Desire Line (40 page)

Wrong.

Notes

*
‘Let it flow away with the water' – fitting for Sara. Perfect for Rhyl.

Chapter 28

By mid-May an inquest had been opened and adjourned, Rhyl-style in a pre-formed structure on the corner of Wellington and Westbourne. Just-thrown-up clubhouse had the drop on public building. The burnt-out shell of Corbett the Bookmaker that Glenn said had stood on the site showed more gravitas. Not long after I returned from Ireland, the coroner issued to Sara's next of kin – neither Eurwen nor me but Josh still – an ‘interim certificate of the fact of death', freeing her from the half-life she'd lived for thirty years. That she'd died wasn't provisional now, only unexplained.

Round this time, when my New Rhyl of the mind kept getting intercut with days generating nothing, I tried to stay in contact with Josh because A. He was Nearest Male Relative in every way that counted. B. Nobody could judge him hard as he judged himself which meant my grandfather was due a respect rebate and c. Neither of those was a real reason. Something close to panic would grab me several times a day and it was always connected with thoughts of him. A message arrives about tenders for salvage from demolitions in Avonside— and my mouth dries, my pulse races. A detective inspector announces a crackdown on thefts from the Royal Alex Hospital— I have to freeze what I'm doing and lose track of the task. Keeping him informed is the spin I tried to put on our conversations— he usually already knew as much as me. ‘'Course
you
won't be called when the real inquest's held. Why would—? It'll be me they want. Unless they'll accept my statement because the coroner's still got all the original case notes available. There's a number of possibles for the verdict— accident, suicide, unlawful killing or open. Take your pick.' These were reeled off without a stumble over
killing
. ‘Or there's one called a narrative. But they mightn't want to bring that in because they don't have enough facts.'
Do they?
‘Accident's most likely. Open is the last thing anyone wants.' The background to Josh's head was a vertical field of broken rock that fixed his whereabouts. Croagh Patrick's Pilgrim Path was about to enter a testing stretch by the looks of it.

‘Because?'

‘Leaves a forever stink. That's what they used to say, the bosses.' He shrugged. ‘People like things tidied up. Open is, well, like admitting it's bad and just how bad who the hell knows?'

‘You'll be coming back for it—?' but I'd misunderstood.

‘Not if they don't force me.' That set face again. ‘I've nothing to give them. Not new.' At a distance over one of his shoulders a figure was making poor progress from boulder to boulder, slipping back, spine bent, head tucked in. Reminded me of a subject by Tomiko. No one was sketched out enjoying a sunlit stroll, he concentrated on wretched humans struggling through hostile landscapes and this looked pretty hostile. I'd never set foot on Ireland's holy mountain and according to Josh every July fewer pilgrims bothered with the mass ascent. While also according to Josh – he, a non-Catholic – walked there once a week.

‘Are you going up or down?'

He laughed as if I'd made my second mistake. ‘Just sitting. See that!' The terrain lurched. He showed me out to flat grey cloud cover blending into flat grey sea full of leaden lumps, no birds or vessels to attract the eye and no competition for the perfect vision of Clew Bay we'd shared only a short while ago. It gave a moment for us both to think. Then, ‘Yori—'

‘What?'

A hiss of breath then, ‘Take care of yourself.' His voice had thickened. After 
U, Westport At Night came up, colourful, busy, The Jester's doors swinging behind an elderly couple holding hands. I thought, How can he stand that? Yet from our few minutes' chat you'd assess him as in the top ten per centile of OK. As though he was signing off on the past. Or was it relief he could put his name to a document saying nothing in his possession (now) had any connection to Sara's disappearance that November 17
th
, their daughter's birthday?

Result?
I
was never going to know what happened to her. If I leaned towards letting Josh off all charges, it left one familiar culprit. Nothing you
did
Yori, I told young Archie Kao in the wardrobe mirror. He was in black pants, charcoal T-shirt, up on his toes, fighter-style.

But it's looking like it killed her anyway.

There wasn't a date set for the proper inquest ‘pending police enquires' and the legal process kept pace with life at Forward Rhyl. I won't wander far off-message. I know the town doesn't count for anything with the inhabitants, never mind you but Rhyl was the last one to see Sara alive. It figured somehow if only as her enemy. September came in. If Sara was shocked when she arrived in this month in 2008, she'd be horrified now.
How can you live here?
I imagined her Oxford diction like a scalpel used on Josh. All major refurbishment has stopped. Not been completed. Stopped. Some days in the office— these were the busy ones— what we did was handle sinister requests from other agencies for information. So the population template could be declared inaccurate while the design code for the delivery of quality outcomes in respect of Massing, Density and Height was too detailed. To maintain our keenness, backing for this or that project was
really
a goer – was about to be drawn from a pot that had recently materialised – and had been reallocated – was never intended for us anyway because sealed by criteria that we'd failed to meet at the outset. Then we were put to work on a new Magic Formula. The brainchild of muscular planning superstar D. P. Cutler from
Melbourne
*
, it takes weather pattern forecasts, familial resilience scores, changes in ‘personal downtime usage', current central government/private enterprise health campaigns plus all the usual retail/commercial/service industry demands – there's no column for architectural merit – and predicts what you should do with a dead beat area. Less than a week and D.B. Cutler was a hate figure at Forward Rhyl. Neither Glenn nor I could find a single UK instance of predictions based on Cutler's formula being A. practical or B. just not mad.

But that didn't stop his rise to first planning dollar-billionaire, did it? So our ‘robustness of benchmarks' needed to be improved for Rhyl to get even to base camp on the Cutler GoodGradient. As a matter of urgency. Just to
start
. Rhondda Jones, ex-leisure services and now Recovery Czar had said it. Glenn's fake poster business must be beckoning again. He predicted unemployment on the hour.

On the positive side, I stole time to fiddle about with the PalmWalk projection. A twisted cable of retrofitting and modern engineering, its aim was to tighten the fractured sea front and hold it in place for others to make something of. This strip of real estate is responsible for Rhyl's existence. Starting in the 1820s and for a hundred plus years men on-the-make jostled for frontage, pouring in time, effort and hope like gold prospectors. Where land meets water is the thing – it is everywhere – and along this edge they'd strung their buildings and successful attractions, Morfa Hall and Lodge, the Italianate Baths Hotel, the Grand Pavilion, Victoria Pier, Queen's Palace and as late as 1930, Goodall's heated saltwater pool that a quarter of a million people entered in its first season. And – from the middle of the 20
th
century – some so hideous the brief might've been ‘Kill Rhyl!'

Here's another not-so-magic formula. Knock out the signature pieces that make This Place not That Place. Infill using for a guide a blind man's take on beauty. Then couple it with the tunnel vision of a mugger. Result? A seafront that demands, ‘You! Yes, you! Give us what bit of money you've got now. All of it NOW! Then fuck off home.' But stripped bald by The Wave and redrawn by me, what I could offer was exactly what the site provided to start with. The ultimate desire line, the route people chose to follow when developers, civil engineers, local authorities, private landlords – and architects – let them. You can find tracks trampled across grass verges, running through broken down gates or holes in fences, cow paths they used to be called and it was a rule of planning once that you didn't pave them. Like it was giving in.

I began modelling my Rhyl cow path, enjoyed the making and, creepily, Sara kept me going. She'd walked it or tried to. Starting on West Parade, jostled by a coach party. She nearly tripped and fell opposite Harkers— or was that Clear Skies? Come along, I invited her. It'll give you the lowdown on the town that stole your daughter, from Splash Point in to the Blue Bridge out. All through your journey up here, crazy as a go on the Dodgems, you stayed fixed on Eurwen at the fair, leaning too far out, asking for disaster. You wanted to be at the Ferris Wheel, waiting for the finish – it's rubbish and you don't get long, the story of Rhyl – ready to pounce the moment she steps off. Instead you found no Eurwen and no rides. And plenty of freed-up space. But the practise of architecture takes nothing and clothes it in metal, glass, brick, concrete and a dozen other new materials. For pleasure and use. (
You should've stayed around if only to witness what I could do!)
Getting her involved through October was automatic— see my Walk wrapping itself round the base of SkyTower. You knew it when it actually worked! I envy you that. Allow me to impress with its refurbishment in Rhyl colours, my audioplaque to Princess Diana that it made sick, my removal of four physical barriers over the next one hundred metres, my tough little buckthorns employed for greening and, bringing you here to this exact spot, my hard landscaping in slate, a substance manufactured 400 million years ago. In Wales. Wasn't that what
A First
was about, collecting your history together then knocking against its limitations to break out of the groove?

The month used itself up. I wore away my new pair of Adidas Felons going up and down, worrying about Josh, actually working, making
mochi daifuki
for Tess who told me when I said flavoured with green tea, well you'd never guess!

But she sounded a bit less convincing? Having to spend extra on her now looked likely— I must price up how much a new improved affection quotient would cost.

And November was on its way with an anniversary.

Notes

*
That's Melbourne! – as in ‘How Not To Do Docklands— A Lesson,' the first text I ever paid for. 

Chapter 29

You'll remember autumn 2040 as brilliant. In the Botanic Garden that The Wave never reached all the snakebark maples were like flares— but the cold snap gave our surviving trees everywhere great early colour. Then a warm, still, sunny week stretched and stretched now it couldn't do us any good and the colour stayed on. At home, between cruising clips from Sara In Rhyl, I cleansed the flat like a maniac, right down to the filters. Everything inside went out and at least it entertained Libby— ‘You're gonna make some'dy a brilliant little househusband and what happened to that girl, why's she not giving you a hand?'

Not Tess, obviously. Tess would never come looking for me of her own accord. It was a sad confession to myself as the vacuum nozzle probed the sofa. Thanks for that Libby. Instead of outlining the whole point of
higan
for her I acted deaf.

‘Yeah— you
know
, that one came here the time you were on holiday. Bit snobby and thin. Your sort of build—'

‘It wasn't a holiday.'

‘If you say so.' Libby was dressed for— something or other, all in pink, with pink shoes her feet were trying to climb out over the top of. Waiting for a taxi.

‘I never managed to find out—'

‘Well you should of. Or I'm gonna be stuck with you forever. He's here! Bye!'

She waved as she went. A grudging bow in return. Not only was her reminder of the visitor unwelcome – who was it? I'm not superstitious but seriously
who?
– so was Libby's life-coaching that managed to turn normal hygiene into displacement activity. I hoisted the sofa up the front steps, acknowledging Mrs Yilmaz, the Turkish doctor's wife who'd stopped to watch Libby off. Probably feeling superior. Mrs Yilmaz is a jowly, sour-faced woman with patches of moss for eyebrows so Libby's still well ahead on points, on my planet. I threaded the sofa back through my front door where it slid into place equidistant from an architectural model taking up most of the desk, and a small pedestal table. I went into the bedroom and came back with Sara's personal possessions, took down
A First At Oxford
and laid the lot on the tabletop. According to Tomiko what you do now is fill a drinking glass under the tap and add that. You've got Sara's shrine.