The Summer We All Ran Away (22 page)

“And what happened?” he prompted at last, since Jack seemed to have run out of words.

“It was my fault,” said Jack. “I fucked it up. But she was the one, you know?”

“How long has it been?”

“She was the one,” Jack repeated, not appearing to hear the question. “Until I met her, I never thought that was real, but she was. I met her one night in my garden, and that was it, I was gone.”

There was grey in Jack's hair, and the lines on his face
were not all from exhaustion and cold.
We've both grown old
, he thought.

“It's still all for her, you know? Every song I wrote, every tour I put together, all for her, trying to be the man she'd have wanted. I've written whole albums for her, for what we had, for the life we should have lived, if I hadn't - ” He took a deep breath. “My entire career since then has been like a massive exercise in necromancy.”

So she died
.

“You know that feeling, when there's something you love so much, you just have to make it yours? All yours and nobody else's? Whatever the cost?” He shook his head. “I'm sorry, I'm sure
you
don't. I'm sure you're a much better man than I am.”

I tried to be
. “I'm just as flawed as anyone else,” he said out loud.

“I seriously doubt that. Not many people would take in a total stranger and let him ramble on like this.”

“How long is it since you and she - ?”

“More than twenty years.”

“So why's she haunting you now?”

“It was at a gig,” Jack said. “There was a girl in the front row.”

He waited patiently, knowing each confession had its own rhythm. He was good at this. They all were.

“She was wearing a green dress,” Jack said. “A sea of denim, and this one girl in green. They say it's unlucky, don't they?”

“Do they?”

“See, I do know how unbelievably fucking lucky I am. I really do. I get sackfuls of fan mail. I was rich before I was thirty. But what's the point? What's it for?”

“So you brought your problems to God?”
Who isn't listening because he isn't even there
.

“Not really,” Jack admitted. “I actually I don't believe. I'm so sorry. But I couldn't face Rehab and my sponsor relapsed
three months ago and my manager would only tell me to get laid, and I thought a man of God might just be the only other person who'd take me in. I'm the biggest fucking hypocrite in the world, and I'm taking complete advantage of your good nature. You can throw me out if you want to.”

He hesitated. “Actually,” he said slowly, “I don't believe either. Not any more. I lost my faith. And now I don't know what to do.”

The blood throbbed through the chambers of his heart. Silence pressed heavily against his eardrums.

“I just realised I don't know your name,” said Jack, sounding dazed. “I'm really sorry. I want to help but I don't know what to call you.”

“I don't know what to tell you. They called me Andrew, but he's gone now. I suppose I need a new name.”

“And how long have you, um, known?”

“A year. Longer. Long enough to be sure.”

“Have you said anything?”

“What is there to say?”

“That's a hell of a thing to live with. What are you going to do?”

“I have no idea,” admitted the man who used to be Brother Andrew.

“You could leave, though, right?”

“I'm not a prisoner. But I made a promise. It's like getting married. Is it fair to bail out just because you're unhappy?”

“Haven't you already broken it, though?”

“It's not just that,” he admitted. “I haven't been out in the world for decades, literally decades. I have no money, no family, no friends. Where would I go? What would I do when I got there? I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be helping you.”

“No,” Jack protested. “I just wish there was something - I could offer you a drink?”

Their laughter sounded thin and light in the vastness of the vaulted air.

“You know,” said Jack, “I have this house in the West
Country. I haven't been there in years. I just walked out the front door and left it. Never went there again.”

“Why?” He suspected he already knew the answer.

“It's where - where we lived. We had one summer together. I don't think I'll ever go back there. But you could.”

“Sorry, what?”

“If you need somewhere to go. Christ knows what state it's in by now, but the power's still on, and the water, and it's totally safe, or at least - no, it should definitely be safe by now.” The oddness of the phrase was striking, but Jack was still speaking. “If you want to, you're welcome. Stay as long as you like. No-one'll bother you.”

“I couldn't possibly - ”

“You get the train from Paddington,” said Jack. “Change at Truro. Then you get the ferry - ”

“I really can't,” he said. The prospect of freedom made his head swim. “But thank you. You're very kind.”

“I've got a lot to make up for,” said Jack.

Later he leaned against a pillar and watched Jack sleeping with his head on the empty rucksack. An unpleasant thought burrowed at the back of his mind.

Of course there was no way to tell by looking. It was at once the oldest and most amateur of crimes, and it left no mark on those who committed it. And it was more difficult to be objective because he actually liked Jack. He didn't want to believe it could possibly be true.

He awoke a few hours later in a panic, it was nearly four o'clock, time for Vigils, and found he was alone. There was no sign of Jack, or the rucksack, or the guitar, or the vodka, or the pills. The blanket had been wrapped awkwardly around him, and when he stood, a piece of coloured cardboard, plumped around a roll of ten-pound notes, fell from its folds.

He was holding the inlay card from a cassette. On the front, a painting of a house, seen from a distance and in darkness, a
single rosy lamp glowing in a high window. The dimensions of the cassette didn't suit it; the image felt hemmed in from the sides, as if it longed to breathe. The words
Jack Laker
and
Landmark
were crammed around the edges like an afterthought. He turned the card over and found the note.

I meant it. The house is yours if you want it. Here's a picture of it someone did for me once. It looked better on the vinyl. Thanks for keeping me sane and sober
.

Jack

PS You look like this guy I knew years ago called Tom
.

And below, a scribbled list of directions that leaped out at him in confusing bursts:

Paddington - change at - ferry to - up the street - key's underneath the -

And one more strange command:

Be careful in the woods
.

chapter fifteen (now)

There was no question about it. No possible way it could be anything other than what it looked like. Davey had seen them before, of course, in cases in museums, shielded behind glass and silence. He had read little white cards explaining how information gathered from skulls could give important information about diet and nutritional status, the mystifying secrets that could be gleaned from this simple shard of bone.

But he had never until now considered that each skull had once been part of an actual human being. This wasn't some interesting relic somebody had carelessly broken one afternoon and then thrown away, like clay pots and worn-out scraps of fabric. This was the skull of a person who had once lived and breathed just as he did; and had then died, and been buried beneath a tree in someone's garden.

There were black spots dancing in front of his vision. He felt Priss grab him hastily.

“If you pass out, mate,” she told him, “there's no way I can catch you even with two hands. Why don't you sit down or something?”

His knees folded beneath him and then he was sitting on the ground, which suddenly felt dirty and polluted. He glimpsed the thick crust of dirt on Priss' fingers, saw the glint of blood, black in the moonlight, where she had cut herself as she scrabbled furiously in the soil. How much of the muck on her hands was actually rotted human flesh? How could such a beautiful sanctuary contain such ugliness? His stomach
lurched and he heard himself whimper. Priss slapped him hard on the arm.

“Give over,” she ordered, and put the skull carefully on the ground before them. “I didn't want to find this, but I did, so there's no going back. We need to think, okay? We need to decide what we're going to do.”

“What do you mean?” Davey asked faintly. “We just found a b-b-b-b - ”

“Bacardi Breezer, bison, Bert Bacharach, Bavarian sausage, banyan tree,
no!
Sorry, I just can't help myself when I get nervous. A body, okay? I get it. We found a dead body.”

“Was it - ”

“Did it smell, you mean? No, it's just bones. Well, I'm saying that.” Priss sniffed cautiously at her fingers. Davey struggled not to vomit. “No. Definitely just bones. So who do you think it is?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, of course you don't fuckin'
know!”
Her fury took him by surprise; he had been too busy with his own terror and disgust to realise that she, too, was shivering with cold and tension. “But you could at least, you know,
speculate
a bit, right? We've got to decide what to do. We're out here in the cold with a dead body. There's three grown adults – well, okay, two grown adults and Isaac – back in the house. So we need a strategy. And that means we need a theory. So - ” She poked thoughtfully at the skull with her foot. “ - who do we think this is?”

Davey tried to focus on the skull in front of him. The expression ‘Beauty is only skin-deep' had never seemed more apt. It was a hideous, ugly thing, blind empty eye sockets and yellowed teeth. He looked away again.

“It's got to be something to do with that fuckin' annexe,” said Priss. “And those letters, and those two women, what were they called? Daphne and Miranda, or something?”

“Evie and Mathilda,” said Davey, relieved to have something to contribute. “Where did you get Daphne from?”

“Probably the purple bikini,” said Priss.

“Um - ”

“Scooby Doo, you culturally-derelict twat. Maybe that Jack guy, maybe he killed one of them.”

Davey tried to remember what he had read in the letter. In books and films, people always seemed to have perfect recall of any piece of information they were given. The plot frequently depended on it. He had often wondered what would happen in reality: policemen arriving, perplexed, at the wrong address because they'd heard
street
instead of
avenue
, codes forgotten or mistyped leading to endless Doomsday devices going off.

“Wasn't there something in there about one of them leaving him?” he asked. “And the other one was coming back from her holiday to c-c-comfort him - ”

“Ha! To make her move on him, more like.” Priss sniffed. “She must have really liked him to come all the way back from Greece just to hold his hand and listen to him sob into his beer about how special his girlfriend was.” She began picking dirt from beneath her fingernails. “Maybe she killed him in a fit of jealous rage when he told her he wasn't interested.”

“That's a bit extreme, isn't it?” It was easier to talk about possible motives than it was to actually look at the skull.

“Murder is extreme?” Priss laughed. “Hold the fuckin' press.”

“Well yes I
know
, but would you kill someone just because they wouldn't s-s-sleep with you?”

“I might kill them if I thought they'd only done it out of loneliness.” Priss grinned. “Or if they were a really crap shag.”

“Don't make jokes like that,” said Davey. “It's horrible.”

Priss laughed scornfully. “How can you sit here with an actual murder victim in front of us and tell me off for bad-taste jokes? You'd want to get your priorities sorted. Maybe he'd already killed her, the other one I mean. And Daphne - ”

“Evie - ”

“And then maybe
Evie
helped him bury her out here.”

“Only he was filled with remorse, and left,” said Davey.

“Remorse.” Priss savoured the word thoughtfully. “D'you think you could feel something as poetic as
remorse
for killing someone? It ought to be a bit more visceral than that. Besides, running away doesn't sound much like
remorse
to me. More like terror.” She sighed. “Do you think running away is an inherent act of cowardice?” Davey swallowed uncomfortably. “No, don't answer that, since we've both done it.” She looked at the skull gloomily. “For Christ's sake. What are we going to do?”

“I don't know,” said Davey miserably.

“Yeah, I know you don't. You're no fucking use at all.” Priss leaned against him affectionately. “You're quite warm, though.”

This, he thought, was his cue to put his arm around her. That was the first move. Once you had your arm around her, you were halfway home. Then you could turn her face up towards yours and kiss her -

His arm hung uselessly from his shoulder like a huge slab of dead meat.
Just move
, he thought to it furiously, but he couldn't get the right neurons to fire up.
Just get on and move, she must think you're absolutely retarded
.

“Can you hear something?” asked Priss.

And now that he stopped to listen, he could. A slow rustling, a cracking of twigs, something shouldering its way towards them. He suddenly remembered the panther.

“Shit and corruption,” breathed Priss. “What do we do?”

He was too terrified to think of an answer.

And then they saw a glimpse of torchlight, and Tom whispered, “Priss? Davey? Is that you?” and Tom and Isaac, pale and breathless, appeared through the trees.

Afterwards, Davey's memory of the return to the house was a slow, surreal nightmare. Branches clawed and clutched at them as they passed; shadows crouched everywhere, ready to spring. The wind rustled threatening branches on the edges
of their vision. Priss stood in a rabbit hole, twisted her ankle and had to hobble the rest of the way clutching onto Davey for support, white-faced and speechless with pain. Isaac silently offered to take her other arm, but Priss looked at him in disbelief until he turned away again. And throughout it all, Tom marched silently behind them, staying a few paces back, as if either he or they were infectious, carrying his grim burden.

The house finally loomed up across the lawn. They could see Kate's silhouette against the light that streamed out from the French windows in the kitchen; she was pacing up and down, her arms wrapped tightly around her. “What are we going to tell her?” Davey asked. “Fuck, my ankle hurts,” Priss muttered, biting her lip. Tom said nothing, but merely gestured them all onwards. Kate saw them and threw the doors open wide. Isaac hesitated, then followed Priss and Davey over the threshold.

“Thank God you're alright,” she said. “Thank God, I thought, oh my God, I thought when I heard that scream, Tom, what on earth, oh,
no
- ”

“Is there somewhere I can put it?” said Tom. “I'm sorry, I know this is a terrible thing to ask, but is there a basket or something, something you won't want to use again - ”

Kate groped blindly behind her and found a plate. She looked at it, then laughed hysterically. “Bring me the head of John the Baptist,” she said, laughing and laughing. “Oh my God, this isn't funny, why can't I stop laughing? There must be something better, something more appropriate, somebody slap me, please, I think I'm going into hysterics here.”

Isaac took the plate from Kate's hand and replaced it with a gardener's basket from beside the doors. Tom gratefully placed the skull in it, then immediately went to the sink and began to wash his hands, scrubbing hard at them with the stiff wire brush Kate used to clean potatoes. Kate pressed both her hands over her mouth to smother the awful, mirthless laughter and finally managed to force herself into silence.

“It must be an old one,” she said at last, swallowing hard. “Bones last for centuries, don't they? It must be old, medieval maybe, or Tudor, there have been people living here for thousands of years - ”

“It's not thousands of years old,” said Priss wearily.

“We don't know that,” said Davey.

“Yes, we do.”

“How do we know?” he asked. “It might have been there for centuries, it really might have.”

“A body buried in a shallow grave decomposes in just a few years,” said Priss. “The bones last about another fifty. If it had been there for centuries I wouldn't have found even dust, never mind bare bones.”

“How would you even know that?” asked Davey weakly.

“Because I'm the fucked-up product of the digital information age,” said Priss. “I know all sorts of awful shit. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I've got in my head.” She limped painfully to a chair and lowered herself into it.

“What happened to your ankle?” Kate knelt at her feet. “Priss, this looks like a sprain. Sit still and I'll get some cold wet cloths.”

“Leave it,” said Priss. “It's fine,
ow
it'll be fine if you stop doing that, anyway - ”

“It's already swelling. If I don't wrap it, tomorrow morning you'll look like the Elephant Man. I know it'll hurt, but it'll only take a few minutes.”

“Stop it!” Priss screamed.

Kate looked at her in astonishment. “Stop what?”

“Stop being so
nice!
Stop looking after all of us like you're all of our mothers fuckin' rolled into one, alright?”

“Priss, I know it hurts, but there's no excuse for - ”

“I just turned up on your doorstep,” Priss said. “I was going to kip in the shed for the night and then maybe break in the next day and nick anything worth selling, did you know that? And instead, you just came down the garden path and invited me in for lunch!”

Kate stood up and went over to the sink. Hunting in the cupboard, she found a clean cloth and began to fill a basin with cold water.

“You looked hungry,” she said over her shoulder.

“I was! I was starving, I hadn't eaten in, like, eighteen hours! And you were like a dream come fuckin' true, alright, like something out of a fairy tale. Taking me in, making me feel at home. You can stay as long as you want, nobody minds. You and Tom, the pair of you, you never asked me where I'd come from, what I'd done, I mean, come on, right? A big deserted house, and two people who just
happen
to be living here, and just
happen
to be really happy with a couple of teenage randoms moving in with them. It doesn't take a fuckin' genius to figure that one out, does it? One of you killed him, or maybe you both did it together, or why else wouldn't you call the police when that beast turned up in the woods?”

“We didn't call the police because of you,” said Tom, raising his voice so he could shout Priss down. “Because of you and Davey. You're obviously both on the run from something. If you must know, Priss, we thought maybe that was why you were hiding. Because the police were after you.”

“Just me? Just because I'm from Liverpool and common as a Burberry pushchair in Starbucks? Not Posh Boy over there?”

“Well, aren't you on the run from the police?” said Kate, very gently. She had taken an ice-cube tray from the freezer compartment of the fridge and was dropping the cubes into the bowl of water one by one, slow and careful.

“Why the fuck would you think I was on the run from the police?”

“We found a car key in your room. And before you say anything, you're too young to drive at all. Let alone a top of the range Audi. We didn't call the police because we were trying to work out what to do.”

There was a silence. Davey took a breath to say something, but Isaac grabbed his wrist and squeezed it sharply. When
Davey turned to him in surprised reproach, Isaac frowned and shook his head. Then he tapped his finger against Davey's wrist, where his watch should have been.
Later
.

“I don't believe you,” said Priss at last. “I want to. Fuch me, but I want to, but I can't. One of you knows
something
about that body, I know it. Why else would you be so nice to Davey and me if you're not making up for something?”

“Priss,” said Tom gently. “Did it never occur to you that maybe we just like you and we want to help?”

“The world doesn't work like that.”

“Not always,” Tom agreed, “but sometimes. Sometimes we see a fellow human being drowning, and we reach out a hand to pull them out of the water.”