Something halted me – I don’t know what – but I stopped and stared across the fields. There was only the faintest hint of moonlight as the snow clouds broke apart. The blizzard was short-lived and had dusted the land. The subtle light picked out the edges of several trees, the white gable wall of David’s house, and the memories that raced through my mind. They were all I had left.
Suddenly the front door of David’s house opened and loud voices rang crisply through the night. I was close but not so close I couldn’t abort my arrival without being spotted. Someone came running out of the house, slipping over on the snowy path. There was crying, shouting – a female voice – followed by lower male tones. I saw a struggle, more crying, swearing, and David’s voice booming through the night.
‘Take my coat at least,’ he called. ‘I can’t let you back out into the night like this. It’s freezing. Shall I call your parents?’ His figure was silhouetted in the hall light as he reached inside and passed her a coat. He bent down and helped the girl to her feet. ‘Look, I think you should come back inside.’ He was almost begging – something David never did – and his voice carried cleanly through the freezing air, weaving through the hoar frost. I didn’t understand what was going on, but even in the dark I could see that the young girl was the one from the café.
‘You can’t stop me leaving,’ she called out. ‘I’m going home.’ The girl glanced back over her shoulder, perhaps hoping for David to come after her as she teetered off wearing a silly short skirt and heels. She hadn’t bothered to put on the coat but had it slung over her arm. David watched her walk as far as the end of the path, and then, shaking his head, he closed the front door.
The girl came down the lane, heading exactly where I was waiting. I froze in fear. In a moment, I would be spotted.
So then I did it. I spoke. I spoke to save the rest of my life; the rest of Julia’s life. One word, and it fell out as if I had never said anything ever before. ‘Hello.’ I was preempting her thoughts with my stuck-together voice. I coughed, clogged and uncertain about the noise I had just made. If I hadn’t done it, she would have seen me and become scared.
Twenty feet away, the girl stopped dead, not expecting to meet anyone at this time of night. Her neck stiffened and her shoulders hunched. One ankle twisted to the side because of her ridiculously high-heeled shoes. She looked like a hooker. She looked like me thirty years ago. I knew because of the pain weeping from her eyes.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked, relieved to hear the figure blocking her way was female.
‘I’m an old friend of Dr Carlyle.’ My voice crackled. The words rose from my chest like a slow-erupting volcano. I had to stay calm, in control. ‘Are you OK? Can I give you a lift?’ I asked before she could question my presence at such an early hour. She clearly wanted to go home. I would take her and then come back to confront David.
‘Yeah, yeah, actually, that would be great. My parents will kill me.’ She was still nervous, still incredulous, hesitant, but her need for assistance outweighed her fear of strangers. She relaxed a little.
‘Why don’t you call them?’ All the while, my mind was spinning back and forth between now and then, him and her, David and Mary, rolling us together as if thirty years had never passed. What had he just done to her? She was dishevelled. Upset. I was watching it happen all over again.
‘Out of battery.’ She held up a silver phone as she approached me. Her face was blotchy and streaked with make-up. She’d been crying. I remember crying; alone, violated, bereft, in pain, dirty, ashamed.
‘Come on then. Climb in.’ I led her back to the Land Rover. I prayed that once again the engine noise wouldn’t give away my presence. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked as I started the engine.
‘Grace,’ she told me. ‘Do you have a phone I could borrow?’ She took off her shoes and rubbed her bare feet. They were violet from the cold. She pulled the waxed jacket that David had given her around her shoulders; the only sensible thing she was wearing.
‘Me? A mobile phone?’ I laughed. ‘No. I don’t have a phone.’ And after a three-point turn in the gateway, I drove off. In the rearview mirror, silhouetted against the house lights, I saw the outline of a broad male figure, watching us disappear down the lane.
‘So, tell me.’ I still wasn’t used to the sound of my voice. ‘What’s a young girl like you doing roaming the countryside at night?’ It was as if I was talking to myself all those years ago; as if I was looking into a mirror from nineteen seventy-six. There was so much I wanted to know. She would help me understand.
‘It’s a long story,’ she mumbled.
‘I bet I’ve got a longer one,’ I replied. We bumped along.
‘You have to turn right at this junction,’ she said. There was already a quake in her voice. Just a hint of fear. The moonlight made her nose seem bigger, her cheekbones prominent. I glanced at her lips. Lips where
he
had been. I wanted to scrub her clean.
‘OK,’ I whispered, turning the opposite way. There was a pause; a moment for her to decide what to say.
‘Are we going somewhere else first?’ Her hand crept on to the door handle.
Truth was, I didn’t know where we were going. Maybe I wanted to drive the rest of my life away with Grace –
me
– as my passenger. I would be safe then, perhaps prevent it from happening. I could ask her about David, find out if she’d met Jonathon, if she still worked at Café Delicio, if she was studying at university and finally going to make something of herself. I could tell her not to go to the wedding; I could tell her to turn the open sign to closed on the café door when David walked by. I could tell her the pain never goes, never lessens, never stops ruling every decision of your life. I could do all that.
The more I drove, the clearer it became – resolving like the dawn would do in just a few hours. Behind us, a car came down the lane from the direction of David’s house. To begin with, the headlights were fireflies in the hedge but turned into bright moons as they neared. In my mind, I imagined it was David following us. In my mind, I imagined everything worked out fine.
MURRAY
Flora refuses to let go of her mother.
‘You can come in with her if you like,’ the nurse says. She holds out her hand to our daughter. Flora pushes her face into Julia’s shoulder.
‘Is it really necessary?’ I ask when we are inside the cubicle with the doctor.
‘If there are signs of . . .’ she mouths the word ‘abuse’ above Flora’s head, ‘then the police need to know. Action can be taken. Flora will need treating. Counselling.’ She speaks in a gossamer-thin voice. Mostly mouthing.
‘She’s deaf,’ I say. ‘She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.’
The doctor closes her eyes for a moment. ‘I need to check for vaginal interference. Trauma. Bruising. We will need to take photographs. Swabs.’ Her words are suddenly loud, clipped. Determined.
‘No way,’ Julia says. ‘There’s no way David would have hurt Flora.’
Did David hurt you, Flora? I sign. Flora is lying on a white couch and is wearing a hospital gown. She had to take her clothes off standing on a sterile plastic sheet to catch any forensic evidence that might fall from her. Her clothes were bagged and labelled. Even her doll was taken from her. Did he hurt you? I sign.
Flora shakes her head and signs, I didn’t mean to leave the boat. It was boring. David found me on the lane.
‘Did you see that?’ Julia says. ‘David didn’t kidnap her at all.’
I slip my arm around Julia’s waist. She hasn’t said she wants me back. She hasn’t said she doesn’t. A part of her still believes that David is innocent.
Flora has tears in her eyes as she lies back on the couch. I just catch her hands quiver
sorry
as I leave the room. It is no place for me as the doctor begins her work.
Twenty minutes later, the paediatrician calls me into her office. Flora nestles on Julia’s knee. She is licking a lollipop but her tired eyes keep drooping shut and her head falls forward.
‘Good news, Mr and Mrs French.’ Julia doesn’t correct the doctor about our names. A good sign. ‘Your little girl is fine. The only trauma she seems to have suffered is guilt at having wandered off. Other than that, she’s perfect. I’m going to get a child psychologist to assess her. To be on the safe side.’
Julia and I nod in unison. It’s the first thing we have agreed upon for as long as I can remember.
Ed is waiting for us in the department reception. ‘Are you here as Uncle Ed or Detective Inspector?’ There’s the seed of something in my voice now that I know Flora is unharmed. It’s hope; it’s the first glimmer of good in months of mess. Already my eyes are stinging from the brightness of it all.
‘I’m here as both,’ he says. ‘And with that, I advise you all to go home. Together.’ Ed’s eyes sweep around my family. He has been looking after Alex while we attended to Flora.
‘I got to ride in Ed’s police car, Dad. And he let me talk on the radio.’ I ruffle my son’s hair and he pulls away. ‘Not cool, Dad.’
‘Talking of cars,’ I say to Julia, sighing at the logistics, ‘your car and your mother’s Land Rover are still at . . .’ I don’t know what to call it. I don’t even want to say his name. ‘Need picking up from . . .’
‘We’ll fetch them tomorrow,’ Julia replies. She drapes her coat over Flora’s arced back. She is clinging on round my neck, just about asleep now. ‘Let’s get home,’ she says, and Ed offers to give us a lift, although I can’t honestly say I know where home is any more.
The rock had landed on a polished side table, smashing a lamp and a vase. David swung round at the sound of breaking glass but Flora didn’t stir. Her back was to the window and I was careful to avoid her, but I had to get in somehow. Carlyle was hardly going to open the door to me. Flora was looking at something – photographs – and it was only after I pushed in all the glass with my coat wrapped around my arm that she turned to face me. I leapt through the window, banging my head on the stone lintel.
Get back! I signed to her, but my coat got in the way of my hands and the urgent warning was lost. David stood, his mouth gaping, choked with excuses. He didn’t attempt to defend himself. He just stared at me, almost as if he was pleased to see me.
‘You bastard!’ I yelled, and strode up to him, swinging a punch on each side of his face. Then I rammed him in the guts with my foot and fists and would have done more but Flora was close up, watching, stunned, crying. Her hands got tangled as she tried to sign. I pushed Carlyle down on to the sofa. He didn’t fight back, not even when I dialled Ed’s number. The police were on the way.
‘What have you done?’ I yelled at Carlyle, but he didn’t reply. I towered above him, giving him no chance of escape. Strangely, calmly, he picked up the photograph album that Flora had been looking at and flipped quietly through the pages. When I saw the pictures, I felt sick. Each leaf was crammed haphazardly with photographs of Julia, Mary, the kids, even me in places. They were stuck in roughly with Blu Tack or tape, as if they had previously been displayed somewhere else.
It’s OK, honey, I signed to Flora. Uncle Ed’s coming to help us. The pain of not being able to hug my daughter properly until the police arrived was agony. My hands itched both to thump Carlyle again and cradle Flora.
Are you the bad man because you hit David? Flora’s hands shook as she signed. She wouldn’t look at me. Will you go to prison now? she asked. I shook my head, watching as David turned the album pages.
No, but I should, I thought. Pictures of my wife and kids flashed before me. It was as if Carlyle was showing me what I had been missing all these years by having my nose shoved in a bottle. If I’m honest, Flora, I sign, I think I’ve just been released.
The house smells damp and it’s freezing. I swear it’s actually warmer outside in the orange glow of the streetlights than in here. I turn on the central heating and the boiler makes a grinding noise, but after fifteen minutes – the same length of time it takes to knit my family together with hugs, smiles, tea and blankets – we feel a layer of dry heat creeping through the small house.
‘So,’ I say. Julia sits opposite me at the kitchen table. She wanted to go home to Ely. She wanted me with her. Ed stopped off with us at Northmire on the way home to check on Mary. She was sleeping, the breath falling from her chest steadily. Brenna and Gradin were settled in their room and complained bitterly when Julia insisted that they come with us back to Ely.
‘We won’t do anything wrong,’ Brenna said. She nudged her brother but he didn’t speak, still suffering the trauma of a few hours down at the police station. Ed didn’t press charges in the end, although he’s convinced there’s something troubling the boy; something he’s bottling up.
But Julia insisted that the pair come home with us. ‘We can’t possibly leave you.’ And she packed up a few belongings.
‘Do you think she’ll be OK?’ Julia asks about Mary as we sit in the kitchen.
I nod, thinking how beautiful my wife looks, how unusual this is. Us, together, calm, at home.
Then she says, ‘Just one night. That’s all I need. Just one night at home, normal, as it used to be. The four of us.’
‘Four plus two,’ I say, laughing. ‘They’re all crashed out. All exhausted.’ And I know what she means about the one night at home. If it’s all I get, I will stretch out the memory for ever.
She cradles her mug in her hands. ‘Oh, Murray,’ she says. Then she calls out my name, but not so loud that she will wake Flora. Beneath the table, her foot curls round my ankle.
Earlier, our daughter couldn’t wait to climb between her own sheets. She surrounded herself with soft toys, and Julia and I kissed her simultaneously on each cheek, just like we used to. Then we looked in on Alex. He was reading, waved a hand at us without looking up. ‘Some things never change,’ I whispered to Julia as we went downstairs.