I wiped myself off – sticky, cooling – and pulled my jeans back on. ‘We don’t have to do anything. It’s fine.’
‘He’ll know. I’ll have to tell him. Jesus.’
‘Rory.’ My voice like a gunshot in the glass bubble. ‘You don’t have to tell him anything. I don’t think he would notice if you did. Unless it’s about seaweed, Matt is currently unable to take your call. Please try again later.’ But that was no good. I softened my voice, held my arms out. ‘Rory, please. Don’t go. I need you.’ A suggestion of tears in my voice. ‘I’m . . . scared.’
With some guys, that’s all you have to do. Need them. Rory turned back. ‘Hey, it’s OK. We’ll sort something out. I promise.’ And he put his arms around me and I clung to him like driftwood when you’re drowning, this guy I wouldn’t have looked at twice in London. Because despite myself, I did need him. And I was scared, more than I could admit to myself.
It’s easy to judge, I know. I’m basically professionally judgemental. But you don’t know what you might do, if you were stuck on an island and your boyfriend had gone crazy and no one believed you. And that little pink line does tend to focus your mind quite amazingly.
Chapter Forty-Two
King’s Cross station was frenetic, with rushing feet, squeaking suitcase wheels, and a gaggle of tourists around the Harry Potter display. All a world away from Bone Island, the stillness that seemed to leach right into the core of you. Paula hurried along, huffing from her dash through the underground corridors. They’d arranged to meet at Patisserie Valerie, and before she went up the escalator she paused, trying to compose herself. Trying to be ready. A headline in nearby WHSmith’s caught her eye – KILLER COMPANY FACES TRIAL. So someone would pay for what had happened to Andrea, and Niamh, and Mary, and all the other victims of Bone Island. Maeve was on the case, and she wouldn’t rest until the whole dirty truth was dragged out into the light.
Her phone was ringing and she dug it out of her bag, her mind still on the island, the ice-pure sea and the sand white as bone. She didn’t even see the name of the caller, and so Davey Corcoran’s smoker’s hack was a shock in her ear. She’d been leaving him messages all morning after her last-minute trip over. ‘Davey?’
‘Aye. So you’re here, are you?’
‘Yeah. I just thought . . . I had to come.’
‘You’ve had a wasted trip, so you have. I went to the address. They moved on years back, the neighbour said.’
The hope she’d dared to feel was shrivelling already. ‘But . . . they?’
Davey said nothing for a moment, and she could feel him weighing it up, whether to tell her or not. ‘Aye. Neighbour said he’d a woman with him when he lived there. Black hair, she said. I asked.’
But maybe she’d dyed it, to cover up the red that was so striking, so unusual. ‘OK.’ Another question unanswered. Maybe her mother, maybe not. Maybe he’d had a wife the whole time.
‘Something else,’ said Davey, reluctantly, and Paula knew it as if he’d already said the words.
‘They’d a child?’
He sounded surprised that she knew. ‘Aye, they did. A wee one. A girl.’
Paula stood holding her phone, Davey’s flat Belfast tones in her ear, the rush of a city around her, millions of lives, millions of people who’d never know her mother. What difference did it make to anyone if she’d lived or died, if she’d got away or been caught? Only to Paula. It was only her who could not stop looking, even now, when she was starting to see the shape, the outline of it.
‘You want me to keep looking?’ said Davey. She could hear what he wasn’t telling her: that she might not like what he found. That the answers might be harder than not knowing.
But there was no other answer she knew how to give. ‘Yes. Please. Keep looking.’ She hung up the phone and went up the escalator, trying to push it back down deep inside her, trying to bury it, the thing she carried with her at all times.
The woman was sitting there anxiously, her handbag on her knee, looking about her as if she might get robbed at any moment. Susan Andrews – Matt’s mother. Since she was coming to London anyway, Paula had decided to use the trip to tie up any loose ends on the Bone Island case. Package it away, neat and solved, file it and close it. She stuck on a sympathetic smile, trying to hide her own turmoil.
‘Mrs Andrews, hello. I’m Dr Maguire. I was there when they found Matt. I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Words she had said a thousand times before. She did these visits if the family wanted it, knowing what it was to have unanswered questions about the death of your loved one. At least if you knew all the hows and whats, it might make that giant why somewhat easier to tackle. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe she would soon find out for herself.
Mrs Andrews looked older than her years, her skin pinched and eyes red, wearing an unfashionable lemon twinset. ‘Is there anything more you can tell me, doctor?’
‘It would have been quick. He wouldn’t have known what was happening. Just one moment there then the next . . . peace.’ If the family were religious she might say something vague and spiritual at this point. You had to judge it right. It made some people angry – they didn’t want the transient comfort of thinking they might see their loved one again. They didn’t want any comfort at all, like it would be a betrayal of the lost one. But other people liked to hear the soothing platitudes.
‘He was in the sea, they said. For a long time.’
‘He had been when we found him. But he wouldn’t have known that, I promise you. He was already gone. He hit his head, falling down.’ Being pushed, rather, but she didn’t say that.
Mrs Andrews clutched her bag tighter. ‘Then he burned. They burned him.’
‘Again, he wouldn’t have been aware of it. He was . . . far away by that point.’
She nodded dully. ‘So they say.’ She had a flat Glasgow accent. ‘That policeman did it, they said. His friend.’
‘Yes. He’ll stand trial in a few months. If it helps at all, Mrs Andrews, something was very wrong out there on the island. They were all sick, all of them.’
‘This lawyer called. Said I should sue.’ Her voice was toneless.
‘That will be a separate case. But if it helps at all, I got the impression, from my enquiries, that Matt was extremely popular out there. Well liked. He was happy there. That was the reality, you see, not . . . anything that happened after.’
Mrs Andrews was quiet a moment as the waitress, harried, brought tea, slopping a little down on the table. She moved the brown drops aside with one finger. ‘She didn’t get sick, though. Fiona.’ Her tone was hard to read.
‘No, she was all right. We think it’s because she only ate food from off the island. She didn’t even drink the water.’ Paula thought of saying something about the baby, a comfort maybe, but perhaps Fiona wasn’t ready to tell. It could be too much to take, the emotions of a funeral and a pregnancy on top. ‘Have you seen her at all since?’
Mrs Andrews shrugged. ‘We’re not close, exactly. I doubt I’ll see her again now.’ So maybe she didn’t know about the child. Paula would say nothing, though. Every woman deserved to tell that news when and how she chose.
She changed the subject slightly. ‘I’m sorry I never met Matt. He sounded like a really great guy. Did he always love the outdoors?’
‘Oh yes. You’d be taking your life in your hands going into his room as a little lad. Frogspawn, baby birds he’d rescued, a toad on the landing one time!’ She was almost smiling a little.
‘It must have been his dream job, then. It’s beautiful over there. Maybe, in time, you’d even like to go. See why he loved it. The seals, the birds.’
Mrs Andrews took a deep, sighing breath. ‘He was happy there, I know. Before he got sick. Hated London, always hated it. He was only here for her.’ She looked round with distaste at the noisy concourse,
chill and dirty with spring winds. ‘I just wish things had been different. That I could have had something left of him. But it wasn’t possible, of course.’ She bit her lip, eyes brimming. ‘I think that’s the hardest part. That I never could have had it.’
Paula didn’t understand. ‘Had what, sorry?’
‘A bairn, of Matt’s. He’s my only one, you see.’
So she really didn’t know about the baby. ‘Matt didn’t want children, you mean?’
‘He couldn’t, love. Had the leukaemia when he was a small lad, and the chemo for it. Course they stored his . . . stuff, but he said he didn’t want to bring a child into the world. Not when we were destroying the environment.’ She recited it listlessly, as if remembering a conversation she’d had many times. ‘Suppose they could have adopted or summat. One day.’
Paula frowned. That couldn’t be right. ‘Mrs Andrews . . . sorry, you’re saying Matt . . . he couldn’t have children?’
She shook her head. ‘She kept on at him to have a baby, but he wouldn’t. I don’t think Fiona knew. Though when she’d have time for a baby with all her working, I don’t know.’
Paula’s mind was racing, though she tried to keep a neutral, sympathetic face while the woman talked on about her son, sniffing at times and tearing up, leaving her tea to grow cold. It would be easy to check Matt’s medical records. The Guards probably had them already. Had Fiona found out about this, after years of secret trying and hoping? She smiled mechanically as Susan told her a story about Matt’s first pet, a grass snake he’d hid in the airing cupboard, but all the while she was thinking: Did Fiona know? What did she do when she found out? How did she feel?
And most of all, if Matt Andrews could not have children, then who the hell was the father of Fiona Watts’s baby?
She remembered something. The way Rory had said, on the boat: even if it’s not mine. That could be taken two different ways, of course. It could mean Rory knew there was a chance the child was his. And what else had he said? Waiting for someone in jail, it’s no way to live. She’d assumed he meant Fiona, waiting for him. But there was another way to read that too.
Then her mind was turning again, as if someone had taken her by the hand and led her to the memory. The bowls of stones in Fiona’s house. Smooth and polished, with pretty candy stripes and seams. Picked up on the beach maybe, for their island home, to look good on Instagram. Lying around in bowls and arranged on window sills and shelves. Except for the glass bowl on the dining room table. Which only had one or two small stones in the bottom. As if the rest had been hurriedly scooped up, by someone rushing, and crammed into the pockets of a coat hanging nearby.
She knew where Guy worked. It had been ingrained in her for so long, kept in the back of her mind, even when she’d told herself he was long forgotten. She’d always known the exact station and street where he went every day, no doubt swinging in the doors in his suit and smart overcoat, every inch the successful career detective. Now she was there in reality, on a rain-soaked London street in late February. At four p.m., the lights were already sliding into the puddles, a rainbow of colour. She waited, hands shoved in the pockets of her trench coat, hair already damp and tangled. She could never quite rise to an umbrella. Come on, Guy. She didn’t know what she would say, or how to explain, and she hoped that just seeing her, damp and bedraggled, he might somehow understand what she’d come to tell him. Tell him about Fiona Watts, about the terrible suspicion that was growing inside her like a dark child, have him make sense of it somehow, but also tell him more as well.
Guy. I need to tell you. Maggie – there never was a test. Only there was, and I didn’t know about it, I swear I didn’t know – but it said – Guy, you’re her father.
And he would be angry, and confused, and she’d have to do her best to explain what had driven her to not find out the answer – fear of the result, a desperate making-do with Aidan, trying to pretend it would be all right, that they’d never need to find out. Stupid. Maggie would need to know, at some point, for her medical history alone. She’d need the truth. Paula had never wanted her daughter’s childhood clouded by secrets and lies, as her own had been. But how would she explain to Guy that she had known now for months, and not told him?
I was afraid. That was all she would say. I was afraid to lose you. Afraid to see him look at her with disgust, and distrust, and afraid to lose the thing she held most dear – his good opinion. And then maybe they could finally talk, after years of half-promises and half-confessions. Maybe then she could take that job he’d offered, and leave Ballyterrin behind again, wipe it from her shoes like dirt, and make a new life for her and Maggie, in this city, where they could lose themselves.
There was movement at the turnstiles of the police station. Paula straightened up, pushed her damp hair into some semblance of neatness. Her stomach was turning over and over, seasick on dry land. Was that – yes, it was him. She’d know the height and gleam of fair hair anywhere. His long grey coat. He was smiling back at the person coming through the gate after him. A person Paula knew too. Jet-black hair, hooded eyes, guarded face. Though a little more rounded. Tess Brooking. Why was Guy’s wife there? Meeting him at the station after work, perhaps?
Paula held her breath. The busy road ran between them, cars skidding up water, and he had not seen her. He was putting up a large black umbrella, sheltering his wife, pressing a hand into the small of her back. Tess turned, a smile breaking onto her lips – Paula had never seen her smile before – and her own coat fell open, and Paula saw it. The curve of the stomach. The bloom in the face. She knew it for what it was, and something stabbed in her heart, and she stood back, quickly, turning her face to the brick wall, in case they would see her.
They passed by – Guy, and his wife, and their coming baby – and Paula let them go, drips of cold city rain running over her face and pooling down on the warm hidden flesh below.
Fiona
Even now, I don’t know how it happened. Matt was out on the balcony, where he’d spent so much time recently. He was staring out over the horizon. It was beautiful, though I hated it now. I’d never seen sunsets like the ones there, not even in Bali or Mexico. The way the sea turns blood-red, and the sun dissolves into it like a giant pill, something to take the pain away and make it all better. It would have been romantic, had my boyfriend not been crazy. Had he not been standing in a sea of broken glass, from where he’d shattered the lighthouse bulb. I said, ‘What are you doing?’
I’d left my surgery early. I’d gone shopping. I was trying so hard to make it all perfect and nice and good. I’d even bought food, normal food. Hoping against hope there’d been a mistake, that what I’d found in Matt’s medical records was somehow not true. My brain was trying to shuffle what he’d said about being sick as a kid. Some echo of his awful mother. A childhood illness. Pictures of him with a shaved head, vague references to hospital stays . . . But of course, that won’t matter to you, Fi, because you work so much anyway, you wouldn’t have time for one anyway . . . I hadn’t been listening. I should have listened.
Despite all this, I was making an effort. Because even after everything, I hoped so much he would look at me. Say, I’m watching the sunset, sweetheart. Put his arm around me, pull me close like he used to do. I used to worry so much I would lose Matt’s love in the obvious ways. That he’d meet someone younger, thinner, nicer than me. That he’d see me naked and in full light and realise what a terrible mistake he’d made. That I wouldn’t get pregnant and he’d leave me for someone who was twenty and fertile. That I would get pregnant and he’d run from the responsibility. Or that I’d lose him properly. Bike into lorry. Ski into tree. Tumour in head or blood or bones. I never thought I’d lose him like this, when he was still standing in front of me, breathing and whole.
His eyes skipped over me. Empty. I’d become invisible, and some terrible part of me wished he would beat me or cut me, anything to feel
his mark on me. To know he still saw me.
‘Baby,’ I tried again. Trying to be nice. ‘I’m here. What are you doing? I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, about the company. I believe you now. People are sick, you’re sick. Why don’t you come down, and we can watch the sunset together, and we can have dinner and you can tell me about it . . .’ And what? Make love? Have a baby? Live happily ever after? I don’t think I even believed in that any more. A raw sob tore out of me. ‘What’s happening, Matt? Why are you being like this? Why did you lie to me – why didn’t you tell me you’d been sick? You knew I wanted a baby. You knew.’
He turned to me. He looked so beautiful. His face bearded, his hair shaggy. So strong and tanned. My love. My saviour. My ending. How could our story have unspooled like this? The sunset glinting off the glass and off his hair, like liquid fire. Everything red and burnished. Like the whole place was coated in blood.
‘We can’t have a baby,’ he said, his eyes flicking everywhere. Watchful. Scared. ‘I can’t, Fiona. How can we have a baby when all this is happening? The blood tide! I had to stop the light, in case they find us! Don’t you see?’
Blood Tide (Paula Maguire 5) Page 27
