by Harper Fox
“Gideon?”
Jago was signalling for him to come down. Gideon ran to join him, the ache in his leg forgotten. “Jago, did Lee come through this way with the baby? I saw them on the path above the church, but they vanished.”
“What? You can’t have done. I just left them up by the house.”
“Oh. Okay, that’s weird. Were they all right?”
“Yes, but I felt strange, and I wanted to come down and talk to my brother about it.”
Gideon nodded. They were standing at the foot of Cadan Tyack’s grave. Gideon had learned to overlook the usual boundaries when it came to his in-laws. “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”
“No, we should go back. Cadan thinks so, anyway.” He set off, and Gideon fell into step by his side. “That’s a death gate, you know. Up there where you were sitting.”
Gideon did know. The vast coffin-shaped stone between the two benches was an inescapable clue. He’d overheard visitors exclaiming at it in horror, but he liked the frank West Penwith acceptance of time and change. He liked the idea of weary mourners having a chance to lay down their load and eat bread and cheese in the sunshine. “Yes. The path’s the old route down from the village, isn’t it?”
“More than that. It’s a corpse road. Run straight as arrows for miles across the country, they do, so wandering spirits won’t be obstructed in their travels.” Jago glanced at him fearfully. “Do you have it too, then? A gift like Lee’s?”
“No, not at all.” Gideon was surprised at his own vehemence. If he had no gift, he had still less of an explanation for his encounters with Lee’s father, with Morris Hawke and the bloody Beast of Bodmin. But today he just wanted to be normal. “What makes you ask that?”
“You saw into my heart.”
They had reached the patched-up hole in the eastern wall of the church. Jago seemed disposed to pause. Gideon laid a gentle hand to his back to move him on. “Jago, you made me a very full confession of the contents of your heart. Dropped half the village in it, too.” As a man, Gideon had no doubts that he’d done the right thing by forgetting that Jago and his friends had clubbed a vicious child-napper to death and concealed the body not three yards from where they were standing, but the copper in him sometimes gave him a hard time. “I’d really like never to hear it again.”
“All right. But there’s a tradition that seeing someone on a corpse road means they’ll be gone within a year.”
“Oh, my God. Look, Tamsie’s already got my nerves in shreds from crying all night. Can you do me a massive favour and keep any local legends of doom to yourself?”
“I’m sorry, Gideon.”
“That’s all right. Just... Oh, there he is. He must’ve found a different way back up the cliff.”
But Lee was making his way down the path, not up it, and he didn’t have the baby in his arms. Instead a small, odd deputation was following in his wake. Elowen was directly behind him, struggling to keep up. She stretched out an arm to grab Lee’s jacket. He shook her off, the gesture so uncharacteristic that Gideon’s alarm bells began to shrill. Behind them came Michel and Zeke, apparently vying for position. “Bloody hell,” Jago said. “What’s going on up there?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of it. Come on.”
They met at the foot of the track. Lee came to him like a hard-hunted fox to its earth. He stopped three inches shy and stood motionless. “Lee, darling,” Gideon said without thinking, something in Lee’s face shocking the word out of him—a bedroom endearment, a sleepy last word after love. “What in God’s name’s wrong? Where’s Tamsyn?”
But Lee couldn’t speak. Nor could Elowen, who had jolted to a halt at his side and was sobbing without restraint. Michel made a kind of croaking sound, but he was out of breath and looked sick to his soul. And so it was left to Ezekiel to step forward, lay his hand on Lee’s shoulder and say, “You have to stay calm, Gideon. Elowen’s decided she wants to keep the child.”
Stupidly, Gideon’s first reaction was relief. He’d imagined his little girl hurt, knocked down by nonexistent traffic, fallen into the barbecue fire. This was just an aberration, a fault in the wiring. “She can’t,” he said reasonably, as if that would fix everything. “Where’s my daughter?”
“Sarah Kemp and Mrs Ivey are looking after her.”
“Right. Lee, come on—we’re collecting her and going home.”
Elowen caught her breath on a deep, gulping sob. “No. Michel and I have made all the arrangements. She’s coming with us to France.”
“Elowen, excuse me, but bollocks to that. What the bloody hell are you thinking?”
She looked up at him, pallidly defiant. “She’s still legally mine. You can’t stop me.”
The trouble with being six feet tall and built like a house-end was the courtesy rules that applied. A kind of sliding scale governed them. The stronger you were, the punier the other guy, the gentler you had to be. Especially when the other guy was female. Gideon was old fashioned. He had never threatened violence to a woman in his life.
There was a time and a place for everything. “I could stop you,” he said consideringly. “I could pick you up and throw you off that cliff.” Michel’s mouth fell open and he took a step forward. Gideon turned on him. “And as for you,” he roared, “don’t you so much as fucking look at me! Because you I will take down, mate, right here and now!”
“Gideon!” Ezekiel stepped between them. “A dreadful thing has happened. But to fight it out here is unseemly, and won’t fix anything. Come back to the house.”
His brother’s hand, planted flat to his chest, was a force to be reckoned with. Gideon had never thought about him in physical terms. The ten-year age gap had prevented them from scuffling as children, and since then he’d been so buttoned up and godly that even the possibility of a brawl had never occurred. Yet here he was—an inch or so taller than Gideon, and probably stronger still inside his lean frame. That was good. Gideon’s sliding scale reset itself to zero. “Blessed are the peacemakers, eh, Zeke?” he said shakily. “Not this time.”
He drew back his fist. But his blind flying punch didn’t connect: was stopped and absorbed by Lee, who had grabbed his hand out of midair and drawn it against his own chest. He gave a muffled grunt as the force of the blow expended itself. “No, Gid. No.”
They dropped to their knees on the turf. Instantly Gideon tried to struggle upright, but Lee’s arms closed around him like cables. “Zeke,” Lee rasped, his voice a hollow echo of its usual rich sound. “Get everyone away from him. Please! Just let him calm down.”
***
The house was quiet, the garden emptied of its guests. Mrs Ivey had steered Jago out of harm’s reach into the kitchen. Sarah had taken the children home, parting from Gideon with a silent, white-faced kiss. Lee had held it together as far as the front door, and then at the sound of the baby’s wails from the first floor, had left off his loving custodian’s hold of Gideon and run for the stairs. Gideon was sitting opposite Elowen in the living room. It was as beautiful as ever—armfuls of dried flowers in the old tiled hearth, the family photos smiling down from the walls. Gideon wanted to torch it. “For God’s sake, Elowen. You were so sure.”
She had managed to stop crying. Her voice was still raw, her face swollen. “No. I was never sure.”
“Are you kidding? You practically threw your foetus into my arms the first time you saw me.”
Michel and Zeke had positioned themselves on the sofa, a pair of unhappy bookends. One guardian each, Gideon supposed, or possibly two to deal with him if he lost his rag again. He was already deeply ashamed of the first time. And he’d been right in his assessment of Michel as a decent man: he got up now and came to stand by Elowen’s chair. “This is in a great part my fault,” he said, his accent heightening the flawlessness of his English. “When Elowen became pregnant, I didn’t make clear to her my feelings. And I hadn’t anticipated having a child. So she made her own arrangements, and I must ask you to speak to her civilly,
Gideon, even though you are so distraught.”
“All right. Yes. I’m sorry, Elowen.”
She sniffed and gave a miserable shudder. “Call me what you like. I don’t blame you.”
“I don’t want to call you anything. Just... explain to me, please. Why are you taking Tamsyn away from us?”
“Because I’m her mother. I love her—far more than I’d ever thought I could, and now Michel wants to be with me, things are different. She’ll have a father too.”
“What about this amazing bloody job you were so desperate to have?”
“He’s holding it for me. I can start when Tamsyn goes to nursery school.”
Her nursery school’s in Dark, just down the road so she won’t ever feel too far from home. Gideon could have recited chapter and verse of such small arrangements, but Elowen already knew them. He swallowed the taste of helpless misery. “You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?”
“I have to. You and Lee can adopt another baby. It’ll be easier for you this time—you’ve already been through all the checks. But Tamsyn’s mine.”
“I wish you’d thought of that before you’d let us start to love her.”
“Gideon, you’re killing me, okay? You can say as many heartbreaking, bitter things as you want—and I deserve them all—but I’m not about to change my mind.”
“I can’t accept that. Look, you’ve only known me for a few months, and we’ve got on well enough together, but... Please, Elowen, think about Lee. Tamsyn’s his whole life.”
“Oh, bollocks!” Michel laid a restraining hand on her shoulder, but she swung on him impatiently. “Well? He doesn’t mince his words to me, does he? I didn’t live in that flat with those two for all that time and not work out who Lee’s whole life is. He has you, Gideon. I’m not talking about this anymore, all right? I’m going to fetch my baby.”
She left the room. Ezekiel got up, but Gideon didn’t need the move he made to prevent him from following. A terrible passivity had taken hold of him. “Okay,” he said faintly. “You can say it if you want, Zeke.”
“Say what?”
“I told you so.”
Ezekiel sat down on the arm of the chair. “About what?”
“Bless you for pretending to forget. The adoption papers. We never did get them signed.”
“Shame on me, if I were to lay such a burden on my brother’s wounded heart!”
Gideon looked at him in astonishment. The Methodist chapel at Dark must be a very different place these days. He rested his brow against Zeke’s shoulder. It would have been nice to give it all up right here. He had a big brother, restored to him after all these years, and not half so much of a po-faced bastard as he looked. But Gideon’s two Tyacks—the mother of his child, and his own poor Lee—were already somewhere upstairs in tears, and it was just too ridiculous for him to break down too. In a world where small mercies had suddenly loomed large, he was grateful that Ma Frayne was off with her bridge club today and not here to add her wail to the chorus. He sat up, awkwardly patting Zeke’s arm. “I’m all right. Jesus, though, Michel—I still can’t believe this.”
Michel’s eyes were red too. “Je suis vraiment desolé, Gideon.”
“Not half as fucking desolate as we are. Can’t you talk to her?”
“How can I? When I came over in December, it was to tell her that I wanted to be with her, to keep the child if we could. She said no at the time, but...”
“But she’s obviously given it plenty of thought since.” Gideon rested his elbows on his knees and sat listening to the shattered world around him. Zeke’s breathing was unsteady. Michel turned away towards the window. To cap it all, the poor dog, forgotten in the fuss, crawled out from beneath the sideboard, crept to Gideon’s feet and began a low, miserable whine.
Not a dry eye in the house, apart from Gideon’s. Anger had carried him this far. Perhaps it would bring him out the other side. Someone had to stay calm around here, and it had better be the copper. Wishing he was in uniform—his armour, his outer carapace—he got to his feet. “I’d better go and check on Lee.”
But a door clicked on the floor above. Lee appeared at the top of the stairs. He had Tamsyn’s rucksack over his arm, and the baby—quiet now at last, looking around her with wide green-silver eyes—cradled against his shoulder. Elowen followed him anxiously down into the hall, the carrycot in her hand.
Gideon resisted the impulse to snatch it from her. He went to intercept Lee. “What are you doing?”
“I’m handing Tamsyn over to Elowen and Michel. And they’d better take her now, because...” He swallowed hard and turned away from Gideon to face them. “Because otherwise you’ll have a fight on your hands, and this time I won’t hold Gideon back. I’ll help him.”
“Lee, we can’t let her go like this.”
“Think about the options. Think about them.”
Gideon did. A living-room brawl, the baby shrieking in terror as the adults around her erupted like volcanoes. Police called, arrests made for domestic affray. Even the best option—Gideon’s fantasy, flashing through his brain in vivid colours—a farce, bundling the child into the back of Lee’s Escort and driving her away from here, tearing up the singletrack lanes to escape. Abduction in the eyes of the law, because Tamsyn wasn’t theirs and never had been. “Oh, God.”
“It’s all right.” Lee sacrificed one hand from his hold on the baby and took Gideon’s, drawing him close. “Do you see how calm she is now? This isn’t the end.”
“You... You saw that? You told her?”
“No. I didn’t foresee any of this—possibly because I’d have gone batshit crazy. She told me.”
He put Tamsyn into Gideon’s arms. How awkwardly Gideon had handled her at first! His hands had looked massive beside her tiny limbs, and his terror of breaking her had only ebbed through the constant daily routines of care and love. Now she felt like a piece of himself coming back to him. Her strange gaze focussed on him, and she made a solemn grab for his nose. “But we’ll have to go back to the flat first,” he said dully, capturing the little fist and kissing it. “To Dark. All her things are there.”
“That’s all right,” Michel said. He was crying outright, as if all this hadn’t come about because of him. “We’ve bought everything she needs. We thought it would be easier on you and Lee if we did this here, rather than taking her out of your home.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a piece of piss this way.” Gideon studied the rosy face turned up to him. His heart was beating too fast, and a cold, racing nausea like an underground stream was chilling his guts. “How am I meant to say goodbye to her?”
“Give her here,” Lee said softly. “This is just for now, love.”
“I can’t let her go.”
But Lee’s arms were outstretched for her, and it was such a habit to transfer the solid little weight that he did it unthinkingly now. Lee planted one kiss—silent, eyes closed tight—on her brow, then handed her straight on to Elowen, who shot Gideon a look of pure fear at having got her desire. “We should go,” she whispered to Michel. “Come on. Now.”
Gideon walked away. He slumped down on the window seat in the living room, the lovely broad space looking out over the cliffs. It was cushioned in faded green velvet. One of the house rules was that Isolde wasn’t allowed onto it, a prohibition she steadfastly ignored. Gideon curled forward and laced his fingers around the back of his head. The dog’s scrabbling, plumping weight promptly landed beside him. He was distantly aware of her warmth.
The porch door opened, then the outer one. By pressing his wrists to his ears, Gideon could block out most of the conversation. He didn’t have to hear whatever words Elowen had chosen to end his brief experience of fatherhood and take the child away. Then Lee’s voice cut softly though his self-imposed deafness. “I don’t think I ever had a really bad word for you, Elowen—not even when we were squabbling kids. But you bitch, for hurting him now.”
“Lee, don’t.” That was Ezekiel, sounding less reproac
hful than tired. “Just look after him. He’s devastated.”
“I will. I promise.”
Gideon wasn’t devastated. He was the only calm one. That was the whole point of him: he was stronger, calmer than anyone else. That was why he was a policeman. Always the last man standing. But the outer door closed, and Lee came to sit beside him on the faded green cushions not occupied by the dog. Lee said, “Come here, you. Come here,” and Gideon proved himself no better or worse than anyone else by bursting into tears in his arms.
Chapter Two
“I can’t get down the hallway. I’m sorry, Gid.”
The days of their orderly two-man flat were long gone. Lee was a good stay-at-home dad but he’d been working on the scripts for a new season of Spirits of Cornwall at the same time, and their rush to leave for Drift had left a trail of devastation, Tamsyn’s toys scattered over the carpet, the heated clothes-rail on its side where Gideon had tripped over it and hopped out of the house, swearing under his breath. None of this was the problem. What had brought Lee to a halt was the sight of the open nursery door. Isolde, who’d been a distraction and a comfort on the way home, gave a whine of outraged herding instincts and abruptly made matters much worse, picking up a discarded stuffed rabbit and trotting hopefully through with it into the empty room.
“It’s all right. Close your eyes.” Gideon steered Lee straight past. He took a deep diver’s breath and half-pushed, half-guided him through all the silent relics, all the way to their bedroom door. He slammed it shut behind him with his foot, gently shoved him in the direction of the bed, then went to draw the curtains. The afternoon was changing to a beautiful summer’s evening on the moors—the last day of July, he remembered in an irrelevant flash—but the outside world could do no good to him today, and he shut it out angrily. Folded up Tamsyn’s extra cot for good measure and packed it into the closet. He turned to the bed, where Lee was watching him wide-eyed, already unfastening his shirt in a gesture of comprehension and welcome. “We always did everything too fast, didn’t we?”
