by Emlyn Rees
They reached the hill’s summit and turned right on to the moor road, the same road Bill had driven along with Emily on that hot summery night. He glanced at Glover, at the blood on his face, then down at the blood on his own hands. He pictured him running back towards the town, fighting to get there, fighting to bring help. He thought of Rachel, little Rachel. He didn’t want to see her blood. He’d give anything so long as she didn’t . . . just so long as she was safe . . .
Suddenly, he didn’t care that it was Glover sitting beside him. He couldn’t give a damn if Rachel wanted to marry him, have his baby, anything. She could do whatever she wanted. So long as she was OK. So long as nothing had
. . . So long as she wasn’t already . . .
‘There,’ Glover shouted, pointing straight ahead.
‘Jesus wept,’ Bill gasped. A great horse-chestnut tree lay across the road. Buckled, broken and crushed up against it was the torn form of the Jowett Jupiter which Bill and Richard Horner had spent so many months working on.
Desolation . . . even in the storm, Bill knew that this was where Emily had brought him that night in the car.
Before the van had even stopped, Glover was swinging out of the door with the first-aid kit in his hand. Bill slammed on the brakes and climbed out into the gale, running after Glover through the hissing rain. He joined him ten feet from the car’s carcass, where Rachel was lying slumped up against the tree’s thickened foliage. A red bag was open at her side, its contents – sweater and trousers and shirts – had been thrown haphazardly over Rachel in a frantic attempt to protect her body from the rain.
Glover was down on his knees in the mud, crouching over her, kissing her face, whispering her name. Bill stood behind him, looking down. His little sister wasn’t moving. He realised that Glover was sobbing, desperately, pitifully, now. Bill took the torch from his pocket. He swept its beam across Glover’s drenched back and on to the parts of Rachel’s face he could see. Her ear was cut and the right side of her face livid and bruised. Still no movement: nothing. Bill reached out to push Glover out of the way.
But then he froze. Because then Rachel stirred. Her lips parted.
‘Tony’ was the first word she said.
Bill stared at them. These two people together. This unit. Thank God she was all right.
‘Can you move?’ Glover was asking Rachel. ‘Can you move your legs?’
‘Yes. It’s just my head aches . . . my ribs . . .’ Her voice rose up a notch in panic. ‘I woke up and you were gone . . . I went to the car and looked for you . . .’
‘I went to get help . . . to get your brother . . .’
‘Bill?’
Bill wiped the tears from his eyes and leant in so that she could see him. He pressed his hand against her frozen cheek.
‘Oh, Bill,’ she said, taking his hand in hers and kissing it.
‘We’re going to drive you to Barnstaple,’ he told her.
‘No.’ Already, she was struggling to get to her feet. Together, Bill and Tony helped her up. ‘I want to go home.’ She looked back to the road, into the storm. Fear filled her eyes as she turned back. ‘It’s too dangerous up here.’
Bill stared at the bruising on her head. It wasn’t too severe. She might be concussed, but Dr Barnard would be able to deal with that. Rachel was right about the roads. If there was a tree down here, who was to guarantee they’d make it across the moors to Barnstaple at all?
‘Home then,’ he agreed. Once he got her back to their mother, he could go out looking for Dr Barnard. ‘Back where you belong.’ He stared at Glover. ‘We’ll all go home together.’
Chapter XXIII
Mallorca, Present Day
‘Home,’ Archie announced from his seat in the back of the Porsche four-by-four, as Sam switched off the engine.
‘Did you enjoy today?’ asked Sam, peering round the seat at him. ‘Did you have fun?’
‘Yes, Daddy. I seed fish.’
‘Saw,’ Sam corrected him.
‘I sawed fish . . .’
‘No,’ Sam started to correct him again, before his face clouded over with weariness. ‘Yes,’ he said instead, ‘that’s right, Archie: you sawed fish.’
They were in the apartment block’s underground car park and had just got back from a trip to the Reserva Africana over near Porto Cristo. Sam switched off the crackling radio and stared through the bug-dashed windscreen at the breeze-block wall in front. His heart was beating erratically, thumping like a trapped bird against his chest.
Deliberately – to remind him of her – he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn the day before to see Laurie. He could smell traces of her perfume on his shirt. If he closed his eyes – as he did now – it was possible to pretend that she was here with him. It filled him with longing. Even something so simple as her and him sitting in a car seemed miraculous right now, because so much still had to be done, before that could be achieved.
He knew she’d be going crazy, wondering what was happening. He wanted to call her, but he couldn’t. Not until he’d spoken to Claire. Not until he had something concrete to say.
And Claire had been in no fit state to speak to about anything when he’d seen her this morning. And so he’d had to wait and bide his time until now. His nerves were making him feel physically sick.
‘Daddy . . .’
‘OK,’ he said, opening his eyes and reaching for the door. ‘Let’s do this now.’
He got Archie out of the car and walked with him across the neon-lit car park to the lift. He counted the yellow apartment numbers painted on the parking spaces as he passed them, then listened to the hum of the lift as it descended towards him. Archie scuffed his trainers across the concrete as they waited. The tiny red bulbs set into their heels flashed quickly on and off.
These sights and sounds . . . already they felt like memories. Was that what this place was about to become?
As the lift carried them up towards the penthouse, Sam sifted back through the day he’d spent with his son. He’d slept on the sofa in Archie’s room the night before to escape from the party. When he and Archie had woken and dressed, Claire had been on her way to bed.
‘I need to speak to you later,’ he’d said.
‘Whatever,’ she’d answered as she’d disappeared into her room.
The living room had been choked with smoke and he’d started to help Isabel clear the bottles and ashtrays away.
‘Go,’ she’d told him. ‘Take Archie out.’
So that’s what he’d done. To the first place he’d been able to think of which Archie had never seen: the Reserva Africana. Sam had driven slowly through the auto-safari’s feeding grounds, with Archie standing on his lap, shouting with delight at the monkeys who’d dropped down on to the car from the trees. Then they’d driven to the beach for lunch and had eaten ice creams and drawn zebras and antelopes and wildebeest on the sand with sticks which they’d found washed up on the rocks.
All memories. All wonderful. Even though not a second of the day had gone past without Sam thinking about Laurie, and what they’d done, and how everything had changed.
Archie and Laurie . . . Laurie and Archie . . . he didn’t want either of them to be memories. He wanted them both. Always. He didn’t want to have to give either of them up.
He was back where he’d started, then: torn between his family and the woman he loved.
Claire . . . he felt guilty about wanting to leave her. But would it really be so bad for her if he went? He couldn’t bring himself to believe that. He thought of her at the party, and on her way to bed this morning as he’d been getting up. Hadn’t their lives been unravelling for a long time now?
He remembered the resolve which had filled him as he’d flown back from France to Mallorca three years ago. He’d been prepared to throw everything away then, to be with Laurie. He’d have set Claire and himself free from one another. He’d have willingly betrayed Tony and Rachel, and given up on the future which they’d so clearly marked out for him. He�
��d have thrown it all back at them and struck out with Laurie on his own.
And yet his resolve had failed the moment he’d found out about Archie. And his resolve was failing again, because Archie was now so much more than a nameless bundle of cells in Claire’s belly. Now he was walking and talking and holding Sam’s hand. And Sam didn’t want to let go.
The floor numbers continued to flick past on the digital display. He squeezed Archie’s hand.
But who was to say he would lose Archie if he left Claire? Wasn’t it possible that he could take him with him? He hadn’t discussed it with Laurie yet – let alone Claire – but who was to say that Laurie wouldn’t want to be a parent to Archie? If she loved Sam, then surely she might learn to love his son.
But, equally, he knew it was impossible. If he tried to take Archie from Claire, she’d fight him harder than she’d fought for anything in her life. Not only because of Archie – although Sam knew she loved him in her own way – but because of Sam. Because he’d have left her. Because he’d have rejected her. And because that would mean that, for the first time in Claire’s life, she wouldn’t have got her way.
And Rachel . . . wonderful, wise and understanding Rachel, who Sam loved and who’d loved him and welcomed him into her family and business. Rachel would turn on him the moment she saw her family was under attack. A cuckoo, that was how she’d see him. A cuckoo she’d let into her nest. A cuckoo who was now trying to steal her beloved great-grandson away. Not to mention a cuckoo who owned a 5 per cent stake in her family company.
Sam sighed. What was he thinking? Laurie as a parent to Archie? Claire fighting him to the bitter end? And Rachel joining in on the attack? Slow down, he told himself. He was so many jumps ahead of himself already. He hadn’t even found the courage yet to tell Claire that he was going to leave. He didn’t even know if he had that courage left in him.
The lift doors hissed open and Sam and Archie stepped out into the hallway. Sam and Claire’s was the only apartment on this floor. Sam stared at the white door to his home.
‘Archie,’ he said, kneeling down in front of his son and gripping him by the shoulders.
Archie laughed, and began to wriggle, thinking that this was some kind of a game.
‘No,’ Sam said, ‘I need you to listen to me.’
Archie frowned, reading something in Sam’s eyes, becoming still.
‘If Daddy had to go away for a little while . . .’ Sam began.
‘Away?’
‘That’s right. Go away, like when we go on holiday, or –’
‘Holiday?’ Archie smiled brightly.
‘No, not you,’ Sam said. OK, he’d try explaining another way. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘when grown-ups love each other . . . sometimes mummies and daddies . . .’
‘I want Shrek,’ Archie said.
Sam released his son and watched him walk to the penthouse door. It was hopeless. Archie was too young to understand. And if he was too young to understand Sam’s explanation for leaving, then how much less would he understand it if Sam actually left? Or should he be seeing it the other way round and taking solace from Archie’s lack of comprehension? If he was too young to understand, might that mean that he was also too young to remember? And therefore too young to apportion blame?
‘Mummy!’ Archie yelled excitedly as he pounded on the door.
Sam stood up. Too young to remember? With Rachel and Claire to remind him? What chance was there of that?
It was Isabel who answered the door.
‘Shrek!’ Archie yelled up at her.
‘No,’ Sam said.
‘No?’ Isabel asked.
‘No, I want you to take him out for a walk, to a cake shop, anywhere. Take a phone and I’ll call you when I want you to come back. Now, please. As quick as you can.’
Isabel collected her bag from the stand just inside the doorway. Embarrassed, probably thinking all this had something to do with the mess Claire’s friends had made of the apartment, she wouldn’t look Sam in the eye as she walked past him and pressed the lift call button.
‘I love you,’ Sam said, picking Archie up and hugging him. Sam couldn’t look him in the eyes.
‘I love you too, Daddy,’ Archie answered, before running off to join Isabel. ‘Cake!’ he exclaimed as the lift doors opened.
In the sitting room, Sam stared around him at his home. In the centre of the room was a Robin Day black leather sofa which Claire had had shipped over from London, a David Design’s ‘Bob’ beanbag and a Merrow Associates glass coffee table. Hanging from the ceiling was the Tom Dixon ‘Ball’ chandelier she’d brought back with her from last year’s Milan Furniture Fair, and against the wall to the right was the custom-built drinks bar, along with its four Azumi brushed stainless-steel and walnut bar stools.
He knew the names of the various designers, not because he was into this latest wave of retro chic like Claire, but because he’d heard her brag so many times to her friends about the individual pieces of furniture.
He searched the room for a single item which he’d bought himself, just one contribution to this, the public face of their family home. He found none.
His stuff, Archie’s stuff . . . there was none of it here. Not even a photograph of either of them, or of Sam’s brother or parents. His mother had remarked on it the last time she’d visited (nearly a year ago now). ‘I don’t want the room cluttered,’ Claire had replied, knowing full well that Sam’s mother’s sitting room was a gallery of family photographs. Claire used a similar excuse for keeping the sitting room a toy-free zone: ‘This is an adult space. I don’t want it ruined.’
Sam’s stuff, Archie’s stuff . . . it was all kept separate: Sam’s in his study; Archie’s in his bedroom. Separate. Compartmentalised. Was that what they’d become?
Sam’s eyes settled on the oil painting of Sant Bartholomew, the monastery he’d visited the day before. It was a late nineteenth-century piece, not in keeping with the rest of the room at all. It had been a gift from Tony to Claire. It was the same painting which Sam had found himself staring at nine years ago in Claire’s old apartment, after he’d slept with her for the very first time.
Who knew, Sam had wondered then, how different and amazing his own life might become in a few years’ time? Well, now he had his answer. He’d fallen head over heels in love with Claire’s life, all right, and he’d become a part of it, a part of the great Glover family bandwagon. Subsumed. Sam Delamere, the individual, the dreamer who’d once been, was as anachronistic in this room as the painting itself. Sam Delamere, the company man, who’d imprisoned himself with each decision he’d made: that’s who lived here now.
‘God, I feel like shit,’ Claire announced. She was standing in the doorway which led to the master bedroom, dressed in a green dragon-patterned silk kimono. Her hair was still wet from the shower.
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Oh, don’t start, Sam,’ she said. ‘I’m not in the mood. Oh,’ she suddenly said.
‘What?’
‘I forgot to tell you: Laurie called last night, while you were in the shower . . .’
A momentary panic ran through him. What if Laurie had changed her mind? But he fought it down. He loved her. He’d always loved her. And she’d never stopped loving him. All he had to do now was prove himself worthy. ‘What about?’
‘Something about the gate not working. I can’t really remember.’ She gazed around the room. ‘Isabel!’ she called. ‘There’s no bloody hair conditioner again,’ she complained to Sam. ‘Isabel!’ she shouted again, louder this time.
‘She isn’t here,’ Sam said. He could feel the sweat forming on his brow. His heartbeat was stuttering now. He tried not to think of the attacks . . . the one which he’d had at Tony’s funeral . . . and later, in bed with Claire . . .
‘Why not?’
Sam slowed his breathing, counting one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three . . . The other attacks, they’d been a result of his deceiving himself about Laurie. They’
d stopped when he’d spoken to her that night in the Angel’s wheelhouse.
‘Why not?’ Claire asked again.
But he wasn’t deceiving himself about Laurie any more, was he? He wasn’t pretending he didn’t want to be with her, was he? Was he? Was that what this was? Was he about to let her down again? ‘Because I told her to take Archie out,’ he answered.
‘Why?’
His heart jolted hard. Archie . . . his little boy . . .’Because we need to talk.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘if it’s about Toby breaking the glass table top, then don’t worry, I’ll be able to get it fixed.’
‘It’s not that.’
She didn’t look like she believed him. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But let me get dressed first.’
‘Fine.’
Outside on the terrace, Sam took a cigarette from a packet of Marlboros which someone had left on the table. He hadn’t smoked since the day Claire had told him she was pregnant. He lit the cigarette now and took a long drag. When he looked down, he saw that his fingers were shaking and realised his breath had grown shallow again.
Chapter XXIV
Stepmouth, 8.17 p.m., 15 August 1953
Tony could feel Rachel’s breath against his throat. His arms were cramped from holding her tight, but he wouldn’t let go. She was alive. She hadn’t died. He hadn’t killed her when he’d crashed the car, as he’d been so terrified he had.
They were sitting in the front of Giles Weatherly’s Citroën van, halfway down Summerglade Hill. Between the sweep of the wipers, rain slapped the windscreen in sheets. Bill was at the wheel, silent, focusing intensely on the road ahead. Whatever he was thinking he was keeping to himself. Up on the moor, he’d dug a blanket out of the back of the van and they’d wrapped it round Rachel as tight as swaddling clothes.
Tony’s muscles burned, like they’d been squeezed in a vice, from when he’d run to get Bill. His face felt raw, sandpapered by the wind and rain. The cut on his jaw throbbed steadily in time with his pulse. But then came the image of Rachel’s mother. She’d be waiting for her son and daughter. And when they returned – they’d call the police, of course – and, then . . .
