by Gill Mather
Further Hugh said no evidence whatsoever was produced to suggest that Sharpe stopped on his way home that night or that he ever did so. He had been shown to be an unsociable man who would have been unlikely to have stopped off for a chat with someone or gone to someone’s house. No-one had come forward to suggest that had happened. The police had questioned people in the pub, neighbours in the road where Sharpe lived and on the route back from the pub to try to gather evidence of what might have happened but no-one apart from Madge claimed to have seen anything at all.
It was nonsense therefore to suggest that Sharpe didn't walk straight home as he usually did which would have taken him a few minutes only from the time he left the pub. He would have arrived home well before Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Bolton had been consistent throughout in his account of what had happened. He had been woken up in bed by police the day after Mr. Sharpe was injured, arrested and taken straight to the police station. He had given his account to the police that same day and it had not changed. He hadn't said anything about having drawn cash from a cashpoint in Manningtree on his way home but that had happened earlier on and he had had no reason to think it was relevant at the time he was interviewed. His journey back from his daughter’s home hadn't actually been raised at all during the police interview and he hadn't been asked about it.
Hugh gave the usual final warning to the jury that if they were in any doubt about Mr. Bolton having injured his neighbour then they should find him “Not guilty”. In this case Hugh submitted there was plenty of doubt and no direct evidence against Mr. Bolton. There was forensic evidence but that was entirely consistent with Mr. Bolton’s own account of what had happened. All the circumstances led to the conclusion that Mr. Bolton was not himself the perpetrator but instead was the unhappy victim of a set of events that put him on Mr. Sharpe’s front path shortly after Mr. Sharpe had fallen over and caused his own injuries.
The jury unanimously found Jim not guilty of all charges.
Jim left the court and decided to go straight up by train to see his daughter without going home at all. He'd packed a small case before the trial started and had left it in a locker at the Court and he said he never wanted to go back to that house ever again. He'd get it cleared by a removal firm and the house sold and he'd buy something near his daughter. He'd get his car collected in the next few days and he would never come back to Essex. He thanked Hugh and Orielle. They should send the bill onto him at his daughter's address. Orielle was a little shocked at this outcome. She'd grown fond of Jim and though she’d thought he might leave the area some time after the trial, she hadn't expected it to be immediately. She’d hoped to visit him sometimes. Even go for a drink with him. Perhaps not in his local pub but somewhere nearby. But he marched off to reclaim his case, and Orielle knew she'd never see him again. He wouldn't want her to remind him of what he'd had to go through.
"Well," said Hugh. "A good result in most respects." He looked at Orielle's watery expression. "Come on Orielle. You have to toughen up you know. This is a hard profession. And remember. We don’t own these people. They possibly own us to some extent while we're acting for them. After all they are paying us not vice versa. But when it's over, it's over. They have their own lives and agendas. It's a mistake to get too involved with clients if you don’t know them already. If he feels like that, it's his privilege."
Toughen up? Orielle thought. Easy for him to say. He’d had his heart broken and come through it. And as to keeping one’s distance from clients, Orielle was tempted to mention Hugh's posh Jag given to him by a monumentally grateful client. But then Hugh hadn't kept in touch with the client at all so far as Orielle knew. Of course Hugh was right. It was just such a come down for it to end like this. But that was what it was going to be like. She realised she would just have to get used to these lows in this career she had chosen if she was going to be able to experience the highs sometimes.
CHAPTER 21
YOU COULD GET sick of a song, thought Hugh. He’d rather liked the track before but Orielle had come across it earlier in the day amongst their haphazard CD collection and had played it over and over again. It was World Where You Live by Crowded House, probably Hugh thought not of Orielle’s generation.
That golden one leads a double life.
I don't know where you go
Do you climb into space
To the world where you live
The world where you live.
He’d never listened to the words properly before. He’d just thought the tune very catchy and unusual, quite haunting actually, the song well sung and the recording well produced. But suddenly he found he was torn apart by the whole thing and broke out into a sweat. At the point especially where the tune fell. Was it an octave? A different pitch? He didn't know. The mood of it changed from fairly upbeat to searching, yearning. Listening to the words now, he started to feel sick. Sick as he had been five years ago. Where had she gone? Where had Ali gone? Where did she live? He had dug his nails into the palms of his hands and had had to take a few deep breaths and calm down. He knew it would pass soon. It always did.
HUGH WANDERED INTO the sitting room and saw Orielle there huddled on the settee. She hadn't wanted to go shopping with Amanda. She was facing the TV but he didn't think she was watching it. He started to back out, anxious not to get involved in any exchange about her situation but she looked up and said:
“It’s very kind of you and Amanda to let me stay here this weekend while Georgie’s away, especially since you’ve got your other children coming to visit tomorrow. I’ll try and make myself scarce when they’re here.”
“Oh. There’s no need for that,” he said hoping in fact that she would. Orielle managed to focus all right at work so he had rather hoped she had started to get over her loss but he and Amanda had heard her sobbing her heart out in her bedroom last night and hadn't known whether to go in and try to comfort her, or at least Amanda. He hadn't realised quite how bad she was still. Hugh had thought that at Orielle’s age, she’d relatively soon get over her loss and move on. However he reflected that from what he’d been told and seen, Ali hadn't really ever got over him.
But they decided to let her get on with it and after a time the noise had subsided. It didn’t seem to worry Amanda too much, but Hugh found it upsetting and disturbing. He knew it was selfish but he didn’t want to be reminded just what total abject misery was like. It was barely eighteen months ago that he’d started to painfully haul himself up out of his own private mire of unhappiness, a process much accelerated by Amanda’s sudden arrival back in England.
“You won't want a wet rag like me fouling up the atmosphere. I’ll just go upstairs and read or something.”
“Well OK if you want to. I’ll put the portable TV in there for you.”
Unaccountably, Orielle’s bottom lip started to tremble.
“Sorry,” she said. “That just reminded me of something. Sorry.” And she burst into tears.
Hugh mentally rolled his eyes. It would look callous to just walk out or even to hover nearby and not comfort her but there was no way with his record with women, both actual and invented, that he was going to lay hands on her at all. He wasn't a person to utter meaningless platitudes. Had be been prepared to talk to her at all about her situation it would have been to suggest that she took her time to recover and that taking up too soon with someone else may not be the best thing, that it didn't always work. On the rebound as they called it. It could lead to disaster sometimes and huge unhappiness. It certainly seemed to have for Ali. But he said nothing.
She still reminded him so hugely of Ali, not her appearance so much as her bearing, her age and of course her position as a trainee lawyer. And she had a sweetness about her that Ali seemed to have lost now but had had in abundance when he first knew her and had fallen in love with her at first sight. He didn't want those old wounds opened any further or explored any more.
But Orielle was trying to control herself and was speaking. “It’s just s
o hard to bear. The way it happened. There one second and gone the next. No-one can explain it. He just literally vaporised.”
“So. Do you think there’s no room for doubt then? That he might not have got out somehow when no-one was looking. Or been taken?”
“No way. We were watching the monitor. That horrible big area in his brain that shouldn’t have been there.” She shuddered. “And the weather that afternoon was abysmal. There was this terrific clap of thunder and the air started sizzling. All the lights went out momentarily and the monitor. It was just for a few seconds but I felt this presence, or presences, all around me. Like a soup of charged air. It was like they were going through me. A kind of wrenching feeling. I can't properly put it into words.” What she couldn't say, couldn't tell anyone, was that for just a brief instant, she had also felt Triss inside her, telling her that he loved her. “And then there was this shard of blue light going into the scanner. Again it only lasted a few seconds and when the lights came on again, there was no image on the screen. The technicians went berserk. They started pressing switches and then running around. They started to eject the bed from the scanner and he simply wasn’t there.”
“So where do you think he went then? But don’t talk about it if you don’t want to. Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“I don’t mind. There aren’t many people I can talk about it to. Who know anything about the background and who wouldn’t try to make something of it, you know try to get me on some TV programme about the occult or alien encounters or whatever. But as to where he went, where he came from in fact, it’s too nutty for words. You’d think I was round the bend completely.”
“I doubt it. Try me.” Hugh was actually genuinely interested in this and at least maybe talking about it would stop her from crying again. He didn’t want to have to cope with tears.
“He….talked about coming from another dimension, one in which people had no physical form, that co-existed with our space which is supposedly why he knew so much. There was an awful electric storm when he disappeared and I can remember there was another storm one night like I’d never seen before when I’d just got my job with you and then suddenly after that he was there in the park sleeping rough.” She told Hugh about getting to know Tristram through the attempted mugging incident.
He was about to ask her if she really believed all that, but thought better of it. The obvious conclusion was that if incredibly it was true she’d definitely never see him again and it would set her off. Anyway she was talking once more.
“All the stuff he knew. It was remarkable. All the languages he could speak. He knew Amanda was pregnant before either of you did, although he said you suspected it.” She looked up.
“Yes. Amanda said. I didn’t take it very seriously at the time but now….”
“It was him that said I reminded you of your first wife but I still can’t think how.” She was looking up at him again. He looked away out of the window so she wouldn’t see how tight lipped he’d gone.
“I’d really rather not talk about that,” he said.
“No. `Course not.” Orielle was silent for a moment. “But there’s something else. Something I should tell you. You must be entitled to know.”
“Oh yeah?” What fresh hell was she preparing to open now he thought.
“The recording. The full one that went up on the internet of you and that girl. He found it. Actually he knew where to find it. He just hacked into someone’s computer. I don’t know if it was hers or someone else’s. He didn’t actually tell me what it was but he left me with detailed instructions what to do if that girl’s trial wasn’t going well for you. So that it couldn’t come back to me. I think he must’ve known he was going to be taken back. So when you called Peter the lunchtime of the second day of the trial and said you didn’t think your own evidence had gone well and it looked as though she might get off, I did it. I did what he said. And you know the rest. Of course I didn't know it would go viral all around the world. I’m sorry about that but…..” She shrugged.
Hugh realised his mouth was hanging open and shut it quickly.
“I’m speechless. Well thanks. I suppose that’s one mystery solved. So he was an expert computer hacker as well as everything else! Remarkable!”
Just then, the baby monitor burst into life and they heard Gray calling for attention. He never cried, just made a noise so someone would come and look after him.
Hugh smiled automatically at the sound.
“I’ll have to go,” he said, “Er Amanda should be home fairly soon now.” And, relieved, he escaped upstairs.
The baby, conceived it seemed the very first time Hugh had slept with Amanda, put his arms out to his father as soon as he saw him and chortled and smiled, showing two small front bottom teeth, and Hugh went and picked him out of his cot.
“Hello darling Gray. Daddy loves you.” He kissed his precious son’s face and downy dark hair and looked into his bright blue eyes. This precious child and his mother were the very hub of Hugh’s universe. Nothing else much mattered. The physical closeness of their little nuclear family was like a soothing reassuring balm. Lying in bed at night with Amanda and with Gray in the cot next to them was just perfect, as was life with Amanda, smooth and wonderful, no arguments, no upsets. Just happiness.
Of course he loved his other two children but it was different. They weren’t physically here to be directly cherished and taken care of. It made an enormous difference.
Hugh took a look in the baby’s nappy and decided he needed changing. It wasn’t a task at all. He loved looking at Gray’s perfect little form, legs kicking away, little hands reaching for him, blue eyes looking directly unblinkingly trustingly at him, baby voice saying “Dadadada”. Before he put the new napkin on, Hugh bent and kissed and puffed at the baby’s stomach. Gray squealed with delight and grabbed at his father’s head.
Hugh adored everything about him. And he was such a good baby. Hardly ever any tears even now that he was teething, the baby was endlessly good-natured and happy. It really did seem as though something of his name-sake Graham had returned as Amanda had mused.
He bore the baby downstairs afterwards. Gray was into high speed crawling now and Hugh had put carpet down temporarily on any hard floors including the tiles in the kitchen and proceeded to spend the next hour following Gray around the ground floor of the house making sure he didn’t hurt himself or choke on anything small left about by mistake or put something up his nose or in an ear which he’d just started to try to do. Hugh kept up an effortless stream of sing-song chatter to the baby the whole time and periodically picked him up, swung him about and puffed and blew at his baby-gro covered stomach while Gray laughed loudly. When they went into the sitting room, Orielle watched them apathetically. Hugh was a bit surprised she took no interest in the baby at all. Many young girls loved to look after babies and he thought she would have despite her situation. He thought it might even help her to forget her troubles for a bit. But the way she was made Hugh dubious about leaving her to look after Gray for even a few minutes.
Seeing the time, Hugh took Gray into the kitchen, gave him a bottle and then put him in the play pen with some wooden bricks and other toys to play with and put on a CD of baby songs and nursery rhymes and sang along to it too, bending over the pen every so often to sing Gray’s favourite verses to him, while making a light lunch of chicken with some vegetables. He whizzed some up for the baby and was about to put him in his high chair when he heard the noise of Amanda’s car and went to meet her at the door, carrying some of the bags quickly back to the kitchen.
Orielle drifted in and Amanda said hello and picked up Gray. “Hmm. Mummy’s missed you,” she said holding him close. From being disinterested and even pretty alarmed at finding she was pregnant in the early stages, she’d become a devoted mother.
Hugh went and put his arm around Amanda and nuzzled her hair. “And Daddy’s missed you.” They gave each other a look. Orielle turned away.
“Come on the
n. Grub’s up.” Hugh started serving out while Amanda put the shopping away. Gray was starting to try to feed himself and had his own spoon but it was a messy process, so Hugh sat next to him and took up a separate plastic spoon and did the usual aeroplane dives towards the baby’s mouth coupled with appropriate sound effects.
“Why don't you have a go too Orielle,” said Amanda, “He might actually end up eating something then.”
“Oh well. I suppose I could try.” She took her plate and went and sat the other side and before long she was laughing and getting in a mess too.
After half a mashed banana for pudding and a tippy cup of water, Gray was starting to yawn and look drowsy.
“Who wants his afternoon nap then?” said Amanda picking him up. She looked at Hugh. “I’ll take him up. I expect he’ll be asleep in a few minutes.”
“OK I’ll clear up,” and he proceeded to do so, turning every so often to glance at the open doorway out into the hall.
“I’ll do that if you like,” said Orielle. It didn't take a genius to work out that Hugh wanted to go upstairs and have sex with Amanda.
“You sure? Thanks. I’ll go and see how they’re getting on,” he said and was gone in a couple of seconds without waiting for a reply.
It was all a bit much in one way, being in such a happy household, but far preferable to weeping alone at home. At least they understood and didn't mind.
CHAPTER 22
ORIELLE’S TRAIN PULLED into Newcastle Central Station. Will was supposed to be meeting her but she expected he’d be late and that she’d have to go looking for him. But there he was standing on the platform already straining to see her amongst the large crowd of journey-makers this busy Friday night just before Christmas. And there too unexpectedly was Ben as well casting about for his sister’s delicate form and long golden hair.
