As she approached the bend, a familiar engine roar came from up ahead. Knowing the way Dax drove, she dived into the side, her left boot dipping into a ditch of icy water. His red truck zoomed precariously round the bend and skidded to a halt. The window came down. A radio blared.
‘No painting today?’ Dax yelled cheerfully, turning it down.
Hannah dragged herself out of the ditch, surprised at how grateful she was to see him. How lonely she felt.
‘No, I’m going for a walk, down to the sea.’ She went to say ‘actually’ and stopped.
‘Why’s that?’ Dax asked, apparently flummoxed at this idea.
‘Why?’ Hannah replied. ‘I want to go for a walk. Which way is it, Dax? Is there a path?’
Dax’s head ducked down. The passenger door flew open, nearly banging her into the ditch again.
She approached, expecting him to produce a map. Instead he swung upright again and took the handbrake off. ‘Come on then.’ He motioned her in.
‘But I’m …’
‘Come on! Got to be down Graysea by one.’
She sighed. What was it with him? She couldn’t seem to say no. Dax was clearly wasted out here – he’d do great things somewhere in government.
She climbed into the truck.
‘Dax,’ she said, shutting the door. ‘Do you ever ask anybody if they actually want to do something, or do you just make them do it?’
‘Ha!’ Dax roared. ‘Ha!’
For the first time in a while, Hannah smiled. ‘OK, but if you could just show me the path, that would be great.’
He turned the radio back up and raced off, not waiting for her to buckle up. When it became apparent there was no seat-belt, she clung to the door with one hand and to the seat with another.
His truck reminded her of Dad’s van, full of newspapers and rags and tools, but less tidy. There were old tracksuit trousers rolled in a ball in the footwell; a cup with a dirty ring-mark in the drink-holder, and food wrappers. It smelt of diesel and dogs.
Dax raced along the narrow roads, whacking his gear stick in and out.
Loud pop music played on the radio, the soundtrack to his crazy driving. It made talking impossible, but right now that suited her fine.
Will’s words came at her in the cold light of day.
I can’t believe you gave up your job like that.
Jane can’t, either.
That one had hurt as much as anything; that Jane – who’d given Hannah her first desk job at TSO, then fired up her passion for human rights and sent her abroad aged twenty-four to do things she wouldn’t have dreamt she was capable of – was disappointed in her.
Dax braked as they met a car head-on. With no selfconsciousness whatsoever, he placed his arm behind Hannah and reversed at speed back into a lay-by. The other car passed. A gruff wave. And on again.
Around the next bend Dax swerved sharp right onto an unpaved road, so narrow that Hannah knew she’d never attempt it in a car. She wasn’t even sure if it was a road – more like a cycle lane lined by high verges of grass. A small sign in the bushes up ahead said ‘Graysea’.
‘Oh no. Dax, listen!’ she shouted over the music. ‘I just wanted to find the path, so I could walk there.’
‘You want me to show you the way or not?’
‘Yeah, but …’
She gave up and sat back.
As the truck bumped along, with the marsh on one side, hedges on the other, strangely it reminded her of a TSO trip. Of bombing along in a hired minibus or Land Rover, in blasting heat, in crazy, beeping traffic – kids sitting in the backs of trucks, cows on the road, the local driver she’d hired double-overtaking on hills; Hannah reassuring the journalists in the back that it was all fine, when in truth she was wondering if any of them – including her – would ever get home.
She’d never felt so alive.
Will said he was upset that she’d given it up.
She felt a burst of anger towards him. How could he say that, after what had happened last summer? She’d ruined it for both of them, because of her job. Did he have no idea how hard it had been to leave TSO? How hard it had been to give up such a huge part of who she was? Did he not realize what a sacrifice it had been for her?
Dax drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the windowsill. She glanced at him. She couldn’t imagine Dax bowing down to anyone. If ever there was someone who knew who he was, and where he came from, she suspected it was Dax.
His head was thrust forward. His eyes darted left and right.
A second later she knew why.
Dax slammed on the brakes and his arm flew across her chest as she jerked forward.
A pheasant scurried across the road.
‘Shit!’ she said.
‘Come on, fella, or we’ll have you for dinner,’ Dax said, removing his arm, and accelerating at speed again. ‘Hold on!’ His arm shot out again.
Hannah grabbed her seat as the truck hit a short upward slope and burst out with a little skip onto an area of high grass.
The grass parted like theatre curtains and the sky opened up – and there was the sea.
‘Wow,’ Hannah said, as the truck came to a halt.
She’d never seen a beach in the snow. It stretched, a white arc, into the distance, bordered by a grey line of shingle, melted at the water’s edge. The sea was flat and salty-grey; dirty packs of ice and flotsam surfed the current.
‘I didn’t realize it was quite so close,’ Hannah said.
‘What d’you think was here! Ipswich?’ Dax snorted.
She smiled, irritated. ‘Well, no one would know how to get here, if they didn’t live locally.’
A woman walked in the distance with two kids. Dax turned down the radio and picked up his cigarettes. He offered her one and she declined.
‘So how come,’ he said lighting it, ‘how come you ain’t got kids, with that big house?’ He opened the window and chucked out the match.
Hannah turned. ‘Bloody hell, Dax! That’s a bit rude.’
‘Ha! What are you, thirty-summat?’ He dragged on his cigarette, a wicked glint in his blue eyes.
She laughed. ‘God, you say what you mean, don’t you?’
He blew out smoke and tapped the ash. ‘Can’t have ’em, I reckon. What is it? Your bloke shooting blanks?’
Hannah snorted indignantly. She opened the window to let out the smoke, not caring if he took offence. ‘No, he’s bloody not, Dax. God, what are you like?’
‘Ha-ha!’ He guffawed again, showing surprisingly white teeth.
She sat back in the seat, watching the tide retreat, taking more snow with it. Oh, who cared any longer?
‘Well, as you’ve asked so nicely, the reason I’ve been decorating is because we’re waiting to adopt.’
‘Are ya? What, from China or someplace?’
‘No …’ she said. ‘From foster care. Here. Or from London anyway.’
‘Oh, right.’ He took another puff and blew it out with a whistle. ‘Someone what someone didn’t want?’
She glared. ‘That makes it sound simple. No. Probably a child who’s been removed from their family because the parents are struggling to look after them, or the child’s at risk. Sometimes it’s a child whose parent has died.’
She watched the muddy sea, realizing she was speaking about the adoption as if it were still going ahead. As if Will had not declared his uncertainty to her.
Dax reached into the side-pocket and pulled out a hip-flask. He took a swig and offered it to her.
She sniffed. Whisky.
‘Good for the cold, my granddad used to say,’ he said with a grin.
She didn’t know why, but she took it. It set her throat on fire, and she coughed and handed it back. Dax shook his head again, as if she was an idiot.
She wondered what she was doing, sitting in an oily van with a man with the manners of a wolf, drinking whisky.
‘So that’s why I’ve been decorating,’ she continued, even though he hadn’t aske
d. ‘Social services are coming to make sure the house is suitable for a child, and to meet Will’s family in Thurrup.’
‘What, they going to give you a test or summat?’
‘Yes, that’s right – a sit-down exam in how to change nappies.’
Dax stopped, mid-puff.
‘I’m joking,’ she said. ‘No, we’re approved to adopt – that doesn’t change – they just need to check nothing’s altered because we’ve moved. That’s why we’re trying to do it so quickly, in case a child comes up soon. We don’t want to miss one.’
Dax looked cynical. ‘That bloody house needs pulling apart, not painting.’
‘I know.’ She nodded. ‘I’m starting to realize that. And we will do it. It just needs to look good enough for now, when they come. Have you got kids, Dax?’ she asked, to change the subject.
Dax’s gaze settled on the woman and children disappearing around the headland. ‘Do I look bloody stupid?’
She found the door handle. ‘OK, well, thanks for the lift. And for yesterday.’
Dax threw the butt out of the window. ‘You can help me now, if you want?’
‘Doing what?’ She let go.
Dax didn’t reply. Instead he turned up the radio, slammed into gear and accelerated onto the shingle beach.
‘Where are we going?’ Hannah asked, alarmed. The truck hit the shingle, listing at an angle, spraying snow as it raced along the beach. She grabbed the seat to stop herself falling sideways.
‘Are you allowed on here?’ she shouted.
‘By who?’ Dax shouted, swerving around driftwood and rocks.
She was going to mention the council, but suspected he wouldn’t care.
The truck sped along, stones skittering out of their way, the engine growling. A few seconds later they skidded around the headland and came to a stop outside a tin-roofed house on the marsh, right by the shore. The yard was full of old cars. An elderly man looked up. He was unusually tall, with long skinny legs and a red face and white hair. He wore a boiler suit like Dax’s, a black hat and gloves. He regarded Hannah with rheumy eyes, with an unnervingly still expression that made her look away.
Dax flung his door open. ‘Come on then.’
She stepped out onto a slushy path.
The elderly man turned away. He pointed to a stack of tyres and mumbled something indecipherable to Dax, before walking off on his long, spidery legs.
Dax picked up a tyre. ‘Ten of these.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Hannah said, taken aback.
As Dax carried his to the truck and threw it onto the back, she tested the weight of the second one. She decided to roll it to the truck. Dax took it from her and threw it into the back as if it weighed the same as a loaf of bread. Without speaking, they carried on like this: her rolling, him lifting.
It wasn’t what she’d expected to do this morning, but it took her mind off Will. It was good to be outside, too. The sea-air blew away the effects of a bad night’s sleep.
Dax threw the last tyre in, then banged the tailgate shut. He climbed into the driver’s seat, and she followed. To her surprise, he drove off without saying goodbye to the elderly man. Hannah watched the strange red-faced man in her wing mirror, as they took a different path off the beach, down the side of the shack. Maybe if you saw the same few people every day out here, there was no need for the kisses and bright hellos she was used to in the city, almost as if people were so pleased to find like-minded souls among eight million people that they celebrated every time they saw someone they knew.
‘You done that all right,’ Dax said, sounding surprised.
‘Thanks,’ Hannah said drily, wondering how Dax would cope with driving through a desolate stretch of desert, knowing gun-wielding militia were in the area.
Will’s words returned. I can’t believe you gave up your job like that.
A thought hit her. Her new neighbours in Tornley would never even know that side of her. It was over.
Dax raced up to a gate and stopped. Without being asked, Hannah jumped out and opened it, then shut it as he passed through and waited for her.
They continued on, speeding alongside the marshes, till they braked at a paved road. Hannah had absolutely no idea where they were.
Dax turned down the radio and motioned to the tyres. ‘Got to drop these down to a fella in Snape, then do a pickup at Marshleton.’
‘I’ll come,’ she said, playing him at his own game.
‘Ha! Will you now?’
She nodded, and he accelerated off to the right. A second later he skidded to a stop at a T-junction with a three-pronged signpost. Hannah leant forward to see if Tornley was on it, but the place names were all unfamiliar.
‘I suppose no one ever comes to Tornley, do they?’ she said. Dax turned right onto the road, then accelerated. ‘I mean, it’s a dead-end, isn’t it? You wouldn’t even know it was there, unless you knew someone there. Will and I only found it by accident while he was trying to show me the pub where he hung out as a teenager.’
Dax turned. The first weak sunshine in days shone through the windscreen, lighting the yellow around his irises. For the second time today Hannah thought of a wolf.
‘That’s how we like it, in’t it?’ he said. ‘Get up to what we want to get up to out here!’
Maybe it was the thought of the wolf, or the strange light, but for that second Dax’s eyes seemed to devour her. Flushing, Hannah leant forward to turn the radio back up and watched the fields and farms zoom by.
Will’s words from last night repeated in her head, the implications deepening.
She had no idea where Dax was taking her. She just knew that, right now, she wanted to be anywhere but Tornley Hall.
CHAPTER TWENTY
In London that morning Will sent Matt out for coffee, food and painkillers, while he cleaned up the bin, then left his nervous-looking assistant to load up the vocals, drums, bass, strings and guitar for mixing, as he took a shower to try in vain to clear his head. He didn’t care what Matt thought about the sight that had greeted him this morning – he’d seen a lot worse as an assistant. But he did care that Matt spoke to Hannah on the phone occasionally, and Matt was clearly wondering what Will was up to with Clare.
This had to be sorted.
When Will returned from the shower, he saw a light under her door. He thought about knocking, then hesitated. He’d speak to her when there was a better chance he wouldn’t throw up.
In the studio Matt pointed to a second coffee he’d made Will.
Will took it, too hungover to thank him. For a while he watched, bleary-eyed, over Matt’s shoulder, then lay back down on the sofa. ‘Wake me when you’re ready,’ he said, shutting his eyes.
Matt shook him an hour later. Will pulled himself over to the Mac and stared at the tracks in front of him, already knowing it was useless. He couldn’t mix a fucking cake today.
‘Listen, mate, my stomach’s not right. I’ve already done a couple of lates this week, so let’s call it a day. We’ll come at it fresh on Monday.’
He waited for his eager assistant to argue; offer to stay on and make himself useful. But Matt’s usual enthusiasm had vanished.
‘Sure?’ Matt said, avoiding Will’s eye.
‘Yup, sure.’ This was irritating. Matt needed to pull himself together. This was work.
Half an hour later, when Matt had left, Will checked his phone. Still no reply from Hannah.
He thought back over last night, shaking his head as more snatches of memory returned. He drank another coffee to steel himself, then knocked on Clare’s door.
No answer.
His stomach rumbled. It was midday. He needed food. He threw on his jacket over the baggy clothes Clare had lent him, then walked to the King’s Head and ordered food.
‘And what can I get you to drink?’ the barman asked.
The beer pumps were lined up in front of him. Despite the nausea of two hours ago, Will realized he wanted a beer. He pointed.
‘Pint of that,
mate.’
As the barman poured, a movement caught Will’s eye in the mirror.
His fingers were tapping on the bar. He realized he was still singing ‘Carrie’ in his head.
Then, just like that, he remembered.
He’d been standing here when he met Hannah.
Exactly at this spot. Eight years ago. Tapping his fingers.
The pub had been packed. The lads had been here, a couple of them fresh off the train from Salford that Friday afternoon. He’d been waiting to order a round, pleased to have real money in his pocket for a change, after a week assisting a producer at Smart Yak, and psyched that the guy had offered him another week’s work.
In this mirror Will had seen the reflection of a woman, watching his hand, whispering to someone hidden by the throng. He’d turned.
‘Oh! Sorry!’ the woman laughed. She had short grey hair, warm eyes with a black granite core, and small, tough lips, painted red.
‘That’s all right,’ he smiled.
She pointed at his fingers tapping on the bar.
‘We were trying to guess. What is it? The song?’ she asked flirtatiously.
He liked her cheek. ‘What do you think it is?’ His words came out slurred.
‘Right …’ she said, screwing up her eyes. ‘Er … “Wonderwall”?’
He shook his head. ‘Manchester accent, eh, and everyone thinks Oasis.’
She laughed wickedly and leant forward to grab a wine list, revealing the woman behind her. ‘Your turn, Hannah!’
This woman was younger, around his own age. He tried to focus. She had the weirdest hair colour he’d ever seen. Neither red nor blonde, but a very pale golden-pink, pulled back into a scruffy ponytail. Her skin was almost translucent, too, apart from three sore-looking strips of sunburn across her forehead, nose and chin, and oddly dark freckles that looked as if they’d been stamped on her nose. She had wide, flat cheekbones, small, slanting blue eyes, and a blunt upper lip that had a sexy quality about it that didn’t fit in with the rest of her. He dropped his eyes casually. She was skinny like a boy, wearing scruffy jeans, a white T-shirt and a blue scarf chucked around her neck, as if she couldn’t be bothered. Her face broke into an easy smile that pulled the upper lip firmly out of its pout, as if she and it were constantly at odds.
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