by Paul Burman
“Apparently, for a number of months before your dad – before he died – they were looking at down-sizing the company, laying off some of the workforce. That stuff makes everyone fed up. From what I gather, he got a bit depressed.”
Brian pauses, as if he’s finished.
“He killed himself because he lost his job? You’re joking?”
“Just listen, will you. I’m trying to make this make sense. He didn’t get laid off. In fact, a few days before – you know – he found out that he was one of the lucky ones. Even if there was a bit of a question mark hanging over the company, he still had a job.”
I twist on the chair, can feel sweat running down the inside of my arm, goosebumps on the back of my neck.
“But he did go and celebrate,” Brian continues. “From what I gather, it seems he drank a bit too much with a few workmates at a Christmas party and, when he was driving home, had an accident.” He pauses, sighs, picks up the remote and turns off the TV. “What you’ve got to remember is that the drink-driving laws weren’t the same back then.”
I work my way through Brian’s statement and realise he’s understating a bigger truth. “He had an accident? He killed someone? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He nods. “A child. A five-year-old girl. The daughter of someone your mum had gone to school with, except he didn’t know that at the time. In a side street in Northampton.”
“Shit. But if it was an accident…”
“He’d been depressed for a while and things were looking up again, but he’d also been drinking.”
He’s trying to tell me something else, but I can’t catch it.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“He didn’t stop. He could have helped the girl, got her to hospital, but he didn’t stop. I suppose he panicked, wasn’t thinking straight. It was a hit-and-run. The media was screaming blue murder. The police had an idea of the car they were looking for. It would’ve only been a matter of time.”
I say nothing. Try to focus on the blank TV screen. Hear myself swallow air.
“It’s what you wanted to know,” Brian says.
I nod.
“Two days later he went to work, clocked off, and well…”
“Clocked off,” I say.
“And hanged himself,” Brian says.
I nod.
“That’s it,” he says.
I’m still nodding, and I sit in silence a while and Brian says nothing.
“A letter – did he write a letter? Didn’t he leave some kind of… something?”
He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. There are things your mum won’t even talk about with me.”
“Can’t you ask her? There must have been a note. People don’t just…”
“No. She won’t. There are some things we never get all the answers to. I suspect he wrote something but she destroyed it. She won’t talk about it. I doubt she ever will. You have to accept that. Forget it. You’ll have to.”
I remember the words she uttered at the time, after the policeman called: ‘Weak, so weak.’
I look up at Brian, who’s looking at me and waiting.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
I nod again. I just have to get out of here, away from them.
I need to get in the car and drive back to the flat. “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks for that.”
FIFTEEN
There’s no two ways about it, I must see Kate’s parents again. All I’m asking for is her address or a telephone number, to fix up another meeting. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, or sat so far back in the café. On the passenger seat next to me is a poinsettia loaded with red and green leaves, tied with a large Christmas ribbon, and in my coat pocket is Kate’s Christmas card, to prove she’d invited me to meet her in London.
“Happy Christmas,” I’ll tell them. “It’s no big deal; I’m happily married with a beautiful family. This is just for old time’s sake. The last thing I want is to upset her life.”
Who knows, I might even find her in Abetsby on a pre-Christmas visit. Stranger things have happened. And then, over coffee or a meal somewhere, we’ll talk and I’ll tell her how I needed to make sure she was okay. Maybe I’ll explain how things were all those years ago when I lost her, and redeem that part of the past, but we’ll also renew our connection with one another.
A matter of letting go what’s dead, embracing something new.
Turn, turn, turn.
At a T-junction in Abetsby, I watch a young mother struggle to carry a Christmas tree. She’s steering a pushchair across the road with one hand while gripping her tree with the other, which is okay until she tries manoeuvring the pushchair back onto the pavement and it begins tipping and her baby starts screaming. The pavements are crowded with the busy rush of Christmas shoppers, but an elderly man with a walking-stick stops to help.
Pulling out from the junction, I don’t see the bus overtaking a parked delivery van until it’s almost collected me. I brake hard and the driver swerves, slams on his brakes and slides a window open. “Happy Christmas, moron!” he shouts. Everyone on the bus stares and a kid on the backseat presses his nose against the window and gives me the finger.
Two minutes later, I turn into Kate’s street and… and can do nothing but drift to a halt in the middle of the road. I sit, stare… stop. It’s too big to comprehend.
Half the houses in the street have plywood panels nailed across their ground-floor windows and against the front doors. Not only this, but the unboarded houses are empty. There’s no curtains, no furniture; even the Christmas decorations have gone. It’s a street awaiting demolition. Impossible.
Standing in front of Kate’s house, surely there’s something that’ll half-convince me I’ve turned into the wrong road, but over the porch is a corbel stone with a motif carved in relief: a face with leaves growing out the eyes, mouth, nostrils, ears, scalp. And it’s only now I register that every tree in the street has gone; they’ve all been felled. All this in the space of a few days.
Kate would be distraught. The Kate I knew would be distraught.
The house is an empty shell. All the same, I knock twice on the front door and wait as both knocks echo back, the way abrupt noises will bounce around such hollowness. I knock again, then peer through the letterbox: the hallway and stairs have been stripped of carpets.
The door swings open to reveal several letters scattered on the floor.
“Hello! Anybody home? Mr Hainley? Mrs Hainley? It’s Tom Passmore.” My voice runs upstairs and down again, and I shut the door behind me. The house smells cold and my breath fogs. “Hello! Hello!”
The door to the lounge and the back of the house is shut, and maybe there’s a murmur of conversation coming from beyond it.
But there’s no one. Nothing. Even the gas fire’s gone. The kitchen’s empty, the bathroom too. Tugging open the back door, there’s only winter weeds dead in the frozen soil. A hundred white swans once filled this garden.
Upstairs, it’s the same story. Almost. The front two bedrooms are empty, and my feet make too much clatter on the floorboards as I steal from one room to the other, but Kate’s bedroom door is closed. And softly, I place a hand flat against it, as if I might trace some lingering whisper of life from it. Then I turn the handle and enter.
Her calico curtains are still hanging and, although there’s no other furniture in the house, her bed is against one wall of the small room, where it always stood. I try tracing the pattern of the wallpaper, but the tangle of briar roses has faded to a bleak nothing.
This is the end of it.
“Kate.”
Positioning the poinsettia on the windowsill, I dig a finger into the potting mix to check it’s not too dry and then close her curtains. There’s no sheet or blanket, but the bed is more inviting than any bed I can remember, and I’m about to stretch out and claim the sleep I’ve been dying for when a loud bang echoes from downstairs.
Someone’s there.
&n
bsp; My heart’s racing.
I mustn’t be caught trespassing and am tempted to charge downstairs and out the front door, but what if I’ve conjured Kate’s return simply by being here? I tiptoe to the top of the stairs, lean my head against the wall, place a hand on the banister, and wait and listen. But whoever’s down there is playing the same game: waiting, listening.
“Hello! Anybody home? Mr Hainley? Mrs Hainley? Hello!”
Nothing. Silence.
Downstairs, I push the lounge door ajar and brace myself for an intruder to rush out – or to run myself. All quiet. Shoving the door fully open, though, sparks a flurry of movement under the window and I jump back. A starling flutters around the room, panics away from me and crashes into the window with another loud bang. I’m the only intruder. Dazed, it stands on the sill and regards me with one eye, and when I head over to open the window it panics again. From the muck by the chimney place, where the gas fire once stood, I can guess how it found its way in.
There’s really nothing wrong with opening the scatter of post. It’s an abandoned house. There might be some reference to where the Hainleys have moved, or even to Kate, but there’s nothing. No suggestion at all. Two mail order circulars advertise Christmas Specials, there’s a letter from Reader’s Digest advising Mr Hainley that he’s successfully completed the first two stages towards becoming a millionaire and might like to consider how he’d prefer receiving his prize, and three Christmas cards, but none contain the clues I need.
It’s while I’m slipping the cards back into their envelopes I realise that, although no return address appeared on Kate’s Express envelope, there should be a postmark to identify where she mailed it; something to narrow my search. Shit, I’m stupid. Why didn’t I think of this before? Because I didn’t know I’d miss her in London. Because I didn’t know her parents’ street was about to be demolished. But it’s dustbin day in Nenford, with the envelope among the rubbish, and Annette asked me to put Mum’s bin out that morning.
There’s no time to call at the hospital, and even less time once I get snagged in the congestion surrounding Northampton’s town centre. However, the road to Nenford’s almost deserted, while heaps of nose-to-tail traffic heads in the opposite direction. It’s like one of those disaster movies where the entire population is fleeing the site of impending doom, while the hero races against time and tide. Even so, I count three dustbin lorries during this short journey, each heading out towards the municipal tip, and my foot presses harder on the accelerator.
Turning off the main road and into one of the side streets that leads to Mum’s house, several things happen one after the other. Firstly, the car loses traction as I turn the corner (the temperature has dropped and there’s ice on the road); secondly, I notice all the dustbins lining this street have been emptied; thirdly, yet another dustbin lorry pulls out of another side street, and seems to be heading where I’m heading. I accelerate slightly to catch up, but as I’m negotiating a row of vehicles parked either side of the narrow road, a pale child in a nightdress steps in front of me.
Slamming down the brake, the car swerves, hits ice and skids sideways towards the girl and a parked car. I hold my breath, which is about all that’s between us when I stop: a breath. She stares past me as though I might be invisible, then floats back towards a house with an open front door.
It’s enough to sit still and breathe and be thankful I haven’t turned into my dad, and then I drive slowly round to the house. The dustbin lorry isn’t in sight and the bins haven’t been emptied.
Dropping the lid to the ground, I drag out the topmost bag of rubbish and rip into it. The Express envelope is tucked down the side, next to an empty can of beans and a soggy teabag, and the dustbin lorry enters the street as I uncrumple it.
By now, I expect it to be date-stamped with a useless London postmark or illegibly smudged, but it reads quite clearly: AVEBURY WILTS.
Letting myself into the house, I sink into a chair and the day stops.
It starts again in late-afternoon when the village sign for Avebury comes into focus fifty-odd metres ahead. Snow clouds have been hanging low over the landscape ever since I cut out of Swindon, adding a broodiness to the winter downs, and there’s only the weakest suggestion of daylight left when I pull into the glare of the pub’s car park spotlight. Throughout the journey, I’ve noticed a jittery insularity growing, with people rushing from place-to-place, and families in thick coats scurrying down driveways, laden with bags and boxes, into houses pulsing with the glow of coloured Christmas lights. It’s obviously a day to abandon the bleak outside and be barricaded against the siege of a long night, to enjoy an open fire, mulled wine and mince pies and the company of loved ones.
Surely, it’s not Christmas Eve already? It can’t be. Time isn’t flowing the way I’m used to. Has one day passed since I was in London, or none? I might’ve been in the UK for months, or even years. Anything seems possible at the moment. Maybe Australia was only a vivid, beautiful dream, along with my family and being the person I thought I’d become. I’ve always needed someone to anchor me steady to who I am. Perhaps I should phone Elin, so she can tell me about her day and how she walked along the beach and paddled in warm waters and felt the sand between her toes, and so I can hear my kids chattering in the background… except it’s the middle of the night in their world and I’d only frighten them.
“G’day,” I say to the landlord.
I’m leaning on the bar with my overnight bag by my feet. There’s an open fire crackling in the hearth; flames dancing, logs spitting and singing. The bar is a quarter full at most. It’s a room of stone and oak, warm and dry, and stout against the winter. It’ll do.
He smiles, nods. “Australian?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Jeez, you’re a long way from home.”
It’s my turn to nod. Then I remember why I’m here and glance round at the other patrons, but there’s no one who could be Kate sipping on a beer or a brandy.
“What can I do for you?”
“Accommodation,” I say. “I saw the sign out front. Have you got a spare room for the night?”
“They’re all spare. We don’t usually get visitors this close to Christmas. We weren’t planning on taking guests.”
“It’s a long way home,” I say.
“Give me a minute; I’ll ask the missus. She’s in charge of that stuff.”
The room I’m given is so similar to the one Kate and I shared in Whitby that I go to the window, half-expecting to see the onset of night in an east-coast fishing town. Instead, the view encompasses a sweep of huge sarsen stones glistening with frost: a parade of watchful ghosts.
Pint in hand, I lean on the bar and chat with Mick the landlord. He asks about Australia and why I’m in Britain at this time of year, and I answer him. In return, I say: “So, how long have you run The Red Lion, Mick?” and “What’s the population of Avebury, Mick. It can’t be very big, can it?” But it’s harder than I imagined to ask the questions I need to ask, and a relief when he jumps into the subject himself.
“So, if your mother’s sick in Northampton, what brings you down here just before Christmas?”
There’s a tree dressed in silver standing in one corner, and thick garlands of tinsel tracing the beams and outlining the windows, and coloured fairy-lights behind the bar. The open fire has grown and now fills its grate; a stew of flames licking and laughing, feeding warmth into the room. More people are sitting at the tables than when I arrived; a few have left, but more have arrived. Their voices have the rich Wiltshire burr that reminds me of when Elin and I rented the flat in Great Shentonbury.
“I’m looking for someone, Mick,” I say, and take a gulp of ale.
“In Avebury?”
“Yeah. Or close by.”
“A relative?”
“An old friend. Someone I lost touch with years ago, who I’d like to catch up with before returning to Australia.”
“And he used to live in the area?”
/>
“No. But she wrote to me recently. We were supposed to meet in London, but something happened. We missed each other. When she wrote she forgot to include her address – probably because we were going to meet – but the envelope was postmarked Avebury.”
Mick picks up a towel and begins drying a tray of glasses. “Bit of a long shot,” he observes.
“Yeah, but the only one I’ve got.” I sip my beer, pluck a crisp from the packet – stop myself from rushing into the moment. I will him to ask and will him to know.
“What’s her name then?”
“Kate.”
He shrugs. “Kate what?”
“Kate Hainley. But she may have changed her surname.”
“You don’t know whether she’s married or what she does?”
“We lost touch. It’s been a few years.”
He shakes his head, picks up another wet glass. “I’d remember a name like Hainley. And I don’t know any Kate either. But you might ask at the Post Office in the morning. Have you looked in the telephone directory?”
“Yeah. And the electoral rolls.”
“She’d be about your age?”
“That’s right.”
“Sorry.”
And the front door swings open to admit two couples. They’re laughing and loud; their faces are rosy, their eyes bright. No Kate. They bring with them a blast of icy air that makes the fire gutter for a moment before flaring and burning brighter than before. I almost expect to hear a glass being dropped.
Next morning, the sky over the downs is a steely grey and there’s a stiletto-thin icicle forming in my throat. The downs themselves, dressed in their winter grasses and skeletal copses, along with everything about the village, are the thinnest wash of colour imaginable without turning transparent. The moment the postmistress flicks the sign from CLOSED to OPEN and lifts the latch, I enter the shop and follow her to the counter, where she sits behind a partition of thick glass.
“Yes?” she says, and I launch into my spiel about finding an old friend called Kate Hainley.
Almost before I finish, she lowers her eyes, pulls across a rubber-banded wad of dockets – pension stubs – and begins counting.
