Other Countries

by Jo Bannister

  Ash’s voice was low. ‘Are you sure you know who he is?’

  Hazel bridled. ‘Of course I am. At least, I know the important things. I wouldn’t be with him if I thought he’d done something to be ashamed of.’ She made herself remember what Ash had done and overlook why he’d done it. ‘Look, Gabriel, when things have settled down a bit, let’s all get together for a meal or something. I think if you got to know Oliver you wouldn’t have these silly concerns.’

  Almost before the word was out she wished it unsaid. No concern is silly until it’s been disproven, and then all of them are. Ash didn’t object, but she knew he’d noticed and felt it as a criticism.

  But all he said was, ‘Yes, I’d like that. Will you call me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘As soon as I’ve figured out how the Aga works.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  The weather turned problematic again. There was no word from Emerald about the resumption of filming. Ford spent much of his time at Purley Grange. In the mornings he worked in his study, and preferred not to be interrupted except by a mug of strong black coffee around ten-thirty. He was writing a textbook on Richard the Lionheart. He would finish by half past twelve, and often they would go out for lunch.

  Hazel had advised Meadowvale that she considered herself fit for work and was waiting for an interview with the medical board. Her invitation to attend failed to arrive. At first she thought Superintendent Maybourne didn’t want her back on the beat until she could see small children across busy roads without the sight of her burns making them cry. But as the days passed and there was still no summons, she began to suspect that she was being subtly punished. She wasn’t quite sure for what. She and Ford had been thrown together by a police Press Office eager for positive coverage: was she to be ostracised because their match-making had succeeded?

  In the meantime, it was pleasant to spend time making herself at home and getting to know the surrounding area. Wittering, with its new museum, was the nearest village, a robust hour’s walk away, or eight minutes in the car. There were no other houses close by. Woodlands, currently turning from green to flame, surrounded the house entirely, reducing its vistas to no more than fifty yards in any direction. Hazel wondered if, in winter, the proximity of all those dark trees, dripping moisture into the dark ground, would feel claustrophobic – and whether she’d still be here to find out. She felt that the uncertainty ought to distress her more than it did. In fact she was content to let events unfold as they would. For the moment, the woodland setting with its carpet of gold and red and rich brown was both calming and charming.

  She thought, I must get Gabriel over for lunch soon. Patience would run off a week’s worth of energy chasing rabbits. Hazel ran the idea past Ford, who said she must of course ask her friends round if she wanted to; but his lack of enthusiasm made her reconsider. Perhaps, she thought with a secret grin, he wanted to keep her to himself a little longer. There was no rush. The woods weren’t going anywhere, and she couldn’t imagine that Ash was either.

  Ford watched her getting ready for bed. She let him, enjoying his admiration. This was the first thoroughly grown-up relationship she’d had, and it was quite different to the fun she’d had with teenage boyfriends, with fellow students or even with her contemporaries on the police studies course. It wasn’t just that Ford was older. She was too, and the rhythm of their life together was naturally slower. But it was also more focused, more deliberate, arguably more intense. And that, she realised, was because this was the first time that she’d been with someone and been open to the possibility that it was for good. That Oliver Ford might be her last lover.

  As she brushed her cropped hair, growing a little shaggy now as well as asymmetric, Ford said thoughtfully, ‘You’d look terrific as a redhead.’

  Hazel was momentarily taken aback. ‘You mean, I don’t look terrific as a slightly singed blonde?’

  He was immediately contrite. His arms went round her, folding her against his chest. ‘You’d look terrific bald and covered in tattoos. With your teeth filed to points and a bone through your nose. But one of the privileges of being a woman is that you’re allowed to have fun with your appearance. If I dyed my hair red, my colleagues would point and snigger and my bosses would tell me to stay off work until I looked like a serious historian again. If you dye yours red – or purple, or green – people will applaud your daring.’ He shrugged. ‘It’d soon grow out if you didn’t like it.’

  She was staring at him in the mirror. ‘You’re serious? You think I should dye my hair?’

  ‘No,’ he said judiciously, ‘I think you should let a hairdresser do it for you. Some things a professional is always going to do better.’

  Hazel didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t an outrageous suggestion, it was just that she’d never considered it before. ‘Let me sleep on it.’

  ‘Of course.’ And as he turned back towards the bed, he ruffled her hair and grinned. ‘Whatever you want, sweetheart.’

  Ruffled her hair.

  In fact, though, he’d piqued her curiosity. Hazel had never dyed her hair before, partly because she liked its natural colour and partly because she couldn’t be bothered. Now she found herself wondering how she’d look as a redhead. Ford made an appointment with a stylist in Birmingham, drove her to the salon and helped her pick the precise shade, or blend of shades, from an album. As well as colouring it, the stylist reshaped her angular cut. A little less punky this time, now she had more hair to work with. Hazel sat through the whole procedure – it took most of a morning – like someone waiting her turn at the guillotine, but afterwards she had to admit to liking the result.

  ‘Told you so,’ Ford said smugly.

  As if she’d done something for him, he wanted to reward her with a new outfit. Hazel frowned. ‘I’ve got plenty of clothes.’ In fact, she’d never owned so many clothes in her life.

  He explained as if to a child. ‘You don’t buy new clothes to have more clothes. You buy new clothes to have new clothes.’

  It was like describing heat-stroke to an Eskimo. In the end it was easier just to agree. He picked her out a floaty dress in waterfall shades that she thought would clash with the red hair. In that she was wrong. She still couldn’t see herself wearing it. ‘I never wear dresses.’

  ‘You’ve done a lot in these last few weeks that you never did before,’ Ford pointed out. ‘Look, I know I’m never going to wean you off your jeans and boys’ shirts. I know you’re a country girl at heart. But not for every minute of every day! It’s nice to dress up sometimes. To have somewhere nice to go to, and something nice to wear. Isn’t it?’

  Hazel remembered a similar conversation between herself and Saturday. ‘It’s nice to have a good soak in a hot bath sometimes …’ She grinned at the recollection, and nodded.

  Ford didn’t understand the grin. He frowned. ‘Are you making fun of me?’

  ‘No,’ said Hazel truthfully. But then, impishly, she added: ‘Would it matter if I was?’

  He had to give that some thought. Clearly he would have liked to say Yes, but suspected that she’d accuse him of being precious. And she might be right. Oliver Ford wasn’t a man much given to introspection; it was a measure of the value he vested in this relationship that he was, if grudgingly, open to the possibility. In the end he said, ‘Not if you do it in a loving, empathetic and generally supportive manner.’

  She chuckled and hugged his arm.

  Ford bought her turquoise high heels to go with the dress.

  Ford had business in the bank. While Hazel was waiting outside, watching the people hurrying along the pavement for no better reason than that they weren’t trees, Dave Gorman almost passed her by. He started visibly. ‘You look different.’

  She couldn’t resist preening. ‘It’s the hair.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed after a moment, ‘that too. When are you coming back to work? We’re missing you.’

  ‘Really? I always think I hear a collec
tive sigh of relief when I leave Meadowvale.’

  ‘Not always,’ said Gorman defensively. ‘And you do … liven the place up a bit.’

  That was unarguable. ‘I’ve sent in my request. I’m just waiting to hear.’

  ‘These things take time,’ he agreed. ‘How’s the face now?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Hazel. ‘I can barely feel it. It’s a bit shiny under the concealer, but as long as I can avoid punch-ups for another week or two, it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the delay,’ hazarded Gorman. ‘In this job, you can’t always avoid punch-ups.’

  Hazel heard a note of – possibly unintended – criticism in that. ‘Dave, no one can accuse me of hiding behind the furniture when the shit hits the fan!’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’ He seemed genuinely concerned that she’d misunderstood. ‘I just mean, the powers-that-be are wary of approving anyone for duty if they aren’t fit for every kind of duty. They don’t want to be responsible for exposing you to unnecessary risk.’

  ‘I can man the radio,’ said Hazel. ‘I can run the computers. There are lots of things I can do if they want to keep me off the streets a little longer.’ She heard the echo of that and realised it could have been put better. ‘If you’ll pardon the expression.’

  Gorman grinned. ‘I’ll have a word with Maybourne if you like – say I’ve seen you and you look fine to me.’

  For a moment she was about to give him her new address, in case they wrote to her at Railway Street and Saturday lost the letter. Something – discretion, a desire to protect her privacy, even a touch of embarrassment – stopped her. ‘You’ve got my mobile number?’

  Gorman nodded, and they parted.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Hazel’s car refused to start. Though she knew very little about the workings of the internal combustion engine, she lifted the bonnet and poked things for a minute or two, in a spirit of showing willing. If she’d found something that was plainly a plug and something else that was plainly a socket, and the two had become disconnected, she would have reintroduced them and hoped for the best. But nothing so obvious presented itself, so she admitted defeat and went back inside.

  ‘My car won’t start.’

  Ford looked up briefly from his papers. He was on something of a roll with the book and hadn’t left the house for days. ‘Bummer.’

  ‘Will you have a look at it for me?’

  He seemed astonished by the suggestion. ‘I don’t know anything about engines.’

  Hazel had always rather assumed that a certain level of mechanical knowledge came, like deep voices and hair loss, with the testicles. ‘Can’t you jump-start it or something?’

  ‘How? With what?’

  They stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. Finally, irritably, Hazel shrugged. ‘All right, I’ll call the garage.’

  But she couldn’t get a signal on her phone. All the trees, she supposed. She asked Ford to try his network.

  With an exaggerated sigh, Ford put his work aside and took out his phone. ‘No, nothing. What’s the number of your garage? I’ll keep trying till I get a signal.’

  She called it out to him, and Ford made a note of it. Then he looked up. ‘Where were you going? Was it anything urgent?’

  It wasn’t urgent. She’d thought she might look in on Ash; she’d considered reminding Detective Inspector Gorman of his promise; mainly she felt the need to get out of the house and go where there were more people than trees. ‘Just into Norbold. Can I take your car? I’ll call at the garage while I’m there.’

  But like many men who could afford to buy another if anything happened to it, Oliver Ford was protective of his car. Not very knowledgeable, it seemed, but protective. He hummed and ha’ed, and thought he might have business in town as well, and suggested they have a nice lunch at The Crown on the way home.

  By then, though, Hazel was going off the whole idea. What she had really wanted was a little time to herself – away from the house, away from Ford, checking that the threads of her old life were still where she could pick them up when she wanted to. If he had been a different sort of man, she would have said briskly, ‘Love you dearly, Ollie, but I don’t actually want your company twenty-four hours of every day.’ And held her hand out until he dropped his keys into it.

  But Ford lacked much insight into his own failings, or what Hazel perceived as his failings, and she knew that if she told him she wanted some personal space he would ask her why, what he’d done to displease her, and keep coming back to it like a sore tooth. Instead she gave a slightly forced smile and said, ‘Never mind. Maybe I’ll go for a walk instead.’

  ‘All right. How long will you be?’

  His attentiveness could be wearing. ‘An hour or so. I need the exercise. Don’t wait lunch for me.’

  Ford nodded. ‘OK. Take care. I’ll keep trying the garage.’

  He was as good as his word. Two hours later, muddy and breathless but lighter in spirit for her tramp through the woods, she returned to find only Ford’s car in front of the house. Her own had gone.

  ‘Diego took it away?’ She was surprised and a little alarmed.

  ‘I’m afraid so. It was the … distributor? Or was that what he said it wasn’t?’ Ford gave a sheepish grin. ‘Sorry, but I did warn you about me and engines. Bottom line was, he needed to work on it at the garage. He’ll bring it back when it’s fixed.’

  ‘How long did he reckon it’d be?’

  ‘Two or three days,’ said Ford. ‘Tell you what: if it isn’t back by the weekend, we’ll drive into town and rent you something.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Hazel, and Ford returned to working on his book.

  Since Hazel had left the little house in Railway Street, Ash had made a habit of dropping round a couple of times a week to make sure Saturday was all right. That he had enough money to buy food, and that food was what he was spending his money on. He didn’t want the boy to feel he was being spied on, though, so he started walking Patience the long way home from the park. By the time he got to Railway Street it was no longer a lie to claim he needed a cup of coffee and a sit-down before walking the last mile home. Gabriel Ash had never been a terribly active man. For much of his life, the only part of him that got regular exercise was his brain.

  He thought he was being quite subtle. But by the third visit, Saturday knew exactly what he was doing and also when to expect him. Ash would arrive to find the front door ajar and the kettle already on.

  Saturday was managing fine, but he too felt Hazel’s absence like a small bereavement. He’d been alone, and he’d lived with someone who cared enough about him to ask how his day had been and remind him to eat vegetables, and he knew which he preferred.

  And Ash, though he now had his sons to think about, found that they did not fill the precise spot in his mind that Hazel had occupied. He missed her: the inconsequential warmth of her chatter, her well-meaning interference in his life, the way she involved him in the affairs of the world from which he had for so long withdrawn. She had coaxed him back to life; and to a life richer and more fulfilled than he had ever expected to enjoy again. Perhaps that was only partly her doing, but it was certainly true that it would not have happened without her input. He owed her so much. Now she wasn’t around, he felt guilty that he hadn’t done a better job of thanking her.

  In thinking about her, he missed what Saturday had said. ‘Sorry – what?’

  ‘I said, have you heard from Hazel at all?’ So they’d been thinking along the same lines.

  ‘Not for a couple of weeks. I suppose’ – Ash shrugged, lamely – ‘she has other things on her mind.’

  ‘Have you called her?’

  Ash blinked. He hadn’t thought of that. ‘No, I haven’t. And I must. I have her number at home …’

  Saturday gave him a long-suffering look. It was the one he’d learned from Hazel, the one with Ash’s name on it. ‘I think you’ll find your phone knows the number.’

  Ash patted his pock
ets until he found it, keyed up the phonebook. Looked at her name and wondered if she’d welcome the sound of his voice or think he was intruding.

  ‘Call her,’ urged Saturday. ‘Call her now.’

  So Ash did.

  A voice he didn’t recognise told him the number was currently unavailable, and suggested he try again later. Ash rang off. ‘No reply.’

  Saturday was doing the Hazel look again. ‘Did it go to voice mail?’ Ash shook his head. ‘Then she must have switched it off.’

  Ash frowned. ‘Why would she do that? She’s never done it before. I’ve never not been able to get hold of her when I needed to. Do you suppose there’s a problem?’

  Saturday gave him that special grin that young people reserve for their elders when the subject of modern technology comes up. ‘Everything’s fine, Gabriel. Either she’s turned it off so it won’t disturb her, or there’s a gap in the coverage where she is. A dead zone. The further you get from centres of population, the more of them there are. Try her again later – sometimes it’s a question of where the satellites are at a given time.’

  Ash was a little reassured, and also a little rueful. ‘When it comes to mobile phones, there’s a bit of a dead zone in my head. You grew up knowing this stuff. I had to learn about it – and then they changed it around while I was out of circulation and I’m having to learn it all again. I struggle to remember what half the expressions actually mean. 3G, 4G – that used to be something pilots had to worry about. A mobile communications device was a carrier pigeon, and when you talk about instant messaging I think of semaphore. When you talk about social media, I think of The Tatler.’

  He was making a joke of it, but in fact he was hardly exaggerating. It wasn’t even the four years he’d been a hermit. His wife had accused him of being born middle-aged, and Ash suspected she was right. It didn’t justify what she had done, but perhaps it helped explain it.