The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Partly. I was leaving The Heights and happened to see you coming out of the café opposite. So I thought I’d take a walk this way myself. May I?’

  He wants to sit next to me. He’s followed me for ten minutes without making himself known, but, hey, there’s nothing to be scared of. Even stalkers get stalked sometimes. He’s in good shape, far less creaky when he lowers himself to the ground than I was a few minutes ago.

  Sighing softly, I fold the paper bag with the last of the pastry and slip it into my bag. ‘So you’re the one who invested in Kieran Watts’s app and made him rich?’

  ‘Sam Harding’s app,’ he corrects me, but I ignore this.

  ‘And you were at his flat last week. You chased after me.’

  ‘You ran from me. I was intrigued as to why you should do that.’ His grammar is extremely correct, his accent cultured, and I imagine that usually impresses people, perhaps even intimidates them.

  ‘You scared me,’ I say. ‘And when you chased me, I knew I was right to be scared.’

  ‘There was nothing to be scared of,’ he says, bearing excellent teeth in a smile. ‘You’re not scared now, are you?’

  This kind of banter right out of the blocks might look flirtatious on the page, but, believe me, it is anything but. ‘Do you live with Kieran?’ I ask tonelessly.

  ‘Sam. No, but not far away and my office is down on Bermondsey Street. You probably know that already.’

  ‘Green Shoots.’

  ‘Right. And you’re a lighting designer, with a client in Jacob’s Wharf.’

  ‘Correct.’ I drain the last inch of coffee. It tastes suddenly briny.

  ‘You work with Habitus Architects, I gather. But I couldn’t find you on their staff list.’

  ‘I’m freelance. There are a few of us they use on rotation. Why? Are you interested in investing in my business? Want to build me into a lighting giant? We could call it Edison Ellen.’

  His answering smile is a little tighter this time. ‘Actually, my interest is more in how your presence in the neighbourhood might affect Sam.’

  ‘I don’t know any Sam, Mr Ratcliffe. You’ll have to use his real name if you want to discuss him with me.’

  He exhales. ‘Kieran.’

  I cock my head a little to consider him. There’s the softness of compassion in his face, but something hard and metallic behind the eyes. ‘What about his presence in the neighbourhood, how did that happen? He approached you with his genius idea, did he?’ Disgusted though I am by Kieran’s success, this is too good an opportunity to fill in the gaps of his lost years for me to pass up, especially as Ratcliffe seems all too willing to oblige.

  ‘I met him for the first time at Danstone. A contact of mine is a fundraiser there and she got me involved with a computer science initiative they were doing. Kieran was a part of that. He won a lot of fans there, he was quite the whizz.’

  ‘I’m sure he was,’ I say, sarcastically. ‘Last I heard, he was working in a fried chicken shop.’

  ‘So I understand. But he’d already had the idea for Moodsmart when we first met. He reached out to me about six months after his release. He was based in Glasgow then and it was a while before we met again face to face. But I made an investment, connected him with a few people. His hard work and talent did the rest.’

  So he was in Glasgow, I think. There are more expensive cities to hole up in, but still, how did he fund that? And has he confided in Ratcliffe about the circumstances of his Houdini act? ‘Why up there? Who was he staying with?’

  ‘That I don’t know,’ Ratcliffe says.

  ‘So it only took you, what, eighteen months to make all that money together? That’s got to be unusually fast, even for tech?’

  ‘It was the IP they paid for. The valuation was fair.’ Ratcliffe flicks me a conspiratorial look. ‘It didn’t hurt that the social media companies were actively looking for something with a mental health angle.’

  ‘Given they’ve played such a key part in wrecking it?’

  ‘You said it.’ His gaze lingers with new significance and I guess he’s thinking of Lock Up Longer, its website forum flowing with vitriol.

  ‘Why change his name? Wouldn’t it have helped with PR that he’s an ex-con? Isn’t that your whole angle?’

  ‘Not my whole angle, no.’ He tilts his head, patient with my errors. ‘I’m interested in social and entrepreneurial mobility in general. To answer your question, we could have made it work had his conviction been basically unknown to the public, but it was widely known, as you’re well aware. An extensive community had already engaged with it. We decided too many people would remember his story the way it was originally told.’

  The way it was originally told. Fury rampages through me. Who the fuck is this guy, reducing my son’s death to a matter of narrative approach? But he is thinking of Lock Up Longer, that’s clear. He’s worried I’m going to expose Sam Harding for who he is – I’ve whipped up hate once and I can do it again.

  ‘In any case, he’d already changed his name when we reconnected,’ Ratcliffe added. ‘He became Sam the moment he had to leave London.’

  Is he implying anything by this? His easy gaze does not alter and nor does his body language. ‘Why did you say you didn’t know him?’ I ask. ‘When I rang at the flat and said I had a delivery?’

  ‘Because he’s Harding now and I knew that if someone calling him Watts turned up out of the blue, we needed to pay attention. It could only be the wrong sort of enquiry.’

  ‘From the wrong sort of parent,’ I snap. ‘The kind whose child was left by him to die in agony.’

  This stark comment seems to galvanize Ratcliffe. He drops his equanimity for a more combative stance. ‘Why are you involving yourself in his affairs, Ellen? Are you planning something with the Mirror again? Because if you are, I can’t stress how bad an idea I think that would be, now of all times.’

  So this is about the app, exactly as I supposed. No doubt there’s a massive launch planned by his Saurus overlords, who won’t be best pleased if eleventh-hour bad publicity comes raining down on them. The finance might even be structured so that there’s still a substantial payment outstanding.

  I let him chafe for a moment or two, before saying, ‘I’m not interested in rekindling my relationship with the media, no. I prefer a quiet life these days.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it.’ Ratcliffe doesn’t look relieved, however. Rather he seems to be battling some internal dilemma. ‘If I can be frank with you, PR is not my only concern here.’

  ‘So what is?’

  He leans a fraction closer. ‘This is confidential, but the reason Kieran relocated to Scotland and changed his name was he was tipped off that someone wanted to hurt him. I’m not talking about local abuse or internet trolling, he expected all of that, but a real threat. A death threat.’

  I jerk upright, shocked. This man knows not only about Kieran’s escape but also the crucial elements of it that Vic and I have only been able to guess at. A tip-off? This must mean that Kieran staged his own disappearance out of some pre-emptive fear for his safety. And since Ratcliffe is the one sharing this secret, his camp clearly has no suspicion that the threat originated with Vic and me.

  ‘I can see this is news to you,’ he says.

  ‘It is. I don’t understand. Who tipped him off? How did he know the threat was real?’

  ‘Only Sam knows that. I trust his instinct, though.’ There is something in his tone that makes my nerves flare. Am I being too quick to assume an absence of suspicion on his part? Is it possible that as he sits here, with his gracious manners and smarmy talk of reaching out, he knows exactly what Vic and I tried to do?

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I ask.

  ‘To let you know that any noise you decide to make, even just a bit of casual gossip with a client in Shad Thames, could have serious repercussions for Sam.’

  ‘And I should care because…?’

  There’s a twist of irritation in his face, follow
ed by a look of pleading. ‘Throw me a bone here, Ellen. I’m trying to solve this situation, not make it worse.’

  Throw him a bone? He’s got to be joking. ‘We came face to face last week, did Kieran tell you that? He pretended he didn’t know me. That was disrespectful.’

  The implication is that if he’d only acknowledged me to my satisfaction, then I’d have been on my way. Right.

  ‘He did tell me that, yes, and I don’t think he intended disrespect. You caught him unawares.’ Ratcliffe makes a show of preparing for another revelation and I feel my pulse accelerate. ‘Ellen, he feels an enormous sense of guilt about what happened with your son. His inability to overcome that is crippling him. He’s really suffering.’

  ‘He’s suffering?’ This is so laughable I hardly know where to start. ‘If he felt enormous guilt why did he start going out with Lucas’s girlfriend the moment he was released from Danstone? Did he tell you that?’

  Ratcliffe gives a sympathetic nod. ‘Sometimes, after a tragedy, those left behind grow close. They understand how the other one feels. But he hasn’t seen the girl since leaving the area. That was a tough sacrifice for him.’

  ‘Not as tough as the one Lucas made,’ I bark. ‘He hasn’t seen her for a while, either.’ I’ve had enough of his ‘poor-Kieran’ stance, applying the language of the victim to the perpetrator. ‘Look, Mr Ratcliffe, maybe your charity work makes it possible for you to see these criminals as normal, and maybe most of them are, but I can tell you that the Kieran we knew was not normal. He was reckless and malicious and the fact that he’s now changed his mind and wants to make the world a kinder place makes me feel worse, not better. He denied my son the future he’s now living.’

  I’m breathing heavily, perilously close to lashing out physically.

  ‘Ellen, please, I know you’re hurting, but—’

  I interrupt: ‘Stop. You know nothing about me. Just say what you came to say.’

  ‘All right.’ He straightens, clearly as tired of my hostility as I am of his evangelical sincerity. ‘He wants no further contact with you. It’s a reasonable request, and I think you should think of it as an unofficial restraining order.’

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort.’

  He sighs. ‘Fine. But please know that if we think there is any threat to his welfare, we will take measures to protect him.’

  I meet his gaze. ‘His welfare or his reputation?’

  ‘They are one and the same,’ Ratcliffe says, and he at least admits that, not without a certain sorrow. If I had to guess, I’d say he had his own history of delinquency, that Kieran’s second chance is a reliving of his own.

  The problem is their victims have fallen by the wayside in the process.

  I scramble to my feet, blinking into the sun, and walk away without even saying goodbye.

  Chapter 27

  Robustly expressed though Vic’s wishes are on the matter of Kieran, I consider them for all of five minutes before calling him. The encounter with Kieran’s mentor is too crucial not to share, the nuggets of information mined too valuable. ‘Can you meet? I’ve got a lot to update you on. You know that guy I told you about? James Ratcliffe? He’s Kieran’s mentor—’

  ‘No!’ Vic’s voice cuts across mine, sharp and angry. ‘I don’t want to know, Ellen, I told you that the other day.’

  ‘I thought you just needed a few days to process it.’

  ‘What I need is to put what we did behind us. For fuck’s sake!’

  It is a long time since he has sworn at me. Before we split up, I would say, when Lucas was small. When I could scoop him up and squeeze him, carry him around on my hip before groaning and protesting, ‘You’re getting too big for this. You’re not a baby anymore.’

  Vic’s apologies vibrate in my ear: ‘I didn’t mean to have a go. I’m a bit stressed out.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I suppose I can tell you on Thursday. I will see you, won’t I?’

  There is a silence. The twenty-first of November is Lucas’s birthday. On the last four, Vic and I have visited his grave together.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he says, ‘but I have a work thing I can’t change.’

  ‘What thing? Can’t one of the others cover for you?’

  ‘No, they can’t, sorry. Look, let’s keep in touch,’ he adds, but I’m not stupid, I know what that means.

  You’re on your own, Ellen.

  * * *

  I ask Justin if he’s free to remember Lucas with me on his birthday and he agrees to take the afternoon off work.

  I drive. It doesn’t take long for him to question the route. ‘We’re not going to the cemetery?’

  ‘No, I thought I’d do that later. I want to go somewhere else.’

  ‘Ah,’ Justin said, as I take the turn signed for Purley. ‘I see.’ Then, ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Yes.’ It’s natural that he should ask. I haven’t returned to the reservoir since the week of the accident almost five years ago and I don’t know how I will react. I don’t know how Justin will, either. As I drive, I think of all the times – both before and since Vic and I pledged an undying secrecy that excluded all others – I have expected him to call time on our marriage. Perhaps even willed it, for his sake, not mine. Freya has glued us, of course. Her grief. Her longing. These last two years, I’ve known (albeit mistakenly) that her brother’s murderer has been neutralized, but she hasn’t. To her, Kieran has remained living; not a malign spirit, but a flesh-and-blood threat with the potential to come back to town. She’s needed her parents to shore up their marriage, not allow it to fracture.

  But now she is at university, independent and resilient. Will this be it? Will this be the time Justin says I can’t take any more of this?

  We’re almost there. The turn from the B road is steeply angled and you need to slow right down, take it with a little extra looseness. Easy to imagine joyriders shrieking and swearing as the car turns too tightly. A momentary loss of control that thrills, a close call that feels euphoric. The sign is the same as it was then: ‘Layham Hill Reservoir – Do Not Enter’. At least I think it’s the same. It’s hard now to know what was my personal experience of that time and what has been grafted into my memory by media images. The blue-and-white police tape, the basin of black ink beyond. The car being hauled out, sheets of water flowing from its windows.

  We park and climb over the fencing, past the ‘Keep Out’ signs, to get as close to the spot as we can. There is a tremor in my arms and legs, a tightening of my lungs, as I survey the innocent flatness of the water, silvery and reflective in the afternoon light.

  I turn to Justin. ‘If it had been daylight, would there have been light in the car?’

  He considers this as if I haven’t asked it before. As if he hasn’t borne witness to a thousand individual collapses as question follows question, no answer getting us any closer to acceptance than the one before. ‘There would have been some, yes. There would have been more of a chance of a witness, as well. Busier roads. A passing driver who saw them and stopped to call for help.’

  They’d have to have seen the crash; the car was not visible for long.

  ‘Do you feel like this overshadows everything?’ I say. ‘I mean, us? Freya?’

  His gaze narrows. ‘How can it not? When you lose a child, you make your life in that shadow. You’re never going to be cured. You’re managing a condition.’ He reaches for my hand. ‘We’ve survived this far, we’ll keep on surviving.’

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I say, abruptly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve known about it for a while, but I wanted to be sure. Kieran Watts has come out of the woodwork. He lives near Tower Bridge.’

  ‘What?’ A bolt of alarm crosses Justin’s face. ‘After all this time? How do you know?’

  ‘I saw him. I’ve seen him twice, actually.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The first time was about a month ago, completely by chance. I spotted him from a
client’s window.’ I pause. ‘I’ve told Vic. I had to.’ Seeing the tic, light as a moth’s wing, by his right eye, I feel a reciprocal flutter. It has never been clearer to me than in this moment that Justin was as much a father to Lucas as Vic and yet he never behaved as if he were entitled to the same status.

  ‘And?’ he says.

  ‘And he wants nothing to do with it.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With…’ And I can’t say any more, I can’t confess, not to that. ‘Just with the fact of it.’

  ‘That explains it,’ Justin says, and his brow actually clears. ‘You’ve been so preoccupied. Glum. I knew it was more than the time of year.’

  The annual year-end deterioration of my spirits. The approach first of Lucas’s birthday, and then the anniversary of his death.

  ‘It is,’ I agree. ‘I suppose I’d got used to the idea that Kieran was dead.’

  Paid good money to be sure of it. I feel so angry with myself. And angrier still with Vic for cutting himself off. I shouldn’t have to burden Justin right now – not when I don’t know if I can trust myself. ‘He was supposed to be dead!’

  I’ve said it before I can think it through, feel my face flush in horror. In two and a half years, I haven’t come this close to confessing.

  Fortunately, Justin misinterprets my outburst. ‘That was never confirmed,’ he points out. ‘Personally, I always assumed he’d run off somewhere and kept a low profile.’

  ‘Really?’ I stutter.

  ‘I know you wanted to think it was something more permanent, but there was never any evidence, was there? That police investigation, they were only ever guessing.’

  I press my lips tightly together, avert my eyes.

  ‘Wherever he’s been hiding since he left, he’s obviously been keeping out of trouble.’

  ‘More than that, he’s made a lot of money.’ I give him a concise update. The app, the change of name, the friends in high places. The flat in the sky with the view of Tower Bridge.