The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  It was Chad. He was a few feet from me and did not seem at all happy to see me.

  ‘You’re ’ere?’ he said slowly. ‘Thought I could be alone ’ere.’

  ‘I often come here,’ I admitted.

  Luckily he did not seem annoyed. ‘Right. A good place for a cry, in’t it?’

  I fished out a handkerchief and wiped my nose, although I knew I had swollen red eyes and a blotchy face. Probably I looked uglier than ever before.

  ‘Mum married again,’ I said, waving the telegram in my hand.

  Once again he said, ‘Right.’ Then he looked around suspiciously. ‘Is Nobody somewhere around?’

  He was all I would have needed right then!

  ‘I lost him. Don’t worry. He wouldn’t dare come down here on his own.’

  Chad took a few faltering steps towards me. No doubt he would rather have been alone, but something held him back from just shooing me away like a tiresome fly. He had done that at first. But now I was twelve. You could not act as dismissively and impolitely to a twelve-year-old girl. Realising this, I started to feel a little better.

  ‘Is he disgustin’?’ Chad asked, pointing to the telegram.

  I swallowed. Just don’t start crying again.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ I had to admit. ‘He and Mum met since I’ve been here with you. I haven’t been back to London since.’

  ‘She coulda brought ’im with ‘er, when she came t’ visit. If she knew ’im then.’

  ‘He didn’t have time. His work is essential to the war effort.’ At least something about Harold she could be a little proud about.

  Chad did not seem to hold such work in high esteem. He harrumphed. ‘Like me Dad and t’ stupid farm! There be only one place for a man in a war, at t’ front!’

  I felt a cold chill down my back as he said this, although it also impressed me deeply. The way he said it sounded so brave, so determined. Chad had finished school that summer and now he had to help out more on the farm. It was work which did not appeal to him. He and Arvid were always having run-ins about it. I had heard Arvid and Emma talking about it a month earlier. Emma would have liked Chad to go on to the sixth form and then perhaps university.

  ‘He can do it,’ she had said, almost pleadingly. ‘His teachers think so too. He gets good marks.’

  Arvid had cut her down.

  ‘Sixth form! University! What ever for, woman? Our boy’ll inherit t’ farm. Don’t need a Higher School Certificate for that. He’ll grow into the job. One day I’ll pass it all on t’ him. He’s lucky. Not many who get a property like this just thrown int’ their lap!’

  However, at the moment I did not have the impression that Chad was interested primarily in a sixth form education. His goal lay elsewhere, and I found that unsettling.

  ‘I’ve just talked to me parents,’ he said. His cheeks were red, probably not just from the climb down the gorge. ‘I’m sixteen. I could enlist if me Dad gave me permission! Can’t understand why he’s refusin’!’ Sitting down beside me on the boulder, he picked up a few small pebbles and flung them angrily into the sea.

  ‘Enlist? You mean …?’

  ‘For t’ front, of course. I’d like to fight. Like t’ others!’

  ‘There aren’t many sixteen-year-olds who are going,’ I mooted.

  ‘Some do,’ he insisted. He threw some more pebbles. I had rarely seen him so angry.

  ‘Your father needs you on the farm.’

  ‘My country need me at t’ front. Others’re dyin’ for England! And ’ere I am sittin’ and shearin’ sheep. Can you imagine what that means to me?’ He turned his face towards me. I could see in his eyes that he was not just angry, he was also sad – almost despairing.

  Maybe he was feeling much the same as me in that moment.

  ‘D’you know what kind of a guy Hitler is?’ he asked.

  I only had vague ideas. ‘Not really …’

  ‘He’s crazy,’ said Chad. ‘Mad. He wants to take over the world. He’s attackin’ every country. He’s even takin’ on Russia now. Only a madman could do that!’

  ‘But then he won’t manage to conquer Russia,’ I suggested, shyly. I knew that Hitler had attacked Russia that summer, but I had not thought any more of it. I hoped I did not look too silly to Chad.

  ‘Imagine the Germans invade England,’ said Chad. ‘Not just send their bombs, although that’s bad enough. But imagine they were suddenly ’ere. That the Germans were suddenly ’ere!’

  I did not see that the Germans could make my current situation any worse. Not even Hitler seemed as much of a bogeyman to me as Harold Kane. Naturally, I kept this to myself.

  ‘That would be terrible,’ I said compliantly.

  ‘It would be a bleedin’ catastrophe,’ stressed Chad, before falling into a gloomy silence.

  ‘Mainly it’s Mum who’s stoppin’ me,’ he said after a while. ‘I think I could bring Dad round. But when I just start to say I want t’ join up, she gets hysterical!’

  ‘She’s afraid for you.’

  ‘Afraid! I’m pretty much a grown-up. It’s time for her t’ stop being afraid for me. Let her hold and kiss and suffocate Nobody with her care. That’s not for me any more. I have t’ go me own way. Follow me own convictions!’

  I thought that what he was saying sounded very good. As always, I was so impressed by him. But I still did not want him in the war. Of course not, on no account! I did not say that. I wanted him to see me as his ally, not as a younger version of his frightened mother.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘things don’t go as you’d like in life.’

  It was not that I thought I was saying something particularly clever. It just seemed like the naked truth to me.

  Chad looked at me.

  ‘But then you don’t have to accept it,’ he replied.

  ‘Sometimes you do,’ I waved the telegram in my hand. ‘Sometimes you’re helpless.’

  He kept on looking at me. Something had changed. The look in his eyes had changed. He – yes, he was looking at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

  ‘You’ve got beautiful eyes,’ he said, and sounded almost surprised. ‘Honestly, right beautiful. With golden flecks in them.’

  I have green eyes with a little bit of brown in them. Brown, not gold.

  Maybe the light had changed the colour, or he just saw what he wanted to see. I don’t know. But to me it was as if the world had suddenly stood still. As if the waves had paused, the seagulls had gone silent and the gentle summer wind was waiting. My mouth was suddenly dry, and I swallowed. Suddenly the telegram with its earth-shattering news was unimportant.

  ‘I …’ I said, but did not have the faintest idea what else to say. ‘Thank you,’ I finally said and thought that I really did not have a clue about things. What should you say in a moment like this? Thank you, that sounded like something a schoolgirl would say, but however hard I tried, I could not think of anything else.

  He will think I’m a little idiot, I thought, depressed. The special moment in which the whole world around me had held its breath was passing as quickly as it had come – all because a girl had been speechless when a man said something nice to her.

  But he carried on looking at me with that new expression, and there was something in his gaze which gave me hope that he did not just see a schoolgirl in front of him.

  He reached for the telegram. ‘Give it t’ me,’ he said.

  With a few quick folds he had made a paper aeroplane. He stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s send it off!’

  I stood up too. Chad checked the wind direction and threw the plane skilfully into the air so that the thermal caught it and carried it on. It flew for a good distance before plunging into the sea. For a while we continued watching it dancing around on the waves, then it disappeared from sight.

  ‘Gone,’ said Chad. ‘Don’t think about it again.’

  I had to laugh. It was as simple as that. All at once Mum was gone. Harold Kane too. I suddenly did not c
are about the future or what was going to happen. The only real thing was the present, the beach, the sea, the sky. And Chad, who quite naturally took my hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  I remember thinking on the way home that it was the happiest hour of my life. I felt I would never be happier, my life would never be more complete. Even today, more than half a century later, I can still recall what was special about that afternoon. Maybe every life has these moments which cast us under a spell whenever we think back to them, however much time has since passed and however our lives have turned out. What was special about that afternoon was naturally the fact that I had more or less been given a declaration of love. That is how I understood Chad’s comment about my eyes, and indeed the following months were to show that he was finally requiting the secret and rapturous feelings which I had been harbouring for him. Looking back, I know that it was more than that, more than a romantic meeting between a boy and a girl on a beach. It was – but I could not know at the time – one of the few intense moments Chad Beckett and I were to share in innocence. I mean that literally. We had not yet made ourselves guilty.

  That would change, and today I’m sure that was the reason why a life together – which would otherwise definitely have been possible – failed.

  Because of our guilt.

  Tuesday, 14th October

  1

  She woke up because her alarm clock rang. It took her a few seconds to realise it could not be her alarm, because she was in Scarborough and not her London flat, and she did not have an alarm clock here. She must have been dreaming, or have imagined something, especially as it was quiet now.

  She sat up in bed. Outside, day had broken. She saw fog pushing up against the windowpane. The weather soothsayers had got it right: it was autumn.

  She wanted to sink back into the pillows, but then she heard the ringing again and it dawned on her that someone was at the front door. She felt for her watch. It was almost nine. She never normally slept this long. With a slight feeling of guilt she remembered the whisky she had bought yesterday and of which she had drunk a good deal in Fiona’s living room that evening. Probably that was why she had slept so deeply and long.

  Only tea tonight, she resolved, although she immediately had a bitter premonition that she would not manage to keep her resolution.

  She stood up and felt her way through the flat. When she passed the living room she saw, lying on the table, the pile of papers which Colin had given her and she had read all evening. The Other Child.doc. Beside it, her glass and bottle of whisky. The standing lamp was still burning; she had forgotten to turn it off.

  She pressed the button to release the door to the street, and opened the door to the flat. A minute later Stephen traipsed up the stairs – a bleary-eyed Stephen carrying a travelling bag and wearing trainers.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ he asked.

  She was stunned. ‘Yes. No. Well you did, but it doesn’t matter.’ She stepped back. ‘If you’d like to come in …’

  He stepped inside, shaking himself, a little like a damp dog. He was wearing an anorak that shone wetly. ‘I haven’t been here for ages. I parked far too far away,’ he said apologetically. ‘Down at the Spa Complex. I had to walk up through the gardens … God, the paths are steep, and then you can’t see a thing!’

  Leslie was still struggling to wake up properly. ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘From London. I set off about four in the morning.’

  ‘Why on earth?’

  He shed the wet anorak. ‘I managed to get time off. And I thought …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought you might need me. Well, I can imagine you’re feeling pretty terrible …’

  She crossed her arms in a defensive gesture. ‘I told you I didn’t want you to come.’

  ‘Still,’ he replied. ‘You did call me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was a mistake.’

  He looked hurt. ‘Leslie, could you possibly—’

  ‘I couldn’t!’ she hissed. Don’t be weak. Think what he has done to you. How much it hurt when he told you about his slip-up. How you felt afterwards. The fear that he could do it again. The suspicion as to whether it was really just one night. Fear and suspicion. She had been relieved when she had found the strength to finally end it.

  He carried on, not paying any attention to her objection. ‘Could you possibly take into account that we were married for ten years and together for fifteen? That your grandmother was also part of my family? I’ve also lost someone. I’ve got a right to mourn too. I’ve got a right to know what happened.’

  ‘All right. The last point: at the moment no one knows what happened. If that’s why you came, you’re in for a disappointment. No new leads. And the point before that: of course you can mourn. But on your own, please. Without me.’

  They stood opposite each other. Leslie noticed that her breath was coming in short, panicky gasps. She tried to calm down.

  Don’t let him get you worked up!

  Stephen looked at her pensively, then he grabbed his anorak, which he had slung over the back of a chair.

  ‘You made yourself clear. I’ll look for somewhere to have breakfast and …’

  Suddenly ashamed, she brushed the hair from her face embarrassedly. ‘You can have breakfast here. It’s fine. I’m sorry if I …’

  He smiled in relief. She disappeared into the bathroom and heard him go into the kitchen. In the past they had often spent their holidays with Fiona in Yorkshire. Stephen knew his way round the flat. Looking at her swollen face in the mirror, she thought she was almost relieved not to be on her own. Maybe Fiona’s death would be the start of a new phase in her life, in which she could give up her aggression and hurt. In the end it would be possible to be friends with Stephen.

  Having showered and blow-dried her hair, she put on jeans and a sweatshirt and went to the living room. It smelt of coffee. Stephen had set the table at the window, although it was rather meagre fare. A big piece of cheese lay plonked on a plate in the middle, accompanied by a dish of crackers. Stephen, who had been looking out into the impenetrable fog, turned around. ‘What do you live on?’ he asked. ‘The fridge is bare. The only thing I found in the kitchen, and plenty of that, is coffee and cigarettes!’

  ‘That’s it. The answer to your question,’ said Leslie. ‘Coffee and cigarettes. That’s what I live on.’

  ‘Not very healthy.’

  ‘I’m a doctor myself.’ She sat down, poured herself a cup of coffee and enjoyed the first sip. ‘Just what I needed! Now I’m back in the land of the living.’

  During what passed for breakfast Leslie brought him up to date with the modest progress of the investigation, as much as she knew it. She told him about the calamitous engagement party, about the holidaymakers Colin and Jennifer Brankley, about the fight between Dave Tanner and Fiona, and about Fiona’s fatal decision to go walking on her own that night.

  ‘Somewhere on that lonely road she must have met her murderer,’ she said.

  ‘This Dave Tanner must be the main suspect,’ said Stephen. ‘He might have still been in the area. And from what you’ve told me about the evening, he must have been dead angry.’

  The pun was unintended but Leslie picked up on it. ‘Not enough to want someone dead. That doesn’t fit somehow. Yes, he was angry, but angry enough to want someone dead … I don’t think so.’

  ‘What kind of a person is he?’

  ‘Hard to read. But not in the way that you’d think he could commit a crime. More like in the way Fiona suspected. He might really not be on the level with Gwen. He’s good-looking. He’s the kind of man young women flock to, and he’s scrabbling around to make ends meet. Gwen – or more precisely, the Beckett farm – is a real chance for him.’

  ‘A man ready to marry her and have children with her is also a real chance for Gwen,’ said Stephen, thoughtfully. ‘I mean, it’s not the classic romantic love story, but the relationship could be good for b
oth of them.’

  ‘If he manages in the long run to keep away from the tempting offers of beautiful girls,’ said Leslie, before adding tartly, ‘And both of us know only too well how hard that can be for men.’

  Stephen looked like he wanted to reply, but he refrained.

  After a while he pointed to the little table where the computer printouts, the glass and the bottle gave a clear picture of how Leslie had spent her evening. ‘Exciting reading?’ he asked.

  ‘Fiona’s life story. Or at least a part of it. She wrote it down for Chad and sent it to him via email. It was meant to be for his eyes only, but Gwen guessed the password and printed it all out. Colin Brankley gave me the sheets. He was very mysterious about it, but I’m not yet sure why. Fiona describes her evacuation from London during the war and her life on the Beckett farm. She often told me about it. What’s new is finding out that she was really in love with Chad, but that’s something I had at least suspected, and that they had some sort of relationship. I haven’t got any further than that yet.’

  She shrugged. ‘As you can see, I drowned my sorrows drinking yesterday. So after a while I wasn’t really taking in what I was reading.’ She thought for a moment. Something surfaced from her alcohol-laden memories, a term … ‘Guilt,’ she said. ‘She hinted at a guilt which Chad and she had burdened themselves with. But I haven’t read about that yet.’

  ‘What kind of guilt? Any idea?’

  ‘Not really. The only thing I can imagine is that Fiona and Chad had a relationship, even once Fiona was married to my grandfather and Chad to his wife. Although … she wrote that Chad and she could not have a life together because of guilt. So it can’t have anything to do with their later spouses.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Did I tell you that Fiona had been getting anonymous calls?’

  ‘No. What kind?’

  ‘Silence. Breathing. Nothing else. She hadn’t told anyone about them, except Chad, on the evening she died. They must have had quite an effect on her.’

  ‘Did she tell Chad whether she suspected anyone?’

  ‘No. She had no idea who it was.’

  Stephen put down his cup, leant forward and looked at Leslie very seriously. ‘Leslie, I think the story there,’ he nodded towards the little table with the printouts, ‘should be in the hands of the police. A vital clue might be hidden in it.’