In the sudden silence then, Nat thought she heard something and she stopped. She hadn’t been paying attention and she was surrounded now, the path squeezed between high tangled mounds of brambles and whispering dry reeds. There was the rush of the water, somewhere ahead. She thought there was something else, though, a murmur, a human voice. She swallowed, and the sound of her own blood filled her ears.
Was there anyone, anyone she would be glad to see here now? Ollie might have thought he was coming to meet Beth. That would have gotten him down here, the thought of her wide smile, her warm strong arms open. Who did Nat have? No one.
It came back to her forcefully that Janine had wanted rid of her, this evening, the two of them standing there in the pub’s back garden, Janine with her hand over the mobile phone, trying to sound friendly, trying to sound casual. Giving her the evening off, when she’d been rushed off her feet, Steve was away, Craig out of his head? Some teenager recruited at the last moment to fill in, some … some girl. And she’d sent Nat away.
Janine had been talking to Steve about something she didn’t want Nat to hear. And then she had told her to go, not looking her in the eye.
The voices were still there, mumbling, indistinct, urgent. Hesitantly Nat started walking again, toward the sound, when all she wanted to do was turn around and run, tearing the brambles off her, running up and away. She kept going. The roar of the water through the weir filled the air and then she saw it, a stretch of railing that led out across the concrete slope where the water rushed. In the gray uncertain light she saw a bunch of flowers, bleached and wilting, tied to the railing hanging at an angle, and then she saw two people. An older couple, a woman with thin wild hair clinging to a bulky man who was standing with both hands on the railing stiff and upright. They turned and looked at her.
His parents. Ollie’s parents. Mr. and Mrs. Mason.
It seemed to Nat that they looked as if they wanted to run away when they saw her—or throw themselves into the water. Nat retreated, suddenly shaky, reaching out with her hand to support herself. She wanted to hide, the look on their faces was so awful. The woman called after her. Her voice was angry, distressed. “Don’t!” Nat heard, distinctly, and she made herself stop. She turned back. The man had his hand on the woman’s arm; he was trying to pull her into an embrace, but she wanted Nat.
Nat set out across the walkway toward them, one hand on the railing. She stopped a few feet away.
“You’re her friend.” The woman’s face was wild and haggard. Nat could see Ollie’s eyes in it, though, bright washed blue.
“Her friend?” Though she knew with sinking certainty that she meant Beth.
“It was her fault,” the woman said and her husband looked away, agonized.
“Beth,” said Nat. “Beth didn’t do anything. She didn’t.” She didn’t know how she knew that or why she was defending Beth anymore. This was so terrible.
“It was her fault. He never used to be that kind of boy. Pubs, drinking. He was a good boy.”
“Ange,” said the man, pleading.
His wife—Ange—shook him off. “You think I don’t know what girls are like?” she said angrily, without looking at him. “She was a prick-tease, he would have done anything for her.” Staring at Nat, as if she was Beth.
“He was … he was just a normal lad, Ange—hormones and that.” He grabbed for her uselessly.
For a second the gulf between men and women seemed vast, as they stood there with the roar of the water in their ears. Nat saw the father as his wife did: he was a man, all men the same, driven by sex. And then he let his wife go and he was just a grieving father.
“She didn’t care about his feelings,” said Ange Mason, her face tight now, and focused. On Nat.
“How do you know all this?” Nat said, faint. “Did he talk to you about it?” Looking into the woman’s face.
“He had a diary,” his mother said, drawing herself up. “They never found his phone, but he had … just a notebook, he scribbled in it. I gave it to the police. Saying how he knew there were other men, he’d seen her with them, but he didn’t care. They were going to be together.”
“Seen her with other men?” Nat got in swiftly, to catch the straw in the wind. “Where? Did he say who?”
Ange looked at Nat, her eyes wild, empty. “You know boys,” she said, hollow, more to herself than to Nat. “He wasn’t one for writing, he was just scribbling, he was upset.” She was holding herself, a straitjacket of her own arms across her body, and the husband stepped in front of her.
“The police think that the barmaid had something to do with … Ollie’s death,” he said, not quite looking Nat in the eye. “Your friend.”
“But they think she’s dead too,” said Nat. “What have they told you?”
“I don’t care,” said Ollie’s mother, mumbling from behind her husband. “I don’t care about her.”
He turned, and all Nat could see was his broad back as he wrapped his arms around his wife, rocking her, very gently.
“It’s getting dark,” she heard him mutter. “Let’s get home, Ange.”
They came past her then, Ange’s hand groping along the rail like a blind woman’s, and Nat could only watch them go, thinking of their empty house, getting dark.
The water went on roaring after they’d gone, and she stood there, leaning against the railing. Someone had killed their son because he knew something he shouldn’t. Seen something—like Victor? Had he seen the murderer, like Victor had, early one morning? Ollie had seen her with other men, and perhaps he’d seen one man in particular, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She took a different path from the one they’d taken, not knowing, not much caring, where she would end up as long as it wasn’t with them. At least it headed uphill: she had to scramble at one point, the dusty hard-packed earth giving her no purchase, and for a panicked five minutes there was nothing resembling a path at all. Then she was out, panting, on a narrow tarmacked lane she didn’t recognize, just as a car came past.
She glimpsed a profile in the driver’s seat, a head turning with something in it that she had seen before, then the car came to an abrupt stop a couple of yards ahead of her. The door opened as her scrambled brain tried to process it, a leg, a muscled forearm, a broad hand on the rolled-down window.
Him. He climbed out. It was Bill Sullivan.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Friday
An alarm had gone off as Emile, the porter, brought in the trolley, closing the door behind him. Victor lay there, listening to footsteps hurrying to and fro in the corridor. There were always alarms, he had adjusted to that, alarms that sounded when a drip finished or a battery was dying, but this one generated more commotion. Voices whispering.
Today was Friday: today Richard would come.
Emile knew nothing, or professed to. The nurses had not yet come around to take his observations, although usually they would have done: Lisa should be back on duty.
He asked Emile for cornflakes and made himself eat them, methodically. Beyond the door it fell quiet. When he was finished he set the bowl carefully on the side table and got up. As he got to the door and peered around it, he saw Lisa, kneeling, tutting over something. He edged out and she looked up. She got to her feet and he saw what it was she’d been looking at.
A small scattering of brown: it looked for all the world like earth to him, a little dusting of the outside world, although perhaps it was only compost, from a plant brought in.
Now Lisa was leaning across the nurses’ desk, saying something, reaching for something. A dustpan and brush—she had it in her hand when she returned to him.
“Has something happened?” he said, leaning carefully on the walking frame to get his breath back and her head turned, just enough. He followed her gaze. The curtains around the bed he’d slept on every night until last night had been drawn.
“Nothing you need to worry about, Victor,” she said, although she looked worried herself.
Feeling himself un
der a compulsion he didn’t quite understand, Victor shifted his position to face the curtained cubicle. He pushed the frame, one small movement toward it and then Lisa’s hand was on the frame.
“No, Victor,” she said. “You can’t—”
“Did he … did he…”
The porter who had moved him the night before appeared at the far end of the corridor with another man, ambling. They were talking about football results, but when they reached Victor and Lisa they fell abruptly quiet—the one Victor knew gave him a quick glance, almost sheepish. Lisa nodded and they headed toward the cubicle.
“These are high-dependency beds,” said Lisa in a low voice. Her face was strained. “Patients sometimes … there are sometimes limits—sometimes there’s nothing we can do.”
“Was he old, like me?” said Victor faintly.
She frowned. “I don’t know what—”
“Did he look like me? With the lights out, could he have been me?”
“He was an elderly gentleman, yes, Victor, but you mustn’t worry, he … you’re doing so well. There’s no comparison.” She looked alarmed.
Victor leaned back a little and she put her hand on his elbow to steady him. She would think him mad if he said any more. The two men were behind the curtains and he could hear the mumble of their voices. He could see the outline of their bulky bodies through the thin fabric as they leaned across the bed. “I—I…,” he said, feeling his heart flutter, uneven, and Lisa gently steered him away, back toward his own room. They were behind him now, and he didn’t want to turn and see what they were doing. He didn’t want to see them wheel the body away.
She stood inside the door, waiting for him to get back to his bed. She took his observations in silence. He could see—he could feel—that his pulse was high, but she didn’t say anything.
Twenty minutes later, as Victor lay there trying to return himself to quiet, the door opened softly and the porter’s head came around it.
“You all right, mate?” he said. He looked pale. He took a step inside, but the door stayed open.
“He died,” said Victor. “Is that right? The heart patient.”
“Yes, but it’s still a shock,” said the porter. “You sure you’re all right?” Victor tried to nod, but it was feeble. The porter grimaced. “Get used to it in here,” he said. “Quicker than they thought, but sometimes hospital does that. You’re a tough one, you’re going to be all right.”
“What happens now?” asked Victor. “What happens when you die in hospital?
“You what?” The porter did a double take. Perhaps he thought Victor was past curiosity about dying. “Doctor comes to certify him, look at what happened.” He leaned against the doorjamb.
“Is there a postmortem?” asked Victor, whispering. He felt something ebbing, strength or …
The porter looked dubious. “I doubt it,” he said. “’E was ancient, he’d been brought in with heart failure, no one’s gonna question it.”
I’m ancient, thought Victor. Would they ask questions if I died? The consultant, the nurse. He nodded, and the porter looked briefly relieved, then he was gone, leaving the door ajar.
Victor thought of the earth the nurse had swept up, the outside world, and it made him shiver. Turned earth from a garden, not compost. He heard a sound, a soft click, and when he looked, someone had closed the door.
* * *
The room felt strange even before Nat was properly awake; there was more heat in it, in the air, under the sheets. And it wasn’t her room. Nat lay very still, eyes shut, fighting panic.
She opened her eyes and turned her head. Bill lay on his back and his eyes were closed, his hair stuck up off his forehead, the fine brush of stubble on his chin, some of it white. He had slept in his T-shirt, a nice T-shirt, she registered, aware that she was grasping at straws. Then he turned, opened his eyes, and smiled, a broad, sleepy smile, into her face, and his arm came across and rested on her and he closed his eyes again.
Last night: and with a lurch she was back there so abruptly she had to close her eyes.
Wouldn’t it be nice, shit, wouldn’t it be nice, to actually choose to fuck someone, instead of just falling into it? An old expression popped into her head. Falling pregnant. Like you trip and tumble and whoops, there it is. There you are. Fucked.
Nat realized she was talking to herself in her head as if she had been in the Ladies at the Bird with Beth, leaning back on the basin, spilling the beans, going off on one. Who was there she could say any of this to? Now Beth was gone. And it rose up in her, a great sloppy gush of grief for Beth, mixed in with terror. Mixed in with self-pity, more like. She blinked. What would Beth say? It happens. It’s what we’re designed for, ain’t it? Boy meets girl.
There’d been a time—a month, maybe—when Beth went more or less celibate, an experiment she called it. She had moaned about her skin, how it gave her spots, made her bad-tempered. Then she’d disappeared on a three-day lost weekend with a band she went to see in the town and she was back on track. “Life’s too short,” she had said cheerfully, breezing back in and ignoring Janine’s black look. True enough.
Had Steve been around then? Tick, tick, tick they went, the questions starting up again. Yes, he had, because she remembered him on the stairs at the sound of Beth’s voice, thundering down. He’d been around, shaking his head over her.
Party girl. For a flicker of a second Nat wondered if she was turning into Beth. No chance—one Beth was enough.
But you don’t have to feel bad. Boy meets girl.
Not pregnant, though; not this time. An advantage of both being sober enough for that considerate exchange, kind, even—at least it had felt kind, him setting two hands on her forearms to hold her there and saying, We’d better …
There. She heard Beth’s voice, encouraging her. Comforting her. So: no harm done, right?
He had climbed out of his car on that twilight road and come two steps toward her before stopping, holding up two palms.
“You all right?”
Of course it was only natural that he should stop, that he should ask that, seeing her stumble out of the undergrowth with twigs in her hair, panting and wild-eyed. He was hardly going to drive on. She had staggered and straightened up, brushing herself down.
“Jesus,” Bill had said then, and began to laugh, and with the sound the question that had hovered when she saw it was him, something to do with coincidence, and what had he been doing there, and was he … was he … that question evaporated.
In the car she had begun to tell him about Ollie’s parents, but he had just frowned and she realized she wasn’t saying what she meant, and he probably wasn’t the person to say it to anyway. The difference between men and women, mothers and fathers.
“Perhaps you should get out of this place,” he just said mildly, “when this is all over.” So he knew, all right, about Beth. “Don’t you … have plans?”
“You mean a holiday?” She didn’t mean to sound so scornful. She just couldn’t imagine it, a beach or a foreign city. He was driving carefully: his car was anonymous, a rental firm’s sticker in the window and a pine-tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, clean and empty. The room was like his car, a short-term rental in the next village, inland, the end unit in a converted stable. She could see a couple of things hanging neatly in a fitted wardrobe: dark trousers, a jacket.
Was this his life? Everything temporary, three months here, three months there. Girl in every port, and was that her, here? He’d be off soon. None of the arguments got through, though, she was just liking it, sitting next to him in his car, his broad clean hands on the steering wheel. The thought of Ollie’s parents receded, although it didn’t disappear: it sat in darkness, where the chaos was, beyond the neat interior.
“No,” said Bill, patient, leaning forward to check his mirrors, indicating. “I meant, you know. Moving on, working out what you want to do with your life.”
If someone else had said it—and punters did, sometimes,
beerily, by way of a let-me-take-you-away-from-all-this conversation, she would have had a smart reply. As it was all she said was “Maybe.”
And as she said it he turned out of the top of the lane and she saw where they were, the estuary spreading out dark ahead of them, a few lights coming on across the distant dark velvety sweep that was the caravan site, and she sat up in the passenger seat to gaze. “How long did you say you’d been here?” she said to Bill. “You and the crew?”
“Since June.” Was that impatience? He wasn’t looking at her, indicating to turn into the lane. He was taking her home, and without thinking she put a hand up to the wheel and said no. The cottage was the last place Nat wanted to go to.
“You hungry?” she said. “I mean, I’ve got the night off. We could … or…”
He’d sat back in his seat, the car waiting at the junction, and looked at her, not quite surprised. Then reversed, and turned the other way.
“I mean, I can see why you like it here, though,” was all he said, as the trees flickered overhead, a green tunnel swooping up to a ridge and the darkening blue of the evening sky.
More than that, she thought, it’s more complicated than that, but she sat quiet, barely registering where they were. The edge of a village she didn’t know, a row of big chestnut trees, a post office, then he came to a stop outside the barn development, switched off the engine and he turned to her and kissed her, soft and warm, and she tasted the inside of his mouth and felt his hand move quick and sure under her shirt to her breast, and her train of thought was gone, elsewhere.
He had had the condom in his pocket. It had been a small shock, him being one of those men who carried one with them at all times. Now lying still with his hand on her in the high-ceilinged room with the warm green light of day filtering through the blinds, she let herself think, It’s just normal. Practical. He had moved a pillow for her without needing to be asked, shifted his hip to make her comfortable. He had stopped for a second at the quickest indrawn breath from her to make sure he was doing the right thing. It had seemed like she knew him already.
The Day She Disappeared Page 26