“Hi there.” The Americanism chimed oddly with the Welsh accent that seemed to have reasserted itself since her retreat to Snowdonia.
“It’s me. Chris.”
“Chris? This is a surprise, I must say.”
“It shouldn’t be. I’ve just been speaking to Pauline Lucas. Or rather she’s just been speaking to me.”
“Oh yes. Who’s she?”
“Stop playing games, Miv. Pauline Lucas. Your solicitor.”
“I’ve never heard of her. I suppose old Warboys is still my solicitor if anyone is. Is she his assistant?”
“No, of course not. You know damn well who she is.”
“I don’t. Honestly, Chris. You’re not making any sense.”
“She came here today and told me about your so-called claim to a share in my business.”
“But I don’t have a claim to a share in it. Come to that, I don’t want a share in it. Who’d you say this woman was?”
“Pauline Lucas. A solicitor from Llandudno. Hold on.” I plucked the card she’d given me from my pocket. “Pauline A. Lucas, 32A High Street, Llandudno.”
The name means nothing to me. Besides, Llandudno hasn’t got a high street. As for getting involved in your jalopy racket, forget it. It’s the last thing I need.”
“I’m not asking you to ‘
“Are you sober, Chris?”
“Yes, of course I’m bloody well sober.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“Neither would you if The doorbell jangled through the confusion of my thoughts. I saw a shape moving beyond the frosted-glass crescent window set in the door. “Are you saying that you haven’t asked Pauline Lucas or anyone to chase me up over the money you gave me towards starting the business?”
“That money was a gift. I don’t go back on gifts.”
“Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
The doorbell rang again. The caller could probably see me standing in the hall, but I decided to ignore them anyway. “Then how did she know about it?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“You must have told her.”
“But I’ve never met her. Not that I know of, anyway. What’s she like?”
The doorbell interrupted my stumbling efforts to describe Pauline Lucas, the caller giving the bell three imperious stabs. It seemed they weren’t going to give up, though clearly one of us was going to have to. I took a deep breath. “Listen, Miv, can I call you back?”
“If you feel you must, sweetie. Or I could give you the number of a good psychiatrist.”
“Thanks a lot. Bye.”
I slammed the telephone down, marched to the door and flung it open. A woman was standing on the mat, hand raised to give the bell another jab. She was slim, almost petite, curly dark-brown hair framing a pale, soft-featured face. She was wearing blue jeans and a red polo-necked sweater beneath a fleece-lined flying jacket. The jeans were flared, several years behind the fashion, frayed and faded enough to be genuinely old. My first impression was that she was some kind of student, but it was obvious she had to be the mature kind. I’d have put her age at thirty-odd. Strangely, however, there was nothing in the least mature about the skittering look of panic that flashed into her eyes at the sight of me. She bit her lower lip and withdrew her mittened hand from the bell.
“Yes?”
“Er … Chris Napier?”
That’s me.”
“Oh … right.”
“What do you want?”
“Well, it’s a bit…”
“I’m in a hurry, so I’d be grateful if ‘
“Michaela Lanyon.”
“What?” I genuinely thought I must have misheard.
“I’m Nicky’s sister.” She looked at me for a second or two in silence, then swallowed hard and repeated her name, as if sharing my disbelief.
“Michaela Lanyon.”
CHAPTER SIX
“I suppose it must be … a shock. I mean, if you thought, like the guy who wrote about me in the paper… that I’m … that I was
“Dead?”
“Yeh.” She looked at me across the sitting-room, into which I’d distractedly shown her. We were standing either side of the window, each confronting a familiar shadow cast by a total stranger. “God, I wasn’t sure whether to … I mean …”
“You’re Michaela Lanyon?”
“Yeh. Well, I call myself Emma Moresco, actually. Have done for years. Ever since I… ran away.”
“You weren’t murdered.”
“No.”
“You just… vanished of your own accord.”
“I had to.”
“Leaving your family to think you were dead.”
“There was nothing I could do about that. Not without She turned aside and bowed her head. “I didn’t like it, you know. I didn’t enjoy it.
But I had to get away from there. From the life I was leading.”
“Why?”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s not why I came. I came because of Nicky.”
Too late. He died, believing you’d been murdered by Brian Jakes.”
She sighed and ran a hand over her face. “This isn’t easy. Christ, I
don’t even …” A shudder ran through her. “Could I sit down?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” I ushered her into an armchair, her vulnerability undermining my anger. “Look, do you want some tea?”
“You haven’t got anything stronger, have you?”
“Fraidnot.”
“Tea, then. Yeh. Fine.”
I walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. As I measured some tea into the pot and arranged cups and saucers on a tray, I reeled mentally before the mundane reality of Michaela Lanyon’s return from the dead. For a second, I almost believed she wouldn’t be there when I went back into the sitting-room. But she was, hunched forward in the armchair, just as I’d left her. She looked up as I entered and smiled weakly.
“Sorry about this. Honest.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me.”
“No. But I reckon I have to explain.”
“Teenagers run away from home every week. And a good few never come back. What’s there to explain?” My tone sounded harsh, even to me.
“Sorry.” I grinned ruefully. “Now we’re both apologizing.”
“Perhaps we both need to. In our different ways, we each ran out on Nicky, didn’t we?”
“Yes. I suppose we did.”
“If I’d known he was likely to commit suicide, I’d have…” She shrugged. “Done something.”
“Me too.”
“I had no idea Mum was dead or that Nicky was so … desperate.
Truly.”
“I believe you.”
“He used to talk about you so much. His good friend Chris Napier. He would never have a word said against you, would never admit…” She shook her head, sparing me, it seemed, the words of condemnation I could as easily have uttered myself. Then the kettle came to the boil.
I filled the pot, put it on the table and stood beside it, waiting for the tea to mash. “How did you find me?” I asked, as much to fill the silence as to satisfy my curiosity.
“I phoned Tredower House. The receptionist gave me Grayson’s number.
That’s how I knew where you were. I followed you from there. Even when you got here, though … I hesitated.”
“Why?”
“Sixteen years is a long time to be thought dead. You get used to it.
It becomes a habit. And habits aren’t easy to break.”
“So why did you break it?”
“Because Nicky’s death ties you and me. We can’t walk away from him now. He’s forced us to listen, hasn’t he? He’s forced us to take notice.”
“Notice of what?”
“His belief. His certainty.” She watched me as I poured the tea, nodding yes to milk and sugar. I carried our cups across and sat down in the armchair opposite her. “I’m taking a bet he spoke to yo
u before he hanged himself. That’s why he went to Truro. To see you, in the place where you’d been friends. Am I right?”
“Yes. You are.”
“Then I’ll take another bet. But this is a safer one, because it’s only what he was forever saying to me when I was a little girl. He thought our father was innocent a wronged man. He told you that, didn’t he?”
“In his own way, I suppose he did.”
“But you didn’t believe him. No more than I did, when I was old enough to grasp what had happened. Nobody ever believed Nicky.”
“Not even your mother?”
“She wanted to. But she didn’t have the strength of mind to withstand Considine’s drip-drip-drip campaign to portray himself as the noble saviour of a murderer’s widow.”
“It doesn’t sound as if there was much love lost between you and your stepfather.”
“Love?” There was real passion in her voice now. “I hated that man. I still do. He made my life hell.”
“How?”
“How do you think?” Her stare challenged me to draw the obvious bonclusion. “It was him I was running from. I preferred to let my mother and brother believe I was dead rather than let Considine think there was even a possibility I might still be alive somewhere. Because he’d have come looking, for certain. Searching and prying and probing and She broke off. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear this.”
“Michaela ‘
“Call me Emma. Please. That’s who I’ve been for sixteen years.” “All right. Emma. Where have you been for those sixteen years?” “London.
Isn’t that where all the runaways go? It wasn’t so bad. There was this guy I met in Clacton that last Easter. He was on holiday there.
Well, we sort of hit it off and … he offered to put me up if I needed a place to stay in the big city. Nice bloke. Gay, actually. Maybe that’s why he was so nice. Anyway, he gave me a start. Since then, it’s just been… an ordinary life. I work shifts on a supermarket checkout. Home’s a high-rise flat. Not much, is it? No husband, no children and a dead-end job. But it’s what you have to expect if you do a runner from your own identity. And I’ve never regretted it. Never once. It’s been worth it to be out of Considine’s reach.”
“Aren’t you taking quite a risk by coming forward now?” “I’m not coming forward.” She set down her cup and stared at me intently.
“Nicky told me I could trust you, Chris. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Nobody must know I’m alive. If Considine ever found out…”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“I couldn’t sleep at night if I thought he knew.” She folded her arms defensively around herself. “There’s nothing he’s not capable of.”
I held up my hand reassuringly. “All right. OK. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. Especially not Considine. You can trust me. For Nicky’s sake, if you like. You’re right. I let him down. But tell me this, Emma. What can I do, now he’s dead, to make up for that?”
“You can prove him right,” she replied without even a momentary hesitation. “You can prove our father didn’t murder your uncle.”
I thought I was dreaming at first. And so I was, in a way. The ringing doorbell became a bumble-bee buzzing in my ear, ever louder and more threateningly, as I traversed some soon to be forgotten landscape of my sleeping mind. Then I woke and realized it was the real solid brass doorbell of our home in Crescent Road that was ringing. It was pitch-dark in my bedroom, but there was a light visible round the door and a sound of movement along the landing. I rolled over and peered at the luminous dial of my alarm clock. It was a quarter to three, the very middle of the night. Yet there was somebody at the door. Whoever they were, whatever they wanted, I knew the time meant something very serious had happened.
There were footsteps on the stairs now and a strengthening of the light as another switch was thrown. Then a creaking of the floorboards in Gran and Grandad’s room. I clambered out of bed, walked to the door and edged it open, letting my eyes adjust gradually to the brightness.
Mum was standing by the banisters in dressing-gown and slippers, looking down into the hall. I assumed Dad had gone down and that it was him I could hear fiddling with the bolts. The letter box rattled as he pulled the front door open and a gruff but subdued male voice said, “Mr. Napier?”
“Yes,” Dad replied. “What can I do for you, Constable?”
“Sorry for disturbing you at this hour, sir. I have some bad news.
Could I step inside?” The door closed behind him and his voice sounded louder in the confines of the hall. “It concerns your uncle, Mr.
Joshua Carnoweth.”
“Is he ill?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead, sir.”
Gran and Grandad emerged from their room just as the words were spoken.
I couldn’t see them, but I could see Mum glance round at them. “Did you hear that?” she murmured.
“I heard it,” said Gran, ‘but I can’t quite believe it.” She started down the stairs, with Mum and Grandad in pursuit. “What’s happened?”
she demanded as she reached the hall. “Did you say my brother Joshua’s dead?”
“I’m very sorry to say that he is, madam.”
“But he was in perfect health when I last saw him, only a couple of days ago.”
I stepped out onto the landing and tiptoed to the banisters for a view.
Then I saw Pam standing at the top of the stairs. She frowned at me and pressed a finger to her lips.
“When did this happen, Constable?”
“He was found … just a couple of hours ago, madam.”
“He died in his sleep?”
“Not exactly. When I say found ‘
“What do you mean? Out with it.”
The constable sighed. “I mean, madam, that Mr. Carnoweth was found dead in Barrack Lane just after midnight tonight.”
“Dead in the street?”
“He’d been stabbed several times.”
“Good God almighty,” mumbled Grandad.
“Murdered?” said Mum disbelievingly.
“It seems so, madam.”
“Who did it?” demanded Gran.
“We don’t know yet, madam. But we have a good description of a man seen running from the scene of the crime and you can be assured no effort will be spared ‘
“Murdered?” put in Dad. “Here in Truro?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But why?”
“It’s too early to ‘
“Money,” announced Gran, as if there could be no room for doubt, as if she’d always feared such a fate might overtake him. “It’ll have been for his money.”
“Nanceworthal, summer of forty-six,” I said as I handed the photograph I’d taken of my ten-year-old friend to his sister all of her lifetime and more later. Nicky was grinning down at me from his perch halfway up an uneven haystack on the Jagos’ farm in a snapshot of his childhood and mine. “We never went back,” I added as she scanned the faded print.
“You never can,” she murmured. “Still, when you see something like this, you feel as if it might almost be possible, don’t you? As if you could step into the black and white past and lead Nicky out of it. But you can’t. He’s still there. But he’ll never be here again.”
“Doing what you did running away must have meant turning your back on every kind of keepsake.”
She shook her head. “Not really. I didn’t have any. I’m not sure how much Mum kept when she left Cornwall, but whatever there was she lost in the flood.”
“You mean the flood at Jaywick in fifty-three? Considine told me about it.”
“Yeh? Well, he wasn’t there, was he? But you’re right. Jaywick, January fifty-three. It’s just about my earliest memory Nicky waking me in the middle of the night with water lapping around my bed. It was so cold. Like ice. And the bungalow was moving. It seemed like the end of the world. Nicky got Mum and me onto a mattress and we floated up with the floodwater. He stayed calm while Mum
just wept and I was too frightened to do anything. I remember watching him swim to the front door and pull it open, letting in a rush of water. Then he swam to the back of the bungalow and broke through the wall with a saucepan. It was only a plank wall, of course, but it took some doing. I thought he’d gone mad, that he was trying to drown us, but he’d realized you had to let the water find its own level or the whole bungalow could turn turtle. Then he got us up into the roof space, where he said we’d be safe. We sat up there all night on the rafters in the freezing cold and pitch-dark. Nicky smashed a hole in the roof and shouted for help, but there was no answer. We found out later our nearest neighbours had all drowned. When it got light, we looked out and all you could see was grey swirling water on every side.
Beyond Recall Page 11