by GJ Minett
He’s halfway along Ellesmere Lane now, just under a mile to go. Somewhere up ahead of him, he can hear a car engine and the headlights swing into view seconds before a dark shape bears down on him. Peter hugs the extreme left-hand side of the lane and is drenched by a shower of water, which flies up from a puddle as the driver flashes past. He shrugs it off and pumps furiously with both arms as he reaches the sharpest part of the climb, just below the gates to Yabsley’s Farm. He looks up and tries to locate against the darkening skyline the familiar slate roof of the old farmhouse, which represents the highest point of the climb. Even from close range, he can hardly see it through the slanting rain which stings his eyes and causes him to stagger momentarily. Furious with himself for this loss of concentration, he hunches his shoulders once more, anxious to get this over with. He drives on towards the top of the hill, counting off the paces until he reaches the entrance to the dairy farm.
It’s at this point that he usually launches into the painful final sprint, a headlong dash downhill to the New Inn, as the earth seems to drop away from him. Today though, as he passes the farm, he eases down into a steady jog, then slows to walking pace. He hears something like a sigh inside. It feels like an ending of sorts.
The inn sits back from the road, separated from it by a gravel drive and a designated parking area. He crosses the courtyard and follows the path round to the rear entrance. Pushing open the huge oak door, he removes his trainers on the coir doormat before stepping inside. He closes the door behind him, making a mental note to see to the stiff latch when he gets a moment. As he crosses the hallway, his stockinged feet make a slapping noise on the flagstones and leave a trail of damp prints along the corridor leading to the staff rooms.
His is one of two, both of them on the ground floor at the rear of the hotel, looking out onto the side alley. The other is unoccupied and has been used as a storeroom for as long as he’s been here. His own is small, far too basic to be rented out to guests, but more than adequate for his needs. There’s room for a bed, a bedside table, a writing desk and chair, a chest of drawers and an armchair which has lost its springs, not to mention a great deal of its covering. There’s also a wardrobe with a door that has defied his every attempt to get it to hang properly, and resting on the writing desk is a black-and-white TV with a small screen and a plug-in aerial. The reception is poor and there’s a problem with the horizontal hold, which keeps slipping, but he watches so rarely it hardly seems to matter. There are no posters or pictures on the walls and no photos by the bedside, just a plain, simple wooden cross which was there when he arrived and which he didn’t feel entitled to take down.
It’s not much, he knows. The flat they found for him in town, when he first came here, was much more spacious. The job at Allingham’s went with it though. It was a package of sorts, and working nights as a security guard wasn’t for him. He much prefers it here. He works hard and likes the fact that his efforts are appreciated. He’s responsible for general maintenance, keeping the grounds tidy, a bit of bar work and filling in on Reception as and when needed. A bit of everything, really. He takes a pride in what he does, and they’ve increased his hours now, which makes the decision to move in here even easier. He has three meals a day, a roof over his head and a bathroom and toilet just down the hall which no one else uses. The other employees live locally and keep more or less to themselves. They’re friendly enough to be good company in small doses but at the same time they recognise his need for a little distance and are happy to respect it.
He peels off his socks and throws them into a laundry bag. Then he goes down the corridor to run a hot bath for himself, stretching gently and massaging his calves while he waits for it to fill. There’s a stiffness in one of them that has been troubling him for a few days now. Another sign of age, he supposes.
In the bath, as the steam swirls around him, he slides his shoulders under the water and wonders if she’ll come to his room tonight. It’s been over a week now, which is as long a gap as there’s been since that first time, the night of the staff Christmas party. He wonders if he’s said or done anything to upset her. If he has, he can’t imagine what it is. He understands that picking up on other people’s moods has never been a strong point with him but there’s been nothing out of the ordinary that he can think of.
Her attitude towards him, whenever their paths cross during the day, is not likely to offer any significant clues. She’s made a point, right from that very first time, of not seeking him out in public or starting up any conversations that might arouse suspicion. A shy smile, a quick hello – nothing to alert anyone to what happens when they’re alone together at night. The past few days have been no different, as far as he can see. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe she’ll come tonight.
He remembers that first time and smiles as he recalls the heady mixture of astonishment and anxiety he’d experienced when she slipped into his room and, without a word, drew back the sheets and slid in to join him. For one thing, there had been nothing he was aware of to suggest that anything like this was about to happen. In all the time he’d been working there, she’d shown no great interest in him as far as he could tell. If they’d spent quite a bit of the evening together, it was because each of them recognised in the other a kindred spirit. When it came to the loud excesses associated with staff parties at Christmas, they were both happier talking over a quiet drink than throwing themselves around an improvised dance floor and making themselves look faintly ridiculous. And yes, they’d kissed under the mistletoe and had a few drinks but then again, so had everyone. It was one of those things you were expected to do and you were more likely to attract attention if you opted out than if you went along with it. But it was quite a leap from that sort of innocent, ritualised contact to what happened just a few hours later.
The anxiety had stemmed from a number of sources. For one thing, he liked his job and was grateful to the old man for giving him a chance. Sleeping with his daughter, even at her instigation, and even though she was more than old enough to make up her own mind, didn’t exactly seem an appropriate way to pay him back for his kindness. He’d managed to keep any such worries at bay while she was there with him, but the moment she left they’d come flooding in, and he’d spent the next twenty-four hours promising himself it was a one-off mistake he wouldn’t be repeating. Then she’d returned to his room the following night in the small hours and all such resolve had simply vanished into thin air.
He’d also been troubled to some extent by the . . . unconventionality of it all. He’d heard a lot of talk about the sexual revolution, but he thought it was more or less the preserve of the young, the hippy generation, and he was neither. The same could be said of her too – he’d never actually asked her age but he suspected she wouldn’t see thirty again and supposed there wasn’t a huge difference between hers and his. And besides, he’d never supposed for one moment that these new attitudes had anything to do with him. He certainly didn’t see himself as attractive to the opposite sex. He was more sexually moribund than active. It was ten years since Jennifer had gone and there’d been no one at all since then – and no one to speak of before, if it came to that. His embarrassment and self-doubt almost crippled him that first time.
When she left, just a few minutes after it was all over, complaining she was feeling cold, he was convinced it was an excuse and that he’d been found wanting in some way. It was almost a relief at the time. He half-expected her to avoid him the following morning but when they bumped into each other in Reception, she gave the same quiet smile and that evening, when he returned to his room, there was a pile of extra blankets at the foot of his bed. And she had come back.
As he reaches for the soap and lathers both arms and legs, he realises there’s a subtle change taking place in the way he thinks about her. Until now he’s always viewed all this as more of an arrangement than a relationship. It’s like an accommodation, something that’s brought together two people who need to forget the real world for a few fleeti
ng moments.
Lately though, she’s stayed a little longer each night and they’ve started to talk. Nothing significant, but he knows she’s been divorced for some time, even if he doesn’t know why. He knows she’s anxious about her relationship with her father and resents the fact that he seems to blame her mother’s death on her divorce and the anxieties it caused, even though the illness wasn’t remotely stress-related. He knows she has a thing about Toblerone and Jaffa Cakes and has given up smoking for the fourth time but doesn’t seriously expect to be able to hold out for much longer. She’s told him she was considered one of the brightest children in her class, university material even, but she gave up on that because she knew her father would never allow it. Now it’s years since she aspired to anything. He knows she feels trapped in this small village with her life racing away into the distance while all she can do is gaze wistfully after it.
In return, he’s managed to tell her he too was once married and has hinted at the fact that it ended badly but not much more than that. How much more can he say? And this, it occurs to him, is going to be something of a problem if they are going to make the leap from arrangement to lasting relationship. Until now she’s been happy to live with his evasions. She respects his privacy and takes his training weekends at face value, even though some of them have been cover stories for his visits to John Michael . . . David, damn it. David.
She doesn’t even know he has a son. It hasn’t been a problem before now.
He scrubs at his face with the flannel, as if trying to drive the thoughts away. Then he takes hold of the chain attached to the rubber plug and gives it a sharp tug to let the water out. He picks up his watch from the rim of the bath and realises he’s been lying here longer than he’d intended. They’ll be expecting him for dinner before long.
In his room, he pulls on a pair of jeans and a lumberjack shirt. He picks up a heavy-knit sweater, then decides against it. They’ll have the log fires going in the bar. If it’s busy and he has to eat in the alcove at the back of the kitchen, it’ll be no less warm in there. He’s putting it back in the drawer when the phone rings. The new boy on Reception – Mark, is it? – is ringing to say that someone in the bar’s been asking for him. Wants to buy him a drink. Doesn’t know who it is. He says he’ll be right there and hangs up.
It’ll be Bill Hayden, he thinks with a sigh. Yesterday he helped him get his son’s car out of a ditch in Titmus Lane and old Bill insisted on buying him a drink to say thank you. He protested it wasn’t necessary but knew at the time he was wasting his breath. That’s how things are around these parts. You recognise your obligations and settle them. It’s a bit of a nuisance actually. He doesn’t really want a drink right now. He’d rather have his dinner and besides, with old Bill there’s no such thing as a quick drink or a short conversation. Maybe he can use his meal as an excuse for cutting it short.
He shuts the door behind him and walks down the corridor that leads to the front part of the hotel. He nods at the lad in Reception who points to the bar, as if he needs to be shown the way. He can hear, even before he enters, that it’s busy already. He’ll probably be needed later to help out. He’s happy enough to do that. It’s better than sitting in his room, watching a TV screen that refuses to settle.
He smiles at some of the locals who have already taken up their regular places at the bar and looks around, trying to pick out Bill Hayden. He can’t see him and is just starting to wonder if the lad on Reception has sent for the wrong person, when a figure sitting at a table over by the window catches his eye. He looks more closely and in that moment it feels as if he has swallowed a hand grenade.
The man half-rises from his seat and smiles, one hand outstretched to indicate the vacant chair he’s been saving for him. The temptation to turn round, leave the bar and run . . . and keep running . . . is almost irresistible, but he knows it’s pointless. Apart from anything else, where exactly would he run to?
He crosses the crowded room, grateful for the fact that no one seems to be taking any interest in him. No one, that is, except the man at the table by the window.
‘Hello, Martin,’ says O’Halloran. ‘Long time no see.’
February 2008: Ellen
Kate looked up from the sheet of paper and frowned.
‘Inverness?’
‘Mmm . . . I know.’
‘So who do you know up there?’
‘No one. Far as I’m aware.’
‘What about this – Ashbury?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’ve never been there?’
‘Not that I remember.’
‘How weird is that?’
‘I know.’
Kate helped herself to a poppadom from the pile that Ellen had stacked on a plate and dipped it in her tandoori sauce.
‘You don’t think he’s holding out on you?’
‘My friend Liam?’ Ellen reached into one of the bags and removed another container, from which she peeled the foil lid. She smiled to herself, recalling the look of desperation on Sharp’s face as he handed over the photocopy earlier that afternoon. One solitary sheet, which was no help at all really. He must have known she’d be disappointed and feared the worst.
‘No, I don’t think so somehow,’ she said.
Kate took a bite from the poppadom and picked up the sheet again. The letter, on headed notepaper from ‘The SJM Agency’, was dated April 2nd, 2000. Addressed to Derek Wilmot, it contained confirmation of arrangements made in a phone conversation earlier that same week. There were no specifics as to what those arrangements might be, other than a suggestion that it was time to switch the focus of the search from the north of Scotland to a village on the east coast of England. There was no explanation as to why and no names were mentioned although, as Sharp had suggested, it was clear that the person they were seeking was female. The letter was signed by a Stuart Mahon.
Kate sighed and let the sheet fall onto the kitchen table. ‘God, never a dull moment with you,’ she said. ‘How come these things never happen to me?’
‘I know. Your life is so boring.’ Ellen poured the steaming chicken korma over a portion of mushroom-fried rice, running a finger round the edge of the plate to prevent it from spilling over.
‘Here,’ she said, sliding the corkscrew across the work surface. ‘Make yourself useful.’
Kate took two glasses from the overhead cabinet and saw to the wine. She took a sip from one of them and topped it up again before carrying the drinks through to the lounge. Then she returned to collect the food, which Ellen had loaded onto trays. She smiled to herself at the korma. Always the same, week in, week out. For Ellen, an Indian was a korma and mushroom-fried rice. A Chinese meant sweet-and-sour chicken balls and egg-fried rice. An Italian was a build-your-own pizza, mushroom, ham and olives or as many of them as were available. The spice of Ellen’s life was anything but variety. Kate no longer bothered to comment on it. If nothing else, it made the whole business of ordering a takeaway for the two of them a lot easier.
She transferred everything to the coffee table in front of the TV and snapped off a chunk of poppadom while Ellen disappeared upstairs to check on the children. Remembering the DVD, she reached into her bag and brought out a copy of The Hours. She remembered going to Cineworld to see it when it first came out. Mark it would have been in those days. Mark the estate agent. She wondered what he was doing now.
Ellen broke in on her thoughts as she came back into the lounge.
‘Megan says to thank you. They’re so excited about going to the film tomorrow night.’
‘Bless.’
‘You sure this is OK, switching nights on you at the last minute?’
Kate picked up a glass and held it out for her.
‘Thursday, Friday . . .’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Adam’s in Madrid anyway so it’s not like I had to cancel anything. Besides, you don’t think I’d want to miss out on something like this, do you?’
Ellen knew she wasn’
t referring to the DVD. She smiled and reached for her plate.
‘I could have done with you there. At the cottage,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘I’d have pushed O’Halloran for answers if I’d had you there to back me up. I hated letting him just wander off that easily.’
‘So why did you?’
‘Easy for you to say. I was out there in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t that worried while it was just Liam, but the two of them?’
She snatched quickly at her fork as it slipped from her plate and, in doing so, allowed some of the sauce to slop over the edge and onto her lap. She tried a few ineffectual dabs at her skirt with a tissue from a box on the table, then put her plate down and went into the kitchen for a damp cloth.
‘So this reporter –’ Kate called after her.
‘O’Halloran.’
‘Right. O’Halloran. What do you know about him?’
‘Nothing. Or as good as. Just what Liam told me.’ Ellen rubbed frantically at her skirt with no more than moderate success, but decided it would have to do for now. She could change later, after she’d eaten.
‘You’ve no idea what he’s up to?’
‘None at all.’
‘And you haven’t tried Googling him or anything?’
‘When, exactly?’ laughed Ellen, more amused than exasperated. Never having had children of her own, Kate seemed perpetually bemused by the idea that substantial chunks of Ellen’s day were automatically accounted for.