Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  I’ve only just sat down again, and am pulling my coat around me to keep out the icy wind, when she launches in.

  ‘Well. There’ve been some new events,’ she says. ‘Even since I saw you on Friday. I’ve got myself in a bit of a pickle, and I need your help.’

  I stare at her, the coffee cup halfway to my mouth.

  ‘Look, Sonia. I have to tell you this, because I’m not sure what to do about it any more. The day Jez disappeared, Friday, I didn’t go to work. But I told everyone including the police that I did.’

  I stare at her. My hand starts to tremble. For a horrible few seconds I think she’s about to tell me that she was here, in Greenwich and saw Jez come to my door. That she knows he is living with me. That now the police are making enquiries it’s time to ‘fess up’ as Kit’s friends would say. The cup rattles against the saucer as I put my coffee down.

  ‘I took the morning off – I only work half days anyway on a Friday. So I didn’t think anyone at work would be bothered either way.’

  She stares at me, wide-eyed, as if expecting me to guess what she’s about to say.

  ‘Now the police think I’m involved in Jez’s disappearance. At the moment it’s only hunches, instincts, they have no firm evidence. But they’re trying to get some.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The questions! Endless! They’ve been back to question me, not Mick. Twice. And I told you, they imagine I have a motive, because Barney wanted to get into the same college as Jez. Now they’ve found out I wasn’t at work that morning. But I’d told them I was.’

  ‘Oh God. How ghastly. Then where were you?’

  My pulse has slowed now. I watch her carefully as I sip my coffee.

  ‘Not where I said I was. The truth is, and I can only tell you this, it’s so humiliating. I was in a bar in Smithfields. Hair of the dog. If Maria finds out, I’ll never live it down. Look. I got pissed on Thursday night, sitting up, drinking alone. I know it sounds a bit sad. But sometimes I just need it. When Mick and the boys are all busy doing their thing. I’m lonely, Sonia. I’ve been lonely for a long time. And facing it is sometimes too much to bear.’ Two tears roll in tandem down her cheek. She wipes them away with both index fingers then takes a deep breath and a gulp of wine.

  ‘So. On Thursday, I drank. Far too much. Couldn’t face work on Friday. Sat in a pub. Drank again. It’s pathetic. And now I’ve lied to the police to save face!’

  ‘God, Helen, you’ve got yourself in a right muddle, haven’t you?’ I’m so relieved that this is all she wants to tell me, I feel like hugging her.

  ‘No. no. The thing is, I think it could be OK. I told them I was at the Turkish baths. All I need is a good friend. Someone unconnected with Jez to say they saw me there. And it’s plausible. In fact, perhaps, I thought of you because you’re freelance, it’s perfectly possible for you to pop to the baths on a Friday morning.’

  ‘Look, Helen. I don’t think I should get involved. I’m sorry. Anyway, isn’t it a bit late? Surely they’ll have checked already if they know you didn’t tell the truth the first time?’

  Helen fiddles with some change I’ve left on the table. She takes a sip of her wine.

  ‘What do I do? If you won’t help me I’m buggered!’

  ‘You’re not, Helen. You tell them that you were in a pub, if that is where you were. Tell them the truth.’ I feel impatient now. She’s not done anything, for goodness’ sake. She’s not got everything to lose. Helen looks hurt, as if she might really cry.

  ‘And Mick?’ I say at last, more gently. ‘How are things with him?’

  She sniffs, knocks back the end of another glass.

  ‘It’s all more complicated than I’d admitted. Even to myself. The jealousy. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. There was someone, oh a year ago now, I was involved with.’

  ‘Right.’

  This is unexpected. ‘Do you want to tell me who?’

  ‘It’s over, Sonia. I finished it. To save our marriages. His and mine.’

  ‘You did the right thing.’ I can barely believe these words come from my own lips. Whenever did I know what the ‘right thing’ was?

  ‘But the guilt has been with me ever since. So how can I confront Mick with this suspicion that he’s having a fling with Maria now? He could throw it back in my face! When he found out about me he dealt with it. He didn’t like it, but he let it go. Now this thing with Maria is eating away at me. I’m losing all my confidence, all my dignity.’

  ‘Oh, Helen.’ I’m acutely aware of the feeling she’s describing, the agony I, too, felt with Jasmine all those years ago. That terrible conundrum. If you admit to your hurt you invite contempt, if you don’t, you remain in agony. It’s a curse. But I say nothing.

  ‘I’d been convincing myself everything was back to normal between me and Mick. But then this comes along and the façade of our so-called happy marriage has been blasted off. There were faults we refused to see. It only took one shift for the whole lot to collapse. Jez goes missing and everything’s fallen apart.’

  We sit silently for a few minutes.

  ‘One good thing is I’m getting to know Alicia, Jez’s girlfriend. She’s been coming around a lot, of course, poor kid. She’s devastated. But she’s company. She finds their behaviour nauseating too. She’s never got on with Maria. When she’s not too distraught about Jez, we manage to laugh about them together. Alicia sticks her fingers down her throat when she sees Mick waiting on my sister hand and foot. In a way, it’s a distraction. Stops us worrying about Jez. That’s how I’m trying to see it, Sonia, though I’m afraid my feelings could well up at any time and I’ll let them see how hurt I am. Not hurt. Angry, upset, guilty, confused. My feelings are all over the place.’

  She’s beginning to sound a little drunk.

  I do want to reassure Helen. I’m fond of her in spite of everything. There’s a great pleasure, I seem to remember, in sharing secrets with other women, it can be almost as intoxicating as a love affair in its own right. I’ve not often had this privilege. My greatest passions have been played out in secret, unable to carry their heads high. But I know from the days when I first met and had doubts about Greg, and from nights spent in bars with confused friends, in love but uncertain, how intimate and exciting such conversations can be.

  ‘I must get back.’ She leans across now, squeezes my hand, and I catch a whiff of her vanilla perfume. ‘But you promise to keep in touch? Now we’ve re-established contact? You’re the only person I can really talk to about all this. Everyone else is too involved.’

  I promise that yes, of course, I’ll keep in touch.

  When she’s gone, I lean back, stare past the trees to the view down the hill and across the river to the towers of Canary Wharf, the HSBC building, the mini Manhattan it’s become across there with its skyscrapers and myriads of silver windows glinting now in another sudden shaft of sunlight that’s found its way between the clouds. I think of the way it looked in the old days, when Seb and I made the riverside our playground, how the Isle of Dogs was out of bounds. I feel as if I’ve taken a step too far onto the forbidden side of the river. That everything that happens leads me deeper into the murky streets and hidden bombsites. I wonder how I’m ever going to get back. Or whether I want to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sunday

  Sonia

  ‘I’m off, Sonia.’ Greg’s at the door. His suitcase is packed, he’s wearing the tracksuit bottoms, casual jacket and white Adidas trainers he always travels in.

  ‘I’ve not seen as much of you as I’d have liked. But we’ve both got work to do. Maybe you can give some thought to the things we’ve talked about. Don’t forget what you promised me.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘To go to the doctor’s. Oh, and I’ve phoned a couple of estate agents. They’re coming to take some photos. Just photos, Sonia, so don’t get all funny about it.’

  ‘When? When are they coming?’

  ‘Sometime ne
xt week. One’s on Tuesday I think. They’ll be in touch.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, smiling outside, seething within. I lean forward and kiss him on the cheek. Greg brushes his dry lips against the sides of mine and pats my shoulder before heading up the alley.

  There’s a rank stench in the garage this afternoon. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the light but when they do I see that Jez is very unwell. He’s lying awkwardly on the bed as if he’s been writhing about in his sleep and there’s a strange brown liquid pooled onto the pillow under his mouth. His glassy eyes are open, but only just. I put my hand on his forehead. He’s running a high temperature. Then I see that the sheets are soiled, even though I’ve used the pads, and there’s a pool of vomit on the floor.

  ‘I’ll soon get you sorted out,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t mean to leave you for so long. Let’s clean you up and get you back to the music room as soon as possible.’

  He looks up at me through glazed eyes. ‘The music room?’

  ‘Of course. As soon as the coast is clear. I never meant for you to stay in here.’ Look what it’s doing to you, I think. You need light and air and music.

  ‘No! It’s drowning me, go away. Go away! Go away! There’s another one, over there. Oh please!’

  At first I think he’s talking to me, then I realize he is staring in terror at an imagined monster over my shoulder.

  He’s delirious. I feel his forehead again, his neck. The skin there, under his hair, burns. I try to recall advice indelibly printed on the minds of young mothers. Remove extra layers of clothing to bring down the fever. Apply cold flannels to the forehead. Give Calpol every four hours. But when is it you seek medical attention? What did I learn the time Kit had suspected meningitis? It comes back vaguely. Rashes that don’t fade when pressed beneath a glass. Sickness. Aversion to bright lights.

  Jez has already been sick. What will I do if he needs antibiotics? If he does have something awful? I bend over him, pull the covers back, look for suspect rashes. There’s a faint red sprinkling of tiny spots on his inner thigh. My heart gives a great thump against my chest. It can’t be septicemia. Don’t people get rashes after a fever? That’ll be the explanation.

  I cover him again. Panicking is the worst thing you can do. I must remain calm, sensible. Think it through one step at a time. I try to remember the early days of my medical training, the first-aid courses I did when Kit was a toddler. I must refill his hot-water bottle, bring more water for him to drink and to bathe his face in.

  The reek is unbearable. It makes me retch. It’s mixed with something down there in the river, a foul stench, not the washed-clean feel of the tidal water. Something must have died down there, and begun to putrify. We do occasionally get corpses washed up on the tide. Seabirds of course. Sacks of kittens. Once I found a donkey, half eaten up by chemicals or some preying fish, its side open, all its bloodied ribs on view. Only when the flesh has completely decayed does the smell disappear, when the bones are washed clean, as if in death there is finally a return after all to purity. Like the shoe soles you find lying around on the beach. It’s funny how rarely one comes across whole shoes. The river devours the soft tissue of the uppers but it rejects the soles. They wash up on the tide, hundreds of them, strewn along the shore when the tide’s out. Detached footprints of the lost and the drowned.

  My plan was to take Jez back to the music room but now he’s ill it isn’t that simple. Preventing him from making a run for it is not an issue while he remains as weak as he is. But now, even were I to support him, I’m not sure he’s capable of walking the short distance along the alley back to the house. He’s become an invalid.

  The word invalid supplies me with one of my rare but brilliant brainwaves. My mother’s wheelchair! I’m supposed to visit her today. I could go right now and kill two birds with one stone. Then I’ll push Jez along the alley as if I were simply taking my mother for one of the pleasant evening walks I did regularly when I first moved back here. I’ll wrap Jez the way I’d have wrapped her, blankets over the knees, a shawl about the shoulders, a scarf wrapped about the head and tied under the chin.

  I tell Jez I won’t be gone long. He’s barely conscious as I tuck him in, but I check the tape is tight and go back outside.

  I have to act swiftly. If this illness is serious, then I cannot afford to hesitate. I grab the car keys from the River House, and hurry back along the alley.

  I navigate the narrow car-lined roads that wiggle up from the river to the high street, swearing under my breath at the traffic that seems deliberately to dawdle in front of me. Every time I come to a set of lights, they’re on red.

  At last I cross the high street and take Maze Hill past Helen’s house up to Blackheath Standard.

  I find a visitors’ parking space in the retirement home car park and let myself in with the key my mother’s given me.

  ‘You missed your Saturday visit,’ she starts up before I’ve stepped through the door. I hand over the bottle of gin I grabbed for her from the River House, as a sweetener.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother. It was busy. Kit was home and Greg—’

  ‘Well you could have phoned at least. You’ve no idea what it is to wait all day, seeing no one. I expect you’ll have coffee.’

  ‘Please.’

  After half an hour sitting and making amends, nodding and agreeing about how tiresome the other residents must be, I tell my mother I’m sorting out the garage, that it’d be a help to use the wheelchair to shift stuff along the alley.

  ‘Can’t you use a wheelbarrow?’

  ‘Mother, we don’t own one. You must remember. There’s no calling for a wheelbarrow in a house with no garden.’

  ‘Hmmm. I used to nurture those plants at the River House. I made things grow in that courtyard that defied nature’s own laws. Everyone told me that wisteria would never flourish on the shady side of the house but I made it flower like there was no tomorrow. And the clematis! Purple stars, held in the green night of its leaves.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘It’s Oscar Wilde. Though I wouldn’t expect you to know. And the peonies. I even grew sunflowers one year against the wall in the shadiest patch of the courtyard and they grew tall for me, all they asked for was a little love and attention.’

  I wonder how my mother was able to give her plants so much love and attention when she spared so little for me.

  ‘Still, Mother, there was never a wheelbarrow at the River House.’

  ‘So, what do you want my wheelchair for?’

  ‘I just said! I’m clearing out the garage. I need it so I can shift some of the heavier stuff back to the house.’

  ‘You should do as Greg wants and sell that house. Its hour has gone!’

  She waves a hand, holding a glass that’s three-quarters drained. It’s a little early for gin, but the light’s fading outside and she’s already put her lamp on, which means it’s as good as cocktail hour for my mother. I refill her glass and hand it back to her, dropping the lemon quarter in as she takes it. It fizzes and spits up at her.

  ‘Now what can I do for you?’ she asks.

  ‘The wheelchair, Mother. May I borrow it? Just for a day?’

  ‘Take it!’ she says. ‘Take it away. Looking at it makes me feel old and frail. I’d rather never have to look at that horrible thing. I don’t know why you had to make me buy it!’

  ‘If it wasn’t for the wheelchair you wouldn’t be able to go for your outings to the heath, or the village, or to the park, would you? I’ll bring it back as soon as I’ve finished clearing up.’

  As soon as she’s settled down in front of the TV, I say I have to leave, and I take the chair down the carpeted corridors to the main entrance.

  When you’re in a hurry, it’s as if the world knows and decides to slow you up. As I reach the foyer, Max comes out of his mother’s flat.

  ‘Afternoon, Sonia,’ he says, grinning, dimples appearing in his rosy cheeks. Max looks like the kind of man who has been happy all his life
, who was probably born smiling and has stayed that way ever since.

  ‘I see Mother’s going out? What little mystery trip have you in store for her?’

  I explain that I’m storing the wheelchair in my car ready for my mother’s next excursion.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with that!’ he says. ‘Here, let me.’

  We push our way out through the double doors. At the car I thank Max profusely. He looks at me for a few seconds longer than I feel comfortable with. Is he about to invite me for a drink?

  ‘It’s funny,’ he says, ‘sometimes I envy my mother her little flat in there, all her washing done, nothing to do all day but play Scrabble and gossip about the other residents.’ He stands, hands on hips, as if he has all day.

  ‘I’m sorry, Max, I’m in a bit of a hurry, I’d love to stop and chat . . .’

  ‘Perhaps we could have a cup of tea together sometime . . . meet in the residents’ lounge?’

  ‘It’d be a pleasure.’

  ‘I was only joking of course, about the residents’ lounge. I meant, perhaps I could take you for dinner?’

  I smile. ‘If I’m ever at a loose end.’

  He looks at me as if trying to find a positive way of interpreting my words, then he nods and folds the wheelchair and puts it into the boot for me.

  ‘There she goes!’ he says, a broad grin spreading across his face again. ‘All ready for Mum’s next day out. Take care now.’

  I drive as fast as I can back to the river.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sunday

  Helen

  Helen sat down on one of the few empty chairs in the market café with her usual large cappuccino and put her head in her hands. Sonia hadn’t wanted to help and who could blame her?

  It took sitting alone like this, without a drink, for Helen to let her thoughts and feelings take coherent shape. The Jez situation was far worse than she imagined it could have become. Sonia’s theory that he might have a lover was unlikely given his relationship with Alicia. Alicia was convinced Jez would never have gone anywhere without his guitar, and she knew him best. That left them with three possibilities. He had had an accident, perhaps in the river and hadn’t yet been found. He had been abducted. Or the most unthinkable possibility of all – he’d been murdered. But there was no body. No clue. Helen banged her cup down in her saucer. She wasn’t getting anywhere like this. Any further than the police had already done. Though they at least had a suspect.