by John Harvey
He smiled. 'You'd be surprised.'
'I would,' Ruth said.
When they'd learned what had happened to their daughter he had lost his temper certainly with those he blamed, but almost never with her. And later, while they were still trying to come to terms with what had happened, he had taken himself off and cried quietly in corners, as if his grief were something not for sharing. Real and immediate and his own.
'So,' he said, taking a sip of his coffee, 'what is it exactly?'
'Nothing special, I told you. I was just coming down and ...'
'Ruth, you live just outside Ely, not at the ends of the earth. You must have been in London half a dozen times in the past eighteen months if not more. If you'd wanted to see me, just to chat, find out how I was getting on, you could have done so easily.'
'Simon ...'
'No, that's all right. It's fine. Remaining friends, it's not what you wanted. And I respected that. I understood. A clean break. Easier, much easier. For you, at least.' He made a small sound through his nose. 'We deal with these things in our different ways.'
Oh, God, Ruth thought. She pushed the spoon around the inside of her empty cup. 'I've met someone,' she said, her voice so low that Simon had to lean forward, his expression suggesting he hadn't heard or didn't understand.
'I've met someone,' she said again, too loud this time, and the young woman sitting next to them—Spanish? South American?—glanced up from the book she was reading and smiled.
It took Simon a few moments to respond.
'You mean, as in ... Yes. Yes, of course you do. And it's serious?'
'Yes.'
'Well ... well, I don't know what to say. I'm surprised, that's all. I thought maybe, whatever you had to tell me, it was about your family—your dad, I know he's not been too well—I thought perhaps you were moving up to Cumbria to be closer to them.' He shook his head. 'I didn't expect this.'
'No.' She laughed, self-consciously. 'Not exactly love's young dream.'
'That's not what I mean.'
'Simon ...'
'I thought you wanted to be on your own. I thought that was the point.' His fingernails, she noticed, were bitten almost down to the quick.
'It was,' she said. 'Believe me. This was the last thing in the world I expected to happen.'
'Almost.'
'Sorry?'
'Almost the last. Not as unexpected as ...' A shadow passed behind his eyes.
'Simon, I'm sorry, I...'
'No, no, congratulations. Really. I mean it.'
'Thank you.'
'So where did he come from, this Prince Charming? This Lochinvar?'
'Don't mock.'
'I'm not.'
'Perhaps I should never have told you. I'm not sure why I did, it just seemed important, that's all.'
'Yes, of course. I understand. Least, I think I do. And I'm pleased, pleased that's what you felt. Pleased for you, too. I really am.' Squeezing out a smile, he leaned across the table and aimed an awkward kiss at her cheek.
'I should be going,' Ruth said. She felt flustered, uncomfortable, conscious of the young woman next to her looking on with unfeigned interest, and wished she had never come.
Outside, they stood for a moment on the pavement, side by side. There was an odd pallor to his skin, she thought, as if lately he had not been much exposed to the light.
'Simon,' she said, 'you are all right?'
'Me? Yes, of course. Of course I am, what did you think?'
And he was on his way, threading through the traffic that spread in both directions along Upper Street in a slow-moving, never-ending trail.
She had met Andrew through a friend, Catriona, a jolly fifty-five-year-old with whom she volunteered at the Oxfam bookshop, Saturdays and Thursday afternoons. Between studying part-time for her Postgraduate Diploma in Information and Library Management and working three days a week at a little arts and crafts shop near the cathedral, it helped fill in the time.
Catriona and her husband, Lyle, had retired to Ely two years before; Lyle, laid off after two decades in the engineering department of Rolls-Royce Aerospace, had chosen to spend part of his redundancy money on a vintage 27-foot motor launch, which he kept moored on the marina.
Catriona was good at talking Ruth into accompanying her to the latest foreign film at the Maltings or the new exhibition at the Babylon Gallery—Ruth had once let slip that she used to paint herself, so Catriona was forever bowing to her greater knowledge and asking Ruth to explain the inexplicable. She had even cajoled Ruth into going along with herself and Lyle to the occasional Ely Folk Club evening at the Lamb, where Lyle joined in the choruses far too loudly after too much beer. And then, of course, there were trips along the Great Ouse, Lyle as proud of the pulling power of his craft's 80-hp diesel engine as he was of its oak frames and teak planking and traditional coir-rope fender.
They had listened, both of them, to Ruth's story and decided, good-hearted people that they were, that she should not be allowed to wither on the vine. Get out and meet people, make new friends, a new life. Ruth had already arranged to shadow one of the staff at Ely library for five hours a week, but Catriona had something less bookish in mind.
At dinner parties she and Lyle would introduce her to what they clearly saw as eligible men, for one reason or another unattached: a widower who had recently lost his wife to cancer; a Cambridge academic, never married, with an interest in liturgical history; a folk musician whose speciality was the penny whistle.
And then there was Andrew. Andrew Lawson.
Four-square, seemingly dependable, the head of a local primary school, on that first evening he was close to self-effacing. The only time he became particularly animated was when describing a new mentoring scheme in which year five and six pupils read to the younger ones from years one and two.
'Ruth used to be a teacher,' Catriona had said, oiling the wheels.
'That was a good while ago,' Ruth said.
But Andrew's interest was caught. 'Here in Ely?' he asked.
'No. In London.'
'Secondary?'
'Primary.'
'Still, pretty tough all the same. Most of the kids round here, the villages especially, have them eating out of your hand.'
'That's because,' Lyle boomed, 'they've never learned to use a bloody knife and fork.'
Everyone laughed and the conversation moved on.
Ruth was surprised when, four days later, Andrew called her at home. 'Catriona gave me your number, I hope you don't mind.'
Even more to her surprise, she found she didn't mind at all.
Of course, he'd been married before. It had lasted ten years, almost as long as her own. Andrew's wife had fallen in love with a young New Zealand woman who had briefly been teaching at his school and whom he'd invited home several times out of kindness, not wanting her to feel isolated and alone.
When it became clear where her affections were leaning, his wife moved out of the family home into a flat of her own. Andrew kept his head down: there was a new round of SATs tests to prepare for, an Ofsted inspection looming, the budget to be readied for the next governors' meeting, a new special needs coordinator to be appointed.
Eighteen months later his wife was on her way out to New Zealand with her lover and as far as Andrew knew the pair of them were still living on the South Island, in Dunedin, a place which Andrew, in a rare coarse and less than cautious moment, had once described as being just a fingertip away from the arsehole of the world.
At least they had never had children: that was a blessing.
When, later, Ruth asked him why, he told her that for the first few years they had both said it was too soon, too early, they should wait, and then, after a few more years, neither of them had mentioned it at all.
Ruth had become pregnant with Heather not long after she and Simon had married, almost without thinking about it, something that just happened. She had been twenty-six.
It was not the easiest of births and afterwards Ruth had
suffered quite badly from post-natal depression. For a time, she'd come close to rejecting Heather altogether—something for which she felt forever guilty—and if it hadn't been for Simon the whole situation might have imploded.
It wasn't until Heather was practically a toddler that she and Ruth had really bonded, though Simon had remained very much a part of her life, closer perhaps than many fathers.
They talked of having another child, but Ruth was frightened and Simon wary. 'We're happy now, aren't we,' he said. 'As we are? Why change things? Eh, Ruthie? Why take a risk?'
'I envy you,' Andrew said. This was some little while after their first meeting, after they had begun talking about the possibility of getting married themselves. 'I shouldn't say it, probably shouldn't think it, no right, but I do. You and Simon. What you had with Heather.'
'Even after what happened?' Ruth asked.
Andrew looked at her, seeing the residue of pain he could never hope to clear from her eyes. 'Yes. Even after that.'
It wasn't so very long after the wedding—Catriona jubilant in a suit of shocking pink with orchids in her hair; Lyle, florid-faced, taking none-too-secret nips from a silver flask—that Andrew suggested they had a child themselves.
'Andrew, no! No, that's ridiculous. It's not ... Besides, I'm too old.'
'Not necessarily.'
'I am. You know I am.'
'Let's see.'
Beatrice was born almost exactly a year after they were married, and for all that Ruth was by then thirty-nine, there were no complications and it was a relatively easy birth.
Simon, when he heard—she had to tell him, had thought it through, talked it over with Andrew, and decided it was the only thing to do—was magnanimous: he sent a card with congratulations, a bottle of Moët, and a selection of knitted bootees and such from the Baby Gap near where he worked.
Ruth, feeling awkward and oddly beholden, sent him an effusive thank-you note and pictures of the baby, but to these Simon made no reply.
Five months later she received a letter. Brief and to the point:
Have taken your advice—the advice you gave me long ago—
sold up here and gone into private practice. Wish me luck. And
if ever you need someone to look at your accounts...
There was no phone number, no address.
Ruth had not heard from him since.
***
With Beatrice there were none of the difficulties she had experienced with Heather. From the moment her mouth found the breast, gumming the nipple with surprising force, feeding was no problem, any more than weaning her off on to the bottle was later. She put on weight, she grew, her eyes followed Ruth happily around the room.
She was a lovely baby, a loving child, and remembering how she had been with her first-born, Ruth felt even more guilty than before.
She hid this from Beatrice, of course, overcompensating with love and affection, and hid it too, as best she could, from Andrew, though not always with success.
'What's this?' he asked one evening, when Beatrice was five years old, holding the envelope out in front of him gingerly, as if it might burn.
'You know.'
'Hmm?'
'You know what it is. You know very well.'
Like a sour magician, he turned the envelope round between finger and thumb and shook its contents out, the card with its green map of Cornwall floating towards the table where Ruth was sitting and landing face down.
Soon. See you soon.
'I thought ...' he said.
'You thought what?'
'I just thought after all this time ...'
Ruth laughed, a scoffing humourless laugh. 'How long is it, then, Andrew? Do you know? Do you even know?'
'Ruth, come on, that's not the point. The time, it's—'
'Of course it's the point. You want to know how many years? How many months? How many days?'
'Ruth, look—'
'No, you look. Look at this.' She was shouting now, beside herself. 'This stupid bloody card with its cows and its cathedrals and fishing boats and her writing ... look, her writing, here, read it, look, read it for yourself.' Brandishing it in his face, pushing it at him, close, until he had to duck away. 'See you soon, that's what it says. See you soon. And you thought I'd forget. Forget. Because of Beatrice, because of you, because of my perfect bloody life, you thought it would be like—what?—a bad dream? Something that happened to someone else? And you think that if I stopped looking at this, this card, if I never took it out of the envelope, out of the drawer, it would all change, I'd forget all the sooner?'
Andrew stood there, shaking in the force of her anger, eyes angled to the floor. Ruth never lost her temper in that way, almost never swore.
'Here.' She thrust the card at him again. 'Take it. Go on, take it. Tear it up. If you think that's what makes the difference. If you think looking at that is what makes me think of her. Go on. Tear it into little pieces. What are you waiting for?'
She pushed the card towards him again, hard against his face, so that he had little choice than to take it from her hand.
'Go on,' she said. 'Tear it up.'
Without looking at her, he let the card fall through his fingers to the floor, then turned and walked away. The postcard was returned to its place in the drawer, from where Ruth would take it, from time to time, and neither she nor Andrew ever mentioned it again.
Though there were times, after an especially tiring day and one more than usual glass of wine, when she would rest her head against his chest and want to talk to him about Heather, to tell him what she was feeling, and Andrew, to his credit, would put an arm around her and listen and kiss the top of her head as if he understood.
Only when he'd had a particularly difficult day at school—an especially long meeting with the local authority, an argument over extra funding—would she feel him tense up against her and they would stay there on the settee, silent and uncomfortable, muscles cramping up, until one or other of them would stumble out something about the time and needing to get an early start in the morning and they would get up then and go about their various tasks, the lights, the locks, the bathroom jobs, the bed.
But Beatrice was a sweetheart, Beatrice was a darling, good at her lessons, popular at school. Ruth loved her, admired her, felt proud, and, yes, she loved Andrew too. Of course she did.
How lucky she was, despite everything, she reasoned, to have had two beautiful daughters, be thus twice blessed. And to have known two kind and loving men, quite different, but loving and supportive all the same, when there were people out there who lacked either, or both, and for whom happiness was always, for whatever reason, out of reach.
Surely, knowing that, she should, beneath it all, be happier than she was?
6
Liam Noble had been the division's Sex and Dangerous Offender Intelligence Officer for nine months; operating within MAPPA, Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, his focus was on the management of high-risk offenders in need of varying levels of supervision after their release from prison.
Noble had previously worked in Probation and before that in Social Services, a career path which made him, as his superiors had pointed out when he was appointed, ideally suited to the task in hand.
'At least,' as one had said, 'you know how the buggers think.'
To which Noble had almost retorted, the buggers think just like you and me. Except that he knew there were occasions when that wasn't strictly true. And, as he had discovered, being able to get some way inside the minds of those probation officers and social workers who sat across from him at MAPPA meetings was as apt to confuse as clarify. Affiliative, his manner of dealing with colleagues had been described in his last appraisal; affiliative rather than authoritative. The unspoken suggestion being there were times when a little more direction, a touch more directness would be appreciated.
Noble was trying for a little directness when Will Grayson knocked on his door; an irritatingly circular conversation with
a senior social worker about the advisability of applying for care proceedings in order to protect the stepchildren of a recently released offender.
'Will,' he said, relieved at the interruption. 'Come on in. Take a seat. I'm just about finished here.'
'No,' he said into the telephone, 'I think you should go ahead and make the application. Definitely. Do it today. There's no sense in leaving those children at risk.' He listened for a moment, and then: 'Yes. Yes, right. You'll let me know.'
Setting down the phone, Noble let out a slow breath of satisfaction before turning towards Will. 'No need to ask why you're here.'
'Pass the time of day?'
Noble laughed. 'Mitchell Roberts, right?'
'When were you going to tell me?'
'I thought you'd find out soon enough.'
'And you've known for what? Months?'
Noble shook his head. 'Six weeks.'
'I thought the prison service had to give three months' notification?'
'Level Three offenders they do.'
'And Roberts isn't Level Three? He's not high risk?'
'Not high risk enough.'
'Tell that to Martina Jones,' Will said. 'Tell that to the next twelve-year-old he gets his hands on.'
Noble sighed and sat forward in his chair. 'There's no indication Roberts is a serial offender, no history of anything similar in his background. What happened was an isolated incident.'
'Bullshit.'
'I'm sorry?'
'People like Roberts, there's a pattern. You know that as well as I do.'
'There's a first time, too.'
'And you think that's what this was? You've read the transcripts of the trial? Seen the pictures? That doesn't happen out of the blue. The only reason we don't know about it, either he was clever or he was fucking lucky or he was both.'
'Will, Will, getting angry doesn't help.'
'It helps me.'
Noble looked at him carefully. 'Just suppose for a minute you're right, there is another alternative, of course.'
'Which is?'
'CID wasn't as smart as it might have been.'
'What's this, Liam? Passing the buck? Spreading the blame?'