by Hall, M R
‘You didn’t notice anything upset him?’
Harry thought about it and shook his head. ‘Not in Africa. He couldn’t wait to go back. We were due in Chad next month.’
‘On a similar project?’
‘Bigger. A real game-changer – five thousand acres.’
Jenny ran through her mental checklist of issues to cover in suspected suicides. ‘Any financial problems that you were aware of?’
Thorn smiled. ‘Hand to mouth, like we all are. No bastard chooses this life for the money.’
Jenny thought his answer odd. Small as it was, Thorn’s house wouldn’t have come cheap. ‘You’re sure he hadn’t got into any kind of trouble—?’
‘I’m the one who gets into trouble,’ he glanced towards the kitchen, ‘not Adam.’
‘What about his marriage?’
‘Karen’s a good woman.’
Jenny detected a note of hesitancy.
‘Is there a “but”?’
‘Look, no one’s going to pretend that a man away from home most of the year is going to live like a monk, but as they go, I’d say Adam came as close as damnit.’
‘He had lovers?’
‘No, not like that.’
‘Then like what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he screwed the odd girl, maybe he didn’t – I wasn’t watching that closely. But if he did, it was no big deal. Look, you’re asking me why this serious, goodhearted man I worked with jumped off a bridge – I have no goddamn idea.’
‘Was he the kind who might have carried a lot of guilt if he had done something he regretted?’
‘I never saw Adam get into anything he would regret. He didn’t take risks. He was a planner. No …’ Thorn seemed to search through his foggy memory, then shook his head. ‘If something was weighing on his mind, I’d say it went way back. Way back, before anything I could tell you about.’
‘Did he ever talk about his past?’
‘I’m not the type people confide in,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t want that shit when I’m working. Or any time,’ he added, with a glance towards Gabra.
Jenny had already seen enough of Harry Thorn to agree with his self-assessment. She imagined his answer to most of life’s problems would be to get stoned and feel the relief of not being dirt poor and trapped in a fly-blown African village. Her gut instinct told her that Adam Jordan would have needed more than that: he was an idealist, still hoping to leave the world a better place than he had found it.
‘Do you want to see some pictures of the last project?’ Thorn asked.
‘Thank you. I’d like that.’
He heaved himself out of his chair and disappeared inside.
As Jenny waited, she couldn’t help sneaking a glance at Gabra. Standing at the stove frying eggs, she was as content in her body as it was possible to be. Jenny found herself momentarily entranced by the curve of her neck, the tautness of her small breasts, the sheen on her flawless skin.
Gabra looked round and smiled out at her. Quietly, so that only the two of them could hear, she said, ‘Something you should know about Harry – he’s not as tough as he makes out.’
Jenny said, ‘I guessed that.’
The naked woman returned calmly to her cooking.
When Thorn reappeared with a handful of photographs, he didn’t seem to want to talk any more. He sat in silence rolling another joint, leaving Jenny to make of them what she would. The pictures were of him and Adam in a Sudanese village in which large, family-sized huts really were made of mud and thatched with straw. In two of them Adam was surrounded by laughing, skinny children, grinning broadly. His eyes seemed to shine out at her like points of light. She noticed the villagers wore a mix of traditional dress and Western clothes; many of the adults had ceremonial scars on their foreheads. Some of the men had picks and spades; others carried hunting bows. It seemed a place in flux, caught between two worlds, like the men who had come to help them.
Jenny said, ‘Has Karen Jordan seen these?’
Harry Thorn shook his head. ‘Take them. And tell her I’m sorry. I truly am.’
Jenny hardly recognized the smiling, confident young man who greeted her outside the student halls. During his two years at university Ross seemed to have gained all the confidence she associated with his father, while managing to avoid acquiring his arrogance.
‘Hey – you’re looking well.’ Ross leaned down and hugged her, then kissed her cheek.
‘Wow, I’m privileged,’ Jenny said. She couldn’t remember the last time he had been so affectionate.
‘It’s the end of term – I’m feeling good. Go with it.’
That was fine with her. After six years during which she had feared their relationship had broken irretrievably, there were finally signs that the damage was being mended.
Loading his luggage into the boot of her car, Ross said, ‘Where are all the bags? I thought you were hitting the shops.’
‘Change of plan.’
‘Working too hard?’
‘Don’t worry – I’m learning.’
She smiled and won one back from him. It was warm and trusting, the smile he had given her as a little boy.
As they pulled away and headed west through the hectic traffic, Ross said, ‘You’re sure you don’t mind putting me up? I know you’re busy.’
‘You can stay as long as you like – it’ll be fun. How’s the new girlfriend – Sarah?’
‘Not that new – six weeks. She’s fine, and her name’s Sally. She’s gone to stay with her dad in Brighton for a bit – it’s complicated.’
‘Aren’t all families?’
‘Not like hers. He left her mum for another guy.’
‘All right, I concede. That beats even us.’
‘I couldn’t tell Dad. God knows what he’d say to her.’
Jenny felt a guilty satisfaction at the thought that for the first time since she and David had separated, Ross might be seeing her as the closer ally.
‘I’d like to meet her. She’s welcome to stay any time.’
‘Cool. She’d like that.’
Jenny waited for his mood to dip, as it so often did when they were alone together, but against her expectations Ross remained upbeat, giving her a full unprompted rundown of his term’s activities, his spell as an intern in a City bank and the complex love lives of his flatmates. As they made their way across St James’s Park and Hyde Park Corner towards Knightsbridge, Jenny allowed herself to believe that he was letting her back into the life he had excluded her from since the day she’d left the family home. They felt like friends again.
London’s green western fringes were finally dissolving into the Berkshire countryside when Jenny found the courage to edge the conversation around to the subject of her own faltering love life. ‘Did I tell you I’m still seeing Michael?’
‘I think so,’ Ross said vaguely. ‘He’s the pilot, right?’
‘He used to be in the Air Force.’ She was a little hurt by his evident lack of interest. ‘I know you’ve only met him once, so I thought it might be nice if he came over this evening and said hello.’ She braced herself for a negative reaction, but again he surprised her.
‘Sure. No problem.’
‘Really? I can put him off to another day.’
‘What do I have to say? It’s fine.’ He touched her arm as if to reinforce the point, and Jenny couldn’t believe her luck.
It was one of the few precious summer evenings when the air was perfectly still and warm. Waiting for Michael to arrive, Jenny and Ross sat outside at the weather-worn pine table, drinking wine and talking about his plans for the future. His tutor had suggested business school, and hinted that if he studied hard enough he might even win a scholarship. It seemed so recently that he had been a surly sixteenyear-old on the brink of throwing away his education, but having struck out on his own, he seemed to have found a passion. His innocent hunger for life was infectious.
Michael’s car pulled up in the cart track at the side of the house o
nly a few minutes after eight. He appeared clutching a bottle of wine and dressed in a clean white shirt and the navy linen jacket Jenny had bought him for Christmas. She felt proud of him as he approached. He was dark and slim and carried his masculinity easily, with no attempt to posture. He glanced at Ross and Jenny could see that he was self-conscious as he stepped forward to greet him.
‘Hi. Good to meet you again,’ Michael said.
‘And you.’
They shook hands, Ross looking him squarely in the eye just as his father had taught him to since he was a small boy.
‘How was the trip to France?’ Jenny asked.
‘No problem. Perfect day for it.’
She gestured him to a chair and poured drinks, feeling suddenly and irrationally nervous.
‘What kind of planes do you fly?’ Ross asked.
‘Props. Light aircraft.’
‘His company has a contract to fly jockeys between race courses,’ Jenny said.
‘Kind of an upmarket chauffeur,’ Michael added apologetically.
‘Mum said you flew fighter jets,’ Ross said. ‘You must have seen a lot of action.’
‘Here and there.’ Michael glanced at Jenny and took a large mouthful of wine.
‘You would have been in Afghanistan?’
‘Yes. I was,’ Michael answered quietly.
Jenny shot Michael an apologetic glance, regretting having raised the subject.
‘What about Iraq?’
Michael nodded.
Jenny tried to change the subject. ‘Ross is studying economics—’
His usual sensitivity blunted by the wine, Ross failed to take the hint. ‘That must have been intense.’
Michael said, ‘That’s one word for it.’ He stared into his glass, then stood up from the table and glanced at Jenny. ‘Won’t be a moment.’ He went inside, closing the outside door that led to the kitchen behind him.
Too late, Ross realized his clumsiness. ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it. You didn’t tell me.’
‘I should have done. I’m sorry. He’ll be fine.’
‘Bad experiences?’
‘A few.’ She touched his hand. ‘We’ll talk about something else, shall we?’
‘He could have just told me he didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘It’s all fine. No big deal.’
She smiled, hoping to smooth things over, but like his father, Ross was quick to suffer wounded pride when he’d been made to feel foolish. He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass.
Following the bumpy start, conversation between the three of them failed to find a natural flow. During dinner, Jenny found herself having to make all the running. Michael was quiet, nervous that he was being presented for Ross’s approval. Ross made gallant efforts at small talk, but the more he groped for subjects on neutral ground, the more artificial the atmosphere between the three of them became. Jenny was relieved when it was time to clear the plates and retreat briefly to the sanctuary of the kitchen.
Michael came in behind her with the dirty glasses and set them down on the counter. Sensing her tension, he placed a hand tentatively on her shoulder, half expecting her to slap it away. ‘Sorry I’ve not been better company tonight. Tired, I guess.’
‘Can’t you just have a few drinks and relax?’
‘I’ve tried—’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Nothing, it’s just …’
She waited.
‘I feel like I’m on show.’
‘He’s not judging you, Michael,’ Jenny whispered. ‘This was meant to be fun.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got another early flight tomorrow. I don’t think I should stay tonight.’
‘Why not? Ross doesn’t mind. He knows we’re together.’
‘We’ve only just met.’
‘So?’
Michael was saved from explaining himself by the telephone ringing in the sitting room. Jenny glanced at the clock above the old cast-iron range – it was nearly 10.30.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Michael said.
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
Ross burst through the back door from the garden. ‘It might be Sally.’ He ran through to pick it up. ‘Hello? … Oh, hi, Dad.’
Jenny grasped Michael’s hand. ‘Please stay. He’ll be fine. I’ve missed you.’
Yielding, he kissed her lightly on the lips, and in their brief moment of connection the awkwardness between them dissolved. His hands held her waist; she felt their warmth through the fabric of her shirt and longed to feel them on her skin.
‘If you’re sure it’s all right.’
‘I told you it is.’ She held his gaze.
He reached for her hand and delicately stroked her palm with his fingertips in a promise of what was to come.
Ross came to the door. His expression was serious. ‘Mum—?’
Jenny kept hold of Michael’s hand even as he tried to tug it away.
‘Yes?’
‘Dad wants to talk to you.’
‘Your father? What about?’ She steeled herself. A call from David could only ever mean he was angry, usually about something she had done.
‘It’s about a colleague of his – Ed someone?’
‘Ed Freeman?’
Ross nodded. ‘His daughter’s died.’
Jenny hurried through to the sitting room and grabbed the receiver.
‘David? Ross said Ed Freeman’s—’
‘Yes,’ he interrupted, in the clipped, urgent tone he used in a crisis. ‘Sophie fell ill this morning and died at five o’clock this afternoon. I only just heard.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Jenny pictured David’s one and only goddaughter as a pretty, black-haired girl of eight, but knew she must be a teenager by now. ‘What happened?’
‘Some sort of infection. That’s all I know.’
‘Should I call them?’
David said, ‘I would be careful about that. She died in the Vale. You’re going to be the coroner and Ed’s going to want some answers …’
‘What is it, David?’
‘I need to talk to you properly. Can you get into town for six?’
‘In the morning?’
‘My list starts at seven. Shall we meet in my office?’
And just as she had during fifteen years of marriage, Jenny agreed to do as he asked.
SIX
They had slept together like married couples did, avoiding rather than seeking out each other’s touch. Jenny wasn’t so much grieving for the bright, pretty girl she remembered from the family parties of her former existence, as shocked by the thought of a vibrant life so suddenly extinguished. Her mood had rubbed off on Michael, who was shifting and turning in a restless, nightmare-haunted sleep. She could tell he was back in the cockpit, raining fire on dusty villages, tormented by images of broken bodies and bloody sand. Feeling for him, she reached over and stroked his arm, but he’d jerked away from her, leaving her feeling more isolated lying next to him than she would have done alone. Ross had reacted to the news of Sophie Freeman’s death with a concerned formality that hid whatever lay beneath. She had never understood why men found it so hard to express perfectly normal emotions. Did they feel more or less acutely than she did? Where, she wondered, did all those tears go?
She left the house before either of them woke, leaving them, she hoped, to make more of a success communicating with each other over breakfast than they had at dinner. She trusted Michael to make an attempt, but Ross remained a partial mystery to her; just as she thought she was learning to predict his reactions, he wrong-footed her again. She had tried. If they loved her, they would, too.
She approached David’s consulting room on the third floor of the Severn Vale District Hospital with a sharpening sensation of dread. A consultant cardio-thoracic surgeon, his working life had been spent exclusively with patients confronted with their mortality. Approving of those who went under the knife without a word of complaint, and dismissi
ve of those who ‘whimpered and blubbed’, he had treated Jenny’s ‘episode’ (he had refused ever to call it a breakdown) as if it were something akin to an embarrassing skin complaint. During the numb, lifeless months after she had been rendered helpless, he would look at her uncomprehendingly, as if frightened that if he drew too close he might catch the contagion, too. She knocked, feeling all the old history rushing back to meet her.
He answered the door with an abruptness that made her start.
‘Jenny. I didn’t think you’d make it. Come in.’
David’s room was as functional and forbidding as she remembered it; a place to feel the cold press of a stethoscope and bleak words of diagnosis from a man as enviably fit as a fifty-year-old could hope to be. It was as if his tall, lean squash-player’s frame radiated judgement against the weakwilled and sick.
Jenny purposefully avoided sitting in the patient’s chair and instead stood by the desk, a gesture intended to show him she was here as an equal, not as someone to be managed.
‘Ed must be devastated,’ Jenny said.
‘He and his wife both. I’ve seen quite a lot of him lately on the consultants’committee. He was a devoted father.’ Frightened of appearing too emotional, David changed the subject. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no coffee to offer you.’
‘That’s all right.’
David stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room, unsure where to place himself, then stepped over to the window and propped himself against the sill, his arms folded beneath defined chest muscles that pressed hard against his shirt. Even discussing his colleague’s dead daughter, it seemed, he felt the need to impress her.
Jenny said, ‘You said it was an infection.’
‘It appears so.’
‘Do we know what kind?’
‘A strain of meningitis, I’m told. It happened so quickly I doubt the lab will have detailed results until later this morning.’ David avoided her gaze and stared down at his shoes, a tic he’d had ever since they first met aged twentytwo. It usually meant he had something difficult to say.
Jenny knew she would have to coax him along. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘The infection … It was an odd one. She went off to school perfectly well, complained of dizziness and temperature at lunchtime and collapsed shortly afterwards. Never regained consciousness. As far as I can tell, they pumped her full of broad-spectrum antibiotics but they didn’t make a dent. Ed didn’t tell me all the symptoms but I get the impression it was pretty rough – fitting, generalized oedema. I think she was haemorrhaging badly towards the end.’