“Why don’t you tell me about your friends—your school friends, that is?”
“Well, Sophie and Katarina are my closest friends. Sophie’s like me, into music. Kat’s on the drama course.”
“But you don’t really see them out of school?”
“Not really.” I shrug. “Kat’s family live in Italy. I went out to stay with them once. And Sophie’s parents travel a lot.”
“You must miss them.”
Do I? I’ve never thought about it like that. Anyway, it’s not like I’m alone. I have Theo. And sometimes I’d rather be alone.
“You were a long time. Did you have a good talk?”
One of my mother’s questions that doesn’t require an answer. The seamless movement as she glances in her driving mirror, smoothing an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear, then changing gear, so that I’m pushed back into my seat as she pulls out and accelerates past the car in front.
“God, some people shouldn’t be on the roads,” she says, turning to her radio, clicking through the stations until she finds what she wants. Not seeing the car coming toward us until it blasts its horn and swerves out of her way.
“That’s better. What were we saying? Yes, I’m sure a few more sessions will help.”
By help, she means effect some miraculous transformation, turning me into superdaughter, with the incredible social life and the hordes of desirable, glamorous friends she thinks I ought to have—forgetting the more basic, fundamental things that are totally missing from my life. Noticeable only by their absence.
When I get home, I kick my shoes off and run, feeling the cool, soft grass under my bare feet. I stretch out my hands, catching handfuls of air, relishing my freedom, wishing Theo was there under the low branches of the old cedar, a ray of sun lighting his face.
9
2016
Talking to Will has unleashed a storm surge of memories. About him and about April, too. About the last time I drove to Musgrove, for my mother’s funeral, grieving and guilt stricken that I hadn’t been with her at the end; feeling that I’d deserted her; realizing that it took losing her to see how alike we were, both of us unhappy, lonely; not knowing, until it was too late. About my childhood; a sense of dread I could never explain; the hollow feeling I could never fill.
It’s early when I leave the house, the past still preoccupying me, its presence unwelcome, as I’m assailed by the kind of silent questions that can’t be answered, that only belong to such an hour. As I drive, I’m wondering where it went wrong; why April fell out of love with me; where my mother’s inherent sadness came from; why Will betrayed me. Unable to stop the most illogical of thoughts that as the common denominator of them all, I’m somehow responsible, when I hear an echo of Clara’s voice.
“You young people don’t know how good you have it.”
It’s almost as if she’s here, beside me, in the car. Irritation rises in me, at her all-knowingness. And in a sense, she’s right, because I’ve never been homeless or starving, but even so. She has no idea. I’d suffered, I knew that. Maybe no less or no more than anyone else, but what happened all those years ago almost destroyed me.
I keep driving, barely noticing as the darkness lightens to a pale, pearlescent blue, breaking off just outside Portsmouth to take the familiar road that winds its way toward Musgrove.
The decision’s impulsive, motivated more by curiosity than anything else. And in the time I’ve been away, the town’s sprouted shiny new housing developments that encroach across farmland toward the hills that lie to the north; the vast school playing fields I remember are pockmarked by a rash of porter cabins, yet the road where I grew up is strangely untouched. I pass my parents’ old house, where an unexpected wave of déjà vu sweeps over me. It’s smaller, more modest than I remember, with the ghosts of my mother inside cooking and cleaning, my father in his favourite chair, reading the newspaper. I feel a nostalgic pang for my childhood, which is as suddenly gone.
The North Star is a couple of similarly untouched streets away. Apart from the police presence, the tape cordoning off the car park, the yellow notices by the roadside asking passersby for any information, it’s as I remember it, yet changed forever by the knowledge that a man was killed here, brutally. Today, for now, I keep going, through the town that’s stirring into life, taking the narrow lane that twists away from it toward the hills.
Where the lane ends, and a stony path stretches across bare fields, fading into Reynard’s woods, I pull up, temporarily blinded as the low sun edges above the horizon.
It’s a quiet, timeless landscape that, unlike the town, hasn’t changed at all. As a teenager, I had felt miles away out here, removed from the world. It had been the place where we were free of the constraints of the adults in our lives—a forty-minute walk that had been irrelevant when I was with April, that’s somehow diminished by the ten minutes it takes by car.
* * *
On the outskirts of Tonbridge I find a small barbershop, uncomfortable that by the time the barber’s finished, without the overgrowth of hair to hide behind, like the white skin around my hairline, I feel exposed. Catching sight of my reflection as I’m walking out, I realize I also need clothes. Chinos and a couple of shirts, which I buy in haste from the first shop I come to.
Yet again, as I walk back to my car, swept along by the flow of people who have both place and purpose, I’m besieged by doubts, questioning what good I can do, why I’m even here. April deserves better than I can give her. Silently reminding myself that I’ve come here out of choice. No one forced me. That now I’ve driven all this way, I should at least see her.
But too easily, around the next corner I find a B&B, in a white-painted Victorian town house that’s just a short drive from the hospital where April is. The street is quiet, the house imposing in stature yet reassuringly shabby, so that I hesitate only briefly before I pull over and park.
When she opens the door to me, the landlady looks me up and down, as if, for some reason, I’m not what she’s expecting. Then while she takes down my details, a column in yesterday’s paper, left folded open on a glass-covered coffee table, as if on purpose, instantly catches my eye.
While she continues writing, I pick it up, hoping it’s not what I think it is—to no avail.
A man’s body was found in the early hours of yesterday morning, in the town of Musgrove, north of Portsmouth. His body was discovered by the landlord, in a car parked behind a local pub. The man has been identified as Bryan Norton.
It’s started. I’m guessing that already the press has picked up that there’s a story, because not all murders reach the national papers. Tomorrow, or the day after or the day after that, if a journalist has contacts, or if someone can be persuaded with a surreptitious bribe to let it slip, they’ll have April’s name. Just a matter of time before they start tunneling relentlessly into the past.
10
The Princess Royal is big, light, and suffocating, with chemical-laced air that sticks in my nostrils. I read the ludicrously themed ward names and look at the incongruous, contemporary prints hung on the walls, as I make my way through its maze of corridors, then through the swing doors to ICU, which is, in contrast, dark and windowless. A place where every breath is counted and heartbeat measured, where life holds on. Just.
It seems miraculous that nobody stops me. I pass one or two small rooms with slatted blinds in the windows, before I see a nurse walking toward me.
“It’s a little early for visiting, sir.”
I feel myself frown. I hadn’t even considered visiting hours. If someone’s unconscious, what does it matter?
She looks kindly at me. “Who’ve you come to see?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think. April Moon.”
The nurse looks puzzled. “We’ve no one by that name here, I’m afraid. You could check with reception in case she’s been moved. Here, I’ll show you the quickest way.”
As she walks past me toward the swing doors, I glance wildly around
because I can’t leave without seeing April. I catch sight of a whiteboard near the nurses’ station and among the list of names scrawled on it is April Rousseau, written in uneven letters. I take a shot in the dark.
“Hey, just a minute. . . .” I catch up to her. “I got that wrong. She kept the name Rousseau after her divorce. I was forgetting. I haven’t seen her in a very long time.”
I’m bluffing. I’ve no idea where the Rousseau comes from, but I’m counting on the nurse not knowing any more than I do.
She looks at me doubtfully. “I’m sorry, but under the circumstances, you should probably leave . . . Mr. . . .”
“Calaway,” I tell her, wondering if there’s a Mr. Rousseau, and if so, is he here? Does he even know? “Noah Calaway. I know what’s happened to her. Will Farrington told me. I imagine he’s been here?”
“No one’s been here.” The nurse shakes her head. Then she looks at me with interest. “You know Dr. Farrington?”
“Yes. And I know how this looks, just turning up like this,” I say more confidently. “But I’m an old friend. And once she comes round, I’ll be acting as her lawyer.”
The nurse looks uncertain. “Do you have proof?”
I shake my head resignedly. “A driver’s license with my name on it.” Knowing how lame it sounds, I add, “You can call the firm I work for, if you like.” Rummaging in my pocket for one of Jed’s cards, finding there isn’t one.
From the way she looks at me, I know that she’s not sure. That she thinks she should ask me to leave. But then she sighs. “It’s all right. I believe you. But you won’t be able to go in, I’m afraid. The police have someone with her round the clock. But you’d know about that, wouldn’t you? Being a lawyer.”
“Of course.” I nod, but it had completely slipped my mind. She’s right, of course. With April a suspect, the police won’t be leaving anything to chance.
Glancing around, the nurse lowers her voice. “Just a suggestion, but if by any chance the sister comes round, tell her you’re Mrs. Rousseau’s lawyer. It’ll save a lot of trouble. She’s along there, in bed seven.’
I nod gratefully. “Thanks.”
Guessing that it’s my connection to Will that’s swung her decision in my favor, I walk in the direction she’s pointed me in, until I reach a door on which there’s a number seven. It’s another tiny room with a slatted blind, and as I peer through, for a moment I think she’s mistaken. The woman in the bed is tiny, fragile looking, her skin like pale wax, her chest barely moving under the white sheet that’s pulled up to under her shoulders. Laid on top of it, one of her arms is threaded with lines that are plugged into the machines beside her.
Even through the window, I’m overwhelmed with the sense that she’s not just unconscious. This woman’s dying. Her heart might be beating and her lungs inflating, but she’s too still, too empty of life.
A dulled shade of the glossy red I remember, her hair is the most recognizable thing about her. Glancing away, shocked, I take in the robust presence of the young policeman sitting on a chair in the corner.
“It’s a pity you can’t go in and talk to her.” The same nurse, her voice quieter, comes from behind me. “Even when patients don’t respond, sometimes they can still hear. People who’ve come round, some of them tell us that hearing voices is what they remember.”
“Has she opened her eyes at all?”
“Not yet.” The nurse’s voice is gentle. “She nearly didn’t make it, you know.”
But I know she’s telling me that even now, even though she’s alive, April may not make it. It’s in the spaces in between; what she doesn’t say, the tone of her voice. Then I feel her hand, light on my shoulder, before she quietly turns and walks away as a memory comes back, a day I haven’t thought of for many years, long enough ago that life was simple and untroubled, yet the images as sharp as if it happened yesterday.
“Do you remember that day?” I ask her silently through the window, wondering if what the nurse said is true; if from the distant place April’s gone to, if she can hear my voice, maybe she can hear my thoughts, too.
“On top of Reynard’s Hill? I slipped. Nearly went over the edge. You saved me.”
I pause, because I can still remember how the ground crumbled, falling away under my feet. “Remember how we ran? Ran until our legs gave way underneath us, tumbling us to the ground, where we laughed wildly, until our eyes locked and we fell into an awed kind of silence.”
That had been the thing about April. She’d had darker moments where, for a while, I’d lose her; but there’d been an overwhelming intensity about her, a desire to live each moment, that doesn’t tally with this frail woman who’s taken an overdose.
As this and other thoughts race through my head, I’m still watching her, for the faintest indication that she’s sensed me, but she hasn’t moved. There’s not a flicker.
11
As I walk away, I’m caught, swinging between hope and despair, faith and cynicism, telling myself other people have come out of comas, there’s no reason why April won’t, yet convinced that whatever the nurse might think and wherever April is, she’s too far away to hear me.
But as I drive back toward my B&B, my unease grows and I find myself going full circle. The North Star was hardly her hangout. April must have been in Musgrove for a reason.
To kill Norton? Before driving the hour or so home to take an overdose?
I push the thought from my mind, because there are people who can kill and people who can’t—maybe a group in the middle, who if pushed just might. I know April isn’t one of them, but when I least need it, I hear Clara’s voice.
You could be wrong.
But she doesn’t know April.
It’s then I realize I can’t leave her, and my thoughts swiftly turn to what lies ahead should I defend her. The painstaking research that’s required; the in-depth scrutiny of April’s life; the leaving-no-stone-unturned level of detail involved, in the pursuit of a single piece of information someone’s deliberately hidden or forgotten about, that can determine guilt or innocence, prison or freedom.
And the truth isn’t obvious, whatever the police think, whatever Will says—not even with her phone and her glove found in Norton’s car. Until they have fingerprints, a witness, a motive, nothing is certain.
* * *
Once I’m back in my room, my mind has already turned to the people in her life. Work colleagues, her friends, neighbors if there are any. Any family—and I need to find out about Norton, too, because there could be any number of innocent reasons behind their meeting that night. Perhaps it was just a twist of bad luck that the night they met up was the same night the murderer chose to strike.
I switch on my laptop and type April Rousseau into the search bar. It takes seconds to find two listed on the electoral roll, one of whom I dismiss immediately, due to both her age and the fact that she lives in Manchester. I copy down the address of the other, then pause, because I’m acting for April, but without her consent and assuming that when she comes round she’ll have no objection. Knowing that I could just as easily be wrong, and that if I’m caught entering her house, I’m trespassing—theoretically. I dismiss the thought just as quickly, knowing it’s a chance I have to take.
* * *
That April is under police guard suggests her home may have been secured, but I at least have to check it out. After I’ve typed in April’s postcode, my GPS takes me a mile or so out of Tonbridge, along a meandering B-road, then into a quiet lane. As I turn into it, on either side are empty fields with just the occasional large house set in its own gardens, well-spaced from its neighbours. I continue slowly along a stretch of a hundred yards or so, before coming to a sharp bend.
It’s darker here, the lane narrowing to a single track under the cover of tall trees, their branches seeming to close overhead. I glimpse one or two smaller houses behind unkempt hedges before my GPS indicates I’ve arrived.
Pulling over beside a narrow gate, I see a sign th
at says Holly Cottage.
I hesitate, because this is where April lives and though at the moment it’s quiet, the police will inevitably come and search here,. I continue a few yards up the lane, where I pull over on the grass verge and turn the engine off. But as I wait, not a car passes, nor is there a sign of anyone.
As I walk back down the lane and slip through the gate, I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but it’s not this, a small stone cottage that looks as much a part of the landscape as the woods that surround it, its weathered, faded exterior the legacy of the elements, of time. Against the grey of the flint, the brickwork around the windows is an ugly red, the paint on the frames cracked and peeling to reveal the grain of the wood underneath. The house is softened by the mass of sprawling borders, the pale green of newly unfurled leaves, the curved paths cut into unmown grass full of wildflowers.
The entire garden is edged by trees, and I look up, my eye drawn not only to their height, but to the gnarled spread of their branches. Then I notice more trees, only they’re smaller, a whole new generation, still saplings, planted at intervals here and there. But it’s the sound that gets to me. Surrounding me, it’s stereophonic; the wind through the leaves and birdsong.
I’m still caught in the spell of the place as I walk round to the back, checking for an unlocked door or unlatched window, when suddenly the back of my neck prickles. Slowly turning, I look around, seeing nothing, yet with an unmistakable sense I’m being watched.
12
1999
After April went back to London early, I was numb. I’d been prepared to give up everything for her. Even move, just to be with her. Not only had I lost her, I’d lost a future that had so briefly, brightly presented itself. I felt let down—and cheated, too. The “sweet” in her letter was patronizing. Nor did I accept her allusions to a dark secret that would ultimately keep us apart. Of course there were things we didn’t know about each other. In the couple of days we’d spent together, we’d just started. Now, we’d never have the chance.
The Beauty of the End Page 6