by Rosie Thomas
‘I didn’t know he was in there. I didn’t mean to kill him. And after he was found dead, no one had seen me, my mother couldn’t remember anything. I just told everyone flatly that I’d been at home in bed all the time. Then I waited, wanting them to find out the truth, because it was too much of a secret to keep. But no one tried very hard. He drank, he was a queer, he was a misfit in Turner anyway. The police probably thought it was no more than he deserved. But what it meant, as well as a man being dead because of me, was that my mother lost her friend. He was grown up, he was someone to tease her and keep her company and listen to her grief. I didn’t understand that, I thought she shouldn’t need anyone but me. She didn’t survive very long after Lester died. I suppose she felt too lonely. In the end she just got into the bath and pulled the electric fire in after her.’ He hesitated, but only for a second. ‘I came home from school and found her.’
A group of big men in football shirts noisily pushed past their table, beer slopping from their full pints. Rooker stared straight ahead, not seeing Alice or the crowds. He only saw his mother now, the last image he had suppressed. Tears ran out of his eyes and down his cheeks.
Alice stood up and went round the table to him. She wrapped her arms protectively round him and cupped his head against her ribs. She stroked his hair and leaned down so that her mouth was against his ear. ‘You are not a murderer,’ she whispered. ‘You never were a murderer.’
They stayed still. Rooker wept openly and Alice held him close. They created an eye of motionless silence together, in the midst of the airport’s turbulence. And because it was an airport, where tears and delight were ordinary currency, nobody spared them more than a glance.
At last he was able to speak again. He felt empty, but calm. If Alice were to reject him now, he thought, it would hurt him deeply. But it would not be the end of him.
‘Now you know,’ he said simply. ‘What shall we do?’
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. The airport noise swirled around them, but they were deaf to everything. Alice found that she was smiling. ‘I don’t care. As long as we are together.’
His grasp tightened. ‘Don’t go to New Zealand.’
‘Come with me,’ she countered.
The flight wasn’t quite full, they had told her that at check-in. ‘We can go back to Turner together. The three of us.’
She didn’t think for a moment that what Rook had just told her would be the end of the darkness for him. But if they went back together and turned over the stones of his memories, maybe they could lay a solid foundation for the future.
Because her future, and Meg’s, did lie with Rooker. She was as certain of that as anything she had ever known, and the travel and the distance and what lay beyond the gates of the airports was only so much detail by comparison.
He said, ‘I haven’t been back there since they took me to the children’s home.’
‘We should go now.’
Light suddenly kindled in Rooker’s eyes. It was simple.
Everything was simple. They had each other.
‘Wait here.’ He grinned.
‘Oh, no. Wherever you go, I’m coming with you.’
They leaped up. Hand in hand, propelling Meg in front of them, they ran like the wind back through the tide of travellers.
A flight attendant walked down the aisle. He leaned over the occupant of the seat next to Alice’s. ‘I wonder’, he murmured to the gap-year backpacker, ‘if you would be willing to exchange seats so that this family can travel together?’
Rooker felt a jolt of amazement at the word, then a sense of happiness taking root that he had never known before.
‘Sure.’ The boy shrugged indifferently.
The plane took off and London dwindled beneath them. Alice and Rooker sat with their hands linked, not speaking, knowing how much talking there was still to do. Rags of cloud blotted out the orange bloom of the city as they climbed. Ties and memories and fears dropped behind them.
They were airborne, in their jet capsule, suspended between what had been and whatever was to come.
Rooker released Alice’s hand for a moment and fumbled in his pocket. He brought out a small curl of red Velcro fabric and dropped it into her palm.
One-handed, because Meg lay in her other arm, Alice unfurled it. It was a name label from an EU Antarctic Expedition parka.
Peel, it said.
Acknowledgements
Andrew Prossin of Peregrine Adventures generously enabled me to make two unforgettable trips to Antarctica aboard the Akademik loffe. I am grateful to Bill Davis, Aaron and Cathy Lawton, David McGonigal and all the expedition staff and ship’s crew in the 2000 and 2003 seasons. Andrew Prossin also introduced me to Professor Christo Pimpirev of the Department of Geology at the University of Sofia, who immediately invited a stranger to join his team for part of a season at St Kliment Ohridski Base, Livingston Island, South Shetlands. Without the opportunity to live and work alongside the members of the Eleventh Bulgaria Antarctic Expedition I could not have written this book. Nor would I have enjoyed the experience of a lifetime.
I am also indebted to Captain Rod Wood, CabAir Helicopter Training Schools, Elstree Aerodrome, Borehamwood; Dave Taylor, Helicopters Cambodia Ltd; Mr Anthony Silverstone; Phil Bowen and Exodus; and to Sara Wheeler.
About the Author
SUN AT MIDNIGHT
Rosie Thomas is the author of a number of celebrated novels, including the top ten bestsellers White, The Potter’s House and, most recently, If My Father Loved Me. She lives in London. Once she was established as a writer and her children were grown, she discovered a love of travelling and mountaineering. She has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas, competed in the Peking to Paris car rally, and spent time on a tiny Bulgarian research station in Antarctica to research this novel.
Praise
Praise for Rosie Thomas
‘Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love.’
The Times
‘Honest and absorbing.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A master storyteller.’
Cosmopolitan
‘Thomas’s novels are beautifully written.’
Marie Claire
‘Terrific…a real weepy.’
Sunday Times
‘A story full of passion…will keep you reading long after bedtime.’
New Woman
By the same author
Celebration
Follies
Sunrise
The White Dove
Strangers
Bad Girls, Good Women
A Woman of Our Times
All My Sins Remembered
Other People’s Marriages
A Simple Life
Every Woman Knows a Secret
Moon Island
White
The Potter’s House
If My Father Loved Me
Iris and Ruby
Lovers and Newcomers
The Kashmir Shawl
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2004
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2004
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced,
transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 978-0-007-38956-8
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com