The Girl on the Pier

by Paul Tomkins

  “The thing is,” he says, slowly, deliberately, “Do I now believe your story about Genevieve?”

  “What does she have to do with this?”

  “I’m just trying to get a sense about you. About the stories you tell.”

  “But David, you didn’t even believe me about Black. You thought she didn’t even exist! You were wrong, not me. I wasn’t lying. You know that now. I wasn’t lying.”

  “I just don’t like things that don’t fit together. Now, I accept that sometimes it’s just life laying it out that way, but I still need to check. Coincidences, inaccuracies, inconsistencies –– they draw my attention. You know that as well as anybody.”

  “I was just a child when she ran away. I told you, that man Darren is the one you should be speaking to, if it is indeed even Genevieve.”

  “You don’t think it is?”

  “It could be. But as I said, maybe I had her in mind – subconsciously – when I sculpted her. Perhaps I was in some way influenced and made it look like her. Or perhaps this Darren is mistaken.”

  “We’re trying to trace some relatives for DNA comparison. I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

  “Good.”

  “I wouldn’t go anywhere, though, Patrick. I’m pretty sure the investigating officers will want to speak to you about it.”

  “Why haven’t they already?” I ask, suddenly surprised by this lack of activity, given David’s suspicions.

  “I said I’d handle you, and they were okay with that. I wanted to hear your take on things. But I will be reporting back to them. And as I said, they’ve not properly established that it is actually Genevieve yet, so we cannot really move forward.”

  “Consider this. If it was Genevieve, and I had some role in her death, why would I have made the reconstruction resemble her?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Patrick, but I’m damn-well sure that we’ll find out, whatever the truth is. It’s coming together, though. Can’t you sense it?”

  * * *

  And that is it; for now, at least. But I’m left like the tiring front runner in a 10,000-metre race, whose great lead has been worn away, and whose fate, as the spikes beat down on the tracks behind, is inevitable. My lies won’t keep David at bay for long; he’ll check, he’ll make discoveries, spot inaccuracies. Soon I’ll be running on quicksand.

  My options? A full disclosure, and finally act like a man over what I did as a boy. Or, to make some kind of escape.

  But no matter what happens now, I never got away with it.

  At least I’ve done part of the right thing: seeing that Genevieve’s bones will achieve identification, so that she is no longer a Missing Person statistic, but instead a girl to be afforded the kind of grave that she once so compassionately tended.

  At least I gave her that.

  At least, after all I got wrong, I gave her that.

  But then, what of my more recent mistakes?

  FORTY-FOUR

  Time, I feel, to take a break; but only after one last walk around Brighton, in case it never again feels like home – that place where the best and worst happens.

  The train station: where I was greeted by my father, and from where I was led, trembling, into a new life; and where, all those years later, another dream terminated. I glance at the shop where once stood the café. I stop on the concourse, which marked the end of all hope of a normal life to a six-year-old boy. The ticket in my pocket that day, although marked as a return, turned into a single. I must take responsibility for my actions, but I was set on a course when abandoned in that train carriage.

  From here, I walk down the bustling Queen’s Road, with the architecture on my right-hand side little different from all those decades ago – all changes purely cosmetic; the shops below the façades having altered, but little else. No matter how modern and cosmopolitan Brighton gets, it will always retain the hallmarks of its Regency heyday. I pass some greenery on the left enclosing the United Reformed Church, and up ahead, the sea is framed between the street’s final buildings a few hundred yards away. I reach the junction where the clock tower stands unmoved, Queen Victoria’s face on one facade, Prince Consort’s on another. The road is now West Street, and it arrows down to the shoreline, intersecting King’s Road midway between the two piers of my childhood. My only thought is to turn right, to the west. Memories whittle away in time, and the older pier is the perfect metaphor: it’s down to just the bare bones now.

  My path to the west is blocked, however; the Metropole cordoned off. Kitchen staff, waiters, maids and porters hang around outside, beyond yellow perimeter tape.

  I ask a waiter what seems to be the problem.

  “Someone discovered a body, apparently,” he says, matterof-factly. “Out back, in one of the big bins.”

  “Oh,” I say, stepping back. “That sounds awful.”

  I quickly turn and head east, in the direction of Rottingdean, on the way back to the cottage; taking in reverse the route walked three decades earlier when I led a mischievous girl to an unplanned fate. Once past what is now the Brighton Pier I approach the cast-iron colonnade of Madeira Terrace, built into the east cliff. Hundreds of arches – complete with turquoise posts and railings – run from the busy hub of the shoreline along the esplanade for what must be at least a mile, down to the more peaceful end of town. A childhood vision of Kitty leaps to mind: dragging me past some attraction, for which she would never hand over the time or the money. Then I think of her now, down to her final hours.

  Eventually the final archway blends into chalk and sandstone, and on my right, the last of the beachfront attractions – a crazy golf course – gives way to a natural expanse of shingle. A few hundred yards later I am at the marina, beyond which the east cliff fades to relative flatness, a high wall separating me from road level. A flight of steps, and I am up on Marine Parade, from where I stare across to the smartly redeveloped quayside apartments and, beyond the roofs, the proliferation of white masts in the dock. All the years spent looking on in envy at the apparent carefree lives of those seafarers. Maybe I need to get a boat? Then again, it’s probably not the kind of thing you can purchase at short notice. Still, the sea represents freedom, discovery, new worlds.

  New lives.

  * * *

  Every day, the missing of this world are located. Some will simply walk through the front door, back into their old lives as if they’d never been away. Others, sadly, will wash ashore or edge out of a shallow grave as soil erodes. But it’s never an end to the story. We choose neat conclusions, all-powerful final sentences, but in life, it seems, there is always unfinished business, ongoing consequences.

  Where to draw a neat line? To be honest, until one is drawn for me, I simply don’t know.