Lost Summer

by Stuart Harrison

  It was, Adam thought, the most convincing argument she had put.

  ‘I don’t know where else I can go, Mr Turner,’ she said. ‘I’ve wondered if I should let it go. Nothing will bring Ben back. But I can’t. He was all I had. I loved my brother and now he’s dead and I want to know what happened to him. What really happened. I can’t go through life always wondering.’

  Again there was a plea in her eyes. He wasn’t sure yet if this was something he wanted to get involved in. He was aware of Karen watching him, trying to gauge his reaction. In fact he was intrigued, and he was moved by what Helen had said. He understood what she was going through, and he reasoned that in this instance there were no obvious parallels with Meg Coucesco. But he needed time to think. He promised that he would consider everything she’d said, and she didn’t press him, but took her cue and rose to leave. She held out her hand.

  ‘I want to thank you for at least listening to me, and for not being patronizing. Whatever you decide, I’m grateful for that at least.’

  He shook her hand and Karen showed her to the door, murmuring something to her quietly, and as he watched them he remembered something. ‘Wait a minute. You didn’t say where all this happened. Where exactly was your brother killed?’

  ‘In Cumbria,’ she said. ‘Near a town called Castleton.’

  He barely registered her leaving, or Karen coming back to the table. She looked at him, her brow furrowed. ‘What is it, Adam?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, I have to go, can we meet later?’

  He arranged a time and hurriedly left, and only paused when he stood outside again and was gulping lungfuls of air. ‘Christ,’ he muttered.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Adam sat stirring a long black outside an Italian café near Covent Garden. He saw Karen stop at the lights and wait for them to change before she crossed. She looked over and when she saw him she waved. She was tall, her short, dark hair framing fine, even features. He lost her when a bus thundered past spewing out diesel fumes into the already polluted London air, and then the lights changed and a swarm of people stepped into the road.

  When she arrived he pulled out a chair and signalled to a waiter. ‘I ordered you a cappuccino. Do you want something to eat?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t, Nigel’s picking me up to go to dinner. Some business thing. You go ahead though if you want.’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  Nigel. Tall, good-looking Nigel, who was an investment banker and whose family owned half of Shropshire. Old money, old school tie. He tried to imagine Karen being the perfect hostess on one of those country weekends, hanging out with the polo and horsey set and dressing for dinners in some great baronial hall. Somehow he couldn’t see it.

  ‘So, how is Nigel?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine. He’s very busy.’

  He stirred his coffee, saying nothing.

  ‘You don’t like him do you?’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘That’s right, you don’t,’ she said, a trace of defensiveness in her tone.

  ‘Maybe I just don’t like the idea of him taking my best friend off to live in the country.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ she said, though she smiled. ‘Anyway, Nigel knows my career is here.’

  Does he? Adam wondered. Nigel struck him as the type who, when he married, would expect his wife to give up her amusing hobbies, like her career for instance, and settle down to produce lots of little well-bred Nigels to continue the family line.

  ‘Besides, it isn’t as if we’re engaged or anything,’ she said.

  Yet, Adam silently added. The waiter brought Karen’s coffee and Adam changed the subject. ‘I’ve been thinking about your friend Helen.’ She looked at him over the rim of her cappuccino. ‘I can’t help, Karen. I’m sorry.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Is that because you don’t want the commission, or because you don’t believe her?’

  ‘It isn’t because I don’t believe her.’

  ‘Then you don’t want the commission?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware there was a commission. I thought you were helping a friend.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But you think there might be a story in it for Landmark, is that it?’

  ‘I’m not sure I like the way you said that,’ she replied in clipped tones.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out.’

  ‘Apology accepted.’

  ‘But you do want to commission me professionally I take it?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t know if I would run the story, even if it turned out there was one. It would depend on the story. If for example it turned out to be a case of police bungling I might not be interested. But if it was more than that

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s your part isn’t it, to ferret out the truth? But whatever the case I wouldn’t run anything without Helen’s agreement.’

  ‘Fair enough. But as I said, I can’t help. Sorry.’

  ‘But you still haven’t told me why.’

  ‘I’m busy at the moment.’

  ‘I thought you’d finished the book you were working on.’

  ‘I have.’

  She waited, saying nothing, levelling her intelligent gaze on him, and he knew he’d have to do better than that.

  ‘Alright. The truth is I’m not sure this is the direction I want to take.’

  ‘Oh. So it’s that again. Sorry, I must have mistaken you for somebody I knew who had a mission in life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it was a mission.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Righting wrongs. Helping people like Helen who don’t know where else to turn. That girl you wrote about in Suffolk, the one who was pushed off a train, she’d never have been found if it wasn’t for you.’

  ‘Liz Mount. That was her name. Perhaps it would be better if she hadn’t been. At least her parents could have clung to the hope that she was alive and well somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t think you believe that,’ Karen said.

  ‘Well, maybe not.’

  Karen sipped her coffee thoughtfully. ‘So, what’s the real reason you don’t want to do this? I get the feeling you’re not telling me something.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Then at least promise you’ll think about it.’

  She had pricked his conscience, as of course she had intended. She gave no quarter, Karen, which was probably why he liked her so much. ‘Alright. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Thank you, Adam.’ She reached across the table and briefly put her hand over his.

  Just then a taxi drew up by the kerb. The rear door opened and Nigel poked his head out. He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket. His dark hair was smoothed back over his aristocratic forehead. ‘Come on, darling, we’ll be late.’

  Karen withdrew her hand. ‘Sorry, I have to go. Will you call me tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She bent to kiss his cheek as Nigel looked impatiently at his watch. ‘Hurry up, Karen. You know what the traffic’s like at this time of day.’ He held the door for her, and then belatedly remembered Adam. ‘Sorry to drag her off like this. You weren’t discussing anything important were you?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Adam answered, but it was a rhetorical question and Nigel was already turning away.

  He watched the taxi pull away from the kerb, and for a moment he experienced a faint regret.

  Karen sat back as the taxi negotiated rush hour traffic. Nigel was telling her about the people they were having dinner with, giving her tips on whom she ought to be especially nice to. Or perhaps instructions would be a better term. Like when he’d taken her home to meet his parents and he’d lectured her on etiquette for the entire journey, as if he was afraid she’d embarrass him by using the wrong cutlery at dinner. She tuned him out, turning her thoughts instead to Adam.

  She wondered why he was reluctant
to take on this commission. If Helen was right about her brother here was a possibly innocent victim whose death might not be what it appeared to be, a police force who wouldn’t listen, and apparent discord between a bunch of protesters and locals. It was exactly the sort of thing that would normally interest him. She sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her. She remembered a year ago, shortly after they’d met when Condor had put on a launch bash and she’d invited him to go along with her. Sort of a date. The truth is she had been interested in him. He was intelligent, and quite good-looking, and there was something else about him that appealed to her. He was a loner, slightly mysterious in some fashion. Maybe that was it. The lure of mystery.

  Somebody had organized a karaoke machine and Adam, quite drunk, had got up to do a rendition of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, spoofing Freddie Mercury’s camp antics. To her surprise he was funny, hilarious in fact, and when he finished it was to loud applause and calls for an encore, which he’d declined. At two in the morning they’d found themselves sitting together outside, watching the lights reflected on the Thames at Kew, sharing a bottle of Heineken. She had looked at him lopsidedly and directed a playful punch to his arm.

  ‘You’re a dark horse, Adam Turner. Who would have thought you could take off Freddie Mercury?’

  ‘That’s me. Dark horse from way back,’ he’d agreed.

  ‘But you really are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She’d regarded him solemnly. ‘You know what? I don’t really know anything about you.’

  ‘There’s not much to know.’

  ‘There must be something. I don’t even know where you’re from.’

  ‘Hampstead.’

  She’d frowned. ‘I thought you mentioned once that you went to school in Scotland or somewhere. Up North anyway.’

  ‘Did I?’

  She’d pointed to his knee, which he’d absently begun massaging the way he did sometimes. ‘And what about that? How did that happen?’

  ‘An accident.’ He passed her the Heineken bottle. ‘Look at the lights on that boat out there. See the way they’re reflected on the water, like a mirror image. The water looks like oil.’

  ‘It probably is fifty per cent oil,’ she’d said, and then sighed. ‘There you go. You always do that. Change the subject whenever we start talking about you.’

  ‘Bad habit. Sorry.’

  ‘Tell me about Louise.’

  He’d looked surprised. ‘My ex-wife? What about her?’

  She wasn’t sure why she’d brought the subject up, except that she was curious, she supposed. He’d mentioned her once and then abruptly steered the conversation in another direction. ‘What went wrong between you two?’

  ‘Long story.’ He’d stood up and offered her his hand. ‘We should look for a taxi.’

  She’d sighed. ‘Dark horse. That’s what you are.’

  There were no taxis around so when they did finally flag one down they decided to share, but since they lived in opposite directions she’d suggested he should stay at her place. When they got in she put on some music and said she was going to get ready for bed. When she came out of her bedroom wearing her Dodgers T-shirt he was flaked out on the couch, with his shoes off. She’d given him a pillow and a blanket.

  ‘Here you go, Freddie.’

  He’d looked up at her, and somehow he’d seemed vulnerable. Or maybe she was just drunk, or maybe a lot of things.

  ‘I had a good time tonight,’ she’d said at last.

  ‘Me too.’

  Another silence. Then she’d said, ‘That couch is lumpy.’

  ‘It is a little.’

  ‘So … perhaps you should sleep in there.’ She’d gestured vaguely towards her bedroom, and he’d pondered that gesture for a while before he agreed that yes, he could do that.

  They got into bed from opposite sides, and after a few seconds they slid together. He was wearing his shorts and she still had the T-shirt on. Tentatively they’d wrapped their arms around each other. She’d rested her head on his chest. In the darkness the alcohol had seized her brain again and everything was spinning a little.

  ‘Wow, I feel a little woozy,’ she’d said.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Can we just lie here like this for a little while?’

  ‘Of course.’

  It felt kind of safe and pleasant. Like being with a friend, and yet not quite. ‘I’m sleepy now,’ she’d murmured.

  ‘Yes.’

  She’d nuzzled closer, her leg over his, and felt his breathing become deep and regular. ‘This is nice,’ she’d murmured.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Night, Freddie.’ Then she’d drifted off into a happy oblivion.

  In the morning when she woke she had a massive headache. She’d sat up groaning, and only then realized that Adam was gone. She saw the depression in the pillow beside her, and fuzzily recalled the previous night. A minute later he’d appeared, already dressed, carrying orange juice. He’d sat on the end of the bed and from there it was all downhill. They’d talked chiefly of feeling terrible, and commenting with wonder on how much they’d had to drink, recounting moments from the previous night, laughing, shaking their heads. It all had a hollow ring and went on for too long, as if each of them was desperate to avoid mentioning the most glaringly obvious of all the evening’s developments.

  In the end, their conversation withered into silence and he’d said he should be getting along, inventing, she was sure, some urgent task. She wasn’t sure how to feel. She hadn’t wanted him to go, but she was uncertain about whether to say anything. Perhaps he regretted what had happened. Or nearly happened anyway. Perhaps he was trying to let her know he didn’t feel that way about her. In the end it was a relief of sorts when he did leave.

  Two days later she’d arrived at his door, and when he’d answered she’d launched into her prepared speech.

  ‘I don’t want this thing to come between us, Adam. I like you and I feel we’ve become friends. I value that.’ She’d thought he looked relieved.

  ‘I don’t want it to come between us either.’

  ‘So, we’re still friends?’

  ‘Friends.’

  ‘Great.’

  And in fact their friendship had survived intact, though it had taken several months before they were completely easy again in each other’s company, before that shadow dissipated. It wasn’t really until Nigel had arrived on the scene. Perhaps that was partly why she’d started seeing him, because she’d sensed it was a way to finally clear the air between herself and Adam.

  And yet, sometimes, she wondered at the way Adam looked at her. Christ, she had to stop thinking about him like this. They were friends weren’t they? Wasn’t it supposed to be men who couldn’t handle a relationship with a woman on that level?

  Abruptly she realized that Nigel had stopped talking and was looking at her strangely. Guiltily she came to. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘Karen.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘I said perhaps it might be a good idea not to have more than a glass or two of wine tonight. What do you think?’

  ‘You mean instead of my normal bottle and a half, is that it?’ she said testily.

  ‘Actually,’ he said huffily, ‘I was talking about me. I’m still taking those antihistamine tablets.’

  Contrite, she put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Nigel.’ She looked away, suppressing a giggle.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Adam’s flat was on the second floor of a converted Victorian semi in Wimbledon. It was cluttered but comfortable. He rarely ate there, avoiding all forms of cooking unless they were ready-made meals from Marks & Spencer that he could put in the microwave. After the break-up of his marriage he’d given up the office he used to rent in favour of working at home. At first he’d converted the spare bedroom for use as an office but after a while he’d moved into the living room where he felt more comfortable. When he and Louise had split up, she had taken the TV, and he had never replaced it
. His work and the remains of his life outside of work had merged.

  He sat at his desk, which was actually a long table that occupied the wall space on one side of the room. He was slowly drinking a glass of Scotch, and thinking about Helen Pierce and the way fate intervenes in life sometimes. Earlier he’d posed the question to himself that had Helen’s brother been killed in say, Devon, would he be willing to help her? The absolute truth was that he wasn’t sure. He liked her, he wanted to help her, but he wasn’t certain on the face of what he knew whether he could. Beyond her own conviction that her brother’s death hadn’t happened the way the police said it had, there was little to support her. But then there never was. He received letters from people all the time whose children or sisters or brothers had vanished or died. They all believed something had happened that didn’t tally with the official version, and they all asked for his help. Of course he couldn’t help them all, though he did reply to each and every one of them. But of the ones he did look into the truth was never obvious. Normally it was only the conviction of the family that convinced him to investigate.

  He knew he wasn’t going to ghostwrite another book, and he wasn’t about to go back to doing lifestyle pieces either. The thing that really bothered him was the idea of going back to Castleton. Who knew what can of worms that would open up? But a quickening in his chest belied his reluctance.

  His thoughts drifted back to the summer a year after Meg had vanished. Throughout the intervening year he and Angela had continued seeing each other though their relationship had stalled on the knowledge that he would eventually go away to university and from there would probably move to London to begin his career. For the same reason they hadn’t had sex. The commitment to one another that step seemed to entail foundered on the looming presence of the future.

  In August the country was assaulted by a sudden heat wave after a long damp July. A crowd of them had gone to a pool in the river where the water was deep and clear. He recalled lying in the grass as he dried off, warmed by the sun, watching Angela climb the bank towards the bridge which some of them had been jumping from. Nick was smoking, wearing wet cut-off jeans, his body skinny and pale. He wore a familiar faintly contemptuous expression. He no longer suffered any outward scars or bruises, but whatever damage had been inflicted inside by a father who’d been dead nearly a year would probably always remain.