‘Paul?’
‘Yes, Paul. A police spokesman said evidence had come to light following a credit card trail and images found on his computer.’
‘Paul hasn’t looked at a woman since his wife died.’
‘Anna, they aren’t talking about women…’
‘That’s too vile.’
‘Coincidence? That this comes out now? Think about it Anna.’
‘I can’t, I feel sick.’
Anna hung up and went to the tiny en suite bathroom. She stared at herself in the mirror. She looked tired, thick lines had gathered under her eyes. She hadn’t washed her hair in four days; her skin was grey and lifeless. She looked as though she had vacuumed up all the fear, uncertainty and ugliness she had come across over the previous few days and stored it just beneath her skin. She looked her age, older even. She closed her eyes and thought of Paul Stern, thought of the sadness he carried with him always. Thought of his son. He was no more a paedophile than she was but once it was said he would be labelled, reviled, discredited forever. And so, of course would his work.
She phoned Grace back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not at my best. I don’t believe any of that.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Grace. ‘But now they won’t have to kill him, will they? And frankly Anna, they won’t have to do anything to you, either. I mean, your work is Paul’s work.’
‘Did you phone that hotel?’
‘Yes I did, they said nobody came for you. Maybe they aren’t following you? Maybe they just had your address.’
‘And your address,’ Anna said.
‘Maybe it was a different car,’ said Grace. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’d quite like to go home,’ said Anna.
‘I could drive over there and check it out,’ said Grace.
‘That might be dangerous.’
‘Might it?’ said Grace. ‘Really?’
Anna paused. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I trust my own judgment. Have you heard from Tom?’
‘No, nor my errant daughter, but that’s a whole different thing. What is your plan?’
‘Not sure,’ said Anna. ‘I think I’ll have a bath, maybe go for a drive. Maybe go home.’
‘Give it a day or so, Anna, just to be on the safe side. I’ll go over to your flat and I won’t go on my own. I’ll take a couple of friends. Malcolm, my personal trainer, and his boyfriend, Ben. They look like a couple of heavyweight boxers, both into martial arts, and love me because I helped them design their kitchen. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
Anna turned on the radio and ran a bath. She lay in it for half an hour listening to the news programmes until she heard the name Dr Paul Stern. ‘Eminent psychiatrist and academic’, they said. Father of one. And then: ‘His wife killed herself by overdose several years ago’. And Anna wondered if that information was given as a way of making sense of his moral and personal decay, as if they were giving context to a man’s demise. Only later, and it was this that made her stand up and begin to dry herself, did it occur to her that the caveat was perhaps added to suggest something more sinister: that maybe Mrs Stern knew something so horrible she couldn’t live with it.
*
Adam had expected to feel the tightening round his chest return when he looked at Laura. Instead he found himself feeling numb, except for his eyes, which burned, and the tips of his fingers, which felt electric and damp. He had gone home after Tim’s body had been taken away and he had not been back to the hospital since. He phoned in the following day and said he would be off sick for a couple of days and he had found himself sitting on the floor of his flat for the whole of the next day staring at the wall, expecting to cry but not being able to. Someone had called round twice, maybe three times, but the lights were out and he was silent. They had gone away. The day after, he had gone to see Catherine in her office. She had been very busy and initially reluctant to see him. However he had an offer he knew she would not refuse: sell the flat they had bought together five years earlier, and he had been paying the mortgage on alone for the last three years, and if she took care of the sale he would take a 40% share of the profit, leaving her 60%.
‘What’s the catch?’ she said.
‘No catch, I promise,’ he replied. ‘You draw up a contract now that stipulates that I agree you can take 60% of what is left after the mortgage is settled and all fees are covered, on condition that you manage the sale and forward my 40% to me by cheque. I’ll sign it.’
‘Come back at 6pm,’ she said.
When he did, she gave him the contract to sign and offered to buy him a drink.
‘Simon is away,’ she said sweetly.
‘I have to be somewhere,’ he said, avoiding eye contact. ‘Take care of yourself.’
That evening he packed everything he wanted into a hire car and drove to his mother’s house just outside Margate. He stored his things there and got a job working on the sunken gardens along the coast for four months while he waited for his cheque. He thought the £68,000 he got was obscene. Not as obscene as the £102,000 Catherine pocketed, but obscene nonetheless. He put £45,000 in a savings account, gave his mum £10,000 and went to India with the rest.
Before he went, while he was waiting and digging the flowerbeds less than half a mile from what would many years later become his shop, Anna appeared. He didn’t ask her how she had found him and she didn’t say. He assumed that Stephen, the only person in the hospital who knew Adam had come from anywhere, might have passed on where his mother lived and she worked it out from there. When he saw her sitting on a bench watching him work he simply nodded. She walked over. She didn’t look pregnant until she got closer, then her perfectly round bump announced itself and she grinned when he looked down at her stomach.
‘You OK?’ she had said.
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘I think this helps.’ He motioned around at the flowers. And that was it. They spoke about her plans for maternity leave and childcare. How her breasts had changed shape and she wanted to eat meat for the first time in a decade. How the flowerbeds looked gorgeous. They didn’t mention Tim. They didn’t mention Grace. They didn’t mention Libby or anyone else. She gave him her address on a piece of paper. She didn’t say anything when she gave it to him. He just slipped it into his back pocket. When she left he leaned over, careful to not to brush against her body, and kissed her lightly beside her lips. That was it. He’d sent a couple of postcards, just to tell her, for no good reason, that he was a long way away. But he never heard anything back, perhaps because he had never put a return address on any of them.
Laura looked a bit like a thin Grace. The same confident eyes; she held herself with the same poise. Adam could no more see Tim in her than he could see himself in Tom, but he policed the extent to which he looked.
‘Are you two a couple?’ asked Adam. Tom blushed, Laura looked away. ‘I’m sorry, is that an inappropriate question?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Our mums often refer to us as being like brother and sister,’ he said.
‘We think in part because they both feel a bit guilty about not having any other kids,’ said Laura.
‘We never thought of each other like that,’ Tom said.
‘To be honest,’ Laura added, ‘We never thought of each other much at all.’
‘We played together as kids but we went to different schools. We went on a couple of holidays together when we were what? Nine and twelve.’
‘We got closer when we were like seventeen, eighteen.’
‘And then later, after we had left home, we got closer still,’ smiled Tom.
‘So,’ said Adam, pursing his lips. ‘You have been like a couple for how long?’
Laura looked at Tom and blushed. ‘Nearly four years?’ Tom nodded.
‘And neither of your parents know?’ asked Adam.
‘My mum has secrets,�
� Tom said defensively.
‘And I didn’t know anything about my dad until I was like ten,’ said Laura. ‘Certainly didn’t know how he died or that he had cancer.’
‘Secrets aren’t a big deal,’ Tom said.
‘So why have them?’ Adam said, although the words were automatic. It was the word cancer that was echoing around his skull.
‘In our families,’ said Tom sarcastically, ‘It is de rigueur.’
Grimy Nige and Jim came in and nodded at Adam. Grimy Nige eyed Tom and Laura suspiciously for a moment, then followed his friend to today’s area of interest: History, Politics, World Affairs.
Adam was staring at Laura. ‘You mentioned cancer?’
‘My father had cancer of the brain. Mum didn’t know. Grandad told her when she found out she was pregnant. They were scared that mum might terminate because she might think that any child of their son would be predisposed to depression. Mum said it never occurred to her—not the terminate part, that occurred to her—but the depression part. She said that my father was not depressed, she knew that. She also said she didn’t believe that you inherited depression. Anyway, Grandad came to see her a few weeks after the funeral and told her he’d had an inoperable tumour.’
Adam stared at her. ‘And so he killed himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why like that? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘That’s what mum has always said. She says that Anna saw my dad talking to a psychologist, someone she didn’t like.’
‘David Cassells?’
‘Yeah, that sounds familiar. Not sure what that could have had to do with it but sometimes people latch on to stuff like that, don’t they? When the world doesn’t make sense.’
Adam nodded. ‘I suppose.’
A young couple came into the shop, a little younger than Tom and Laura; they appeared self conscious when everyone looked at them but went to the fiction section anyway.
Tom took the pause in conversation to change the subject. ‘Mum said she wasn’t sure what happened to you.’
‘I’m surprised I came up at all,’ Adam said.
‘I asked her. Not until I was thirteen, interestingly enough. Until then I think she had created in me a sense that asking about whoever my dad might be would break something unmendable, so I didn’t. But when I was thirteen I asked, in as matter-of-fact way as I could, what happened to my dad. She said that he had moved away and that she had encouraged no contact.’ Adam raised his eyebrows. ‘She implied it was you. Later, when I was fifteen or so, I asked what you were like and she was hesitant. She told me that she wasn’t exactly sure who my father was. That it might have been one of two men. You were one of them and you had moved abroad. She was very clear that you were not avoiding any responsibility for me. She said the other bloke was running some government campaign to do with mental health and stigma.’
Adam was struggling to hold on to all the information and he wanted to slow it down, so he went for small talk. ‘What do you do Laura?’
‘I’m at medical school.’
To Adam’s surprise he felt a stinging behind his eyes. ‘You are not going to specialize in…?’
‘Good God, no,’ Laura said. ‘Surgery. Like Grandad’.
An older woman, in her late sixties or early seventies, wearing a cravat and brown polyester trousers came in and smiled at Adam.
‘Anything?’ she asked hopefully. He reached under the counter and brought out a pile of five books.
‘Ohh lovely,’ she said. They stood at the counter in silence as the woman looked at the books with shaking hands. ‘I can’t decide between this one or this one.’ She held up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Farewell My Lovely.
‘Buy them both?’ Tom said gently.
The woman looked at Adam conspiratorially. ‘These young people don’t understand deferred pleasure do they?’
Adam smiled. ‘Or self discipline.’
‘I’ll take this one please.’ She handed Adam the Conan Doyle. ‘But I won’t call foul if we find Mr Chandler in the next list, Mr Sands.’ She handed over £2 and Adam gave her a penny change. After she had gone, Adam took the three books that had not interested her back to the shelves and carefully picked three others: a book of Father Brown mysteries, something by Peter James and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
‘This will make her laugh,’ he said, forgetting that he was talking to Tom and Laura. They looked at him. ‘She comes in three times a week,’ he explained. ‘I pick out a selection of five books—they have to be crime books, good ones, nothing gratuitous—and she chooses one.’ He shrugged.
‘You’re like her personal shopper,’ smiled Laura.
‘Not much money in this, I imagine,’ Tom said and immediately blushed. Laura looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, that sounded rude, it really wasn’t meant to. I just noticed, and I hadn’t before, that second hand bookshops don’t, I imagine, make much money.’
Adam smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a front for the drug trade I operate from out back.’
‘We’ll have a pound and a half of your best marriage-wana,’ piped up Grimy Nige.
The young couple approached the counter and Adam returned from his book search smiling. ‘Can I help?’
‘Just these please.’ They put five books on the counter. On the top was The Road. ‘Remarkable book,’ said Adam. The couple said nothing, so neither did Adam, until he had put the books in a bag and said ‘Fourteen pounds, please.’ The young man paid with cash and they left.
Tom, Laura and Adam were silent for a moment.
‘My mum says that you and she were good friends,’ said Laura. Adam reddened slightly. ‘Oh my, you didn’t sleep with my mum too, did you?’
Grimy Nige and Jim both stopped staring at A Short History of the World and looked up.
‘No I didn’t,’ said Adam quickly. ‘I liked her too much.’
‘But you didn’t like my mum,’ smiled Tom.
‘That was different. And you two—’ looking over at Grimy Nige and Jim, ‘Get back to your browsing.’
‘Sorry, Mr Sands,’ said Jim. ‘Still waiting on the marriage-wana, though.’
Adam lowered his voice and his head a little. ‘I let your mum down, Laura. After what happened with your dad, I didn’t go back. It wasn’t just that, if you think about it, and I have—a lot—that wasn’t enough on its own to make me leave but I was a mess. I couldn’t so much as look back, I don’t think, and Grace… well, I think I was ashamed.’
‘Because of my father?’
‘No, because, well, because we were sort of all in it together. The hospital, the work… and I felt like I was deserting her.’
A middle-aged man came in and headed straight for Military and Engineering. Adam looked at him long enough to offer the man the opportunity to acknowledge him; when he didn’t, he turned back to Tom and Laura. ‘What do you do Tom?’
‘Just finished English and Music at Manchester. Doing Post Grad in Musical Composition.
‘Songwriting?’
‘Not sure they are songs.’
‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘Showing my age.’
‘No, we still have songs, people call them tracks for some reason but they are songs.’ Tom was smiling. ‘I write songs sometimes but I write longer pieces too, modern classical stuff really. Ever heard of Einaudi?’ Adam shook his head. ‘Not going to make a living out of it…’
‘Hey,’ said Laura. ‘Yes, you are.’
‘Not much of a living, so I am staying on at University as long as I can, so I can make as much music as I can before I move into selling insurance.’
Adam considered saying ‘I used to write songs,’ but didn’t. But found himself staring at Tom, unable not to, and the boy noticed and said nothing. Adam wasn’t looking for anything, he was just looking, just like Grimy Nige and Jim. And Tom
was being kind. He was letting him.
Adam heard the door open but he didn’t look round. Neither did Tom. Laura did, and she shook Tom’s arm frantically. The young man turned away from Adam and looked at Laura. ‘What is it?’
Laura motioned toward the door and smiled. ‘Your mum’s here.’
13. Where Are We Now
‘Mum! Where have you been?’ Tom was already across the small shop floor and hugging her as he shouted. Even Grimy Nige and Jim looked embarrassed.
‘Eastbourne, mostly,’ she said, holding her son with her eyes closed, not ready to let go, not ready to take in anything other than his presence.
‘I’ve been worried sick.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘So have I.’ She opened her eyes and saw Adam. She looked at him for a moment as he stood impassively gazing back at her. ‘Nice tattoo,’ she said.
‘Nice son,’ he replied.
Anna nodded and turned to Laura. ‘Laura, what are you doing here? Your mum doesn’t know you’re with Tom.’
‘I’m twenty-three, Anna,’ she said gently. ‘I don’t feel the need to report in on all my movements.’
Anna smiled. ‘I think she was worried, a bit. Maybe.’
‘What’s going on, Mum?’
Anna sighed, partly because she didn’t have any idea how her story was going to sound to an audience.
Anna told them, quietly, about the research into CCT and the findings that suggested quite strongly that the medicines that helped sustain a billion pound industry were, according to the evidence, quite pointless. She told them about Meena and Paul and her trip round the south coast. She finished by saying: ‘I thought I might be being paranoid.’
Tom and Laura both shook their heads. ‘Of course not. Why would you think that? Do you know how Meena is? Is she recovering?’
Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know. And I think it’s because things like this don’t happen to nurses doing research. I can’t believe a massive international drug company would hire people to… to try to kill someone. Or plant a story like the one they have about Paul.’
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