I watched the ball roll against the house, among the flowerpots. ‘You know that’s not what I meant. I just mean – you know her better than anybody. And I thought we could talk about it.’
‘Do you and Mum really think that if I knew something, I wouldn’t have told you already?’
‘I just thought it might help to talk. That’s all.’
‘Help who?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I have homework,’ he said, and went inside. The cricket bat lay where he’d dropped it.
Three months later he boarded the plane for London. I wondered whether he’d planned his gap year as a way of running away from her, or from us.
I ask Rosa if she wants to come with me to the caves. She’s lying on my couch reading something on her phone, while I work at my computer. When I ask her, she snorts. ‘You must be kidding.’
I understand. She was there – she doesn’t need to go back to the caves to understand what happened.
But I do. I hire a car and set off the next morning. It’s been raining since dawn, a resolute grey drizzle that seems very British. The drive takes about ninety minutes, after I’ve left the traffic of London. I follow the sat nav down a long, unsealed road that ends in an empty car park, puddles starting to settle in the gravel, below the tumbled stone cliff.
The entrance to the cave is narrower than I’d expected – a low black gap in the cliff face. You would have to crouch to enter, but it’s all I can do to touch the wet stone wall. I lean close to it and the stone, rough as sharkskin, brushes my cheek.
By the entrance to the cave, there’s a small wooden shelter, no bigger than a bus stop, open along one side. Inside, a noticeboard gives cursory information about the cave system. And on a shelf, with a Biro attached by a string, is a logbook. Above it, a sign on the board says: All parties to sign in and out, noting destination and any other relevant information.
Why wasn’t I told? The police and the coroner’s office haven’t mentioned this.
I flick through the book, until I spot the date I need: 13th May 2016. The lower half of the page is crowded with the details of the various search parties:
J. Lewis + 4, entering 11, out 11:10 (can confirm: not safe to proceed beyond cavern 2)
J. Lewis + 4, in 1400. Out 1445 (as above – water still too high)
P. Hawley + 4, entering 7pm. Out 8:25pm. Water receding; made it as far as Cavern 3.
D.I. Preston + 6. Entering midnight. Out 3:45am (body retrieved)
The handwriting is rushed, the later entries probably written by the light of headlamps through that long night.
Further back, at the top of the page, in neater writing:
13th May 2016. P. Murphy and T. Wan + 10 – entering 10am; heading for cavern 3.
Then Dougie and Rosa’s names, both in Dougie’s handwriting:
D. Jordan, R. Campbell
Below, they’d let the kids sign their own names, in their careful, childish writing. These kids were barely older than Teddy. One of the girls, Miriam Abiola, has topped each i with a little love heart. I look at her name for several minutes. Would I have swapped her death, or any of the other children’s, for his? I don’t have an answer – at least, not one that I can admit to myself.
Then, in the Out column, in different handwriting: 11:10 P. Murphy + T. Wan + 9
There it is again, that maths sum, at once perfectly simple and impossible to grasp: If twelve people go into a cavern, and only eleven come out, what remains?
I spend a long time looking at the entries. Several times, I run my finger over Dougie’s handwriting. The rain is heavier now. I watch it dent the shallow puddles in the gravel of the car park.
Before I close the logbook, I turn over to the previous page. From the days before the flood, various standard entries, where the numbers in and out tally. But at the bottom, there’s another entry with the same date as the flood. I check it, then double-check it: 13th May.
My hands are shaking when I call Heather at the coroner’s office.
‘Do you know about the other logbook entry?’ I demand. ‘Somebody called M. Calvert – they didn’t give their full name – signed in for a group of three. They signed in at nearly nine that morning, more than an hour before Dougie’s group. Then signed out again, twenty minutes later. Water underfoot at Cavern 1 – not tempted today.’
‘The police gave us copies of the relevant pages of the logbook,’ she says. The rain is loud on the tin roof of the shelter, and I can hardly hear her.
‘And? That’s it? You don’t think it’s important, that somebody an hour earlier noted that it was already flooding?’
‘They didn’t say anything about flooding. They said there was water in the first cavern.’
‘Isn’t that enough? It was obviously deep enough that they decided not to go in. And Murphy, the guide, would’ve seen that.’
‘If he read the previous page.’
‘Why wouldn’t he? He should’ve done.’
‘That’s something that the inquest will be exploring, Mr Jordan. I can’t pre-empt the coroner’s findings.’
The rain thickens on the drive back into London, headlights flaring and receding beyond my windscreen wipers. The downpour turns my car into a box of noise. I’m thinking about this Calvert. What did he see, and what does he know?
Halfway home, I pull over and ring Rosa.
‘Where are you?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. A truck-stop somewhere on the M1. Listen: how much water was underfoot at the entrance, when you first went in?’
‘I’m not sure. I wasn’t looking – I didn’t know it was something I was supposed to be looking out for.’
‘But was it wet? Can you remember?’
She’s silent for a moment.
‘I was wearing these boots that the guides gave us. Big ugly things. I remember being glad I had them on, early on in the cave. I remember looking down and seeing the water near the top of my boots, and thinking I’d have been freezing if I’d worn my trainers.’
‘How far into the cave? Was it in the entrance, or the first cavern?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Try to remember.’
‘Gabe, I’m trying.’
That night, back in the flat, I print out the photos that I took of the logbook entries. Water underfoot. I keep thinking about the guide who led Dougie into the cave, despite that water. Phillip Murphy. Goes by Phil, the police liaison officer had said. Phil, the man who saved Rosa and left Dougie to die in the dark.
Two weeks ago I asked the police liaison officer if I could meet with Murphy. He got back to me the next day, told me Murphy’s lawyer advised him not to meet with me. I know why. Just like the school, he has to be careful not to admit liability.
I could reassure him that we’re not interested in suing him, that I just want to find out what happened – but I don’t know if that’s true. Once, I would have said that Gill and I aren’t the kind of people to sue. I would have said that we know that suing would never bring Dougie back. But that was then.
Now, I’m still pretty certain that I won’t sue Murphy. But I think often about the grotesque asymmetry of him being alive, while Dougie is dead. In the dark, when I dream of water and wake choking on air, I remember that Dougie’s gone, and I think of Murphy, and what it would be like to kill him.
Teddy
On the way up to Papabee’s flat I see Sharon-Over-The-Road.
‘You should have another baby,’ I say to her. She has a little girl called Alison who Sylvie used to babysit, before she went into the Boneyard.
Sharon-Over-The-Road laughs. She’s unloading the shopping from the boot of her car, and trying to keep hold of Alison’s hand at the same time. ‘God, no way. One’s enough for me, thanks, Teddy.’
I wait until she’s stopped laughing. ‘You should though,’ I say. ‘Seriously. Then if one dies, you’d still have another one.’
Sharon’s smile goes away, and she gets that look in her face that the teachers al
l had at school in those first few days after Dougie died.
‘Oh, Teddy,’ she says. ‘You mustn’t think like that. That’s not how it works.’
I don’t say it, because she looks upset, but I’m thinking: Yes it is. Dougie was alive and now he’s not. That’s exactly how it works.
I try with Mum too, later that day. ‘Are you going to have another baby?’ I ask her.
‘You must be joking,’ she says. She’s folding clothes and I watch her hands, folding my school t-shirts so quick and neat, the same way she folds filo pastry when she makes spring rolls.
‘But you liked having three children, right?’
She puts down the t-shirt in a pile and swallows really slowly.
‘I loved it,’ she says.
‘So have another one. I know it won’t be the same. But at least you’d still have three kids.’
‘I’m too old. It’s too late. And anyway, your father would have to be here for that.’
That makes me go quiet, and not just because she’s called Dad ‘your father’ again. The idea of Mum and Dad having sex is horrible, even worse than when someone on TV takes their clothes off when Papabee’s in the room.
Mum touches the side of my face. ‘I can’t do it again, love,’ she says. I don’t know if she means, I can’t have a baby again, or, I can’t lose a child again. Maybe both. Since all the names started to change, everything means at least two things.
If I can’t find a way to save Sylvie, then everyone will fall out of their names for good. Sister in the hospital, brother in the water. Already it feels like our names are broken, and our private family words too. This must be what it feels like to be Papabee, when words are never where you left them.
‘Were you at Papabee’s all afternoon?’ Mum asks at bedtime. Papabee’s gone home, and she’s sitting on the edge of my bed.
This is one of those times when what she says isn’t what she means. What she means is: Why didn’t you go to the hospital?
‘Yup,’ I say. ‘We played dominoes. I won twice. Then I let him win once. And then he actually won once.’
Mum pulls the doona up higher, so it’s tucked right under my chin, and she rubs her thumb against my shoulder.
‘It’s great that you spend so much time with Papabee,’ she says. ‘But it’s important to spend time with your sister too. She needs at least some parts of her life to stay normal.’
‘I went in yesterday.’ That’s true – I make sure I go in at least two days a week after school, and on weekends too. But until I find the next price to give her, I don’t like going there. There’s nothing normal about those visits. It’s just me sitting in Paediatrics 3 trying not to stare at the tube coming out of her nose, and trying not to say anything about Dougie – and that’s not normal at all.
‘You used to go in more often, that’s all.’
‘She never wants to talk,’ I say. ‘It’s boring.’
‘I’m not having this conversation, Teddy. She’s part of this family, and we’re not leaving her alone in there just because she has a disease.’
‘What am I supposed to say to her?’ I can’t think of things to say to Sylvie, when I’m concentrating so hard on all the things that I can’t say to her about Dougie.
‘I don’t know. Nothing. Take a book, if you want. You can just sit with her.’
So after school the next day I take my homework with me into the hospital. I count the girls (ten today – that’s not bad; eight of them will get to live). Sometimes Sylvie says Hi, sometimes she doesn’t. Today’s a Hi day, but then she stays quiet. I don’t know whether or not she’s glad that I’m there. She doesn’t give away any clues. She doesn’t give away anything.
And I’m trying so hard not to give away any clues either. I sit here with my maths assignment on my lap, but instead of focusing on diameter and circumference, I’m thinking of all the ways that I might accidentally let the secret out. I get tired, worrying about all the ways that I might get it wrong, and then Sylvie would die, which would kill Mum and Dad too, all of them going down dead, one, two, three, like dominoes going down clack clack clack on Papabee’s coffee table.
So many ways for me to make it worse. And only one way that I can make it go right: get the price for Sylvie’s story, and save her myself.
Sylvie
In Dougie’s latest letter he complains about the heat in the Greek islands. I can’t imagine ever being hot again. I’m always cold. My fingernails have been blue for years.
Now the weather outside matches my chilled body. Teddy visits with a puffy jacket over his school uniform, his scarf wrapped halfway over his face, and his hands chapped and red.
At the Neck the tessellated pavement will be slippery and slick, and the puddles of the gravel driveway will have a crust of ice. The possums in their winter fur will chase each other across the tin roof of the house. At the edge of the beach the marram grass will be tipped with frost, and the gum trees will stand, grey-white sentinels, on both sides of the road. Deep in their burrows, the mutton-birds will be thick with fat. The tides will eat the beach and spit it out again.
At the Neck I learned not to trust time. I was a girl, and I was busy finding crabs in rock pools and climbing trees and laughing at Dad’s bad jokes and suddenly I was something else: a woman. We were playing Classic Catch at the beach – me and Dougie and Nathan and Dad and Papa J – and Dougie lobbed the ball way up high and I jumped up for it and my right boob popped out from under my bikini top. My boobs were still only tiny, and I didn’t realise, and I was standing there, waiting to throw the ball back, but they’d all stopped, and except for Teddy they were all looking away. Dad said, ‘Sylve, love—’ and I said, ‘What?’ and Nathan made an awkward gesture towards his own chest. Teddy laughed and said, ‘Your boob, dummy,’ but Papa J and Dougie and Dad were all still looking away, as if it were something shameful. As if I were something shameful.
This is what you need to understand: when I stopped eating, I wasn’t trying to become beautiful. I was trying to get away from my beauty. It was too heavy. I wanted to step out of it – leave it behind me like clothes on the beach.
Gabe
M. Calvert from the car park logbook at the caves turns out to be a woman, and I chide myself for having assumed that somebody leading a group of cavers would be a man. Ten minutes on Google – M Calvert potholing; M Calvert Buckinghamshire – and there she is: Meredith Calvert, architect at a firm in Milton Keynes; Facebook account (locked); a captioned photo of her at the Chiltern Hills Potholing Club’s annual pub quiz.
I email her work address.
Dear Ms Calvert,
My name is Gabriel Jordan and my son Douglas was the young man killed in the floods at the Smith– Jackson caves in May. I’ve recently become aware of your entry in the logbook from earlier that day.
I understand that it might seem strange that I’m contacting you – please forgive the intrusion. I’m sure you’ll understand that my wife and I are keen to find out any information that can help us to understand what happened. I’d be extremely grateful if you’d be kind enough to meet me, to discuss what you saw that day. Equally, if you could put me in touch with the other members of your group, it would be very much appreciated.
I’m currently in the UK to sort out my son’s affairs, so am free to meet you any time and place that suits you.
Yours sincerely,
Gabriel (Gabe) Jordan
Gill wouldn’t have used understand twice in one paragraph. She’s always been better at crafting words than I am – it’s her job. But I haven’t even told her I’m trying to contact Meredith Calvert.
I put ‘Smith–Jackson potholing accident’ in the subject line, and wonder if that will be enough to stop my message being consigned to the Junk folder.
Meredith emails back that same night.
Dear Gabriel,
I’m so very sorry about what happened to your son.
I’m not at all sure that I will be able to help you, but I�
�d be happy to meet.
There’s a café called Brass Bear near my work on Hepburn St (Milton Keynes) – it’s not far from the station, so should be easy for you if you come by train. We could meet there for coffee at 2:30pm on Friday, if that suits you?
Best wishes,
Meredith
I tell Rosa I won’t be at home all day on Friday. I’m so worried about being late that I catch an early train from London and arrive at the café forty minutes before Meredith is due. When she finally enters I spot her straight away, looking around and holding a big bag across her body. She’s about my age, with curly brown hair, cut shorter than in the photo I saw online. She keeps fidgeting with her bag.
‘I can’t stay long,’ she says, after the initial handshake and introductions. ‘Sorry. It’s bad timing – busy week at work.’
‘I understand. Of course.’
She nods sharply, twisting the handles of her bag.
‘I kept thinking about what happened to your boy,’ she says, when we’ve sat down at a table in the corner. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news. It’s awful.’
If I told her the truth I’d say, Yes, it’s as awful as you think. Worse. It’s the very worst thing. But I’m learning that one of the burdens of grief is that you want to shield others from it – so I say nothing, and just change the subject.
‘The potholing world isn’t that big, I expect,’ I say. ‘Do you know this Phil Murphy, the leader of the school expedition?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’ve never met the guy. I don’t do that much potholing these days, and a lot of what I’ve done was overseas anyway. I know people who have met him, though, from the club.’
‘And?’
‘And what? You want me to tell you what some other people think about somebody I haven’t met?’
‘I suppose so,’ I say. ‘I know it’s only hearsay. But this isn’t a court – nobody’s on trial, least of all you. I’m just desperate to find out whatever I can.’
The Cookbook of Common Prayer Page 20