by Helen Grant
It’s dead quiet in there, and dark, too. The blinds must be down on the back windows as well as the front ones.
Not good, I think. It’s too late for him to be having a lie-in and too early for him to have gone to bed. Maybe he’s sick, or gone away. Or lying dead on the floor. That’s an option too, with someone that old.
I press my face close to the slot and breathe in through my nose, hoping not to smell the aroma of dead old man, and in fact all I can smell is slightly stale air. It’s not bad enough to be offensive. It’s more like the smell of old clothes in a charity shop, or the cupboard under the stairs in Gran’s house.
Unloved, I think. Well, that’s probably about right.
I wait for a bit, but it’s absolutely silent in there, so if Dr. Robertson is at home at all, he’s probably having a nap. There’s no other option now but to knock, and if he answers the door, hope that I can talk him into speaking to me.
I knock several times, as loudly as I can, and then I wait. Nothing. I look through the letterbox again. Still dark, still nobody stirring.
“Dr. Robertson?” I shout as loudly as I dare through the letterbox. Then I try knocking again. After that, I stand back from the door, thinking about what to do next. If he’s gone away, can I find out where? Eight more days, that’s all I have.
When someone clears their throat behind me, I almost jump out of my skin. I look round and there’s a woman at least as old as Dr. Robertson, wearing a tweedy-looking hat and carrying a huge pair of garden shears. Her face under the hat is so wrinkly that it’s like being stared at by a tortoise, and the way she’s holding those shears makes me take a few steps backwards.
“Can I help you?” she says – well, that’s what she says in words. Her tone says, I can see you’re up to no good, laddie.
“I’m looking for Dr. Robertson,” I tell her.
“Why?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her to mind her own business, but this is not the time to start a row. In fact, I’ve thought about what to say if this happens. I slide a handful of Dad’s business cards out of the back pocket of my jeans and show them to her.
“We were hoping to give him a quote for some work,” I say.
“Really?” she says. “What work?”
I give her a look. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss our clients’ confidential business,” I say. “Unless you’re a member of the family?”
“Humph,” she says, squinting up at me. “I’m his neighbour. I’m keeping an eye on his house,” she adds, meaningfully. Like I’m a burglar and that’s going to scare me off.
He is away. My heart sinks.
“Can you tell me when he’ll be back?” I ask her. “I want to make sure he gets his quotation.”
“You’re wasting your time,” she tells me. “He had a heart attack. He’s in hospital. He has better things to worry about than your quotation.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, and I really am, though not for the reasons she thinks.
She stares at me, waiting for me to go, and there’s nothing for it.
“Thank you very much, you’ve been very helpful,” I say, managing not to make it sound too sarcastic. Then I walk out of the garden, taking a wide course around the garden shears, and back to the bike.
So that’s it. Dr. Robertson might die, or he might get better and come home again, but whatever happens, it’s unlikely I’ll be talking to him any time soon.
I sit on the bike for a few moments before starting off, wondering what I’m going to do, and resisting the temptation to put my head in my hands. Then I glance around and the old lady’s standing by Dr. Robertson’s gate, watching me. I start the bike and drive home.
Days passed, and Tom did not come back. There had been other times when he had not come for days and days, like the time when his mother refused to let him have the car, and he hadn’t got the motorcycle working yet. I reminded myself of that, and yet it was impossible not to consider very seriously the possibility that he would never come back, ever.
“Just go!” I had shouted at him, and he had gone.
He had said I love you, not so very long ago, but I had never said it back to him.
I thought about those things, and I also thought about what I would do if my eighteenth birthday came and went, and I was alone. I knew my way to the town now, and I knew that I could walk there; it would take a long time, but the distance was not impossible. I could go to the police station, and tell them about myself, and ask them about Grandmother.
If I did that, I thought, I needn’t tell them about Tom at all. Then he would never be in the terrible trouble that he thought was hanging over our heads. Nobody would ever point the finger at him for keeping my secrets.
I can do that, I said to myself. The idea filled me with dread, as though I were facing my own execution without even one friendly face in the crowd to look for, but it seemed like a right thing to do. It was in my power to protect someone I loved.
On Friday evening, the end of a lonely week, I was crossing the hall, intending to take some things upstairs, when I froze, hearing the sound of the motorcycle approaching.
Tom.
In a couple of minutes, he would be knocking at the front door. For a moment, hope flared up. Then I thought: Perhaps I shouldn’t let him in. Perhaps that would be the right thing for Tom, to make him go away again.
Suddenly I was conscious of the rapid beating of my own heart. In my imagination I saw myself go over to the door and stealthily turn the key in the lock; I saw myself sink to the floor, hugging my knees, ducking my head and making myself as small as possible, so that if Tom tried peering in through the windows he would not see me. I would wait until he had exhausted himself knocking and I heard the motorcycle start up again, and then I would go upstairs to the turret window from which I had seen the men in uniforms. Once again I would be a silent, unseen observer, as Tom rode away into the forest.
In my mind’s eye I saw all of this happening, and I went so far as to go over to the door and turn the key as carefully as I could. Then I stood there irresolutely, until I heard Tom’s footsteps on the flagstones inside the stone porch. Now it was too late to move, or escape to another part of the house, or even crouch on the floor; he might hear me.
The first time he knocked on the door, I jumped; now my heart was really pounding. There was a pause, and in the silence I could hear my own breathing. I tried to hold my breath.
More knocking. Then, “Ghost! Ghost!”
I was facing the door. I placed my palm on it, feeling the polished wood cool under my skin, wanting to make contact with the thing that separated me and Tom. Then the door handle turned, vigorously, as Tom tried to get in. He rattled it, evidently not believing that the door was locked against him.
I took a step backwards, the hand that had touched the door going instead to my mouth.
“Ghost?”
I knew I shouldn’t open the door. The questioning tone in his voice meant that he had started to doubt that I was there. The kitchen door was locked, too; he couldn’t get into the house. I had only to wait long enough, and Tom would go away.
He might be relieved.
It was that thought that did it. Once I had thought that Tom might be glad to have an excuse to go, I wanted to know. There was no time to think about it; if he left I had no way to call him back. I turned the key and opened the door.
“You’re here.”
Tom stepped into the hallway. He didn’t look any of the ways I had thought he might – not disappointed I was here after all, not contrite about the argument we had had, not bursting with vehement things he had wanted to say about that argument. Instead there was a brisk energy radiating off him. He plunged in with no preamble.
“I’ve found something out.”
I stared at him.
“About your dad. You were r
ight – about your gran, I mean. I’m sorry I said the stuff I did. It just seemed to fit at the time but I guess it was a crazy idea.”
“Tom...I don’t understand. Did you go to see Dr. Robertson?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t there.”
I shook my head, unable to make sense of what he was saying.
“Come through to the kitchen, and start from the beginning.”
We went through, and I sat at the table. Tom leaned against the sink, seemingly too restless to sit.
“I went back to his house,” said Tom. “Dr. Robertson, I mean. Not on Saturday. I was soaked to the skin – you were right about that, too. I reckoned I’d never get him to talk to me, looking like a drowned rat. So I went back on Tuesday.”
“But he wasn’t there?”
“No, he’s in hospital. His neighbour came out and told me.” Tom made a face. “He had a heart attack. Even if he gets better, he won’t be talking to anyone for a while.”
“Oh, Tom.” I couldn’t think what to say. I hadn’t liked the old man but the thought of his old heart stopping was too terrible; it made me think of poor Grandmother, collapsing in the street.
“Yeah.” Tom let out a long breath like a sigh.
“But how did you find anything out if you couldn’t talk to him?” I asked.
“By accident.” Tom leaned forward. “It had nothing to do with Dr. Robertson. I had to leave his place right away because his neighbour was watching me, and then I couldn’t think what to do next. I mean, there’s nobody else to ask. In the end I decided to carry on with the online searches.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really think I’d find anything new, but what else could I do?” Tom looked at me a little warily. “I know you were angry with me for suggesting your grandmother took you when you were a baby, but don’t get mad at me again. I just thought I’d look and see if there was anything online to prove it, and – there wasn’t.”
I said nothing.
“There was an article about a woman who took a baby from a maternity ward about the same time, but they got the baby back and arrested the woman. That was all. I didn’t find anything else. No babies that disappeared altogether. Not even any pregnant women who vanished. I mean, no proof is not the same as definitely didn’t happen, but still.” Tom shrugged. “It makes it a lot less likely, right?”
“So that’s what you found out?” I asked. I was perplexed; it sounded as though he hadn’t found out anything at all.
“No,” said Tom quickly. “I kept looking. But it was difficult because I’ve been working with Dad during the day, and in the evening Mum’s still bugging me all the time. I did a lot of it late at night, when she and Dad had gone to bed. Then I got tired, and typed stuff wrong a few times. That’s basically how I found out. I thought I’d try another search for your dad, and I typed the name wrong; I got the s and the z the wrong way round. And up came this article from ten years ago, with the same typo in the name.”
“Typo?”
“The same spelling mistake,” said Tom patiently. “That’s why I hadn’t found it before.”
I stared at Tom. The feeling of excitement I had was not entirely pleasant. “Did it say what happened to my father?”
“No – I mean, it said the same as before, that he disappeared and was declared legally dead in 2007. They still don’t know where he went. But they found his car.”
“Where?”
“That’s the thing. They found it in a glen over by Aberfeldy. That’s maybe twenty, twenty five miles from here. Someone had driven it up there and dumped it. It’s not near anything, not even somewhere walkers go. It’d been there for years, covered up with stuff growing over it. The only reason they found it was the Mountain Rescue were doing a search for something else, a missing person.”
Tom was looking at me expectantly. “Don’t you see? It proves he was here. He disappeared here. That’s too much of a coincidence. He came up here after you were born, and then he vanished. Those things have to be related.”
I chewed my lip, looking at Tom doubtfully. “It doesn’t say what happened to him,” I pointed out. “It could be anything.”
“Yeah, in theory,” said Tom. “He could have gone somewhere lonely and killed himself. People do that. But it’s not likely that out of all the places he could choose to do it, he’d pick on one that’s twenty miles away from Langlands, just by some kind of random coincidence.”
Tom looked almost eager. He was convinced he was solving the puzzle, I could see that. But it was not just a puzzle to solve, a riddle like the ones in books. It was my family.
I looked down at my own hands, not wanting to meet Tom’s eyes as I asked the question.
“What do you think happened?”
“I think he came here,” said Tom. He pushed himself off from the sink and came to sit by me. He looked right into my face, his gaze searching mine, his expression serious. “I think he tracked your mother to Langlands. Maybe it took a while to work out where she was, but in the end, he cracked it. Then he turned up and...maybe he tried to get your mum to go back with him and she wouldn’t, so he threatened her. Or maybe he didn’t even try to persuade her, he tried to hurt her or your gran. Ghost...if they hurt him back, it would be self-defence.”
“Hurt him?” I repeated, and I could hear the tremor in my own voice.
“Yeah.” The corner of Tom’s mouth puckered in a grimace of regret. “They probably just wanted to frighten him off, and maybe he wouldn’t go and it got out of hand...”
“You mean murder,” I said.
Tom shook his head. “Self-defence.”
“It still means killing someone,” I said in a very low voice.
“It’s not the same,” said Tom, firmly.
“But if it happened here, why was the car in that glen?” I asked, and Tom had an answer for that too. He had it all worked out.
“It’s not difficult. Your grandmother knew the area from when she was growing up. She could have chosen a really quiet spot where the car wouldn’t be discovered for ages and driven it there herself. Then she could have walked into Aberfeldy and caught a bus back, or gone back to the main road and hitched a lift back or something. It’s twenty miles, not a hundred miles. She could have done it. And then if anyone found the car, there would be no way of connecting it with Langlands.”
I looked away, biting my lip.
“So where is my father?” I asked unsteadily. “You said they don’t know where he went, so he’s not in the car, is he?”
“No,” said Tom. He hesitated, and it was his silence that told me what I needed to know.
“You think here, don’t you? At Langlands?”
Tom sighed. “I’ve been trying to think what I’d do if it were me. Driving twenty miles with a body in the car could be risky. Okay, those roads are pretty quiet, but if you did get stopped...” He shrugged. “And supposing someone found the car straight away? Instead of him being missing and it taking seven years to decide he’s dead, there’d be a murder enquiry.”
“It doesn’t seem real,” I said. “Thinking of Grandmother doing something like that. My mother too. I can’t believe it.” I looked at Tom boldly. “You must be wrong.”
Tom said nothing.
“Tom, you must be wrong. There couldn’t be a dead body here. What do you think they did – buried him in the garden? Wouldn’t I know about it?”
Tom was shaking his head. “It was seventeen years ago, Ghost. You were a baby. You wouldn’t have known anything about it.”
“But I’ve been living here all that time. I’ve been everywhere in the house and grounds. I’m telling you, Tom, I’d know.”
The words were barely out of my mouth before something occurred to me. There’s one place I haven’t been.
I pressed my lips tight shut, not trusting myself to say anything else. I had told an unintentional untruth, b
ut I didn’t want to unsay it. I wanted time on my own to think about it before I did that; I wanted time to talk myself out of the ideas that were slinking like grim wolves through the darkest parts of my imagination.
I listened to Tom as he tried very kindly and patiently to convince me that we should search the house and as much of the grounds as we could. At last, I said, “Come back tomorrow.”
It made sense. Who wanted to go hunting for such a grisly hidden treasure as a dead body, as twilight closed in and the shadows lengthened and merged until all was darkness? Tom said yes.
After he had gone, I went to the overgrown patch of lawn at the side of the house. I stood with my back to the grey stone wall of Langlands House and stared at the encroaching forest. A little way into the undergrowth, not visible from where I stood, through the tangled growth, was the old mausoleum.
I stood there until I began to shiver in the cool evening air, and then I went indoors, taking care to lock up behind me.
On Saturday morning, I rose early to find the day grey and damp. I fed the chickens and made tea for myself. I had the end of a loaf of bread and a couple of eggs left, but I felt too restless to eat anything. The unease was like a sickness; it made me want to pace like a trapped animal.
I took the tea with me and made my way down the passage to the library. Then I set the cup on top of one of the cabinets, where its steam rose into the cool air, and set about opening the safe. I had to take nearly everything out again to find what I wanted: the bundle of letters signed Edith.
If I can just find something to tell me... What? I wasn’t sure. Something to prove, absolutely, that my mother and grandmother had had nothing to do with my father’s disappearance? I had read the letters before; I knew there was nothing in them that could give me that assurance. In fact, the few times the writer strayed away from dull, ordinary topics her words were ominous. The past is better left buried, I think. I stared at that sentence for a long while. Literally buried? I wondered, and shivered. The paper crinkled in my fingers, brittle and yellowed.