by Ann Cleeves
By the night of the bonfire he’d been at the school for nearly a year, but he’d never had a proper girlfriend. Some of them saw it as a challenge. He tantalized them with the possibility, snogging them at parties, but nothing came of it. He was indiscriminate in his physical contact in a way which was unusual at the time. He liked to put his arm round people, boys and girls. He often hugged Sylvie, making her blush with pleasure. He had never touched Hannah though, not even a hand on the shoulder, not even brushing against her by mistake. She longed for it.
She didn’t make straight for Michael when she reached the shore. The booze had made her up for the games other people played. Let him come to her if he wanted to. That night there was a huge orange moon which lit the scene, so she would be able to see Michael even if he moved away from the fire.
She latched on to a tall lad from the upper sixth, who was a figure of fun, because his picture was once in the paper when he got a Queen’s Scout award. Someone had torn it out and stuck it on the noticeboard at school. He had stood in the photo in the ridiculous uniform, blushing in a way which made his acne stand out. Since then he’d got rid of the acne, but the reputation of being what they now called a geek had stuck with him. He did science and maths, and was considered brilliant at both, which didn’t help. He came along to parties like this, but always ended up on his own.
‘Isn’t this brilliant, Paul? I mean this enormous sky. The landscape seems so huge, doesn’t it, tonight. It seems foreign. Like we’re in a country with wider spaces.’
She leaned against him, knowing as she did it that it wasn’t fair. It was the sort of trick that had been played on her. Tentatively he slid his arm around her shoulder. She felt his breath on her neck. On the other side of the fire Michael was watching. She saw him get up. He walked over the pebbles towards the caravan site and the road into town. Hannah waited for a second, then pulled away from Paul Lord and ran after him. She caught up with him by the jetty where the water-sport freaks launched their dinghies and canoes. She took him by the elbow and swung him round to face her, exhilarated by the first touch and her daring. She felt muscle and bone under the denim shirt.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home.’ He paused. ‘To Steve and Sylvie’s.’ As if the two were not the same thing.
‘Where is home, Michael, really?’ She hadn’t had the nerve to ask him about his personal life before. After the incident in his bedroom, she’d been scared of frightening him off. ‘What is going on here?’
He shrugged and walked off like a sulky child, not bothering to turn on the charm. She realized he resented the attention she’d given to the other boy, even though it was Paul Lord, who was a figure of fun, almost a charity case. He wanted her to himself. She was flattered but felt a sense of injustice. It was all right for him to flirt and kiss and touch, but she had to be there for him whenever he wanted the company. On other occasions she would have been apologetic, grateful that he needed her. Tonight, because of the vodka, she had more confidence.
‘Suit yourself,’ she shouted and started back towards the party.
‘No.’ He called after her and she heard something like panic in his voice. She hesitated, determined not to give in too easily, then continued walking. The tactics paid off because he scrambled over the pebbles towards her. He put his arms around her and clung on to her as if she were the most important person in the world. Triumphant, she stroked his white hair and told him everything would be alright.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’ He took her agreement for granted. He knew she wouldn’t let him go again. He took her hand and led her along the edge of the lake. Sheep-cropped grass fell away into sand so it was almost like being on a beach at the seaside. But there were no waves. The water was glassily still. If the others saw them she presumed they’d think she was just another of his party conquests.
‘Poor Hannah,’ they’d say. ‘She’s been hanging round him for months and now he’s taking pity on her.’
At that point the road skirted the edge of the lake. There was the flash of headlights. For a moment she thought it might be the police, that there’d been a complaint about the fire, or even something more serious. She wondered sometimes what Sally was getting into. There’d already been rumours about Chris and drugs. But it was a blue 1100. It stopped and the driver got out, leaving the engine running. He was a small middle-aged man, rather nondescript. Hannah thought it must be a parent, come to collect errant offspring. He peered over towards the fire trying to make out individuals, trying, it seemed, to pluck up the courage to go over. He couldn’t see Michael and Hannah. They were in the shadow. But they could see him quite clearly, caught in the headlights. She turned to Michael to make a comment about the man, to ask him to guess which of their friends he belonged too, but saw at once he already recognized him.
‘Who is it?’ she whispered.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘But you do know him?’
‘Perhaps.’
The man gave up his search, got into the car and backed it erratically up the lane.
Michael put his arm around Hannah and they walked on.
‘Why don’t you ever talk to me?’ she said.
‘I do.’
‘Not about the important stuff.’ Or the not so important. Like a bloke in a Morris 1100 looking for his kids. ‘Is it just that you like the mystery?’
‘No. You don’t understand.’
‘Whatever it is I won’t be shocked. You must have heard about my dad. So you know about my shady past.’
‘That was him. Not you.’
‘What do you think I’ll do? Shop you? Dump you?’
He didn’t answer at once. ‘I’m frightened,’ he said. ‘Not just for me. For you.’ She thought that was the old Michael again. The attention seeker. The boy who made up stories in his head and almost believed them himself. She didn’t care.
He pulled her beside him on the grass. She thought he was kissing her to stop the awkward questions. By the fire someone had started playing the guitar. There was a smell of pine and wood smoke. She lay on her back and looked at the orange moon.
All that came back when she was talking to the detectives, but of course they weren’t interested in the detail, only in the clues which might lead to information about their victim’s past. The party by the lake had taken place a year before Michael’s disappearance. What happened then could have no relevance to his death.
Chapter Thirteen
So they became a couple. Michael Grey and Hannah Meek. She always liked the way their names scanned. Now, listening to Porteous and Stout talking about the mystery of their victim’s birth, she thought it would be a shame if that turned out not to be his name, if the rhythm were lost. Though now of course she was Hannah Morton and she had more important things to worry about, like convincing these policemen that she knew nothing at all about Michael’s murder and that she had no reason for wanting him dead.
If their friends thought about it, they must have assumed that Michael and Hannah were lovers. Porteous and Stout, of course, had made the same assumption. After all, they went out with each other for nearly a year. Their intimacy was for everyone to see. They walked round the school hand in hand, despite a rule banning physical contact. It only got them into trouble once. They were walking across the yard towards the common-room for morning break. Michael had his arm around Hannah’s waist and they were laughing at a joke, some piece of nonsense. There was a shout and they turned to see Mr Spence bearing down on them. Spooky Spence. Now husband of Sally.
‘Mr Grey, Miss Meek. A little decorum, if you please.’
They looked puzzled. Like the ban on smoking in the common-room, the rule was never enforced. Spence must have taken their bewilderment, their failure to comply immediately with his instruction, as impertinence, a personal insult. Suddenly he lost his temper. He stood in the middle of the playground, gathering a small crowd of giggling onlookers, and he ranted about the younger generation in general and Ha
nnah and Michael in particular, about their lack of morals, their failure to comport themselves with decency and modesty. As he yelled flecks of spit came out of his mouth. It took them a moment to realize what had provoked his anger. At last they got the message and pulled apart. Spence regained a shaky control and walked away. They didn’t mention the incident to their friends. They were embarrassed by it. It wasn’t the way adults were supposed to behave.
They never went to bed together. Spence and the gang they hung around with would have found it hard to accept, but they never even discussed it. Hannah thought that was because Michael was living with the Brices and felt he should conform to their standards. An exaggerated idea of good manners. She wouldn’t have known how to raise the subject. Later she wished she had, that she’d lost her virginity to him and not to a plump mathematician after a drunken freshers’ ball in her first week at university. Sally was certainly sleeping with her disc jockey. At weekends she told her parents she was staying at Hannah’s house, but she’d spend the evening with Chris and the bed in the Meeks’ spare room was never used. Her parents never checked up on her. Perhaps they didn’t want to know what she was up to. Hannah was worried about her, concerned she’d get caught up in his shady deals. It wasn’t only the drugs. There was an air of aggression about him.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ she asked once.
Sally had told her not to be stupid. She wanted Chris and he wanted her. That was all that mattered. Sally also wanted the things Chris could provide. He had two jobs, more cash than the rest of them could dream of. She liked the presents, the fact that she never had to buy her own drinks. On the evenings when Sally was supposed to be at the Meeks, she would go with him to work, to the disco at whichever village hall or hotel had hired him, or more often to the caravan site which was his regular gig and seemed to have become her second home. Then she would go with him to the scruffy flat he was renting over the betting shop in a back street behind the police station. She once took Hannah there when Chris was away for the weekend. He’d given her a key to feed his cat – an angry black tom. Inside the flat was surprisingly ordinary. There was the same utility dining suite as Hannah’s mum had in their house, and a floral carpet. One of the bedrooms was locked and Sally didn’t have a key to that. She said it was where Chris kept his sound system, but Hannah wondered what else was inside. Sally agonized about going on the pill as if it were a decision Hannah must be making too. ‘Doesn’t it make you put on weight? Chris would hate me fat. It’s all right for you. You could do with a few extra pounds.’
Hannah was noncommittal and Sally was too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice. Michael and Hannah didn’t spend all their time together. They were ambitious. It was the A-level year and they wanted to do well. Hannah for herself; Michael, she thought, for the Brices. Hannah went through the process of applying to university, filling out UCCA forms, going for interviews. Michael, however, refused to make any plans. None, at least, that he would talk about. It was as if he wanted to shroud his future as well as his past in mystery. He said he’d take a year out, travel perhaps. Hannah wondered if he had more specific ideas. He worked for his exams with a purpose which suggested he had a project in mind. He spoke once of a crusade. He had a responsibility, he said. There was something he had to put right. When she asked what exactly this mission was, in a teasing voice, because she refused to let him take himself too seriously, he clammed up. She didn’t push it. Talking to the detectives she thought it was incredible that she should have taken any of his stories at face value. Why didn’t she ask where his father was, why they never saw each other? Because she was perfectly content. She knew she would never be so happy again. She was determined to do nothing to spoil it.
The school play was planned for the end of the Easter term. When Michael went for the auditions, just after Christmas, she thought he was mad.
‘You are joking. Our last full term before the exams. You’ll never manage it all.’
‘Sod the A levels,’ he said, much as Rosie would do, then gave her a grin to show he didn’t mean it. Perhaps managing it all was the challenge. Perhaps it was part of his game plan.
Hannah went with him to the audition, not to try for a part, but to offer her support. She thought he might be given a small role. When she saw that Spooky Spence was one of the auditioning panel, she thought he’d be lucky to get that. It never occurred to her that he would go for Macbeth. She perched on a window-sill at the back of the hall and waited for his turn. The teachers sat in judgement on a row of chairs at the front: Spooky Spence, Miss Davies who taught English and drama, and Mr Westcott, still slightly tipsy from his lunchtime in the pub. The actors stood on a block to read, but when it was Michael’s turn he didn’t stand. He sat with his legs crossed, quite relaxed, and when he spoke, despite the language, it was as if he were speaking just to her. She knew at once that he would be chosen to play the lead.
Hannah saw Jenny Graves audition that day too. She was in the lower sixth, a year younger than them, tall and willowy, rather nervy. Hannah thought it was typecasting. The panel had gone for the look. She wasn’t sure she would have chosen Jenny over some of the others. She realized that Michael and Jenny would have lots of rehearsals together. It didn’t bother her at the time, but nearer to the performance she thought she could afford to get involved and she volunteered to help with props and to prompt. She never admitted to herself that she wanted to keep an eye on him.
One Saturday, at about the time of the Macbeth auditions, Michael and Hannah took a trip to the coast. Occasionally they wanted to get away from home and homework and explore the surrounding district. Hannah liked to have Michael to herself. On this day they went to Millhaven, the seaside town where Hannah would end up living. Where Rosie would be born. Where her husband would fall in love with a PE teacher called Eve. They caught a bus into Newcastle, then another to the coast. It was the longest trip they had made and she wasn’t sure how they came to decide on it. On the bus Michael said he liked seaside towns in winter.
When they arrived, however, she could tell that he had been there before. It was a freezing day. Flurries of snow blew in from the sea, gathered like piles of confetti against the lampposts and wrought-iron benches. They walked shoulder to shoulder, hands deep in coat pockets, heads bowed against the wind. But not in an aimless way. Michael knew where he was going, where he wanted to be. He found his way immediately to the sea front, knew which way to turn for the funfair, closed and deserted for the winter. He stood there for a moment, looking in over the padlocked gate at the entrance to the ghost train and the helter skelter, at the still and tarnished horses under their gaudy awning. Hannah guessed he had been taken there as a child, though it didn’t seem to hold any happy memories for him.
‘A penny for them,’ she said lightly.
‘Sorry?’ He turned to her, still preoccupied.
‘What are you thinking about?’ She had to yell above the wind and felt a bit ridiculous. They weren’t ideal conditions for a deep and meaningful discussion.
‘My mother,’ he said. ‘Actually.’
She sensed that he was ready to talk, took his arm and pulled him into a pub.
Talking to the detectives, she was aware on a number of occasions of coincidences, links between her life as an eighteen-year-old and her life as a mother. Often she caught herself thinking, What would Rosie have done if that had happened to her? Certainly she would have been more assertive. She wouldn’t have waited for almost a year, content with a kiss and a fairly chaste grope. She would have wanted to know what was going on. The pub was the most obvious coincidence. When Rosie first started work in the Promenade, Hannah thought the name was familiar. She called in occasionally to collect her daughter from a late shift but the place stirred no memories. By the time Rosie worked there the Prom had become one big room with long windows painted white. One evening, when she wasn’t quite ready for her lift home, Hannah looked at the old photographs on the walls. They hadn’t
been bought as a job lot by the brewery; they showed the place as it had been before it had been taken over. With a start she realized it was the pub where she and Michael had sat on that winter’s day. Then, the Promenade had two small bars separated by a gloomy corridor. The walls were half panelled in wood covered in a sticky yellow varnish, wrinkled like custard skin. They had sat all lunchtime in the corner of the snug, with their half-pints in front of them, and nobody disturbed them.
That was the time he told her about his mother’s funeral, the story Hannah passed on to the detectives, without giving them the context, without telling them where she sat to hear it. He talked in short phrases, not trying to call attention to himself this time, but trying to get it right. He described the big car whose purpose he could only guess at. The stern people in black clothes. The crocuses on the lawn.
But the funeral hadn’t taken place in Yorkshire. Hannah was sure of that. It had taken place in the windswept town on the coast. Why hadn’t she passed on that particular gem of information to Porteous and Stout? She had her reasons. Because they had irritated her with their insinuating questions. Because Michael wouldn’t have wanted them to know.