Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  “Do you know what happened to them?”

  “Old Teddy Armitage died a long time before they closed down. Mrs Armitage ran it on her own after that. She had the staff to help her, of course.”

  “What happened in the end?”

  “She died too, and there was no one to take over. The developers moved in.”

  I looked towards the new houses that were just in view down the road. “We used to have our holidays there. For a couple of years, anyway.”

  He smiled. “Very nice spot. Lovely gardens. All gone now, of course.”

  “Do you still see any of the staff? Do you know if any of them live around here?”

  “I doubt it. They were mostly young people – students doing holiday jobs, young people here for the surfing up at Newquay. Not many locals.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I used to know the head chef. He was a local man. But he died years ago.”

  I thanked him for his help, and was walking away towards my car when he called me back. “I tell you who might remember more about the place – Elizabeth Alderley. I think she used to do book-keeping for Mrs Armitage – something like that. She still lives in the big house up the road.”

  * * *

  The large double-fronted Victorian property was quite close to the new housing estate. I found it easily, but knocked on the front door without any high expectations. However, a woman of about eighty with unruly grey hair and wiry build answered promptly. She was wearing faded jeans and a woollen jacket, and was holding a trowel. I gave her what I hoped was a friendly and unchallenging smile.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. Vic at the shop suggested I speak to you. I used to have holidays with my parents at the Fairmile Hotel, and I’m trying to track down some guests we met there. I’m not having much luck.”

  “Good gracious. That’s going back.” Her expression relaxed into a smile as she gave me a slightly mischievous once-over. She glanced down at her muddy hands and wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve. “I’m not sure I should be giving out that sort of information to a complete stranger, assuming I even knew it.” She blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.

  “Ah, well, I can understand that. I don’t want you to break any confidences.”

  I left that remark hanging, and after a moment she said, “Oh, what does it matter? It was all so long ago. What were your friends’ names?”

  “That’s the problem. I’m afraid I don’t know. Except for the daughter. She was called Trina, I think. This was about two years before the hotel closed down.”

  She seemed to reflect for a moment, but simply shook her head and smiled. “I’m really sorry, that doesn’t ring any bells. It’s a long time ago now.” She looked at me more carefully. “Why do you suddenly want to find them now?”

  “It’s a whim really. I’m trying to fill in some gaps in my childhood memories.” I shrugged. “I was visiting the area anyway, so I thought I’d see what was left of the place.”

  She smiled wryly at me. “As you can see, the answer is not much.”

  “Do you think the hotel records still exist somewhere?”

  “Oh no, that’s one thing I do know. There was a fire at the place not long after it closed, and everything went up in flames. I know that, because I intended to go back and sort it out, but the office wing was destroyed.”

  I asked if there were any suspicious circumstances.

  “Oh, no, it was caused by an electrical fault.”

  One way or another, it looked as though I would find little help here in tracking down the missing family.

  * * *

  I left the woman and drove in towards the town centre, leaving my car in a peripheral car park. The narrow lanes of the old town seemed a world away from the London suburb I’d left yesterday. The gulls’ cries echoed round the whitewashed walls, and a few early-season tourists hovered in front of artisan shop windows. A pall of dampness was drifting in from the sea.

  I emerged into the harbour area and leaned over a railing, looking out at the mix of dinghies, yachts and a few fishing boats. Much bigger naval vessels lowered in the distance. The rigging of the nearby vessels clattered in the light breeze. I’d come down here with my parents once or twice during our holidays; the intense scent of sea air mingled with chip fat took me straight back to that time.

  Despite being thwarted in my search for clues about the missing family, I felt strangely revived. The weight of work done or not done seemed to have been lifted temporarily from my shoulders. For the first time, I was starting to understand the depression that had been descending on me for what seemed like years, largely unrecognised and unchecked. Here, it was as if I’d stepped out from under the cloud. I could empty my head of day-to-day concerns, and just drink in the sights and sounds.

  I headed for a pub and a lunch of fish and chips.

  Chapter 9

  Back in Truro that evening, I considered my options for a meal. I could go out and look for a restaurant in the town, or eat in at the hotel for a second time. In the end I opted for the latter. Its olde worlde charm prevailed.

  A party of eight or ten were sitting at a long table opposite me. I had the impression they were a family group, and it was someone’s birthday. As my meal progressed I gradually realised my eye was being drawn repeatedly to one of the party – a girl with shoulder-length dark hair, perhaps in her late twenties. She was pretty and animated, and was facing my way. I fancied that occasionally she caught me looking at her, though she didn’t seem too discomfited by my attention – perhaps just mildly curious.

  Eventually the waiter came over to ask me to sign my bill, and as I was doing so a female voice said, “Hello again.” It was the girl from opposite, smiling down at me tentatively. “We met yesterday afternoon at Latimer’s. I work in their marketing department.”

  She had even features, greenish-blue eyes, and a tendency to small dimples when her face creased in a smile, as it had now.

  I said, “My god – I’m so sorry. I thought you seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think where from.” I hoped this sounded plausible.

  “You probably see so many transport offices, in the end they all look the same.”

  “No, no. Not at all. Well, yes.” I attempted a smile and lifted my arms in submission. “I didn’t recognise you out of context.”

  She looked down at her loose multi-coloured top and red skirt. “Not my normal workwear, I suppose.”

  I held out my hand. “Mike Stanhope.”

  She shook it briefly. “I know. Sally Meadows introduced you to us all.”

  Sally was personal assistant to Bob Latimer, the managing director, and also seemed to have the unofficial role of head of press liaison.

  I said, “Oh god.” Inwardly, though, I was still marvelling at the fact that this girl had actually materialised here in front of me tonight.

  Her smile widened. “Don’t worry, I’m taking advantage. You can tell from the way I’m standing over you while you’re sitting down. Gives me the upper hand.”

  I smiled back at her for a moment. Then a well-built man in his thirties detached himself from her table and walked over. He put his arm casually round her shoulders. “Are you going to introduce us?”

  She looked round at him amiably. “Ah, Jack, this is Mike Stanhope, a journalist from London. We met yesterday afternoon. He’s doing a feature about Latimer’s. Mike, this is Jack, my fiancé.”

  Of course he was. Had I imagined for one second that she would be single and available? My brain went into overdrive as I struggled to unwind the fantasy relationship I’d already constructed: irrepressible fool.

  Her party was in the course of standing up and shuffling their chairs back. She said, “You’ll have to excuse us,” and they returned to their table. I pushed back my own chair. My two options were the hotel bar or a film on the TV in my room. Neither seemed to hold much appeal.

  Then the couple were in front of me again. “Some of us are hanging on for a while in the bar,” the girl sa
id. “Would you care to join us?”

  “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  She smiled. “You’re in Cornwall now. Time to experience a bit of Cornish hospitality.”

  * * *

  Five of her party came through to the bar and gathered at the counter. I made a weak attempt to pay for the first round, but it turned out they had already started a tab.

  It was her father’s birthday, and he smiled benignly at the assembled company, sipping his brandy. I felt sure he would have been waving a cigar if it had been permitted. He was around sixty-five with a reddish complexion, slightly heavy features and thinning brushed-back hair.

  The girl turned to me. “Mike, let me introduce you. Gordon Renwick, my father. Mary, my mother. Ben, my uncle. And you already know Jack.”

  “I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know your own name.”

  “No shame in it. You wouldn’t remember such intimacies from yesterday. I’m Ashley.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Ashley.” I held my hand out and she shook it for a second time. Her hand was warm, her grip brief but confident.

  For a while I found myself chatting to Uncle Ben, a retired sales manager. Then it was the turn of fiancé Jack, who managed a sports equipment shop in the town. Next on my list would have been Ashley’s mother, who was currently deep in conversation with Ben. She had a carrying voice, and I had the impression she could be quite intimidating.

  However, Ashley now turned to me. “What have you been up to today, Mike? Sampling the joys of life in the duchy of Cornwall?”

  “Well, I went down to Falmouth this morning.”

  “Ha! We used to live there. What were you doing? Another interview for your paper?”

  “No …” I broke off, wondering what to tell them, then decided the truth wouldn’t hurt. “I went there on a whim, actually. I was trying to track down a place where I spent a couple of holidays in my childhood.” I paused. “But it was pulled down and replaced by a housing estate, so there wasn’t much to see.”

  “You must mean the Fairmile. Was that it?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s amazing!” Over her shoulder she said, “Mike used to stay at the Fairmile!” She turned back to me. “But what on earth made you go there now?”

  “It probably sounds daft. I just had a fancy to track down some people we used to see when we were staying there.”

  She seemed intrigued. “Who? We might know them. Me and my brother Patrick used to play there sometimes. My dad knew the owner, Peggy Armitage.”

  I was still recovering from my astonishment that these people actually knew some of the near-mythological characters from my childhood – were trotting out names as though there were nothing remotely remarkable about them. But what should I tell them about my search for the missing family? I decided I’d keep it simple.

  “To be honest, I was trying to track down a girl who stayed there. It probably sounds a bit weird now, but obviously we were both about the same age. I just wondered what became of her.”

  A beam spread over Ashley’s face. “So what was this girl’s name? No need to be coy.”

  “Trina. I think that’s what it was.”

  Amazingly, she immediately said, “Yes! I remember Trina.” She looked upward, scanning her memory bank. “Tall girl. Dark hair. Bubbly personality. Mind you, I was only about six. Everybody seemed tall to me then.”

  I stood there marvelling. Apart from that single photograph, this was my first evidence that the mystery girl and her family had ever even existed.

  “You’ve got a good memory, if you were as young as that.”

  “She made an impression on me. I liked her, so I always remembered her.”

  “Did you know her surname?”

  “Marsh? Something like that?” She turned to her father. “Do you remember a girl at the Fairmile called Trina? Very lively personality. What was her surname? Was it Marsh?”

  “Unusual first name.” He squinted for a moment. “Trina Markham. Daughter of Desmond Markham. Must be her.”

  I turned my attention to him. “Do you know where they were from?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, no idea. Peggy Armitage used to introduce us to guests at the hotel sometimes, but it was all very fleeting. I’m amazed that I even remember Desmond.” He drained his brandy glass and placed it with emphasis on the bar, then turned away and engaged Jack in conversation. Evidently the conversation was closed.

  I turned back to Ashley. “Well, I think that’s truly remarkable. This is practically the first concrete evidence I’ve found that she existed at all.”

  “So you didn’t keep in touch with her at the time?”

  I shook my head. “I was a tongue-tied youth. We only knew each other slightly. Keeping in touch wasn’t on the agenda.”

  I heard myself hesitate as I said this. Keeping in touch had certainly been on my agenda, for a while at least, but evidently it hadn’t been on hers. It seemed inappropriate to mention it now.

  She looked at me questioningly. I said, “OK, so why am I chasing her up in that case? Well, it’s a long story. I’ll happily tell it to you some time, but this probably isn’t the right occasion.”

  She gave me a teasing smile. “So you think you and I going to stay in touch, do you?”

  Chapter 10

  Someone had broken into my house.

  I didn’t notice as I opened the front gate. I was feeling battered after the return trip from Cornwall – my second three hundred-mile drive in three days. How truck drivers dealt with such stress every day I’d never understood. I’d almost reached the front door before I realised it was slightly open. I felt an instant kick of adrenaline. I had certainly locked it when I left the day before yesterday. Then came a further shock of realisation; the intruder could still be inside.

  I hesitated a moment, unsure what to do, then shrugged, stepped forward and thrust the door wide open.

  It swung back and banged loudly against the interior wall. If there was anyone inside, they would certainly know they were about to be discovered. I paused and listened. No sound. I pushed the door fully open and stepped inside.

  In the main room the flat-screen TV had been wrenched off the wall and lay face down on the token hearth, presumably now dead. The old fireplace was exposed behind it like a toothless mouth. Many of the books and CDs on the bookshelf had been half-pulled out or completely removed and dropped on the floor, ornaments had been moved from shelves, the coffee table had been kicked over, and a glass vase was lying in pieces on the floorboards in the centre of a drying puddle of murky water.

  I contemplated the mess with horror. It was like a personal assault. Finally I stepped back into the hallway and headed warily up the stairs. Bedclothes had been stripped from my bed and garments from drawers lay strewn on the floor. In the office, papers were scattered all over the desk and the floor – notes from interviews, old article drafts, bills and receipts. Yet a pile of pound coins on a shelf had miraculously survived intact.

  In the kitchen, crockery and utensils had been pulled out from drawers and cupboards, and several mugs were lying shattered on the floor. I returned to the lounge and slid open the patio door. Nothing in the tiny garden looked amiss.

  Back indoors, I remembered my computer archives. I kept backups of recent work on an assortment of CDs, thumb drives and hard disks, and I stored these underneath the stash of plastic bags in the cupboard under the stairs. It seemed a disorganised approach, but I’d always felt this made it more secure. I lifted the plastic bag nervously, but there they all were, safe and sound.

  Relieved, I returned to the main room and surveyed the damage. It was hard to understand the objective of the intruder. Was this theft, wanton vandalism or the outcome of a frenzied search for something? All these possibilities seemed to fit.

  Whatever the answer, I felt a massive sense of violation. It was the same feeling I’d had when my web site was hacked, but magnified massively. On that occasion strangers had invad
ed my virtual space; now they’d intruded into my physical space. Contempt radiated from the chaos they’d left behind. It was like a violent slap in the face.

  I sat down shakily on the sofa, pulled out my phone and called the police, and then I phoned Joanna. I felt guilty about taking advantage of her good nature, but I needed a friendly word from someone, and I knew she would provide it.

  “Bastards!” was her summing-up, and her earnest fury immediately made me feel better.

  * * *

  Two uniformed officers came round surprisingly quickly, but told me no one would be available to process the scene until next day. Processing, one of them explained, meant taking fingerprints round the front door, where the intruders had clearly broken in, and possibly checking for any other forensic evidence.

  Having said this, he made it clear that he thought it unlikely that his colleagues would have much time to spend on the case. “They’re already fully stretched as it is.” But this break-in might provide evidence of a pattern, he added. “They’ll definitely want to know about it.”

  Looking around at the chaos, he asked, “What do you think has actually been stolen?”

  I glanced around myself. Was anything missing? Well, the ugly silver dish I inherited from my parents still sat in its proper place on the bookcase, the coins upstairs hadn’t been disturbed, and the TV had been trashed, not taken.

  “Nothing that I’ve noticed, but I’ll need to check.”

  “What about computers, tablets, that kind of thing?”

  “I was away, so I had those with me.”

  He nodded. “Lucky for you.”

  He reminded me to bolt the front door after they left, since the lock was now shattered and the jamb was hanging in ragged splinters.

  Once the police had left I poured myself a large whisky, savouring the instant buzz it gave me. I slumped down heavily on the sofa. What a bloody day. What a fucking day. All that endless driving, now this. Just when I’d felt unusually cheerful.