Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  The two women came back downstairs. Ashley was wearing a red and yellow woollen pullover that I’d seen often on Joanna. She grinned at me encouragingly, and Joanna commented, “We’re a reasonable match for size.”

  Joanna provided hot drinks all round, and we sat chatting for a while. She and John asked Ashley about Cornwall, and expressed their liking for the South West in general. Presently, though, I was aware of Joanna giving John a visual signal that probably translated into something like “They need some space”.

  “We only have one guest room,” she said. “I assume that’s OK with you.”

  Ashley immediately said, “It’s fine Joanna. Thank you.”

  As we dispersed into the hall Joanna caught my eye. Her look said, “She’ll do nicely!”

  * * *

  Ashley smiled up at me. “I’m not into night-time garb.”

  “Me neither.”

  I stripped off quickly and slid under the duvet beside her. The pine bed frame creaked slightly. I was more than a little nervous. I leaned on my elbow and looked at her.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello yourself.”

  “This wasn’t exactly how I planned things.”

  She glanced quickly around the room, then looked back at me and gave me a wry smile. “Friends’ house. Clean sheets. Thin walls. Young son. I think there are rules.”

  “Shall we play it by ear then?”

  She nodded, and I shuffled tentatively towards her. She slid into my arms, and I relaxed into the soft pressure of her body. I muttered, “I might as well tell you I’ve been dreaming about this for months.”

  It should have been a sublime moment, but as I spoke the bed creaked again. Ashley stifled a slightly hysterical giggle and lifted her head. “You mean to tell me you’ve been dreaming about lying feet from your best friends and their little boy in a bed that creaks as soon as you draw breath? Sounds a bit kinky to be honest.”

  “I must have forgotten to mention my exhibitionist fetish.”

  She laughed again, and I gave an ironic scowl. The tension was broken, and I flopped on to my back and stared at the ceiling. “What’s to be done?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then I felt her reach over and run her hand cautiously up and down my chest. She said, “I’ve been thinking about this too.”

  “Huh!”

  She seemed unperturbed. Almost in a whisper she said: “Of course I have. Why do you think I’m here?”

  I leaned up on my elbow again, looked into her eyes, then leaned forward and kissed her. When I pulled back she wasn’t smiling; her features were relaxed and her eyes were closed. I shuffled to rebalance, took her head in both my hands and kissed her again – eagerly, gratefully, exultantly.

  After a while she opened her eyes and in slightly cracked voice asked, “How good are you at keeping really really REALLY quiet?”

  “Very good. Excellent. How about you?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  * * *

  By the time we got up in the morning John had left for work and Joanna had already headed off to deliver Jeremy to school. We sat in the kitchen facing each other across the breakfast bar. Autumn sunshine cast us both in soft lights and shades. Ashley was wearing Joanna’s red pullover again.

  I said, “I wish you could stay longer.”

  “What, in your sopping house? No thank you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “As a matter of fact I do know what you mean.”

  She leaned on the bar with both elbows and gave me a hazy smile. Then she sat back and stretched. “Jack should be discharged this afternoon, and I promised I’d be there tonight.”

  “I know.”

  I looked at my watch. “I need to make a phone call.”

  Thankfully, Dave Matthews answered his mobile immediately for once. I said, “Dave, I’ve got a big favour to ask.”

  “What, another? When do I get one in return?”

  I explained about the water damage as succinctly as I could. “I don’t know if there’s any evidence to find. Probably not. But I think at least someone should look. I might need it for the insurance, too.”

  “So what’s your problem?”

  “I need to be somewhere else this morning. It’s really urgent. I can’t be at the house to wait for the police to come round. No way.”

  “So the favour is …?”

  “Could you possibly organise it anyway? I’ll sign a statement or whatever later. They can get the keys from Joanna.” I gave him the address.

  He hesitated for a moment, and I wondered if for once I’d pushed his good nature too far. However, he finally said, “Mate, you owe me so many favours you’re off the chart.”

  When Joanna returned I explained my arrangement with Dave, and we prepared to leave. She asked me, “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure if my house will be habitable.”

  “Come here. Stay as long as you like.” She turned to Ashley. “And you must come again too. I mean it.”

  Ashley smiled warmly at her. “You’ve been really good. I can’t thank you enough.”

  I drove Ashley all the way to Paddington. It was a long slow trek, but it meant we could stay together longer. Periodically I kept reaching out to touch her, as if to reassure myself that she was really there. Finally she said, “I’m not going to vanish or turn into a pumpkin, honestly.”

  As she got out of the car at Paddington she said, “Give Trina my regards. Tell her I remember her too.”

  And I was on my own, heading north up Finchley Road towards the M1.

  Chapter 63

  Something was nagging at me as soon as I hit the M1. All I wanted to do was daydream about the previous night, but my brain wouldn’t let me. I worried away at the problem as I drove through the drab grey morning, and was still trying to track it down when I reached Toddington services; still trying at Watford Gap, forty miles further on.

  It was at some point after the M6 turnoff that it came to me. When Trina had phoned me I’d scribbled down the details of our meeting in red pen on the back of a printed sheet of A4 paper – probably an estate agent’s flyer. It had been lying on my desk ever since, and I clearly remembered seeing it before I set off yesterday afternoon to meet Ashley. Yet last night it wasn’t there – definitely.

  The people who had sabotaged my water system were the same people who had held me captive in that meeting room – that much was obvious. Their break-in had seemed just a childish act of revenge for my escape – but suppose they were still looking for information about Liam Stone? Would they have taken those scribbled notes? Why would they have seen any significance in them?

  I thought back over recent events. At one point they’d stolen my computer; therefore they could have read my recent files and emails. I’d never bothered to password-protect it – an omission I’d rectified with my new one. If they had, they would almost certainly have seen stuff about Trina and my search for her. Would they have concluded that she was Liam Stone’s daughter?

  My thoughts raced as I tried to follow the logic. The fictional daughter wasn’t called Trina, but they might still have made the connection. They’d already decided that the rest of the book was substantially true, so why not this?

  What had I actually written down about our meeting? I couldn’t remember exactly, but I had an idea it included the time, the place, even what she would be wearing. I hadn’t really needed to make a note of any of this – it was simply a habit borne of all the interviews I’d conducted over the years. Without notes, you had no evidence of what you’d been told.

  I broke into a sweat as I thought through the implications. If these people believed Trina was Stone’s daughter, in their eyes she would be a target – and it would be my fault. Her years of carefully cultivated anonymity could be swiped away at a stroke. And all through a bizarre misunderstanding.

  Suddenly I felt powerless, captive on this motorway while Trina was possibly stepping into d
anger. I had to contact her, to warn her. I took out my phone, but immediately realised the battery was flat. I’d intended to put it on charge when I got home last night, but in the fuss I’d completely forgotten about it.

  I fumbled in the glove compartment for my in-car charger, then remembered I’d taken it indoors the last time the car was serviced. Then it occurred to me that this was academic. She’d rung me on my landline, so I wouldn’t have her number anyway. How incredibly stupid of me not to have asked for it explicitly. Yet again, I was losing my grip.

  What should I do? I was in an even weaker position than I’d felt when Rick Ashton headed off to Rugby with Liam Stone. This time there was no crime to report – just a vague suspicion that one might be committed at some indeterminate time in the future. And if I did call the police and they actually paid any heed to me, how would Trina feel if they descended on her, even if it was merely in a benign attempt to protect her?

  No, the only thing I could do was meet her as planned and try to ensure she was safe when I got there. Subconsciously I pressed harder on the accelerator.

  * * *

  The exit for Chesterfield was seventy miles further on. That final long stretch of motorway seemed to take an age. Then I had about four miles of feeder road to contend with, and finally I was on a sort of bypass, looking for signs to a car park.

  With just under half an hour to spare I was speed-walking through the streets of Chesterfield, looking out for the market square. I kept glimpsing the town’s famous twisted spire, peeking through alleys or towering above other buildings.

  At several points I stopped to ask the way, but I was misdirected twice – or more likely I misunderstood what I’d been told. Everywhere I seemed to see black and white mock-Tudor facades – apparently a feature of the town. They all looked frustratingly similar to one another.

  Eventually I emerged into the square. It was filled with canopied market stalls in uniform ranks, and was bustling with late lunchtime shoppers. There was a phone box on the corner as Trina had said, and I cast around, looking for her and at the same time looking for any sort of threat.

  I could see neither, so I leaned on a wall, catching my breath and continuing to watch. For a while nothing happened.

  And still nothing. The minutes ticked past. Two o’clock approached. Then it occurred to me that there might be phone boxes at other corners of the square. There was none in view, but I couldn’t see across to the opposite corner. Cursing my stupidity, I made my way hastily round the square. Another pair of phone boxes came into view.

  And there she was: the woman I’d encountered at Euston all that time ago. No question – she was Trina. After all my speculation, it turned out I’d got it right.

  She was dressed as promised in a brownish jacket and darker skirt, and was glancing at her watch. I approached her diffidently.

  “Hello?”

  She looked up and smiled. “Mike.”

  Chapter 64

  She led the way to a modern-looking restaurant and bar. I glanced around warily in case I’d been right about my stalkers from the south. I could still see no apparent threat.

  “Chesterfield’s finest,” she commented as we sat down facing each other. She took off her jacket and hung it over her chair back. She was wearing a high-necked dark yellow jumper and a necklace of wooden beads.

  Comparisons were pointless, but nonetheless I found myself reflecting that her hair was a little darker than Ashley’s and a little longer, and she also looked older: my age, in fact. But she had a similar type of face – my type, clearly. There was a slightly haunted grace about her. I was aware of a faint but distinctive scent.

  She smiled briefly. “So. Here we are.”

  I smiled back. “I can’t actually believe it’s you.”

  “Well it is.” She was smiling cautiously, probably assessing me.

  I waited a moment, then said, “I saw you at Euston station. Two or three years ago. I thought it was you then, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “I remember.”

  “Really? Did you think it was me?”

  “No, not at the time. I didn’t remember you that well. I didn’t make the connection. But when I realised you were looking for me, I started to wonder.”

  “I must seem like an obsessive. I’m amazed you were willing to meet me at all.”

  “As you see, I picked a public place.” Another brief smile.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  A waitress arrived with menus and we both ordered food.

  “So,” Trina said when we were alone again. “What shall we talk about?”

  I smiled. “The Fairmile Hotel?”

  “Ah, the glorious Fairmile. I understand it is no more.”

  “Correct. It’s now a housing estate. A shame.”

  “It was nice,” she said reflectively. “We used to have holidays in all sorts of places back then, foreign holidays mostly, but somehow the Fairmile seemed special.” She smiled faintly at me. “You should have spoken to me sooner. We could have done stuff together.”

  “Ah, but I didn’t know how to do ordinary stuff. I was a thwarted romantic. I had a crush on you. The trouble was, I couldn’t imagine you feeling like that.” I shrugged.

  Another faint smile. “You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

  I hesitated, then said lightly, “You were going to write to me, but you never did.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Was I? It probably wasn’t the best of timing.” She gave me a dry smile. “I’m sorry if I left you traumatised.

  “I think I got over it.”

  We looked at each other in silence for a moment. Finally she said, “OK, so we’ve covered the Fairmile Hotel. What else should we talk about then?”

  I looked carefully at her. I had a sense that she had her piece to say, but was holding back. Playing for time, I said somewhat fatuously, “Good question.”

  “Well, we could talk about why you’ve been so keen to find me. Juvenile crush aside, I did notice that you’re a journalist. Did you see a story in this, Mike?”

  Immediately I felt put on the spot. What she said was at least partially true, but I didn’t want it to be. To deflect the idea I said hastily, “No, no, I would be more inclined to call it a kind of therapy.”

  Therapy? What the hell did that sound like? Floundering, I added, “I was divorced, I was depressed. The Fairmile Hotel seemed to conjure up a happier time from my past, but it was a bittersweet memory. I thought I might be able to shake some kind of sense out of it. And the harder you were to track down, the more of a challenge it became.”

  “Therapy,” she repeated. “A challenge. Right.” She pulled a plastic cigarette lighter from her bag and started tapping it absently on the table, evidently thinking. “And why do you suppose it was such a challenge?”

  “Well, for some reason you obviously didn’t want to be found. That is, your family didn’t.”

  “Precisely. It was a challenge because my father intended it to be. He made it as hard as he could for anybody to find us. He needed us to disappear.” Her look had hardened. “But you were determined to find us anyway. You treated our lives like some kind of game – a puzzle to solve.”

  Ah, now we were getting to it: her real opinion of my efforts. Well, I’d put myself up for hearing about it, so now I’d better listen. I said, “You’re upset with me. I’m sorry. I can’t blame you.”

  She sighed. “It’s OK, Mike, I didn’t bring you all the way here to lecture you. I just find it ironic to think that we’ve avoided being found all these years by the people we were hiding from, and now along comes Mike, just looking for a bit of ‘therapy’.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  She put her lighter down on the table, twirled it around and watched it come to rest. Then she looked up again. “It’s no real surprise, to be honest. When we went to ground, there was no internet, no Facebook, no way to find missing people online. All that came later. In the last few years it dawned on me t
hat in the end some persistent person was bound to start digging into our past. It just happened to be you.”

  “I can stop it,” I said awkwardly. “I mean I can take down some of the internet stuff and drop the whole thing. Not all of it, but some.”

  “It might be too late, but thank you for the thought.”

  I said nothing. Neither of us spoke for a moment, then she said, “You know, in some ways it’s the trivial things that bother me the most. Suppose my identity was blown. My passport would probably be cancelled. My credit cards might stop working. I could lose the mortgage on my flat. I might have a fight on my hands to keep my pension rights. I would suddenly be a non-person. Can you imagine the months of hassle it would all cause – years even?”

  “Surely it wouldn’t be as bad as that? You can’t be the first person ever to be put in this position. There must be procedures to deal with it.”

  “And you know this for sure, do you?”

  “No.”

  “No you don’t. And what about the publicity if it got into the press? You’ll gather that my father was hiding something. Suppose it all came out. My face would be all over the papers. Suddenly I would be public property. And all this is before we start talking about interrogation by the police, things like that. Jesus.”

  I stared at her, humiliated and unsure what to say next. Weakly, I commented, “You were only a child when all this happened. Surely you can’t be blamed for it now? Presumably you just did what you were told?”

  “That’s what I would argue, but if you were in my shoes, would you want to put it to the test?”

  “No I wouldn’t.”

  She looked at me again without speaking for a moment, then smiled briskly and said, “Cheer up, it hasn’t happened yet.”

  I cleared my throat. “So why exactly did you decide to meet me then?”

  “Ah, partly it was out of curiosity to see who this persistent person was.”

  “You could have got that from my Facebook page.”