by S J Bolton
She mock-glared at him, unconvinced, and then suddenly, her face was serious again.
‘You’ll laugh at this,’ she said.
‘Good. I could use a laugh.’
‘I think I’m being papped.’
‘Leave the house in your wedding dress and I can guarantee it.’
‘Earlier, when I was still in leggings and an old T-shirt of yours, someone was right outside taking photographs through the window.’
Xav and Ella’s house had no front garden; passers-by could rap on the windows, even look through them. As a rule, they didn’t; the people of Oxford were, for the most part, civilised.
‘Did you see who it was?’ he asked as Ella turned and flounced back into the kitchen. She’d be reluctant to take her wedding finery off now; she loved dressing up. He followed more slowly, checking out the window that overlooked the street. They’d never bothered with net curtains; ‘What am I, a maiden aunt?’ his wife had said.
Someone earlier that day had stood outside and taken a photograph of the inside of his house. Of his wife.
Ella could be right, it could have been paparazzi; it could also have been Megan.
‘I made dinner,’ Ella called back at him. She was a dreadful cook. ‘Second time this week,’ she added. ‘Are you proud of me?’
‘I’m a lucky man,’ he said, as he went to join her.
32
Westminster might be in Whitsun recess but Amber had late meetings in town on Monday and didn’t get home until after nine o’clock. Entering the house by the back door, she closed it quietly; the girls were always alert to Mummy sneaking in. Given half a chance, they’d both leap from their beds to say hi, whatever the hour.
The steam in the kitchen was heavy with cumin, lime and coriander; on the worktop a bowl of couscous was soaking in saffron water. Thank God she’d married a man who liked cooking. Dex appeared from the hallway, barefoot, ink on his hands, remnants of the girls’ dinner on his T-shirt.
‘Hey,’ they both said. She let her head fall onto his shoulder; he helped her remove her coat.
‘How’ve you been?’ she asked, as she took the wine bottle from the fridge. They had a rule about not drinking mid-week, but maybe half term and recess didn’t count as the working week.
‘The girls are fine,’ he told her, because she never asked about them first, and he knew she always wanted to. ‘Swimming, lunch at Chloe and Amelia’s house, afternoon at that hideous place in Thame. Ruby fell out with her best friend but made up an hour later, and Pearl, according to Ruby, has a boyfriend, but they haven’t kissed yet.’
‘That hideous place in Thame’ was Wizz Kidz, the indoor adventure playground; the girls loved it, their dad was less keen.
He held out a glass. ‘In less exciting news, we got the Canary Wharf job, and I’m lead architect.’
Amber kissed her husband, and felt less guilty about the wine, because now they could call it a celebration. She climbed onto a stool as Dex pulled a casserole dish from the oven.
‘Emily did mention something.’ Dex ladled out spiced chicken with apricots and pineapple. ‘She wasn’t too worried but wanted to be sure we knew and were OK with it.’
Emily was the girls’ nanny. Amber made an ‘I’m listening’ face.
‘She was approached by someone in Wizz Kidz, while the girls were on the big slide.’
‘What do you mean “approached”?’
Dex spoke in between mouthfuls, very little got in the way of Dex and his food. ‘The kids were all playing, and the nannies and mums were in the coffee area, keeping half an eye on them, you know how it works in that place.’ He paused and chewed for a few moments. ‘Anyway, a woman sat down at Emily’s table.’
Something was bothering Dex; he was pretending to be fine, but the lines of his face were tighter, like his skin had been stretched.
‘A woman?’ she said.
‘Megan.’
Amber put her fork down. ‘Megan was in Wizz Kidz?’
‘Yep. She said she was there with another family, although Emily didn’t see anything of them, had recognised Pearl and Ruby, so wanted to say hello. She sat with them for a bit, Emily said, asking all sorts of questions about them, where they go to school, what after-school activities they do, that sort of thing.’
‘Why the hell didn’t Emily phone us? Why didn’t you call me when you found out?’
Dex held up one hand, and God help her, if he said, ‘Chill, babe’ – she’d put a fork in his eye.
‘Emily said she was in two minds, but she kept a very close eye on the girls after that, and she hopes it goes without saying that she didn’t tell her anything about their habits or their movements. I believe her, Am. Emily knows she has to be extra careful with the girls.’
Amber got to her feet. ‘I’m going to see them.’
‘Babe, what’s up with you? I know she’s not exactly a role model, but she may have been telling the truth. She could have been with another family.’
He didn’t believe that; she could see it in his eyes. Dex was trying to pretend that everything was cool, because that was his instinct, but his face told a different story.
Upstairs the girls, who still slept in the same room, were fast asleep, the unusual activity of half term having exhausted them. Pearl, who saw pixies in the undergrowth and monsters in every cupboard, was tucked away beneath the duvet, with nothing to reveal her presence but a few coils of dark hair. Ruby, though, with her super-fast metabolism producing heat like a mini furnace, had pushed the duvet down to her feet and lay curled on the mattress, a soft toy clutched between her chubby hands. Amber bent to kiss her daughter’s forehead, to breathe her in for a few seconds, and felt her heart stop.
The toy Ruby clutched was not one Amber had seen before: an elephant, with silver-grey fur, softer than velvet, from a range that Amber knew, from years of buying baby gifts for friends, to be ridiculously expensive.
‘Hello, Mummy.’ Ruby’s huge eyes looked black in the dim light.
‘Hey, baby.’ Amber kissed her daughter again. ‘Who’s the new friend?’
‘It’s Elly.’
Elly the Elephant – of course it was. Ruby had no imagination, her mother had used it all up, giving birth to Pearl.
‘Where d’you get her?’
Ruby’s eyes were closing again. ‘Auntie Megan.’ She murmured something else, something so low that Amber barely caught it. Getting to her feet, she crossed quickly to Pearl’s bed, lifting the duvet cover to reveal her older daughter’s sleeping face.
Pearl, too, had a gift from ‘Auntie Megan’. Another Jellycat toy. Curled up on the top of her head, a little like a soft pink crown, was an octopus, its many legs entwined around Pearl’s hair as though it would never let her go.
Amber left the room with Ruby’s sleepy mumble ringing in her ears.
‘Auntie Megan said she’s an ellyfant. Cos ellyfants never forget.’
33
Xav went back to the salvage yard after midnight, grateful that the bad weather was making the night extra dark. As he’d suspected, the water tower wasn’t in Echo Yard itself, but in a separate area of adjacent land, entirely contained within high steel fencing. Xav tucked his car against the hedge – it was black and unlikely to be seen from the road – and then retrieved his loft hook, borrowed from home, out of the boot.
He’d had plenty of time to plan. Ella had gone out after dinner to the official opening of one of the new shops in the Westgate centre, and had arrived home late, too tired to chat. He’d hoped it would have stopped raining by now, but it had at least slackened off, and the cloud cover was a definite bonus. Feeling the damp steal across his face, Xav was surprised at how calm he felt, but as he approached the eight-foot-high steel railing and stepped into the shadow of the tower, he felt a stab of nerves. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to co
me alone. But Felix was rarely sober these days, Dan was afraid of his own shadow and he could hardly ask either of the girls.
Xav was dressed in black, like a cat burglar, and while he had a head torch, he didn’t want to switch it on just yet. He pushed the loft hook through the railing before using a Thames Water sign, firmly screwed into the metal uprights, to give him a leg-up and allow him to leap over.
Close up, the tower soared above him. Built of concrete sometime in the 1950s, it was a great circular tank of water held high on six concrete columns. It looked alien, even predatory, like early film adaptations of The War of the Worlds, and climbing it was the last thing he wanted to do.
Even so, he used the loft hook to bring down the ladder and began. Before he was ten feet in the air, the wind picked up and at fifteen feet an unreasonable fear gripped him. Telling himself the ladder was sound, that water engineers must still use it from time to time, he forced himself to keep going. At twenty feet the tower seemed to be moving, as though conspiring with the wind to shake him off.
The first platform, when he reached it, gave him chance to rest but from this point on, the climb became harder. Once he set off again, he’d be climbing a ladder that sloped backwards to snake itself around the giant cylindrical tank. Only a narrow safety rail, that could have rusted years ago, would stop him tumbling if he lost his grip. For a short while, he’d have to climb practically upside down, and Xav was a long way from being as fit as he used to be.
The moment his feet left the platform, panic hit him. As his body began to tremble, Xav fixed his eyes on the concrete and told himself it wasn’t far. He could support his own body weight for a minute or two. Chilled by rain all day, the cold metal stung his hands, but he could ignore that. His feet were sliding on rungs no longer parallel to the ground, but the ladder was sound.
He’d reached the trickiest part of all, pulling himself around the curved lower edge so that he could once again climb vertically. If he slipped now, he’d break his back. A last pull and he was upright again. Gritting his teeth, he climbed the last few rungs.
Pulling himself onto the upper platform, Xav collapsed and, only when he’d caught his breath, took stock of his surroundings. He was on a narrow ledge that ran around the circumference of the tower. The water tank, a large, contained mass of dark water, was directly below him.
As a stronger gust of wind hit the tower, Xav looked up. Above the centre of the tank was a smaller, circular structure that appeared to be some sort of control room. He struggled to his feet and, holding tight to the railing, made his way around the perimeter. The countryside surrounding the tower was flat and empty; the closest villages, and they were all tiny, at least a mile away.
Back at the door to the control room, he tried the handle. It was locked, of course, and no window to allow him to see inside. Xav took a step back, kicked out, and the door sprang open to reveal a circular space, like the uppermost room in a lighthouse, but without windows. Free at last from the risk of being spotted, Xav switched on his head torch.
The room was a teenager’s den. A square of threadbare rug covered the concrete floor and an oversized teddy leered at him from the far wall. A beanbag close to his feet smelled rotten. A pile of magazines had melted into each other and he thought he recognised one of the A level chemistry textbooks. Hanging from a hook on the wall was a battery-operated lamp. Megan had brought all this stuff up here herself, climbing that treacherous ladder.
Xav didn’t know whether he was more sad or annoyed that Megan had never told him and the others about this place. So much they hadn’t known about her.
There was no sign that anyone had been here in decades and yet his heart was thudding again, this time with excitement. Megan could surely not have two such hiding places; the film and signed confession had to be here.
The torch beam landed on a satchel, stuffed away behind the bean bag. Inside, Xav found a scrapbook and put it to one side while he emptied the bag. A crumpled tissue fell out, blood-stained, as though someone had used it to stem a nosebleed.
There was nothing else in the satchel, even in the zipped pocket at the back, so he settled himself on the bean bag and opened the scrapbook. On the first page, he saw his own face looking back at him.
It was all about him. The whole bloody album. Often the pictures were of the whole group, but he was centre stage in all of them. Lying full length along a row of seats in the common room at school; striding out of the river at Port Meadow, water streaming off his body; throwing wood onto a fire pit, as sparks flew into the night around him. He came across his old school library card, ticket stubs from bands they’d seen, a programme from Reading Festival.
On the back page, he found his old school tie stuck to the paper. He lifted the flap, just to check, and saw his nametag, Xavier Attwood, on the reverse side.
The blood-stained tissue had been his too, he remembered now, or rather one Megan had given him when Felix had kicked a football directly into his nose. She’d kept it. All that time, Megan had been in love with him, and he never knew.
But there was something, worm-like, wriggling away inside him. You did know, though, didn’t you? You just pushed it to the back of your mind because it was too much to deal with.
‘And no sign at all of the confession? Of the film?’
When Xav had got back to his car, he’d been surprised, and grateful, to see several text messages from Talitha. She was the only one he’d told about his plans. When he’d texted back, she’d replied immediately, letting him know she was awake. Needing to talk to someone, he’d phoned her.
‘None,’ he said. ‘I turned that place upside down before I left. It isn’t there.’
‘It’s probably where she hid it though, twenty years ago, when she knew she was going to prison. It would have been there all the time she was inside.’
A car flashed by on the road, too fast to have noticed Xav’s car, still tucked away close to the hedge.
‘Yeah, well that doesn’t help us now, does it?’ he said.
‘Did you leave the place as you found it? Will she know someone’s been in?’
‘I kicked the bloody door in – of course she’ll know. We have to confront her. We can’t keep on like this.’
Silence. Then, ‘Christ.’
He’d never heard Talitha sound so defeated. ‘Yeah,’ he replied.
‘Where are you going now?’
‘Home. Where else would I go?’
He hung up on Tal as the thought occurred to him that before too much longer, going home might no longer be an option.
Xav parked a little way down the street and sat in the car for a while. He’d never in his life felt more tired or less able to sleep. There were no lights on in his house, thank God.
Oxford city centre at one in the morning was rarely still – the clubs kept going until the early hours – but St John Street was far enough away from Jericho not to attract the drunks and the stragglers. The stone-faced terraced street, shining gold in the lamplight, was empty, and its occupants asleep.
For years, Xav had envied those who slept well and easily. He lay awake, for hours sometimes, haunted by waking dreams of what his life could have been like; what all their lives could have been if that night hadn’t happened.
Sophie Robinson would have been fifty-eight by now, her daughters grown women. She might even have been a grandmother. Years ago, Xav had found out their birthdates – by chance, he hadn’t been looking – but now every year on 10 January, 17 June and 25 August, he found himself thinking about the three women he’d helped to wipe off the face of the earth. When he saw young women in their twenties, pale-skinned and with dark hair, he thought of the two Robinson girls whom he’d never pass in the street or bump into in a bar. As the years had gone by, he’d started to ask himself if this crippling guilt would have been less if he’d taken his share of the blame twenty years ago. There�
�d even come a time when he’d started to envy Megan.
Conscious that tomorrow he had to be on the first train, that he had a full day ahead of him, and that the world’s bond markets wouldn’t close while he lost his mind, Xav at last got out of the car. The sound of the door slamming bounced off the buildings with a half-hearted echo, and he crossed the street.
‘Xav!’
It was half a call, half a whisper, and on any other city-centre street, he might not have heard it, but in the dark silence, it came floating across the tarmacked road. He turned and saw a woman on the opposite pavement, half-hidden behind a blue car. Megan.
34
Xav felt a sweat break out. He was afraid, and it was worse than the fear he’d felt climbing the water tower. The risk then had been definable. This new one was not.
Megan stood still as stone, letting him stare. A thought crept into his mind, one so disturbing he didn’t give it air to breathe, but dismissed it, never to be considered again. He held up both hands in a questioning gesture and she took his movement as a signal to approach.
‘I thought you were never coming home,’ she said when she was close enough to touch him.
‘Meg, what are you doing here?’
He could smell her perfume, could name it, God help him, even after twenty years. Coco by Chanel, her eighteenth birthday present from the gang. They’d all chipped in, but he and Amber had bought it in Debenhams one Saturday and the final choice had been his. Years later, she was still wearing his perfume.
‘I’ve had to leave my flat,’ she said. ‘I’ve nowhere to go.’
‘What do you mean you had to leave?’
What did she mean, she had nowhere to go?
‘The media have found me. They’ve been camped outside for three days now and the other people in the house know who I am.’
Xav glanced around; the street was still empty. ‘So? I mean, what’s their problem? You’ve served your time. And you’re not exactly dangerous.’
The words faltered on his tongue, Megan could very easily be dangerous.