by Alyson Rudd
Dylan Stenson had pored over the photograph of the Stanning shed and counted ten whole bikes, not eleven, and concluded the body would be within a fifteen-mile radius but that the terrain and passage of time made no sense of a new search. Even so, George, urged on by the ghost of Lauren, commissioned one, so Dylan Stenson drew up an action plan for every ditch to be cleared on common ground. The thinking was that had a man dropped dead on private land, the owner would have noticed. They did not bargain for a reclusive farmer keener to hide a body than have his privacy invaded.
Dylan Stenson had sighed a satisfied sigh when Peter was eventually found. He was within the fifteen-mile radius. The rest of the story, how on earth Peter reached the ditch and why the farmer had been so lacking in common decency, was not something he could have been expected to deduce.
* * *
The light streamed in through the church’s red, green and yellow glass and Amber smiled as all the dust in the air sparkled. Her mother was here, she thought, right here and smiling at her. Amber wondered at how many particles of dust there must be dancing in front of her eyes. Millions. She felt light-headed all of a sudden and alone. A thought had entered her head. Her mother was in a million different places. Her mother was everywhere but here. The illuminated dust was a greeting from Lauren, a message that somewhere she lived on, was loved and was loving.
I miss her, Amber thought, even though I never knew her. I wonder if she misses me.
And with that thought the sunbeams weakened as if on a dimmer switch and the church became a sad and cold place to be as the new vicar spoke of God’s mercy and the sanctity of family life.
Later she hugged George and shook hands with Harry, who she barely knew but could tell was clever in a way that must make him lonely. She looked him in the eye and wondered if his devotion to science meant he never felt spooked or intuitive.
‘I’m glad you have said goodbye to your father,’ she said boldly, ‘and I’m sure my mother would have been glad too.’
Harry nodded but before he could reply, Amber continued.
‘But I feel perhaps my mother is somewhere, lots of places, maybe even there is a place where we are together.’
She blushed.
‘I have no idea why I said that. I’m so sorry.’
Harry stooped and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
‘It is perfectly possible that you are somewhere else with you, mother,’ he said gently and Amber was amazed by how level his voice was, that there was not even a hint that he was being patronising.
She walked alongside her father and grandparents towards Lauren’s resting place. There was a beautiful posy tied with white ribbon on her grave and a card attached which read, ‘The Stanning family thank you, dear Lauren.’
‘I might never have met your mother but for Peter Stanning,’ Tim said. Amber linked her arm through his.
‘I know,’ she said, and she smiled Lauren’s gentle smile which, as always, made Vera blink away the tears and prompted to Bob pull an ironed handkerchief out of his pocket.
‘I hope you are happy, my darling,’ Bob whispered to the headstone. ‘And that, wherever you are, you know somehow that your daughter is loved.’
Peter
The farmer was on patrol. Everything he did was on autopilot. He ate not tasting, he slept not dreaming. He stomped down to the furthest corner of his land aware it served no purpose, it was all rubble and rabble and weeds, but it was his and it needed to be checked. He had found a sheep in the ditch once, many years ago when Hilda was alive. When Frank thought, involuntarily, of his wife he smelled her milkiness, her scones, he felt her sunny practicality like a scarf warming his chest.
He poked among the brambles, keen to avoid the memory of less pleasant smells, of hospital wards and decay, and then he caught a whiff of something real and rotting, looked down and saw a man’s face, his eyes wide open, his mouth misshapen, his skin grey. Frank frowned and stomped back to the farmhouse, drank a half-pint of tap water, then collected a shovel and stomped back to the body. He covered it with soil and stones and pieces of shattered brickwork and then teased a wild shrub in the direction of the grave.
Frank had no intention of inviting the police onto his land, of inviting anyone over at all to stare at his dilapidation, his grief, his loneliness, to question him. He had no idea why a man had decided to die in his ditch and he could imagine the cynicism that would greet his ignorance.
* * *
Two weeks earlier, Peter’s wife had been annoyed he had behaved so dramatically but part of her doubted that he was being deliberately mystifying. He simply would not want to worry his children. They asked her the same question every five minutes.
‘Where is Daddy?’
‘Where is he?’
‘Where is Dad?’
She sat in the vast drawing room contemplating the irony. Her quest for freedom had inadvertently trapped her. She had to tell the horse breeder who had been thrillingly pushing her against stable doors and then hotel doors to keep away. If something dreadful had happened to Peter she could not be seen to be the cause and neither could she be seen to be so uncaring as to be having fun while he was missing. She baked and then, later, made jam instead. No one could criticise her for making good use of all the fruit in her garden and her jam, she knew, was quite superb. She pictured her children all grown up telling friends and lovers that they coped through their father’s disappearance thanks to the homeliness of their mother, hair swept back, spreading her own strawberry jam onto her tall Victoria sponge cakes.
Indeed, the local paper used a photograph of her doing exactly that when they published an interview that was ostensibly supposed to keep Peter’s name in the public consciousness but was really a sort of House and Garden-style piece on her lifestyle, her kitchen and her horses. Your skin, said the photographer, it is like porcelain. I know, she said.
She later sold the car because it spooked her, the way it had sat there afterwards, taunting her, the way Peter’s keys had lain on the table. As Easter approached she began to feel panicked, as if she had murdered him in her sleep. By Christmas, when a year had passed, she asked the local vicar to deliver a special service; not a memorial, but a service of hope. He was delighted to do so, knowing it would draw in the crowds and maybe the local TV cameras.
Not once did she confess she had asked Peter to move out the evening he vanished and she vowed she would never tell a soul until George, tall and successful and attentive George, wrapped his arms around her and said, ‘Please.’
The bramble soon covered the stones that covered the body in the ditch and Frank ignored the letter from a neighbour asking to buy the section of land that encompassed the ditch. He would have ignored it anyway.
* * *
One year earlier, close to Christmas, Peter had gripped the table edge, a wave of indigestion gripping his chest. He wanted badly to weep. He wanted badly not to weep. He stumbled outside to the driveway and felt in his pocket for his car keys. He must have left them on the table but he could not bring himself to return to the kitchen. He knew he was in no fit state to drive anyway and found himself in one of the outhouses which sheltered all manner of redundant outdoor toys. There were pogo sticks and space hoppers, a trampoline, roller skates and bikes, eleven of them, one or two were even his. He pulled the least rusty away from the wall, rolled up his trousers and left.
Peter pedalled furiously as the light dimmed. He wanted to find exhaustion and isolation so he could scream and not be heard. He turned off the B-road as a church came into view and found a rough track hewn by tractor tyres. He passed a farmhouse and half expected to be chased by a dog but nothing stirred. The track ended and cycling became impossible. The bike’s tyres had been almost flat to start with, now he was cycling on metal, not air. He was about to abandon the bike when he noticed in the gloom that there was an incline that would allow him to put yet more space between him and the kitchen and totally destroy his Raleigh. He stuck out his legs and let gravity t
ake over, feeling briefly like a ten-year-old and carefree, his legs stretched out wide, his neck wobbling as the wheels juddered. The lower he went, the darker it became and he knew he would fall, it was just a matter of when. Finally, he hit a rock and let go of the handlebars, laughing as if this were all happening to someone else in an old slapstick film from the twenties.
He lay there, maybe hurt, maybe not. He noticed there was water, a small pond perhaps, and he thought about taking off his clothes and swimming in endless circles but he wanted to cover more ground. In an act of rebelliousness he threw his bike into the water which triggered a fresh bout of indigestion. He vowed to walk until dawn, convinced he could rid himself of the confusion and pain if he pushed himself. It never became pitch-black and the sky retained a blue winter’s tinge. The sunrise, he thought, will be spectacular.
He left the land of one farm and entered that of another. He heard the distant bleating of some sheep and he blinked away tears as he remembered his sons cuddling the toy sheep he once brought back from a meeting in Lancaster and the only moment his wife had lost her cool, as her waters broke in the middle of a cocktail party. He felt ill now, nastily unwell. There was a bitter taste in his mouth and his gums were stinging, aching as if all his teeth were ready to leave him, just like his wife was ready.
No, he thought, she has already gone, and he stumbled, his chest sore and tight, into a ditch that was deeper than it looked, steeper than it looked, and the shock of the fall severely winded him. He could hardly breathe at all. I will rest for a bit, he thought, pleased he had found a glimmer of common sense. His body felt numb but he could feel a trickle of blood along his face from his forehead. He was on his side, which was better than being face down, and he wriggled in slow motion to turn onto his back and was rewarded by the sight of the sky lightening as hazy, elongated clouds turned from orange to pink to white.
Peter Stanning did not slip into another world. There was no other universe among the millions of similar universes in which he was still alive. There was nowhere for him to go. There was no alternative path. It was his time.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Clio Cornish at HQ for her intuitive and brilliant editing.
Oli Munson, my agent at AM Heath, with just one short comment, turned a premise into something with a purpose. Genius.
I am grateful to the experts – Philip Diamond, Associate Director at the Institute of Physics, Professor Chris Hull at Imperial College, and Professor David Tong at the University of Cambridge – for their precious time.
Thanks to Sarah Coward for her unwavering faith, intelligence and enthusiasm, and without the (very funny) chiding of my sons, Sam and Conor, I might never have summoned the energy to write at all.
So many dear friends have been supportive but, for not rolling their eyes, I must thank Nigel Taylor, Sarah Squire and my sisters Caroline and Claire. My inspiration is the remarkable Susan Hughes.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, ON, M5H 4E3, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com