ON SATURDAY MORNING, ANNIE WOKE EARLY, so she could get to shower first in one of the communal bathrooms – only Rick had his own – then she made her way to the kitchen. It looked out from the back of the house over the ill-kept garden. There’d been a frost, and each blade of the long grass which made up the lawn was white, separate. It was only just dawn and there was something other-worldly about the scene, the white ground and the pale light.
She checked her phone. There was broadband now at the Pilgrims’ House and she messaged Jax about an order for the deli that had slipped her mind before. Jax was her business partner and co-owner of the deli. Jax had founded the place and Annie had started working for her after she and Dan had separated. Later, when Annie’s parents had died, leaving her a bit of money, she’d bought into the business.
Jax had become her friend. The woman’s parents had come to England with the Windrush and arranged for her to be sent from Barbados to join them as a teenager. In the eighties, she’d moved north to Newcastle, following a musician boyfriend, and had stayed in the North-East once the relationship had ended. She’d somehow put up with the confusion and rudeness of locals in a region where there were few people of colour, and racism was as ingrained as support for the Toon, and she’d laughed off the petty aggressions and fought back with humour and style.
Who else would think to open a classy deli in a county where the pits had recently closed, money was scarce and unemployment the highest in the UK? But that had been more than twenty years ago, and here Jax still was. Bread and Olives was an institution. The wealthy would drive miles from the city for the ‘artisan’ bread or the local cheese.
To be recognized by name by Jax was an accolade. Annie had seen at least one regional celebrity slink out of the shop because Jax had shouted over their head to a customer behind them. She smiled at the thought and turned back to her phone.
When they’d come to Holy Island that first time, there’d been no screens in the house, not even a television. There’d been one pay phone but she couldn’t remember anyone using it, except Charlotte summoning her father to take her home. She was sorry for kids now; Annie and her friends had had so much more freedom when they were teenagers. Many nights she’d walked home from Kimmerston after under-age drinking sessions in the Stannie Arms. The roads had been narrow, the street lights few and far between, but nobody had thought it might be dangerous or even unwise. Now, parents seemed to track their kids’ every move, and they flew into panic if a text or a phone call was left unanswered.
Annie made coffee. Soon the others would appear. She’d put Jax’s freshly baked croissants into the freezer the night before and retrieved them now and put them in the bottom of the oven to warm and crisp. She laid the long table, with the jumble-sale plates, with dishes of jam and honey and her own Seville marmalade. The sun rose slowly, an orange semi-circle on the flat land that ran north-east towards Emmanuel Head, the shape spiked by branches which were already losing their leaves.
Phil popped his head round the door.
‘I’m just going out for a wander to clear my head. Start breakfast without me. I won’t be long.’
‘No worries.’
Almost immediately afterwards, Louisa and Ken came in, the dog at his heels. Ken gave a lovely smile. ‘Good morning, Annie!’ At least today he remembered her name.
Louisa had said the night before, that sometimes he forgot her name. ‘Sometimes,’ she’d said, ‘he thinks I’m his mother.’
Usually, Annie felt a little intimidated by Louisa, who hadn’t been one of the core friendship group. She’d only joined them because of her attachment to Ken. Louisa was beautifully groomed, with clear, unchipped varnish on her nails. She’d worked as a head teacher and had been parachuted in to failing schools, to bring them up to scratch. Annie had always felt a failure in comparison, but now, she felt sorry for Louisa and admired her easy care of her husband. There was no sense that she was embarrassed by him. Annie felt a little guilty that she hadn’t been a better friend.
‘We’ll wait, shall we? Philip said not to, but I’m sure he won’t be long. He’s just gone out for a walk. And Rick will turn up soon.’
‘I was talking to Phil last night.’ Louisa poured coffee for herself and for Ken. She added sugar and milk to Ken’s and set it in front of him. ‘He was telling me how special these weekends are for him. At work, it’s hard for him to be himself. I suppose it must feel like a kind of performance, being a vicar. So often, you’re officiating at ceremonies, and even at a normal service, you’re up there at the front with everybody staring.’
‘Philip was always an actor,’ Annie said. ‘I think he rather enjoys it. At school, we knew he’d get the lead role every time. We believed he was destined to be a star. He had the good looks, the attitude.’
‘I’d have thought Rick would be the one to take centre stage.’
Annie thought about that. ‘Well, Rick wasn’t such a good actor and he never had Philip’s looks.’ This was a stalling tactic while she took herself back all those years. It was true though. Rick had been too short to be traditionally handsome, but he’d made up for that with energy, a charisma that could light up a room. And confidence. He’d had that in abundance. Confidence and charm.
‘He hasn’t changed, has he?’ Louisa broke into Annie’s thoughts. ‘After all those dreadful rumours and accusations, you’d have thought he’d be quieter, a bit subdued.’
‘I can’t imagine Rick ever being subdued.’
‘Well, that’s true.’ Louisa turned her attention to her coffee. ‘I saw an article by one of his daughters in the Observer. Rather cruel, I thought, to go public.’
‘I didn’t see it.’ That was true. They opened Olives and Bread as a cafe as well as a deli at the weekends and she never had time to read the Sunday papers. She’d heard about it though. Rick was a local boy. Some of her older customers had been patients of his father. There’d been gossip over the coffee and the pastries. Annie had wanted to defend Rick, but after all his attitude to younger women was indefensible these days, and she’d remained silent.
‘I wasn’t even sure that he’d be here this weekend,’ Louisa said. ‘It showed a certain courage coming to face us all.’
‘Rick’s always been pretty fearless.’ And we’re his friends. He knows we’d accept him. Love him, despite his faults and his ridiculous ego. I can’t believe he actually did all the things he’s been accused of. Besides, we owe him. He’s been there for us through the bad times.
When Dan had walked away, leaving Annie penniless, Rick had been there, offering a loan, which they’d both realized would be a gift. It had helped pay off a few of her more vocal creditors. It had given her a little dignity, bought her time to think about the future. And before that, when Freya had died, and Dan had been useless, lost in a world of his own, it had been Rick Annie had phoned, sobbing down the line. Rick, who’d jumped on a plane from London to be with her, holding her, sharing her grief. Then when Dan had left the scene entirely, Rick had been back again with the money, helping her to find a place to live.
‘Do you really think so?’ Louisa set down her empty mug. ‘I’ve always thought he was scared of the world, that all that running after women and stories, the endless travelling, was a kind of distraction.’
Louisa occasionally came out with phrases like that, but Annie remembered what Charlotte, Rick’s girlfriend, had said during that first weekend, halfway through Only Connect, just before she’d phoned her rich father and summoned him to take her away. Rick Kelsall is obsessed with dying. Perhaps that was a better explanation.
But she just nodded. ‘You’re probably right.’ There was no point, Annie thought, arguing with Louisa. She was one of those women protected by certainty.
There was the sound of a door opening and closing and Philip stood in the doorway. He still had on his outdoor clothes and a strange purple hat with a bobble on a plaited woollen string, knitted, Annie remembered now, by one of his elderly parishioners. He’d mentioned that the night before. Phil leaned against the wall, one foot raised, so he could take off his boots.
‘I smell coffee,’ he said. ‘Wonderful coffee.’
He was still good-looking in a grandfatherly, silver-haired sort of way, though he’d put on a lot of weight. He padded into the kitchen in his thick woolly socks, and Annie wondered, not for the first time, how he’d changed from the edgy, tense boy to this relaxed and generous man. Perhaps that was what faith did for you. He was a walking advertisement for Christianity.
At that point, Annie expected Rick to make an entrance. He’d have been out running, of course, and would put them all to shame. He’d wait until they were all gathered then come in glowing, mud on his trainers. Only 5K today but I’ll go out later, run a bit further. Though she thought he too had put on a bit of weight round the belly since she’d last seen him. Perhaps he hadn’t been getting so much exercise lately.
The others were laying the table and making plans for the day. There was a decision to make. Should they stay on the island or explore a bit further afield? A yomp up Simonsides, or a leisurely day in Berwick.
‘Where’s Rick?’ Louisa asked. ‘If we don’t get a move on, it’ll be lunchtime before we’re ready to leave. There’s so little light now and we don’t have so long because of the tide.’
‘I’ll give him a shout.’ Annie was glad of the excuse to be on her own, even for the few minutes it would take to get to Rick’s bedroom. She was so used to living alone that gatherings of people, even people she cared about, freaked her out a bit. It was a sort of claustrophobia and occasionally she felt close to a panic attack. She walked along the corridor to Rick’s room and knocked on the door. When there was no answer, she opened it and looked in.
Rick was hanging from a white plaited cord from the beam that crossed the vaulted ceiling. He was wearing a striped woollen dressing gown that had flapped open to reveal a body otherwise naked. Everything about him looked different. It took her a while to believe that this was Rick, that it wasn’t a stranger who’d taken up residence. There were red pinpricks around his eyes and eyelids. He looked very old, his chest wrinkled and sprouting grey hair. There was nothing attractive about this body. Rick would hate anyone to see him like this.
She reached out and touched his wrist. It was icy, and when she felt for a pulse, there was nothing. Rick had killed himself. There was an overturned chair on the floor beneath him. He’d stood on the chair, strung the dressing-gown cord around the beam, and kicked it away. Charlotte had said all those years ago that he was obsessed with dying and Annie could understand that he might want to choose his own time to let go. This must be suicide. He’d had so much pressure. The accusations of bullying by his young colleagues. The dreadful stories in the press. His former wives selling their tales of his misdeeds. Then the fact that his show had been axed. He’d always liked a dramatic gesture and suicide was certainly that.
What did surprise her was the fact that, under the dressing gown, he was naked. Rick loved clothes and he loved dressing up. He would have prepared his departure from this life with care. He must have been desperate to leave like this, with so little dignity, so little thought for the picture he’d leave behind. There was something ridiculous, almost clownish, in the figure before her.
The shock hit her then and she opened her mouth. What came out was a scream, but it almost sounded like hysterical laughter. She cupped her hand around her mouth to stop the noise, because, more than anything in the world Rick hated to be laughed at.