6

When Chris went back to his hotel, I brought out the hard stuff, had a few more drinks and phoned Angela to tell her what we’d discovered.

‘What’s wrong, babes?’ she said when she answered, her voice tinged with alarm. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

I looked at my watch. It was 2:25 a.m.

‘Shit. Sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought it was only about midnight.’

‘Midnight’s still a bit on the late … Have you been drinking?’ she asked. ‘Haven’t you got work in the morning?’

‘Just had a wee party with my erstwhile brother.’ I giggled at how I managed to mangle the word erstwhile. ‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’

‘John, that’s lovely.’ I could hear her shift in her bed. ‘But really? I’ve got work in the morning. You’ve got work in the morning.’ She yawned, and I got a picture of her stretching, and felt a surge of affection.

‘I didn’t thank you for coming with me to see Mum the other day. That was kind of you.’

‘You’re welcome, John, but can’t we do this in the—’

‘So kind. You are a sweetheart, you know that?’

‘I’m a sweetheart, thank you.’ I could hear her smile despite her tiredness. ‘But you didn’t phone at this ridiculous time to tell me that.’

‘No, no, no,’ I said. Then I told her about the box with the shoe, and the photo.

‘You thought the photo was you at first?’

‘It was the hair style that gave it away. I never had a mullet.’

At this Angela started laughing. ‘You with a mullet. That would be hilarious.’

‘And a shell suit.’

She snorted. ‘Who is this boy then?’

‘Chris is convinced he’s our brother, but I don’t know. That’s a massive thing to keep from your kids. There must be another reason for this boy’s stuff being in my parents’ house.’

‘From what you’ve said in the past, Chris tends to be a wee bit dramatic.’ She yawned again. ‘I’m sure there’s a plausible explanation.’ I could hear the swish of cloth on cloth as she moved on the bed. I would have given anything to be with her.

‘Postcard moment: wish I was there,’ I said.

‘A postcard would read wish you were here.’

‘You know what I mean.’

She was silent, and in her silence I knew where her mind was going. The debate surfaced regularly. We led separate lives. I was selfish. I was commitment-phobic. I was a bachelor. And if I really wanted to be there, I could be.

‘Anyway, I just wanted to talk to you. Big news, eh? I could have had another brother.’

‘I’m sure there’s another more plausible explanation, John,’ she repeated and stifled another yawn.

‘Sorry I woke you,’ I said in a whisper. ‘But you shouldn’t have your phone by your bed, so it serves you right.’

‘Idiot.’ She laughed, and hung up.

My mother’s eye was large. And accusatory. Her fingers curved into a claw, as she stretched towards me. Imploring.

‘You don’t love me. You’ve never loved me. How could you leave me in here?’

Words like barbs.

‘You never cared about me … I gave you everything and you do this to me?’

Shame and guilt covering me, weighing on me like thick, black oil, my answer, my weak attempt at justification, dying in my throat.

Silenced by my remorse, my tongue lay as still as a corpse in a drawer at the morgue.

‘I gave you all the love I had and you leave me here…

‘Just like your father…

‘Just like your father…

‘Just like…’

I shot up out of bed so quickly my head spun.

What was that noise? Light blasted through my barely open eyelids. Must have been the postman. I felt sick. I made it to the bathroom just in time.

When I pushed myself back up from the pan, I remembered with a squirm of embarrassment being in here during the night, for the same reason. After thoroughly washing my hands I made my way back to bed. There, I sank into the pillows. No way could I go to school in this state. The head would smell the drink on me, order me home and write me up.

‘Disappointed in you, Mr Docherty,’ I could hear him say.

Again.

I needed to get my act together or I’d be out of a job. And I would have no one to blame but myself.

Invoking a silent promise to do better, I reached for my mobile. I read on the screen that I’d made a call in the middle of the night to Angela. Shit. What nonsense did I spout to her? I’d call later and apologise. In the meantime I had a school secretary to call and convince I was ill.

That wouldn’t be too difficult in my current state.

By noon, however, I was feeling almost alive and decided I should make use of my day off. I’d go see my dad’s old mate Harry. If anyone knew our family secrets it was him.

Gravel popped and crunched under the car, and the branches of the trees that lined the drive seemed to surge and whisper at me in the strong wind as I made my way up to Lennox House.

In a corner of my mind a voice intoned that this was a mistake. Let dormant secrets lie, it said. But I was on a track and couldn’t stop.

As I parked in front of the house I considered my conversation with Chris the previous evening. He appeared genuinely sorry that he was having to leave me at that moment; but he reasoned that this mystery had existed all our lives, so waiting a few weeks or even months until he got back to help wouldn’t make much difference. This was a trip Marjory had been planning for a long time and he didn’t want to let her down.

‘I get it,’ I had said. ‘It’s not a problem. Perhaps it’s best we don’t go diving into this anyway. Who knows what we might find out?’ I gave him a hug as he left. ‘Have a great time on your trip, and if anything else pops up…’

‘What, like a link to the royal family?’ He grinned.

‘Knowing our luck it would the relative with the hunched back, locked in the tower.’

We hugged again before he jumped in his car, and that felt good. A reassurance. I wasn’t entirely on my own.

Rain sparked against the windscreen as I released my seatbelt. I should stop. Go home and put this behind me. I shrugged off the thought, climbed out of my car, and ran the ten steps to the front door regretting that I’d left my jacket at home.

Inside, the receptionist took a moment before looking up from her paperwork,

‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

‘I’m looking for Harry Bone,’ I replied, taking in the cloying smell from the flowers on her desk, and feeling a little guilty that I wasn’t going to see my mother first.

‘Oh … and are you a relative?’ Her smile came and went in a flash.

‘No,’ I answered, surprised by her question. ‘I’m a family friend.’

Harry and my dad were not only colleagues, they’d been great mates. Surely on one of their long night shifts, while they waited for the local miscreants to get busy, they’d shared a few secrets? And it was no surprise that he and Mum were both in the same nursing home. There was only one other in the area, but it had been taken over by a new company, and in a place like this people took a while to accept newcomers.

‘Room thirty-two, second floor.’ Smile. ‘There’s a lift just round the corner beyond the stairwell.’

I walked over to the wide staircase and started to climb its carpeted steps. But now that I was here I started to question my reasoning. Would Harry remember me or my family? Would he be able to tell me anything? Would he want to see me? And what the hell was I doing here? That picture couldn’t be my long-lost brother. I was kidding myself on. Looking for something to distract me from my worries.

I was so lost in this chain of thought I almost walked by Harry’s door. Slightly out of breath, I paused before knocking. I should go. I was wasting everyone’s time.

Then a loud voice ordered, ‘Ye can come in.’

I hadn’t yet knocked, but feeling like a schoolboy ordered to see the headmaster I entered the room. The space before me was huge. It had high corniced ceilings, wide walls and an expanse of grey carpet. The only furniture, a television set, a small desk, a massive wardrobe and a bed tucked away in a corner. Apart from a different view, this could have been my mother’s room.

The owner of the commanding voice lay propped up on his pillow. ‘I could hear you breathing even through a closed door,’ the man said. ‘You need to take up jogging, son.’

‘I’m sorry…’ I offered while thinking he was right. I was badly out of shape. ‘I think I’ve come to the wrong room. I’m looking for Harry Bone.’

‘Aye, well, you’ve found him.’

Astonishment loosened my jaw and I gaped at the man before me. I expected the years to have altered him somewhat, but this? Trying to hide my shock, I corrected my expression and smiled weakly at the dried-up apple core of a man propped up on the pillows.

Harry’s bald pate was pale and liver-spotted, with a monk’s tonsure of sparse silver hair. His skin was paper thin and almost translucent, and the long, thin lump under the sheets hinted at the damage that disease and old age had visited upon him.

‘Jings, if it’s not young Docherty.’

‘Hello, Mr Bone.’

‘Come in, son, come in and sit down, and for fuck’s sake call me Harry.’

I smiled. A memory of Harry in my mum’s kitchen. My mother giving him a row for swearing in front of us kids.

‘To what do I owe this pleasure, young Docherty?’ And without waiting for a reply he continued, ‘Sit down, son. My, you’ve filled out. That’s polite speak for “you’re a bit of a fat bastard”, by the way.’ He cackled, then a deep cough rattled his frail form and pain clouded his eyes. ‘Oh son, old age doesn’t come by itself. So…’ he said, piercing me with his grey eyes, ‘…what’s up?’

Not wanting to get straight to the point I said, ‘I was visiting my mum and somebody mentioned you were also a patient here.’ I coughed. ‘Thought it would be nice to say hello.’

His eyes were rheumy and bloodshot but they missed nothing. ‘Whatever your reason is, son, it’s fucking good to see you,’ he said kindly. ‘How’s that mother of yours?’

‘She’s…’ I wondered how much to tell him. ‘She’s just been given a room in here, Harry.’

‘I fucken know that, son. I’m old, no’ stupid. I’m asking how she is.’

‘Feels like she’s getting better every time I see her,’ I lied.

‘Illness is a bastard, eh? Fine woman, so she is. If she hadn’t been married to your old man, I would have run away with her years ago.’ This was arrant nonsense, as anyone who had a pair of eyes and had spent any time with Harry and his wife could see that he was hopelessly devoted to her.

‘How’s your wife keeping, Harry?’ I asked.

‘Oh son, she passed away six months ago,’ he answered with the matter-of-fact compassion that only the old can muster. ‘Aye, she was done in looking after her old man.’ He paused, his eyes distant. ‘Six months, that’s how long I’ve been in this place. Anyway, that’s enough about me. Tell me about you. What’s happened to you in the past few years? Married? Working? Kids?’

While I answered his questions Harry’s eyes never left my face. He nodded at appropriate times and in a voice that resembled the purr of a tiger he punctuated my sentences with a series of ‘Aye’s’.

‘And how’s that young brother of yours doing? Still working for that newspaper?’

That newspaper was a local newspaper based in Bermuda, the only real job Chris got following his journalism degree at Napier University. Mum hid her disappointment over Chris going to the other side of the world to work by bragging to everyone she knew that her son was an international correspondent in the Caribbean. She never quite forgave him when he binned that in favour of soft drugs and beach-hopping.

Soon the subject came around to the real reason for my visit and I handed Harry the photo and told him about finding it and the shoe among my father’s stuff in the attic. I halted in my speech and with a churning stomach I waited to hear if he could shed any light on the boy in the picture.

He looked at the picture. Looked at me. And then back to the picture. Then he sucked on his teeth, and produced another hacking cough.

‘Where did you say you found this?’ he asked, when he recovered, his expression inscrutable.

‘In the attic,’ I replied, feeling a sense of strong disappointment when I realised he wasn’t going to tell me anything. ‘I was clearing my dad’s stuff out—’

‘I’m feeling awfy tired, son.’ Harry slumped back onto his pillows, and with a note of regret said, ‘You should go now.’ He studied my face and then his gaze slid away from me. It may have been my imagination but his energy levels had completely faded and there was a defeated tone in his voice.

‘Can you tell me anything about the boy in this picture?’ I asked, trying to hide my desperation. I was beginning to feel that this task was beyond me.

‘Aye. It’s you.’

‘But…’

‘But, sorry, son,’ he puffed. ‘I’m fair wrung out. Need my sleep.’ He shoved the photo back at me, as if it might burn him. Then he closed his eyes and turned from me.

What the hell just happened?

Harry had been delighted to see me, but the second I brought out that photo he shut down. He knew something, I was certain.

‘Harry?’

He stared out of the window.

Realising that I was going to get nothing from him, I sighed, turned and walked towards the door. When I reached out for the door handle I heard a rustle from the bed as the old man moved. I turned back, hoping he was about to offer me something.

‘If you’ll excuse an old man for speaking out of turn…’ He paused while another cough wracked his frail form. He spat onto a tissue and then wiped his lips. ‘I loved your old dad like a brother. He was a fine, fine, man,’ he said as if he was keen to offer me something, without breaking any promises. ‘You need to go, son, before I say too much. But think on this: only an eejit runs away from the present by burying himself in the past.’