The weight is still in his belly when he wakes up the next morning, and all through the next day, getting worse. He can’t eat.
‘You’re sickening for something,’ Nina says. ‘I can tell.’
He longs to lay his head in her lap and tell her what happened, like he’d tell her things when he was a small boy, and she’d stroke his hair and make everything better again.
That’s all over now.
A police car draws up outside Leah’s house. A man and a woman get out. Simon watches Leah’s door open to let them in. She can stand, then. Walk about. Not badly hurt. Nina joins him at the window. He flinches when she strokes his arm.
‘Why don’t you go over and see how she is? When the police have gone. Don’t be mad with her over Matt Davies, Simon. There isn’t anything going on between them, you know. A mild flirtation, that’s all. I asked him.’
He hunches his shoulders, digs his hands deeper in his jeans’ pockets. His fingers brush against the cool metal of Leah’s bracelet.
‘Look!’ Ellie thrusts a card in front of him. ‘For Leah. I made it.’ It’s all vivid felt-tip colours, a jazzy mess. ‘It’s a picture of her,’ Ellie says.
Simon almost smiles. Yes, he thinks, that’s Leah.
Ellie goes with him over the road. It’s easier, having Ellie there. Leah looks pleased to see them. It’s the first time, he realizes, that he’s been inside Leah’s house. It’s weird, the way it’s the same as theirs, but completely different because of the heavy old furniture, the swirly carpets. Ellie runs about, opening doors and poking into things.
Simon sits on the edge of a chair in the sitting room opposite Leah, who has stretched herself out on the sofa with her leg propped up on a cushion. This is impossible, he thinks.
Ellie runs back in and stands right in front of Leah. ‘Where’s your mum?’ she asks Leah. ‘Who’s looking after you?’
‘No one!’ Leah laughs. ‘I look after myself. My mum’s in a sort of hospital.’
‘Is she sick?’
‘Getting better. She’ll be home soon.’
‘You were in hospital,’ Ellie says.
‘Yes, but not to stay. Just so they could bandage my leg up properly. Lovely card, Ellie, thank you! Put it on the mantelpiece for me.’
There’s a vase of flowers there already, with a florist’s card. Simon recognizes the handwriting. Art teacher italics.
Ellie sits down next to Leah and strokes her foot. ‘Does your leg hurt?’
‘Yes, but not as much as it did.’
‘What did the police want?’ Simon asks.
‘Just had to go over what happened again,’ Leah says. ‘The man – Mad Ed – they can’t find him. He’s disappeared. No one’s seen him.’
Simon’s heart is thudding wildly again. He feels sick.
Leah’s giving him a funny look.
What does she know? Can she tell how agitated he is?
Ellie gets up again and fidgets with the row of china birds on the shelf above the fireplace. Then she sits on her hands, watching him and Leah.
Silence.
He keeps glancing at her leg. It’s bandaged from the knee down. She’s wearing that short denim skirt. And her turquoise top, and her hair twisted like a rope over one shoulder.
‘I saw you with Nina yesterday,’ Leah says. ‘Got your new wetsuit, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’re going to do that surfing school?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lucky you. Wish I could. Not with this leg, though.’
‘How do they know it was him?’ Simon blurts out.
‘Mad Ed? We saw him! Right by the wall.’
‘What if… what if he just happened to be there, but it was really someone else?’
Leah laughs. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Like who?’
For a wild moment Simon thinks he’s going to tell her. But Ellie comes and leans against his legs. ‘Can we go now?’ she wheedles. The moment’s gone.
‘You can go whenever you want,’ he tells her. ‘It’s only across the road.’
‘Thanks for your card, Ellie,’ Leah says.
Simon stands up. ‘I’d better go too.’
‘I won’t be able to walk anywhere for a while,’ Leah says.
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘Are you?’
‘About your leg. And everything.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Leah says.
He looks directly at her for the first time. Does she speak in all innocence? Or has she begun to work it out? Is she waiting for him to tell her the real truth?
He can’t tell from looking at her face.
‘Can’t you stay a bit longer?’ she says.
He sits back down. The room seems bare and empty. There are no books, he realizes. There’s a magazine on the floor, and what looks like a college prospectus.
‘What’s that for?’ he asks her. ‘You going to college, then?’
Leah shrugs. ‘I might. Your mother brought it round.’
‘It’s good, what you said about your mother getting better,’ Simon says.
‘Well, we’ll see.’
He tries to imagine what it’s like for Leah, living here. All she doesn’t have.
‘Do you want me to make you a drink or a sandwich or something?’
She smiles then. ‘Nah, not hungry. But thanks, Si. Nina said she’d bring me some supper tonight.’
‘It’ll be better soon, won’t it? Your leg?’
‘Yes. A week or two, maybe? That’s when the GCSE results will be out too. Not that I care about them.’
The silence in the room makes him feel dizzy. He can’t think what to say.
Leah speaks again. ‘Then I’ll be able to swim again. You can show me how to surf.’
Simon stands up. ‘Better go,’ he says. His hand brushes against the silver bracelet in his pocket. He fishes it out. ‘I found this.’ He holds it out on the palm of his hand. Leah squeals. ‘You clever thing! Where was it?’
‘In the burial chamber,’ he says. His cheeks are burning.
‘You went back there? Thank you, Simon!’
He looks at her face. Her eyes are shining, her cheeks have gone bright pink. So she does remember!
He places the bracelet next to her on the sofa and watches her pick it up, kiss it.
He knows that she means the kiss is for him.
She wouldn’t, would she, if she knew what he’d really done?
He feels sick all day.
Simon watches the news while he picks at a plate of pasta that Nina insists he tries to eat. There’s something about a new kind of bomb some American has invented, that kills people without damaging property. Next it’s about a new manned space mission. Some government person talks about zero tolerance for youth crime. Another one goes on about lower standards in public examinations. Nina makes her usual comment about there never being any good news. She goes back out to the kitchen.
‘Listen for what they say about the weather, Si,’ she calls out to him. ‘After the local news.’
‘A body has been washed up… a man, drowned… possibly someone who’d fallen from the cliffs… so far unidentified…’
Simon’s heart flutters wildly.
Mesmerized, he watches the reporter talking into the microphone against the familiar backdrop of the harbour wall and the town beach. Simon realizes it’s exactly the news he’s been dreading and expecting to hear, for days. The horrible news that lets him off the hook and condemns him to secrecy at the same time. It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Mad Ed.
By the next day the news has gone round the town and everyone knows who the drowned man is, and everyone knows why. It’s the same man ‘wanted by the police for questioning about an incident at the studio…’ For the first time, Simon finds out his real name: Edward Morvah, thirty-five, single, farm labourer…