HARRY CORNELL’S FATHER, Ben Cornell, worked at the large branch of B&Q, not that far from the River Tyne itself, although any sense of the river was lost under the rumble of ever-present traffic. By the time they’d driven there and parked, the light was already seeping out of the day, and even though it was only four o’clock, it felt much later. Ashley paused just before the automatic doors, her hands in her pockets.
‘Nervous?’
She gave Freddie a lopsided smile. ‘It’s not very British, you know. Confronting someone at their place of work. Perhaps we should write him a letter first.’
‘I already did,’ said Freddie. ‘Or at least I wrote emails. Ben Cornell never replied. Anyway, we’re not confronting him, Ashley. We’re just here to ask some questions. Ben Cornell is a victim in all this.’
They passed under the bright orange signage and into the bulk of the shop. The place was cavernous, with high ceilings, square lights, and a squeaky grey floor. Near the entrance were several rows of tills, which Freddie made a beeline for. The first one he came to was manned by a young woman in her early twenties with a bored expression and thick false eyelashes that made Ashley think of the bristly attachment for her mother’s vacuum cleaner. She brightened up considerably when Freddie appeared.
‘Excuse me, Miss,’ he said, turning the full wattage of his smile on her. ‘You don’t happen to know if Ben Cornell is here today?’
‘Yeah, he’s in,’ she said, sitting up a little straighter in her booth. ‘He’ll be over by the garden stuff if he’s not on a break.’
‘Thank you kindly, Miss. Have a great day!’
Following the big signs that hung over the aisles, they made their way towards the gardening area. Freddie was wearing a checked lumberjack shirt, and Ashley wondered if the other people in the B&Q – couples mostly, pushing trolleys and snapping at each other – assumed that she and Freddie were together. It was an amusing thought, and she allowed herself to imagine that they were looking for entirely mundane things, like tiles for the second bathroom they had planned, or a new shed that they would playfully argue over the use of. She was just picturing his mini office, which would double as a sound studio, when Freddie stopped and nodded.
‘There he is,’ he said in a low voice.
Ben Cornell was a short, wiry man with a blunt, stubbly face. He was wearing the B&Q uniform, but it was baggy on him. As they watched, he moved large bags of compost from the trolley onto a larger display. There was a blank expression on his face that made Ashley uneasy. It was impossible to guess what he was thinking.
Stop it, Ashley told herself. You’re being ridiculous.
‘Excuse me, sir? Mr Cornell?’
The short man straightened up and looked at them warily.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’
Freddie’s face was solemn. ‘I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.’
‘There’s a customer query desk just back down that aisle,’ said Cornell. He had dark grey bags under his eyes. Underneath the usual discomfort of asking a stranger for something they were unlikely to want to give, Ashley felt a deeper dread unfurl in her chest. We shouldn’t be speaking to him.
‘It’s about your son, Harry,’ Freddie continued.
Cornell’s eyes flashed. ‘Are you the police then?’
‘No, Mr Cornell. I am a freelance journalist. I wondered if …’
‘You come to my place of work now, do you?’ The anger in the shorter man’s voice was rising. He rubbed his hands together, brushing off dirt, and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable. You people are fucking unbelievable.’
‘We’re sorry to bother you.’ Ashley was speaking before she even knew what she was going to say. ‘We’re trying to find out a bit more about what happened, and …’
For the first time, his attention turned fully to Ashley, and as his face changed, she realised they had made a huge mistake.
‘You!’ The banks of fury went from embers to a volcano in seconds. People along the aisle were turning to look. ‘I saw you on the bloody news! The worst of the lot, preying on grieving parents to line your own pockets. I ought to smash your bloody face in.’
Freddie was between the two of them quickly, his hands up. ‘Please, Mr Cornell, there’s no need to be like that.’
‘No need?’ The man was shouting now. Ashley heard someone calling for security, and a wave of warmth crept up her body from her toes to the top of her head. Get out, get out, before it all goes wrong. ‘No need? She’s the one on TV parading herself around on the backs of dead children!’
‘Fucking hell,’ muttered Ashley.
‘What did you say?’ snapped Cornell. He leaned forward and around Freddie, as though trying to grab her. ‘What did you say to me, girl?’
Freddie took the man’s arm and pushed him back. ‘That’s enough.’
The punch was so quick that Ashley had barely registered it before Freddie was reeling back, both hands clutching his face. There was a shriek from the people watching, and then a nervous laugh. Quickly, she stepped in front of Freddie; the heat was prickling at her scalp, and her heart was thundering.
‘Get out of it,’ she snapped, her voice pinched with anger. ‘Control yourself, you idiot.’
Mr Cornell deflated a little, unsure of himself. A large man in a dark blue security guard uniform was jogging down the aisle towards them.
‘What’s going on here then?’
Ashley ignored them both and turned to Freddie. His glasses were hanging from his face and there was a ragged cut to one side of his left eye where the lens had broken awkwardly, and blood was running down his cheek. Hesitantly, she pushed his hair back from his temple to get a better look. By this time, Cornell was having a pitched argument with the security guard.
‘You can’t go around lamping customers, Ben. I’ll have to call the police.’
‘They’re harassing me in my place of work!’
Freddie straightened up, one hand over his bleeding eye.
‘Please, there’s no need for that. I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr Cornell. We’ll be leaving now.’
The security guard looked at them sceptically, and Ashley found she couldn’t blame him. There was a growing mutter coming from the small crowd that surrounded them.
‘Are you sure, Freddie?’ Ashley’s heart was only just beginning to slow down. ‘You’ll probably need a stitch or two.’
He shook his head, smiling slightly. ‘I won’t report this, Mr Cornell, if you don’t. I think we can at least both agree that the police aren’t needed.’
The short man looked like he might argue, but Freddie lowered his hand to reveal that his face was now streaked with blood, and Cornell looked away.
‘Fine,’ he muttered. ‘Just get out of my sight.’
* * *
Five hours at A&E later, Freddie walked out with four stitches and an incongruously cheerful expression on his face. Ashley, who had been sitting in a cramped waiting room, stood up and winced.
‘You look a mess. So what are you so cheerful about?’
‘Your National Health Service is incredible.’
‘We just had to wait several hours to be seen.’
‘But, I didn’t have to pay for any of it! Can you believe that?’ Without his glasses, he looked younger, more vulnerable, and Ashley felt an uncomfortable tremor of affection for him. In truth, sitting in the waiting room for hours had been a strange kind of endurance test all of its own; the Heedful Ones were thick on the ground here, lurking around corners or following patients down the halls like they were tethered on a leash. She was keen to leave the place.
‘Okay, yeah, fair enough. It is pretty incredible. It’s amazing to me you can call yourselves a civilized country without proper health care, you know.’
She meant it as a mild kind of joke, but Freddie nodded seriously. Outside, it was cold and gloomy. They stood on the steps for a moment, doused in blue light from an approaching ambulance. It seemed like a hundred years since she had fled her house and jumped into Freddie’s car.
‘Do you have any spare glasses?’ she asked.
Freddie sighed. ‘I do. In my room at the B and B in Green Beck.’
‘Ah. I assume you need them for driving?’
‘My eyes are absolute garbage without them, yep.’
The back of the ambulance opened and a large man with a sling on his arm practically fell out of it, shouting something unintelligible. Two paramedics helped him back onto his feet again.
‘I could drive us back,’ said Ashley, carefully. ‘I’m a bit nervous about driving cars that aren’t the Parma Violet, so it’ll probably take longer than two hours. And I could drop you off in Green Beck, then return the car to you in the morning. Assuming I’m allowed to ever leave the house again. We’ll get back pretty late.’
‘We could do that,’ Freddie agreed. ‘But?’
She turned to him, feeling as though the wild weather had infected her blood. ‘Fuck it,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to a hotel and head back in the morning.’