3

4 November 1999
London and Annan
Britain

 

 

The flat seemed to have taken a deep breath in his absence. The air hung heavily above the few bits of furniture that he and Rosa had spent long weekends choosing in markets and in huge furniture warehouses back when they had moved in together. Each piece was like a time capsule to him, speaking to this future self that he had suddenly and reluctantly become.

He placed his suitcase by the door and bent down to pick up the pile of post that lay on the mat, a month’s worth of circulars, free papers and bills. He walked into the living room, switching on the light and putting the detritus from the mat on a table. He looked around, as if he had walked into a strange hotel room and was sizing up its possibilities.

For a moment it seemed no longer to belong to him. Its relevance to his life had been stripped away in his absence and he had the sudden desire to be rid of the whole place and everything in it, to start anew. But, he thought, it is, after all, only bricks and mortar and a few chairs and tables. What would he do but replace this collection of bricks and mortar with another one more or less the same, only in a different place? And, in any case, was he ready to become involved with estate agents and solicitors and the whole enervating rigmarole of moving house? He thought not.

The bedroom had always been dark, overlooked as it was by some very large trees whose branches sometimes came crashing down in winter storms. Indeed, a branch had once exploded through their window in the middle of the night, like a giant arm come to lift them out of bed. They had instinctively reached towards each other, even in their half-slumber.

He could not sleep in their bed tonight. Instead, he rolled the quilt up in his arms and carried it awkwardly into the living room, dropping it in a heap on the sofa.

He felt as if he had to shut down this world and its attack on his senses and his memory. Everywhere he looked, he felt as if a dart was being pushed into him. Vases, pictures, tables, chairs, carpets – each of them assumed a life of some sort as his eyes fell on them, each of them dredged some instance or other out of his memory and played it like an old family video in his head.

He went to sleep without even unpacking. After all, he had the rest of his life to unpack things.

Before very long, he woke once again, in that blue, rippling room and once more there was the sound of flapping wings before the wall was burst asunder by the bonnet of a blue car, Rosa’s body lying limp and broken across it.

 

‘Michael. I don’t know what to say.’

John Appledore had been Rosa’s closest professional, and probably also personal, friend during the last few years. They had shared the rent on a studio in a run-down part of East London and had fed off each other’s work. That their relationship was anything other than purely professional, Michael had no fears because John was gay and happily ensconced in a long-term relationship. A good-looking, funny man, he was also a brilliant photographer. While Rosa’s work had become increasingly commercial, appearing more and more regularly in newspapers and magazines in the last few years, John had been gaining a reputation for innovative and, frankly, startling photos. His work had begun to appear in upmarket magazines and next year an exhibition of his work was due to be held in New York, a city in which he was spending ever-increasing amounts of his time.

They embraced on the doorstep and Michael winced at the thought of how many times in the coming weeks he would have to endure the well-meaning words and sentiments that followed.

‘I was devastated … well you probably know from that awful phone call I made to you. I’m sorry, I should have thought of you and how you were feeling, but I couldn’t help it. It’s just … just so unbelievable that she’s gone.’ He broke down, putting his hand to his eyes, wiping away the beginnings of tears.

‘I know … Come on, John. Let me get you a drink.’ Michael put one arm around John’s shoulder, leading him into the kitchen and sitting him down while he poured two over-large whiskies.

John took a sip, shuddering as the spirit caught the back of his throat.

‘You know, I do wish you would have let us come to the funeral. It can’t have been easy for you to handle on your own.’

‘Actually, I think if you had come it might have been even more difficult for me to handle. Don’t ask me why … You just make these decisions … I thought that if you and Steven or any of our friends had been there, it would have made it all seem somehow even more final.’ He held his head in his hands. ‘Christ, at times like that you make the strangest decisions for the strangest reasons. None of it makes any sense. It probably never could.’

John lifted his glass to his lips once again, draining it and reaching for the bottle which stood between them.

‘God, I don’t know why I let you poison me with this stuff,’ he said, grimacing. ‘It makes me feel sick when I drink it and makes me feel sick after I stop drinking it.’

‘Yes, but you should really stop after the first bottle,’ Michael said and they both smiled. How many times had he, Rosa and John drunk themselves into helpless giggles in this room over the last few years? And how many times was he going to have to relive the events of his life with Rosa in the familiar places in which they occurred? Would it always be like this?

‘How are you feeling, anyway?’ John asked, as Michael filled his glass again. ‘I mean really.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, John. How am I supposed to feel? Exhausted, empty, sad, sorry for myself … all of that and a whole lot more.’

‘You do know that if there’s anything Steven and I can do …’

Once again, the feeling that these were words that he was going to hear a great deal during the next few weeks.

‘Thanks, John. I’ll be fine. But look, there is actually one thing you could do. I have the last few rolls of film that Rosa took.’ He stood up and picked up a plastic bag containing rolls of film that he’d placed on a table. I wonder if you could …?’

‘Of course, Michael. I’ll develop them for you.’ He beamed. At last there was something he could do to be helpful. ‘Were they taken in Italy?’

‘I think so, although I’m not really sure. She disappeared quite a lot during the six days before the accident.’ He swallowed hard as he said the words. ‘I’m afraid we argued about it. She took the car we’d hired and I was stuck in the house with nowhere to go until she got back. More stupid, bloody arguments. What a waste of precious time.’ He thought of them arguing quietly across their bedroom in Renzo and Giovanna’s house so that no one could hear them. Observing the niceties – a very English habit.

‘Had you been arguing a lot, then?’ There was reluctance in John’s voice as he asked this question. It felt like he was about to get in too deep and he did not want his view of this relationship between two of his best friends to be altered, especially as it was now gone forever. He would rather preserve it as he had known it. However, the question had to be plucked out of the air where it had been left hanging by Michael.

‘As you’ve seen often enough, Rosa and I were always at each other. It was just the way we were. I suppose, though …’ He hesitated, recalling the pain of their last few weeks together. ‘… we had been arguing a bit more than usual. That was one of the reasons we decided to go to Italy. We’d both been under quite a bit of work pressure – she was doing the book and trying to earn some money and I was up to my eyes in political shenanigans for the Post. To be honest, we’d hardly spent any time in each other’s company for weeks, maybe months. We thought that being with Renzo, Giovanna and the kids again would bring us back to ourselves, bring us back to where we had been. And a little taste of her Italian homeland might be relaxing for her.’

‘And it wasn’t working?’ John reached for the whisky bottle and helped himself to another drink, filling Michael’s glass at the same time.

‘No, I don’t think so. She had kind of climbed inside herself.’ Michael sipped at his drink. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen that in her, John. You know, all her life people took Rosa to be a calm person, unflustered by crisis, totally centred, when all around people were losing themselves in panic. I think it probably paid off for her in her work. Some of those pictures she took in Ireland – remember, the ones of the kids throwing stones at the army – they had something about them, something calm and focused in the eye of the beholder. It often worked like that. But she told me it wasn’t calm. It was what she called nothingness – she said, just nothingness. Those words stuck in my mind, John. She was irritated by the lack of it in others and when she encountered that she would simply throw the ‘off’ switch. Frankly, she could become strangely emotionless for one who was normally so sensitive.’ He felt a sharp pang of guilt as he said it, but continued: ‘She once told me how when her father died and her mother’s life was in tatters, she felt as if she was watching it all take place on a roll of film. Naturally, I expect she evolved, as ever, into the steady fulcrum at the centre of the drama, the organiser, the maker of tea, the acceptor of wreaths, the recipient of doorstep whispers from caring friends and relatives.’

Michael explained how she would afterwards have to face her own coldness, how she would burn herself on the icy edge of her emotionless being and, as she had confessed to him with tears boiling up at the corners of her dark eyes, could not even find the words to ease her mother’s pain of loss.

John leaned forward.

‘Look, Michael, we can’t help what we are. We’re the sum of our lives and no more. Of course, I’ve seen this in Rosa, but remember, she was also an immensely talented human being who used that distance to create terrific work. The obituaries in the papers – you may not have seen them; remind me to send them to you – spoke of her as a lost opportunity for photography, a great loss. She was a fabulous artist. Her work is a testament to that and, believe me, it’ll be remembered.’ He looked down, momentarily saddened. ‘But all that aside, Michael, I’ll just miss having her around, her sense of humour … and the invaluable advice she used to give me back in the day about my mad love life!’ They both laughed. ‘But she hadn’t been herself in recent months. She told me it was the pressure of putting together the book, but I began to wonder if maybe there was something else going on that she wasn’t telling me.’

Michael shook his head and said, ‘Nothing that I’m aware of, John.’

After a moment’s silence, John asked, ‘So, what about the book? Will it still happen; can it still be finished?’

Michael had tried not to think too much about it. It meant travelling back inside himself to a landscape that he did not yet feel ready to visit. The book that was due to be published the following year had been a large part of Rosa’s life for the past three years and the trip to Italy, as well as being an attempt to re-awaken their relationship, was also meant to be the opportunity for her to put the finishing touches to it, including the addition of a few final pictures to the magnificent portfolio of landscapes that she had constructed.

‘I really don’t know yet, John. It was almost done, as far as I know.’ And then, feeling tears fill his eyes, ‘I can’t really get to this just yet.’ He wiped his hands across his face and breathed deeply. ‘I guess that’s something else I need to do – get in touch with the publishers and find out what they want me to do.’

They both stared into the middle distance, not really having much more to say to each other. They both knew instinctively that there was simply an emptiness in their relationship that would never again be filled. John knew that he would drift apart from Michael, that Rosa had been the mortar in this friendship and without her, it would inevitably crumble.

‘I’ll develop these rolls tomorrow and send you the contact sheets so that you can let me know which ones I should do more work on,’ John said, standing at the door, Michael’s hand grasped tightly in his own.

‘Thank you, John.’

‘And remember, Michael, if you need anything, if I can help in any way just give me a call,’ he said, turning as he walked down the steps to the road where a taxi was waiting. Guiltily, he felt a sense of relief as he sank into the back-seat of the cab and waved to Michael, smiling as reassuringly as he could.

Michael, too, felt relief as he closed the door and walked back into the lounge. He poured himself another drink – one too many, he thought – and sat down on the sofa, where within a few minutes he had fallen into a deep and, for once, thanks to the whisky, dreamless sleep.

 

Michael pulled back the curtains and watched a leaf drifting slowly down onto the lawn at the back of the house. There was something odd about it and it only struck him as it settled gently on the grass that it was quite a way from any trees and yet was falling in a vertical manner as if it had fallen from heaven rather than from a tree on earth. He smiled to himself at the thought and turned towards the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. His head felt thick from the whisky of the previous night and his neck was stiff from the position in which he had lain on the sofa. The cold he had felt developing in Italy was beginning to make its presence known and he searched for a piece of kitchen roll to blow his nose and clear his head.

It was seven-thirty and today he would go into the office to pick up whatever pieces he could. He worked in the newsroom of the London Evening Post, a competitive arena in which the time he had spent in Italy could spell trouble for him. Stories had come and gone during his absence. He knew the longer he had been away, the more difficult it would be to get back into the best assignments. These thoughts were worrying him as he walked into the living room and caught sight of the pile of post where he had placed it on the table in the corner. All day yesterday he had ignored it as he busied himself around the flat. He decided he had better sort through it to see if anything demanded his immediate attention.

After sorting through the free newspapers stuffed with leaflets and flyers, he had to take a deep breath before dealing with the post. Rosa’s name was on the front of a number of the envelopes and it was hard for him. Bills – electricity, phone, gas. A couple of attempts by credit companies to get him and/or Rosa to take out loans or open accounts with them. He sorted them into piles – those that would go straight into the bin and those that would have to be dealt with in the next few days. There was a letter from an old friend of his who lived abroad and, with the outline of part of a footprint on one side of it, a card from the Royal Mail with Rosa’s name on the front, saying that it had tried unsuccessfully to deliver a parcel to her. It said he had twenty-eight days to collect it from the sorting office or it would be returned to sender. He checked the date and discovered that he only had one day left before the deadline.

It was bound to be something that Rosa had ordered from a photographic catalogue, but his curiosity was aroused and he resolved to go down to the sorting office as soon as he was dressed. It wasn’t far and the air would do him good after spending the whole of the previous day mooching around the house and then drinking far too much whisky last night.

 

The sorting office had a 1950s feel to it. It resembled a school building and reminded Michael a little of the large comprehensive school he had attended what seemed like another lifetime ago.

He followed a sign directing him to ‘Collections’, walking through a swing door into a dingy room with a large counter at one end.

In this obviously neglected space, Michael stood feeling similarly neglected. No one came and there was not a sound from anywhere. Behind the counter was a low partition beyond which there were rows of wooden shelving with pigeon holes filled with parcels of all shapes and sizes.

Soon a woman appeared and Michael explained he was collecting a parcel for his wife. The woman absently took the card, checked the address and disappeared into the dinginess behind the partition. She returned after a minute or so with a large brown paper parcel, about a foot by one-and-half feet in size. A typed, white label showed Rosa’s name. Michael showed the woman his driving licence for ID, signed a form and left the office clutching the parcel.

It was soft to the touch and sealed so completely with brown packing tape that, when he got home, he was forced to hunt down a pair of scissors to open it. Inside, wrapped in a piece of thin clear plastic of the kind dry-cleaners use to wrap clothes, he was surprised to find a man’s jacket. He searched for a letter or a note accompanying it and found one in an unsealed envelope, its letter-head denoting that it was from a hotel, the Lighthouse Inn, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Puzzled, his eyes quickly took in the short message written on it:

Dear Mrs Keats, we are delighted to be able to return to you a jacket found in the room you occupied during your stay in our hotel in September. We hope to see you again at the Lighthouse Inn soon.’ It was signed ‘J. Stewart, Manager.

Michael’s eyes returned to the jacket. It was light brown with a faint check of a darker hue stitched through it. Expensive, he thought, looking at the label, which displayed an Italian name of which he had never heard. But that was no surprise to him. Fashion and clothes had never been much of an abiding interest with him.

He put the jacket on, approving of the lightness of its cloth, but found that its chest size was at least a couple of sizes bigger than his thirty-eight. The sleeves hung down below his fingertips and the shoulders dropped a couple of inches too low. The owner was undoubtedly a big chap, he thought, eyeing himself in the long mirror that formed one of the doors of a wardrobe in the bedroom. Shame, he thought. I might have just hung on to it had it fitted.

This was obviously some kind of mistake. Rosa had not, to his knowledge, been in Scotland recently. She had gone away in September, the month that the note claimed she had been at the Lighthouse Hotel, but that had been a trip to Newcastle on a photographic assignment for some magazine or other.

Certain that a mistake must have been made, Michael pulled off the jacket, laid it on the bed and resolved to ring the Lighthouse Inn later that day to let them know that they were mistaken and that he would post it back to them.

As he got ready to head into town, however, it nagged at him, tugging at his thoughts. Whenever he tried to push it to one side it would return, like one of those irritating flies that can plague you in a hot climate. You swat them away and within a minute or two they return to buzz around your food or drink. How had the hotel come to connect Rosa with this item of clothing? It was unlikely, after all, that there was another combination of names like hers in the country – Rosa Keats – and, apart from that, how would they have come into possession of her address?

 

‘Hello, Lighthouse Inn, Mary speaking. How may I help you?’ The voice was soft and musical. He asked to be put through to ‘J. Stewart’ and explained the reason for his call.

‘Well, Mr Keats, the thing is …’ – there was hesitancy in J. Stewart’s voice because the delicacy of the situation had suddenly made itself very apparent to her. Husband receives man’s jacket in post. Jacket doesn’t belong to him but has been left behind by male companion of his wife. ‘… The point is, we were quite certain the jacket belonged to Mrs Keats’s companion because we had the room refurbished shortly before their stay, but found out after they left that the plumber had made a right mess of some of the pipes and water was leaking down onto the ceiling of the room below. When the bed was moved to lift the floorboards, we found the jacket.’ She hesitated, before adding nervously, ‘But, of course, there might be some other explanation.’ There was a silence at the other end. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eventually.

Surely not, he thought. Oh, Rosa, surely not. There must be some kind of mistake. Ten minutes after he had hung up, he was staring out of the window watching the world go about its business as if nothing had happened, as if everything had not just taken a step in the wrong direction. He had been too embarrassed to pursue the matter further with ‘J. Stewart’ and sensed that she was relieved when he brought the brief conversation to an abrupt close.

They had her address. She had evidently given them that, unashamedly; had had no fears at all about being found out. God, she had been having an affair! What a quaint, old-fashioned way of putting it, he thought – ‘an affair’. Someone else, the owner of this fine, expensive, Italian-tailored jacket, had been screwing his wife.

His first instinct was to pick up the phone and speak to someone, find someone who would tell him what he wanted to hear, that he was being paranoid, that this was all some silly mistake. He started to dial John’s number, but stopped after his finger had angrily pushed three numbers and replaced the receiver, realising that it would mean nothing. What could John do to reassure him? No. Even if he was just being paranoid, he somehow had to prove it. Tears of sadness and frustration began to form in the corners of his eyes. As if the grief and the hurt of her death had not been enough, now he was losing her life as well, was losing all the intimacy of the time they had spent together.

He pressed his face to the glass of the window, his breath spreading mist across it, and moaned like a sick animal.

‘Oh, dear God, Rosa, how could you …?’

 

The cold November rain splintered on his windscreen, the wipers sweeping furiously from side to side, but failing to make much of an impression on it. The heavens had opened up at Preston and he had been slowed considerably. Lorries, whose sides shouted about the glories of frozen chips or nappies, sped north showering his BMW with spray every time he overtook them, adding to the tiredness that was making the drive so difficult.

He hardly knew why he was doing this, driving to Dumfriesshire in the hope that he could prove that it was all some kind of mistake. It was so important to him that he prove that this was, indeed, the case. If he couldn’t, then the last few years of his life would be completely invalidated. The relationship into which he had invested a vital part of himself would crumble into dust and where would that leave him? Just the thought of it filled him with horror.

The alternative was, of course, to just let it go. Put it down as some bizarre error. Some confusion of identity. Some mistake on his part. Or some miscalculation by Rosa. Perhaps someone had stolen her credit card. Sure, she had not told him it had gone missing, but, of course, she didn’t tell him everything. Perhaps she had just forgotten. They were busy people. There were days when she would be working at the studio until late into the night and he would be fast asleep by the time she came home and flopped into bed. His hours were equally unstable and they had often been like ships that passed in the night, or kissed on the stairs, one coming home, one just going out. Perhaps in the midst of this frenetic existence she had just forgotten to pass on the tiny domestic detail that her card had been stolen in the underground or she had left it at a restaurant and now someone else was using it fraudulently.

This thought had sustained him from Birmingham to Manchester, to the extent that he had come close to turning the car round and heading back to London. But it was no good. He knew she would have cancelled it if it had been lost or stolen and, therefore, it could not have been used by anyone else. No, he had to somehow make it certain in his mind one way or the other. To go back home and have to live with this doubt was unthinkable.

He had left the motorway some miles back and, after following the A75 for a distance that made him think he had gone too far, he came to the small town of Annan. Traffic was bad – it was early evening and the road was filled with people returning home from their day’s work. He should have been doing the same himself, of course, but had phoned Harry, his boss at the Evening Post, this morning to say that he could not get back for another couple of days. Harry had reassured him that it was fine, but Michael had picked up just a tinge of irritation in Harry’s voice. Probably just having a tough day, he thought, but just the same he reckoned it would be unwise to push his luck. At Annan he stopped to get petrol and peered in the dark glow of his interior light at a hotel guide that gave directions to the Lighthouse Inn. He pulled out of the petrol station, rain still spattering on the car windows and followed the sign for the coast road.

About seven miles later, the village he wanted was signposted to the left. It was dark by now and the road was narrow, barely wide enough to take two cars abreast. At least the rain had eased off, however, and the sky was beginning to clear, revealing a bright quarter moon scudding between the clouds.

He came to a village, which consisted of little more than a few houses and a shop, as far as he could see, and then followed the road along what appeared, in the dark, to be a rocky coastline. Then he saw a sign bearing a line drawing of a lighthouse with a beam spitting out of it on all sides. It announced that the Lighthouse Inn was one hundred yards further down the road on the right.

The Lighthouse Inn was an old sandstone building with an empty car park outside. It stood alone, staring grimly out to sea, its slightly lighter outline showing through the darkness. He took his overnight bag from the back of the car, the wind pulling at the car door as he struggled to shut it. He bent into it and ran the few paces to the hotel entrance.

The roar of the wind disappeared suddenly as he closed the door. He placed his bag on the floor and stood there gathering himself, running his hand through his wind-tousled hair.

The Lighthouse Inn took its name seriously, indeed. Its walls were covered in framed photographs and paintings of lighthouses of every description. The window ledges held models of lighthouses, large and small. In the far corner was what he took to be the workings of an old light – huge cogs interlinked and levers stuck out at irregular points. Ropes hung the length of the walls and had been stuck onto the bannisters of the stairs. The overall effect was that of a concept carried too far.

He approached the desk which, like every other surface, was edged with rough rope. The only sound was the cracking and spitting of a large fire, which roared into a huge chimney to his right.

‘Hello?’ He said hesitantly, before repeating it, almost shouting. ‘HE LLO!’

He then turned and surveyed once again the bits of lighthouse that surrounded him.

A distant door opened and the sound of a familiar piece of music emerged – the theme tune to some TV soap or quiz show, he couldn’t quite remember. TV wasn’t really his thing.

‘Good evening, sir, welcome to the Lighthouse Inn.’

She was about twenty-five or so, attractive with blonde hair tied back in a pony-tail and wearing a blue skirt and a similarly-coloured jumper. Her skin had a slight glow about it, the glow that comes from sitting too close to a good fire.

‘Good evening. I’d like a room, please.’ He put his bag on the floor and rubbed his hands together to get some feeling back into them after the iciness of the wind outside.

‘Would that just be for the one night, sir?’ she said, handing him a form on which were spaces for his name, address and credit card details.

‘Yes, I think so,’ he replied.

‘Well, if you change your mind and want to stay longer, it won’t be a problem. We’re a wee bit quiet at the moment.’ Her Scottish accent was soft and precise and she had a slow, lambent smile that, when it flickered across her face, struck him as being well worth the wait.

‘Is Mrs Stewart in tonight?’ he asked, handing her the completed form and reaching into his pocket for his wallet so that she could swipe his credit card.

‘Oh no, Jacquie went home ages ago, but she’ll be in early tomorrow morning.’ She handed him his key, directing him to the first floor and added. ‘Enjoy your stay … Oh, and if you’re hungry or want a drink, the bar’s open.’ She indicated a doorway to his left, under the stairs. ‘The restaurant’s closed tonight, but I can do you a toasted sandwich and some salad, if you want.’

‘Thanks, I think I might just take you up on that,’ he replied, smiling. ‘Give me fifteen minutes to freshen up.’

‘See you in fifteen minutes then,’ she said, filing away his form and letting another of those smiles drift across her face.

The hotel had an out-of-season atmosphere. It felt as if it were in hibernation. Needless to say, his room persisted with the lighthouse theme. The walls once again provided a photographic record, it seemed, of every lighthouse in the world and the window was round like an enlarged porthole. Nonetheless, it was clean, comfortable and quite spacious.

He emptied his bag, laying the jacket he had been sent carefully on the bed. He showered quickly and changed into a fresh shirt and pair of black jeans before heading downstairs once again in the direction of the bar.

The girl was behind the bar, pulling at one of the pumps and emptying the results into a slops pail that stood in the sink. The walls around her were decorated with still more pictures of lighthouses and mysterious brass items – pieces of the workings of lighthouses sat on shelves.

‘Hello!’ she said cheerily as he entered, ‘I hope everything’s alright with the room?’

‘Oh, yes thanks, absolutely fine,’ he replied. ‘A bit heavy on the lighthouse theme, but I can live with it.’

‘I know what you mean.’ She laughed as she spoke. ‘You should hear the locals about it! It’s not as if there’s even a lighthouse for miles around! Now, if you’d like to choose a filling for your sandwich, I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?’

He looked down at a hand-written menu she had handed him. ‘Cheese and ham would be fine and a pint of …’ He surveyed the unfamiliar names on the pumps and selected one at random. ‘A pint of that, please,’ he said, indicating his choice with a nod of his head.

She poured it, her face a mask of concentration and her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. He got the impression that this was not a part of hotel work with which she was totally familiar.

‘And will you join me?’ he asked, pulling out his wallet.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t really, but … well go on then!’ she laughed. ‘I’ll have a gin and tonic, if that’s alright.’ She put the pint of beer down in front of him. ‘I think I deserve it. I’ve been on duty since the crack of dawn and the guy who was supposed to be doing the bar tonight phoned in with flu, so I’m here until the death.’

‘The joys of the catering industry, eh?’ He said taking a long draught from his glass.

‘Yes indeed. I’ve just about had enough of it.’ she replied. ‘Now, cheese and ham you said, didn’t you?’ She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen to prepare his sandwich.

He climbed onto a stool at the bar and began to eat his sandwich there when it arrived. She polished glasses and sipped intermittently at her gin.

‘Business?’ she asked.

‘Pardon?’ he mumbled through a hot mouthful of ham and melted cheese.

‘Is it business that brings you here?’

‘Oh, erm, yes. Well, business and coincidence, really.’

‘Coincidence? What do you mean?’ she asked, becoming curious. He had prepared his story as he had showered and it came out, he thought, like the truth.

‘Well, it’s a bit complicated. You see, my sister stayed here a few months ago, with a friend of hers and it seems this friend left a jacket behind. Your Mrs Stewart sent the jacket to my sister’s address and … well … the truth is, my sister died a month ago and I don’t know who the jacket belongs to. If she was close to someone, I’d really like to meet him.’ It sounded quite plausible, he thought.

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she said, and he realised with relief that she actually had no reason not to believe what he was saying. ‘I mean to hear about your sister’s death, and all. That must have been a blow. I presume she wasn’t that old.’ She stopped polishing the glass in her hand and put it on the bar-top.

‘Yes, it was, and she wasn’t,’ he sighed, ‘It was very sudden,’ he added, warming to his subject. ‘And then to find that she had been here seemingly with a friend, a male friend at that, that none of us knew about … well, it was a bit of a surprise, as you can imagine.’ He had been staring at his knotted fingers and looked up at that moment partly for effect and partly to gauge whether she was, in fact, buying his story. She was, however, nodding sympathetically, with a concerned look in her eyes. ‘We were close – she told me everything – so I thought at first that some kind of mistake had been made,’ he went on. ‘Anyway, long story short, I happened to be passing on my way to Glasgow and decided to come here to see if I could find out anything about this shadowy friend. At the very least I could let him know what has happened to her if he doesn’t already know.’

He felt guilt at this fabrication, but it seemed to be having the desired effect. Her interest was well and truly aroused.

‘Oh, but perhaps I could be of help. When did she stay here?’

‘It would have been in September.’

‘And her name?’

‘Keats … Rosa Keats, and her companion would have been a big guy, if his jacket is anything to go by. I have a photograph of her, if that would be any help.’

He fished out of his wallet the photo of Rosa that he had always carried with him. It had been taken in a restaurant before they had married. She had been caught laughing at something, holding her head in that peculiar way of hers, angled to one side like a puzzled bird, her dark hair, as ever, cascading down over her shoulders. He thought he could smell it, even now, as he handed over the photo.

‘Och, yes, I remember this lady. What a shame. She was lovely.’ She smiled sadly at him, holding the photo. ‘What I should say really is that I remember the chap she was with. He wasn’t all that young – in his fifties, I would think – but, God, he was really good-looking. In a kind of well-off way, you know? You know the way that rich people’s skin glows in a funny way?’

He evidently did not.

She laughed again. ‘You know, it’s like the money oozes out of their pores; they look tanned all the time without having gone anywhere.’ She smiled at the bewildered look on his face. ‘Och, you know what I mean.’

‘Okay, I think I do.’ He smiled faintly. ‘But tell me, did they have two rooms or did they share? I was wondering, erm, just how close they were. I may have this all wrong and he might just have been a business associate.’

He asked as nonchalantly as he could, but this was a question he would rather not ask, a question for which he would rather there was no answer. Nonetheless it was the question that he had travelled all this way to find the answer to. Whole lives can sometimes pivot around key moments. These are usually decisions that one makes – to decide on the spur of the moment to go to a party where you meet your soulmate; or to open a newspaper at a certain page and see a job that inalterably changes your life; or to step into a road that looks clear but, unknown to you, hides a juggernaut which is balling round a blind corner in your direction. Sometimes, however, hearing a single sentence that appears to the speaker quite innocent can move your life to another place entirely, in the same way that chaos theory asserts the familiar cliché that the innocent flap of a butterfly’s wings in China can set off a chain of events that ends in an earthquake on the other side of the world.

‘Oh, they shared, if I remember rightly. Yes, they had a double room.’ She casually picked up another wet glass.

Michael felt the ground shift beneath his feet. His heart was riven by pain that was beyond the physical. If a soul could hurt then his was hurting greatly. The last few years unravelled like a film falling off a spool. The images in the frames seemed to slip out, fall to the floor and shatter. He grasped the edge of the bar to steady himself.

‘Between you and me they seemed to be very much in love,’ she went on. ‘I waited on them in the restaurant – it was the waitress that phoned in sick that time – and they held hands and stared into each other’s eyes all the way through the meal. She was so busy looking at him that she hardly ate anything. I remember that because Chef was bloody furious. He was all for going out and asking if there was something wrong with the food … hey, are you alright?’ she asked, looking curiously at him and noticing that something had changed in him, perhaps the colour draining from his face. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m being stupid, forgetting how difficult this must be for you; let me get you another drink.’

He asked for a Bowmore malt whisky with a little water, reviving slightly as the smoky liquor slipped down his throat.

Just then some locals entered the bar and she went off to serve them, exchanging noisy stories about the excesses of the weekend and leaving Michael alone with thoughts he would rather not have. Indeed, they were thoughts that several more malts failed to quell.

Eventually, the locals drifted off, noisily making their farewells, leaving Michael and the girl alone again in the bar. He was by now seated at a table and she came over to join him, sitting down with a sigh.

‘He was Italian,’ she said after a moment had passed.

‘What? You mean …’ He ran his hand through his hair in exasperation. ‘Italian?’

‘Yes, your sister’s friend, he was Italian. I heard them speaking Italian together and when he ordered his food, he had an accent. He was Italian. I thought you should know.’

‘Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.’ His words were quiet.

‘But I’m afraid I don’t know his name,’ she went on.

‘No?’ he asked, disappointed, beginning to come to his senses and becoming curious.

‘No. I’m afraid your sister signed the register as Mrs and Mr Keats and she paid with her Mastercard. I checked.’ She got up and disappeared behind the bar for a moment, returning with a bottle of Champagne and a couple of glasses. Jacquie … Mrs Stewart … said I could help myself to a bottle for staying on late tonight and locking up. ‘Like to join me?’

‘Why not?’ he replied, smiling.

‘It’s Helen, by the way. Helen Matthieson,’ she said holding out a hand to him.

‘And I’m Michael, he said shaking the hand.

‘I know. I already checked it out on your registration card. Michael John Keats, to be precise. Very poetic. Would you be kind enough to do the honours?’ She handed him the bottle and he removed the foil and the wire from around the cork. He was no expert at opening Champagne bottles, but he managed it without losing too much of the contents. He filled the two glasses she had brought and they raised them in a toast.

‘To lighthousemen everywhere,’ he said.

‘To lighthousemen,’ she replied, laughing and adding, ‘Long may their lights shine!’

‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to be drinking this, given that I’ve already had a pint and a few generous malts. You know what they say about mixing the grape and the grain.’

‘Och, Champagne’s absolutely the best idea there ever was,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, carpe diem, Michael. Carpe diem.’

There were a few moments of silence between them.

‘How long were you married, then?’ she said quietly, breaking the silence as she raised her glass to her lips, looking directly at him.

He had been lost in the sound of the wind raging outside, driving squally rain against the windows.

‘Sorry?’

‘Ah, Michael. That look in your eyes when I told you that they shared a room, Rosa and her companion. That wasn’t the look of a brother trying to find a friend of his dead sister’s. That was the look of a lover wronged. For a moment you looked utterly destroyed.’

He looked at her, the feeling of devastation momentarily returning.

‘Well? I’m not wrong, am I?’

A pause. He smiled.

‘How old are you, Helen?’

‘Oh, twenty-five going on sixty, my mother says.’ A smile spread across her face. She had cut through the facade of his secret like a knife through rice-paper.

‘She’s not wrong, your mother,’ he sighed. ‘Yes. You’re right. Rosa was my wife. When she was here, I thought she was actually in Newcastle on a photographic assignment. She was a photographer … and …’ The alcohol, tiredness and the emotion of the last month took hold of him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It must be awful. I understand.’ She reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘You obviously had no idea …’

‘None at all. I think that’s what’s making it so hard.’

And he told her the whole story, the shifting sands of their marriage, the photography, the trip to Italy, the blue car. She listened intently, the rain hammering on the windows of the bar.

He finished and felt like he had emptied himself. He felt, somehow, better for having shared his story with a virtual stranger.

‘So, what now for Michael Keats?’

‘Who the hell knows, Helen. I need to get back to work, I suppose. But I need to know, too, about this guy who’s barged into my life, who was seeing my wife. I’d like to find out more. How long it was going on. I’d also like to find the driver of the car that killed Rosa. The Italian police don’t seem to be getting very far. Those two things would close the circle for me and I think I could kind of get on with my life.’

‘That would mean going back to Italy for a while?’

‘Possibly … I guess, yes.’

Helen yawned across the table from him.

‘But look, you’re knackered. When did you start work this morning?

‘Oh …’ she stifled another yawn. ‘… about six, I think.’

‘So, time you went to bed, then!’

They both stood up.

‘Breakfast is from seven o’clock. I’m on duty again.’

‘You need to find another profession! But, thanks for the Champagne and for listening. I didn’t mean to burden you with all my problems.’

‘Sometimes, you know, all you need is to talk to someone.’ She touched his arm. ‘Goodnight, Michael. See you in the morning.’

 

As he climbed the stairs, he realised he had drunk a little more than he should have. He managed to get the key into the lock at the second attempt and entered the room. The jacket lay on the bed where he had left it on his arrival. He picked it up and held it at arm’s length, swaying slightly from the cumulative effects of the beer, whisky and Champagne.

‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!’ he hissed, hot tears beginning to roll down his cheeks. He held it against his body as if he were in a shop trying on a jacket with a view to buying it and once again put it on, as if somehow that would make him feel better. The sleeves still dangled three inches below his fingertips and he wiped the tears from his cheeks with one of them. This was one big bastard, he thought. He put his hands into the pockets and eyed himself in the mirror. He looked like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes. All at once, however, the passion left his body, his shoulders fell forward and he sighed and began to remove the jacket. He was about to throw it back onto the bed when he felt something inside the lining at the hem, something rectangular and hard, like a small piece of card. He felt in the pockets and sure enough there was a hole in one. That’ll teach you to put such fine lining on a jacket, he thought to himself as he folded it back so that he could reach two fingers down into the bottom corner where the card was lodged.

His fingers found it and lost it a couple of times before he was able to pull it out. ‘Got you!’ he breathed, looking at a business card. He mouthed the words written on it as he read them. ‘Massimo Di Livio, Via Broletto No. 110, Milano.’ There were simply those words and a phone number.

He stared into space wondering who this Di Livio character was. It need not necessarily be the same man who was having a fling with Rosa. It could be a business associate, anyone. But it was a start, a clue. He put the card carefully in his wallet, folded the jacket and climbed out of his clothes, kicking them off carelessly onto the floor, before crawling into bed. Before too long, the room stopped spinning and he drifted off into a shallow sleep.

Outside, rain had begun to rattle on the window once again and the waves beat against the coastline like a warning.