As March comes in like a lion, Toby sits opposite Laurel, who stares up at the ceiling, chewing gum. From her studied lack of interest, he knows that she is deeply upset. He shifts on his seat, trying to ignore the pain in his lower abdomen. He can’t help himself, though. Inside of him, he can feel the cancer growing, multiplying in mushrooming nodules. Sometimes, he feels it actively crawling upwards, sideways and along his organs. It has become part of him and he is no longer certain where the cancer ends and he begins. It has crept over him, carpeting his insides with a stealth that leaves him breathless. He looks gaunt, the flesh around his cheeks hanging down in chalky-coloured folds.
His operation was cancelled at his last consultation. The cancer has spread to his lymph nodes and liver. But, looking at his fingernails, calcified and worn, in truth he had known even before then, without articulating it, that it would not be an operating table he would lie on soon.
‘I saw a rainbow this morning,’ he says. ‘Did you manage to see it?’
Laurel’s eyes remain looking upwards and she does not respond.
‘Funny the things you realise you’ll miss.’ Toby sighs, leaning forward across the space between them. ‘I’ll miss you, L. I really will. I feel . . .’ He grimaces, his mouth contorting uselessly, trying to articulate what he means. ‘I feel I’ve let you down.’
Laurel chews on her lip, working at it so forcefully that Toby is worried that soon she will draw blood.
‘Stop it, L. Please. Don’t hurt yourself . . . We have to talk. We have to prepare ourselves for next week. For the hearing.’ He rubs the back of his neck. ‘Your sister’s offered to speak on your behalf. To help you in the judicial review.’
Laurel’s head snaps up. ‘Is she allowed?’
‘Yes. It’s not common. But we’ve made the application and the court just agreed. We argued there were extraordinary circumstances. New evidence might come to light, which could influence the parole board. It might help you to have some familial support. Some back-up. All these years, you’ve never had that, have you? And from what Rosie said when I saw her here . . .’ Toby tries to catch Laurel’s eye but she ducks her head. ‘What do you think?’ He shrugs helplessly in the silence which thickens around them. ‘L? What do you think?’
He looks at her, at the harsh set of her face, and wonders again why she cannot speak, why she cannot help herself.
‘Could you talk to me, L? Could you? Just because this might be the last time we see each other before the actual day of the hearing. And there are so many things that I feel are unresolved. Could we try and deal with them today?’ He waits, but no answer comes from her. ‘Has she been in touch?’
‘Rosie? No. Not since her visit.’
‘No letters or anything?’
‘No.’ Laurel eyeballs him. ‘You trust her, do you?’
He thinks about it. ‘I think she’s frightened. She’s been brought into the public eye because of this Devon thing. She never wanted it but now she has to deal with it, make the best of it. I think she cares about you, yes. Do I trust her?’ He expels a long breath. ‘In all honesty, I don’t know. But I feel very strongly that time is running out and we should take the opportunities that present themselves.’
‘Running out for me? Or for you?’ Laurel looks at him, blinking slowly. Her hair is greasy and her skin a greyish colour. Toby feels his heart constrict as he notices the boniness of her wrists, the pulse point in her temple, flickering rapidly.
‘For both of us,’ he says softly.
Laurel raises her arms above her head, and cracks her knuckles. ‘What if I told you that I had proof Rosie was involved?’ she says lightly.
‘What?’ Toby sits forward. ‘What proof? Involved in what happened to Kirstie? What are you talking about?’
Laurel shrugs. ‘Nothing concrete. But something that would harm her. Make people wonder. About her. About what was going on back then.’
‘I’d want to see it. Right now. And I’d wonder why you hadn’t shown it to me before. Why you’ve waited all this time to say something.’ Toby’s voice is sharp, his blood pumping. He stares at Laurel. Her eyes are dark, fathomless, but just for a second he sees a light pass across them. An open duct of longing, of desperate pain.
‘Have you ever been frightened?’ she asks him. ‘Really terrified? So scared that you think you’re going to die, that your heart might stop?’
‘No,’ he says, wondering where she’s going with this, his forehead creased with concern. What proof does she have? Why won’t she tell him? ‘Not really. Anxious, worried. But not frightened like that. Not like you mean.’
‘Not even now? Not even when you’re facing . . . death?’ She whispers the word as if afraid she might summon it.
Toby shakes his head. ‘What happens in death has always been something I’ve thought of as being out of my control,’ he says. ‘I’ve lived my life.’ His lips twist sadly. ‘I’ve done my best. What will happen . . . afterwards, I don’t know. But I’m not scared of it.’
Laurel nods. ‘But you’re a man,’ she says, as if this is an answer. ‘You’re a grown-up.’
It breaks Toby’s heart to hear this, as if she has never left her ten-year-old self behind. Stuck forever down on that canal path, the wind in her hair. She cannot see herself as an adult. She has never had any barometer of her worth.
‘If you know something, L,’ he pushes on regardless, ‘you must tell me. You must help yourself. Speak! Tell us what you know and then we can help you. I can’t help you if you keep me in the dark.’ He rubs his face in frustration.
‘I know I’ve been here all this time,’ Laurel says. ‘Never been to school or anything. But I’m not an idiot. I know what the law is. Even if I knew anything about that day, what would have been the point of saying it? They were never even going to arrest her. She was too young. She was six. They wouldn’t have done anything. And . . .’
‘And?’ Toby prods, his cheeks hot with a terrible growing fear that he has misguided her for all of these years. That she has been under a horrific misapprehension, something so utterly wrong, and the reason for it is entirely his fault.
‘. . . And what would it have done to my mother?’ She looks at him, appalled. ‘How would she have dealt with … with anything else? She was so fragile, Mummy. It was impossible. Just impossible. Everything was. All of it.’
Laurel breathes in deeply through her nose and rolls her shoulders back as if hefting away all these thoughts. ‘I’ve sent something to your office,’ she says. ‘Something I want you to pass to that writer bloke who’s helping Rosie.’
Toby clears his throat, his mind spinning. ‘What? What is it?’
‘Call it a form of protection. Promise me you won’t open it.’
‘Laurel . . . please. What protection? This is insane. I think I’ve misled you. I think you’ve got things wrong.’
‘I haven’t got anything wrong,’ she retorts. ‘Nothing at all. But you have to promise.’
‘Look, time’s running out. What can we do? Help me here. Let me help you.’
She ducks her head but not before he has seen the flash of fear pass across her face again.
‘I’ll stop it.’ He stabs the table with a finger, the muscles in his jaw clenched. ‘I’ll stop her testifying if you think it’s wrong. We won’t have it.’
Laurel pushes her chair back and the smile she gives him then is so sweet and pretty that, for a moment, he is back in the garden in Grassington, watching his nieces play on the lawn, running through the sprinkler with dappled sunlight on their backs.
‘Thank you for everything, Uncle Toby,’ she says as she stands up and moves to the door, tapping at it with scabbed knuckles. ‘I’ll always remember it, really.’
But she is gone. And Toby is left alone in the room, his heart hammering in his chest, feeling absolutely spent. Thinking about those two little girls, Rosie and Laurel, playing games in the fading summer light.