‘No,’ said her mother, standing outside the metal and glass of Ashford International with her small suitcase. ‘I completely understand. You’re busy.’
‘I texted you to say I was running late.’
‘You did. Is this a police car?’ her mother said, peering inside.
‘I know. I didn’t have time to go back to the station and pick up my own.’
It was a short distance back to the station. Cupidi pulled into a loading bay outside the TSB, far enough from the nick. In the old days, nobody would have minded bending the rules a bit, but you weren’t allowed to give anyone lifts in a police vehicle. ‘I have to go and swap. You mind waiting here? Only for a minute, I promise.’
Her mother got out and stood by the front of the bank. Helen drove the fifty metres to the police station and turned right into the car parking area. She had just returned the keys and was walking to her own car when she saw McAdam striding towards her.
Hoping to avoid getting caught up in a conversation, she pretended she hadn’t seen him, but he called out, ‘Alex. Anything on the Eason situation?’
‘Nothing new from the scene of crime.’
McAdam looked gutted. ‘We’ve been bounced into a press call on the murder of the unidentified man. Politics.’
The local MP was under pressure on illegal immigrants and had started talking tough about anything he felt he might lose votes on.
In spite of wanting to get away to pick up her mother, Cupidi found herself saying, ‘Thing is, the dead woman. I’ve been thinking. How do we even know she’s Hilary Keen?’
‘What?’
The darkening sky above them dropped spots of rain. Cupidi held her handbag over her head to keep her hair dry.
‘The dead woman. Our confirmations of her identity are a doctor and a dentist. We’ve found nobody who knew her in her ordinary life. No friends. No work colleagues. Apart from Stanley Eason.’
Suddenly a gust of rain swept across the yard. She had to raise her voice at the sudden noise.
Something the Border Agency man had said had swung un-expectedly into her head. Half these people aren’t what they say they are.
‘There were two Hilary Keens. Remember? What if our one is the imposter, not the other one?’
He pulled up his jacket over his head. ‘Jesus. Tell me about it tomorrow.’
‘And that photograph. Who are those children? If she was Julian Keen’s mother, wouldn’t she have had a photograph of him, not the other children? It doesn’t fit.’
The rain was hammering now.
‘Tomorrow,’ he shouted back, above the din of drops hitting the cars around them.
Inside her own Micra, she switched on the windscreen wipers double-speed and realised that her mother would be waiting for her again; there was no shelter on Tufton Street.
‘Oh fuckity hell!’
And the police station was on a one-way street. In her hurry to drop her mother out of sight of the station, so that no one saw her using the car, she had left her waiting in a place where it wouldn’t be easy to pick her up. Cupidi would have to drive round the whole block.
And, typically, at the end of Vicarage Lane the lights weren’t working properly. There was a temporary traffic control which seemed to be stuck on red as the rain drove down. When she finally got through, a van courier delivering a package had parked in the filter lane on the next right-hand turn. Cupidi leaned on her horn, for all the good it would do. Other drivers joined in.
She found her mother standing next to a young man who was holding his small umbrella over her while the rain soaked him. ‘Thank you so much,’ said Cupidi to the man, putting her mother’s sodden suitcase into the back of the car. ‘You’re a godsend.’
‘You got caught up again, I expect,’ said her mother.
‘God, I’m so sorry, Mum. I’ve messed this all up, haven’t I?’
‘I’m going to need to change,’ said her mother. ‘I’m quite wet.’
Cupidi put the heater on, but that just made the windscreen steam up, and she had to open the window a crack, letting the spitting rain in on her side of the car.
As soon as she turned onto the road to Dungeness it stopped, sun suddenly golden, shining on the wet tarmac.
‘Is this it?’ said her mother as they approached the the end of the shingle promontory.
‘I love it here,’ said Cupidi. ‘We both do.’
Her mother said nothing more until they were inside the house.
Zoë flung her arms around her grandmother. ‘Nan. You’re soaking.’
‘Your mother abandoned me on a street corner while the heavens opened.’
‘Mum,’ scolded Zoë.
‘I’ll show you to your room,’ said Cupidi. ‘So you can change.’
Hers was to be the third bedroom, an oblong room with a single bed, a bookshelf and a desk. ‘I’ll move the computer downstairs in a minute. And the books. Then you can have some space.’
The bedroom looked out at the front of the house, towards the power station. Her mother looked in the small wardrobe. ‘There are no clothes hangers,’ she said.
‘I’ll get you some from my room. Will you be all right in here?’ she asked, suddenly conscious of how small the room was.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said her mother. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m OK,’ she said, going to her bedroom and opening the wardrobe.
‘And Zoë?’ asked her mother, following her.
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s just teenage mood swings,’ said Cupidi.
‘I don’t mean that. I meant… God sake. Is she ill? She’s got so thin. There are bones everywhere.’
Cupidi drew her head back a little. Had she? ‘I suppose she has. I feed her and she eats. She’s just active all the time. She’s changed.’
In her room, she took a dozen work blouses off hangers and laid them on the bed. She looked at them and decided they were all horrible anyway. She should throw them all out and start again.
While Cupidi made supper, Helen disappeared into Zoë’s bedroom. When the pie was cooked, she had to shout up the stairs for Zoë to come down and lay the table.
‘What were you two talking about?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, really,’ said Zoë.
‘You’ve been in there an hour.’
‘All sorts,’ said her mother vaguely.
They ate together round the dining-room table; after weeks of sitting in front of the television it seemed oddly formal.
‘Wine, Nan? I don’t normally drink during the week, but…’ said Cupidi.
‘I do,’ said Helen.
‘Yes you do, Mum,’ said Zoë. ‘All the time.’
‘Not every day.’
‘Most. Can I have a glass?’ asked Zoë.
‘Of course she can, can’t she, Alex? What’s for supper?’
‘Fish pie.’
‘How very coastal,’ said Helen, and Zoë burst out laughing in a way Cupidi hadn’t heard her laugh for so long, and for the first time Cupidi was glad to have her mother here. Three generations. Her mother, her daughter and her. However much they rubbed each other up the wrong way sometimes, it felt good. Maybe everything would be all right, here on the edge of the world.
And then the house phone started ringing again. Cupidi looked at the handset, its keys lit up, lying on the table in front of her.