‘Mother? It’s Imogen. Jonathan said you wanted me to phone.’
‘Did he? How strange. Perhaps I just wanted to know if you’re all right. I can’t afford to phone you very often with my limited income.’
‘My job isn’t well paid either, you know.’
‘No? Well, I’m sure it’s more than my pension.’ There is satisfaction in her voice because she likes to be worse off than everyone else. It makes her feel better.
‘So, how are you?’
‘Bearing up. You remember that pain I had in my hip?’
No. ‘Yes.’
‘The doctor thinks it could be arthritis. He might send me for tests.’
Doody doesn’t believe her. The doctor must be wise to her by now. She’s had tests for heart disease, lupus, MS, ME and osteoporosis in the last year. ‘Well, never mind. I expect it’ll clear up soon.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Doody experiences an unexpected pang of sympathy for her mother. She’s lonely, and needs her illnesses. They’re just a familiar fantasy world that she can control. The trips to the doctor give her something to do, and her pills are comforting. ‘Nothing, Mother. Let’s hope it’s not too serious.’
‘Yes, because—’
‘Have you heard about my cottage yet?’
She brightens up at the prospect of good news. ‘Yes, Jonathan told me. How wonderful. A cottage by the sea.’
‘It’s not that wonderful. It needs a lot of work.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage. You’re very capable.’
‘Mother, it’s more than just painting a few doors. It’s major work. Roof and windows and things.’
But she doesn’t want to hear this. ‘And it’s all thanks to Jonathan.’
But it’s Doody’s cottage, her aeroplane, her life. She doesn’t want to be grateful to Jonathan. ‘I’ll have to go, Mother. Mr Hollyhead is waiting for me to discuss a hole in the fence.’
‘Yes, of course. You mustn’t keep your headmaster waiting.’
It’s hard to know what irritates Doody most. Her mother remembering who Mr Hollyhead is, calling him her headmaster, or thinking Doody shouldn’t keep him waiting.
‘Goodbye, Mother,’ says Doody, and puts the phone down.
She shouldn’t have phoned before settling down to work on the Mandles novel. Now, instead of thinking calmly, she is humming with frustration, itching with resentment of Jonathan, her mother and Philip Hollyhead.
She’s worried about Mandles. The story is slowing down, losing its momentum. Something needs to happen, a dramatic development that will bring back some of the sparkle she felt when she started writing.
Determined to solve the problem, she picks up a pencil.
Mandles fore as he felt a cold barrel placed carefully at the back of his neck. A gun! ‘Good aftenoon,’ remarked a cod, level voice that he had never heard before. ‘Welcom toe our little party.’ Rough hands came from behind Mandles and tied his hands tightly behind his back. A wad of material was shoved into his mouth and a scarf was fixed uncomfortably round his face in a vice-like grip.
This is better. Some real action.
‘Yow go it wrong, Imogen.’
All week she has been pushing away thoughts of Harry. He seems to be hovering at her shoulder, whispering into her ear.
‘You did walk out on me,’ she says out loud.
He laughs. ‘But you can’t be sure.’
There’s the problem. She can’t be sure. She has always believed that he left voluntarily because he didn’t want to live with her any more, and the leitmotif of rejection has been drumming away in the background ever since.
If he was on the train, killed off by Straker, everything changes. The world has been picked up, twisted slightly and put down again. The same, but not the same. She has misjudged him, found him guilty in his absence.
‘You left me. There’s no question about that. The crash was later.’
‘But I might have come back.’ His voice is cool and level, mocking her.
He shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t know anything about her life and has no right to challenge her like this. He’s somewhere else, in a large house in the suburbs, making money, being a doctor, living the middle-class life he was destined for. He’s married to someone who doesn’t know he’s a bigamist, and has four children at private schools.
Or he’s dead.
Doody jumps up and puts on her coat. She can see Doris the Lion Tamer out in her garden, taking in the washing, so she doubles round the front of the house to avoid her and walks down the road to the shops.
Her mind slips sideways to Straker, who may have killed her husband. Why does he refuse to believe the crash was an accident? Does he enjoy being responsible, or does he just feel better saying it was his fault? He wants to be a martyr, like her mother. How can one person cause the death of seventy-eight people? It seems almost self-indulgent of him to insist on it. If he can’t remember what happened, why does he insist on blaming himself?
We’re all guilty, thinks Doody, half running along the road. She had mashed the berries. She had wanted Celia to die. Perhaps she could have saved her if she’d done something quicker.
Her mother had implied that once. ‘Did you phone the ambulance as soon as you found Celia?’ Imogen was washing up at the time, the marigold gloves letting in warm, damp soapsuds because there was a hole in each thumb. Whenever she thinks back to this conversation, she remembers the feel of her hands, wet and somehow contaminated inside the gloves.
‘Of course I did,’ said Imogen, too quickly. Had she delayed on purpose? Was that why she couldn’t decide what to do?
Her mother must have detected something in her voice. She pulled Imogen round and put her hands on either side of her face, looking very hard into Imogen’s eyes. Imogen could smell her breath. It reminded her of Celia. ‘Are you quite sure? You were seen coming home at least fifteen minutes before you phoned the police.’
Imogen hadn’t given herself away. Her mother had known all the time. ‘I told you, I didn’t find her straight away.’ Imogen could hear the panic in her voice. She knew that her mother could hear it too. She could feel the redness in her cheeks, the sweat gathering on her forehead.
Then her mother’s hands fell away, and she stepped back. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Imogen.’ Her voice had changed. It had become less raw, more controlled.
Imogen stared at her, not sure how she should respond. Did her mother mean it, or was this a new tactic? A trap?
‘You mustn’t blame yourself. I’m sure those fifteen minutes wouldn’t have made any difference.’
But they might have done. Imogen had heard the conversation with the policeman and her mother would not have forgotten it.
‘We should remember that it was Celia who made the decision, not you,’ said her mother, turning her face away, but not managing to disguise the catch in her voice. ‘We must remember that,’ she said again, as if she were trying to persuade herself.
She’s only pretending, thought Imogen. She doesn’t mean it. In her memory, her mother is there, holding her face again, close like Celia. And she does blame Imogen.
‘Hello? This is Stella Doody speaking.’
Doody opens her mouth and tries to speak, but nothing comes out.
‘Hello? Who is it?’
‘Imogen.’
‘Imogen? Imogen? I don’t know any—oh—’
Doody tries again: ‘It’s Imogen.’ Her voice doesn’t sound right. She’s talking to someone from her past who doesn’t know her as she is now. She doesn’t know how to give the impression that she’s no longer the tongue-tied, naïve girl who destroyed the life of Stella’s son.
‘Imogen,’ says Stella, and her voice has lost some of the authoritarian sharpness. It’s a little softer, even kinder, perhaps, but this may just be Doody’s imagination. ‘What a surprise. How are you? We didn’t know what happened to you.’
‘I went to Bristol,’ says Doody. She wonders how hard they tried to find her.
‘I see,’ says Stella. ‘And are you there still?’
‘Yes. Although—I also have a cottage in Devon now.’
‘Oh. You have done well for yourself, then.’
‘No, not really. It’s not as good as it sounds.’ Why does she tell her that? Her outer layer is dissolving, and she’s allowing Stella to penetrate the inner, private part that should remain hidden. She can’t seem to stop herself.
‘Have you married again?’ There’s tension in Stella’s voice. As if she doesn’t want to know that Doody might have replaced Harry with someone else. Another rubbing out, another denial of his existence.
‘No,’ says Doody. ‘I live on my own.’
‘Ah.’ Stella probably wants to say ‘good’ but realises that it would be inappropriate.
Neither of them speaks for a while. ‘Well, it’s nice to hear from you, Imogen,’ she says. ‘Did you phone for any particular reason?’
‘Harry didn’t come back, did he?’ says Doody, thinking suddenly that maybe he had returned to his family years ago, and nobody had bothered to find her and tell her.
‘No, of course not. We would have contacted you if he had.’ Her voice is brisk and sensible. She’s a decent woman. She would never have lied, or pretended that things were not as they were.
Doody nods. ‘I just wondered…’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you remember a crash, about twenty-five years ago?’
‘A crash?’ She sounds confused. ‘What sort of a crash?’
‘It was a train. A private plane hit a train, which collapsed on to a housing estate. There were lots of casualties. Seventy-eight dead.’
‘Why are you asking me this?’ Her voice has lost its softness. ‘Is this something to do with Harry?’
‘Yes,’ says Doody. ‘Well—I don’t really know.’
Stella is silent for some time, and Doody begins to worry that she has gone. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Imogen, I would appreciate it if you would get to the point.’
Doody swallows. ‘It’s just that the crash was round about the time that Harry disappeared, and I wondered if you had considered it, that’s all.’
Stella lets out a sigh. ‘I do remember the crash, as a matter of fact. It was a train from London to Birmingham, but it was some time after his disappearance. We’d hardly have ignored something as obvious as that.’
Doody is relieved. Of course they would have thought about it. They were all sensible people. ‘So he couldn’t have been on it?’
‘It was at least three months later. Why would he have been?’
Doody is uneasy. It’s not as obvious as she suggests. Harry vanished first, then the train crashed. ‘But we don’t know where he was. He might have been on the train. Maybe he went somewhere for a short time, and always intended to come back, but then went on the train.’
‘They will have identified all the people on the train.’
‘No. There were nine unidentified bodies. Nine people who didn’t belong to anyone.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you think they could still check? With dental records and things?’
There’s another long pause. ‘Look, Imogen,’ says Stella, ‘perhaps we should meet. Shall I come down to your cottage in Devon?’
‘No,’ says Doody, imagining her coming through the front door of her cottage, eyeing the rotten window-frames, the dust-filled furniture. ‘I’ll come and see you.’
‘Fine.’ She sounds relieved. ‘We’re still in the same place. When would be convenient? A weekend would suit me best.’
Doody hesitates, not sure if she wants to meet Stella again and go back to a version of herself that she would prefer to forget. ‘I can come next Saturday,’ she says.
‘Good. Come for lunch. One o’clock.’
Doody puts the phone down and wonders what has happened to her. Did she really telephone Harry’s mother, the woman whose dislike for her always permeated her scrupulous politeness? Has she really accepted an invitation to lunch? Stella won’t recognise her. Will she recognise Stella?
Harry and Imogen had set off to Stratford as two separate people and returned as man and wife. Till death us do part. Or at least until Imogen drove him away with her inability to remain funny. Harry wanted her to come in with him when they arrived to break the news to his parents, but she refused. ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ she said. ‘It’d be better if you go and tell them first.’
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said. ‘I’m proud of my new wife.’ He leaned over to kiss her, and she breathed in that vague, antiseptic, hospital smell that he carried around with him. She could feel the sharpness of the bristle on his chin against hers, the intensity of his presence.
‘You don’t have to be ashamed,’ she said. ‘I’d just prefer you to tell them first before they have to speak to me.’
He gave in eventually, and left the car with a breezy wave. ‘I’ll be back in no time, you’ll see,’ he said. ‘They’ll be delighted.’
Imogen knew they would be appalled, and it thrilled her to think that he’d brave their wrath for her. She sat in the car, an old Cortina, and waited. All around her was evidence of Harry. Chewing-gum wrappers in the ashtray, lecture notes stuffed into the glove compartment. There were bits of grit caught in the mat where he placed his feet, slivers of nails that she’d seen him bite off and drop on the floor. She touched the gear stick and felt its shiny surface, worn smooth by all the previous owners. Now Harry’s left hand had taken over, polishing away the past. The steering wheel had old cracks that had become his cracks, where he had held it and turned it, letting it slide easily through his hands.
She couldn’t drive then—she learned much later. Harry had once opened the bonnet and explained the internal combustion engine, pointing out the various parts and their functions. She pretended to understand, but the information came too fast, with too many alien words.
‘How do you know these things?’ she asked.
He looked bewildered. ‘Well, I don’t know. You just pick it up…’
It shocked Imogen to discover that people all over the country were picking things up, examining them, remembering them, while she’d wandered along carelessly, missing the details, not even aware of their existence. She was glimpsing a new landscape through an open door, perceiving that her world was tiny compared to the great other world outside.
Harry came back, looking pale and angry. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘They’re delighted.’ He smiled at her, but his mouth moved without the rest of his face. Imogen could feel the tension beneath the smile, his determination to be positive.
They walked in, holding hands, and found his parents drinking in the living room.
‘Sherry, Imogen?’ said her new father-in-law, Arthur.
She was going to refuse, but could see Harry nodding beside her, so she took a glass, and they sat down on the sofa opposite his parents. She tried to think of them as Arthur and Stella, but it wasn’t possible. They were too far away from her.
‘It should be champagne,’ said Harry.
‘Yes,’ said Stella uncomfortably. ‘Of course. Do we have any?’
Arthur frowned. ‘I don’t think we have, dear. Shall I pop up to the off-licence?’
‘No,’ said Harry. ‘It’s all right.’
Imogen was disappointed. She’d never tried champagne, and this might be her only chance.
There was an awkward silence. ‘So,’ said Stella, ‘you’re married. To each other.’
‘Yes,’ said Imogen, and smiled.
‘Mummy and Daddy are delighted, aren’t you?’ said Harry.
‘Yes, of course,’ they said together, and Imogen could feel how hard everyone was trying.
‘So, where are you planning to live?’ said his father. ‘Harry hasn’t qualified yet, you know.’
‘Qualified?’ said Imogen. She didn’t know you had to be qualified before you got married.
‘My job,’ said Harry, squeezing her hand. ‘As a doctor.’
She felt foolish.
‘He has another six months at medical school.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Imogen, eagerly. ‘I earn good money at Asda. They like me there.’
‘Good,’ said Stella.
‘We thought we could rent a flat here until I’m qualified, and then I can look for work in Birmingham,’ said Harry.
Did they think this? Imogen couldn’t remember discussing it.
Arthur was nodding. ‘Good, good. You’ll be settled in no time.’
‘You need to be in London, Harry,’ said Stella. ‘You’ll have to finish your course.’
‘I’ll come back at weekends,’ he said.
Imogen stared at him. Why wasn’t he planning for them to be together all the time? Surely that was what happened when you got married. ‘But I can come to London,’ she said.
‘No, no,’ said Stella. ‘You don’t want to give up your job. The cost of living in London is so high. There’s far too much unemployment at the moment. Anyway, Harry will need the time to study. He’ll be back in no time.’
How had this happened? How had they persuaded her not to go to London? Imogen has wondered about this a lot since. She had just done as she was told when she should have protested. But now she suspects a conspiracy between them, a deal they did with Harry. Sending him away from her all week was a kind of test, to demonstrate that he didn’t need her, and could be perfectly happy away from her. Perhaps they thought he would meet someone else when he was in London during the week. What did they offer him that Imogen didn’t know about? Financial help, some gentleman’s agreement that he had to honour if he wanted to keep on seeing them?
Had Stella and Arthur plotted to remove her? Do they feel guilty about it now?
Doody drives up to Birmingham from Bristol on Saturday morning, wondering if Straker has turned up in the last two weeks and found the cottage empty. What would he have thought? Would he have taken her absence as acknowledgement that he had been right and Harry was on the train?
She feels uncomfortable about this. She doesn’t want him to believe he killed Harry if it’s not true. But there is so much uncertainty. Harry seems to have strolled in twenty-five years too late and messed up everything again. Why should she care? What does she owe him?
She has no difficulty finding the house. The road is as wide and leafy as ever. Large houses standing back from the road, tall and elegant, sheltered from hardship and economic struggles. There are more cars parked on the drives than there were then, but nobody has plastic windows. Theirs are wooden, well looked-after, painted regularly, free from rot. The road is quiet and remote when she turns off the engine—any sounds from traffic are muffled, far away, irrelevant.
She doesn’t have the nerve to pull on to their drive in her little Fiat—ten years old, rust spreading on the wings. They have two cars—a BMW and a smaller Fiesta, both brand new—on the drive, so she parks on the opposite side of the road. She’s very nervous, and doesn’t really want to do this. She should have tried to find more information about the crash before she arrived, but it’s too late now.
She sits in the car, watching Harry’s old home for some time. It’s a wonderful house. There are three storeys, with the top floor built into the eaves. Harry had a room up in the attic, and his brother, William, had the other. They were the largest rooms in the house. Harry had once given Imogen a guided tour when no one else was there. They looked at his other brothers’ rooms, Nick and Gavin’s, and then he took her into his parents’ room. He leaped on to their bed and persuaded her to come and join him. He clearly found it erotic to think of them making love on his parents’ bed, but Imogen couldn’t do it. She was too terrified by the reflection of them in his mother’s elegant three-way mirror, under the shadow of his father’s red check dressing-gown hanging on the back of the door.
What she learned, when he showed her round, was that other people had untidy houses too. She’d thought that because the house was so big, because they obviously had so much money, and his mother cooked and cleaned, everywhere in the house would be immaculate. It was a shock to discover that they left things lying around, that the basin in the bathroom had soap smeared on the taps, that Harry’s father would leave a shirt in the middle of the floor when it needed washing.
Doody steps out of the car, shuts the door and locks it. She walks across the road and on to the drive beside the Fiesta and the BMW, skirting the delicate yellow roses in their beds beside the hedge. She climbs the steps to the porch and reaches up to ring the doorbell. The sound echoes through the house in the way that it always did, an old-fashioned bell that goes on jangling for some time so that it can be heard by everyone wherever they are in the house. She can picture the hall inside, with its uncluttered, magnolia walls and the thick pile carpet that cushions all unexpected noises.
When the door opens, it takes Doody a few seconds to realise that the old woman in front of her is Stella. She’s shrunk. Her hair has gone white and her skin has shrivelled. She looks like someone dying, so frail you could blow her away.
She leans forward and makes an attempt to kiss Doody’s cheek. Doody freezes. She wasn’t prepared for this. ‘Imogen,’ says Stella, and her voice is instantly recognisable.
‘Hello,’ says Doody.