Fifteen

Kieran hired a car at the airport.

The drive down to Ruth’s through the winding green lanes was a slice of paradise. It was seven a.m. and there was little traffic; the sunlight stretched in broad flat bands over the hills, a breathtaking rose-gold overlying the pale-green downland. As Kieran came off the tops and into the valleys, growing wheat of an almost consistent acid green bordered the road. He could see the small Dorset town now, a full five miles away still, sitting centrally in the fertile valley: a flint circle with a few lights still blazing in the early sunlight.

At Frome Abbott he stopped the car by the water and got out. The air smelled quintessentially English: green and damp and sweet. The river was already wide here, rushing at a good pace through the fields.

He was only a mile or two from the Priory. Lin often brought Theo along these lanes for a walk. Theo had told him that there were herons here, although Kieran had never seen one. It must be months now since Kieran had even walked to the edge of the Priory garden and looked at the river there, at the thick green coating of weeds in the chalk bed.

Last summer Lin had organized a duck race for the village fete, which it had ended in their garden. She had told him that the finishing post was at their own wooden planks across the water, and Theo, eyes shining, had confided that a man in long rubber boots had come to fish the netted plastic ducks out of the water. Kieran remembered listening to them both with tired bemusement. He didn’t know then what a duck race was.

He still didn’t.

Lin had tried hard. Tried to fit into Ruth’s place. Tried to be a good member of the community. Everywhere she went, they eyed her suspiciously, staring down her youth, looking from her to Theo and back again. Kieran knew that the village was polite to her, but not friendly—and there was an ocean in that difference. Lin did not fit in, with her long and shapeless skirts, her Doc Marten’s boots, her occasionally vividly hennaed hair. She had felt the exclusion keenly, he knew. And, although she had been born and bred in a city, she determinedly walked the lanes, taking Theo to and from the local playgroup, going to the village shop, gritting her teeth against the whispered comments, the sideways glances. She was so persistently cheerful about it all, Kieran mused. ‘You’re just a little bloody ray of sunshine, aren’t you?’ he had said to her once.

She had given him a wry smile. ‘Irritating, huh?’

Theo took after her.

‘We saw birds in the field!’ Theo’s reedy, lisping voice last year.

Lin’s amused addition. ‘Forty or so little pheasants, little chicks, in the bottom field. Where have they all come from?’

He had been reading at his desk, and page-scrolling the computer screen with his free hand. ‘What field?’ he had asked, without looking up.

When? November … March? When?

Lin, at Christmas, cursing the fairy lights. ‘Where has the frilly bit gone?’ Her fractured, helpless laughter. ‘Look for it, Theo—a frilly bit …’

Kieran hadn’t helped her. He had been too busy.

He turned away from the river, and got back into the car.

He reached Ruth’s flat at a quarter to eight. The apartment was in an Edwardian building just out of the town centre, on a leafy and quiet street. When Ruth opened the door to him, she was already dressed. She paused a second, then stepped forward and kissed him very lightly and very fleetingly on the cheek.

‘Hello,’ she said, stepping back to let him in. ‘Go through. Theo’s in the sitting room.’

Kieran threw his car keys on the hall table, and walked to where his son, propped in the corner of the couch, sat with a piece of toast halfway to his mouth, his eyes glued to the television.

‘Look who it is,’ Ruth said.

The boy made no movement at all. Kieran switched off the set and placed his face, at eye level, directly opposite his son.

‘Hey,’ he said.

Theo’s lower lip protruded in an expression of defiance.

‘I came back,’ Kieran said. He reached forward and tried to hug him. Grudgingly, Theo lowered his head to his father’s shoulder.

‘You miss me?’ Kieran tried to lift Theo’s head. ‘Hmmm? Miss me?’

Ruth came to his side. ‘He hasn’t said much this morning,’ she murmured.

Kieran looked up. ‘What time do you have to go to work?’

‘Half an hour.’ She smiled down at Theo. ‘We’ve been getting on well, haven’t we, sweetheart?’ She bent down and stroked the boy’s hand where it lay over Kieran’s shoulder. ‘Haven’t we?’

Theo didn’t respond.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Ruth said, straightening up and leaving the room.

Kieran followed her out to the kitchen where—although he suddenly felt extraordinarily tired, as if he could sleep with his head on the breakfast counter—he sat down at the table. He made a concession to his fatigue by propping his head on one hand.

‘He had some sort of nightmare last night,’ Ruth said, with her back to him.

‘Thanks for taking him in.’

‘I don’t think I had much choice.’

Watching her, Kieran bit one side of his lip. As she turned back to him, he rearranged his face. ‘Why were you there?’ he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry?’

‘In Hampton.’

Ruth pulled out a chair, and sat down opposite him. ‘Do you know where she was living?’ she asked. ‘Some student flat she used to have way back, when she first came to university. Long before that house near the campus.’

‘Ruth …’

‘It’s over a shop. You know those little back streets where all the secondhand furniture places are? There are drug addicts in that area, you know.’ Ruth frowned, shaking her head and fixing her gaze on the table in front of her. ‘I can’t understand the two of you,’ she said. ‘Taking Theo to a place like that.’

‘I had no idea she was going there,’ he said.

She looked up. ‘No idea?’

‘She went away suddenly,’ he explained.

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Had you two fallen out?’

‘No, not exactly.’

‘What, then?’

He held up his hand. ‘Ruth,’ he repeated, ‘why were you there? Who told you where she was? I just can’t believe that Lin rang you herself.’

She smiled. Behind her, the kettle switched itself off. She made a move to get up to make the coffee, but he put a hand flat on the table by way of stopping her. It made a dull, resounding thud.

‘Am I the wicked witch again?’ she asked.

‘This is perfectly serious.’

‘Yes, you’re right. It is serious. What am I supposed to have done now, besides break into the Priory on a regular basis?’

‘That’s just it.’

She started to laugh. ‘You’re telling me she went away to avoid me?’ Still laughing in astonishment, she shook her head. ‘Really, this gets worse.’ She leaned forward. ‘She rang me and asked me to go there,’ she said.

Kieran stared at her.

‘It’s the truth,’ she said.

Ruth returned his look, then got up and fixed the coffee, returning to the table with a pot and two cups. She watched his face carefully. ‘Have you spoken to the hospital this morning?’

He gave a prolonged sigh. ‘No.’ In a desultory fashion, he began stirring sugar into the black liquid.

‘I have. Ten minutes ago. They seem to think that Lin has had some kind of seizure.’

‘Seizure?’ Kieran paled. ‘What do they mean?’

‘The lumbar-puncture results aren’t back yet. They think it’s probably viral, if it’s meningitis.’

‘Do you get seizures with meningitis?’

‘I don’t know, Kieran. I’ve never seen a case of meningitis. Most doctors haven’t.’

‘What do they mean … a seizure?’

‘It was like a mild form of epilepsy.’

‘But she hasn’t got epilepsy.’

‘No.’

They looked at each other.

‘I have to go to work,’ she said, rising.

He looked down for a moment, then he also stood up. ‘I’ll take Theo back home later. Mrs Sawyer will be there today. He can stay with her while I go to the hospital.’

‘When do you plan to go?’

He ran his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know … I’ll try to get an hour or two’s sleep before I drive again. Then have a shower, breakfast. Maybe midday …’

‘If you wait until one, I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘I won’t have to be back again at the hospital until four.’

He was surprised. ‘No, no. That’s OK.’

She smiled at him, going to the sink with her cup, then picking up her case from the side of the door. ‘I’ll drive you there,’ she said. ‘I won’t go in and see Lin if you prefer me not to.’

‘It’s OK really,’ he said.

‘It is not OK,’ she told him. ‘You’re far too exhausted to drive any more.’ She waved her hand, a brief inclination of the wrist. ‘Be a good boy,’ she said.