Chancer was unusually quiet as he drove, with no trace of his natural exuberance. The deep tan he’d acquired over the summer months made his eyes bluer than usual. Edie’s claim that he’d thumped her sat heavily with me.
Like a croupier in a casino, I mentally arranged the cards in front of me. Was Chancer off his game due to divorce proceedings, the morning’s argument he’d had with Edie or a recent conversation with my brother?
We were driving towards Welland, over the common, past old-fashioned tulip-styled lampposts. The way the sun caught the hills made them look like fire-breathing dragons. Then it was over Castlemorton Common where long-horned cattle flanked the road on both sides. Beyond: a narrow stretch and car park.
We climbed out of the Jag, put on our boots and set off at a cracking pace up a rutted path with spectacular views behind us. The sun powered down and I was glad I’d grabbed a wide-brimmed hat to protect me. Halfway up, we passed an abandoned car, and a scattering of cottages. I let Chancer go on ahead. We didn’t speak much other than to comment on the weather and the scenery. I could tell by the way he walked, his shoulders rounded, that he was troubled. I was troubled too.
Eventually, the path forked left, and we trudged up a narrow rocky incline, up and up, to where a monument stood on our right and the Brecon Beacons in the distance. From here, the going was better, less steep, the way flattening out a little. Only then, when a couple of serious walkers overtook us, and it was just he and I, side by side, did we pause for water and speak of anything that mattered.
“I want to put the record straight about a couple of things.”
I turned to him and smiled. “I’m listening.”
He smiled back, grateful and nervous. “Edie didn’t lie.”
“About you wanting to split up?”
“About me hitting her.”
“Oh,” I said. Christ, I thought.
“I’m not going to dignify it by saying that she made me. It happened once and once only, and it shouldn’t have done, and I was wrong.”
“It’s not me you need to tell,” I said chippily. “It’s her.” And there was me thinking that she was an overdramatic fantasist.
“I know, and I have, but do you see that we simply can’t go on together?”
“If Edie can forgive you, then why not?”
“Because I don’t love her.”
“You must have done once.”
“I never have.”
“Hell, Chancer, then why marry the woman?”
He looked across, enquiringly.
“Oh, please,” I said, heat spreading across my face and neck, which had nothing to do with the route march.
He reached out, took my hand and drew me close. “Why didn’t I choose you, instead of Edie?”
His body pressed against mine. It felt all so familiar. I looked up into his eyes, saw the Chancer I used to know before life had moulded and distorted him into something unrecognisable and quite different. I didn’t know whether this was down to an overbearing father, a difficult, unfulfilled marriage, the pressures of working in a dog eat dog industry, or something dark and unspoken. If it was, my last vestige of belief in someone from my past was dead and buried. I repeated the mantra I’d repeated at the time. “I’m not from your world.” Or the right set.
“That was all in your pretty little head.”
I remembered how Chancer had been, for a short space of time, my guilty secret pleasure. Nobody knew, not even Zach. When it got serious between us, I’d got scared. I’d been hung up about being outside ‘the in crowd’, never quite fitting in, and money, or the absence of it in my case, and not being as smart or as well-educated as his friends. His family terrified me, particularly Stephen Chancellor. I’d gone travelling in a lame effort to help me straighten out my mind. As one month drifted into another, we lost touch and, when I came back, Edie was on the scene.
He leant in, dropped a single soft kiss upon my lips, not at all like Rocco who felt as if he were devouring me. Yet it still felt wrong. “We can’t.” I pulled away. “It’s too late.”
“Is this because I lost my temper once?”
“Because it’s not fair on Edie.”
“Fuck Edie.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not in a good place.” There’s Scarlet and Rocco, and Zach and my dad who colluded to cover a crime, and my mother who kept her mouth shut, and a girl called Drea Temple.
“But with time?” He looked expectant and fearful. I opened my mouth, but no words came out. “Look, you don’t have to make a decision,” Chancer said with forced jollity. “Let’s head up towards the quarry.”
In reality, the way ahead to Gullet Quarry was barred and with good reason. A notorious spot for wild swimmers and skinny dippers, or people wanting to cool off in the mistaken belief that is was a safe environment, too many young men had lost their lives in its unfathomable depths. Steep-sided and with murderous drops, it wouldn’t have been my first choice for a swim – not that I was much good at it in any case.
“Race you to the top,” Chancer said. Unable to resist a challenge, I took to my heels. I was fitter but Chancer was stronger. We level-pegged it and then, in a final spurt, I nudged ahead. Chancer caught me and spun me off my feet, swinging me round. “Put me down,” I giggled, my hands drumming his shoulders. It seemed so long since I’d last laughed like this. Carefree. Like the old days before things turned ugly. “See,” he said, planting me down carefully. “What’s not to like?”
I gave him a wry smile. Chancer had always been so persuasive, but I could be persuasive too. “Can I ask you something?”
“Fire away.”
“Did you ever meet a woman called Drea Temple?”
I expected a strong and immediate reaction. Either an emphatic, “No,” or silence followed by him dropping his arms, drawing back, with an expression of stunned numbness. I expected him to speak in an empty tone. Instead, his hold on me tightened and so did his voice. “Yes, but if you’re asking me whether I had anything to do with her death, you’re wrong. As importantly, why are you interested in a woman who disappeared a decade ago?”