Dan and McCulloch walked into the Warwick Castle at ten past eight and there was Alison Connor, sitting at the bar like a mirage.
‘Hey,’ she said, as if it’d been only yesterday, as if neither of them had crawled over emotional burning coals to get to each other.
‘Hey.’ He stood for a while and drank her in, so perfectly at home on that bar stool, yet fundamentally out of context. The disconnect between these two facts made him slow to react, as in a dream, when you want to reach out for what you know you need, but your arms are heavy and won’t obey the signals from your brain. He stared at her, and didn’t move or speak, and she watched him a little uncertainly, then hopped off the stool and hunkered down to scratch the little dog behind his ear. ‘So you’re McCulloch?’ she said. He shuffled closer to her and closed his eyes and gave a small shiver of bliss.
Dan gave a soft laugh, and all the terrible weight of the day eased by a few small degrees. She stood up and moved towards him, then cradled the back of his neck with one hand while she kissed him with gentle care.
‘Alison,’ he said now, and he was closer to tears than he’d been all day, way, way closer, keenly moved by her tenderness. He’d believed he would never see her again, he’d begun the process of hardening his heart against her, he’d tried to think her faithless, weak, insincere. But now the sight of her slayed him all over again, and he felt a jolt of fear, because although he might have underestimated her resolve, how was he ever to trust that she would stay? He stepped back, and she let her arms fall to her side.
‘Daniel,’ she said. ‘Please forgive me.’
He’d forgive this woman anything, he thought. That was the problem.
‘I was wrong to leave with Michael that day, I was wrong to let him talk to you that way, and wrong to leave with him. I should’ve listened to my heart and stood by your side. I’m sorry, Daniel. And I’m here now, if you still want me.’
There was a pause, and all she seemed to be able to hear in the crowded bar was her own heartbeat.
‘You used Jim’s phone,’ he said, at last.
‘I lost mine,’ she said. ‘I think it got stolen on the way over.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I sent you a song. Two songs in fact, but the first was an accident, too cheerful by half, so then I sent you another, just this morning, so you’d know for sure that I was certifiably insane.’
‘Oh! God, Daniel, sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth. ‘I did get Donovan, but I was with Stella in Lisbon, and I’d have replied, I would, I knew what I wanted to send, but then—’
He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Hush. Never mind.’
‘Oh, but I’m sorry, Daniel. I’m sorry about so many things, and one of them is not replying at once to “Sunshine Superman”.’
His face remained impassive, unsure, but she gave him a tentative smile, and it tugged at his heart. Seeing her standing there before him with all that anxious love in her eyes – it was golden balm for his soul. He loved her so much. He loved her so much she might never truly know the length, breadth, and depth of his feelings.
‘What were you going to send?’ he asked.
‘The Cure,’ she said at once. ‘“Lovesong”.’
He nodded. ‘Whenever I’m alone with you …’
‘… you make me feel like I am home again.’
Now they both smiled. Then she put her head on one side and said, ‘Certifiably insane?’
‘Psychotic,’ he said. ‘I never expected to see you again, so you got – or you didn’t get – “I Want You”. Unequivocally deranged.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, God, that song.’
‘You put me through hell,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I do know, I do, but never again. I love you now, and I loved you then, and, if you’ll allow me to, I’ll love you for ever.’ She spoke simply, matter-of-factly stating her case, and Dan couldn’t speak, he didn’t know why – and yet he did know why.
‘I want you,’ she said. ‘My Sheffield boy.’
She was so much more on top of this situation than he was. She looked at him, mute and helpless before her. ‘Let’s just go to the boat,’ she said.
The thing about Crazy Diamond was, you stepped on board and left the real world behind. Perhaps it was being afloat, or being cocooned, or the gauzy, filtered quality of the light inside the cabin. So it was hard to leave it, even knowing – joyous thought – that she could and would come back, but it was Monday morning now, and Dan needed to be in Salford by Thursday, and before then, they had to get to Sheffield.
Sheffield. It squatted in her memory like a toad, one of those Grimm brothers’ toads, the warty, malevolent kind, embodying evil. Dan said she’d only have to step off the train at the city-centre station to realise that the place itself was innocent of all charges, especially as she wouldn’t recognise it – he could barely navigate those streets himself since the council started beautifying the place. He kept his tone light, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand what an ordeal this was for her, catching up with the ghosts of her past. But look, they were together, she’d come to him of her own free will, and he couldn’t help being happy, even if this trip north was, for her, a bit like crossing the Styx to the Underworld. Speaking for himself, he felt renewed, rinsed clean of doubt and bitterness and regret, and shagged out, too, in all honesty: a winning combination of her jet lag and his perpetual ardour had kept them awake most of the night, until they both plunged into spectacular unconsciousness at 5 a.m., when daylight was already seeping through the cracks in the curtains. McCulloch woke them three hours later, demanding – not unreasonably – to be let out, and they’d dragged themselves bodily from the sinking sands of sleep to deal with the dog and make plans. Lisa appeared, a ministering angel bearing a Spanish omelette, and they ate it straight from the little black frying pan she’d cooked it in while she sat with them at the towpath table and smoked her French cigarette. Jim joined them too, proud of the role he’d played in their story, keen to retell it whenever he had the chance, but Ali was mostly under the spell of the hippies, warmed by Lisa’s loopy brand of love and entertained by Frank’s amiable wickedness. Lisa was possessed of a total lack of curiosity about the practical detail of other people’s lives, interested only in the wider picture, the rainbow colours of their souls, the generosity of their hearts. Frank, slowing ever closer to the final halt, generally remained in the shadows of Ophelia’s cabin, although yesterday, while Alison had waited for Daniel, Frank had been briefly reinvigorated by the novelty of her arrival, and had told her a long story about the Beatles at the ashram in Rishikesh, and how one incredible day there’d been John and Paul, Ringo and George, Lisa and Frank, all of them cross-legged on the same flat, hot bungalow roof, practising meditation while being scrutinised by little, grey, sceptical monkeys. Best day of his long life, Frank said, then he’d drifted off to sleep again, worn out by his memories, and Lisa and Alison had talked about, oh, a jumble of subjects, Moroccan spices, stars in the southern hemisphere, the power of music to change the course of a life. Lisa’s mind flitted from one big subject to another like a hummingbird at a fuchsia bush, dipping now here, now there, and rarely still. Alison knew this was otherwise known as a lack of concentration, doubtless the legacy of a life on weed, but it was very freeing to listen to her new-age take on life, and comforting too, not least because she’d wrapped Alison in a smoky quilt and given her chai and a bowl of chana dal, because she was frozen, a hothouse flower from Adelaide for whom this so-called summer in London felt no warmer than an early spring dawn in South Australia. By the time Dan hit the scene in Little Venice, Alison and Lisa were forever connected and when they left after breakfast on Monday for the train to Sheffield, Lisa kissed her on her forehead and slipped an engraved silver bangle off her own wrist and on to Ali’s, to keep her safe until she returned. Ali liked this, a talisman was exactly what she needed; that, and the warm body of McCulloch sleeping on her feet, and the level gaze and steady confidence of Dan on the opposite side of the table from her on the northbound train.
Dan’s phone lay on the table between them. It rang repeatedly, and each time he answered she put on her headphones and listened to music to give him privacy, although she saw the name of each caller bloom on to the screen before he picked it up from the table. Katelin. Katelin. Alex. Katelin. Katelin. Duncan. Katelin. Katelin. Katelin. Not once did he switch it off, and not once did she ask him to. ‘Your life’s in free fall,’ she said at one point, aching with concern. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He leaned across and took hold of her hand. ‘I love you,’ he said, and she said, ‘I love you too,’ and Dan nodded. ‘Then there’s nothing I can’t deal with,’ he said.
So, at last, the fact had to be faced that she was in Sheffield and Dan was right, up to a point: the landscape of the city wasn’t familiar at all; but the voices were, those accents that were now all around her, the raw, flat, laconic speech patterns of the northern working classes, her people, hard-working, hard-up, hard-faced, and there was something about them she’d missed, she realised now, and they swept her relentlessly back and back over the past three decades far more effectively than the architecture ever could have done. Dan kept her close, shepherding her through the station concourse, but in fact she felt OK so far, she felt fine, with Dan on one side of her, McCulloch on the other, the sturdy little terrier a surprising and enchanting ally. When he looked up at her, his dark eyes seemed full of intelligent feeling, enough to fill a little space in her heart, although she admitted she was probably reading too much into things; he was more than likely just hungry.
‘I always wanted a dog,’ she said. She held his lead and he trotted just slightly ahead, as if he was guiding her along the busy pavement. ‘As a kid, I mean. I always wanted a collie like Lassie.’
‘I wanted a kangaroo like Skippy,’ Dan said. ‘My mum wouldn’t get me one.’
He’d rented a car, thinking cabs and buses might let them down if they needed to make a quick getaway. Also, he’d called Marion, told her to sit down and listen. ‘I’m in Sheffield, Mum, with Alison Connor – yes, Alison Connor – and can we come and say hello? No, Katelin’s in Edinburgh. No, it’s complicated. I’ll try and explain later. No, Mum, I told you that, Katelin isn’t here, Alison is though, so we’ll call in, OK? And don’t worry, OK?’
Listening to his side of this conversation, Ali’s spirits began to sink and she thought, Oh, this is unfeasible, this isn’t fair on anyone other than we two, and when he hung up she blurted out her concern and said, ‘Daniel, how can we ever be happy when we make so many other people sad?’
‘Mum’s not sad, she’s just a bit perplexed.’
‘Well, she doesn’t know what there is to be sad about yet. I bet Katelin’s sad, isn’t she?’
‘Katelin’s sodding furious, she’s already packed half my clothes into bin bags and given them to the British Heart Foundation. Duncan’s trying to save my records, but he’ll have to look sharp if he’s going to save them from being car-booted.’
Ali started to laugh, hard not to, and Dan smiled and said, ‘Look, it might get worse before it gets better, but we’ll power through, me and you. Does this vehicle have Bluetooth?’ He prodded the buttons on the sound system. ‘Hallelujah, yes it does, and I’m about to fulfil my teenage fantasy of driving Alison Connor through our city listening to Reproduction.’
‘Ah, the Human League,’ Ali said; then at precisely the same time they both said, ‘Before the girls joined,’ and laughed.
‘Badge of honour, seeing them in nineteen seventy-eight,’ she said. ‘Private club for the cognoscenti.’
‘Kev Carter still tries to lay claim to these guys, because he accidentally saw them at their first gig.’
‘Kev Carter, oh my God. This is so crazy.’
‘Crazy bad or crazy good?’
‘Crazy both. Do you still see him?’
‘No, not for years, but we could. He’d love to check you out, I bet.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Not sure I want to let him, mind you.’
She shook her head, rolled her eyes at him, then gazed out of the window at twenty-first-century Sheffield, trying to get her bearings, and then the music came on and it was February 1979 again as the car filled with the tick-tock, synthy start of ‘Almost Medieval’ and she raised her arms in a kind of ironic reverence and said, ‘Marsh, Ware, Oakey, we salute you.’
‘And that,’ said Dan, whacking up the volume, ‘is why you’ve always been my girl.’
She said, ‘Let’s bite the bullet and go to Attercliffe,’ but of course the street she’d lived in was long gone, demolished years ago, and Brown Bayley’s was gone too; nothing looked the same, and none of this bothered her at all, she couldn’t mourn the loss of the places where she’d been unhappiest. Still, she thought, putting aside her own feelings, the old neighbourhood had certainly lost a bit of northern heart and soul with the demolition works. Granted, if you grew up with an outside lav and a tin bath, you probably wouldn’t have given two hoots for the historical integrity of nineteenth-century back-to-backs, and nobody saw the industrial chic in a Victorian warehouse in the 1970s. But it was all so very changed, an impoverished landscape, somehow, without the sooty brick and corrugated metal of the old terraced houses and the mighty steelworks. On Attercliffe Road, where they parked to talk strategy, massage parlours seemed to be the boom industry: gaudy, seedy, unapologetic.
‘Well,’ Ali said, surveying the view.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Dan replied. ‘I think sex might be the new steel.’
‘If these places had been here in Catherine’s heyday …’
He’d never known her mother, so he didn’t comment, didn’t know how to.
‘She’d have sex with a bloke for a glass of port and lemon, Catherine would. Sold herself very cheap.’
‘Did you always call her Catherine?’
She shrugged. ‘I think so. I guess as an infant I might’ve done the “mummy” thing, but she didn’t really put the mothering hours in, so it never stuck, and I think calling her Catherine kind of helped me and Peter to cope. Like, distancing ourselves from her – less disappointing, y’know? It might be called denial now, I suppose. It wasn’t her fault, she was an addict, and she’d been abandoned, she got no help from anyone.’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘You must find this all very dysfunctional?’
‘No, no, only very sad.’
She sighed and stared out of the window, lost in her own thoughts. Then she said, ‘It’s been so wrong, for such a long time.’
‘What has?’
‘My silence, staying away, my neglect of Peter especially. I mean, it made sense at first, I understood my motives perfectly, but after Thea and Stella were born, that’s when I should’ve come back, made reparations.’
‘Alison, you were the victim, not the culprit.’
‘I owed my brother such a lot, Daniel. And I left him.’
‘You did what he wanted you to do – he packed you off, effectively.’
She gave a fractional shake of her head, refusing to shed the blame. ‘The onus was on me to come back, because how could he ever find me? But the longer I was away, the harder it was to go back.’ Then she sighed bleakly and looked out of the window again. Without turning to Dan, she said, ‘How on earth are we going to find him?’ and it was almost as though she was speaking to herself.
Dan had in fact already begun the process, not that she knew this. She’d slept for half an hour on the train, and he’d quickly trawled through the social media sites, knowing this obvious tech-strategy probably wouldn’t have crossed Alison’s mind, it wasn’t her style, and now she’d lost her phone, but he’d saved her the trouble anyway, because unless Peter had changed his name, he wasn’t online.
‘Well, we can ask around,’ he said now. ‘Try in the pubs maybe – some old-timer might know where he is. I bet this is still a pretty tight community, and it’s not that big really.’
‘It hardly seems possible he’d still be in Attercliffe.’
‘Why not? My parents are right where I left them. Folk don’t move far from round here, as a rule, even when their homes are knocked down.’
There was truth in this, and she acknowledged it with a nod, and said, ‘OK, let’s go walkabout,’ and got out of the car. McCulloch nipped out after her from his chosen place in the footwell, and she clipped on his lead and rubbed his head.
‘He suits you, that dog,’ Dan said, joining them. ‘Right, where shall we start? Pubs?’
‘Well, he was never a big drinker,’ she said.
‘What about that Toddy bloke?’
‘His street’s gone, same as mine.’
‘Well, look,’ he said. ‘Let’s just ask around. There’s a pub over the road, it’s a start. Wait here.’
He jogged across and she watched him go into an establishment that you’d swear was closed for business if it wasn’t for the ‘We are open’ sign in a mucky downstairs window. Who’d be in there at midday on a crisp, bright Monday? She imagined a miraculous scenario where Dan emerged, followed by Peter, who in her imagination was unaltered, unaged, and whose face would break into shining happiness at seeing her there, waiting for him. But Dan came out and grimaced, and she smiled ruefully, and waited until he was closer before she said, ‘Were you not tempted to linger for a pint, then?’
‘The landlady looks like an all-in wrestler, and she didn’t like the look of me either, I could tell.’
‘No joy then.’
‘None whatsoever. Two old fellas propping up the bar but no vital signs that I could identify, and bloody Captain and Tennille warbling out of the speakers. Jesus.’
She laughed, and he dipped his head and stole a kiss and saw in her face a kind of glow, an unmistakable golden warmth, and he thought, Well, look at that, isn’t this something?
He held her by the shoulders and said, ‘Ever since the day I met you, baby, I’ll believe I had a hold on you,’ and she said, ‘Is that a test?’
He smiled and said, ‘Might be,’ and she said, ‘Dr Feelgood, “Because You’re Mine”. You’ll never fox me with lyrics, Daniel Lawrence, I’m weird like that.’
‘My favourite kind of weird,’ Dan said, and he lifted her chin and kissed her again. ‘My all-time favourite weirdo. So, c’mon, let’s go find Peter Connor.’
They asked in another pub, then a pharmacy, a tattoo studio, a barber’s, a shop selling exotic pets – he might keep snakes, Dan said – the post office, a couple of Indian restaurants, an offlicence and a newsagent’s. People were kind, but Peter Connor meant nothing to them. In the old John Banners building they asked at a little café, and their question was passed from one person to another until someone looked up from a steaming meat pie and said, ‘Go to Mr Rashid’s. Everybody round here goes there,’ so away they went, following directions to an Aladdin’s cave of household merchandise, where the owner, a venerable Pakistani man with a proud and handsome face, couldn’t place the name, but threw himself into their task with surprising energy, blowing the dust off a phone book and making them ring every P. Connor in there from his own landline.
‘Facebook? Twitter? Instagram?’ he said when the old-fashioned method drew a long string of blanks. ‘This is where lost people can be found this day and age.’ He had a white, one-hundred-watt smile, and his willingness to help was heroic.
‘Tried all those,’ Dan said, and Ali looked at him, puzzled, and said, ‘Have we? I haven’t.’
‘Nothing doing?’ said Mr Rashid to Dan. ‘Then let’s put on our thinking caps,’ and immediately went on to tell them about his granddaughter and grandson, twins, both studying medicine at Manchester University, clever, clever children, working hard to honour their family. His wife had joined them now, but she stayed in the shadows and didn’t speak, only watched.
‘My wife is scared of your dog,’ Mr Rashid said, and they all looked at McCulloch, who yawned. ‘Forty years in Sheffield, and Raiqa is still homesick for Islamabad,’ he added. Ali smiled at Raiqa, but the woman only dipped her head modestly in return.
‘So shy,’ Mr Rashid said. ‘And she doesn’t speak English, never bothered to learn.’ He shook his head as if gravely disappointed, although he clearly relished speaking for them both, and at nineteen to the dozen. They lived above the premises, he told them, and still sent half their income back to Pakistan, where a worrying number of relatives were depending upon it, and if he could go back himself, he would, just for a holiday mind you, because this was home, Attercliffe was home.
Dan, aware of the march of time, said with some finality, ‘Well, thanks for everything, Mr Rashid,’ and they started to move towards the door, saying their goodbyes, but then an elderly man came into the shop, blocking their exit. He was wheezing and thumping his chest, but managed an ‘Ey up’ to Mr Rashid, who said, ‘Ah, right, now this is Mr Higgins, and he knows everybody, don’t you, Mr Higgins?’
‘Postman,’ Mr Higgins said economically, preserving his rationed breath. ‘Retired.’
‘And a local councillor,’ Mr Rashid said, as if this was a matter of personal pride. ‘Very esteemed.’
‘Aye, well.’ Mr Higgins accepted the compliment with a grim smile. ‘Darnall ward, for my sins.’
‘We’re looking for my brother,’ Ali said to him, more from politeness than any real hope. ‘Peter Connor. He used to work at Brown Bayley’s, but that’s probably no help.’
‘Long gone, that,’ Mr Higgins said. ‘There’s no steelworks here any more.’
‘No, we know that. Well, thanks anyway,’ Dan said, and he held open the door so Ali and the dog could beat a retreat, but Mr Higgins wasn’t finished.
‘There’s a Pete Connor runs a chippy not far off, over Tinsley way.’ He paused and took a shallow gulp of air. ‘Big fat lad wi’ a lazy eye, tha can never tell if he’s serving thee or t’next bugger.’
Ali said, ‘Peter wasn’t fat, although I suppose he might be now, but he didn’t have a lazy eye.’ She wouldn’t look at Dan; she didn’t want to laugh. She edged towards the open door. Mr Higgins breathed, preparing to speak again.
‘And there’s a Peter Connor, not Pete, he’s always Peter, up at Northern General,’ he said. ‘Up at hospital, tha knows?’
‘No,’ Ali said. ‘I don’t think so. He wasn’t a medical man.’
‘Porter. Hospital porter.’ He thumped his chest again furiously, frustrated by the inadequacy of his lungs.
Mr Rashid leaned across his counter to join the conversation without leaving his station. ‘Asthma clinic, you see,’ he said. ‘Respiratory problems. Mr Higgins is a regular,’ and Mr Higgins, ready to speak again, said, ‘Peter Connor’s pushed me on them gurneys more’n once, when I’ve not been able to breathe enough to walk. Grand lad. No sister though.’
‘Oh,’ Ali said, her first slim hope dashed. A hospital porter – she could see that; it made sense. Peter’s loving, giving, caring nature. His lack of qualifications. His humility.
‘Well,’ said Dan. ‘How do you know he doesn’t have a sister?’
‘He hasn’t got anybody,’ Mr Higgins replied. ‘He told me he’s on his own.’
Ali and Dan exchanged a look. Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she told herself to be calm, be realistic. ‘Where does he live?’ she asked.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Oh, please, why not?’ Ali asked, a little desperate, and too long absent from Sheffield to understand his meaning.
‘Because I don’t know, lass. I’ve never asked.’
His chest rose painfully with each laboured breath, and Mr Rashid’s quiet wife brought out a chair and offered it, tentatively, giving McCulloch a very wide berth. Mr Higgins dropped heavily on to the seat. ‘Thank you, love,’ he said. ‘I’m right out of puff.’ Ali gave him a regretful backward glance as they left. She felt somehow responsible for his discomfort.
‘Just suppose he’s here?’ Ali said.
They were in the unforgiving glare of the hospital’s reception area, waiting for a member of staff to find time for their trivial enquiry. Disinfectant masking sickness: the smell of hospitals was the same the world over, she thought, and this made her think of Michael. She shivered imperceptibly, and reached for Dan’s hand, and he took hold of hers and squeezed it.
‘If Peter’s here,’ he said, ‘then we’ll be forever grateful that poor old Mr Higgins has asthma that’s bad enough to need hospital treatment.’
He caught the eye of the woman Ali had spoken to when they first arrived. She’d been answering the phone and signing forms and giving directions to patients and visitors, whose labyrinthine course through this vast building was just another ordeal on top of whatever it was that had brought them here in the first place. Now, she looked at Dan and remembered she’d forgotten all about them. She made no apology, however, just said, ‘Now then, who was it you were after?’
‘Peter Connor,’ Ali said. ‘He’s a porter here, and I just wondered …’
‘Hang on, love, I’ll check.’
She picked up the phone and dialled an internal number. Ali felt her heart going at it again, extraordinary how it pounded, just because this kind stranger was asking a colleague if Peter Connor was on the rota today. In all honesty, at this moment Ali didn’t know what outcome she wished for.
‘Right you are, Angie. Thanks, love.’ She looked at Ali. ‘Night shift,’ she said. ‘Eight while eight.’
‘Right,’ Ali said, thinking. Dan waited. She looked at him. ‘I don’t even know if it’s him,’ she said; then, to the receptionist, ‘I don’t suppose you have a photo of him I could look at? Or can you tell me his date of birth?’
‘No, love, I don’t, and I can’t,’ she said. One of the phones was ringing again, and it was evident she needed to get on. ‘You can leave a note if you want, to say you called?’
And this seemed a decent idea. A note saying are you my Peter Connor, in which case, I’m your Alison. If it wasn’t him, no harm done. If it was, he’d have some warning, time to prepare – or to flee, because that might happen too. But, yes, it would be sensible to give him this breathing space so he wouldn’t be floored by the sight of her, unannounced, in his place of work. She took a notepad and pen from her bag, and wrote:
Dear Peter, forgive the intrusion out of the blue, but my name is Alison Connor and I left Attercliffe in 1979, and now I’m back, looking for my brother, whom I hope – and believe – might be you. I’ll be back here, at A & E, by eight o’clock tomorrow morning, when you finish your night shift.
‘We could come back this evening, for eight?’ Dan said, but she shook her head.
‘I’m dead beat, and that’s the start of his shift, better to catch him the other end.’
If it was him.
And it might be him.
Let it be him.
She added ‘Alison x’ to her note, then folded it and wrote ‘For Peter Connor’ on the blank side. ‘Thank you,’ she said, to the woman, who placed a finger on the note and slid it towards herself without really looking at Ali, just glancing up and vaguely nodding. She was in conversation again now on the telephone, and Ali saw her note go on to a moderate pile of paperwork, where soon it would doubtless be joined by more. The chance of that slip of paper making it to Peter Connor tonight seemed even slimmer than the chance of him being the Peter Connor, her brother, the Peter she knew now that she longed for him to be.