Alice sat next to Gregory in one of the rear pews. She looked down the length of the chill echoing room, over the backs of the heads of the other mourners, toward the coffin on its plinth. Soon it would be out of sight, lost to everyone’s gaze as it slid along rollers into the heart of the crematorium. She could not imagine what Thomas would look like inside that polished box with its brass handles. It was so impersonal, so everyday, that it seemed almost unbelievable that it should contain a body she had often made love to.
Gregory counted more than twenty people scattered around the chapel either singly or in tiny groups. He had only agreed to come because Alice had insisted that there would be no one there apart from herself and Richard Laidlaw. But it occurred to Gregory that everyone in the sparse congregation must have known Thomas to some degree, whereas he did not. And not only had he never met Thomas; he was actually rather pleased that he was dead and out of the way.
“I can wait outside,” he murmured in Alice’s ear. “I don’t belong here.”
“You can’t leave now,” she whispered urgently, and then took his hand and squeezed it in manner he found pleasurable. “Please stay,” she added, “not for Thomas, but for me.”
As Gregory waited for Alice to release her grip he slipped into an erotic fantasy on how else she could hold him. Meanwhile she gazed fixedly toward the man sitting on his own at the front of the chapel. Eventually she let go, and as she did she spoke quietly.
“That must be his brother.”
Then she turned her head and whispered so close to Gregory’s ear that the words seemed to be carried within a hot wind.
“Be careful what you say to him.”
“I don’t intend saying anything,” Gregory answered.
He thought uneasily that even though Thomas was dead it was still possible that he could disrupt everything. Gregory’s ambition would have been satisfied by now if his body had not been discovered. Or if Thomas had not carried a diary in his rucksack then he would not have been identified for a long time, and this funeral would not have been held for weeks or months. It could even have been so far ahead that Alice would not have found it necessary to attend.
But the police had easily tracked down Richard Laidlaw. The last communication he had received from Thomas had been a note quoting Alice’s name and address. At the time he had not even been curious. He had never considered that he might have cause to ring the number.
When he had phoned Alice about his brother’s death Richard had shown no indication that had been told about their separation, and she had not had the heart to admit the truth. In subsequent conversations Alice wondered if Richard actually knew what had happened, but if so then he never showed any awareness of it. Evidently the Laidlaw brothers no longer discussed such matters.
She had often thought of confessing, as she felt that Thomas’s brother had a moral right to know. But when she had discussed it with Gregory he had shrugged his shoulders and asked what purpose it would serve, so she had confessed nothing.
Now as she sat in the crematorium chapel Alice wondered if Richard would draw the obvious conclusion when he saw her with a male companion.
“If he asks,” she said to Gregory in a low voice, “make sure he knows we’re just friends.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Of course it is.”
And for the immediate future that was true, Alice thought. She had decided that if she and Gregory were to become lovers it would not be until well after the funeral. Somehow or other that would be more honorable.
The service was muted, its religious aspect made equivocal by the indifference of the congregation. Although the Laidlaw brothers had been baptized as Anglicans, no one knew what Thomas’s beliefs had been when he died. When Richard had phoned to ask, Alice had replied that he had only ever talked about primitive ritual and memorial. Together they had agreed that an interest in polytheism was not a useful pointer for a modern committal, and Richard had therefore arranged a conventional C. of E. service.
An uninterested vicar announced that the deceased had been on the brink of academic recognition when he had lost his life in a terrible accident. As he spoke, Gregory studied the vicar’s bland emotionless features and sensed that few of those present, if any, felt a great sense of loss.
Two hymns were sung to organ music whose notes were drawn out for too long. Alice attempted to sing but seemed out of breath. When Gregory looked aside he saw to his surprise that she was crying. Unsure what to do, he stared straight ahead. The vicar’s amplified voice lifted above the murmuring congregation like a threadbare sail.
To Alice it was disturbingly appropriate that Thomas should have died in such a mundane and pointless accident. It was the summation of a life never fully realized. Briefly she considered the possibility that if she had not ordered Thomas to leave, and if he had not traveled north, then he could finally have had better fortune in a few weeks or months. Just what this good luck might have been remained undefined in her imagination. But a sense of guilt nagged at Alice; she had been the prime mover of this tragedy. Whether Thomas was to prosper or remain a failure, he certainly would not have trekked to Stockdale Moor if she had not ended their relationship.
Even as she thought this, she gained a little ease from believing that there must be a hidden purpose behind his death. It had not been just a simple matter of terrain and weather. Losses so tragic were never without consequence.
Gregory grew more uncomfortable as the service progressed. Any funeral reminded him of his wife’s death, but cremations redefined the memory so sharply that he had difficulty adjusting to the present. At the time he had been cushioned from grief by his own systematic recording of Ruth’s disease. This self-imposed task, this willingness to have his profession place its stamp on those last few weeks, had enabled him to cope in ways that friends found admirable. None knew, although some must have suspected, that he was photographing every stage in his wife’s slow decline.
Now, years later, as he observed the funeral of a man he had never met, Gregory had no need of the detachment a camera could bring. All he knew of Thomas was what he had been told. He did not even know what he had looked like.
Gregory should have been indifferent, and yet the progress of this Christian ritual, its reassurances and what he considered its absurd but touching promises of resurrection, were poignant and moving in ways that he did not wish to admit. So that when the curtains at last came together, cutting off everyone’s view of the coffin, he was eager to leave the scene as quickly as he could.
Outside the chapel most of the mourners dispersed quickly, as though unwilling to be asked the extent of their friendship with the deceased. Alice was almost the last to shake Richard’s hand. At first she could see little of Thomas in his brother, but after a few seconds she was able to detect a likeness in the shape of his face, the way that he stood, and his voice.
“I’m glad to meet you at last,” Richard said. “And I’m sorry that Tommy never told me anything about you. Especially since you’re the one who must be feeling his loss more keenly than anyone.”
Gregory, standing back, noticed Alice blink. He wondered if she had stifled an impulse to turn to him for reassurance.
Richard continued to say the kind of things commonly said at funerals—that it had been a great shock, that his brother had died tragically young. After this he seemed lost for words.
“Yes,” Alice said weakly, “an accident like that was the last thing that anyone could have expected.”
For a moment Richard looked as if he were about to contradict her, but then he looked directly at Gregory.
“And is this your friend?”
Gregory already knew how he would answer.
“Cousin,” he lied, shaking Richard’s hand. “I never met your brother, but Alice talked about him a lot. I came along to give her some support.”
“There weren’t many people here,” Alice said to Richard.
“No. After the police found Tommy’s diary I phoned every address. I didn’t know if it would be a friend or an acquaintance or what it would be. A few of the numbers were out of date. Some of the people who answered couldn’t even remember him. And some were colleagues who’d worked on contracts so had known him only a short while. That’s why I was really pleased that you could come. Tommy must have meant more to you than he did to anyone else.”
Gregory could not resist agreeing. “That’s right,” he said. “She was always talking about him—weren’t you, Alice?”
“I never stopped,” Alice said.
“I’ve organized a buffet at a hotel near here,” Richard told them. “Well, it’s a pub, really. I don’t think many people will be coming. Two have said they’d definitely be there but they sounded as if they go to funerals just to get a free meal. Look, will you and your cousin—”
“Gregory,” Gregory said.
“Will you come along? You can tell me more about how Tommy spent the last few months.”
Alice hesitated. It seemed desperately sad that there were so few people to reminisce about Thomas, but she knew that the closer she got to Richard, the more dangerous it would be. She had avoided telling him the truth, and now was not the right time to confess it. She had caused enough pain in her life. Perhaps it would be best if she left him believing that Thomas had died in a happy relationship.
Gregory rescued her. “I’m afraid we have to get back,” he said smoothly. “Demands of work and all that. Sorry, but I’m sure you understand.”
“Sorry,” Alice said in a hollow echo.
Richard nodded and then appeared to be considering what to do next.
“There are a couple of his things you should have,” he said. “I left them in the car. They’re nothing much, but, well . . .”
Alice swiftly waved a hand in refusal. She did not want her home to be invaded by mementoes of Thomas. She had already packed up everything that she associated with him.
“No, please,” she said, “they should go to his family. Honestly. I have some of his things at the flat—clothes, books, CDs. You should have them.”
“But you and Tommy lived together,” Richard insisted. “You know we hardly ever met. You were closer to him than I ever was. There’s no family left apart from me. You keep his things. What you don’t want, give to charity.”
“Are you sure?” Alice asked after a pause.
“Positive.”
She nodded. “All right. But I don’t want whatever was in his rucksack. Or any money.”
Richard was surprised. “But Thomas had no money—didn’t you know? His account was almost empty.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” Alice looked down. “All he had to do was ask,” she added.
She did not know if she had spoken the truth. Probably she would have resented continuing to support him.
Richard led them toward a car parked alongside a featureless wall of red brick. Suddenly Alice felt nauseous. Sweeping through her was the vivid realization that on the other side of that wall Thomas’s coffin was in place and ready for burning. The furnace door would be closed and a control turned. Within seconds gas jets would incinerate the wood and play upon his body like blowtorches. His skin would peel away like bark from a tree and his fatty tissue would bubble and ignite. Before it disintegrated his skeleton would glow dark as an X-ray against the incandescence. Smoke from his burning would flow from the chimney; she and Gregory and Richard would be breathing it in as they left the site. Soon all that would remain of the man she had once loved would be a scattering of bones being shoveled into a pulverizing mill.
She put out one hand to steady herself against the wall, but it was too far away and her fingers scratched thin air. The asphalt tilted on the parking lot.
Gregory reached out and steadied Alice before she fell. Inside her head there was a sense of lightness, of lifting from the ground. Scared of falling further, she leaned against him as if he were indeed a trusted cousin.
Concerned, Richard asked if she was all right.
“I’ll be fine,” she said weakly.
“I understand. You’ll take a long time to get over this.”
“Ages,” Gregory said drily.
“Don’t worry about me,” Alice insisted.
Richard waited a moment and then spoke in a rush.
“You can be honest with me. Before all this happened, Thomas and you were getting on well together, weren’t you? I mean, there weren’t any problems?”
Once again Alice wondered if, somehow or other, he had discovered the facts but had concealed his knowledge. Maybe the truth was evident in her face.
“You must have a reason for asking that,” she said.
“Do you mind the question?”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Gregory said.
“We were all right,” Alice answered, and then waited a moment. “Yes, we were all right,” she said again, as if repetition were a guarantee of honesty.
Richard was satisfied. “I thought you must be. I was pleased that Tommy had, you know, settled down at last. I never could. It’s good to know he was happy before he died.”
“Is there something we don’t know?” Gregory asked.
Richard pressed the key to unlock the car boot.
“When he was younger—when he was a lot younger—he had black moods. Severely black moods. It was easy to undermine his confidence. I wasn’t the only one who knew how to do that because a lot of us were guilty of it. It took Tommy weeks to get out of those moods—sometimes longer. When he was in them, he used to say things he shouldn’t have said. To make everyone else feel guilty, I suppose.”
Gregory expressed what was not being spoken.
“You mean he threatened suicide?”
“Often.”
Alice shuddered. “He can’t have done that. He didn’t leave a note.”
“That’s right,” Richard said, “he didn’t.”
“You told me that the police said there was food in his rucksack. That he must have slipped and fallen and hit his head while trying to fill a bottle with water.”
“That’s what it looked like.”
“The empty bottle was still there beside the river.”
“Yes.”
“Richard, there were still places that Thomas wanted to see. He was desperate to see them. It was an accident. There’s no reason to think anything else.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Richard said quietly, in a way that both Alice and Gregory took to mean that he was not completely convinced. He opened the car boot fully.
“I thought you’d like his camera and his map,” he explained. “I’ve scrolled through his photos. There are a few inside a flat—the one he shared with you, I suppose—but with no one there. Not a soul. I don’t know why he would do that.”
Gregory improvised. “Maybe you were planning to redecorate,” he said to Alice.
“That was the idea,” she agreed, and Richard went on.
“After those there are dozens and dozens of photographs of the places that he visited. I have no idea where they are. They all look the same to me.”
Once more, Alice hesitated.
“Thanks,” Gregory said, picking up the map and glancing at it. “He’s marked this,” he added.
“Yes, he made notes all over it. His wristwatch, would you like? His address book? He had two archaeology books in his rucksack—do you want those?”
“Richard,” Alice insisted, “I have lots of things to remember your brother by. I really don’t need anything else.”
“Apart from the Kodak and the map,” Gregory said quickly, holding out his hand for the camera. “I’ll take care of it,” he said as soon as it was passed over.
“There was another thing,” Richard added cautiously. Alice noticed him tense a little, as though anticipating a dismissive reaction.
They waited. Richard looked up at the crematorium roof and then back at them. She wondered if he was looking for smoke.
“There’s a memorial garden here,” he said.
They waited until Richard continued.
“I was going to have the ashes buried there. The undertaker said he would see to it. And they’ll put a plaque on the wall. It’ll be durable plastic because people steal the brass ones.”
Alice glanced at Gregory, but he did not look back at her.
“But maybe,” Richard went on, then stopped, then started again. “Maybe Tommy would have wanted his ashes scattered in a different place. Maybe he said something to you about it.”
“No, he didn’t. Why should he?”
Richard shrugged.
“He must have believed that his death was years away,” Alice said.
“I suppose so. Yes.”
Not knowing how to answer him further, Alice turned to Gregory. “What did you do with your wife’s ashes?”
“I buried them where we had been happiest,” he said.
“I thought, perhaps,” Richard said tentatively, “one of those ancient sites that so fascinated him—you know, circles, mounds, things like that, the ones in his photos . . .” His voice tailed off. “But maybe not,” he added defensively.
Once the suggestion had been made, it seemed to Alice that this was the best ethical solution. It would be fitting if all that remained of Thomas were interred in a place that had informed his ambition. It was the least he deserved.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “Why don’t you do that?”
“But I don’t know anything about archaeology. We were very different people, and what interested Tommy never interested me. If you shared his life, you must have shared his interests—at least to some extent. So I thought that maybe you would have the best idea.” And before Alice could answer he went on, rushing out his suggestion so that the words collided with each other. “And I thought that you would like to do it—bury his ashes at one of his favorite places, I mean. Or scatter them there. Whatever’s best.”
“I don’t know if I want to do that.”
“It seems right to me,” Richard insisted. “I don’t have to be there. In fact it’s probably better that I’m not. I don’t even need to know where the site is. Because I think it’s something that should be done by the person closest to him. And that’s you. It could be your secret. I wouldn’t mind.”
Even his own brother wasn’t concerned, Alice thought. Thomas had been more alone than she had ever fully realized. He had always needed someone; even his remains still needed someone.
“What do you think?” she asked Gregory.
“Maybe it would just be best if they were scattered in the memorial garden. Look, let’s be frank, Thomas is dead. He’s not going to know or care where his ashes are.”
“But you felt a duty to your wife to leave her at the right place,” Alice said. “Maybe this is about duty.”
Gregory said nothing. His suspicion was confirmed: Thomas was a problem even in death.
The three of them stood together and said nothing until Richard looked at his watch.
“I have to go,” he said. “Maybe you can think about it and let me know. If you can decide within the next hour or so that would help.”
Alice came to a decision.
“You’re right,” she said. “Thomas shouldn’t be left here. He should be somewhere else. Somewhere that he would want to be.” She turned back to Gregory. “We should do what you did—take him to where he would have been happy.”
Richard’s relief and eagerness were apparent.
“And you’ll do that?” he asked, far too quickly.
“Of course.”
“And once we’ve got the ashes to you, I can forget them?”
“Yes,” Alice said. “Yes, you can forget them. I’ll make sure they go to the right place.”
Richard leaned forward. For a moment she thought he was about to kiss her, but instead of that he grasped her hand in both of his.
“I was never a true friend to my brother,” he said, “but I always wished him well. You were good for Tommy. I’m so happy that he met you. You knew what was right for him. You still do.”
She nodded. The muscles in her neck felt stiff. Richard went on.
“It’s sad that you didn’t have a lot more time together. You must have really loved each other.”
There was no point now in telling Richard the truth. She lied to keep him content.
“Yes,” she said, “we did.”
Minute after minute the procession of bleak, lifeless photographs slid across Gregory’s screen. At the beginning of each section he halted their progress and consulted Thomas’s OS map. After this he searched the internet for images that would confirm Alice’s provisional identification of the locations; she needed to be certain that each stage of Thomas’s final journey had been correctly tracked. Perhaps, Gregory thought, a file of digital images and a map covered in handwritten jottings were to be her dead lover’s only memorial.
During this period there were three incoming calls to the office. On each occasion Cassie pointedly greeted the caller by name so that her father would know who was ringing. None was unimportant, but Gregory shook his head in dismissal and continued his research. Cassie had to promise each time that he would call back as soon as he could. Gregory had not noticed, but she was wearing her mother’s necklace for the first time since he had borrowed it to photograph Alice.
There was little pattern in Thomas’s map. It appeared that although his route had been initially systematic it had soon degenerated into unpredictability. Rather than pursue an itinerary based on rational topography, he had instead been prone to impulse. Sometimes he had traveled to sites that were miles away from each other and returned later to ones he had overlooked. In the final days he appeared to have crossed his own tracks several times. Alice had speculated that this might have been the result of transport difficulties, and cited infrequent bus services and poor availability of accommodation. Although Gregory had not disputed this he believed that the doomed journey’s haphazard nature was the product of a disordered mind that could no longer comprehend its best course of action.
The very last photographs were of a wheel-head cross that was so tall and spindly that Thomas had evidently had difficulty fitting it all into the frame. He had also taken several close-ups of patterns and images carved into its sandstone surfaces. Although much of the detail had weathered, Gregory could identify a tree in full leaf, a snake and several human figures, one with its arms outstretched. Only when he checked further did he discover that these were representations of the sacred ash tree that supports the world, the serpent that surrounds it, and a depiction of a crucified man. The cross was an amalgam of pagan and Christian mythology, with the crucifixion sharing the same column as the battle between the Norse gods.
Gregory telephoned Alice from his mobile. She told him that she understood why the cross would have intrigued Thomas; one of his interests had been the cultural impact of belief systems. New beliefs, he had claimed, entered a community first as threat, then as distortion and finally as transformation. Alice suspected that he had seen that process illustrated in the carvings.
Gregory knew that what concerned Alice most of all was that the photographic record stopped in that churchyard. The cross was its terminal point. There were no images of Thomas’s planned destination.
“I know where the cross is,” Gregory told her. “The date on the photos and the notations on the map correspond.”
“He was on his way to Sampson’s Bratfull,” Alice said.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But he never got there. If he had done, he’d have photographed it.”
“That sounds right.”
Alice did not answer. Some extraneous noise, perhaps an echo, rustled in his ear.
Until quite recently Gregory would have been bemused by the name of Sampson’s Bratfull, and would have assumed that it was fictitious until he was shown it on a map. And if he had then researched the mound further he would have judged it to be uninteresting and of marginal archaeological interest. Now, as the place toward which Alice’s last lover had been heading when he drowned, the location assumed an importance that he could scarcely measure.
Evidence on the Bratfull was scant. Internet photographs showed a concentration of stones set on a drab, marshy, desolate moor. According to posted comment, the modest scale of the mound had disappointed passing walkers. If it had been a tumulus, Gregory thought, it must originally have been much higher; perhaps builders of stone walls or believers in pagan religions had cannibalized it over the decades. There was agreement that the name originated in a folk tale in which a giant let stones fall from his overloaded apron as he strode across the high moor. The sixteenth-century spelling of Sampson, and the Old English and Gaelic name for cloak, brat, testified to the antiquity of the myth. Some sources, however, claimed that it was not an earthly giant who was carrying the stones, but the devil.
“It’s a rather unprepossessing site,” he told her.
“That’s not the point,” Alice said.
“I mean that it’s possible he got there and just didn’t think it was worth photographing. Those stones wouldn’t have caught my attention. There are collapsed sheepfolds all across the moor. The place is just littered with stones.”
“But Thomas recorded everything else, didn’t he? So why wouldn’t he have taken photos of Sampson’s Bratfull? No, he can’t have reached it. I’m sure of that. Did you study the map?”
The landline rang. Cassie picked it up and looked across to Gregory with raised eyebrows.
“Is that someone calling you?” Alice asked. “I don’t want to get in the way of business.”
Gregory shifted his hold on the mobile. “They can wait,” he told her. “There are a couple of bridges on the map, Bleng bridge and an upper one across the same river. His water bottle was found next to the upper one. He could have been on his way to the Bratfull, or coming back.”
Cassie raised her voice so that it carried across the room.
“Yes,” she told her caller, “that’s Gregory Pharaoh you can hear speaking on the other line. But he shouldn’t be too long. Unless I can help?”
“Is that your daughter?” Alice asked.
“Yes. Go on.”
“The police told Richard that the river was in spate. It would have been easy to miss your footing. Thomas never reached Sampson’s Bratfull. He never got to where he wanted to be.”
Cassie was making a note on her pad. “I don’t know,” she told her caller, “he may be away on those dates.”
Alice spoke again.
“It’s the right place for Thomas,” she said. “I know it’s the right place.”
“It’s a long way,” Gregory said. He was already thinking about what could happen.
“Will you arrange things? Please?”
It was not in his interest to refuse. Once Thomas’s ashes had been scattered then a door would be closed on the past. And Gregory imagined a comfortable, discreet hotel in a quiet part of the country, far enough away from the collapsing tumulus for Alice to be able to forget it easily, with crisp sheets and old furniture and soft bedside lights that filled the room with warm shadows. And he thought of her body, a body that he had studied and recorded, and the presence that had tantalized him, and that Alice Fell would be his and his alone for as long as he wanted her.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll fix everything.”
He ended the call at the same time as Cassie was ending hers.
“As soon as possible,” she said as she hung up.
Gregory returned his attention to the screen. After a while Cassie spoke again. As if in reproof, she had rested her fingers on the curve of her mother’s necklace.
“You have to give me some answers.”
“Is there anything urgent?”
“It depends if you’re going away next week. Are you?”
“Cassie, I know you disapprove.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do.”
“And you think I’m too old to be behaving like this.”
“I can’t see why you have to drop important work and drive half across England just to scatter the ashes of someone you never even met.”
Gregory ignored the comment. “We shouldn’t refuse a lucrative contract even if it has to be completed next week. You could do it. I’m happy with that. You’re very capable.”
“I know I am. But I’m covering for you more and more.”
“One of these days I’ll stop doing this job. But the business will continue.”
“Photographers are like actors—they die in harness. Dad, you haven’t even asked what the project is.”
“Do I need to know? Is it something that I really should be shooting?”
Cassie considered for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t suppose it is, no.”
“Well then, you do it. With my blessing.”
“And the exhibition? You have to start finalizing the selection soon. You can’t put that off. It’s essential.”
“You could help me with that, too. Oh, and I need to sort out a hotel. For next week.”
Cassie was silent. Gregory studied the carvings on the wheel-head cross as he waited for her to volunteer. The crucified man lay within the sandstone, his Norse features as blank as those of a chessboard king.
“I’ll arrange your hotel,” Cassie said at last. “I’ll find one that you’ll like. Just tell me your preferred location.”
“Thanks.” Gregory paused for a moment and then apologized. “I’m being unreasonable. I should make my own booking. You must feel you’re colluding with something you don’t want to happen.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Another way is to say that I’m helping you get through your little bit of madness as quickly as possible, because once you’ve come out the other side then things will get back to normal. And I like things to be normal. A double room?”
“Let’s leave it as two singles.”
“How cautious of you,” Cassie said drily.
“I mean it. You know, before you met Alice I was certain that you would like each other.”
“How could we, when we understand each other so well?”
“You don’t really.”
“Dad, let’s say that you think you can discover parts of her character by staring at her body through your lens, but that I can see other parts just by looking straight into her eyes. Why don’t I just book you a double room? Won’t that be simpler? Get it over with?”
“If you dislike her so much, then why are you so keen that we sleep together?”
“You know why. You’re not very interested in women as individuals. You like them as types, as examples of some aspects of femininity that you’re fascinated by and yet don’t know all that much about. So losing them doesn’t affect you very deeply.”
“That’s not true,” Gregory insisted, and yet he thought that his daughter could be right. After Ruth’s death, had he retreated from the particular to the generalized, from depth to surface, from commitment to indifference, from wise man to fool?
“Dad, Alice Fell is a schemer. She’s not enigmatic and she’s not challenging. Once you’ve slept together, she’ll lose her allure—it’ll fall away like a broken shell. You’ll wake up and see that her ambitions are selfish and ordinary. The sooner that happens, the better.”
Gregory tapped a finger against the edge of his keyboard. “Let’s keep it as two singles.” After a few seconds he went on, “I have to consider what happened to Thomas. Nothing will change until after his ashes are scattered.”
Cassie crooked her finger through the necklace.
“If you think about how he died,” she said, “then it must be even more obvious why I don’t trust her.”
Cassie returned Gregory’s steady gaze as she continued.
“That man must have been very naïve. He was probably convinced that she was the love of his life. Even worse, he must have persuaded himself that she felt the same. It’s obvious when you look at it. Thomas killed himself because of how Alice treated him.”
“That isn’t what anyone else thinks.”
“Dad, you must know that’s what happened. I don’t need to hear any more detail to know that’s true.”
“People don’t kill themselves for love.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know it.”
Gregory believed that he had lost more than Thomas would ever have had, and yet he could never have thrown himself into a river. If he had done that he would have betrayed Ruth as well as Cassie.
“You’ve always had reasons to live, Dad. Maybe Thomas Laidlaw couldn’t find any.”
Gregory shrugged and his eyes strayed to the screen again. He had no wish to extend the conversation any further.
“Maybe,” he said. “In the end all that matters is that he’s dead.”
He had already lost interest in Cassie’s opinion, because it arose from observation and not experience. No one would ever know what had really happened to Thomas, and yet his daughter wanted to blame Alice for his death. Gregory decided that this was because she wanted to protect him; she was worried that he would take a path that would be similarly irrational.
Cassie was settled and at ease in a predictable life; Gregory accepted that. But he saw no need to be so wary in the closing stages of his own life; instead all that he saw was the necessity of satisfying a longing that refused to let him rest.