скачать книгу бесплатно
‘OK,’ I echoed, failing to sound as cool as she had. ‘See you then.’
I headed towards the revolving doors that led out to the street.
‘Hey!’ She shouted after me. I turned round bracing myself to see if she’d really been winding me up. As if a woman like that wouldn’t have anything better to do on a Friday night. ‘My name’s Tash, Tash Chaplain, by the way!’
I raised a finger to my lips and mimed an exaggerated ‘sshhhh’ then turned to go. As I stepped onto the street, I allowed myself a little swagger in my step.
Chapter 2 Tash (#ulink_e8631b2f-1fc1-5c52-a579-43e005cc2e87)
It was time to leave. It had actually been time to leave for a while, but I wanted to stay. Geri didn’t seem to mind. I think she hardly noticed me any more; she just cooked and tidied and got the children ready for bed around me. ‘You’re one of the family,’ she had said to me when I first came back and I’d cried with gratitude at her pretending I still had a family. I had forgotten the other side of it though, that a family is just a group of people who have carte blanche to ignore you and take you for granted.
‘Pass me that nappy, Tash,’ she said, as I was getting up the nerve to tell her.
‘Here,’ I said, picking up the one lying nearest to me on the floor.
‘No,’ she shook her head, irritated. ‘That’s one of Katie’s. I need one for Sophie.’
I hunted round for a smaller nappy, glad to have my back to her. ‘So, anyway,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be round tomorrow night after all.’
Her hand shot out to grab Katie as she made a naked dash for the stairs but, still wet from her bath, the little girl slipped past her. ‘What?’ Geri said, distracted. ‘Why not?’
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ I said truthfully. ‘You must be sick to death of having me round here every night, eating your food, drinking your wine, winding up your kids.’
‘Tash, we love having you, I mean it. We wish you’d stay here, honestly. We hate to think of you in that big house on your own every night.’ She grabbed a handful of baby wipes in readiness. ‘And anyway, you never eat the food, and you always bring the wine.’
I laughed. ‘Well, it’s good of you to say so, but I know you and Matt will be glad of some time together.’
She rolled her eyes as she lifted the baby’s bottom and shoved the nappy under her. ‘Tash, we’re constantly together. That’s why we’re so glad you’re here to give us someone else to talk to and about.’ She didn’t seem to be joking. ‘So anyway,’ she picked Sophie up and handed her to me. I cuddled the tiny warm bundle into me, stroking her chubby neck. ‘Why aren’t you coming tomorrow?’
‘I’m – well, I’m meeting someone. A bloke.’
‘A bloke?’ It was Matt, carrying Katie over his shoulder like a sack of coal. She wasn’t laughing or wriggling, just hanging floppily as though this was how her dad put her to bed every night. From what I’d observed over the preceding weeks, this was in fact the case. ‘What bloke?’
I shot Geri an urgent look. Matt was a good guy, and after these last few months of hanging around his house every evening, talking to his wife for hour after hour while he dozed, mouth open, on the couch, I had begun to regard him as my friend. But I still didn’t want to tell him these things. I knew he must know about me and Stephen and Tim and the whole hideous mess because I’m certain Geri tells him everything, no matter how much she promises me that she won’t. But I wanted to at least be able to pretend to him – to anyone – that I was a good person.
‘Matt, mind your own business,’ Geri said, leaning forward to kiss Katie on the cheek.
‘Night, Mummy!’ she yelled.
‘Night, Katie!’ Geri yelled back.
‘Don’t worry, Tash,’ Matt said over his shoulder as he carried Katie out of the room. ‘She’ll tell me it all later anyway.’
Geri stood up and took Sophie back over to the armchair. She lifted up her top and moved the baby to her breast, saying, ‘Well? What bloke?’
‘Just someone I met at work.’
‘One of the other librarians?’
‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘A customer. He came in the library the other day and asked me to help him with some research he’s doing.’
‘What?’ Sophie’s head jerked away at the sound of her mother’s shriek, leaving Geri’s white, veiny boob staring me in the face.
‘What do you mean, “what”?’
‘You’re going out with some bloke who came in the Local Studies Library? On his own? During the day?’
I pulled a ‘fuck off’ face. ‘He’s a journalist actually, not one of the family history weirdos. He’s working on a story about a local cold case or something. Sounds pretty interesting.’
Sophie was sucking away at the boob again. ‘A journalist? Tash, are you sure?’
I knew what she was asking. Not if I was sure this bloke was really a journalist but if I was sure I should talk to a journalist ever again.
‘He’s not a Stephen kind of journalist, don’t worry.’
‘So is he the other kind of journalist?’
I felt that tight grip in my stomach that came every time anyone mentioned him. Even though Geri hadn’t used Tim’s name, I knew that was what she meant. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not that kind either.’ Nobody was a Tim kind of anything.
‘So, did he just ask you out?’ She sounded incredulous.
‘No, not like that. It’s not a date or anything. He just wanted to talk about this research in a bit more depth, and we’d been having a bit of a laugh, and, you know…’
‘Tash, shut up. I’m thirty-three years old, I’ve had two children, I’ve slept with fourteen men. I understand how these things work as well as you do. People don’t – men don’t ask women they meet in the course of their boring research on dead people to go out for a drink with them unless they want to get into their knickers. You might not think it’s a date, but I reckon he will do. God, I’m so jealous.’ She stood to put Sophie in her cot.
‘Geri!’
She held a finger to her lips as we crept out of the room.
‘No,’ she whispered, ‘not like that. I mean, I’ve just never been on a date. When I met Matt we’d slept together about fifteen times before we even went to the cinema together. It would never have occurred to me to go out romantically with someone I hadn’t already had sex with – it’s what people do in films or stupid books about New York.’
‘Well, there’s nothing to be jealous about,’ I said coolly, ‘because it isn’t a date!’
Geri said nothing in response, but the look on her face told me what was going on in her head. In her head she was holding up her thumbs and forefingers in front of her forehead to form a massive W and she was saying ‘whatever’ in an annoying, squeaky voice.
We went into the lounge and Geri poured me a glass of red wine without asking. ‘So anyway,’ she said as I sat down, ‘what’s he like?’
‘Erm – our age or thereabouts, I would have said. Maybe a bit older, but he’s still got all his hair. Quite tall.’
‘Taller than you?’ she put in anxiously.
‘Of course,’ I said quickly, then felt annoyed with myself for playing into Geri’s hands. She was asking about height because tallness and the lack of it had always been a central part of my decision-making process when it comes to men. I’m 5’9” and ever since I reached my full height at age fifteen had had a strict rule that anyone shorter than me was not an option. Until Stephen. I had somehow allowed Stephen to slip through, which just goes to show that rules are there for a reason.
‘And, what? Dark? Fair?’
‘Kind of – kind of sandy, I suppose?’
Geri smirked. ‘Come off it, Tash. We all know what “sandy” means. Do you mean ginger?’
‘No, not ginger. Sandy.’
‘What, like Robert Redford?’
I smiled. ‘Yes! Exactly! Well, maybe not exactly but – you know, not not Robert Redford.’
‘My God,’ she breathed, ‘a date with a journalist who looks like Robert Redford. Are you going to share secrets from the Nixon White House with him?’
‘Yes,’ I said solemnly. ‘I am Deep Throat.’
We laughed, then she said, ‘But seriously, Tash, do you think this is a good idea? If he is, you know, hoping that it is going to be a date. Is he a nice guy?’
I shrugged. I genuinely had very little idea. ‘He seemed like he was,’ I said, which was true.
She tossed her head dismissively. ‘Makes no difference really. If he’s not a nice guy then it’s a bad idea for you. If he is a nice guy – and if you say he is, then he probably is – then it’s a bad idea for him.’
‘Why? What do you think I’m going to do to him? We’re going to be looking at old newspaper clippings and making chit-chat about local history. I’m not going to break his heart just by spending a couple of hours in the same room as him. I know that I’m very beautiful and special to you, but unfortunately the rest of the world does not generally share your point of view.’ She continued to look at me sceptically. ‘Geri, you need to calm down about this. All I’m doing is meeting him for a drink so I can give him some information he asked for.’
‘About the Nixon White House?’
‘Yes.’
She smiled and rolled her eyes.
‘Look, I know what you’re worrying about.’ I reached over and squeezed Geri’s arm awkwardly. ‘But it’s fine. I’m not going to get involved with this guy, I’m not going to fall in love with him and he’s not going to fall in love with me. I’m not on the fucking rebound for Christ’s sake.’ I managed to sound really indignant as I said it, and Geri looked suitably sheepish.
It was entirely appropriate, after all, that somebody in my situation should be affronted by the idea they may be on the rebound. I had only split up with my husband three months ago, as she well knew. Only the most cold-hearted, loveless of people could rebound that quickly. What Geri didn’t know of course, and what I was too paralysed by shame to tell her, was that the thing I was rebounding from was far bigger than three years of marriage to Stephen. That the hurt was so much deeper than anything Stephen could ever have caused me, that what I was experiencing was not the brisk, rubbery bounce of a rebound but a screaming, echoing nosedive into a black, empty abyss. It was the kind of fall that people do not bounce back from.
There was a pained concern in Geri’s eyes as she spoke. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I know that you’re not ready for someone else – Jesus, how could you be? And I know that you’re still grieving for your mum and dad, I just – just be careful, that’s all.’
I almost laughed. This guy had not seemed like somebody I felt I needed to be careful of. He had been so interesting and kind and – well, calm. And he had been the first person I had talked to in nearly two months who didn’t know about Mum and Dad, didn’t know about Stephen or Tim, who seemed interested in me – the old me – rather than ghoulishly fascinated by what a fantastic mess my life was. I just wanted to sit in a room with him for a couple of hours and talk and listen and pretend to be normal. I just wanted a friend. A handsome, charming friend.
*
He was waiting for me at the bottom of the library steps on the Friday night. Several of the other staff were leaving at the same time as me, heads down as they pulled their phones from their handbags or buttoned up their jackets, but some of them saw me greet him and walk off with him. I felt a warm glow that they might think this man was my boyfriend or my husband, that they might assume that my life was filled with the simple pleasures of a walk home on a chilly spring night with a tall, warm man.
‘So what’s your name, mystery man?’ I asked him. He was walking close beside me, his arms swinging loosely by his sides. I could have reached out and grabbed his hand if I’d wanted to. I wrapped my arms around myself, keeping my own hands safely out of reach.
‘Ed,’ he said, smiling and meeting my eyes.
It was quite something that smile: broad and intimate and knowing and fond. The smile of an old friend you never expected to see again, who greets you by telling you that you haven’t changed a bit. It would warm the coldest of hearts, I felt sure, but of course all that was academic because my heart wasn’t simply cold but dead. The body, however, is something else altogether, and I began to feel a long-forgotten sizzle in my gut when his eyes started to twinkle. I looked away, worried that I was beginning to blush.
‘Have I ruined the mystique now?’ he asked.
‘A bit,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you ruin it a bit more and tell me where we’re going?’ We were heading away from the town centre, up South Parade. ‘I didn’t know there was anywhere up here.’
‘Neither did I until the other day. My sister took me.’ He steered me into a white building with a grey painted sign above it saying ‘Dove’. Inside was all smooth wood and dim light and art on the walls. Proper art as well, stuff that looked as if a real artist had painted it – well, either an artist or a school child using their non-dominant hand. There were a few other people sitting at tables nursing wine and real ale and Ed took a seat by the window.
‘I didn’t know places like this existed in Doncaster,’ I said lightly.
He didn’t smile. ‘It’s not all flat caps and slag heaps up here any more, you know.’
‘I know. I’m – ’ ‘I’m one of you’, I wanted to say. ‘Do you think I’m from somewhere else?’ I said instead.
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m from here, from Donny.’
He didn’t look surprised so much as disbelieving. ‘Right. Sorry, I just assumed – I mean, you don’t have the accent or – ’ he waved a hand up and down at me. ‘What I mean is, your clothes, your hair, it’s all – you do look very London.’
‘No!’ I was genuinely wounded. ‘I’m not London, not at all. Well, OK, you’re right, I do live in London – did live there – but I haven’t turned traitor. I’m still a Yorkshire lass really.’
He smiled. If it wasn’t too familiar-sounding I would say he was looking at me fondly. The fizzing started up again and I quickly dropped my gaze. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Don’t remember meeting many like you when I was growing up though.’
‘See? I wouldn’t have guessed you were a native either. You don’t look like a typical Donny bloke to me.’
‘What do I look like?’
Like an overgrown student circa 1994, I wanted to say. And also a bit like Robert Redford. ‘Like a man of the world,’ I said instead.
That indulgent smile again. ‘I’d say you were a pretty good judge of character.’
‘Hmm.’ I made a non-committal noise. Judgement of character was not something I generally performed well at as my track record would indicate.
We ordered drinks and I pulled an envelope from my bag. ‘This is what I’ve managed to find on your Peter Milton.’ I passed a few copies of newspaper articles across to him. ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid, just a few profile pieces done after he disappeared, which you’ve probably seen already. The only thing I found from before was him doing a sound bite from the picket line – there, you see?’ I pointed at the smallest cutting.
‘“Violence only dilutes our message,”‘ Ed read aloud. ‘“If we want to be heard, we have to take ourselves seriously as well.”‘ He nodded, his lips pressed together. ‘That’s quite eloquent.’ He sounded surprised, I noted smugly. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with snobbish preconceptions of Yorkshiremen.
I nodded. ‘There was this as well.’ I leafed through to find the print-out I was after. ‘From twenty years after he disappeared – the Free Press did a follow-up story. Turns out his family has never asked for him to be declared dead and no evidence ever turned up to suggest he is – no body’s been found that fits his description, nothing like that – so I suppose, technically, he’s still a missing person. I think they still live locally.’ I looked down at the piece of paper. ‘Bev Milton, it says here – that’s his mother. You should see if she’ll agree to an interview.’
He took the paper from me, barely glancing at it. ‘She’s dead,’ he said absently. ‘At least,’ he added, ‘I think I heard she’d died.’ He scratched his chin, not looking at me. ‘Anything else?’ he asked. ‘Anything that’s, you know, not in the public domain as such.’
‘Everything I can give you is in the public domain,’ I said coldly, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t be able to give it to you.’ I knew what he meant. He meant, did you find anything that I couldn’t have found by myself given an internet connection and twenty minutes with the newspaper archive?
‘There’s these,’ I said, pulling more sheaves of paper, ‘if this is the kind of thing you mean. Personnel files from Oldfield Main.’
He took them from me and squinted, trying to read the poor reproduction in the artfully dim light. I hesitated. Was it worth even giving it to him? I shook the last few papers out of the envelope. ‘There was this as well.’ I handed them to him. ‘It’s a personnel file from a different pit, Edgarsbridge over in Rotherham. It’s another Peter Milton. I’m fairly sure it’s another one anyway, the date of birth’s different. I just thought there was something a bit funny about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly but whoever it is, he only worked there from October 1984 for about six months.’
His eyes widened. ‘During the strike.’
I nodded.
‘A scab?’ He sounded as though he had heard of such people only in legend.
I shrugged. ‘Must have been. Look, like I said, it’s probably nothing to do with your Peter Milton. According to all this stuff he was a good union bloke, always on the picket lines, well thought of. And anyway, he was only twenty, not married, no kids. I mean, I know times were tough for all of them, but if he didn’t have to worry about putting a roof over his family’s head, then – ’ I shrugged. ‘Seems as if he would have had a hard time justifying it to himself. Or anyone else.’ Ed was looking at me, his eyes slightly smaller than before, and he looked as though he wished I’d stop rambling on about this nonsense and let him do the detective work. I shrugged again, trying to signal that this line of reasoning was at an end. ‘Plus,’ I said, ‘the date of birth’s different, like I said. Chuck that bit out if you want.’
‘No, no,’ he took it from me. ‘It all helps. This is great, thanks, Tash.’ He was trying to make up for his faux pas earlier, I could tell, so I smiled.
‘Just doing my job.’
