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She stuck out her bottom lip. It was an oddly sexy mannerism she had. Or maybe it was that I was beginning to find everything about her oddly sexy. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would have thought so. I’m not sure what exactly, but I’ll have a dig around and see what I can find.’
I smiled. ‘Excellent.’
‘OK, then.’ She looked up at me, one eyebrow raised again. Languidly charming, I decided. ‘Don’t tell anyone though – they’re very strict about us not doing people’s research for them.’
‘They’d rather you were watching cricket on the internet?’
‘No, they’d rather I actually got some work done, but they can’t have everything.’
I smiled. When was the last time I met a woman like this? One who made me laugh on purpose, rather than because I suddenly realised how comically mismatched we were.
‘So, when do you need this by?’
I took a breath. ‘How about tomorrow night? Seven o’clock outside again?’
She nodded with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm. ‘OK. I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Me too. Especially if you wear that short skirt again.’
This time she raised both eyebrows. ‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘See you then.’
I cringed to myself as I walked back to the door. If only she were ugly and boring, I would have slept with her by now.
Chapter 4 Tash (#ulink_d2cd205a-fefa-5f8c-9745-e1855417caea)
I stayed late at work that night, waiting to meet Ed. It was something I had started doing occasionally anyway. It made me look keen in front of the bosses, plus it delayed the awful moment of returning to Mum and Dad’s house. It was better than it had been, being back there without them, but only in the same way that acute appendicitis is better than a ruptured spleen.
The first few weeks I felt as though an evil set-designer had arranged things to be as poignant and painful as possible. The calendar marked with appointments and arrangements for months to come. A half-finished crossword on the side table with a pair of reading glasses folded on top. Unwashed plates by the sink, a load of wet laundry still in the machine, books with bookmarks twenty pages from the end. They’re never coming back, everything screamed at me, and they didn’t even know it.
At the beginning I’d needed all the stomach-clawing reminders every five paces: I didn’t want to run the risk of forgetting, even for a millisecond, and having to face remembering all over again. But slowly, the knowledge became absorbed in every part of me. I was a person whose parents were dead. I was an orphan. I couldn’t forget it, any more than I could forget about being absurdly tall, or being shortsighted, or being a librarian. So I’d tidied the worst of it away after six weeks or so, once I started washing again, and even, occasionally, eating. I went out and bought a brand new duvet set with a comforting, old-fashioned pattern of pink and turquoise roses. It was a woman’s duvet set, I decided, a duvet set that made no concessions to masculine sensibilities. I put it on the bed in my old room upstairs and I started going to bed there every night. Some nights I even slept.
But still, I was happier – well, not happier, but less miserable – when I wasn’t in the house. I generally went round to Geri’s straight from work but on the rare occasion she was busy or the more common occasion when I felt I ought to give her a break, I would stay at work a bit longer, reading the papers and surfing the internet until I felt tired enough to leave.
That night, though, I was genuinely absorbed in work, ferreting away for Ed’s Pete Milton mystery. Even if I had been a real person with a normal life I might have stayed late that night. I felt enthused, like I used to when I’d been doing what I still thought of as ‘my’ job at the Sentinel. I couldn’t give a shit about history, local or otherwise, and I was finding it increasingly hard to even fake an interest in some middle-aged woman’s family tree and whether her great-uncle was christened John but known as James or vice versa. But helping a journalist research a story, gathering the facts in order to get to the heart of the matter – that was what I did. Doing it again made me feel that my old self and my old life had not entirely disappeared. Maybe, one day in the distant future, this could be me again.
‘Hello, Tash.’
The woman’s voice behind me made me jump, and, as I recognised the blustering, over-friendly tones, I allowed myself a small grimace before turning round. Dolly Cheswold, the queen of the family history nutters, and the nuttiest of them all by a very long chalk. And believe me, she had some stiff competition on that score.
‘Hi Dolly.’ I forced a smile, sneaking an anxious glance at the clock. It was twenty to seven. My shift had technically finished at six, but the library didn’t shut until eight, and now Dolly knew I was here I risked being stuck with her for as long as she could carry on talking, which was usually an extremely long time. ‘Back again? I didn’t know there was a meeting tonight.’ Dolly ran the family history group, Who Does Doncaster Think You Are?, out of one of the library meeting rooms. I dreaded their weekly meetings because they never washed up their coffee cups, and someone, usually me, had to wait around to lock up and make sure they actually left the building and didn’t camp out behind the microfiche, so deep was their obsession.
‘Oh no, not tonight unfortunately. I’m just here to help out a friend.’ She gestured to a tall, fashionably dressed middle-aged woman hovering a few metres away from my desk.
The woman gave an apologetic half-smile. ‘Yes, I’m a family history virgin, I’m afraid. Dolly’s been kind enough to offer some of her expertise.’
‘Right,’ I said with a professional smile, trying to hide my surprise that this woman could be a friend of Dolly’s. She looked so normal.
‘Yes,’ Dolly butted in, ‘Jenny here – ’ she gestured again at the woman, ‘ – is my husband’s cousin’s widow.’ I nodded, trying to look engrossed. ‘She fancies finding out a bit about family history now she’s got all this time on her hands with no man to run round after, ha ha!’ Dolly always laughed too much and too long at things that weren’t funny. Such as the loneliness and crisis of identity that often accompany a bereavement. Jenny smiled diffidently again and I felt as though I should apologise for Dolly, for being associated with her in any capacity at all.
‘Great,’ I said, unconvincingly, to Jenny. ‘Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Have you thought about what you want to find out? Which branches of the family you’re interested in, how in-depth you want to go with it all?’
‘Erm…’ Jenny shook her head and shrugged. ‘Like I said, I’m a bit of a beginner.’
I tried to smile reassuringly and look as though I wasn’t just focusing on the fact that I wanted to be sure to have time to go to the toilet and brush my teeth before I had to meet Ed. ‘Do you have any information so far to start you off?’
She shook her head again. She looked as though she was regretting this whole thing and I wondered if Dolly, in her search for a new project, had bullied her into it.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s a bit overwhelming just trying to work out where to start, there’s so much information out there.’
‘That’s where Tash comes in,’ Dolly put in proudly. ‘The staff here are wonderful; such a great help to us.’ Yes, I thought, cleaning up after you every week, listening to you wittering on for hours at a time. Such a great help.
‘Why don’t you take these,’ I said to Jenny, handing her a pile of leaflets. ‘They tell you what we can search for, how much it costs, but – you know, I hope Dolly hasn’t given you the wrong impression, we don’t actually do the research for you, you have to do it yourself.’ I tried to push the file of research I had spent the last couple of hours working on for Ed out of her line of vision. ‘You know, we’re really not allowed to, we just don’t have the time.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘of course. Well, that’s the fun part, surely, the research?’
If you say so. ‘Well,’ I said with a not-very-surreptitious glance at the clock, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you in Dolly’s capable hands. Christine’s next door in the lending section, she’ll be popping in and out if you need anything. I’m afraid I’ll have to dash off, I’m meeting someone.’ As soon as I uttered the last sentence I realised my mistake, but it was too late.
‘Oh! Oh Tash, “meeting someone”? Oh how lovely!’ Dolly had somehow cobbled together the impression that I was a sort of cross between Bridget Jones and Miss Jean Brodie – a single woman, soon to be past her prime, both desperate for a man and yet totally fulfilled by my wonderfully absorbing work. ‘A young man, is it?’ And then, ‘Oh it’s not that nice young man we saw waiting outside, do you think? Is it Tash? Is he lovely and tall with a great head of hair and beautiful teeth?’
I cast about for something to say. The most I had noticed thus far about Ed’s teeth was that he had them all. ‘Um…’
‘Oh, well, if it is, then bloody good for you, Tash! Oh, well done indeed. It’s not often, is it, that a single woman of your age is lucky enough to find a wonderful specimen like him? Oh, and such a pleasant manner. I do believe that if young men still wore hats he would have doffed his at us, wouldn’t he, Jenny?’
It was then that I realised that she must indeed be talking about Ed. And I was surprised to notice that, though Dolly Cheswold was undoubtedly Doncaster’s biggest and busiest pain in the arse, she was, for once, right about something. I did feel lucky.
*
He was waiting for me, just as before, with his dark, 1990s trench coat and his shaggy hair, yet still, somehow, looking like a film star. Same time, I thought, same place. Same clothes. It was close to becoming a routine, and I was surprised by how much I liked that idea.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t find all that much,’ I told him, after we had sat down. We had gone to Dove again, neither of us having a clue as to where else might be half-decent in Doncaster these days. ‘Edgarsbridge was one of the more productive pits in Yorkshire during the strike, but it’s all relative and you’re talking about starting from a pretty low base. Ninety-seven percent of the miners in Yorkshire came out on strike – probably more round here – so yes, maybe more went back to Edgarsbridge than some of the other pits but you’d still only be talking about a handful of men. The one interesting thing about those personnel files is that the other blokes who went back were all employed at that pit before the strike and after, in a lot of cases. This Peter Milton – the mystery man – he was the only one who just worked there for those few months. Now – ’ I leaned back in my chair, feeling like Hercule Poirot, ‘I don’t want to tell you how to do your job but, you know, Milton’s not an especially common name. Say this Peter Milton – yours, ours – say he needed, or wanted, to go back to work for whatever reason. He probably couldn’t risk doing it over at Oldfield where people might see him, where word might get out. But if he was desperate enough to go back in the first place he might have been desperate enough to do it over in Rotherham. Plus, he was taken off their books a few weeks after our Peter Milton disappeared. I know that the strike was pretty much over by then anyway but… What?’
Ed was paler behind his freckly tan and he looked slightly sick.
‘What?’ I said again.
‘Nothing. So – you think it’s definitely the same Pete Milton?’
I shrugged. ‘Anyone can change a date of birth. Remember, it was way before the days of ID fraud and money laundering paranoia. He wouldn’t even have had to give them bank details.’
He nodded, still looking sick. ‘There’s something I should tell you.’
I could tell he hadn’t been properly listening to me. He had that look that men get when they wish you would hurry up and finish talking so that they can blurt out the thing that’s been bothering them the whole time they’ve been pretending to pay attention.
‘I am a journalist, that’s all true.’ He said it as though his being a journalist was the thing that had made me like him so far. ‘But – I’m not working on a story. Or at least, not just any story. I’m – Pete Milton is – was, whatever – The thing is, I’m his brother.’
‘Right.’ I blinked. Seemed as if it was family history research of a kind, after all. ‘Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know,’ I said needlessly. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have been so blunt.’
Ed shook his head. ‘You weren’t – you haven’t been. Don’t be sorry.’
‘I meant – ’ I blurted, then stopped.
‘What?’
I remembered what he’d said to me when he found out about Mum and Dad, and how grateful I had been to him. ‘I meant I’m sorry for you,’ I said. ‘Him being gone so long, not knowing. It must have been terrible for you.’ I wasn’t asking, it was a statement of fact. When he’d asked me about Mum and Dad, about how I managed to carry on, I’d had the feeling then that he knew already that I was just a moving, talking shell, that in some ways he was one too.
He was silent a minute. ‘I know everybody says that the not knowing that’s what everybody thinks is the worst, but I’m not sure. What about you? What would you choose? Not knowing, maybe never knowing, whether your parents were alive, or, well…being where you are now? Knowing.’
Tears sprang into my eyes. I looked down, hoping the light was dim enough that he wouldn’t notice. Ed did not seem like the kind of man who would be attracted to, or wish to exploit, a damaged woman, nor was I the type of woman who would wish to appear damaged. Although, seeing as I was crying in front of him for the second time in as many meetings, it was probably already too late.
He had been the first person to speak about my loss with such honesty, and I wanted to respond in kind. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I mean, I know – ’ I swallowed. ‘I know that they’re gone, even if I don’t know where they’ve gone to.’ I tried to laugh and he smiled in sympathy. ‘But – Oh, Ed, there’s no good way of saying this. What I mean is, I do know that they didn’t choose to go. I wish – I wish so much that there was any possibility they might still be alive, and if the reason I didn’t know they were still alive was that they weren’t able to tell me, then it would be OK. But – I can’t imagine a way that that could be true.’ He was staring at me levelly, his mouth set in a flat line. ‘Can you?’
He shook his head. ‘No. No, you’re right. If Pete’s dead, then he’s dead and that’s terrible. If he’s alive then, obviously, that’s better, but – but, you know… Why?’ He lifted a hand as though he wanted to smash it heavily on the table, but he brought it back down slowly and tapped it once. ‘Why?’ His voice was flat, emotionless but his hand, I noticed, was shaking very slightly.
‘Christ,’ I said, ‘what a pair of tragic life stories.’
He smiled, picking up on my need to break the dark mood. ‘Maybe we should co-author a misery memoir?’
‘Yes.’ I was glad of an excuse to lighten the conversation. ‘Or we could just cut the crap and go straight to Take a Break magazine. I reckon “Disappearing Miner Left Hole in the Coalface of My Life” must be worth at least five-hundred quid. I might even net a couple of hundred for “Divorced and Orphaned in the Same Week”.’
He smiled again, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘So, you told me what happened with your mum and dad. And … you did say you’d tell me what happened with your husband too if I wanted you to.’
Oh shit. ‘Do you want me to?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Very, very much. You’re starting to intrigue me here, Tash. I’d like to know more about you and, don’t worry, there’s not much you could say that would make me like you any less.’
That’s what you think. ‘I slept with his best mate.’ He was being so charming, so heart-tremblingly intense and interested and perfect. I wanted to put a stop to it now, before it went any further. And telling the truth seemed a pretty effective way of doing that.
There was a second or two when his face was fixed, unreadable, then I could see him begin to shut down and withdraw. So quickly and with just a few monosyllabic words, I had drained all the warmth from him.
‘So,’ I shrugged, determined to brazen it out. I would scare him off if it killed me. ‘There you have it. Pretty good grounds for divorce, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, as though he was trying to buy time in which to find the right words. ‘I suppose that depends on what exactly happened.’ There was a moment’s silence, the classic interview technique of trying to get your subject to give away more of themselves than they intended. ‘But, no,’ he continued. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Jesus, we’ve only just met, I’m pretty sure none of this is any of my business.’
I swilled the wine around my glass, watching it slop about, the dregs sticking to the sides of the thick, artisan glass. Suddenly every part of me ached with fatigue. The blood travelling through my body felt slow and sticky, the breath in my lungs was heavy and cloudy. My skin ached with the effort of holding my body together. What the hell was I doing here, in this calm, homely bar with this sweet, handsome man? Why was I allowing myself to do things like this, to come to nice places, to meet nice people? I wasn’t supposed to like it here, I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it, I wasn’t supposed to be happy. Soon I would be back in London, soon Tim would be home and I had to be back there so that he knew where to find me. I was going back soon, that was the plan. I would go back to the place where I truly belonged and stop living out somebody else’s life in this slow, provincial nowhere that I kept on telling myself was no longer home.
I sighed heavily, too tired to stop myself. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. Not because it’s none of your business, but because I don’t have many friends up here and I can’t afford to lose any potential ones.’ I forced a smile. ‘I’m probably going to be stuck living here for a little longer while I sort out all of Mum and Dad’s estate. I don’t want to alienate you by going into the details of what a heartless bitch I really am.’
The tone I had been aiming for was light-hearted and self-deprecating, but I think what came out was probably more world-weary and self-hating. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, then smiled. ‘I know we haven’t known each other long, and despite what you say, I know none of this is any of my business, but you don’t seem like a heartless bitch to me. If what you say is really how it happened, then I’m sure you had your reasons.’
Did I? I wondered. Did I have my reasons? I had excuses, if that counted. And yes, maybe I had made things sound a little bit worse than they really had been. But let’s face it, what I had done was bad enough. Ed deserved to know that I was not the kind of woman he deserved.
I smiled at Ed now, determined to draw this part of the conversation to a close. I was so tired of it all: tired of thinking about it, tired of talking about it, tired of the person it had made me into. ‘Well, maybe I had reasons. I’m sure I did. I’m just not sure if they were good enough reasons.’
‘So,’ he said, attempting to make his tone light-hearted, ‘I guess things with your husband are definitely…’
He was asking what my circumstances were, I realised. Was I still hung up on Stephen? Was Stephen still hung up on me? Was there untold unfinished business and dirty laundry just waiting to be aired, were he to make the mistake of getting involved?
I shook my head. ‘It’s over.’ I laughed, humourlessly. ‘Well, you can’t blame him, can you? Forgiveness would be rather a lot to ask after that, wouldn’t you say? Even from someone like Stephen.’
‘He’s a good guy then?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s a good guy. I should never have married him.’ I shook my head. It really was time to change the subject. Maybe I was trying to be upfront with Ed so that he knew that I wasn’t interested in any romantic funny business with him, but I was worried that I was in danger of coming across as one of those people who wallow constantly in self-pity as a way of mining compliments from the other person. ‘So anyway, we’ve established that neither of us wants to talk about my horrendous personal life. Now let’s try yours. Why didn’t you tell me you were Peter Milton’s brother?’
‘It’s Pete,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘Everyone called him Pete. The only ones who didn’t were Mum and Dad.’ ‘And they’re both gone now’, remained unspoken.
‘OK, then why didn’t you tell me you were Pete Milton’s brother?’
‘So you would take me seriously,’ he said. I rolled my eyes at him, even though I knew that if he had come to my desk with this query and told me it was about a member of his family I would have filed him with Dolly’s Who Do You Think You Are? nuts and hardly given him the time of day. ‘And also – ’ he spread his hands ‘ – I’m not ashamed of who I am, I’m not. Or where I come from. And I hate to admit it, but – I didn’t want you to know that I was from Oldfield, or that my family were miners, or that my brother was that guy who went missing among all sorts of dirty rumours.’ I opened my mouth to protest. ‘Remember,’ he said, gently mocking, ‘you are very London.’
I faked a frown. ‘I am not London, we’ve been through this. I grew up here too. I remember the strike, I remember what went on.’
‘Yes, sure, but – well, what did your mum and dad do?’
That past tense never failed to sting. I would never get used to it. ‘They were teachers. Then when they retired they bought a shop – do you know Apple Tree Books? The one with the café?’ He nodded. ‘That was theirs. But – ’ I could see him about to say something else ‘ – I know what you’re thinking, what does this middle class girl know about being from a pit community? And I don’t know anything really, you’re right. But I think I might understand a bit. Mum and Dad – Mum especially – they got really involved during the strike. They even went down to the picket lines a few times. And they were heavily into the welfare side of it. They used to bring food, cook food, donate clothes and stuff. Not in a Lady Bountiful kind of way, just – she cared, she wanted to help, she thought it was the right thing to do. Believe me, I couldn’t care less where you’re from.’
His eyes narrowed affectionately and the whole of the middle of my body felt warm once that smile hit his lips. ‘I can tell that now,’ he said, smiling, and my stomach heaved with something close to pleasure.
Chapter 5 Ed (#ulink_71acf180-8233-59eb-af6a-c96b72f95985)
Tash finished her glass of wine and went to the toilet while she waited for the next one, allowing me time to mull things over. It was going well, I decided. All this intimacy and soul baring, this sharing of our pasts, was, in my experience, a good sign on a second date. These were dates weren’t they? Were they?
Later I walked her to the taxi rank and when a taxi arrived and I ushered her into it I thought about kissing her goodnight – you know, properly, on the lips and everything – but it seemed I must have thought about it for too long because the next thing I knew, she was manoeuvring herself into her seat while giving me a hasty peck at the top of my cheek, near my ear, the way you might to an old school friend you’d run into by chance. And then she was gone before we could arrange to meet again.
Despite this, I was sure this time, with a confidence I never normally felt, that if I were to ask to see her again, she would say yes. I was glad I’d told her about Pete and Mum and Dad. Not that I’d planned it, not that I’d wanted to use them in that way, but I think it had been something – albeit something miserable – that we could hold in common, that put us both on the same team.
So I waited the obligatory couple of days then texted her to see if she wanted to go out again. I had wanted to go into the library and ask her in person – because I wanted to see her as soon as I could, to get another look at her, hear her voice again – but I held back. Texting would give out a stronger message, I decided, prove that this wasn’t only to do with work, that it could also be a purely social – purely romantic? – relationship.
After the fumbled non-kiss on the cheek, I was becoming increasingly, uncomfortably aware of our lack of physical contact so far, other than an arm round her or a brief holding of hands during emotionally charged conversations. Before things progressed too far towards the cul-de-sac of Just Good Friends, I decided to make my intentions clear by suggesting a meal at one of Doncaster’s few fancy restaurants and by arranging it for a Saturday night. Saturday nights were about couples and exclusivity, they were a precious resource you only spent with someone you valued. ‘I really, really like you’, I wanted to say. ‘This is special treatment. I haven’t put this much thought into taking a woman out for several years – possibly ever.’ The idea was to stop short of saying, ‘Please like me too, I’m desperate’.
She said yes, to my intense relief – replied almost straight away, in fact – and I spent most of the week looking forward to Saturday with agitated excitement. I dithered for a while over what to wear – something of a pointless exercise as the only constituents of my current wardrobe that were suitable for Doncaster in early summer were two shirts, two light jumpers (one of which had a hole under the armpit, one of which had gone an odd purple colour in the wash), a pair of jeans and a pair of combat trousers that had been left in my flat in Dubai by a previous tenant, and which I had adopted when an old pair wore out. I got my hair cut. I had a proper wet shave. I bought condoms – I knew that I was tempting fate, but if and when my chance came, I wanted to be able to capitalise on it straight away.
I got to the restaurant early, just in case. Tash struck me as the sort of person who liked to be on time for things, and I didn’t want to risk keeping her waiting. I was right, kind of. She turned up at four minutes past eight; just late enough to prevent her looking unattractively keen, not late enough to be rude. She had, I decided, probably walked round the block a few times to make sure she wasn’t early.
The restaurant was perfect, all heavy linens and artful table centres and barely audible mood music. This, as I had hoped, was very obviously a place you brought someone you wanted to have sex with. Tash looked beautiful, tall and lovely in a black dress with a red scarf and red cardigan and red lipstick. It was, I realised, the first time I’d seen her wearing make-up. My heart thumped in anticipation as I realised that she was making an effort too. Hopefully this night would end the way we both seemed to want it to.
‘So how are things going in your search for the long lost brother?’ she asked me after the waiter had brought our bottle of Chianti.
I felt slightly deflated. I had wanted to try and find some alternative topic of conversation, some way of drawing her closer and finding out more about what was behind the scary spectacles and the teenage-goth pallor. ‘Not so bad, I suppose. I’ve been through all that stuff you gave me – which has been great, by the way – ’ She smiled and my heart jumped so much it made me cough ‘ – but not much new has come up since then. I’m going to try and talk to a few more people – you know, friends, neighbours – to see if I can throw any light on this Edgarsbridge stuff.’
She nodded. ‘So you think it’s true then? That he was working during the strike?’
I shrugged. ‘I think it’s the most likely explanation, don’t you? I’m going to assume it’s true until I can find evidence that indicates otherwise.’ I sounded, I was pleased to note, smooth and professional. It was true, I did think it was the most likely explanation. Unfortunately, if it were true, then it threw up a hundred million new questions, none of which I knew how to answer. Nor did it chime with the treasured ideal I had held all these years of my brother as a flawless, blameless hero.
‘So – ’ Her face was questioning. ‘How do you feel about that?’
‘About what?’
‘About, you know, him being a scab.’
