Loss of Separation (36 page)

I was told I was lucky I could still walk. The brace had split clear of my spine and a jagged edge was one centimetre from cutting my spinal cord. The harpoon wound was clean, but I'd lost a lot of blood.

I wasn't bothered. Physical pain was something I could cope with now. What mattered was lying in a ward nearby. The baby had suffered mild hypothermia but was making good progress despite being born... despite being
taken
a month earlier than planned. My life had been kickstarted again. I couldn't have been happier.

Keble came to visit me. He said he was spending more time with me than he was with his wife.

'I hope she's prettier than me,' I said.

'Oh yes,' he said, peering up at me from beneath the brim of his hat. 'But she doesn't stare at me with quite the same degree of naked sexual longing.'

He asked me how he was, but I could tell he was itching to be away. 'I just came to tell you...' he said, and then he faltered. Now he didn't meet my gaze. All of his little gimmicks and affectations had vanished. 'Amy killed herself yesterday.'

'She jumped?'

He nodded. 'The water tower.' Now he stood up. I saw him to the door. He apologised. 'I think I might leave this place,' he said. 'And policing. I've had a bellyfull. Things are getting... nastier. I don't know if I can hack it any more.' Then he said goodbye.

I saw him pause as he stepped away, peering along the street in both directions to see if he could spot who had left the letter outside the door. My name was not on the envelope.
burn this, if you want
was all it said on the outside. All lower case letters, unjoined, slanting left. You didn't need a graphologist to see the depression in those words. Keble gave me a look, as if he wanted to share with me what was on that paper, but then he left.

Amy had been in a rush. I imagined the page making a fluttering noise as she spread her arms and pushed off into the blue. For a brief second, she would have been flying. I knew that when they found her she would have been wearing a smile.

dear paul i cant do this i'm not going there with you if you want to go and check then thats your lookout honest i think youd have been better off just burning this note rather than opening it god knows why i wrote it in the fucking first place. so its up to you and if you think this is just me sending you on a wild chicken hunt then fair dos and i'm so sorry if thats how you feel. but anyway theres dead people on cold acre marsh. the sacrificial lambs. the poor babes. shallow graves most probably if you want to go prodding around. i've been distracted by the old bodies that fell at the battle of winter bay. i've been stupid. slow. i reckon these poor loves were buried under its disguise, to keep people like me off the scent maybe. i don't know. i might be wrong. i'm probably wrong about all of this and it doesnt matter any more. the bodies are there, or they are not there. whatever - i hope i've been of some help to you. i know you were to me. dont feel bad. dont feel as though you are to blame. i hope you find your woman. i hope you are happy. i hope you can live with your scars. i cant live with mine. i've tried. last night i had a wonderful dream paul. i dreamed i was made of light and i had no scars, no metal pins or braces. no clumsy limbs. no heartbeat to fret over in the middle of these insomnia nights. i was pure and weightless and innocent and fast. i could move, i mean really move. i was everywhere. i was brilliant. and it is in us all, paul, i think. don't you? we're all of us got this ancient carbon in us. old and unknowable and magic. billions of years old. we're all born of light. whos to say that when we die we dont become it again? be well. love, amy

We live in Scotland now. Oban. Land of my grandfather, on my mother's side. It's quiet. The air is clean. The people are good; friendly and open, without wanting to stick their noses in your business all the time. And it's miles and miles away from everything.

I help Tamara; she helps me. The fact that I can see her again, every day, is more of a salve to me than all the pills and creams and physiotherapy. Andriy is strong, and getting stronger by the day. We pay for some help, because neither of us can properly pick him up, even though we're both improving. I stare at Andriy for many, many hours at a time, when he is asleep, and I think about how I almost missed him, lost him - through one set of circumstances or another - and how I will never allow anything to come between us again. I love him. And I think of my childless self for the past forty years and I think, what a waste. This is what it's about. Children are what it is all about.

I've had children on my mind a lot since Southwick.

I read the newspapers in the little one-storey stone library in Albany Street. Tamara won't have them in the house. Sometimes I'll switch on News 24 when she's out in the garden with Andriy.
Breaking news. We'll keep you up to date with events as they unfold.
I began to hoard pages and pasted them into a scrapbook. Amy was right. The corpses are being dug up on a daily basis from Cold Acre Marsh, not three hundred metres from Bryning's Pit, like treats snatched from a bran tub. They all bear the same injuries. Forensic evidence suggests that their hearts had been removed before they were burned. Many children gone over many years. Files on missing children were re-opened. Residents are being questioned. People are moving away from the area. Older graveyards are being dug up for clues. In one newspaper photograph I saw Jake being led away by police officers to a waiting car. He was wearing handcuffs. Police had seized many documents from the museum, and a harddrive belonging to his computer. There was talk of ancient curses. Of burned offerings. Of Jake's photograph collection.

I followed the story for weeks. I washed my hands often. Whenever I smelled burning I felt as if I might vomit. I thought of Ruth, despite what she had done. Ruth had always meant to be one of the 'lambs', but Charlie had smuggled her to safety. He believed her inability to carry a child to term was punishment for his actions. Ruth resented him for that. When Tamara confided to Ruth, it was a temptation too great to ignore. None of this would have happened if I had been approachable, if Tamara hadn't feared my reaction at being told I was to be a dad. Had Andriy been meant for Bryning's Pit? Or did Ruth want to keep him, raise him with me? Did he see my survival as some kind of sign? She probably thought it was poetry. Destiny. It was almost sad.

I woke up one day and the sun was crashing into the bedroom. No sounds of breakfast, of Andriy crying or lalling. No sounds of the television and Andriy giggling happily over his obsession for
Show Me, Show Me
or old episodes of
Morph.
Needled, I got out of bed and shuffled along the corridor to the living room. Nobody there. Nobody in the garden.

The doorbell rang. I felt a swelling of grief in my gut, something I had not felt for months, since Southwick. The shadow at the door. The policeman with his hat in his hand. The downturned eyes.

But it was Tamara. Andriy was in his buggy and he smiled when he saw me. Tamara was smiling too, but it was a sad smile. She looked as though she had not slept well. In her hands was a box. She held it out to me. 'Please,' she said. 'Burn this for me, please.'

I didn't know what to say. She kissed my cheek. And she said something in Ukrainian: 'Zabuty.'

Forget.

I opened the box. My scrapbook lay inside. We went through to the garden and I placed the scrapbook in the centre of the lawn. The first match ignited. I touched it to the edges of the pages. The flame tucked in. I watched Andriy's face as he became rapt by the fire. I saw the glimmer in his eyes and I went to him and held his tiny hand and it was warm and soft and good.

THE END

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Laurence Davy for opening doors in the plot; Tessa Kum for telling me straight, and wearing my book for a hat; Adam Nevill for support and helpful comments even as the nappies mounted up; Shaun Hamilton for pain management information; Tracy Savin for insights into a nurse's routine; Corrie Colbert for sending me air disaster links; and Peter Skinner, my old mate, who somehow manages to avoid flying passenger jets into mountains for a living.

Thanks also to Nicholas Royle, Graham Joyce, Jonathan Oliver, Darren Turpin, Sarah Pinborough, Susan Tolman, Carol Cummings, Rhonda, Ethan, Ripley and Zac.