Someone to Watch Over Me (27 page)

After Rupert left them Molly had felt her way along the damp walls of their prison, but found no way out other than the door which Rupert had locked behind him. She tried pushing against it, even throwing her whole body weight behind the endeavour, but the wood barely registered the impact. She and Max had spent the rest of the night huddled together with their backs against the driest bit of wall. She had watched the light gather in the one small, barred window set high up, almost at the roof. It cast some dim light across the room, enabling them to at least see in more detail where they had been imprisoned. Even in the dark, she had recognised the building when they had first arrived as being the derelict pumping station that they had stumbled upon all that time ago. On that occasion they had not gone inside, but had walked a little way beyond it and sat on the ground and eaten the lunch they had brought with them. It had been one of the good days with Rupert. He had left her to sketch the building while he had taken Max exploring in the nearby wood. The room they were locked up in was very tall and rather narrow. The place smelt dank and mouldy and there were a series of green marks of varying depths along the walls that indicated that the place had been flooded several times. There was some old farming paraphernalia in one corner, and three large metal drums or boilers of some sort set up on their sides with hinged lids that opened at the front with a grinding noise.

Molly was concerned about Max. His breathing was ragged and he had developed the cough that he sometimes got when his asthma was taking a turn for the worse. He looked pale and despite the fact that she had given him her sweater, he was still shivering uncontrollably.

‘How long are we going to be here?' asked Max.

‘I don't know, darling,' said Molly. ‘Come and cuddle up to me. We'll keep each other warm.'

‘What's Daddy going to do to us?' asked Max, his eyes wide and afraid.

‘I'm sure he won't hurt you, Max,' said Molly with as much certainty as she could muster, although she was far from feeling certain. It seemed to her that Rupert had lost control completely. She no longer knew what he might be capable of.

‘I'm hungry,' said Max wretchedly.

‘I know darling. Be brave. I'm sure Daddy will come back with some food.'

‘I don't want him to come back,' said Max.

‘Shall I tell you a story?' asked Molly.

‘Tell me about when I was born,' said Max, settling against her. She felt his bony little shoulder pressing into her side and she put her arm around him to hold him as close as she could.

‘Once upon a time,' she said, ‘there was a mummy who longed and longed for a boy of her very own. But she didn't want any old boy.'

‘Oh boy no,' muttered Max, already soothed by the sound of his mother's voice telling him this familiar tale in this familiar way.

‘Oh boy no,' echoed Molly, who was trying to be as calm as she had the strength to be. ‘This mummy wanted a very special boy. A boy who was clever and kind and very, very handsome and who knew the words to all the best songs. This mummy knew that in order to get the very top-notch boy that she wanted she would have to do something brave and good to earn him. But she wasn't afraid. She was ready to fight crocodiles and fire and floods and even eat worms to get her heart's desire.'

Molly told the story until she could feel her son's shoulder relax against hers and she knew that he had fallen asleep. She sat as still as she could and watched the light at the window and waited for what might come next.

Carrie spent the next day licking her wounds and trying to recover from the most awful hangover by drinking tomato juice liberally laced with Tabasco sauce. In the afternoon she finally summoned up the energy to haul some of the rotting pots in her garden over to the flowerbeds into which she tipped their soggy contents. She stamped down the mush of roots and strange curling centipedes with her booted feet and then tackled the holly tree that had thickened in all the wrong places. The phone in her pocket rang, and pulling it out with a muddy hand, she saw Jen's name flash across the screen.

‘He's awake. Carrie, he's awake,' said Jen. ‘He opened his eyes. Stared around him for a bit and then noticed I was there and gave this big smile.'

‘Oh my God, I'm so glad. How long ago?' said Carrie.

‘Just half an hour ago,' said Jen. ‘And Carrie … we're engaged. I struck while he was still befuddled with medication. Say you'll be my Best Woman.'

‘Only if I get to choose the dress,' said Carrie, shuddering inwardly at the thought of what Jen might pick if left to her own devices. ‘No trailing sleeves. No empire lines. No attempts to look like an extra in a fifth-rate film of the legend of King Arthur.'

‘It's a deal,' said Jen and rang off.

Carrie had a bath to wash off the mud and dressed quickly in a long white shirt over skinny black trousers, pulling her hair back into a simple ponytail. She had arranged to meet Damian in a nearby pub, thinking it might be easier to say what she had to say on neutral ground. When she arrived he was already there in a corner seat. There were two glasses of red wine on the table in front of him. He knew her so well. There had been other people who had been there during their story, but it was only the two of them that had felt the full force of the joy and the pain. He was the only other witness. The only one she would never have to explain it to.

‘Jen's Tom has come round,' Carrie said, taking off her coat and putting it on the end of the bench.

‘That's great,' he said. ‘Is he going to be completely OK?'

‘I think so. Jen sounded so happy. They are getting married. A spring wedding.'

‘I hope you are choosing the dress,' he said, and she laughed.

‘Do you remember what she wore to our wedding?' he said.

It had been so hot. There had been a kind of hazy shimmer on the path leading up to the registry office. Damian had looked pale in a new, dark suit, too heavy for the weather. She had worried about sweat patches under the arms of her silvery grey dress, her hands clammy around the bunch of cream roses. Jen had worn a hat – some sort of boater decorated with daisies and a floor-skimming gown of almost neon pink. She remembered the evening party in a hotel and the anonymous room that they had made their own by decorating it with ivy and silver ribbon and tea lights in baked bean tins with hearts punched through the metal. Outside, in the sudden thunderstorm they had stood so close that it had felt as if their bodies had fused together in the rain.

‘She looked like a giant prawn,' said Carrie.

‘There was one moment,' said Damian, ‘when we were standing in the rain. I tried to hold it still in my mind so I would be able to go back to it. I still go back to it.'

She saw that he was making his case and in that moment she loved him more than she had ever done.

‘It's still what sustains me, Carrie.'

‘Damian …' she began, but they were interrupted by the arrival at their table of Greg who had been at university with Damian, and whose friendship they had managed to dislodge a few years ago, despite some fairly dogged persistence on his part. Despite her irritation, Carrie felt sorry about the rip in the pocket of his jacket, the smell of old fried breakfast that hung about him, and she pulled out a stool.

‘Come and join us,' she said. ‘We're staying for another quick one.'

In a grateful flash, Greg's jacket was off, his sleeves were rolled up and Damian was making his way to the bar.

‘What's the story?' asked Greg, having found Damian's half-eaten bag of crisps. ‘I thought you two were all washed up …'

It was another hour before Carrie and Damian were able to escape. They walked down Mill Road, which although never as aromatic in winter, still sent out the odd pungent gust of air as doors opened and closed. They selected a noodle bar on the basis that there was a free table in the window and it sold crispy duck. Carrie watched while the waitress pulled the duck off the bone, expertly shredding the soft meat with quick movements, placing pancakes in their bamboo steamer and little cups of dark sauce within easy reach. The orange gerbera on their table had given in to the weight of its head and drooped over the edge of the glass vase.

‘Poor old Greg …' said Damian.

Carrie busied herself rolling the meat, shredded spring onion and sauce into its floury pancake.

‘What's to become of him? He wanders round the pubs of Cambridge until he finds someone willing to put up with him for half an hour. It's so sad.'

Carrie didn't know how to tell Damian about what her latest visit to Simon had revealed. She knew that he didn't believe the man could tell them anything, but all the same she thought that this latest message would come as a shock, if only because it showed him that she now believed that Charlie had drowned. She had the feeling that although deep down Damian knew that Charlie was gone forever, Carrie's own dogged belief all this time that he was alive had allowed him a little hope by proxy.

‘Don't be angry,' she said at last, not wanting to hurt him, but unable to think of another way of saying what she had to say. ‘Simon has had another message from Charlie.' Damian shifted impatiently and looked down at the food on his plate as if he didn't want to listen.

‘He said, that he drowned,' said Carrie gently. For a moment she thought she saw something shift across his face; a look of bewilderment or shock, and then he seemed to recover.

‘I know this means something to you, Carrie,' said Damian, ‘but I just don't get why. It's not like you, not really.'

‘I believe that he's in touch with Charlie. I know we won't ever agree about it,' said Carrie. ‘I felt as if something ended when he told me.' She looked at Damian's face to see if her words had had any impact on him, but he seemed not to be listening properly to her.

‘Let's get married again,' he said. And he looked just as he had all those years ago when he had asked her to marry him on a wind-lashed beach.

‘We know we love each other,' he had said. ‘What's the point of waiting?' He held her hair away from her face in a bunch at the back of her head and kissed her eyelids.

He had always been so sure about everything. His feelings as clean and true as the slice of metal twine through clay. She thought that perhaps there had been a time when she had been as certain as he was about what he felt and what he wanted, but nothing seemed straightforward to her now. She knew nobody would ever again give her the easy peace he had been able to give her.

‘I can't,' she said now. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Please,' said Damian. She saw he was holding on to the edge of the table, as if letting go would cause him to rise up and drift to the ceiling.

‘I lost Charlie and I lost us. There's no getting any of it back,' Carrie said and saw in his face that he had expected this.

‘Couples go through all sorts of things. We were too caught up in the pain. We didn't know how to help each other. We can now,' said Damian.

She put her hand over one of his clenched fists.

‘We didn't manage it. It wasn't your fault. Or mine. It's just what happened,' she said.

She touched one of his Charlie-shaped eyelids with her finger. Outside, the moon was high and bright. The lights wrapped around the branches and trunk of the tree outside Mick Flynn's poolroom had been switched off after the proper post-Christmas period had been observed, but they would remain in place for the next seasonal illumination, growing into the fabric of the tree, making grooves in the bark.

When Carrie got back to her house she checked her phone and there was a message from Simon Foster. His voice sounded softer, more tentative on the phone than it did in real life.

‘Could you give me a ring when you can,' he said. ‘I'm having messages from Charlie. Lots of them. I can't filter them out. He seems very upset, Carrie. I think he is trying to tell you something really important.'

Although she was anxious to hear about the latest messages, Carrie waited until the morning before she called Simon. The phone only rang three times before he answered it. She imagined him sitting on his bed with its hospital corners or moving across the empty floor to his neat table. All around him quiet and orderly, but inside him all the pleading, the justifications, the explanations, the inane and the mad, the cruel and the kind, the anger, the sorrow, the secrets and even, still, the lies. All the wandering souls looking for anchor, trying to ensure they had meant something.

‘Hello Simon, it's Carrie … you left a message for me last night …'

‘Oh yes, Carrie. I didn't really know whether to ring you or not,' said Simon. ‘It's just that he seems so very anxious. So unusually present.'

‘What has he been saying?' asked Carrie.

‘He just doesn't sound like the boy he was when he came through before. He sounded quite calm before. But he seems quite changed now. I explained before that if I think that what has been passed to me is going to upset someone or puzzle them, I try to edit the messages …'

‘Tell me what he's saying,' said Carrie, her heart in her mouth, part of her wanting to know this, the other part of her wishing she didn't have to hear. But she had let him down before. She couldn't again.

‘His voice is different. I barely recognised it. He seems frightened of something or someone. He keeps talking about being wet and cold and not being able to breathe properly.'

‘Is he describing being in the sea?' said Carrie, unable to bear the images Simon's words were conjuring up. She wanted so much to know he had not suffered, but it sounded as if he had been spared nothing.