The First Time I Saw Your Face (41 page)

Mack woke up to hammering in his head and after lying on his back for a while, not daring to move, realised the hammering wasn’t just in his head. He was at Doug’s.

Getting dressed took a long time and he stared at the dried blood on his T-shirt and the front of his jeans, not certain of exactly how it had got there. Standing up straight for any length of time made him feel dizzy, so he leaned and crouched and sidled his way downstairs to find the kitchen door open and the sun already warming the large flagstones in the kitchen. It was all a bit too bright really, and those pigeons, they had to keep on with that noise, did they? He screwed up his eyes as he tottered over to the forge, the noise getting louder and louder and braced himself for the moment when he actually had to stick his head around the doors. Doug was holding a piece of metal under the power hammer, gently manoeuvring it into a new position each time the hammer lifted. His two assistants were, bizarrely, building a curved wall with bricks and cement.

‘Didn’t die in your sleep then?’ Doug said, turning off the hammer and coming to the doors.

Mack couldn’t shake his head. ‘Why the wall?’ he asked, screwing his eyes up against the heat.

‘Building a replica of the one them little buggers will be fixed to in the Diving Centre.’ Doug held up what looked like a splodge of flat metal. ‘They’ll be shells and seahorses when I’ve finished with them and I need to get the curve on them exactly right.’ He went over to speak to the lads and Mack meandered back to the house.

Finding Doug waiting outside A&E when he’d emerged yesterday had been a huge surprise. Being offered a bed for the night had been an even bigger one. As he’d driven him home Doug had said he didn’t want Mack’s death on his conscience.

‘Breakfast,’ Doug said behind him and set about making toast and coffee while Mack carefully felt his head and slowly tested which parts of him hurt and which did not.

‘Was it just coincidence you turned up at the library?’ he asked when Doug sat down.

‘Nah, I came to warn Jen. I’d rung the farm too. Divvn’t know how Alex knew you were back, Danny, I guess. Now shut up and eat your breakfast.’

Mack did as he was told, wondering what his next move should be. Another trip to the library, or should he bite the bullet and go to the farm now they knew he was back? First of all, he supposed, he needed to get back into Tyneforth and find a bed and breakfast.

Doug chewed his toast and said nothing, and Mack didn’t
feel like talking either. The enormity of the task that faced him had been brought home to him yesterday. Forgiveness seemed like a sheer cliff-face, dotted with people waiting to swipe him off. Even if he got past them and reached Jen, that was when it really got hard.

He was close to her here, though, and there was comfort in that. The most comfort he’d felt in the last month. He had been thinking about her in bed last night as he’d drifted off. Thinking of how her skin had felt against his, the beautiful yielding sounds she’d made underneath him.

Lovely, funny, graceful Jen.

‘If you’re set on staying, you might as well bunk up here,’ Doug said, putting his knife down abruptly.

Perhaps Mack’s hearing had been impaired when he’d been hit. ‘Here? Doug, that’s … but I can’t. It would make you really unpopular, with the Rosebys, with Alex, with every—’

‘Divvn’t care. What you said yesterday about Alex burying Jen away … touched a nerve.’ Doug scraped the crumbs on the table into his hand and went to the door and chucked them out. ‘He’s been paying visits to the farm again; he’ll be looking to get his feet back under the table.’

Doug wandered out of the door and Mack got up and slowly, clutching his coffee cup for support, followed him. They ended up sitting by the pond in the sun, Mack lowering himself, over several minutes, into a sitting position.

‘Still think you’re a first-class shit,’ Doug said when
Mack’s backside had finally made contact with the grass, ‘but Alex’s a bigger one … on the sly. Never liked the wanker.’

‘Any particular reason? I mean, you don’t need one …’

‘Was up at their place, the Lambtons’, few years ago. Making a gate for them. Yeah, a big “Sod off, plebs” gate. They were having a drainage trench dug at the same time and suddenly up came this piece of stone; carved it was, a young boy, holding a cup. Obviously Roman. I went over to have a look and, it was lovely. Such workmanship. I wondered whether it had been carved here or brought over from Rome. Couldn’t get over that the last eyes that had seen it before ours, well, who knows who they belonged to?’ Doug broke off a piece of grass and started to tie it in a knot. ‘Old Lambton was there, and Alex, and it was obvious there was a load more stuff uncovered down in the trench.’ He shook his head. ‘Know what they did? Smashed it up into tiny shards and chucked it back in the trench and then covered it all up again. They put the drainage pipe further over.’

‘But—’

‘Didn’t want the authorities there digging up their land, you see, documenting it, perhaps ordering more digging. I couldn’t stop them and I knew if I told anyone that would be me buggered on the work front. People like the Lambtons can do what they like. Or they think they can.’ Doug chucked the knotted grass into the pond. ‘Felt bad about it ever since. So … I’m not saying I believe your reasons for doing what you did, but coming back, having
the shit beaten out of you, well, you didn’t have to do that. I’d say the jury’s oot in this house.’

Mack fought the urge to wrap his arms round Doug, afraid that might be pushing the truce a little too far. ‘I’m really, really grateful’, he settled for instead.

‘Aye, you should be. And remember, if I think you’re taking the piss, we’ll be gannin’ up the coast and one of us won’t be coming back.’

‘Understood.’

‘That’s sorted then,’ Doug said in a kind of drawing-a-line-under-it voice. ‘Do what you can to really piss Alex off, and in return I’ll protect you when everyone you’ve upset marches up this drive with pitchforks and blazing torches.’

The sound of a car turning up the lane stopped any more discussion. It was Ray and Danny, and Mack felt clotted shame settle on him at the thought of facing them again.

‘Talking of people who hate you …’ Doug said, walking towards the car.

CHAPTER 43

Sitting in the kitchen, Jennifer felt she was part of a Victorian tableau of suffering. Brenda was standing behind her chair, Ray was sitting next to her, holding her hand, and Danny was leaning against the dresser, arms folded, head down. Louise, asleep in her car seat, added an extra little dash of pathos. Only Bryony, standing near the sink, seemed out of place: she looked more like a giant sheepdog, primed to round up anything that moved.

Danny and Ray had returned from Doug’s with the news that they didn’t know why Mack was here but he had refused to go away again. That didn’t make any sense to Jennifer, and she understood from the looks that were passing between her mother and father that they were hiding something. The gut-clenching panic she had been experiencing ever since her parents had appeared in the library was slowly being tinged by something that might be impatience. She still wanted to run, but now she wanted some answers before she went.

‘He agreed not to try to see her in the library, or come to the farm?’ Brenda repeated.

Ray nodded. ‘Said he wouldn’t actually come into the library, but that’s all he’d promise. Said if he bumped into her that was just fate.’

‘Brass neck of the man. Did you tell him about the police?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ Danny peeled himself away from the dresser. ‘But until he actually hassles her all they can do is warn him off. We could go through the courts, try for a—’

‘I am sitting in the room, you know,’ Jennifer said, standing up and breaking up the little poignant scene. ‘And I have a name.’

‘What is Doug playing at?’ Brenda said bitterly.

‘Are you sure he didn’t say why he’s here?’ Jennifer tried. ‘He must have said something?’

A Land Rover drew into the yard.

Perfect timing.

Jennifer looked at Danny. ‘Why is Alex here?’

The door opened and Alex rushed in as though he had run all the way, rather than driven.

‘Everyone all right?’ he asked, looking from face to face, and Jennifer wanted to snap, ‘We are not under siege from marauding Visigoths.’

Guilt and gratitude as ever, stopped her. ‘We’re fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You can’t be, Jennifer.’ He came over and looked as though he might put his arm around her. ‘It’s been a terrible shock. You just leave it to us.’ He was addressing
them all, ‘I’ve had a word with him – warned him off. Brenda, Ray, I suggest we keep Jennifer here until we get this sorted.’

We? Keep?

Her irritation was back, she couldn’t fight it. She looked at the way he was holding his hand. ‘Did you hit him?’ she asked. ‘You did, didn’t you?’

‘I thought Danny and I could take a trip over to Doug’s too,’ he raced on, ‘ask the idiot what he thinks he’s playing it. Just when we should all stick together, he does this. Always a loose cannon, that man. Townie, you see,’ he added.

Jennifer saw her father frown and Brenda, ex-townie herself, was short with Alex as she explained that Ray and Danny had already been to Doug’s.

‘Well, I might still go over anyway,’ Alex said, unfazed, ‘ask him how he can treat her like this, taking in that man when he’s meant to be her friend.’

‘Can I remind everyone again that I am still in the room,’ Jennifer said, getting very close to losing her temper. They were all hiding something, she could sense it.

‘Why is he here, Dad?’ she tried once more, but Ray just pressed his lips together and did that look towards her mother. ‘I mean, is there a minuscule detail I didn’t tell him about Cress and he’s come back for it? Like what toilet paper she uses or what colour knickers she favours? He must have given some reason for coming back, even if it was a whopping great big lie like everything else that comes out of his mouth.’

She registered the way Bryony was looking at Alex. It was as if she wanted to slap him.

‘Bryony, was there something you wanted to tell me?’ she asked gently.

‘Yes.’ Bryony moved over to Louise and lifted her out of the car seat, holding her into her chest as if she were a shield. Louise gave a hiccupy wriggle.

‘He says he loves you, Jen.’ Bryony was being careful not to look anywhere but at the soft hair on the top of her daughter’s head. ‘He told Ray he loved you on the day he left and he’s saying it again now. Says he fell in love with you and wants to put it all right.’

‘Bryony,’ Alex snapped.

‘She should know,’ Bryony said so loudly that Louise opened her eyes wide. ‘She’s a grown-up, not a baby. I can’t bear seeing you all keeping her in the dark. It’s not doing her any favours hiding it from her – let’s face it, there’s only one person in this room
that’s
helping.’ She repositioned Louise in her arms. ‘Right, I’m going upstairs to change this one.’

The door closing was the only noise as Jennifer tried to process Bryony’s piece of news.

‘It
is
another huge lie from him, then,’ she said, feeling hot and smothered by the way the others were looking at her. ‘I’m … just going upstairs too.’ She left the room, not even looking at what their faces were doing, and overtook Bryony on the stairs, getting out a quick ‘Thanks, Bry’, before making the sanctuary of her room.

He loved her? How could you love someone when over
weeks and weeks you had deceived them? Set out to deceive them and achieved it? What an insult to her intelligence. Love? He must think she was completely stupid to fall for that story twice.

A memory of lying with him wrapped around her in bed sifted treacherously in and out of her brain, followed by little snippets of the things he’d said to get her on the stage. She chased it all away by forcing herself to think of the way he had eavesdropped on her phone conversation backstage, actually tiptoeing into the room on the other side of that screen. She could just about cope with knowing the whole thing was an illusion, but to imagine bits of it were real? No. Best to concentrate instead on all those lies, on the knowledge that at some time before he had come into her life he had sat in a room and discussed her as if she was some cracked stepping stone he had to tread on to get to Cress.

She grabbed her mobile phone and dialled Cress’s number, forcing her fingers to hit the right numbers, but lost courage just before the call connected.

Bloody Mack Stone, he’d taken so much from her, even Cress.

CHAPTER 44

They probably looked like matching bookends – Doug on his mobile by the pond, Mack on his, just inside the kitchen. From the expression on Doug’s face, the conversation he was having was nowhere near as heartening as the one Mack was having.

‘She still looks very tired,’ Tess was saying, ‘but she’s doing everything they say. Made a few jokes about feeling like a pincushion what with the vitamin injections and everything. She’s made a friend – another writer. Writes children’s books, addicted to cocaine apparently.’

‘I want to laugh at that, but I know it’s wrong,’ Mack said and was pleased to hear Tess giggle.

When Tess rang off Mack waited for Doug to tell him which particular person had rung him this time to shout at him.

‘Pamela,’ Doug explained as he came back into the kitchen. ‘Bit like having your life slowly sucked oot of you by a knitted jellyfish. And before that, Jocelyn. Gave her short shrift after the way she’s always treated Jen.’ He
glanced back out into the garden. ‘That shut her … Oh, no … bugger … bugger …’

Doug’s eyebrows seemed to be all over his face, his mouth working silently as he stepped backwards, knocking the table and making the salt and pepper pots wobble. Mack didn’t need to look to see the post office van was coming up the lane. By the time Pat was walking to the house, her auburn hair swinging in a ponytail, Doug had morphed into a man who was incapable of recognisable speech or movement.

‘She looks good in shorts,’ Mack commented and heard Doug ricochet off a chair.