Lost Summer

‘Here you go, Freddie.’

He’d looked up at her, and somehow he’d seemed vulnerable. Or maybe she was just drunk, or maybe a lot of things.

‘I had a good time tonight,’ she’d said at last.

‘Me too.’

Another silence. Then she’d said, ‘That couch is lumpy.’

‘It is a little.’

‘So … perhaps you should sleep in there.’ She’d gestured vaguely towards her bedroom, and he’d pondered that gesture for a while before he agreed that yes, he could do that.

They got into bed from opposite sides, and after a few seconds they slid together. He was wearing his shorts and she still had the T-shirt on. Tentatively they’d wrapped their arms around each other. She’d rested her head on his chest. In the darkness the alcohol had seized her brain again and everything was spinning a little.

‘Wow, I feel a little woozy,’ she’d said.

‘Me too.’

‘Can we just lie here like this for a little while?’

‘Of course.’

It felt kind of safe and pleasant. Like being with a friend, and yet not quite. ‘I’m sleepy now,’ she’d murmured.

‘Yes.’

She’d nuzzled closer, her leg over his, and felt his breathing become deep and regular. ‘This is nice,’ she’d murmured.

‘It is.’

‘Night, Freddie.’ Then she’d drifted off into a happy oblivion.

In the morning when she woke she had a massive headache. She’d sat up groaning, and only then realized that Adam was gone. She saw the depression in the pillow beside her, and fuzzily recalled the previous night. A minute later he’d appeared, already dressed, carrying orange juice. He’d sat on the end of the bed and from there it was all downhill. They’d talked chiefly of feeling terrible, and commenting with wonder on how much they’d had to drink, recounting moments from the previous night, laughing, shaking their heads. It all had a hollow ring and went on for too long, as if each of them was desperate to avoid mentioning the most glaringly obvious of all the evening’s developments.

In the end, their conversation withered into silence and he’d said he should be getting along, inventing, she was sure, some urgent task. She wasn’t sure how to feel. She hadn’t wanted him to go, but she was uncertain about whether to say anything. Perhaps he regretted what had happened. Or nearly happened anyway. Perhaps he was trying to let her know he didn’t feel that way about her. In the end it was a relief of sorts when he did leave.

Two days later she’d arrived at his door, and when he’d answered she’d launched into her prepared speech.

‘I don’t want this thing to come between us, Adam. I like you and I feel we’ve become friends. I value that.’ She’d thought he looked relieved.

‘I don’t want it to come between us either.’

‘So, we’re still friends?’

‘Friends.’

‘Great.’

And in fact their friendship had survived intact, though it had taken several months before they were completely easy again in each other’s company, before that shadow dissipated. It wasn’t really until Nigel had arrived on the scene. Perhaps that was partly why she’d started seeing him, because she’d sensed it was a way to finally clear the air between herself and Adam.

And yet, sometimes, she wondered at the way Adam looked at her. Christ, she had to stop thinking about him like this. They were friends weren’t they? Wasn’t it supposed to be men who couldn’t handle a relationship with a woman on that level?

Abruptly she realized that Nigel had stopped talking and was looking at her strangely. Guiltily she came to. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘Karen.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘I said perhaps it might be a good idea not to have more than a glass or two of wine tonight. What do you think?’

‘You mean instead of my normal bottle and a half, is that it?’ she said testily.

‘Actually,’ he said huffily, ‘I was talking about me. I’m still taking those antihistamine tablets.’

Contrite, she put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Nigel.’ She looked away, suppressing a giggle.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Adam’s flat was on the second floor of a converted Victorian semi in Wimbledon. It was cluttered but comfortable. He rarely ate there, avoiding all forms of cooking unless they were ready-made meals from Marks & Spencer that he could put in the microwave. After the break-up of his marriage he’d given up the office he used to rent in favour of working at home. At first he’d converted the spare bedroom for use as an office but after a while he’d moved into the living room where he felt more comfortable. When he and Louise had split up, she had taken the TV, and he had never replaced it. His work and the remains of his life outside of work had merged.

He sat at his desk, which was actually a long table that occupied the wall space on one side of the room. He was slowly drinking a glass of Scotch, and thinking about Helen Pierce and the way fate intervenes in life sometimes. Earlier he’d posed the question to himself that had Helen’s brother been killed in say, Devon, would he be willing to help her? The absolute truth was that he wasn’t sure. He liked her, he wanted to help her, but he wasn’t certain on the face of what he knew whether he could. Beyond her own conviction that her brother’s death hadn’t happened the way the police said it had, there was little to support her. But then there never was. He received letters from people all the time whose children or sisters or brothers had vanished or died. They all believed something had happened that didn’t tally with the official version, and they all asked for his help. Of course he couldn’t help them all, though he did reply to each and every one of them. But of the ones he did look into the truth was never obvious. Normally it was only the conviction of the family that convinced him to investigate.

He knew he wasn’t going to ghostwrite another book, and he wasn’t about to go back to doing lifestyle pieces either. The thing that really bothered him was the idea of going back to Castleton. Who knew what can of worms that would open up? But a quickening in his chest belied his reluctance.

His thoughts drifted back to the summer a year after Meg had vanished. Throughout the intervening year he and Angela had continued seeing each other though their relationship had stalled on the knowledge that he would eventually go away to university and from there would probably move to London to begin his career. For the same reason they hadn’t had sex. The commitment to one another that step seemed to entail foundered on the looming presence of the future.

In August the country was assaulted by a sudden heat wave after a long damp July. A crowd of them had gone to a pool in the river where the water was deep and clear. He recalled lying in the grass as he dried off, warmed by the sun, watching Angela climb the bank towards the bridge which some of them had been jumping from. Nick was smoking, wearing wet cut-off jeans, his body skinny and pale. He wore a familiar faintly contemptuous expression. He no longer suffered any outward scars or bruises, but whatever damage had been inflicted inside by a father who’d been dead nearly a year would probably always remain.

In the river David and Graham were encouraging people to jump from the bridge. A girl leapt out and shrieked as she hit the water and when David helped her up the steep bank she laughed flirtatiously. He grinned. He was tanned with a lean muscular build, his thick hair lightened by the sun.

Angela stood on the edge of the bridge and looked down. She stretched out her arms to the sides and balanced on her toes.

‘I’m going to dive,’ she announced.

Her hair was wet, and droplets of water glistened on her skin. She wore a one-piece black swimsuit cut high on her hips that emphasized the flat plane of her belly and the swell of her breasts. She grinned and raised her arms above her head and slowly tipped her weight forward. As if in slow motion she fell forward, entering the water with a muffled splash to emerge moments later in a cascade of spray. She swam smoothly to the bank where David took her hand and helped her up. In that moment they looked at one another and with a jolt of awareness Adam saw something unspoken pass between them. She smiled uncertainly and as she walked away David followed her with his eyes. Sensing somebody watching him Adam turned to find Nick looking on with an amused, sardonic light in his eyes.

After that the rest of the summer seemed fraught with unspoken currents and subtle tensions. Angela was prone to long silences, and sometimes he would watch unnoticed when she and David were together. The smallest gesture or an intercepted glance seemed loaded with meaning.

It all came back with a sudden vivid clarity that surprised Adam. It was strange, he thought, how long dormant memories could return, bringing with them the smell of hay drying in the fields, the sound of laughter in the air, and the sense in her silence and her startled smile when he spoke, that Angela had been drifting from him.

His knee was aching. He rolled up the leg of his jeans and massaged the bare ridged and curiously misshapen flesh. It hurt when the weather was cold or damp, like rheumatism, but sometimes the pain just came unexpectedly. He sometimes wondered if it was just a way of reminding himself. Of making sure he didn’t forget.

A little after nine he called the number Karen had given him for Helen, and asked if he could come and talk to her the following day after she had finished work. He said there were some things he wanted to clarify. She agreed, and gave him her address in Hammersmith.

Adam arrived just after six to find that Helen lived in a flat on the fourth floor of a converted building overlooking the Thames. He looked out of the living-room window at the view, comparing her flat with his own. Research must be rewarding, he mused. Helen must have guessed what he was thinking.

‘When our parents died Ben and I inherited their farm. Ben’s share was held in trust until he was twenty-one. I used mine to buy us somewhere to live.’

She handed him a drink and led the way to her brother’s room, where she lingered in the doorway. It was orderly, everything in its place. A life packed away.

‘When did you say he went to Cumbria?’ he asked.

‘June. The beginning of the month.’

‘The other two boys in the car, did you know them?’

‘Not really. I don’t think Ben had known them long.’

‘Who did the car belong to?’

She went to a dresser and picked up a framed photograph. ‘This one. His name was Simon Davies. The other one was Keith Frost.’ There were four people in the picture, which was slightly out of focus. Three young men and a young woman sat on a stone wall smiling at the camera, with trees in the background. ‘Ben sent this to me not long after he went up there. This is him.’

The colours in the picture had a vaguely washed-out look. A cheap processing shop, Adam thought, one of those one-hour places. Helen’s brother had short brown hair, and wore jeans and a T-shirt with some logo on the front. Next to him sat a girl with long reddish-coloured hair and a slightly more reserved smile than the others. She wore glasses, which gave her a slightly studious look, though she was undoubtedly attractive. Her hands, Adam noticed, were clasped in her lap, while Ben’s arm was around her shoulders. There was something about their body language that the picture had caught. They were out of balance.

‘Do the families of the others know how you feel about what happened?’ Adam asked.

‘No, I haven’t said anything. I spoke to them on the phone but I got the feeling they didn’t want to talk. I didn’t realize until later it wasn’t just because they were upset.’ There was an echo of anger in her tone. ‘I can’t entirely blame them,’ she said. ‘It’s just … I don’t know. They don’t have any reason to doubt the official version, do they? They think their sons were killed because Ben was drunk.’

Adam looked at the picture again. ‘I assume this is the girl Ben was going out with. Jane something?’

‘Hanson. Yes.’

Again he thought he detected the faint bitterness he’d noticed in Karen’s office. ‘You said you hadn’t spoken to her at all since Ben died?’

‘No. The last time I spoke to Ben he told me that Jane had left. This was about a week before he died. I gathered they had broken up, but he didn’t want to talk about it so I didn’t press him. I always got the impression that he was more interested in her then she was in him. Perhaps if Ben had a fault that was it. He wore his heart on his sleeve a bit.’

‘When you spoke to him then, did he say anything that struck you as out of the ordinary? Did he sound worried at all?’

‘He sounded a bit down, which I put down to Jane leaving him.’ Helen looked away. ‘She never even phoned me, you know. I didn’t really expect her to be at the funeral. She may not even have known about it, but she must have heard about what happened sooner or later. I thought she would have phoned.’

Adam didn’t say anything. What could he tell her? Who was to say what the girl’s reasons had been for leaving? Maybe she and Ben had split up because after a couple of months living in the woods together she couldn’t stand the sight of him any more, but he didn’t want to tell Helen that. Neither did he want to say that for somebody who lived with his heart on his sleeve, as she’d said Ben did, losing a girlfriend might be enough to make a person act out of character. Perhaps get drunk and get behind the wheel of a car he didn’t know how to drive.

‘What about the protest, did he say anything about that when you talked?’

‘No. I asked him when he was coming home, and he thought about a week or two. He was vague.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’

He questioned her some more about the protest itself, but she really didn’t know much about it. He asked if he could keep the picture.

‘I’ll scan it into my computer and print you a copy. Would that be okay?’

‘Fine.’

She hesitated. ‘Does this mean you’ll be going there?’

Up until then, he hadn’t really decided, but once she’d posed the question he knew the answer. ‘Yes, but I can’t promise anything,’ he told her.

Relief and gratitude jostled in her eyes. Finally somebody was taking her seriously. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

A vague unsettling guilt niggled at his conscience. He wished he was more certain of his motives.

Later he called Karen at home, and told her what he’d decided. ‘Before you say anything I have to say I’m really not sure about any of this. Helen told me that Ben had just broken up with his girlfriend. You know how it can be. Heartbroken young guy gets drunk and kills himself. It could well be that the police have got it right. When you talk to her, try to dampen her expectations a little could you?’

‘Alright. But I’ll fax you a contract in the morning, anyway.’

‘I’ll be in touch.’

‘Adam,’ she said quickly, before he could hang up. ‘Tell me something. You must have a feeling about this, an instinct if you like. I mean you wouldn’t be taking this on otherwise.’

He heard an underlying probing note to her tone. He was sure she was wondering what had changed his mind. ‘If I find anything I’ll let you know,’ he said.

She accepted the gentle rebuff. ‘Goodnight then.’

That night he dreamed. The images were confused. He was in a forest in the dark, the moon occasionally glimpsed overhead. Ahead of him a figure materialized and as he drew nearer, his heart pounding, fear tightening his insides, he saw that it was Meg. She was pale, her hair matted, her clothes ragged, and he knew that she had been dead a long time. Her wide eyes beseeched him, but he didn’t know what it was she wanted. And then it wasn’t Meg, but Angela. She was laughing, her head tipped back, and David was with her. Then suddenly a flash accompanied by a roar of sound and he woke with a cry escaping his lips and his body soaked with sweat.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The M6 cut a swathe through the industrial north midlands past Stoke-on-Trent. Adam stopped occasionally for petrol or to stretch his legs. The weather continued to be uncharacteristically warm, the whole country basking in a kind of Indian summer. It was a good day for driving and this was the first really long run he’d made in the Porsche he’d recklessly bought six months earlier. It was a 911, with muscular flared arches and a whale-tail. Metallic green with tan leather trim. His pride and joy. He’d always wanted a Porsche, and when he’d finally realized he would never be able to afford a new one he’d considered going the classic route. He’d bought a magazine and thought about it for a couple of weeks, pondering the upkeep and the fact that he didn’t know one end of a spanner from another, then decided what the hell and started making phone calls anyway. Eventually he’d bought a ’seventy-eight model from a man in Lewes who’d owned it for ten years, during which time the car had been fully restored and treated with the respect of an enthusiast. Adam hadn’t even haggled over the asking price.

She rumbled like a big cat, with a throaty growl, and when he put his foot down the power pressed him back against his seat. The insurance was a killer, but some things in life you just have to have.

Beyond Preston vistas of the countryside opened up, and after Morecambe he had the Yorkshire Dales on his right and the Lake District on his left and Ocean Colour Scene on the CD player. The quickest route was to follow the motorway all the way up to Carlisle and then it was less then forty minutes to Castleton through Brampton. An alternative, more scenic route was to turn off at Penrith and follow minor roads along the valley through the villages that huddled beneath the fells, and that was the way he chose.

The sun was going down as he plunged into the countryside. He opened up the throttle along the deserted roads and the sound of the engine echoed back from the dry-stone walls. In the hollows where the sun had already fled he switched on the headlights. Trees and fields flashed by on either side, the bleak high fells looming to his right. He slowed as he passed through villages where the old houses and buildings were built from local red sandstone, his memories stirred by familiar sights; the churches with their squat, square towers topped with battlements like castles; high hedgerows where cow parsley grew profusely among the hawthorn and crab apple and pink soapwort; village pubs and a local garage with two old-fashioned pumps outside that looked as if they belonged to another age.

He crossed stone bridges spanning rivers and streams and took arbitrary turns as he came upon them to delay his arrival, wanting to savour the last of the journey, and the odd mixture of apprehension and exhilaration he experienced at the prospect of his return. Finally, as he drove through Halls Tenement he pulled over outside a pub, its windows lit in yellow squares, a couple of Land Rovers and a handful of cars in the car park outside. He got out to stretch his leg, which was aching after the drive. The sun had vanished and dusk had taken over the countryside, casting villages, fields and woods in eerie purple half-light.

He drove the last few miles at a sedate pace and when he arrived in Castleton it was almost dark. As he crossed the bridge over the river he glanced across the water meadow to the dark line of trees that hid Johnson’s sawmill, if it was still there. Further on the main street narrowed as he passed the newsagent that was once owned by Angela’s father. The shop looked the same but the name above the door was no longer Curtis. He emerged into the partly cobbled square and turned through the gates of the New Inn, which was a pub and hotel and hadn’t been new since 1745 when the coach house had burned down and a new one had been built. The barns at the rear had been converted into extra rooms, four on ground level, four above, with steps leading up the outside and a walkway past the doors.

He hadn’t booked, but the tourist season had ended and there was no problem getting a room. He chose a new one in the conversion, and as he signed the register the young woman who checked him in asked if he would like to have dinner in the restaurant across the hall, which when he looked was empty. The hum of voices emanated from the bar, however, along with the smell of roast beef and gravy.

‘I’ll get something at the bar,’ he said. She smiled and asked how long he would be staying. ‘I’m not sure. Say a week.’

On the way past the bar he heard a woman laugh and when he looked inside and saw her standing among a group with her back to him his heart skipped a beat. For an instant time confused him and he thought at first it was Louise. She was slim with long blonde hair that shone in the light, but then he remembered where he was and it was no longer Louise he thought of but the person she had reminded him of the first time he’d seen her. He stood transfixed but then the woman in the bar turned and she wasn’t Angela after all.

He went to his room and sat down on the bed. His heart was still beating too fast and he experienced an odd sense of revelation. All these years he had harboured a memory of her, but it was like something covert and hidden. Only now did he begin to sense the force of everything he had kept shut inside himself all that time.

He went to bed early and woke at six-thirty as it was beginning to get light. The hotel was quiet other than the first sounds of stirring from behind the kitchen doors when he looked in the restaurant. He decided to go for a walk before breakfast, partly from curiosity and partly to loosen up his leg, which had stiffened overnight. The town was deserted, the sky purple, beginning to turn blue as the sun crept up over the hills. When he reached the river he followed the public footpath across the meadow and as he approached the trees on the far side he detected the familiar, tangy scent of cut pine and sawdust. As he drew nearer he could see that the sawmill was still there. He paused, flooded with memories of riding his bike this way in the holidays before catching the bus into Carlisle and his job at the Courier. Other memories crowded and jostled in his mind and when he turned and walked back the way he’d come crows flapped from the trees and mocked him.

At the hotel he ate breakfast alone in the restaurant, though next to him a table covered with the litter of empty cups and egg-smeared plates was testament to the fact that others had also been up early. Afterwards he drove along the valley towards Brampton and took the main road to Carlisle where he followed the signs to the new hospital. Inside he followed directions to the pathology department and asked to speak to Dr Keller.

‘My name’s Turner,’ he told the receptionist. ‘I have an appointment.’

Dr Keller, when she arrived, didn’t fit the mental picture Adam had already formed of her based on their brief phone conversation when he’d called from London. He was expecting somebody older than the woman in her mid-thirties who approached him. Her smile was friendly as she offered her hand.

‘I’m afraid I can’t spare you more than half an hour,’ she said, speaking with a soft Scottish accent as she led the way along a narrow corridor.

Her office was large and untidy. Files in brown folders that hadn’t made it to the filing cabinets were stacked on every available surface. She made space for him on a chair beneath a framed certificate from Edinburgh University on the wall.

‘On the phone you mentioned a road accident.’ She sat behind her desk and opened files she had already retrieved. ‘Three young men. Pierce, Frost and Davies?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you’re a journalist?’

‘I’m a freelance writer. I specialize in investigative features.’

‘I see. Well, I’ve checked with the police and there’s no investigation pending. The coroner’s verdict was accidental death, but I take it you’re aware of that.’

‘Yes.’

Dr Keller laced her fingers together on her desk. ‘So, how can I help?’

‘When we spoke you said autopsies were performed on all three victims. Did you examine the bodies yourself?’