Who Do You Think You Are?

‘Ed,’ he said, smiling and meeting my eyes.

It was quite something that smile: broad and intimate and knowing and fond. The smile of an old friend you never expected to see again, who greets you by telling you that you haven’t changed a bit. It would warm the coldest of hearts, I felt sure, but of course all that was academic because my heart wasn’t simply cold but dead. The body, however, is something else altogether, and I began to feel a long-forgotten sizzle in my gut when his eyes started to twinkle. I looked away, worried that I was beginning to blush.

‘Have I ruined the mystique now?’ he asked.

‘A bit,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you ruin it a bit more and tell me where we’re going?’ We were heading away from the town centre, up South Parade. ‘I didn’t know there was anywhere up here.’

‘Neither did I until the other day. My sister took me.’ He steered me into a white building with a grey painted sign above it saying ‘Dove’. Inside was all smooth wood and dim light and art on the walls. Proper art as well, stuff that looked as if a real artist had painted it – well, either an artist or a school child using their non-dominant hand. There were a few other people sitting at tables nursing wine and real ale and Ed took a seat by the window.

‘I didn’t know places like this existed in Doncaster,’ I said lightly.

He didn’t smile. ‘It’s not all flat caps and slag heaps up here any more, you know.’

‘I know. I’m – ’ ‘I’m one of you’, I wanted to say. ‘Do you think I’m from somewhere else?’ I said instead.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m from here, from Donny.’

He didn’t look surprised so much as disbelieving. ‘Right. Sorry, I just assumed – I mean, you don’t have the accent or – ’ he waved a hand up and down at me. ‘What I mean is, your clothes, your hair, it’s all – you do look very London.’

‘No!’ I was genuinely wounded. ‘I’m not London, not at all. Well, OK, you’re right, I do live in London – did live there – but I haven’t turned traitor. I’m still a Yorkshire lass really.’

He smiled. If it wasn’t too familiar-sounding I would say he was looking at me fondly. The fizzing started up again and I quickly dropped my gaze. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Don’t remember meeting many like you when I was growing up though.’

‘See? I wouldn’t have guessed you were a native either. You don’t look like a typical Donny bloke to me.’

‘What do I look like?’

Like an overgrown student circa 1994, I wanted to say. And also a bit like Robert Redford. ‘Like a man of the world,’ I said instead.

That indulgent smile again. ‘I’d say you were a pretty good judge of character.’

‘Hmm.’ I made a non-committal noise. Judgement of character was not something I generally performed well at as my track record would indicate.

We ordered drinks and I pulled an envelope from my bag. ‘This is what I’ve managed to find on your Peter Milton.’ I passed a few copies of newspaper articles across to him. ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid, just a few profile pieces done after he disappeared, which you’ve probably seen already. The only thing I found from before was him doing a sound bite from the picket line – there, you see?’ I pointed at the smallest cutting.

‘“Violence only dilutes our message,”‘ Ed read aloud. ‘“If we want to be heard, we have to take ourselves seriously as well.”‘ He nodded, his lips pressed together. ‘That’s quite eloquent.’ He sounded surprised, I noted smugly. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with snobbish preconceptions of Yorkshiremen.

I nodded. ‘There was this as well.’ I leafed through to find the print-out I was after. ‘From twenty years after he disappeared – the Free Press did a follow-up story. Turns out his family has never asked for him to be declared dead and no evidence ever turned up to suggest he is – no body’s been found that fits his description, nothing like that – so I suppose, technically, he’s still a missing person. I think they still live locally.’ I looked down at the piece of paper. ‘Bev Milton, it says here – that’s his mother. You should see if she’ll agree to an interview.’

He took the paper from me, barely glancing at it. ‘She’s dead,’ he said absently. ‘At least,’ he added, ‘I think I heard she’d died.’ He scratched his chin, not looking at me. ‘Anything else?’ he asked. ‘Anything that’s, you know, not in the public domain as such.’

‘Everything I can give you is in the public domain,’ I said coldly, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t be able to give it to you.’ I knew what he meant. He meant, did you find anything that I couldn’t have found by myself given an internet connection and twenty minutes with the newspaper archive?

‘There’s these,’ I said, pulling more sheaves of paper, ‘if this is the kind of thing you mean. Personnel files from Oldfield Main.’

He took them from me and squinted, trying to read the poor reproduction in the artfully dim light. I hesitated. Was it worth even giving it to him? I shook the last few papers out of the envelope. ‘There was this as well.’ I handed them to him. ‘It’s a personnel file from a different pit, Edgarsbridge over in Rotherham. It’s another Peter Milton. I’m fairly sure it’s another one anyway, the date of birth’s different. I just thought there was something a bit funny about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly but whoever it is, he only worked there from October 1984 for about six months.’

His eyes widened. ‘During the strike.’

I nodded.

‘A scab?’ He sounded as though he had heard of such people only in legend.

I shrugged. ‘Must have been. Look, like I said, it’s probably nothing to do with your Peter Milton. According to all this stuff he was a good union bloke, always on the picket lines, well thought of. And anyway, he was only twenty, not married, no kids. I mean, I know times were tough for all of them, but if he didn’t have to worry about putting a roof over his family’s head, then – ’ I shrugged. ‘Seems as if he would have had a hard time justifying it to himself. Or anyone else.’ Ed was looking at me, his eyes slightly smaller than before, and he looked as though he wished I’d stop rambling on about this nonsense and let him do the detective work. I shrugged again, trying to signal that this line of reasoning was at an end. ‘Plus,’ I said, ‘the date of birth’s different, like I said. Chuck that bit out if you want.’

‘No, no,’ he took it from me. ‘It all helps. This is great, thanks, Tash.’ He was trying to make up for his faux pas earlier, I could tell, so I smiled.

‘Just doing my job.’

A waiter brought our drinks and I took the opportunity to break the tension with a change of subject. ‘So, man of the world, have you lived in Doncaster all your life?’

He smiled. ‘I was born here, lived here ‘til I was eighteen, but you were right about the man of the world thing – I’ve lived abroad for the last ten years or so.’

‘Ah, hence the tan.’

He touched his face self-consciously. ‘Hardly a tan. More like all my freckles have finally merged into one.’

‘So, where abroad?’

‘Most recently, Dubai. I worked on an ex-pat paper there.’ He shook his head. ‘A rag, an absolute rag. Full of gossip and so-called profiles of people bragging about how opulent their homes were. The paper’s gone tits up now, along with everything else over there. Seemed like a good time for a visit home. Plus, you know, I had some family stuff to sort out.’

I nodded. I bet it’s a woman, I thought. He’s just split up with someone and he’s nursing a broken heart. And then it occurred to me that this might be no bad thing. He wouldn’t want to get involved with me, which would stop me from getting involved with him.

‘So, what about you?’ Ed said. ‘You said you live in London? Bit of a commute, isn’t it, to Donny Local Studies Library every day?’

I sniffed a laugh. ‘I’ve been in London for fifteen years, I can’t suddenly stop thinking of it as where I live. I’ve come back up here for a while, and the job in Local Studies came up, so…’

‘And what brought you back here then, after all this time?’ He had that journalistic tone, probing but friendly, trying to get past banalities to the heart of the matter.

I took a large slug of wine. I could have taken my lead from him and put it all under the generic heading of ‘family stuff’, but I realised I wanted to tell him the truth. I hadn’t had to tell anyone yet, not anyone who hadn’t known me before.

‘I split up with my husband, then three days later both my parents were killed in a car accident.’

He put his drink down and reached over to grasp my hand. It was an instinctive gesture, a reaching out, and I felt absurdly grateful for it. His hand was warm, much warmer than mine. He opened his mouth, but for a second there were no words. Then he said, very quietly. ‘Oh, Jesus. Tash. I’m so sorry. What happened? With your parents I mean, not – not your husband.’

I half-laughed. ‘I’ll tell you that too if you want.’ I’ll tell you it all, then you can really decide if I’m worth it. ‘Mum and Dad were – they’d been over to Lincoln for the morning and on the way back – ’ I took a steadying breath. I could tell the story if I just ploughed on, didn’t stop to think about what I was saying. ‘Well, there was some bloke in an Audi and he was on his phone – ’ I saw Ed wince. ‘I know, so fucking predictable isn’t it? And anyway, he came round a bend too fast – the police reckon he was doing at least seventy-five – and there was a girl on a horse in front of him. He didn’t have time to slow down so he swerved onto the other side of the road, and that was – ’ I swallowed. ‘That was them, coming the other way. The impact sent them skidding into the horse, and it crushed the car. And them.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said again. ‘Oh Jesus. Tash, how do you – how do you carry on?’

It was what everybody wanted to ask but nobody did. I think he had spoken without thinking, had blurted the thing that was at the front of his mind, and his face looked as though he wanted to take it back. I smiled and shrugged, trying to show him that it was OK that he’d asked me. ‘Oh, you know,’ I said, ‘it’s like everyone says: one day at a time.’

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t carry on, not really. That this wasn’t really me, sitting here, drinking wine, chatting. This was just the pieces all moving together in the semblance of a person. ‘If only you’d known me before,’ I wanted to say, and I didn’t just mean before Mum and Dad, I meant before Stephen – before Tim even. If you’d known me back then, then this could really have been something.

He nodded. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. It’s what everyone says, and it’s nice that they say it, but I usually assume they mean that they’re sorry that person has died, they’re sorry that they’re gone, and the sorrow is partly for themselves, for them missing them. Ed had never known Mum and Dad, he only knew me, and even then only barely. He meant he was sorry for me, that this had happened to me.

His warm hand was still on mine. I moved mine above his and squeezed it. ‘Thank you. He’s going to prison, the guy who did it. Not the first time he’d done something like this, apparently. First time he’d killed anyone though.’

‘He was OK then?’

I nodded. ‘Broken collar bone, whiplash, cuts and bruises. He was hanging upside down in his seat when the police got there; his phone was still in his hand.’ I paused to steady myself. I could hear my breath becoming shaky. ‘It always makes me think of a vampire bat.’ I laughed and he didn’t.

‘And what about the girl? And the horse?’

‘The horse had to be shot – or whatever they do to knackered horses now. It survived but it was never going to recover. The girl’s OK though. Her name’s Chloe, I went to see her in the hospital. She’s got a broken arm, a broken leg and a broken pelvis, but she didn’t have any head injuries: she got thrown into the verge, away from the horse and the cars. They say she’ll be fine eventually. Well, as fine as a twelve-year-old girl can be who’s seen two people and her horse die.’

He shook his head. ‘So, when was this?’

I hesitated a moment. ‘Three months ago. Three months tomorrow.’ I nodded. ‘Right, three months tomorrow. I’d almost forgotten it was coming up.’ Every day is an anniversary – the fourth day, the fortieth day, the fifth Saturday. Three months shouldn’t have been any worse, but it was. Three months is a quarter of a year.

‘Sorry,’ he said. Apparently he didn’t need me to explain. ‘You know, I’ve lost both my parents too.’ I felt my face brighten, much as I tried to stop it. Another orphan! Maybe he would understand. Maybe he’d tell me what to do, how to get through it. Maybe he’d tell me that it was all OK in the end, that eventually I, and the rest of my life, would go back to normal, to the way things used to be. ‘Not like you did,’ he went on. ‘Not so horrific. My dad had a heart problem nobody knew about. He dropped dead one day at work when I was seven.’

I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. ‘Sorry’ seemed so redundant.

‘I can still remember him,’ Ed continued. ‘You know, his voice, what he looked like, what he smelled like, everything. I’m the youngest, so I think it was easier for me in some ways. You know, I was young enough to – I don’t know how to describe it.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. His face was grave, but not upset. There was no sign of any emotion. He opened his eyes. They were, I realised, very, very blue. ‘I think, if it doesn’t sound too simplistic, that I took it in my stride.’

Would that have been better? I wondered. To have lost them then, when the self-absorption and idiocy of childhood might have made it more bearable? No. I shuddered at the thought. Better to have had them for as long as I did.

‘And your mother?’ I knew I shouldn’t ask, that it was distasteful and intrusive, especially on a first date – if indeed that’s what this was – but I had to know.

He screwed his face up, as if in acknowledgement of the unsavoury nature of this conversation. ‘That was more recent,’ he admitted. ‘Just last year. Cancer.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It seemed appropriate to say it, this time, about something that must still be fresh and painful.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s OK. Really.’ He sounded surprised. ‘It’s quite a lot better now, a lot better than it was, at least.’ He was still holding my hand and he gave it a brief squeeze. ‘I know it won’t seem like it now, I know you won’t believe me, but it does start to get better.’

I smiled. Other people had told me much the same, but I’d never believed them. What could they possibly know? But I knew that he must be telling the truth, because he was actually living it.

‘It never goes back,’ he continued. ‘Not to how things were before, but it gets a bit better, honestly.’

I tried to stop the disappointment from showing in my face. I mean, obviously I would never go back to normal. How could I? But it made me feel even more hollow, having it confirmed like that. Tears – small ones, but tears nevertheless – sprang into my eyes. I blinked slowly, praying that they wouldn’t spill onto my face, and that he wouldn’t notice them even if they did. They did. And he did.

‘Oh, Jesus, Tash, I’m sorry.’ He put his other hand on top of mine. ‘I didn’t mean to – ’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Stop saying that.’ I tried to lighten the tone, pulling my hand away to brush my cheeks dry. ‘It’s fine. I cry all the time. And anyway, I like talking to you about it.’

He smiled. ‘I know what you’re going to say. That I’m a good listener?’

I grinned. ‘Something like that.’

‘Women always say that. I think they just mean that I let them talk for as long as they want.’

That was the thing, I realised, about him. He did have all the elements of your everyday ladykiller: artful scruffiness; the appearance of not caring how he looked, while ensuring that he was neither unfashionable nor unsavoury; the effortless flirting; the languid charm; the ‘good listener’ approach – I hoped there was nothing calculated about it. The charm and charisma appeared effortless because they were.

At the end of the evening, he thanked me again for the information I had brought and helped me on with my best coat. I almost asked him if he wanted to come back to Mum and Dad’s with me. It seemed like he would have said yes. I suspected it would not be anything out of the ordinary for him to go home with a woman he had just met. And I also suspected that he was the kind of man who would be good in bed and not a bastard, and for a moment the temptation was almost overwhelming. The thought of another warm body in that house with me, of somebody touching me and taking me away from myself for an hour or so was intoxicating.

But I bade him goodbye warmly and with promise, but without invitation. Tim, I kept telling myself. It isn’t over with Tim. Don’t bugger it up with comfort sex with a stranger, even if he is a Carl Bernstein lookalike. Or Bob Woodford. Whichever one was the good-looking one. But now I think maybe that really, on another, deeper level that I wouldn’t allow myself to acknowledge that I was really saying: Save this one, don’t rush it. He’s worth the wait. Stick it out until the time’s right.

Chapter 3 Ed

‘Ed, remind me again what your fucking problem is?’

My sister Leanne was bollocking me for something. There was nothing novel so I was giving it only about a third of my attention.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, my eyes and most of my mind focusing on the cuttings and personnel files Tash had brought me from the library.

‘I mean, what is this fucking obsession you have about our Pete? He’s gone. He’s gone.’ She shouted the last word. ‘He’s been gone twenty years. Reading old newspaper articles or whatever the bloody hell that is, it’s not going to bring him back, you know.’

I took a heavy breath and put the papers down. This was a conversation we had had many times, although not usually in such a heated manner. ‘You talk like he’s dead,’ I said.

She stuck out her lower jaw. ‘And what? You think he int?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re not getting into all this again.’

‘We fucking are. I’m sick of listening to your bullshit.’

Leanne is not an even-tempered woman, and is very sure of her opinions – and vociferous in her defence of them. But usually, even in her darkest moods, she retains some veneer of civility towards me and other members of the family. Anyone outside the family though, is shown no mercy.

‘Leanne! It’s not bullshit, I’m just – ’

‘What?’ she cut in. ‘You seriously think he could still be alive? After all this time?’

I shrugged. Of course I did. ‘They’ve never found a body.’

‘Means nothing,’ she spat. ‘They’ve not found him alive either, have they?’

‘Nobody’s been looking! Not for years, not since the police said they’d hit a dead end and they were – whatever they called it – “shelving” the case. I just think somebody should still be looking, that’s all.’

She stared at me for several moments. It was clear she thought I was an imbecile. ‘Edward, think about it. Please, think about it. I thought you were supposed to be the brainy one. He’s been gone for twenty years! Someone who leaves and doesn’t come back for that long is either dead – ’ She nodded as she said the word ‘dead’, as though that made it true. ‘Or he doesn’t want to be found.’ That was something else that Leanne had pointed out – to me, or Mum, or to our other sister Lisa – many times over the years. I couldn’t or wouldn’t accept it. My big brother may have left me – left us – but there was no way that he didn’t want to come back. He was out there somewhere and something, or someone, must be stopping him from being with his family. It was my job to try and find out who or what that was.

I didn’t answer, and Leanne shook her head again. ‘You’re as bad as Mum. You need to let it go. That’s what killed her in the end. She couldn’t let it go and eventually it just ate her up.’

‘He was her son! What was she supposed to do, just forget about him?’

Leanne’s face was grim and her voice was strained. ‘I know he was her son. But I’m her daughter. And so’s Lisa. And you’re her son too. She should never have, I don’t know, given up like she did. She should have kept going for us as well as herself.’

‘Leanne,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calmer. ‘She had cancer. That was what killed her, not worrying about Pete, not “giving up”. She could have “let him go”, as you put it, years ago, she’d still have died. I know you’re pissed off with her for dying – ’

‘I am!’ she was shouting again, her pale, freckled face growing red. ‘Too fucking right I am! She were only sixty-five. Who dies at that age?’ She stood up and threw the magazine she’d been holding down to the floor. ‘People who can’t be arsed to keep going, that’s who! And it were ‘cos of him, the selfish little fucker.’

‘Leanne, calm down! Look, it’s hard for all of us; we’re all still upset, we’re all angry. It’s natural to feel like this. But you’ve got to understand, it wasn’t Pete’s fault. And I think, well, I think if Mum were here now, she’d have wanted me to look for him. She’d have wanted to know what happened – she’d have wanted us all to know.’

Leanne swallowed and sat back down. ‘What do you think you’re going to find out? That there was some conspiracy in the National Union of Mineworkers to get rid of him and that he’s inside one of them concrete pillars on the Tinsley Viaduct? Or that Thatcher took a contract out on his head and he’s in hiding in Argentina or somewhere? He was just some bloke. Whatever happened to him, however it happened – I mean, I don’t know any more than you do – but, Ed, you know I’m right. He’s not coming back, I’m sure of it. He’d have done it by now if he was going to, he’d have found us. It’s what I always told Mum, it’s what I always used to say.’ Her right leg was jiggling up and down rapidly. ‘I wanted to get him declared dead. I tried to persuade her to look into it. I’m sure we could have done it – there were never any sightings of him, not that we heard about at least. He never touched his bank account either.’ She laughed drily. ‘Not that there were owt in it anyway.’ She sighed. ‘But Mum wouldn’t have it. ‘

We were quiet a few moments. ‘I’m not going to stop looking,’ I said eventually.

‘Are you hoping for some sort of scoop?’ I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you know, say you did find him – dead or alive, in the Tinsley Viaduct or in Argentina – it’d be a pretty good exclusive for you, wouldn’t it? Reckon some of the national papers might publish it.’

I sucked my teeth. Joking or not, I felt like hitting her. How old did you have to be, I wondered, before your first reaction during an argument with your sister stopped being to give her a dead leg? ‘Leanne, I’m not doing this for my career, I’m doing it because – ’

She shook her head. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I know why you’re doing it.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think really it’s been worse for you than it were for me or our Lisa. We can remember him better – we knew him, properly knew him. You were nobbut a kid yourself and he were a grown man. You’ve built him up in your head to be this hero – especially with Dad being gone and all. But he weren’t. He were an ordinary lad: went to work, went out on a Friday night with his mates, gave girls the run-around. He were nowt special. Well, I mean, he were, of course he were, and he were our brother. But – ’ she spread her hands ‘ – he’s gone. I got used to that idea years ago, and I think you should too.’

*

I went back to the library two days later. Tash was at her desk, the same as before, her eyes fixed on her computer screen. I waited a second before going over to her, assessing the impact of seeing her again. I’m not very good with women. A problem compounded by the fact that I give every appearance of being good with women. I’m good with people. I make my living from being good with people. My solid working-class background followed by a career surrounded by middle-class media types has endowed upon me an ability to get along with anyone who crosses my path; to ask the right questions, give the right responses, make the person I’m talking to feel special. So when I’m talking to a woman I’m not interested in, or am only half-interested in, it’s pretty easy for her to start to feel special too. The trouble comes when I have to talk to a woman I like, or who I think I might start to like – and I was beginning to suspect that Tash might be falling into that category.