Lost Summer

The first houses on the edge of the village were around the bend several hundred yards away. The railway station was in the next town, where Liz had caught the train to Euston. Mr and Mrs Thomas lived in Cloud Cottage with their three children. Liz had been their baby-sitter until a year earlier, a piece of information Adam had only stumbled across when he’d asked Liz’s father, Paul Mount, to go to the station with him a couple of mornings in a row on the very long shot that he would see something or somebody that would open up a new avenue in what had become a fruitless search.

On the second morning Paul had nodded to a middle-aged man in a suit. ‘Alan Thomas. He works in the City I think. Liz used to baby-sit for them.’

What was it about Thomas that had triggered some kind of internal alarm? He was just another business commuter like hundreds of others. Nothing to mark him out from anybody else, but discreet questioning had revealed that Liz had stopped baby-sitting for the Thomases a year ago. Why?

‘I don’t know really,’ Paul Mount had said. ‘I think it was a bit far and they were often out late.’

Adam had moved into the village pub, which was called the Crown, and for several days had been quietly digging and watching. He knew Alan Thomas caught the seven-thirty-two most days, but sometimes he went in late or not at all. His wife was on the plain side but well groomed. She didn’t have any close friends in the village, which wasn’t unusual for incomers like the Thomases. They tended to socialize with other people like themselves from the country club up the road. Their children attended private schools.

Adam had learned that the police hadn’t interviewed the Thomases. There was no reason to. In the morning he went back to the station and watched the other people who boarded the seven-thirty-two. There was a young woman whom Thomas seemed to know. Adam followed her to her office in the City and after work introduced himself. He said he was a journalist and wondered if she had time for a drink.

‘Adam Turner?’ Her brow furrowed and then her eyes lit up with recognition. ‘I’ve read something of yours.’

Minor fame had its uses. In a wine bar near the station she answered his questions. He didn’t expect her to remember the day Liz had vanished, but in fact she did. Such strokes of fortune happened occasionally and he accepted them as his share of luck. Dig deep enough and often enough and sooner or later something has to fall into place, and he was nothing if not diligent. He hadn’t been home for a week.

‘Actually, it was my birthday,’ she said, as she sipped a Côte de Rhone. ‘So I went in late that day. I caught the nine o’clock. Wasn’t that the one this girl was supposed to be on?’

‘Yes. Did you see her?’

She shook her head. ‘If I did I don’t remember. I sat next to Alan.’

‘Alan Thomas?’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Not really. He was on the same train?’

‘Yes. I remember he said he was running late because his wife was away and he couldn’t cope without her or something. He made a joke of it. Anyway he promised to buy me a drink after work, but he never turned up. Actually, I was glad.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated. ‘It’s just that his wife was away, and you know, I wondered if he was making a pass. He didn’t actually say anything suggestive or anything. I’m probably being completely unfair.’

‘But something made you uncomfortable?’

‘A little I suppose.’

‘Intuition.’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

But Alan Thomas had sat with her all the way to London, she was positive of that. Had she seen him again after they left the train? She hadn’t. Who was to say he hadn’t bumped into Liz on the platform?

The next day he went back to London and when he arrived home Louise told him that Morris had phoned. ‘You didn’t cancel your appointment,’ she said. Her arms were folded, a wine glass in one hand.

‘I forgot. I’ll call him tomorrow.’

‘Will you make another time to see him?’

‘I don’t know. I think I’m on to something with the Liz Mount story. I might have to put Morris off for a little while.’

‘Christ!’

She slammed her glass down on the counter.

‘Look, it’s just temporarily,’ he said.

‘Right. Your bloody work comes first. Again!’

‘Come on, Louise,’ he said, and reached for her arm as she swept past.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she yelled, yanking free. ‘Just leave me alone!’

‘It’s not a case of my work coming first, dammit. This girl …’

‘I don’t want to hear about her! I don’t want to hear about any of it. There’s always some girl, some parent, somebody. Anybody except me! Where do I come in, Adam? Tell me that. Where do I come into your list of bloody priorities?’

‘That isn’t fair,’ he started to say, but she shook her head and turned away. He watched her go, heard the slam of the bedroom door.

Out of guilt Adam called Morris and made an appointment for two days’ time. When he arrived at the door he suddenly wondered if there was really any point going inside. That morning he and Louise had argued again. Nothing unusual about that, but it had quickly become a bitter fight. Things had been said by both of them that wouldn’t easily be forgotten. The kind of barbed remarks that are designed to inflict maximum damage. He didn’t think she deserved that. He didn’t either for that matter. By the time he’d left the house they’d both been ashamed to look one another in the eye, and anger had been replaced with the dull knowledge that perhaps this was hopeless.

Deep down, however, Adam knew that Louise’s anger stemmed from her frustration with him and he felt badly about that. In the end he kept his appointment and presently found himself at the window while Morris sat behind him, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

‘During our last session you were telling me about Castleton. You mentioned that you felt lonely when you moved there.’

Adam turned around. He’d been thinking about Liz Mount, wondering what his next move ought to be. ‘It got better after I started school.’

‘The boy you had the fight with went to the same school didn’t you say?’

‘Yes. His name was David Johnson. Nick and Graham, the other two who were there that day, went to the local comprehensive. David and I got to know each other. We ended up being friends.’

‘So, you felt accepted after that?’

‘Not exactly. Sometimes.’

When he looked back now, Adam didn’t think he’d ever felt accepted. Maybe if it had just been David, or even David and Graham it would have been okay. But Nick had never liked him. He tried to explain.

‘Graham was fairly easy-going. A follower I suppose. But when I came along Nick resented me. It didn’t help that David and I both went to the grammar school. David’s dad owned the local sawmill which had the contract for the wood on the estate, so he and Kyle had a lot to do with each other as well.’

‘Nick was jealous?’

‘Probably.’

‘And what was the effect of that?’

‘I think David felt caught in the middle sometimes.’

He recalled a time when they had arranged to go rabbiting. It was early and the town was quiet. They had arranged to meet at the church. Graham and David arrived a few minutes after Adam, but quarter of an hour later there was still no sign of Nick.

‘Why don’t we ring him?’ Adam suggested. There was a phone box on the other side of the square.

‘They haven’t got a phone,’ Graham said.

‘Let’s go to his house then. He might have slept in or something.’

‘It’s best if we wait,’ David said. ‘He’ll come when he can.’ He started idly scuffing his feet along the path between the gravestones while Graham began examining the palms of his hands.

‘I got these bloody blisters yesterday,’ he said, picking at the skin.

It was as if invisible shutters had closed. The subject wasn’t open for discussion but Adam felt excluded by his lack of understanding. He swallowed his frustration.

During that first year he’d lived in Castleton, Adam had never seen where Nick lived. He knew vaguely where it was; somewhere down past the council houses at the bottom end, close to the eastern edge of the wood, but he’d never been there. A faint air of mystery surrounded Nick’s family. Adam knew there was a younger sister who caught the school bus in the mornings and was as scruffy as Nick and just as sullen, and he’d seen their mother around town wearing a shapeless worn coat, her pale blotchy legs bare even in winter. But Adam had never seen Nick’s father, James Allen. Nick never mentioned him, and neither did David or Graham.

What little Adam had known he’d overheard in snatches of conversation between Kyle and his mother. Whenever there was poaching on the estate, or there had been an outbreak of theft, Kyle blamed Nick’s dad. He heard stories about Allen getting drunk in the local pubs and starting fights with men from the estate. Once he’d seen Nick’s mother in town with a black eye. Over time Adam had formed a mental image of the whole family living in Dickensian squalor, terrorized by an evil-tempered thug.

Eventually Nick had turned up that morning but he hadn’t offered any explanation for being late.

They rode their bikes out of town across the bridge and took the road that climbed steeply towards the fells. By eight the sun was already warm on their backs and the effort of the climb had made them sweat. At one point he and David had paused to rest. The others were still out of sight around a bend in the road behind them. On one side the road was bounded by a wall, and on the other by a thick hedge. A blackbird flashed by, chattering in alarm.

When the others finally appeared they were pedalling slowly. Nick’s bike was a big heavy machine that seemed to be made of cannibalized parts. He was wearing boots that looked too big for him, though the laces were undone. The leather was cracked, and the sole of one had come loose at the toe. It was flapping up and down, making a slapping sound as Nick struggled up the hill. The chain creaked with every turn of the pedals. Creak slap, creak slap.

When they finally caught up Nick dropped his bike on the ground and went to sit on the wall. He dumped the sack that was tied over his shoulder on the grass and it moved as the ferret inside poked and snuffled looking for a way out. Nick lit a cigarette butt he found in his pocket, though he was still panting. He coughed and spat then muttered something under his breath as he lifted his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, revealing for an instant his pale skinny body. There was a vivid purple black bruise the size of a melon across his ribs.

‘Bloody hell. What happened to you?’ Adam said without thinking.

He knew straight away he should have kept his mouth shut. The others were looking away as if they hadn’t seen or heard anything. Nick looked up in surprise, and some ill-defined expression briefly flashed in his face before it was quickly replaced with an angry glare. Abruptly he dropped to the other side of the wall and walked fifty yards up the hill where he sat down.

‘A few minutes later David and I started off again,’ Adam recounted. ‘Nothing was said but I knew I’d crossed a line. David gave me the cold shoulder all the way up the hill. I kept thinking about the look I’d seen on Nick’s face. It was shame. I’d embarrassed him.’

‘And you felt bad about it?’ Morris asked.

‘A bit I suppose. But I’d be lying if I said I was that worried. Nick made it clear he didn’t like me and the feeling was mutual. Somehow he always managed to turn things around. Like I said, it was mostly because of him that I never really fitted in.’

That day Adam and David had waited for the others at a place known as the Giant’s Chair. It was a rock formation that roughly resembled a huge seat. Local legend had it that a race of giants had once roamed the fells and this was all that was left of their existence. It was easy to climb to the top by the gently sloping grassy rise on one side, but once in the seat itself the drop was a sheer one. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. From there the road was visible, winding back down to the valley. The town was out of sight but parts of Castle ton Wood could still be seen. A pine forest lay to the north, and fringed inside its southern edge was Cold Tarn, a natural deep lake that even on a day like this, when the sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, appeared black. Sometimes they fished for pike and perch there, and in season wildfowlers stood in the reeds that fringed the shore to shoot ducks. Behind them, Cold Fell rose 600 metres above sea level at the northern extent of the Pennines.

Back the way they’d come two tiny figures were visible more than a mile away, moving slowly up the steepest part of the hill.

Adam had pulled a book from his pack and started reading while David sat with his feet dangling over the edge of the rocks, chewing on a stem of grass.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’ David asked after a while.

Adam silently held it up so that he could see the cover but he didn’t say anything.

‘The Crystal Cave? What’s it about?’

‘I’ll let you read it when I’ve finished.’ He was being sarcastic because David didn’t read anything unless it was about sport.

For a while David tossed small pieces of rock out into the open, seeing how far he could throw them. Eventually he stopped and said, ‘What’s up with you?’

Adam put his book down. ‘So, now you’re talking to me again, is that it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on. You haven’t said a bloody word since we left the others.’

David found another stone, and threw it hard out into the air where it dropped from sight.

‘I just said it without thinking,’ Adam said. ‘For Christ’s sake I didn’t mean to embarrass him or anything.’

But if David had heard him, he didn’t give any sign of it. He picked up another stone and threw it out into the air.

‘How do you think he got that bruise anyway?’ Adam said, though David kept his back turned and didn’t reply. He sensed that David’s refusal to talk about it stemmed from loyalty to Nick, but the reasons behind it were something Adam was excluded from. At first he’d tried to make friends with Nick, but every gesture he’d made was openly rejected. Once Kyle had offered to give all four of them a lift to Carlisle so they could go to a film they all wanted to see but Nick had refused to go at the last minute even though Kyle had said he’d pay for all of them. It had developed into an argument and in the end Adam had had enough.

‘You’d go if David’s dad was paying though wouldn’t you?’

Nick had glared at him and clenched his fists. ‘Fuck you, grammar boy!’

For a second Adam had thought Nick was going to throw a punch. David and Graham were looking on silently and in that moment Adam had realized that if he and Nick had a fight they would be forced to take sides. That afterwards no matter who won or lost nothing would be the same again. He knew they wanted to see the film and it was obvious that Nick was being unreasonable, but he sensed that they would side with Nick. Even as the realization hit him David had stepped in.

‘I changed my mind about the film anyway. Let’s go fishing instead.’

It was meant to defuse the situation and Adam knew it. But he also knew Nick had won a subtle battle. They had gone fishing, but Adam had never forgotten how he’d felt.

Watching David’s back as he threw stones from the edge of the Giant’s Chair Adam knew it was pointless to push it. He went back to his book and after a few minutes David started whistling and murmuring snatches of a song. After a while he gestured to the view.

‘This is great isn’t it? I’m never leaving here.’

Adam looked up. ‘What about if you go to university?’

‘Why would I do that? I’m going to work for my dad when I leave school. What about you, Adam, what are you going to do?’

He thought about it. He wanted to be a journalist and work for a newspaper. ‘Go back to London one day, I suppose.’

David shook his head. ‘You’re a city boy. Do you miss it?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I’d feel out of place there,’ David said.

The others had eventually caught up and they had spent the day rabbiting.

‘Have you ever done that?’ Adam asked, to which Morris replied that he hadn’t. ‘What happens is you find a warren and net all the holes then shove a ferret down one of them to flush out the rabbits. In theory anyway.’

He’d never really enjoyed that kind of thing. He only tagged along fishing, shooting and rabbiting with the others because that was what they did.

Nick had become frustrated that day because his ferret kept killing rabbits down the holes instead of chasing them out. Then the ferret would go to sleep and Nick would have to dig it out. The others had taken it in their stride but if it hadn’t been for the satisfaction of seeing Nick thwarted Adam would have been bored out of his skull.

Late in the day they had found another warren and when they were finished Nick came and checked the last hole Adam had netted. He kicked at one of the pegs and when it came out of the ground easily he sneered.

‘That wouldn’t hold a bloody mouse.’

The others looked on without comment while Nick made a show of doing the job himself.

‘He did it to humiliate me,’ Adam told Morris. ‘And to make a point. He was always doing that kind of thing.’

Finally Nick had sent his ferret down a hole. An hour or so passed before it was clear that once again he would have to dig it out again. He set to with a short spade, his face set in anger while Adam lay in the sun watching with quiet satisfaction.

It took Nick half an hour to find his ferret. He bent down to pluck it from the ground and Adam got up, hoping that perhaps now they could go home. But instead of returning it to the sack Nick pinned the ferret to the ground with his foot. The animal squirmed briefly under the pressure and then almost carelessly Nick raised his spade and then suddenly jerked the blade downwards and the ferret was still. Without a word Nick wiped the blood off on the grass.

Adam was silent, recalling his mingled shock and revulsion.

‘A few days later David tried to explain that Nick had to do what he did because the ferret was no good. Looking back I suppose Nick’s family probably ate what he caught but I didn’t see it that way then.’

‘But it made you feel different from them.’

Adam nodded. ‘I was different.’

That night Adam stayed late at his office. He was thinking about the Mounts, both of whom he’d gotten to know while he’d been looking for their daughter. They were lucky, they had found strength in each other, but the strain was indelibly etched in their faces. A kind of haunted look. It was the not knowing, they had told him, which was the hardest thing to bear. It always was. He looked at the photographs of their daughter on the wall. He had a feeling about her, that she was slipping away as he got closer. It was always like that. The ones he found left him in peace. Those in his dreams were the ones he never found.

Louise was asleep when he got home. He went into their room and for a little while he stood inside the door watching her in the dim light that leaked in from the landing. She bore a physical resemblance to many of the women he’d been out with over the years and she wasn’t the first to tell him that he worked too hard, or that there was a part of him she felt he kept locked away from her.

Quietly he closed the door and went to the couch in the living room.

His leg was aching as it sometimes did when the weather was damp. He sat down and kneaded the ridged and scarred flesh. It still looked red and inflamed after all these years.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Last time we talked you told me that despite your friendship with David you felt different from the other boys. Why do you think that was?’

‘Different reasons,’ Adam replied from the window. It was raining outside, a fine misty drizzle that hung like vapour in the air. ‘We had different experiences. Castleton was a small rural town and I’d grown up in Hampstead. The two places were worlds apart.’

‘But you tried to fit in?’

‘I suppose that’s human nature isn’t it? To belong to the tribe.’

‘For most people it is,’ Morris agreed. ‘Generally speaking we look for others like ourselves to associate with. The friends of Arsenal supporters are usually other Arsenal supporters.’

Adam smiled. ‘If you’re going to use football as an analogy I suppose I felt like a reserve. When Nick wasn’t around I was brought on to play, I felt like one of the team, but then Nick would turn up and I’d be back on the sidelines.’

‘During our last session you said that you thought Nick was jealous of your friendship with David. Was that because you shared experiences with David, like school, that Nick was excluded from?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘But you felt excluded from some of the experiences that Nick and David had in common. So, were you jealous of Nick?’

Adam had never thought of it that way. ‘If I’m honest I suppose the answer is yes.’

‘It sounds almost as if you were in competition with each other, in a sense, for David’s friendship.’

‘I don’t think I felt that way,’ Adam said.

‘How did you feel?’

‘It was more like feeling a constant need to prove myself.’

‘To whom?’

‘I suppose to David. I wanted our friendship to be as important to him as Nick’s evidently was.’

‘You didn’t think it was?’

‘Going back to the football analogy I felt as if I was always fighting for my place on the team. I was looking to score the goal that would finally cement my place. I mean it wasn’t simply about David, it was about acceptance in the wider sense.’

‘And did you? Score that goal?’

‘I thought I had,’ Adam said.

Morris rested his chin thoughtfully on his steepled fingers. He sensed that this was what Adam had been leading up to.

The year was 1985 and spring had been unusually warm and dry. By summer the country was baking in a heat wave. Adam had turned sixteen and had a holiday job at the Courier in Carlisle. The pay was terrible, and his job was mostly running errands and making coffee, but at least he got to see how a real newspaper worked, even if it was only a local daily where news meant local horse shows and reports of council meetings.

The editor was a dour Yorkshireman who spent most of his time secluded in his glass-walled office. Now and then he would emerge and gruffly summon one of the reporters. The door would close and the unlucky victim would have to sit in full view of the rest of the office while his or her work was savagely criticized. The only person who escaped these sessions was the paper’s senior reporter who, alone it seemed, had the editor’s respect.

Adam had been at the paper for three weeks the first time he spoke to Jim Findlay. He was standing at the photocopier feeding endless sheets of paper into the machine when Findlay paused on his way past.

‘Adam isn’t it?’

Findlay was rarely in the office. He did most of his work from the pub on the corner, where he habitually sat at a table in a sunny corner by the window with a pint glass and a whisky in front of him and an ashtray brimming with cigarette butts. He was Scottish and spoke with a broad accent. He looked to be in his forties, and had thinning hair that was turning grey and mournful eyes that gazed on the world with a kind of weary resignation.

‘Yes it is,’ Adam answered, recovering from his surprise.

Findlay nodded. ‘How’re you liking our wee paper then?’

‘It’s fine. I mean, I’m enjoying working here.’

‘Is that so? I expect you’ll be wanting to become a journalist yerself one day, is that it?’

‘Hopefully, after university anyway.’

Findlay seemed amused. ‘University eh? You’ll no’ want to be working at a place like this then. I’ll expect you’ve bigger plans.’