0007464355 (12 page)

Trapped, and it was all her own sweet fault.

12

‘Call me Helen,’ she said eventually.

The first thing she’d said for half an hour. Gil took it as part apology, which it obviously was. ‘My French pronunciation is that bad?’ he asked.

‘Atrocious.’

They’d made slow progress, the difference in their height not helped by the fact Helen alternated between leaning on him and trying to manage on her own. More than once, he’d had to resist the urge to suggest a piggyback or tuck her under his arm and carry her like a child. Not that he could. He might be tall, but he wasn’t that strong any more and she wasn’t that light. Plus, two falls in as many days meant his knee was killing him.

Finally they were stumbling past a mud-splattered silver Peugeot parked on the gravel in front of the great house. While Helen rummaged in her pockets for keys and undid three Chubbs on the front door, Gil looked around him. All these years and he’d never been this close to Wildfell before. Never paid the mansion that much attention to be honest. It was red brick, ivy covered. Faces carved in cheap sandstone around the main door were weathered Botox smooth. If you’d gone to central casting for haunted houses you couldn’t have done a better job.

Gil eyed her car. He was pretty sure it was the one that almost hit him. It was definitely the one that she’d parked so badly outside the General Stores. There was no child seat in the back, and no sign of any of the rubbish that usually accompanies small children. Empty crisp packets, sweet wrappers, discarded toys.

The front door groaned as she opened it.

‘Needs …’ she started.

‘… oiling,’ he finished. For the first time a flash of a smile crossed her face, blue eyes lighting, before she turned her back on him and hobbled inside, flicking on a bulb that hung without shade from electric cord so old it was plaited.

‘Welcoming, huh?’

Gil grinned. Winced.

She frowned. ‘What happened?’

He put his hand up and realised the scratch on his cheek was open again. ‘Oh that.’ He looked at her, seeking a hint of recognition and finding nothing. ‘Took a bit of a tumble into a hedge, that’s all. Nothing serious. It’s just a scratch.’

‘Looks more than a scratch to me.’ Her sudden change of tone surprised him. Efficient, maternal, bossy. The tone Jan had used to tell the girls it was time for bed, no arguing. ‘You need to see a doctor. That probably requires stitching.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘What?’ she demanded.

‘You don’t seem the type to interfere in other people’s business.’

‘I’m not, I …’ then she laughed. ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘It looks bad, like it might be about to go a bit septic. Trust me, I know a bit about these things.’

They hovered in the doorway for a moment. Her just inside, balancing on one leg, supporting herself with one hand on the door frame. Gil standing awkwardly outside on the mat. There was no noise from within.

‘Well, Mr …’

‘Markham, Gil Markham. It’s Gilbert but …’

‘Gilbert?’ Her mouth twitched.

He nodded. ‘I know. Family name. Gil, really.’

She frowned, put her head on one side as if deciding whether or not he was a Gil. ‘Well, thank you for helping me back, at least. But I’m home safe so I’d better let you go.’ She put out her hand and he looked at it for a moment before realising they were meant to shake.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing …?’

She shook her head firmly, already beginning to close the door.

The doctor couldn’t fit him in that day, nor the next, so Gil ended up driving to Keighley and spending three hours sat in A&E with the pond life of West Yorkshire, plus a few sick babies screaming the place down. All for two stitches, a prescription for codeine, questions about his drinking and a lecture on being more careful at his age.

At his age
, indeed.

He seethed all the way home, putting his foot down on the dual carriageway just because he could.
You should take more care at your age.
What was it the nurse had said when he’d muttered some half-truth about taking a tumble while climbing on the Dales? You’re lucky it’s not worse. Rock climbing? At your age? In those shoes? She hadn’t said any of those things; but she might as well have done. The way she’d looked at him. Like, if he was her dad, she’d be giving him a proper talking to and grounding him indefinitely.

This … regression. He couldn’t stand it. Who wrote the memo saying at what point you started going backwards in the eyes of everyone younger? He was sixty-one, for God’s sake. Harrison Ford was making Indiana Jones movies when he was older than this. Bruce Willis was still dying hard, or as good as. Five years ago, he’d been
grown up
,
successful
,
respected
. Although nothing perceptible had happened, he’d somehow become a man that nurses less than half his age could scold. Gil wanted to see the small print. He didn’t sign up for this when he decided to step down from the news desk.

Gil had no idea how long the text had been there, flashing silently from his phone. He only knew he’d missed it. He discovered it when he got through the front door and tossed his mobile along with his keys on to the little table in the hall, which had been there since Jan decreed they needed a
telephone table
. The telephone was long gone.

Above the ‘table’, a kind of a semi-circular thing he’d never liked – too fakely old-fashioned in the way it fitted snugly against the wall – hung a mirror. It was oval, in the same dark wood as the table. Jan probably bought them at the same time. Since she’d moved straight into her new man’s house, already fully furnished and on an executive estate with half a dozen similar, Gil kept telling himself he could throw it away if he wanted. Somehow, like the kitchen clock and reclaiming her side of the bed, he’d never got round to it.

Still, he wouldn’t have cared if Jan had taken it. She could have taken the lot as far as he was concerned, so long as she’d left a bed and a telly. And even the telly … All that stuff was easily replaced and something about the idea of ‘travelling light’ appealed to him. He liked to think of himself as a man who was above needing things. But no, she hadn’t wanted the telephone table, the television, the bed. She hadn’t wanted much, now he came to think of it. Except the kids.

‘Not really Kev’s style,’ she’d said of the rest.

Something along those lines.

‘What makes you think it’s mine?’ he’d wanted to reply.

Maybe he had. That was possible. Not that the split hadn’t been amicable enough; but there had been moments … Well, there would be, wouldn’t there? Dismantling a marriage after twenty-odd years. And even saints snark. He couldn’t remember the detail. It was a long time ago now. So the table and the mirror, and the bed and the telly, and plenty more besides, stayed. Ten years later, all that stuff was still here. Except the telly. Sometime in the last four or five years he’d found his way to replacing that with an enormous wide flat-screen thing the bloke in Curry’s had convinced him he needed. Flicking on the overhead light, Gil blinked, examined the stitches, neatly tied and self-dissolving, and tried to look at himself impartially. Not much to see except floppy blond-grey hair and heavy black-framed glasses.

Without those he couldn’t see a bloody thing.

Well, not unless it was very close, and even then not in focus.

Hanging his suit jacket on the end of the banisters, where it would stay until he put it back on again to go out, he picked up his phone and wandered into the kitchen. That’s when he saw the envelope flashing on screen, with a number underneath he didn’t recognise. Heart pounding, he fumbled to enter the pin-code to unlock it. It wasn’t from his ex-wife or his elder daughter. It wasn’t likely to be from his youngest, but he couldn’t help hoping.

I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at The Bull? I wondered if you’d like to have a drink sometime? Maybe dinner?

Liza x.

PS hope you don’t mind, Margaret gave me your number.

Disappointment surged through him. Who’d he been expecting? Jan? Karen? Lyn? Helen Graham? That was hardly going to happen. And who the hell was Liza anyway? Margaret had to be Margaret bloody Millward. He didn’t know any other Margarets. How in God’s name had that Millward woman got hold of his mobile number? Christ, she’d missed her vocation. And had he just …?

Been asked on a date? By a woman?

Don’t be such an old fart. It’s the twenty-first century.
He could imagine Lyn saying it. If he’d ever been able to have those kind of conversations with her, which he hadn’t. Women asked men out all the time these days. He should be grateful anyone was interested. He tried to picture her, couldn’t get her face. He did remember her though, sort of. Or he would if he’d been looking. The Liza was followed by a single kiss. It didn’t mean anything, he knew. People did that these days. Everything was xxx. Texts, Facebook, emails.

See you later, kiss.

Dinner’s in the dog, kiss.

You’re invited to apply for early retirement, kiss.

Gone nine now. They’d be wondering where he was down The Bull; wondering if they should still be keeping his pint warm. Well, let them wonder. Gil tossed his phone on the kitchen table, not sure how to respond or even whether to respond at all. Turning on the TV produced some ITV crime drama just starting.

It would do. Squabbling women juggling families and crime-scene investigations. Made a change from dysfunctional old sods who couldn’t hold down a relationship … Gil fired up his laptop, dragged a cottage pie out of the freezer and bunged it in the microwave. He bought them by the dozen. Hot, filling, vaguely passed for healthy. Occasionally, he could have sworn he saw a carrot. Flipping the top on a can of Sam Smith’s, he sat down at the kitchen table to kill a bit of time with his good friend Google.

Seeing the old house up close had intrigued him.

He caught himself. Who was he trying to kid? It was Helen Graham who intrigued him. That was the truth of it.

Three hours and three more cans later, cottage pie stone-cold in the microwave, Gil remembered Liza’s text. Gone midnight was too late to reply. It would have to wait until morning. Not that he knew how to respond anyway. He’d been thinking of saying yes, but he’d probably have changed his mind by tomorrow. Couldn’t think of a reason to say no; any more than he could think of a reason to go.

Somehow he’d managed to move enough to get those three cans of Sam’s from the cupboard, but not to take his supper from the microwave. Bit of an art that.

He was still no closer to finding out about Helen Graham.

Her voice had an accent he couldn’t place. Not French exactly, but something … International. European, maybe, more member of the global community than anywhere specific. And that comment she’d made about knowing a bit about wounds. Thanks to that he’d spent the evening down a blind alley with the medical profession. Wouldn’t be the first time, although she’d been a nurse, and that was decades ago. BJ: Before Jan.

He’d even spent a bit of time exploring the history of the big house, as if to prove to himself it wasn’t the woman that interested him. Trouble was, in the scheme of things, it wasn’t that big. Not
significant
anyway. So
there wasn’t that much to tell. Owned by an old local family, the usual rifts over a couple of centuries. Then nobody but an old woman in the decades after the Great War. Gil put two and two together and assumed she’d been a war widow. After that, nothing much to report until that scandal that got the boys’ school closed back in the nineties. That rang a bell, now he thought about it. Some local bigwig got it hushed up, if he remembered right. So there must be some extended family somewhere locally with a vested interest. Since then, tenants had come and gone, but the last couple of years it had stayed empty. Not a word about a ghost, but that kind of tittle-tattle didn’t tend to come from computers, it came from old wives and kids with nothing to do but smoke at the bus stop and break into empty houses at night and scare themselves witless.

There’d been no text from Lyn, no Facebook response from Karen. Not that he really deserved or even expected one. He hadn’t given his daughters a moment’s thought since he sat down, any more than he had Liza. There’d been no room in his head for anyone but the woman at Wildfell. The more he thought about her, the more convinced he became he’d seen her somewhere before. In the papers, on television, maybe a news site. Since she wasn’t local and was far too young to have crossed his path back when he worked in London, those were his only other options. He thought about phoning the news desk, getting them to check the electoral register. Even picked up his mobile and started dialling the number. Then he imagined the laugh they’d have at his expense when he had to admit he couldn’t give them any information apart from her name. Oh, and she was probably French. It was worse than useless.

Unless she was the daughter of someone he did know? That thought stopped him in his tracks for five minutes. Until it bugged him back into action. It was an itch he had to scratch. This was the twenty-first century, as Lyn never tired of telling him. Everybody could be googled. Even the insanely rich couldn’t buy total anonymity. Off grid was for religious fanatics and Montana gun nuts, and that was it.

If Helen Graham was on Google, he’d find her.

13

By six thirty on Monday morning she was on her way to Leeds Bradford Airport. She didn’t glance in her rear-view mirror as she pulled out of the driveway. She never did. She didn’t know why. It was just a thing. Don’t look back. Never look back. She wasn’t sure what she thought she might see if she did, she just thought best not.

Her ankle shrieked whenever she leaned on the clutch, but she didn’t want to leave her car at Wildfell overnight. Now she’d started having visitors, Helen didn’t want it to look like she was in and not answering the door. Better to be obviously away. Perhaps it was unnecessarily elaborate to drive to the airport, leave the car in a long-stay along with thousands of others, and take a diversion through the arrivals hall to pick up a bus to Leeds station. She had no reason to think anyone was following her. Or even interested. But better safe than sorry.