0007464355 (19 page)

Industry honours Lawrence.

Clicking on the link, Gil was bemused when the picture that unfurled on his screen was of a man in a well-cut dinner jacket giving the camera a look that screamed ‘get a move on’. A glitch, it must be. Gil closed the window and tried again. Painfully slowly, the same picture emerged, too large to download easily. Then Gil saw her, half-eclipsed by the man. At first glance it looked as if he was hogging the frame. But when Gil wiped his glasses on his shirt and leaned closer, it became clear it was the woman who wanted to get out of the shot. The man was gripping her hand, hard, as if holding her in the frame.

The woman was Helen Graham, Gil was sure of it.

The picture was old, six or seven years out of date; and her hair was blonde and wavy, longer than she wore it now. It didn’t suit her, Gil thought, made her look older somehow, harder. But it was her, he was certain. He read the caption for confirmation:
Photographer Helen Lawrence with her husband, foreign correspondent, Art Huntingdon.

Gil punched the air. ‘Knew it!’ he hissed into the silence. ‘Bloody knew it.’

He’d found her.

It took all his will power not to get in the car and drive to Wildfell, but too many beers and just enough common sense stopped him.

The pub, then. A whisky and one last pint to set him up for a long night. Gil pushed back his chair. Catching sight of his reflection in the dark window, and the debris surrounding him, he leaned sideways and yanked the curtain shut. Looking like that, he was going nowhere tonight.

‘Come on, Gil,’ he muttered, returning to the spare room with the last of the beers. ‘You know the drill. Back it up. You know the who, and you’ve always known the where, but you still need the what and the why. What is Helen Lawrence doing at Wildfell, calling herself Hélène Graham?’

No one could hide on the Internet. Didn’t they say that? Didn’t this just prove that was true. There was one photograph of the woman, half-hidden behind her husband, more than half a decade old, and bearing a different name, and yet he’d found her. Gil had to admit he was impressed though. No Facebook page or Twitter or LinkedIn and whatever else the suits at the
Post
had been on at everyone to do.

She was her pictures. And that was it.

Nothing at all except one stray to give her away.

He found only one more. Taken, he imagined, on the same night. Cropped so closely you could barely see the top of the award she held in front of her. The look on her face was one he’d seen before, best described as uncomfortable. Her pic was part of a recent story so small it would barely have made half a sidebar on page seven.

Alongside was an arresting black-and-white image of a charismatic man somewhere in his late thirties/early forties in fatigues. The same man who’d glowered over his bow tie. This time, he was leaning against a tank, wiry dark hair sticking up, hooded eyes staring directly into the camera. Gil clicked on the picture and found himself on a news site. The paragraph was short and to the point:

A body, believed to be that of British journalist Arthur Huntingdon, 46, has been found after a fire destroyed the building in which he lived in an exclusive Paris square. Huntingdon, who was last seen over two weeks ago, was estranged from the photographer Helen Lawrence. Police also seek Ms Lawrence to eliminate her from their enquiries.

19

‘I thought you might be here …’

She turned at the voice and saw Gil stopped at the stile behind her, holding one of the posts with one hand and bent forward as if catching his breath. ‘Climbed the hill a bit too fast.’

‘Were you looking for me?’ She slid her camera into her backpack, trying to conceal her irritation. She’d hoped, by letting him know she knew his interest wasn’t purely neighbourly, she’d be able to stall him a while longer.

He hesitated, just a fraction too long, and obviously knew it because he said, ‘I was hoping to run into you, yes.’

‘Why? Other than that you clearly enjoy my company.’

Gil blinked, and flushed a little more.

He looked around him, forgetting her question and his embarrassment, simply seeing the view; long stretches of rolling dale and gorse and the smudge of another world in the far distance. Helen was impressed. She liked people who could see. So many people couldn’t. Most of those who could were like her and looked at the world through a lens of some kind.

‘Just the retired journalist in me, I guess,’ said Gil, calling her bluff.

Helen felt her face flicker, saw him clock it.

‘You don’t like journalists?’

She shrugged. ‘I can take them or leave them.’

‘But you’ve met some.’

When she didn’t reply, he smiled. ‘I thought so. Most people haven’t. They think what they see on the TV is the truth. We’re either scumbags or truth-seeking saints.’

Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘And which are you?’

‘Neither. For most of us this is—’

‘Just a job?’

‘You really have met some, haven’t you? Do you know what they say about you in the village?’

‘No, but I don’t doubt you’ll tell me.’ He was driving at something. Helen wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know what.

‘Half of them think you’re a rock star.’

Helen contemplated pointing out that rock stars were an endangered species, about as common as snow tigers and white rhinos. A dozen still in captivity, maybe two. These days you might just about be a pop star but you were more likely to be a celeb, famous for five minutes, if you were lucky.

‘Not taken with the rock-star idea?’

‘And what do the other half think?’

‘You’re a rich bohemian. A painter or sculptor. But then you’d be up here with your oils and easel, or down at the house with a chisel or a chainsaw attacking some block of wood. Instead you’re up here with your Leica.’

They looked at each other.

‘It’s a good model,’ he said. ‘Old, but good. Serious.’

‘I used to be serious about photography,’ Helen found herself saying. ‘A fixed focal length like that means you have to think.’

Once he found his feet, Gil went on. ‘And it’s discreet. If you didn’t know better you’d think it was a toy. Our staff photographer was always after one of those. The editor wouldn’t sign off on one and he couldn’t afford his own. Then it all went digital.’

‘This one is digital.’

Gil raised his eyebrows. It looked theatrical, intentionally so. ‘That’s the other thing they say about you. That you’re a reclusive millionaire. Those don’t come cheap, so perhaps they’re right.’

‘And how do they think I got my money?’

‘Oh, various ways.’

‘I bet.’ Helen grinned.

At least he had the grace to blush, and even shuffled his shoes a little on the heather in a small boy kind of way. It hadn’t passed Helen by that he still hadn’t told her why he was looking for her.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me why you’re here?’

He seemed to be right on the edge of one thing, and then he paused and said something else, and she got the feeling, from the sudden hunching of his shoulders, that the words coming out of his mouth surprised him too. ‘I’m avoiding telephoning my daughter.’

‘Why don’t you want to call her?’

He shrugged, and she could see he was tempted to leave it at that; but they were up on a windswept moor and this was a place for truth. She was putting what she felt on to her surroundings, Helen knew that. She even knew the name for it, pathetic fallacy, but it was true. Never trust someone who doesn’t read, never trust someone who’s not impressed by the mountains and the sea. She’d learnt that the hard way.

‘I never know what to say,’ he said at last.

‘Hello,’ Helen suggested. She wasn’t being facetious. ‘How are you …?’

‘Oh, we can do that bit. It’s everything else. Sometimes I write myself a list as if I’m about to go into conference, and I can hear myself working my way down it, ignoring her replies in my hurry to reach the next question.’

‘When did you last see her?’ she asked. He looked so uncomfortable, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

‘It’s been a while. She’s busy and her house isn’t very big and it’s a huge inconvenience to them having me there …’ Gil was gabbling now.

‘And you don’t want to go anyway?’

His eyes widened. ‘You don’t mince your words, do you?’

‘Sorry.’ She said it instantly and truthfully. He was right. Not that she’d ever felt the need to apologise for it before. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’

He shook off her apology with a shrug. ‘How about you?’ he said. ‘Do you have children?’

‘No,’ she said shortly.

He pretended to study a witch tree that looked so picturesque that someone could have lopped off its limbs and twisted it intentionally. Without thinking, Helen reached into her backpack for her Leica, moving slightly downhill to find a better angle.

‘I’m sorry …’

She stopped, her finger on the shutter button. ‘For what?’

‘That you never …’

‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t think about it. Really. Well, hardly ever. What about you? Have they brought you happiness?’

He waited while she took the shot, fidgeting from foot to foot.

‘I’d better leave you in peace,’ he said, when she lowered the camera.

Far from helping him muster the courage to call his daughter, she’d upset him. I wonder, Helen thought, cross with herself, what it would have been like to have a daughter to call. Would it have been something to look forward to, or just another chore? She was selfish, driven, focused – call it what you wanted – enough to suspect it might have been a chore. Not that she was ever likely to find out.

‘I was pregnant once.’ The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to think better of it.

He turned back towards her. ‘The timing was wrong?’

‘I lost it. Two months after we married. We never tried for another.’

‘Was that your decision? Or Art’s …?’

Helen stopped, took a deep breath.

So, he’d done it. That was why he’d come.

She was surprised to find that she wasn’t. It was the photograph of the boy that had done it. Deep down, once he’d seen it, she’d known from the way he reacted that it was only a matter of time. What difference did it make anyway? If it wasn’t him it would be someone else. If anything, it was almost a relief.

They faced each other and suddenly a twisted tree and the long line of the Dales seemed a lot less important.

All she wanted was to be away from there.

She was moving almost before she was aware of it, walking calmly but swiftly down the hill.

‘Helen, wait—’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘If you don’t tell me you’ll only end up having to tell someone else,’ he raised his voice, so she could hear him over the wind. ‘Another journalist, the police. Don’t you want to put your side of the story? Why don’t you tell me what happened? You know I can’t just let this go …’

Afraid he was going to come after her, she walked faster, her body bent forward, fury and fear carrying her downwards.

Away, she had to get away.

As soon as she hit the shade of the copse that bordered Wildfell, she started running, vaulting the lychgate in two moves. She rarely used this way in, there was something sinister about the trees, they spooked her, but today the threat was behind her. She ran up the path and fumbled to get the key in the lock, slamming the door and locking it again behind her. In the kitchen, Ghost took one look at her and decided that if he was hungry he’d be better off feeding himself.

She looked around wildly. Coffee cups in the sink, breadboard on the side, Roberts radio chortling to itself. It was starting to look something like home. Well, so what? She didn’t need any of it. She had moved before, many times, and fast. She could do it again. She didn’t need anything she hadn’t come with. Only her laptop and her cameras.

Slamming the lid on the laptop, she scooped it off the table and ran upstairs, taking them two at a time. Grabbing her rucksack from the bedroom floor she stuffed her clothes into the bottom, dirty mixed with clean, running kit on top, and then went in search of her charger. She needed to be somewhere else. But where? She’d come almost to like Wildfell, she realised with a shock. Even with its noises and shadows. Got used to it, at least. Liked having the Dales behind her. This had become about more than hiding.

Here, for the first time, she felt strangely as if she belonged.

Not the people, not even the ramshackle wreck of a house, certainly not her … It was the silence, she realised. The silence and the space and the fact Wildfell’s ruin was nature’s revenge for building a pile on the edge of such a windswept wilderness. The holes in the roof were storm damage. Wind had ripped the biggest branch from the rotting oak tree. The wall below the terrace was broken by subsidence. She’d had enough of buildings split by mortar-fire and cars torn apart and overturned. She never wanted to see a burnt-out office block again.

Since the boy, that was all she’d photographed.

All she’d been able to photograph.

Broken buildings standing in for broken people. It was easier to look at damaged buildings, to look at them and see their damage. Marvel at the ruin; the firestorms and rain of shells that brought Beirut, Fallujah, Tripoli, Damascus to that state. You couldn’t do that with people. It was easier to look away. What was it T. S. Eliot said? ‘Humankind couldn’t bear too much reality?’ Something like that.

Below, Gil’s feet crunched the gravel and Helen stood back from the mullioned drawing-room window where she was stuffing her laptop charger into her rucksack. Gil looked around as if genuinely interested in the forecourt, and then looked behind him, as if suspecting he might be followed, then she saw him straighten his shoulders and take a deep breath before disappearing under the portico to lean on the bell. Somewhere deep inside the house the old bell clattered and clattered again, the flat sound suggesting the bell was cracked.

She stayed frozen two steps away from the window, grateful for her obsession with keeping everything locked.