Fatlands (15 page)

It turned out to be a little more complicated than I had expected: one of those moral thrillers where no one is quite what they seem and where you need to know everyone's versions of the same event to get to the answer, which may or may not be the same as the truth. It was a problem I was not unfamiliar with. But right at that moment I didn't have enough energy to work out my own plot, let alone anyone else's. For a start, who was Malcolm Barringer if he wasn't Malcolm Barringer, and what was squeaky-clean Vandamed not telling me about their precious Dr Shepherd?

‘Hannah?'

‘What? I mean, yes, it sounds wonderful. Obviously it really is as good as everyone says.' He didn't reply, just looked at me. Sometimes I wish he wasn't so good at hearing what people are trying not to say. I leant over and squeezed his hand. ‘I am listening, Nick, honestly. It's just I've had a weird day.'

‘Like yesterday and the day before, you mean? And the week before that. It's work, Hannah. Like everybody else you have to make a decision as to where
it
stops and
you
begin. And if I did this to you, you'd be the first to shout foul.'

I took it on the chin. Because sometimes you don 't have time to duck. ‘I know that. It's not that I don't—' At which point, some might say luckily, I was saved by the bell. ‘I' m sorry—'

He closed his eyes and gave me a fake friendly swipe. ‘And will you stop saying that.'

Given that I didn't understand what was happening, the second half was really pretty good. I listened hard so I could contribute fully to the conversation afterwards. But as it turned out, we didn't talk much on the way back to the car. At first I thought he still had the sulks. It took me a while to realize it was all a little more serious.

At the driver's door he kissed me goodnight. As kissers go Nick can have quite a way with him, so you really know when it isn't one of his best. He let me go and stood back. I opened the door, but he didn't move. ‘You're not coming back with me?'

He shook his head. ‘You're humming like a generator. I find it easier to sleep with the power turned off.'

‘You could always help me to relax,'I said coyly. But it's never been my strongest suit, flirtation.

‘Yeah, but could you do the same for me?'

I smiled. ‘OK. Point taken. I'm sorry … I mean, I 'm not sorry. I'm … er … Listen, thanks for getting the tickets. I promise to be better behaved next time. When do I see you?'

He gave a little laugh. ‘Well, in my diary it says this is the weekend that Josh is with his grandparents so we get to go away together. But … you tell me.'

‘The weekend. Oh, Yes, I …'

He let me flounder for a bit. But it didn't do either of us any good. ‘Oh, come on, Hannah,' he said at last, fuelled more by impatience than anger. ‘It's not that hard to work out. You seriously think it's going to damage your independence, sharing the same hotel room with me? We've known each other for almost six months. I don't want to marry you, I don't want you to have my children. I'm not even sure if I want to spend next Christmas with you. However, I would like to feel that when we're together you're not always somewhere else. I know work is important. It isn't exactly irrelevant to me, either.
And I know how cut up you are about the girl. It's just I'm not interested in someone who doesn't know where she is. I had that for seven years. And I don't need it any more. OK?'

He stared at me. A couple walking down the street looked over at us and then passed on, thanking their lucky stars it wasn't them. It's a good reminder. There's always someone somewhere in the world having a worse time than you are. I looked at the ground. How come when anyone gets mad at me it makes me feel like a child again? Something to do with my father, no doubt. Maybe we could talk about it post coitus sometime. If there was another post coitus, that is.

In the end I said what I felt, although I must admit it sounded feeble. ‘You're right, Nick. I'm sorry.'

He shook his head. ‘Yeah, well, so am I. I spend my life talking to too many kids. Mary always said it made me sanctimonious. Let's leave it open, OK? If you want to go away, let me know. Otherwise call me when you want my company.'

I watched him go. Nice body. Back view again, eh? Fact is, when the mood is upon me (which is usually when I have made him somehow more unattainable), I still fancy him rotten. But that's why moods are such dangerous things. You can't guarantee how long they'll last. And what happens if the sex gets interrupted by the image of a herd of overweight pigs stampeding through my libido? I slammed my hand against the window of the car. God damn it. How come what you want to give is never the same thing as what they want to take? Maybe I should talk to a therapist about it.

I drove north with the stereo blasting out something young and carefree. To add insult to injury I was starving. Only two cheese rolls since breakfast. It's always seemed a severe misjudgement of nature to me, people having to
eat so often to keep going. I went home via the back streets and stopped at my local take-away, otherwise known as the Golden Cockroach—the only place likely to be serving after 11.30 on a weekday night. Peter was busy over the charcoals, as he has been ever since he arrived from northern Cyprus thirty years ago. Maybe it reminded him of the heat he had left behind. It's still not enough to make him happy, not if the amount of whisky he consumes every night is anything to go by. On the other hand he's one of those people who are only truly happy when they're miserable—or maybe it's the other way around. I had been buying my kebabs from him for two years before he even deigned to notice me. Then one Monday night while I was waiting for a take-away he leant over the counter and poured me out a slug of rotgut. From there we proceeded to drink each other under the table. I'm not ashamed to say that he won. Everything I know of him comes from that one night. So now I am the daughter that he never had. Greek sentimentality. Pathos with style.

This evening he was darker than usual. Just like fathers can be. I stood and watched the doner kebab going round and round, drops of meat grease falling on to the tray below. The smell made me sick with hunger. If that was a leg of lamb, then it came from a bigger lamb than I had ever seen. Lamb. Funny how the word meant a piece of meat rather than a fluffy bundle of young life.

‘Do you ever think about the animals, Peter?'

‘What d'you say?' he growled.

‘The animals. Do you ever think of them playing in some field rather than turning on your spit?'

But he was way too far gone for such things. ‘Listen. You want the kebab or you no want the kebab?'

‘I want the kebab.'

I did. Vegetarianism would mean not only no more
lamb, but no more Peter. I decided to decide tomorrow. Or the next day. Blessed are the weak, for they make the strong feel even more righteous.

The flat felt cold and unlived in. Tough shit, Hannah, you make your decisions, you pay the price. But there were a few words of welcome. On the answering machine the ‘message received' light was winking 2 coquettishly at me. I spooled it back.

Number one. ‘Hi, Hannah. Why don't you get out of the bath? It'll be worth the walk.' Frank, like Peter, a little the worse for wear. I saw him, feet on the desk, nursing the bottle of Glenfiddich from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. ‘OK. I thought you'd like to know that Shepherd has been trying to get in touch with you. Says it's urgent. I gave him your number. Maybe he's worried that now you've met her you'll side with the wife.'So Frank knew the sordid details, too. I bet the boys had enjoyed telling him that one. I was glad I hadn't been in on the conversation.

The machine beeped. Number two. ‘Hello. This is Tom Shepherd. We need to talk. I'll be at home from midday.'

You see. It was just as well I'd come home alone. We would have been goosing each other all the way up the stairs, and then I would have lost interest. That's the trouble with my job. There'll always be another man. Tom Shepherd. About bloody time.

I
got there on the dot of twelve. For a workaholic he was spending a lot of time at home. I hadn't been back there since that night. I needn't have worried. There was nothing left to remind me. The windows in the houses near by had all been replaced and another car was parked in the spot. Nothing so forgotten as yesterday's news.

But if places don't remember, people do. Shepherd opened the door with the chain still on and he looked awful. The five o'clock shadow had four days' more growth and his skin was like pastry that had been rolled too many times. As grief goes, his now seemed more devastating than his wife's. But then he had no one to love him through it. I had learnt a lot more about Tom Shepherd since our last meeting. On balance it ought to have made me more sympathetic. I had once had a lover who had discovered the other sex halfway through our affair; but it was a long time ago, and I hadn't been married to him for thirteen years. No question. Tom Shepherd certainly deserved sympathy. Problem was, I was still having trouble feeling any.

He led me into the sitting room. I had seen it a million times since that night. Now I saw it again, Mattie crashed out on the sofa, the remote in her hand, angry at everyone because she couldn't be angry at the ones who mattered.

I chose a chair. He sat on the edge of the sofa, elbows
on his knees, like someone under starter's orders. He launched straight into it, at first not even looking at me, just staring at the carpet, giving it a hard time.

‘I want you to stop talking to people. You have no right to be talking to people. It's not going to help anyone.”

‘You mean it's not going to help you?'

‘I don't know who you think you are. She wasn't your daughter. You only met her for a few hours. It doesn't help—what you're doing. It makes everything worse.' Of course there are scientists who give up words in favour of symbols. But I hadn't figured him for one of those. Maybe it was the pain that had decimated his language, making him sound like a child. Even the voice had a ring of petulance to it. ‘I told you this once already. This whole thing is none of your business.'

I could think of a number of replies to that one, but we weren't going to get anywhere if I let him get to me. ‘How did you know?' I said after a while.

He closed his eyes. ‘Edward Brayton.' I frowned. ‘The farmer in the pub yesterday. He rang to tell me some girl had been poking around asking questions. He thought she was animal rights posing as a journalist. I think she was you.'

Well, it didn't take a Nobel prize-winner to work that one out. I was animal rights, was I? Thinking back on it, Farmer Brayton had done a pretty good job of tying me in knots. No wonder. So, had all that stuff about the poor little piggies been for real, or simply a clever way of winding me up?

‘He told me some interesting things about AAR,' I said, to see what kind of reaction I would get.

‘AAR has got nothing to do with anything. You don't know what you're talking about. If animal rights were worried about performance boosters, they would have
blown up a dozen people before they tried me. It's just another farming aid.'

‘Fine. So if it wasn't AAR, what was it?'

‘I've told you, I don't know. And I don't care. Don't you hear what I'm saying? Finding out why they did it doesn't bring her back. I want you to leave her and me alone. You've already done enough damage.'

I looked at him. I could see where she got her stubbornness. But I also knew about my own. ‘And what does that mean?'

‘It means I paid you a lot of money to keep my daughter safe.'

‘But she's dead and I'm alive, is that it? Well I'm sorry that I didn't get blown to bits too. No doubt that would have made things better for you, wouldn't it?'

I meant it as sarcasm, but maybe it was the truth. Maybe having me on his conscience would have been easier than having me here in the flesh accusing him of something, but not knowing what. It certainly felt that way.

‘I'm warning you, Miss Wolfe. If you persist in bothering me or my friends, I'll be forced to bring in the police.'

And tell them what? Of course, he shouldn't have said it. He should have realized it would only make me mad. But then to be honest I don't think he was thinking that clearly. I was, though.

‘Tell me, Dr Shepherd, what kind of papers do you keep up in your study?'

‘What?'

‘I mean do you have stuff there that might be of interest to the ALF?'

‘What do you mean?' And I have to tell you, he was very nervous all of a sudden.

‘I mean it looks like you do. You've got enough locks
on the doors. And I believe you were burgled—sometime last year, wasn't it?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

It wasn't that I smelt blood, so much as revenge. I was about to do something that I was pretty sure I wouldn't be proud of later. But that would be then, and now was now. And I had had it with men giving me lectures about my responsibilities. ‘I'm talking about the fact that your daughter was having an affair with a boy who once worked undercover at Vandamed. This boy then came to Mattie's school as a gardener, got to know her, and got her interested in animal rights. Her locker was full of pamphlets. Then he persuaded her to start digging up some stuff on her dad—the dad whose obsession with work had, in her eyes, sent her mother off with another woman and her off to boarding school. All so he could get on with his precious research.'

And you could see from his face that whatever he had feared, this was somehow worse. He swallowed a couple of times, and I watched his neck muscles work overtime as the saliva made a painful journey down his throat. ‘You've no idea what you're saying,' he said at last.