Some Old Lover's Ghost (46 page)

Eventually she told Caitlin how she felt about Martin Devereux, half expecting Caitlin to laugh, or to say something scornful. But Caitlin was understanding, and offered to help set Melissa’s hair. They were halfway through, and the room smelt of setting lotion, when Caitlin said, ‘Would you like his autograph?’

‘Martin’s?’

‘Of course, dummy. I’ll get it for you, if you like.’

‘Kate …’

Caitlin shrugged. ‘If you don’t want it …’

‘Oh, I do!’

The sixth form boys had games after school on Wednesdays,
Caitlin explained. She’d slip through the hole in the fence, and ask Martin Devereux for his autograph. Simple.

‘You won’t tell him it’s for me?’ She would die, Melissa thought, if Martin were to find out how much she loved him.

‘Course not.’ Melissa, watching Caitlin’s reflection in the mirror, saw her smile as she twisted the last curler into place.

After school, Caitlin wriggled through the fence that divided the girls’ school from the boys’, and walked across the football pitch. Standing at the foot of the sports pavilion steps she asked in a bored voice, ‘Is there someone called Martin Devereux here?’ A tall, lanky boy said, ‘It’s your lucky day, Devereux,’ as Martin Devereux detached himself from the group and walked down the steps to her.

‘A friend of mine wants your autograph,’ Caitlin said, fishing a scrap of paper out of her pocket.

‘A friend?’ He smiled knowingly.

‘Not me. Too dreary – girlish pashes for sixth-formers. Still – better than the captain of hockey, I suppose. Just write, To M, best wishes from Martin whatever-your-name-was. Something like that.’ She yawned.

He scribbled on the piece of paper. Caitlin smiled. ‘Actually, she’s called Melissa Franklin, and she has the most frightful crush on you.’

‘How amusing,’ he said, handing her the autograph, but she could tell that he was flattered.

‘Too sweet of you. Bye-ee.’ Caitlin began to walk briskly back to the perimeter of the playing field.

He caught up with her as she reached the hole in the fence. ‘I say – I wonder – would you like to go to the pictures one evening? Um … I’m so sorry, but I don’t know your name.’

‘Caitlin,’ she said. ‘Caitlin Canavan. Most people call me Kate.’ She considered. ‘Not the pictures. I’ll meet you at the milk bar in Cornmarket Street after school tomorrow.’

Melissa gazed at Martin Devereux’s autograph, her heart beating very rapidly. ‘To M, best wishes from Martin.’ He had such lovely black, curly handwriting.

Caitlin was pulling the navy ribbon from her hair. ‘I said we’d meet him after school tomorrow.’

Melissa was speechless at first. Then she said,
‘Both
of us?’

Caitlin nodded. ‘I’ll help you do your hair tonight, Liss, so that you look really nice.’

After school, Melissa and Caitlin walked into town. Melissa was convinced that Martin would not come. He would have changed his mind, or Caitlin would have made some sort of mistake.

But she saw him through the window of the milk bar. ‘Caitlin—’ she whispered, suddenly wanting to run away, but Caitlin had already opened the door. Melissa scuttled in after her.

‘Hello, Martin,’ said Caitlin. ‘This is Melissa.’

Martin glanced briefly at Melissa. ‘Hi there.’ He was just as good-looking close to as he was from a distance. His mouth drooped with a sulky little twist at the corners that Melissa was unable to capture with her pencil.

Martin bought two more milk shakes and sat down next to Caitlin. Melissa sat opposite him.

‘Oxford is such a dump,’ said Caitlin, looking around, raising her slender shoulders.

‘My people have just moved down from London. I can’t wait to get back there. One feels buried alive.’

‘I used to live in the Fens, miles from anywhere.’

‘Dear God,’ said Martin. ‘What on earth did you
do
?’

‘I rode a lot. And my father and I weekended in London quite often, actually.’

‘I
liked
the Fens,’ said Melissa suddenly. They both stared at her: it was as though, she thought, the
table
had spoken. ‘I liked Long Cottage and I miss Aunt Sarah and my swing and our den. You liked it too, Kate. And the bower we made – you remember, in the garden, with the bindweed and the old man’s beard—’ She stopped suddenly, her face hot, realizing that neither was listening to her.

Martin put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of change. ‘I’ll just get some matches. I’m desperate for a cigarette.’

Caitlin said, ‘Melissa will get them, won’t you, Melissa?’ and smiled. The smile was patronizing and conspiratorial, and it was echoed by Martin. It sparked a suspicion in Melissa that she could hardly bear to contemplate. She took the money and stood up and went to the counter, and heard the ripple of laughter as she asked for the matches. She wondered whether they were laughing at her. She was aware suddenly of her pigtails, her flat chest. The assistant placed the matches on the counter, and Melissa, as Martin spoke, stepped backwards a couple of paces, straining to hear.

‘Too
tedious … little kids in gymslips running after one …’

Then Caitlin. ‘She adores you. Aren’t you flattered?’ And a giggle.

The coins slipped out of Melissa’s hand and rolled around the counter. He knew. Caitlin had told Martin that she, Melissa, loved him. The shock of Caitlin’s betrayal was almost as painful as the humiliation of Martin’s knowing. Melissa stood quite still for a moment, completely at a loss, her mind blank. She wondered whether she should run out of the café, but she still had his change, his matches. She walked back to the table and sat down.

Martin was saying to Caitlin, ‘Only one more year’s school, thank God. I’ll go to Oxbridge, of course, but at least my weekends will be my own.’

‘I shall leave school as soon as possible.’ Caitlin shook back her dark curls. ‘I was going to be presented, but that sort of thing is rather passé, isn’t it? So I shall be an actress, or a model or something.’

Caitlin was flirting with Martin Devereux, tossing back her hair, smiling at him, raising and lowering her mascaraed eyelashes. And Martin’s gaze rested on her, unable to look away.

‘You’d make a terrific model, Caitlin. And I can imagine you on stage.’

Caitlin simpered. Martin Devereux glanced at his watch. ‘There’s a funfair on the common. Could be amusing. Shall we go?’

‘If you like.’

‘Perhaps your friend would take your satchel home. Things tend to fall out when one is upside down on the Big Wheel. Would you do that for me, sweetheart?’ Martin turned to Melissa and smiled. His smile, that only half an hour ago she would have died for, was now worthless.

Melissa took Caitlin’s bag and her own, and walked back to the bus stop. She got lost in the narrow, winding streets, and had to wait twenty minutes for the next bus. But she did not allow herself to cry until she was sitting on the back seat, her face pressed against the window, her tears painful and silent.

‘You hardly said a word,’ Caitlin said later as she peeled off her stockings. ‘So he thought you didn’t like him.’

Melissa knew that Caitlin was lying. They were in their bedroom; Caitlin had come home at six o’clock, and told Tilda that she’d had a netball match.

All Melissa wanted was to curl up and sleep and preferably never wake up again. Her head ached so badly that she thought she might be ill. She hoped she was ill, something serious and long-term so that she wouldn’t have to go to school again for a very long time, because if she did go back to school then she might see Martin Devereux, and that would be just too awful. And she could hardly bear to be in the same room as Caitlin. She had never been sure that Caitlin liked her – she had always, she now acknowledged, courted Caitlin’s approval in a rather craven way – but to realize that Caitlin cared not one bit for her was profoundly shocking. She saw suddenly that Caitlin was a poisonous interloper, and that after this afternoon she would never again be able to count on the pleasant, dull safety of family life. Melissa pulled the eiderdown over her head and closed her eyes, but saw Martin Devereux’s patronizing smile, heard Caitlin’s ripple of mocking laughter.

‘Cheer up,’ said Caitlin carelessly, ‘you’re going to France soon, aren’t you?’

She had forgotten France. Her washed and ironed clothes were in a neat pile on the chair, ready to be packed.

‘You’ll love it.’ Caitlin was sitting at the dressing table, brushing her hair. ‘So warm and sunny, not like miserable old England. I had such wonderful holidays there, I used not to want to come home.’

Melissa had lived in France as a child, in Paris, but she hardly remembered it. But the vague memory of feeling happy and safe made tears spring to her eyes again.

‘Just think,’ said Caitlin, ‘you could
live
there if you wanted, with your father. Lucky, lucky you.’

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

‘In retrospect,’ said Melissa, ‘it seems so trivial, doesn’t it? But I can still remember how I felt at the time. I saw that I counted for nothing with Caitlin. To see yourself so clearly through another person’s eyes is an unsettling experience.’

We were sitting in the chintzy drawing room of Melissa Parker’s large, modern Surrey house. Photographs of Melissa’s three daughters and her grandchildren crowded the sideboard and mantelpiece. Outside, her husband was mowing the lawn into immaculate stripes; from the kitchen I could hear loud music as Matty crashed about, making herself a snack.

Melissa offered me a cake to go with my cup of tea. Just the sight of the shiny icing and glacé cherries made me feel ill. I declined politely.

‘So you stayed in France with your father?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Now that I have children of my own, of course, I can see how much that must have hurt my mother. At the time, even though I missed her dreadfully, it seemed the only thing to do.’

‘Did you tell Tilda or Max what had happened?’

She shook her head. ‘Not until much later. I couldn’t bear
even to think about it. It’s odd, isn’t it, when you consider all the humiliations one has later to endure – childbirth or losing one’s job or reversing one’s car into a petrol pump – yet nothing ever seems quite so dreadful as the mortifications of being almost thirteen.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I have to go out soon, dear. I’ve a meeting.’

Melissa’s life consisted of meetings, committees, driving her daughter great distances, and hurtling about the country to visit her many relatives. She was shortly to go and stay for ten days with her elder daughter, Annabel, who had just had a baby. I stood up and thanked her for giving me her time, and arranged to come and see her in a fortnight.

I travelled home by train – the Fiesta’s clutch needed to be replaced, so I had had to book it into a garage. Before I went to the station, I forced myself to do what I had been putting off all week, and in a chemist in Weybridge I bought a pregnancy testing kit. Travelling back to London, I thought I understood why Melissa had chosen to live in France with Max. Nothing has quite the same ability to wound as an unhappy first love. And Melissa, like Tilda, had an immense capacity for loving. For that to be so deliberately and unkindly rejected must have been painful indeed.

At home, I let myself into my flat and picked up the mail from the doormat. Bills and a royalty statement and a postcard from Lucy Lightman of a Bahamian beach. And a large manila envelope: I did not recognize the wild, black handwriting that scrawled my address. I slit open the envelope, and took out several sheets of photocopy and a covering note. The note was signed by Caitlin Canavan. As she had promised, she had sent me a copy of the report made by the private detective Joscelin Canavan had engaged to search for her missing husband. The report was dated 30 May 1947. As I began to read it, I forgot everything else – Patrick, and whatever ghost it was that haunted me, and even the pregnancy testing kit, still in my bag.

The detective’s name had been Norman J. Oddie; his signature adorned the final page of the report. Like me, Norman J. Oddie
had suspected Max Franklin. Mr Oddie had been a conscientious man and had checked thoroughly Max’s movements on the night of 10 April. After the bitter parting from Tilda, Max had walked back to Ely and then caught the train from Ely to Liverpool Street. One of the teachers from Josh’s old school had been travelling to stay with her sister in London, and had recognized Max on the train. Miss Parsons had told Mr Oddie that Max Franklin had been polite but uncommunicative. He had spent most of the journey smoking and looking at a book without turning the pages. When the train had reached London, Max had lifted Miss Parsons’ suitcase down from the luggage rack and opened the door for her, and then had disappeared into the crowds. The landlady of the boarding house in which Max lived had confirmed that he had arrived home just before seven o’clock. He had dined (Mr Oddie even included the menu), and then he had gone to his room. He had been up at seven for breakfast the following morning.

Mr Oddie concluded, as I had, that Max could not possibly have killed Daragh Canavan. Over the weeks I had become convinced that the manner of Daragh’s death excluded Max. I could imagine Max killing Daragh in a fair fight, losing his temper and hitting him just too hard, but I could not picture him binding Daragh hand and foot and burying him alive in a dike. What Max had seen in Germany had made him incapable of such deliberate, vengeful cruelty.

I read on. Mr Oddie listed some of Daragh’s debts: the reputable ones, to the bank and Harrods and Tattersalls, and the less reputable ones, to a succession of seedy little men in pubs and clubs and racecourses. I thought of gangland killings, bodies encased in concrete bridges over motorways, or weighted down with chains in the murky depths of reservoirs. Not so dissimilar, surely, from a burial in the wall of a dike. I felt hopeful until I flicked a page of the report and read that Mr Oddie had traced a certain Thomas Kenny to a pub in Hackney. Thomas Kenny had been one of the two men who had beaten Daragh up on that fateful night after the flood. ‘Why should I kill him?’ Kenny had said. ‘Haven’t a hope of getting my cash back now, have I?’