The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones (23 page)

“ … involved in a horrific car crash, committed suicide. A short but eventful life, you could say.” Inspector John barked bitterly.

“But she was living here?”

“Yes, for a short while. She came here with another girlfriend, Mary. They eloped together. Then they became friendly with Alice, and Alice and Mary eloped together. Julia was suspected of murdering them until Mary came back, but without Alice whom she claimed had simply disappeared. Al suspicions were then laid at Mary’s door which Alice’s father and a lynch mob tried to burn down one night, and they fled to Spain. Then Julia returned to England where she kil ed herself shortly afterwards.”

I was watching Mike. From my cynical point of view, the conversation was going rather wel . Mike is at his best being sympathetic and he and Sarah were doing a great job as wailers at the wal . They even both managed to have tears wel up in their eyes. If only they would have decided to console each other, in this litany of pain, as wel as Inspector John.

“So you came here to be close to your daughter?” Sarah concluded.

“Yes. I wanted to put some missing pieces together. Julia wrote a book for me while she was staying here, so I wanted to see where she had written it and to share some of the experiences she was writing about, including buying chocolates from the Jeff de Bruges concession in town here.”

“Oh, I don’t know that one.”

“You should. It is very good, Sarah, not that you look like you eat many chocolates.”

“Quite enough, I am afraid. As I think you know, I was raped too a couple of years ago. Since then, I have taken comfort where I can find it, and chocolate certainly helps – a bit safer than alcohol or drugs.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Inspector John must have known about it already, but he decided to play dumb.

“An ex-boyfriend.”

“They often are.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t make it any better.”

“Not in the least.”

“You must have dealt with many horrific crimes in your time, haven’t you?”

“I have had my share, especial y more recently. The drug-related incidents can get very unpleasant – people sending messages.”

“Any famous cases?” Mike inquired.

“No, not real y. I was mostly a straight forward Mr. Plod. Most crimes are very sad at their core. Inadequate people hurting inadequate people. I am very glad to be out of it after more than forty years of that rigmarole. There weren’t even many funny stories, unless you have a particularly sick mind, which is what a lot of my col eagues cultivated in order to deal with the daily realities of what they had to deal with. You either end up chortling at the end of a rope with your gal ows humour or you disappear into a morose torpor. I am more the morose type. I cannot find anything to laugh about in most crimes. They are just tragic.”

“I can imagine,” Mike added.

“So, anyway, what are you guys going to do next?”

“Wel , we are planning to stay in the area for a couple more weeks,” Mike explained, “then we are going back to Brussels to university, and Paul here has to start finding a real job.”

“What are you going to do, Paul?” Inspector John asked.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I replied. “Something in robotics, possibly. That is what my studies have been about so far.”

“Fascinating,” Sarah said.

(Shit).

“I used to think so.”

“But it must be,” Sarah insisted. “Better than hairdressing anyway.”

“What could be more useful than hairdressing?” Mike quipped with quite a sense of conviction.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but it is not exactly what I had in mind original y. I just ended up doing it for want of knowing what else to do, like Paul.”

(Al roads are leading back to me. I am beginning to feel haunted by the living).

“Can I have a haircut sometime?” Mike chirruped.

(Crass, Mike).

“Of course you can. Today, if you like.”

(Oh wel , sometimes crass works).

Mike looked pleased, but there was no matching response from Sarah. She was simply offering him a haircut. “You can have one too, Paul, if you like,” she offered.

“I like my hair as it is.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Do you know Brussels, Sarah?” Mike asked.

“Not real y. I have been there once.”

“You should come and see us.”

“To give you a haircut?”

“Yes, and that too.”

Poor Mike. He doesn’t have any sense of playing hard to get – far too honest.

“I might.”

Inspector John decided to try to rescue Mike. “I haven’t ever been to Brussels. Can I come? I don’t do haircuts, though.”

“But you do drink beer, don’t you?” I chal enged him.

“Yes, I certainly drink beer. I have heard al about the Belgian beers.”

“I don’t even drink beer,” Sarah commented.

“Yes, but you do eat chocolates,” I countered.

“Yes, but it is a long way for a box of chocolates.”

She was beginning to piss me off. I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

She tensed. “I wil , I assure you.”

“Good. There’s no point in doing anything just to please people.”

“I don’t suppose you do, Paul.”

“He doesn’t.” Mike assured her.

“I don’t,” I confirmed.

“I don’t see anything wrong in pleasing people,” Inspector John observed.

“Nor do I,” Mike added.

“I know you don’t,” I said. “That’s what makes you you, and me me.”

“Wel , I prefer Mike’s approach to life,” said Sarah accusingly.

“Thank God for that,” I spat back. “I hope you wil be very happy together.”

Inspector John started trying to catch the owner’s attention to pay the bil . Mike shot daggers at me and descended into a whopping great sulk.

“We wil have dessert somewhere else later, shal we?” Inspector John proposed. “This one is on me.”

“I am going to take a walk,” Sarah said.

“I’l join you,” Mike replied.

“No, you won’t,” Sarah responded with surprising rudeness. “I would like a few minutes to myself.”

Mike turned on me. “Thank you so much, Paul. That was charming.”

“I hope not,” I retorted. “I wouldn’t want to waste it.”

Things had gone from bad to very much worse for Mike. I may have been mistaken, but my guess was that Sarah and I had just had our first tiff and we weren’t even lovers. Like I had already assumed, matchmaking Mike with her was going to be a lost cause.

He would have more luck with Inspector John.

We have spent the last week back at Valflaunès with Mum and Dad, and away from the crazy atmosphere of Freyrargues. Two worlds, chalk and cheese, yin and yang, war and peace. Here there are outbursts of passion and trauma but they are always between real human beings. Over there everything is colossal, played out on a stage which has a significance in the world, and therefore a sense of responsibility and accountability, even amid the freeloading and the tepid debauchery.

I watch Mum and Dad, and Mike splayed out playing with his iPod, and I wonder why I would ever want anything different. This is the life I have lived for twenty-one years, this is the life I understand, these are the people I love. I am an insider, and that, I have discovered, is what real y matters to me. I need to know where any blows wil fal . I need to be able to negotiate the rules. I don’t need to be trussed up like a turkey at somebody’s mercy, judged against criteria I wil never be able to define, never mind master. I can suck up to the Earl, but I am merely there at his pleasure, and pleasing people has never been what I do.

It has been wonderful this last week, doing very little, going out at night, lazing during the day, knocking back wine until we are too embarrassed to count the empty bottles.

I met Natalie again a couple of days ago out on the street outside a boîte, and we decided to get back together for some friendly dancing, neither of us having anything better to do. It is the first time it has happened to me to get back with a girlfriend, although Luc managed it once with Sylvaine and Thierry has been off and on with Martina for years.

Mum and Dad didn’t make a single comment when Natalie appeared in the salon for a late breakfast at about eleven, and I suspect that she is much more interested in them by now than in me. I reckon Dad quite fancies her, and Mum asks her al sorts of questions she cannot answer but which intrigue her even as they baffle her. She is rapidly becoming one of the family, independent of me, phoning her parents regularly to inform them that she won’t be back with them any time soon. I often go off for walks by myself, or with Mike, and return to find her characteristical y hugging her legs in dreamy chat with either Mum or Dad.

At night, though, I have her to myself. We are sleeping in one of the back rooms downstairs, the permanent guest room, to spare Mum and Dad the noise. Mum doesn’t mind in the least what we get up to so long as we are enjoying it, but she demands uninterrupted sleep, so it is usual y Dad who sleeps in the guest room downstairs because of his snoring. He is now camping in my room instead. Fucking with Natalie, now that neither of us has the least wish to intensify our relationship, is fun and frolic for both of us. That is why we have decided to stay together until we leave for Brussels, simply to enjoy each other’s slim energetic bodies in frantic relaxation. The sex is real y outstanding. I don’t think that I wil ever have it as good again.

However, Natalie loitering around does put an implicit pressure on Mike to produce a bed mate too which drives him to flashes of irritation and sudden escapes on unexplained forays into town - we assume. He takes our car, anyway, which is not a problem now that Mum and Dad are back and I can borrow theirs. So far during these holidays Mike has been able to hide his lack of success behind the appearance of his chasing Sarah, not that she would real y have noticed him doing anything like that, but the vibes at the restaurant in Béziers with Sarah and Inspector John the other day made it absolutely definite that Mike doesn’t have a hope in hel with her, so I doubt that he has been visiting Freyrargues. He has had Hélène back in Brussels (horse-faced like you wouldn’t believe) waggling her thing at him recently so, while she isn’t real y his type, maybe he wil console himself with her for a few weeks.

Mum wants to go on an ayurveda course in India next January, so she is campaigning with Dad to stump up the money, and with us to keep our expenses down, a frugality not matched by her, I notice, given al the new clothes she bought in Cannes and Nice while they were over in Agay. Perhaps that was before she came up with the idea of the course which she absolutely must attend to get away from us and restore her sense of wel -being. Dad wil give in – he always does. He is such a pushover, and somehow the money always manages to materialise despite our supposedly dire financial position.

He has definitely started to age over the last couple of years. I worry about him.

Having said al that, Mike has just returned to the house accompanied by a very chic and sophisticated English woman of twenty-six cal ed Chloe, wherever he found her. Way out of his league, I would have thought, but Natalie is already becoming edgy so maybe he has merely co-opted her temporarily – just long enough to drive Natalie away and restore the traditional family balance.

He has certainly managed to upset Mum who clearly does not like Chloe at al . Dad is looking wary which suggests that he has his doubts too. The peaceful times are over, I think. Any minute now Natalie wil be demanding a lift back home.

Poor old Mum. She was rejected by Dad’s family outright, so she is trying her very hardest not to lay into Chloe. Any minute now she wil either go to lie down with three hours of meditation disks (Extra Strong) or she wil explode and blow Chloe al over the wal s – quite exciting to watch, but perhaps I should spare her and do the job myself.

“Paul,” Chloe swivels cultivatedly towards me, “I hear you talk to ghosts.” Her mouth has “trap” engraved on her lips.

“I can sense them. I cannot talk to them, no. Mike must have got that wrong.”

Chloe laughs like the tinkle of cut crystal fal ing on flagstones. “That’s a relief. I’ve got quite enough friends who believe in ghosts already.”

“And you don’t?”

“No, I’ve never seen a ghost in my life.”

“I can tel you where to find one, Chloe, if you like.”

“I’l think about that. Can you see auras too?”

“Yes, I can see auras.”

“Can you see mine?”

“Yes.”

“What colour is it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I would love to know. You are the first person I have met who has ever said that he can even see it.”

“Or who has admitted to it, anyway.”

She sits back. “Is it that awful?”

“It depends on what you want.”

“Wel , is it the aura of a kind, decent person?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“So you cannot see it real y?”

“Yes, I can see it.”

“What does it say about me?”

“It says that you are rather like me.”

“Like you? Are you chatting me up, Paul? Michael wil be pleased.” Mike is definitely not pleased. “And what are you like, Paul?”

“Like you, probably.”

“And what is that?”

“Spoilt, selfish, arrogant, demanding.”

“You think I am like that?” she chal enges me, affronted or mock-affronted, I cannot tel which, through her thick ironic glaze.

“No, I think that I am like that.”

“I find that total y insulting … ” Suddenly she changes her expression and smiles sweetly. “ … to you.”

Silence, broken by Dad changing the subject with a crashing of gears. “And what are you doing in this part of the world, Chloe? Are you on holiday?”

“No, I’m a journalist.”

“A journalist? They stil exist in the field?”

“Yes, there are a few of us left.”

“And what are you investigating?”

“The murders up around Montauban. The serial kil er.”

Mike is frowning for another reason now.