The Hook (20 page)

She pulled herself up and stood on the jetty, tall when no one was next to her, tall and braver than she had ever thought she could be. Braver than her mother had been. She had never faced the mess she made of Charlie's life, let alone Frank's life. Christy felt that by leaving Mick she was laying the ghost of her mother's restless soul. She had loved Mick, but she knew it was over. Jessica had died because she couldn't face her love affair being over. Christy was confident that she was not making that mistake. She would tell Mick on his birthday.

She rubbed her eyes, pushed back her hair and grasped the handle of the landing net, bracing her legs as she scooped under the surface and up around a cluster of bleeding trout. The plastic dustbin at her side was three-quarters full when she raked in the dead heron and laid it on top of the fish. Its neck twisted like silver rope, slack and useless but menacing, the final victim still hooked on its beak. Christy gripped both ends of the limp fish and slid it off the beak, shuddering at the tiny sucking noise of the wound as it closed around air. She held it up, opened its mouth and put her finger in to feel pink sandpaper
teeth. She stroked the scales down smooth towards the tail then rasping as she ran her hand back up against the grain. It weighed less than a pound, not much more than a mug of tea, and its whole existence had been futile. Christy kissed the fish, more out of curiosity at the sensation than as a dramatic gesture, and dropped it into the bin. She had finished. More than seventy fish lay dead beneath the heron, and there were probably others that would die and float to the surface over the next few days. Frank would enjoy an evening wielding his calculator and would predict a lean Christmas as a result of this massacre.

Christy wiped her hands on the grass and walked back up to the house. She found her father with his head in his hands at the kitchen table amidst a chaos of lists and instructions in Maisie's firm handwriting.

‘She says she's going to do it in May and I have to pay for it.' He sighed deeply and leant back in his chair. ‘Her mother would be able to stop her. It isn't right, it simply isn't right. Why can't they carry on as they are?' He piled the papers up and pushed them into a drawer in the kitchen table.

Christy leant down over him, draping her arms around his shoulders.

‘She might change her mind, Dad. May is a long way off and Ben's never here. Maybe she'll meet someone else.'

‘You're right. I suppose there are decent people around in Lynton; after all, you found Mick. Perhaps she'll meet one of his friends. I don't care who she meets or what she does as long as she doesn't get
married for a while. She's too young, she's got to live a bit.'

Christy turned away from him, her mouth dry and aching with the effort of keeping her expression bland. She put a bowl of cold cauliflower cheese into the microwave, laying the table for the two of them as the dish inside the oven rolled slowly to its climax and was stopped with a ping.

Frank glared at the squat oven.

‘She can have that damn thing as a wedding present. I can't think why I ever bought it, it makes everything taste of Tupperware.'

Christy rolled her eyes and didn't answer.

Frank was only deflected from his dolour by the crisis of the dead fish. Heavy sighs accompanied the drum of his fingers on the keys of the calculator and at half-past two he announced that things were not as bad as he had expected.

‘But don't tell Maisie or she'll add another fifty people on to her reception list.'

Christy looked at the lists Maisie had made. There was one headed ‘Outfits' with subtitles of ‘Bride', ‘Bridesmaids' and ‘Father'. Her name was in the bridesmaid section; it was typical of Maisie not to have asked her if she wanted to be a bridesmaid nor to have mentioned anything about it before arriving with her plans laid. She noticed she was to wear a short silver dress and white tights. The whole notion of Maisie getting married was absurd to Christy. Her sister had never discussed it with her, nor indeed displayed anything but disdain and irritation in her
dealings with Ben. Christy perused the lists for a few minutes, laughing out loud at the food one where Maisie had allowed her fantasy free rein and wished to have an ice sculpture carved of herself hand in hand with Ben, and stuffed them back in the drawer. She walked down to the office to meet the bookkeeper, a sense of empty loneliness nudging through the mental list of her afternoon duties. At least Maisie knew what she wanted and she had plans. Christy only knew what she didn't want.

Hallowe'en and Mick's birthday arrived, the fourth Hallowe'en since Jessica had told her family she was dying. Christy liked the neat dovetailing of the dates. Mick had been busy since they returned from London and Christy had not wanted to see him before his birthday. She still half wanted to be with him; she missed him already. But she was resolved. Danny said he would come back for the weekend to see Mick on his birthday. Christy had given up the idea of a party: it wouldn't be appropriate.

She drove to the cottage in the early afternoon on Hallowe'en. Mick wasn't there, but the fire was lit in the sitting room and the kettle had just boiled. He appeared a moment later with Hotspur wet and muddy trotting behind him.

‘Have you been gardening?' Christy smiled, glancing at the spade he was carrying. ‘I didn't know you had green fingers.'

He grinned and kissed her.

‘I wish I did, I'd love to tend a garden, you know.'

It was easy seeing him. Christy had spent too much time thinking of him as a cheap second-hand car dealer, a social-security fraudster. He had skulked in her mind, his eyes darting rat-like, glinting at a chance to make a few pounds. But here he was glowing as the warmth of the fire met flesh chilled from his digging, his face open, hugging her, telling her over and over, ‘I'm so pleased to see you, sweetheart.'

The fountain pen was a parting present, but Christy couldn't bear to say so. She had spent hours doodling on the envelope of her card, wondering what to write, how to say ‘It's over' and make it sound like ‘Happy Birthday'. In the end she wrote ‘Remember Me'. It looked like a tombstone inscription, but once she had fixed on it there was nothing left in her head to say.

Mick hardly noticed. He tore open the silver paper and opened the box clumsily, like a child in his excitement.

‘Hey, girl, this is the best.' He held the pen up to the light, turning it, opening it, drawing the nib across his palm. ‘And I was thinking you'd be giving me a razor in this little box.' He threw the box on to the fire. ‘I don't need that, I'll be keeping it with me always.' He tucked the pen into the pocket of his shirt. ‘Thank you, sweetheart, I've never had such a thing. My handwriting can't live up to it.'

He was holding her tight in his arms, pressing her ribs so the breath squeezed out of her and she had to push him away. ‘Careful, Mick, you're squashing
me.' They could talk later; it was a shame to spoil his birthday.

They went for a walk, holding hands through the woods, taking the straightest path because the glimpses of sky between the trees were pink and copper as if the sunset had started already. They came out on the other side, blinking at the melting horizon. It was late afternoon now and clouds were pressing down on the sun, forcing deep shadow in patches. Christy looked around very slowly, absorbing the strange selective brightness of the light.

Mick ran up a bank to photograph a row of poplar trees, their leaves burnished above black trunks.

‘This is wild,' he shouted. ‘I've not seen light like this anywhere.'

A scrawling line of geese bowled past out of formation on the back of the wind, the leaders dipped in gold, those behind fleeting silhouettes. Christy and Mick watched them wheel and turn along invisible air currents, skimming in and out of colour as the sun slewed beams across the fields. They turned back towards the cottage, walking faster as the pink behind them dulled.

‘What a sunset,' said Christy. ‘A real fanfare to mark your birthday.' She turned to Mick, but he was straining his eyes towards the cottage.

‘Someone's turned the lights on. What do you make of that?' They ran up the track and in.

It was Danny. Sitting at the table carving chainsaw teeth on to a pumpkin.

‘Hi there, I thought I'd come and say Happy Birthday, Mick,' he said. ‘It's good to be back from
that dump at last.' He started telling Mick about college and Christy went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

She'd left the cake in the car so Mick wouldn't see it, but it was dusk now. She went to get it before it was too dark to find the car. She had almost not bothered making one but it had seemed wrong to celebrate any birthday without a cake. It was an ambitious cake and she had gone to a lot of trouble with the illustration. She had made it in the shape of a folded newspaper, giving the surface over to an icing photograph and a headline: ‘
MICK FLEET HOOKS HIS FORTUNE
'. The photograph had been very difficult to do. In the end she cut out a real photograph of Mick and stuck a red polythene fish across it. She had found the fish in a gift shop. It was Chinese and its packaging said it was a Fortune Fish. If you laid it flat on your palm it curled up to reveal your character. When Christy tried it, her hands powdered white with icing sugar, both sides of the little body curled up and in. ‘This position represents fickleness,' pronounced the leaflet . . . She hoped Mick wouldn't try it out on her.

In the dusk she rested the cake on the bonnet of the car to add the candles and was about to go back in when she heard a car engine. I wonder who that can be, she mused, turning to look up the track. A column of headlights was approaching. Christy gasped, wondering if Mick had arranged a party. She remained where she was, rooted in astonishment, holding her cake. The cars spread in front of the cottage in a line and stopped, cutting their engines.
As if a switch had been pulled they all flicked their headlights to full beam. Tiny red dots like predators' eyes appeared next to the cars, blue flashed above the glare and Christy stood in a flood of light, her hair a dazzling halo against the brick of the cottage. She screamed.

The red lights separated from the rest and bobbed towards her at shoulder-height and her throat closed in terror as she saw that they were attached to guns. Suddenly there were men everywhere, looming out of the cars, running towards her, pushing past into the cottage, crashing into the woods. Radios beeped and bled trailing voices into the darkness behind the cars.

A woman in uniform had her hand on Christy's shoulder.

‘You'd better come with me, love.'

Still holding the cake, Christy followed her to a car.

‘What's happened? I don't know what's going on. Why are there guns? Is it Danny?'

Dry-eyed and numb, she slid into the back seat of the car, wedging the cake between herself and the policewoman. Maybe Danny had been arrested because of those bikers. They must have been drug dealers. Oh God, what if he was shot by a policeman.

‘My brother, what are they doing with my brother?' She started to shake.

Danny and Mick were thrust out of the cottage door, their shadows dancing on the men behind them. Mick was handcuffed. Danny was not. She leapt out of the car and ran over to them.

‘Keep out of the way, miss.' The policeman behind Mick raised an arm to stop her touching him. Danny pulled her away.

‘It's OK, Chris. Come with me to the police station and we'll get this all sorted out.'

‘What's going on? Please tell me.'

Christy's numb shock gave way in sobs. She rubbed at her eyes, frantic to stop herself crying. She looked round for Mick, but he was already in a car. She saw the doors shut; she saw him taken away. She turned back to the policewoman.

‘Do I have to come with you or can Danny and I drive ourselves?'

‘You can drive yourselves, love. No one is arresting you.'

Christy headed back to the cottage to get her bag, but the woman stopped her.

‘Sorry, miss, you can't go in. The house is being searched.'

Christy glared.

‘This is crazy, I just want my handbag. What are they looking for anyway? I need to go and get my things and I'll have to take the dog as well. Perhaps you could go in for me.'

The policewoman nodded.

‘Just wait there, please, and I'll see what I can do.'

Christy and Danny waited. The cottage was alive with disruption. Black-clad men swarmed through the small rooms, past the windows, staggering beneath heaps of books and papers. The lights were on everywhere and all the doors were open.

‘Danny, tell me, please tell me what's happening. Why have they got Mick? Are you all right?'

Danny hugged her.

‘I don't know. I'm scared, Christy. I don't know what's happening. But it's big. Look at those guns.'

His arms around her were light and thin; she hugged him back, half of her exhilarated with relief that none of this was to do with him.

‘We need to find the dog.' Christy broke away and ran around to the back of the cottage.

She whistled, praying Hotspur hadn't run off. He crept towards her from the wood, his head low, crouching in apology.

‘Good boy, come on, Hotspur.' Soothing him calmed Christy.

She walked back towards the car where Danny waited, her mind clear as comprehension settled. She felt no surprise. This was always going to happen; she realised it now. Mick had lied again when he said he was a car dealer and had stolen a cheque. The truth was something worse by far. ‘Oh God,' she whispered and crouched to pick Hotspur up.

Danny drove to Lynton, Christy with Hotspur shivering on her lap sat next to him. They followed the police convoy with Danny talking all the way. He had grown up in a sudden spurt; he was in control now.

Christy sighed.