The Ice Child (22 page)

“He makes me feel like a scientific specimen,” Jo had said to Doug. “He acts like—like he’s preparing a paper on us or something. It’s so strange.”

Doug had shaken his head. “I don’t understand any more than you do,” he’d replied.

She’d taken his hand. “You two have got to get around this,” she said. “I don’t mean us, the wedding. I mean you and John have got to find a place together. Not this. Not like this. It’s excruciating to watch you both, Doug. It’s painful.”

“I know,” he said. “He freezes me out.”

“Well, don’t let him.”

“I’ve tried.”

“You think it’s Alicia?”

“Easy to blame Alicia.”

“Then try some more, Doug.”

He’d given her a crooked smile. He just didn’t know where to start, how to begin, what to say. And John wasn’t about to help him. His expression when he looked at his father—when he looked at them both—was utterly implacable, like ice.

“Well,” Gina said now. “You look good. Both of you.”

“We are,” Jo said.

“An hour from now, Mr. and Mrs.”

“Yes,” Jo said. She couldn’t help a grin.

“Aha,” Gina smiled. “Broke your cool.”

“I’m not cool,” Jo admitted. “I feel really nervous.”

“About what?” Doug said.

“Oh”—she shrugged—“I don’t know. Nothing.”

Gina leaned forward, touched Jo’s knee. “Have you told John?” she said.

At the same moment the door opened. They looked up. John and Catherine stood in the doorway, Catherine dazzling in a white sheepskin jacket. John a little less so, in jeans and a Barbour.

Doug got up. He walked forward, hand extended.

“Told John what?” John said.

Doug let his hand slip from John’s weaker grip. He kissed Catherine. “Come and sit down. Let me open this bottle.”

“Great,” Catherine said. She gave John a look, a marked warning look. Then she came over and kissed Jo’s cheek.

“Let me introduce you two,” Jo said. “Catherine, this is Gina, my editor at
The Courier
. Gina, this is John’s partner, Catherine.”

The two shook hands. “Hello Gina,” Catherine said. “Some weather for a wedding.”

John had walked over to the table. He hadn’t kissed Jo. He watched Doug peel off the foil on the champagne. “Is there news?” he asked, very level. Very pointed.

Doug’s eyes flickered, just once, to Gina. Then he uncorked the Bollinger and filled the glasses. “Good luck,” he said.

“Every happiness,” Gina added.

John looked at his glass while they drank.

Doug set his back down on the table. “We’re … well, starting a new venture,” he said. “In every way.”

Jo had been looking hard at John. There was a hitch of silence.

“I’m getting another series of
Far Back
,” Doug said.

John’s gaze turned to him. “They aren’t doing another series,” he said. “You told me that.”

Doug smiled. “They told me that, too, last year,” he said. “But the Greenland episode … It’s with the Academy too …”

“They offered you another series because of the Greenland fiasco?”

Doug flinched a little at his choice of words. “To cut a long story short. I suppose.”

“We’re doing it together,” Jo said. “He hired me to carry bags.”

The weak little joke fell flat.

“I see,” John said. “That’s a good angle.” He put his glass down. “The reporter who got her man because of Greenland, flying out to meet him …”

“That was all hype,” Jo countered quickly. “I never said all that about moving heaven and earth to meet him. The paper put that in. I told them it was a family flight and that I hitched a ride.”

“But that isn’t true, is it?” John asked softly. “You did move heaven and earth to meet him. Big romance. It was me who hitched a ride.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Doug said.

“I think you should know,” Gina murmured. “It’s eleven-fifteen.”

Catherine stood up.

“So,” John said, “you’ll be traveling.”

“Yes,” Doug said. “There is traveling involved.”

“To where?” John asked. “Greenland?”

“Yes, Greenland …”

“And Victoria Strait?”

Doug’s face betrayed him. He jolted a little, as if John had hit a nerve.

“You’re chasing Franklin,” John said.

“It’s never been done before,” Doug said. “Franklin. In detail.”

“You’re right,” John agreed. “It hasn’t.”

“Look John,” Jo said. “We want you in on it. Of course we do. We know it’s your passion.”

John’s gaze flickered over her. “My passion,” he said.

“So …”

John’s chin suddenly tilted upward. He seemed to brace his shoulders. “It’s always someone else,” he said, slowly, to Doug. “Someone else going with you.”

“John …” Doug interjected.

“No, fine,” his son continued. “That’s okay. I’ll show you.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Jo stared after him, aghast.

“John!” Catherine called.

“Doug, go after him,” Jo said.

“I will not,” Doug told her.

Jo pulled on his arm. “Go after him right now,” she said.

“To say what?” Doug demanded.

“Bring him back.”

“What for?”

Jo’s mouth dropped open. “What
for?
” she repeated.

“Okay, okay …”

“Call him back, Doug. Quickly.” She glanced at Gina. “I just knew it,” she said to her. “I just knew he’d blow a fuse.”

“It’s what he’s dreamed of,” Catherine said.

Jo looked at her. “I know. We both know that. Doug told the TV people he wanted John in on this. Right from the beginning. We made so sure of it. His name’s on the project.”

Catherine frowned briefly. “Maybe …”

They all waited. “Maybe what?” Doug prompted.

Catherine shook her head. “Maybe he wants to do it alone, you know.”

“How can you look for Franklin alone?” Doug demanded. “You need backup and crews.…”

“Yes, it’s”—Catherine paused—“it’s a big barrier,” she murmured. “He can’t let go of it.”

“He
can
do it with me,” Doug said.

Catherine could not meet Doug’s eyes. Her gaze dropped to the floor.

“He doesn’t want to do it with me,” Doug said. “Is that it? He wants to best me in some way.”

Jo stepped up close to him. She put her hand on his arm, then touched his face with her fingertips. “Doug,” she said, “go find him. We need to sort this out. Now. Please.”

Doug tore his eyes from Catherine’s averted face. He looked shaken, hurt. He patted Jo’s shoulder, almost absentmindedly. “Let’s get married,” he said.

“I mean it, Doug,” Jo insisted. “Go after him.”

“No,” Doug said. His tone was altered. Firm. “If he can’t swallow down this bloody envy for one morning, that’s his problem.” He picked up his coat and put it on. “We’re getting married. It’s more important.”

Gina watched Jo’s face. Jo’s expression had hardened. Looking at her, Gina felt that she had seen that determined look a thousand times. It was the same expression that Jo wore when she got close to a story and was brushed off with an excuse.

Doug reached for Jo’s hand. But she neatly stepped out of his reach. “We are not getting married without your son as your witness,” she said firmly. “That’s what we planned. That’s what will happen.”

He stared at her. “You must be joking.”

“I am not joking.”

“What do you want me to do, run?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But we’ll be late,” he objected, throwing his arms out in a gesture of exasperation. “Bloody late for our own wedding!”

“Fine,” she told him. “So you’d better start now. Go to it.”

He opened his mouth to object, then looked at Gina. She raised her eyebrows at him. He looked back at Jo. She kissed him, slowly and softly, on the mouth.

“God, you are the most awkward woman on the planet,” he said.

“Time’s wasting,” she replied.

He went out the door, with a single backward glance in Jo’s direction.

They followed him, out into the snowy street. John was not to be seen anywhere. Doug jogged to the end of the pavement, slipping a little on the icy slush under his feet. He got to the road junction and looked up and down Castle Street and Huntingdon Road. The traffic lights were changing, and the line of cars was edging forward.

“I can’t see him,” Doug called back. The three women made their way in his direction.

“Maybe he’s gone up onto Castle Mound,” Jo said. They looked that way, but it was impossible to know. Castle Mound could only be approached via a little passageway between houses.

“God damn him,” Jo said. She looked at Catherine. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you know, this means a lot to Doug.”

“And to John,” Catherine said.

“I know that,” Jo retorted. “I—”

“There he is,” Gina said.

Doug had already seen John on the other side of the street. It looked as if John had started to make his way up Chesterton Lane and thought better of it, maybe because the incline was just too slippery. Doug ran across the road, dodging a van that had just started to pick up speed. There was a blare of horns. They saw Doug reach his son.

They talked a moment. Doug caught hold of John’s arm. John looked hard at his father, listened, and then wrenched away. Doug turned him back, pulling his sleeve. They heard their voices raised, although not the words. Then John ducked his head and seemed to say something, something soft, something brief, close to Doug’s face. There was a split second where the two men froze, looking directly into each other’s eyes, and then, to Jo’s horror, she saw Doug raise a fist.

“No!” she cried.

John stepped backward; Doug stopped, looked at his own raised hand, and dropped it. John took a pace back, over the pavement, into the road.

“John,” Catherine breathed.

Doug tried to grasp his son’s hand. Misinterpreting the gesture, John pulled away, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was standing in the road at all. Doug was urgently speaking, shouting. John put up his hands. Doug’s fingers glanced off his son’s arms, trying to draw him back out of harm’s way.

“Doug!” Jo shouted.

Doug turned to look at her.

The truck was coming down the hill quite soundlessly, the driver just visible through the snow-smeared windshield, pulling at the wheel. Just for a moment Jo registered the massive tires turning without purchase over the ice, and the back wheels moving out, pulling the vehicle sideways on. There was a screech of brakes from the other side of the road, where the incoming vehicles saw the obstacle rushing toward them—fourteen tons of container, now bouncing against the curb and jumping the load so that it shook, the metal-screened sides of the load shivering like fabric rattled in a breeze. The truck mounted the pavement and smashed against the lights, tearing them from their position.

For a second it was impossible to say which way the impact would take the load.

It won’t hit them
, Jo thought.

She saw that quite clearly. Some still, small, objective voice in her head decided that they were too far away. The road surface was not that bad where they were standing. Other traffic had come to a halt. There was space, there was time, for them to get back.

The load was at an angle, an almost perfect forty-five-degree angle to the road. It seemed to hover there for impossible minutes. They saw the panic on the driver’s face.

Doug suddenly began to move, holding John, pulling him toward the pavement where the women were standing. Relief was in his look. He had judged that distance, too, Jo thought.

But none of them saw the car.

It had been driven too fast all morning. Coming full pelt along Chesterton Road, it was driven by a boy who had only passed his test five months before. The lad had never driven in snow; he was late in the delivery he was making by more than an hour; his assessment of the scene ahead of him was way misjudged. Way too arrogant. Way too quick.

He actually put his foot down to overtake the stalled car in the center of the road. He only saw the truck—saw the load crash over—as he rounded the car.

And he didn’t see Doug and John at all, until it was too late.

Seventeen

Gina stood by the door and watched the afternoon light fade.

It was three o’clock. The snow had stopped at midday, and the temperatures fallen below freezing. From the stultifying heat of the hospital corridor, it was strange to look out on what seemed to be a monochrome landscape. The streetlights were just coming on. Their first faded violet would add another single color, just before the dark.

She closed her eyes. A tear ran down her face, and she brushed it away with the heel of her hand. “Oh, Christ,” she murmured.

Hearing a noise behind her, she opened her eyes and turned around, to see Jo standing opposite her. The door to the rest room was closing behind her. She looked ashen. “Are they ready?” Jo asked.

“Yes,” Gina said. She took her friend’s arm.

It was only a few yards away, but the door to the chapel seemed a very long distance to cover. The floor was mirror-like with polish; the walls blue.

“Is it cold in here?” Jo asked.

“Yes,” Gina lied.

The doctor was waiting for them; there was a staff nurse by his side. It seemed to Gina that she had to manhandle Jo forward; the other woman hung on her like a deadweight. There was a terrible moment, as they passed through the doors, when, between them, they almost carried Jo into the silence of the room beyond.

Jo stopped a few feet inside the chapel.

Doug’s body lay on a white-sheeted gurney by a small altar. Even from where she stood, Gina could see there was no mark at all on his face. On either side of him were two great bouquets of flowers—left over, Gina supposed, from some other person’s misery—and she saw Jo look at them, look at the apricot-colored roses.

“I can’t,” Jo said.

John was sitting with Catherine on the second row of seats. He had his back to them. Hearing Jo’s voice, he stood up and faced her.

The bruise over his right eye was already turning black, closing the lid. A deep scratch ran the length of his face from forehead to neck; his skin was pitted by the dirt of the road. He had been flung by the force of the impact on his father, whose arm he had been holding. In the very last moment Doug had spun him out of the direct line of the speeding car. John had been unconscious for more than five minutes, waking to hear the sound of the ambulance siren, and to see Jo on her knees in the center of the road, trying to wake his father.