Ann Cleeves - Telling Tales

“Nothing. I didn’t know what I’d find here. I mean what chaos Christopher might have caused.”

Emma frowned. “You don’t have to worry about him any more. He’s gone. He didn’t even bother to say goodbye.”

He followed her back into the kitchen and saw she’d been baking. A pile of buns were balanced on a wire tray to cool. She switched off the radio and screwed up her face critically.

“Not brilliant, are they? I don’t know why they didn’t rise.”

“I’m sure they’ll taste OK. They smell delicious.” He knew the cakes were for him. Not to eat specially. More a symbol. Look, I’m making the effort to be what you want. He wondered why she had felt the need to make the effort today. Something to do with Chris?

She smiled and he thought she was like a little girl playing house, with the tea towel tied round her waist as an apron and the smudge of flour on her cheek. That was just what he liked.

“It’s true,” she said. “Chris has disappeared.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d already gone when I got up. Did you see him this morning?”

James shook his head. He was concentrating on making tea. He liked leaf tea, the ritual of the strainer and the warmed pot. “I expect he’s at Springhead.”

“He hasn’t even spoken to Mum and Dad. They didn’t know he was coming.”

“I suppose that’s it, then. He ran away before he had to face them.”

“There are times,” Emma said, ‘when I know just how he feels.” She pulled off the tea towel and wiped her face with it. He thought at first she was just cleaning away the flour, then saw there were tears too. Not grief, he thought. Anger. Frustration. “Dad called in today. He brought some tickets for the fireworks at the Old Chapel tonight. He thinks I should go. It would do me good. Help me come to terms with Abigail’s death, Jeanie’s suicide. He’s fixed everything up, even arranged for an old biddy from the church to babysit, so you can come too. I said you were on duty, but he realized if you were working this morning you were unlikely to get called out again. I mean, the nerve of it. He didn’t even ask. Just assumed that he knew best, that all I need is a jolly family party and I’ll forget all about it.”

She had run out of breath, inhaled in a sort of sob.

James’s first reaction was one of panic. He had spent his time in Elvet avoiding Keith Mantel, not making a big show of it, just keeping away from the places Mantel liked to be seen. More a superstition than a real feeling of danger. After all this time and all this planning, he had thought Mantel couldn’t touch him.

“What exactly is going on at Mantel’s?”

“A fundraiser for the RNLI. They want to get a new inflatable for the river.”

A good cause.” James poured out the tea. The cups were porcelain, so delicate you could see the line of liquid rise through the china, as if it was opaque glass. He’d bought the tea service from an antiques fair before he’d married. Another of the possessions which defined him.

“You don’t want to go!”

He thought about that. Perhaps Robert’s assessment of Emma’s situation applied equally to him. He had blown Mantel up in his mind as a monster, an agent of destruction with the power to wreck everything he had created here. It was probably time to face the nightmare, banish the ghosts.

“I’d like to spend an evening with you without worrying about the baby.”

“But I would worry about him. What if he woke, needed feeding.”

“He won’t. You know him. Regular as the tide.”

“But an event like this… All the village there… Everyone talking about Abigail… Just snooping around so they can see the house where she lived…”

“If it’s dreadful we can always come home. Or go into the pub for a drink. At least it’ll be quiet in there.”

He wondered why he was making so much effort to persuade her and realized that he was desperate now to see Mantel again. He was overcome with curiosity, and he wanted to see if the tragedy of his daughter’s death had changed the developer at all. Now, on the anniversary of her death, how could he throw open his house for a celebration, however good the cause?

“You think Dad’s right then? You see this evening as therapy?” Her voice was bitter. “In that case it’s a pity Chris didn’t stick around to benefit from it too.”

James pulled her to him. He sensed he would get his way. “I don’t want you to do anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with. I’m not trying to manipulate you.”

“It happened,” she said. “It was horrible, but it happened. Reality. Perhaps my father’s right and it’s time to come to terms with it.”

Robert picked them up and drove them to the Old Chapel, though James said that as he was on call he wouldn’t be able to have much to drink anyway. It seemed to him that Robert was treating Emma as an invalid. He asked her if she had a warm enough coat, opened the car door for her, waited until she’d slid into the back besides Mary before shutting it. The tickets he’d given them said Open House but when they arrived they found very little of the Old Chapel open. They parked behind a line of cars in the lane, then a boy James recognized as the son of one of the lifeboat crew directed them to the back of the property. He had loomed out of the mist grinning at them, dressed in yellow oilskins and waving a torch, like something out of a teenage horror movie. It was colder, the low cloud pierced in places so stars showed through. The trees were still dripping but the rain had stopped. James thought later it might freeze. He’d listened to the shipping forecast which had mentioned high pressure, a cold front coming in from the east.

“I thought the press might be here,” Robert said. “Wherever I went yesterday there was a gang of them. Very intimidating. Perhaps it’s not the weather for door-stepping. Or by now the Mantel case is already old news. It’s a relief anyway.”

James thought it more likely that Mantel had warned the reporters off. He had that sort of power.

A bonfire had been built in a paddock which was separated from the garden by a low fence. It had not yet been lit but a group of shadowy figures stood looking at it, as if debating whether the moment was right.

Emma followed his gaze. “Abigail kept a pony there,” she said. She was standing close beside him. Mary and

Robert had already been accosted by people from the church. “But that was before we moved to Elvet. By the time I knew her she thought she’d grown out of ponies. She still talked about the horse though. It was called Magic. That was the stable.”

And the stable, open on one side now, with the stalls removed, had been turned into a cook house A couple of barbecues had been built from stacked breeze blocks and long metal grills. The charcoals smouldered and spat as sausage fat dripped onto them. The sparks lit up the faces of the big, beer-drinking men who flipped burgers.

“Are you OK?” James asked.

She took his hand and in the darkness he smiled.

The bar was in the large conservatory which ran along the back of the house and they could see beyond that into a room with tables arranged around the walls. A few elderly people had escaped there from the cold. The rest of the Old Chapel was in darkness.

“The piano’s gone,” Emma said.

“Sorry?” James had just glimpsed Mantel. His thoughts were elsewhere.

“In that room there was a grand piano. Jeanie used to play it. Abigail’s father must have got rid of it…”

James thought she had said something more but her words were drowned by a surge of rock music from ai sound system outside, then the cheers of the crowd as the bonfire went up in flames. The music was switched to a less painful level but by then she had stopped talking.