Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

‘And he’d miss you,’ I said.

‘Aye, I think he did. I think he did miss us. For a while he came for his Sunday dinner but it wasn’t the same. And we missed him. Kay didn’t tell us what was going on. We’d been like parents to him for all those years, then suddenly we weren’t to interfere. She and Ronnie knew best. We found out some. He was bunking off school. Friends of Archie’s had seen him in town. He’d been getting into trouble. Kay told us it was none of our business. Not in so many words, like. But that was what she meant.’

‘And then she got pregnant again.’

‘With the two girls. First Lucy, then Claire. She loves them to bits and I’m pleased at that, but it must have been hard for Thomas to see her with them.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘Nineteen last Christmas.’

‘Still at home?’

‘No.’ It came out as sharp as a bullet shot and she clamped her mouth shut after.

‘They didn’t throw him out?’ I was fighting mad on her behalf and Thomas’s.

‘Not exactly. More like an ultimatum. Behave properly in this house or leave. I can understand in a way. They’ve got the girls to think of. And I can’t blame Ronnie. I don’t think it was his idea. It was Kay being stubborn.’ She paused. ‘We’d have had him here, Archie and me, but Kay didn’t tell us what had happened until it was all over. Maybe now it’s too late and nobody can get through to him.’

‘Where’s he living?’

‘I don’t know.’ She was almost in tears. ‘I think Kay knows, but she’s not telling us. He’s not to be spoilt, she says. He’s to learn a lesson.’

‘Is he working?’

‘Yes, and you’d think she’d be proud of that. When he first left school he didn’t have anything. Then a friend of Archie’s took him on. As a favour to us, like.’ She nodded to the photo on the mantelpiece, towards the big man standing beside her husband on the bowling green. ‘That’s Harry Pool. He took redundancy from Swan’s years ago, in the 1970s. He saw the way things were going and set up on his own. He’s got a haulage business. He started off with one lorry, now he has a whole fleet and a yard on that little industrial estate where the railway used to go in Shiremoor. A house like a palace in Cullercoats. But they’re still best mates, him and Archie. They were at infants’ school together. He hasn’t changed. Not really.’

‘What does Thomas do for him?’

‘Not driving. He was too young for that when he started. He works in the office. Sorting out the invoices and such. Arranging the schedules for the drivers. A lot of Harry’s business is in Europe. It’s a nice clean job. I don’t know why Kay took against it. She wanted Thomas to stay on at school and go to university. But you can’t force them, can you?’

‘At least you know he’s safe,’ I said. ‘If he’s working for Archie’s friend.’

‘Aye, maybe.’

‘Can’t you find out from Harry where Thomas is living?’

‘We don’t want to make trouble for him at work. Harry probably thinks he’s still living at home. And last time Harry spoke to Archie he wasn’t best pleased at the way the lad was carrying on. “If he doesn’t mend his ways he’ll be on the dole.” That’s what he said. We can’t interfere, can we? We might make things worse.’ She turned to me. ‘I don’t mind if Thomas doesn’t want to visit. He’s grown up. Why would he want to spend time with us? I just want to know that he’s happy and he’s well.’ Which was what Philip had wanted too.

I couldn’t leave her like that. I made her another cup of tea and we chatted about happier things until she saw Archie making his way from the park and her eyes lit up.

When I got home from my chat with old Mrs Mariner, Ray was in the kitchen talking to Jess. It was only five o’clock but I had the feeling they’d been there for a while. Everything about him was awkward and clumsy; his hands and feet were enormous and seemed to flap as if he had no control over them. When I looked in from the yard through the window, I saw his legs were poking out from the table. His wide, bony feet were bare. If he’d been sitting there in his boxer shorts I wouldn’t have been more shocked. He always took off his mucky work boots when he went into the house but never his socks. They must have been making love. In the big back bedroom, which was Jess’s only private place. None of us were allowed in there, not even me. I pushed open the kitchen door and they grinned at each other, smug and sheepish at the same time. I wanted to smack them.

‘There’s tea in the pot, pet.’ Easy, relaxed, as if she had sex with a plumber every afternoon. Perhaps she did. Perhaps that’s why I hated the new relationship so intensely – Marrakech had made me realize what I was missing and I was jealous.

She must have sensed my tension. ‘Are you all right, Lizzie?’ Then, ‘You have taken your tablets today?’

I glared at her. That was none of her business and not something to be discussed in front of lover-boy. All the same, feeling as I did about Ray, still I asked him if he’d give me a lift the next day. I’ve no pride, you see. Don’t see the point in it.

‘About time I had my own transport again,’ I said in explanation. I’d sold my old car after the incident in Blyth. That was always how I thought of it: ‘the incident in Blyth’. I couldn’t trust myself with a car after that. Road rage kills.

‘Good idea, pet.’ Jess beamed. She thought she’d been forgiven after the slip-up with the pills. ‘It’ll do you good to get out more.’ She turned to Ray. ‘Can you fit her in, love?’

He nodded obediently. If she’d asked him to take me to the North Pole in his little white van, he’d have said ‘no problem’ and gone out to look for snow chains in Halfords.

I knew the garage on the coast road. I’d seen the sign, spinning on a pivot in the wind until it was a blur. Ronald Laing, quality motor vehicles. It was close to the 1930s Wills building, which had been converted into expensive flats, and the office behind the forecourt was built in a similar style. Brick. Curvy lines. Probably not original but put up with some care. The cars were a bit special too. The stock wasn’t the usual junk – the ageing Micras and rusting Fiestas meant for nervous housewives and first-time buyers. This was second-hand but classy: top of the range BMWs, a Jag, a couple of four-wheel-drive monsters, a Golf convertible only two years old. If Kay Mariner had bought her car from here she must have been saving. Or perhaps Ronnie had gone upmarket since they married.

Why did I go to the garage first and not straight to Thomas or his mother? Nerves perhaps. I wanted a practice run. And I wanted to get this right . How would I feel if some stranger blundered up to me with information about my family? Shocked, sceptical. I’d have to trust the messenger before I accepted the message. So I needed as much information as possible before approaching Philip’s son. Already I had fantasies that we might be friends. I know it’s soppy, but I dreamt he’d come to see me almost as a sister. I didn’t want to cock things up before we’d even met.

Ronnie Laing came out of his office to meet us as soon as we pulled up. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting. Someone big and bullying, perhaps, because he’d stopped Thomas from visiting his grandparents. A blustering, overweight car salesman. He wasn’t like that at all. He was slight and small, rather diffident. He was wearing a suit. He helped me out of the clapped-out van as if it were a Bentley. I was glad I’d made an effort to look presentable. There was something about him which made me want to impress. It was warm and I’d put on a sleeveless top and a long, straight skirt, slit at the back so I could walk. I hadn’t lost all the Moroccan tan. A real tan in early summer always looks expensive. Ray stayed in the van, as he’d been told.