Ann Cleeves: Burial of Ghosts

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

‘Mmm.’ In this mood I was always hungry.

As we walked back to the café, the peace was broken by a car screaming past. It seemed there was a Spanish motor rally taking place. A time trial, I think, not a race. Occasionally a car would flash by and men with stop-watches would wave their arms and yell at each other. I found the speed and the noise exciting, but Philip was furious.

‘It’s completely ruined. Our last stop in the mountains. How dare they?’

If he’d been alone, I think he would have confronted the loud Spaniards, made a scene. I thought he was used to getting his own way.

‘It’s no big deal,’ I said. ‘You’ll come back. There are other places.’

‘Maybe.’

He wandered inside and came back with a tray. There was a plate with an omelette, a loaf of flat, sweet bread, a bowl of salad and two cans of Coke. He put the plate in front of me on the wooden picnic table, wiping the knife and fork with a paper napkin. Then he opened one of the Cokes and took a swig.

‘Aren’t you eating?’

He shook his head. ‘Too hot.’

He took a pair of binoculars from his bag and looked down the valley at the vultures, wincing occasionally when a car went past. He pointed out a family of wild boars, a mother and four piglets, skittering through the shrub below. As I handed back the binoculars and returned to my food, he said, ‘What plans do you have for Marrakech, Lizzie Bartholomew?’

I looked up from the meal, expecting him to be grinning again, but it was almost as if he were holding his breath, waiting for an answer.

‘That depends,’ I said.

‘On what?’

‘On you.’

He nodded, satisfied. I insisted on giving him the cash for my lunch. It was a matter of pride that I’d never been paid for sex.

There was other stuff I hadn’t told Philip, and that I wasn’t so proud of. I didn’t talk about the stealing and the court appearance. He would probably have understood. He was a kind man. He’d have made allowances. It might even have made him laugh. I would have liked to make him laugh. But he got the story everyone else got. The expurgated version. We own our own past, don’t we? We can do what we like with it. I didn’t risk telling him about the time in Blyth. I don’t like to think about that tale and certainly there weren’t many jokes in it. Nothing to entertain even a kind man like Philip.

I started running away from kids’ homes when I was fourteen. I would go to stay with Katie Bell. She’d left care a year before, but she couldn’t really cope on her own. She’d never been much of a fighter. She made a bit of a fuss when I turned up on her doorstep, but only because she didn’t want trouble with the social. She soon let me in and I slept on her floor.

It was all right in the flat. Katie could have done more with it, but she didn’t care about anything except a lad called Danny and the gear he brought with him. Danny didn’t like me being there. He said I was crazy, a moody cow. When he was around I kept out of the way, moving to other people’s places, from floor to floor. Then he got sent down for dealing and Katie was only too glad to have me back for company.

It was OK. Like we were playing house. When I went thieving, I brought out quilt sets and cushion covers besides the food and the booze. I had no money at that time, but I never did drugs and I never sold myself. There was this dream I’d had since I was small. My mother would come out of the blue to claim me. She’d just knock at the door and she’d be standing there. I’d know her at once. She’d look like me, except her face would be rounder and softer. I didn’t want her to find me on the game. Perhaps that was an excuse. Perhaps I was just scared. That’s what Katie said, but she’d never been the sharpest tool in the box and I didn’t take any notice of her.

I wasn’t on the run. Not really. The authorities could have taken me back at any time they wanted. It wouldn’t have been difficult to find out where I was sleeping. If they weren’t bright enough to guess, any of the kids left in the home would have told them. I even went to school most days. It was somewhere to go when Katie was getting on my nerves and there was a free dinner. I’d never admit it, but I liked school. I liked waking up in the morning knowing there was something to do. I suppose I needed the structure. I thrived on the routine. Of course I’d been institutionalized. I’ve got A-level psychology and a social work diploma. I know about these things.

They would have let me drift along at Katie’s until I was sixteen if I hadn’t turned up in court. It was my fault. I’d gone back to an Asda I’d already done before and they must have recognized me and sent someone outside to wait. It was supposed to work like this. You’d put a load of stuff in your trolley but only half the amount you could get rid of. You’d take it through to the till and pay for it, then push it outside. Katie would be waiting for me there. She’d take over the trolley and disappear – in a mini-cab if we were buying booze for other people and they were willing to pay. I’d keep the receipt, go back into the shop and buy exactly the same stuff. Then I’d bypass the till – Asda’s good for that, loads of space – and go to the coffee shop for a cup of tea. Dead leisurely and laid back. I’d pack some of the stuff into the spare bags I’d picked up on the first way through, as if I was just rearrranging the load. If anyone stopped me, which they only did once, I’d have a receipt to prove that I’d paid for my trolley load. Of course, all the receipts are date- and time-stamped, but I could explain the difference in time by the tea. That day, though, they got Katie just as she was getting into the cab. The muppet cracked up at once and told them everything. I ended up in court. First offence, so I only got a conditional discharge. I had to eat, didn’t I? But social services had to take me back to the home and promise to keep a closer eye on me.

You’d have thought the dreams might have started then. But they didn’t. I always slept like a baby at Katie’s and in the home. So the dreams can’t have been in my blood, can they? I wasn’t born with them.

We arrived in Marrakech in the late afternoon. It was busier and noisier than Taroudannt. The sound hit us as we climbed down from the bus, blaring horns and shouting people, everyone on the hustle. We booked a room in a hotel from the Rough Guide again. I think Philip had somewhere else planned – I’d guess one of the big American chains, the Hilton or the Sheraton, a halfway house between North Africa and home, somewhere to make the adjustment before flying back to his wife. He didn’t say. I suggested this place and he agreed.

Inside it was cool. The lobby was tiled on the walls and the floor, so it was like walking into a swimming pool. There were the same strange shadows and reflections. The air felt as thick as water, moved by a slow fan on the ceiling. We drank black, bitter coffee at a low table, while the man on the desk went to get our room ready.

‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked. Suddenly I was certain that he’d never been unfaithful to his wife before. I didn’t like to think of myself as a corrupter of married men. I still had an idealized view of family life taken from the TV sitcoms I’d watched in the children’s homes.

‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Another dream fulfilled.’

‘What dream would that be?’

‘Being seduced by a young and beautiful stranger.’ He was quite serious and I loved it. Apart from when he had put his arm around me in the bus, we still hadn’t touched, but I felt swept along by the adventure. It seemed an extension of the experience at the palmery: exotic, unreal.