Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

So I phoned Dan.

‘Hi,’ I said. I’d got hold of him first try in Absalom House. ‘How’re things?’

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Ellen’s even more manic than usual and Nell’s still into this guilt thing about Thomas. I think there’s stuff she’s not telling me.’

‘It must be hard for her.’

‘Yeah.’ I expected him to go on to say it was hard for him too, but he showed uncharacteristic restraint.

‘Do you think it would help her to talk to me about it?’

Social work training’s brilliant. It gives you a cliché for every occasion and the bottle to deliver it straight. He took the question seriously. Perhaps he was thinking that if he could persuade Nell to talk to me it might stop her whingeing at him. But perhaps I was being hard on him.

‘It might,’ he said at last.

‘Maybe we could meet up for a drink sometime.’ I was careful not to be too pushy. Much better if he thought the suggestion had come from him.

‘You doing anything tonight?’ he asked.

‘Nothing important.’

‘I’m running a session for an after-school club at Acting Out. Nell’s going to help. You could meet us there. Sevenish?’

I said that sevenish would be fine.

Acting Out operated from a small community arts centre in North Shields. Once it had been a church and I remembered it still had that religious smell of damp prayer books and old ladies’ clothes. I’d been there a few times before. Dan had first become involved with the group when he was a student and he’d dragged me along to watch him in performance or prancing around with a load of kids. It was where we’d first had sex. I wondered if he remembered the occasion or if I was just one in a string of conquests, and we’d all become blurred in his memory. I suspected that Nell would stand out.

I still remembered it in detail. He’d been helping to rehearse a bunch of older kids for some musical they were doing and by the time it was over it was late. I was bored and wondering how I was going to get back to Newbiggin. They trooped off to the pub to catch last orders, expecting that we’d follow them, but we didn’t. Someone had been sorting through a pile of junk, looking for costumes, and we ended up on that. Perhaps that’s where the smell of musty clothing in my memory came from. The tangle of velvet skirts and threadbare woollens protected our knees and elbows from the wooden floor.

Inside the building hadn’t changed much. The kids were just leaving when I got there, yelling and swearing as they barged out through the double arched door. No one stopped to let me in. I wanted to shout a lecture about manners, but at their age I’d have been just the same. In the lobby posters advertised forthcoming events: a local blues band, a folk festival, Acting Out’s summer play for kids. There were photos to go with that. Dan looked sinister in a top hat, false moustache and long, black cloak. Like an old-fashioned undertaker, I thought, though I’m sure that wasn’t what was intended. The play had a green theme and his character was called Professor Pollution.

As I took a flyer on the folk festival to give to Ray and earn some brownie points from Jess, I saw another poster. It caught my eye because there was a picture of Wintrylaw in the background, faded and slightly out of focus as though seen through a sea mist. The print was bold against it. Country Delights. An evening of music and poetry. Hosted by the Countryside Consortium at Wintrylaw House. I made a note of the date.

Dan and Nell were perched on the stage in the main hall. The house lights were off and they were lit by a green spot which made them look like aliens. Someone was in the lighting box running a technical test, but Dan had nothing to do with it. He was talking to Nell. From the back I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were frozen in the green light, turned towards each other. The setting made the contact seem dramatic and intense, but the conversation could have been aimless, banal. All I could tell was that there was nothing funny. Neither was laughing. When the door swung to behind me with a bang they stopped. The hall was still dark and they couldn’t see who’d come in.

‘Hi, Lizzie!’ Dan called. ‘Is that you?’

I walked to the front to join them.

‘What are you doing here?’ Nell asked. Direct but not unfriendly.

‘Dan suggested we meet up for a drink.’

I was surprised. I’d thought he’d have prepared her. She looked at him and seemed to guess what I was thinking, then smiled. It was as if she was letting him off the hook. He hadn’t had the guts to tell her he’d set up the meeting, but she understood.

‘I’ve got to lock up,’ he said quickly. ‘You two go on. I’ll catch you up.’

‘Dan’s pissed off because I can’t stop talking about Thomas,’ Nell said.

‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk about him too.’

She jumped down from the stage. ‘We’ll be at Connie’s.’

He nodded, as if that was what he’d been expecting.

Dan’s usual taste in pubs was basic. He liked drinking holes, street-corner places where the same elderly men sat over their pints of mild and the only food available was a dusty bag of pork scratchings or a jar of cockles. Connie’s was different. It was a café-bar on the fish quay, part of a big building which had once been a chandler’s. It had slowly whirring ceiling fans and a jungle of plants in pots, a lot of bamboo and pale wood. Connie’s had tables outside but Nell led me in. It reminded me of the place in Morpeth where Joanna had held her exhibition, not in the style of the décor but the clientele. It was the sort of place where I felt intimidated by the smart clothes and the knowing voices. But Nell acted as if she owned it. Seventeen and so cool.

‘Have you been here before?’

I shook my head. A kind of admission that I didn’t move in the right circles or know the right people.

‘Connie’s Thai. Fat Sammy had the place before. It was OK. Nothing special. Then he went on holiday and brought her back. Bought her, according to rumour. Thought she’d be a nice, subservient, Oriental wife. Stay in the background, wash up, clean, save on staff costs. But it didn’t work out like that. She took over, introduced her own menu. She bullies him.’ She leaned against the bar. ‘We’d better have a bottle, hadn’t we?’

‘I’m driving. I’ll only want a glass.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘There’s not so much choice by the glass.’

‘White and cold, it’ll be fine for me.’

We sat by the window. Nell chose the table. Perhaps she wanted warning of Dan’s approach. Perhaps she just wanted to enjoy the view.

‘I can’t get Thomas out of my head,’ she said. ‘My parents talk about counselling.’

‘It might help.’

‘I think it’s normal to think about him,’ she said. ‘Someone you’ve cared about dies as violently as that, you’re going to be upset. It would be stranger to forget.’

‘Did you still care about him?’

‘Of course.’

‘But enough to go out with him again?’

She looked at me. There was a crust of green paint just above her eyebrow, like a toad’s wart. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Were you still seeing him? Sleeping with him? Even after you were going out with Dan.’

She stared at me as if I were a monster. Kids can be such prudes. I’ve noticed it before. It’s the middle-aged who have affairs and screw around. Kids are intense. They take fidelity seriously. They talk about love as if it means something.

‘Of course not. What do you take me for?’

From behind the counter came the sound of orders barked in broken English, the crash of crockery.

‘Why did you dump him? Was it just because you’d met Dan?’