Martin Edwards - The Cipher Garden

For the first time, there was a note of irritation in his voice and Hannah cheered inwardly. She hadn’t lost her touch after all; she could still shake the calmest witness. ‘Even so, I’d be grateful. Unless you have a particular objection?’

‘I didn’t hold anything back.’

‘Your explanation for your disappearance was that you’d suffered a nervous breakdown.’

‘As it happens, that was the doctors’ diagnosis. Or whatever medical term they use. Anxiety, depression, stress, whatever. The bottom line is, I was a mess. Overwrought, not thinking straight.’

‘Chief Inspector, you don’t realise,’ Roz muttered.

‘I’d slaved night and day over the CD, but the whole project was going pear-shaped. I’d have found it easier if the reviewers had hated my music. Instead they said it was bland, uninspired. Someone compared it to flock wallpaper, for God’s sake. The CD was meant to be a turning point, a crowning achievement after years of sweat and tears, but it sank like a stone in a sea of critical indifference. I simply couldn’t handle it. Can you understand that, Chief Inspector Scarlett?’

‘Well,’ Hannah said judiciously, ‘I’ve never brought out a CD.’

‘I decided I was a rotten failure, that I’d embarrassed Roz and everyone else who’d believed in me. I just wanted to crawl away somewhere and hide out of sight.’

Roz squeezed his hand. ‘You never embarrassed anyone, darling.’

‘Why go to London?’ Hannah asked.

‘It’s vast and anonymous. People you pass in the street couldn’t care less whether you live or die. Perfect if you want to escape.’

‘Did you have friends there?’

He nibbled at his fingernails. ‘I told you, it was precisely because I wanted to run from the people I was close to that I headed to a city where no one knew me. I didn’t take much money, little more than the clothes I stood up in. I found a crummy bedsit and did a bit of busking to pay the rent. Not that I managed to earn enough, even to live in such a hellhole. I started drinking heavily. God knows, if I’d stayed there much longer, I might have ended up sleeping in a gin-soaked cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge.’

‘So why didn’t you, what brought you back?’

He took Roz’s hand in his. ‘My wife saved me, Chief Inspector, simple as that.’

‘It was down to you,’ Roz said. ‘You had the courage to make that phone call.’

Pass the sickbag, Hannah thought. She drummed her fingers against the arm of her chair, wanting them to get on with the story.

‘I had too much to drink one night and started getting homesick. I’d been so selfish, so cruel, walking out on Roz without a word. She hadn’t a clue where I was, what I was up to.’

‘I explained to the Chief Inspector.’ Roz paled as the memories returned. ‘I realised you were unhappy, but you’d retreated so far inside yourself that not even I could reach you. I was so afraid that one morning I’d wake up and a policeman would be banging on the door, come to break the news that your body had been found in some cave or on a fell.’

Chris said hoarsely, ‘The instant I dialled this number, I started to panic. What would I say, how could I make up for all the harm I’d done? Thank the Lord Roz snatched up the receiver. If she hadn’t, even Dutch courage wouldn’t have let me try a second time. Tell you what, Chief Inspector. Once we’d talked for a couple of minutes, I began to sober up. Come to my senses. I was in tears, mind. But they were happy tears.’

‘I told him I still loved him,’ Roz said. ‘We all make mistakes.’

‘I asked if she’d take me back,’ Chris said. ‘And she didn’t hesitate.’

‘Not that I’ve regretted it.’ Roz squeezed his hand. ‘Not for a moment. I promise you that, Chief Inspector.’

Hannah grunted. Faced with such connubial bliss, she was lost for words. Or at least words that she could decently utter.

And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Warren Howe.

‘You’re a lucky man, Daniel Kind,’ Miranda said.

‘Uh-huh.’

An hour ago Louise had announced her intention to go for a walk and explore the far side of Tarn Fold, along the beck beyond the old corn mill. He’d seldom seen her so relaxed; already Rodney was a fading memory. While she was out, he’d been surfing the Net, searching in vain for information about the Quillers. He was hunched over his computer screen when Miranda came up behind him and started massaging his shoulders. As the tension trickled away, Miranda took off his shirt. Her long bony fingers were working at his flesh with a steady rhythm.

‘I mean,’ she murmured, ‘you don’t just have me. You have a lovely sister of your own as well.’

‘No comparison.’ He breathed in her musky scent. ‘Promise.’

‘What I mean is, she’s your own flesh and blood. That’s so special, you don’t realise.’

Miranda had been adopted by an elderly childless couple, who had striven to give her everything she asked for. By her own admission, it was never enough and she’d repaid their idolatry with childhood tantrums, and later a determination to indulge in everything they disapproved of. Within weeks of her twenty-first, both of them were dead and it was too late for guilt about her youthful ingratitude. As for her birth mother, she’d never met the woman, knew nothing of her.

‘You could always…’

‘Trace her and suggest we get together for a cup of tea? Pray for a tearful reunion with lots of hugs and kisses?’ Her fingers stopped moving. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘It might be the best thing you ever did.’

‘She rejected me once. That’s enough for anyone.’

Above his desk was a framed watercolour of Buttermere in myriad shades of blue and green. Reflected in the glass, her face creased in distress. The pain bit deep, he knew, and yet in her shoes he would not have been able to rest until he had solved the mysteries of the past.

‘We all deserve a second chance.’

‘Listen, if she shut the door on me again, I don’t know what I’d do. It would be more than I could bear.’

He didn’t want to let it go. The law had been changed to allow birth mothers to track down the children they’d given away through intermediary agencies. Even though she didn’t have to agree to meet, she might yet be contacted out of the blue and then feel guilty for not having made the first move.

‘For all you know, somewhere out there you have a ready-made family of your own.’

She raked his skin with her nails. ‘Who are quite happy as they are and don’t need some neurotic female turning up for a cosy chat by the fireside.’

‘You’re not neurotic.’

She was breathing hard, he could feel the warmth on his bare neck. ‘How old will she be now — forty odd? Presumably she was young when she had me. I must have been a mistake, an accident. A cause of untold angst. She’ll have spent the last twenty-odd years trying to make a new life. She’s probably settled down, scrubbed me out of her mind. Or simply forgotten I was ever born.’

‘She won’t have forgotten.’

‘One thing she won’t want is a skeleton climbing out of her cupboard.’

He swivelled in his chair. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Suppose she was very, very young when I was born? Suppose she was raped? It frightens me even to think about it.’ Tears were forming in her eyes and he cursed inwardly for pushing too hard. ‘You just don’t know what it’s like, being on your own.’

‘Hey, you’re not on your own.’ He stood up and took her hand in his. ‘I’m so sorry, I never meant to…’

‘You don’t realise, do you? When I see you with Louise, I feel so fucking jealous!’

He stared at her pretty face, contorted with anguish, unsure what to say or do.