Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

The person best placed to see the train first was standing on the footbridge. He had been there longer than any of the passengers, but showed no inclination to join them on the platform. The holdall resting by his feet and his casual, weather-worn clothes marked him out from the smarter-dressed commuters who had left their four-wheel-drives and company saloons in the station car park and were dividing their attention between chunky wrist-watches and broadsheet newspapers as the arrival of the 7.24 drew near. Paddington was an hour away from them, the City an hour and a half. These aimless minutes of waiting at Pewsey were a featureless fragment of a hectic day. They meant nothing. They were forgotten even as they passed.

They weighed slow and heavy in the mind of David Umber, however. He was here, as Oliver Hall had told him to be. He was here, short of sleep and ragged of nerve. His thoughts were clear, but taut, stretched thin by doubt and anxiety. He had resolved to do what Hall had beseeched him to do. But if Chantelle did not step off the London train, his resolution would count for nothing.

There had been no sign of her at the station when he had arrived by taxi from Marlborough three quarters of an hour before. He had not seriously expected there to be. The train was always the smarter bet. He wondered where she had been staying. Taunton, maybe? Exeter?

It occurred to him then that Taunton and Exeter were places he knew reasonably well. But they were places he could never return to. The escape route Hall had mapped out for him was a flight into semi-permanent exile. It was a fresh start with a heavy price. A long time would have to pass before he could risk contacting his parents. His friends, in Prague and elsewhere, would be lost to him. David Umber was standing at the edge of his world.

But he was still alive. And he would go on living, whatever name he used. Not so Oliver Hall. The sound of the gunshot that had ended his life – the exact, muffled note of it – still echoed in Umber's memory. The sound – and the long, vast silence of the forest that had engulfed it.

He tensed. There was the train, materializing in the distance as a dark, growing shape. He picked up his bag and headed for the steps leading down to the platform.

By the time he reached it, most of the waiting passengers had spotted the train themselves and were edging forwards, some hurrying towards the far end of the platform where the first-class carriages would be found, others bunching in the central stretch, near the gate in from the road. Umber threaded his way into the latter group and stood amongst them. The rumble of the approaching train grew.

Then the carriages were rolling past, slowing as they went. Umber shrank back, scanning the windows for a glimpse of Chantelle. But he could not see her. He heard himself muttering a prayer. 'Please, God, let her be aboard.'

The train came to a halt. The doors opened. The waiting passengers hurried forward. Looking towards the front of the train, Umber saw no-one get off except the guard. He turned to look the other way.

And there she was. Chantelle. He knew it was her at once by her dark, baggy clothes and pale, expectant face. He stepped out of her line of sight, into the gateway next to the station building, resisting the urge to run towards her for fear she would take fright and jump back onto the train. He could see her gazing nervously past him along the platform, her grip on the rucksack hoisted on her shoulder visibly tightening. She was braced for a first sight of her father and had no reason to think he might hide from her.

The last of the train doors slammed shut. The guard blew his whistle. Chantelle hesitated, as if wondering whether she should stay or go. There was a second blast on the whistle. The lights above the doors went out, signalling that they were locked. Chantelle glanced over her shoulder to check there was no-one waiting at the end of the platform behind her. The train began to move. She glanced back.

And Umber stepped into view.

She gaped at him, open-mouthed and wordless, as the train accelerated, the draught blowing her hair across her face. The rear turbine roared past them, exhaust fumes billowing and drifting in its wake.

Then the train was gone. And the station was empty. Save for two people, standing twenty yards apart, staring fixedly at each other.

'Shadow Man,' was all Chantelle could find to say in the end.

'Your father isn't coming, Chantelle.' Umber stepped cautiously towards her. 'He sent me.'

'You didn't come back to the car. I thought I'd lost you.'

'So did I.'

'You're all right?'

'I'm fine.'

'Where's my father?'

'Come and sit down.' He pointed to a bench a little way along the platform behind him. 'There's a lot I have to tell you.'

The next train to London was due in an hour. For most of that hour they would have the station to themselves. No-one came and no-one went as they sat on the bench and Umber told Chantelle all that had happened to him since their parting in Jersey.

She wept, shedding tears for a man she could not and now never would remember: her father, who had ruined her life and somehow contrived to offer her another to take its place. She was weeping for her mother as well of course, the mother who, though still alive, was yet as good as dead to her, as dead as the mother in turn believed her daughter to be. She was weeping for the unfairness of it all.

'I was giving in to all kinds of fantasies on the way here,' Chantelle said when he had finished. 'My father turning out to be a nice guy despite everything. Taking me to meet my mother and my stepsister and making everything all right again. Giving me back my family. I saw my mother on the flight from Jersey, would you believe? Of all the ironies. I saw her, but I couldn't speak to her. I could still speak to her today, though, couldn't I? At the church. Or the cemetery. She'll be there, in just a few hours, to say goodbye to Jem. And I could be there too. But if I am…' She thumbed the tears away from her eyes and gazed imploringly at Umber. 'What my father planned for us, will it work? Will it really work?'

'I think so, yes.'

'And nothing else can?'

'I don't see how.'

'But Tamsin has to stay dead?'

'Yes.'

'And they have to bury Jem without me?'

'Yes.'

'We'll be on a plane to Zurich, while they're shovelling the earth in on top of his coffin?'

'Chantelle -'

'It's OK.' She held his hand. 'What will they say about you, Shadow Man?'

'I don't know. Nothing good, I suspect.'

'I kept the Juniuses safe for you.' She nodded to her rucksack on the bench beside her. 'Never thought you'd get the fly-leaves, though.'

'Neither did I.'

'How long before we have to go?'

Umber glanced at his watch. 'Half an hour. Till the London train gets in. It stops at Reading. We can take the coach from there to Heathrow.'

'And fly away from everything?'

'That's the idea.'

'When there was no answer from that number you gave me – the psychotherapist's – I thought you must have…' She shook her head. 'It was weird to hear his voice on the phone. My father's, I mean. I couldn't think of anything else to try. I just… hoped I could shame him into telling me the truth.'

'You did. But he told it to me instead. I don't think…'

'He could have faced me with it?'

'He's done his best for you, Chantelle. Strangely enough, he always has done.'

'The two of us together. That was his idea?'

'Yes.'

'You sure you want to go with me?'

'Would you rather go alone?'

She frowned. "Course not.'

'There you are, then.'

'But -'

'I'm sure, Chantelle. OK?'

'OK.' She took a long, slow breath. 'Half an hour, you said?'