Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

Jarvis was unimpressed.

‘Robbie could have lifted the desk across the room, Mrs Anderson,’ he said.

‘It’s made of solid oak, Detective Sergeant,’ I told him. ‘It’s very heavy. I can’t even lift one end of it.’

‘You are a small woman, Mrs Anderson,’ he responded. ‘Your son was tall and strong, and a very fit young man. Besides, in extreme circumstances people are inclined to find extra strength.’

I tried to push the point, but got nowhere. It was as if DS Jarvis and the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary had made up their minds, and that was that. I ended the call, and before I had time to do any more thinking made the one I had been putting off.

I dialled Dad’s Hartland number. He sounded so cheery when he answered the phone and heard my voice that I desperately wanted to have a conversation about nothing and then hang up. I knew I couldn’t.

‘I have the most dreadful news...’ I began.

He gasped, in both pain and disbelief, I thought, when I told him what had happened.

‘Oh my God, Marion, how? Why...’

Always that same question. Why?

‘We don’t have any answers, Dad,’ I said. ‘I can’t give you any answers. I can barely talk about it at all, to tell the truth.’

‘Of course,’ he said. Then he asked me when Robbie had died.

‘You should have called me before, I’d have driven right over,’ he said.

I couldn’t tell him that on the night Robbie died I would have been unable to bear his grief, that he had not been the person I’d wanted with me. And I couldn’t tell him about the revelations of yesterday that had made me feel I’d lost a husband as well as a son and rendered me quite incapable of contacting anyone.

‘I’ve just been too upset,’ I said.

‘Well, shall I come now?’ he asked. ‘I’ll just get in the car and I’ll be there in no time. I’d like to—’

I interrupted. ‘No, no,’ I said, a little too quickly, more than a little insensitively, I realized. I tried to soften it, probably not very successfully. ‘Look, it’s just so hard. Robert’s with me. We need time.’

‘Of course you do, I understand,’ said Dad, sounding as if he didn’t understand at all.

‘Thanks,’ I said lamely.

‘But the funeral, when’s the funeral? I must come to his funeral.’

I agreed that of course he must, explained about the post-mortem, and promised to let him know as soon as we were able to make the necessary arrangements.

I ended the call as quickly as I could. I knew that I was treating him shabbily. We had once been so very close. When I was a child, perhaps because of losing my mother so young, I’d always wanted to be with my dad, and to be like him, really. I used to try desperately to be useful, too. I don’t know why because Dad never made demands of me, but I did think it pleased him. He called me his ‘right-hand girl’ in those days. As a loving father and grandfather he deserved to be included in all aspects of family life, even in the aftermath of tragedy. But I couldn’t help myself. After all, my family had just been torn asunder and in any case we had never been what we seemed.

The call had been horrible to make. I didn’t want to break down again. It would serve no purpose at all. I was so determined to keep what remained of my wits about me.

I needed to get out of the house. I shivered even though the bedroom was quite warm. The place just didn’t feel right. I supposed it might never feel right again.

I called Bella, thanked her for her kindness, and asked if I could perhaps visit her in Exeter for a bit.

She hesitated momentarily. ‘Look, the kids have got chums over,’ she said. ‘It’s chaos here. But I’ll get my neighbour to keep an eye on them, and why don’t we meet on Exmouth beach? Usual place. Walk the dogs, get some fresh air. It’s not such a bad day, dry anyway.’

I agreed.

‘I can be there in just over an hour or so,’ she said. ‘Have to be back in good time for this evening, though. We’ve got fireworks and a bonfire down the road.’

I remembered then. Not only was it a Saturday and no school, but it was the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes Night. Robbie had loved fireworks but had ultimately forgone them because they frightened Florrie so much. He’d been that sort of boy.

I dressed in my dog-walking clothes — old jeans, sweater, Barbour jacket and boots — slung a thick scarf around my neck and pocketed gloves and a woolly hat. I called to Florrie. She whimpered at the kitchen door. Robert opened it. Florrie trotted towards me and Robert followed her into the hall.

‘Are you going out?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t think we bothered to tell each other that sort of thing any more,’ I responded tartly.

‘Oh, come on, Marion, I’ve told you how sorry I am about that. We had just lost our son, you know...’

I relented. Slightly.

‘I’m going to meet Bella in Exmouth,’ I said. ‘We’re going to walk the dogs. I just need some space. You should understand that, after all.’

He coloured slightly and shuffled from foot to foot.

‘Please don’t go,’ he said. ‘Please stay here with me. I really want you here with me—’

‘Tough, Robert,’ I said. ‘From now on I make the rules.’

I opened the door straight away, called Florrie through and slammed it shut in Robert’s face. I didn’t even know quite what I meant by that last remark. I just knew things would never be the same again between Robert and me. And not only because we had lost our beloved son.

I drove to Exmouth far too fast. Normally I was a careful driver. That day it was almost a case of not caring what happened to me. Maybe even half wanting something to happen to me.

On the road into the seaside town there’s a 30-mile-an-hour limit where you don’t expect it, and the speed cameras that so often accompany such a limit on the approach road to a town. Easy pickings, I’d always thought, particularly in a tourist town. That day I didn’t give a toss about the cameras, of course, but then a young woman stepped out into the road from behind a parked car. She was pushing a pram, presumably containing a child, and the pram came first. I braked hard and swerved, missing the woman and the pram by inches.

Florrie, in the back, was thrown against the dog guard which separated her area from the rest of the car. She whimpered in pain and protest. I could see the startled white face of the young woman in my rear mirror. What she was doing pushing a pram out from behind a parked car when she clearly would have been unable to see the road, I didn’t know. But I did know I’d been travelling far too fast. I slowed down.

I found a parking space at the eastern end of the seafront where the sand dunes begin and there’s no charge during the winter months. There were usually plenty of spaces at this time of year, and Bella and I were in the habit of parking as close as possible to the town end of the free parking zone. I couldn’t see her Toyota, and was pretty sure I was the first to arrive.

I sat for a moment just staring into space. Now that I’d got to the beach I really had no idea why I’d made the arrangement to meet Bella in the first place. It was understandable that I’d wanted to get out of the house and away from the man who had caused me so much pain over the last couple of days, on top of the biggest blow of all, the loss of my son. But why I’d even considered meeting up with another person I had no idea. Particularly another person who I really did not know that well. I’d never even been to her home or met her children, for goodness’ sake.

For a brief moment I thought about restarting the engine, turning the car around and just driving away. I might have done so, too, in spite of letting down this woman who had been so kind to me on the night of Robbie’s death, if it had not been for Florrie’s persistent whimpering. She was eager for her run.