Stuart Harrison - Lost Summer

‘Helen,’ Karen said. ‘Tell Adam about your parents.’

‘Both my parents are dead, Mr Turner,’ Helen said. ‘Ben was my only family. He lived with me ever since he was thirteen, when my parents’ car was hit by a van travelling at eighty miles an hour. The driver was drunk. Both my parents died at the scene but he survived. That’s why when Ben knew he had epilepsy he decided he would never learn to drive. It’s also why I know that it’s inconceivable that he would have been drunk behind the wheel of that car, even if for some inexplicable reason he had decided to drive that night. Ben wouldn’t even be a passenger in a car if the driver had so much as had one drink. He was almost obsessive about it.’

It was, Adam thought, the most convincing argument she had put.

‘I don’t know where else I can go, Mr Turner,’ she said. ‘I’ve wondered if I should let it go. Nothing will bring Ben back. But I can’t. He was all I had. I loved my brother and now he’s dead and I want to know what happened to him. What really happened. I can’t go through life always wondering.’

Again there was a plea in her eyes. He wasn’t sure yet if this was something he wanted to get involved in. He was aware of Karen watching him, trying to gauge his reaction. In fact he was intrigued, and he was moved by what Helen had said. He understood what she was going through, and he reasoned that in this instance there were no obvious parallels with Meg Coucesco. But he needed time to think. He promised that he would consider everything she’d said, and she didn’t press him, but took her cue and rose to leave. She held out her hand.

‘I want to thank you for at least listening to me, and for not being patronizing. Whatever you decide, I’m grateful for that at least.’

He shook her hand and Karen showed her to the door, murmuring something to her quietly, and as he watched them he remembered something. ‘Wait a minute. You didn’t say where all this happened. Where exactly was your brother killed?’

‘In Cumbria,’ she said. ‘Near a town called Castleton.’

He barely registered her leaving, or Karen coming back to the table. She looked at him, her brow furrowed. ‘What is it, Adam?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, I have to go, can we meet later?’

He arranged a time and hurriedly left, and only paused when he stood outside again and was gulping lungfuls of air. ‘Christ,’ he muttered.

Adam sat stirring a long black outside an Italian café near Covent Garden. He saw Karen stop at the lights and wait for them to change before she crossed. She looked over and when she saw him she waved. She was tall, her short, dark hair framing fine, even features. He lost her when a bus thundered past spewing out diesel fumes into the already polluted London air, and then the lights changed and a swarm of people stepped into the road.

When she arrived he pulled out a chair and signalled to a waiter. ‘I ordered you a cappuccino. Do you want something to eat?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t, Nigel’s picking me up to go to dinner. Some business thing. You go ahead though if you want.’

‘Maybe later.’

Nigel. Tall, good-looking Nigel, who was an investment banker and whose family owned half of Shropshire. Old money, old school tie. He tried to imagine Karen being the perfect hostess on one of those country weekends, hanging out with the polo and horsey set and dressing for dinners in some great baronial hall. Somehow he couldn’t see it.

‘So, how is Nigel?’ he asked.

‘Fine. He’s very busy.’

He stirred his coffee, saying nothing.

‘You don’t like him do you?’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘That’s right, you don’t,’ she said, a trace of defensiveness in her tone.

‘Maybe I just don’t like the idea of him taking my best friend off to live in the country.’

‘Flatterer,’ she said, though she smiled. ‘Anyway, Nigel knows my career is here.’

Does he? Adam wondered. Nigel struck him as the type who, when he married, would expect his wife to give up her amusing hobbies, like her career for instance, and settle down to produce lots of little well-bred Nigels to continue the family line.

‘Besides, it isn’t as if we’re engaged or anything,’ she said.

Yet, Adam silently added. The waiter brought Karen’s coffee and Adam changed the subject. ‘I’ve been thinking about your friend Helen.’ She looked at him over the rim of her cappuccino. ‘I can’t help, Karen. I’m sorry.’

She looked surprised. ‘Is that because you don’t want the commission, or because you don’t believe her?’

‘It isn’t because I don’t believe her.’

‘Then you don’t want the commission?’

‘I wasn’t aware there was a commission. I thought you were helping a friend.’

‘I am.’

‘But you think there might be a story in it for Landmark, is that it?’

‘I’m not sure I like the way you said that,’ she replied in clipped tones.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out.’

‘Apology accepted.’

‘But you do want to commission me professionally I take it?’

‘Yes. But I don’t know if I would run the story, even if it turned out there was one. It would depend on the story. If for example it turned out to be a case of police bungling I might not be interested. But if it was more than that

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. That’s your part isn’t it, to ferret out the truth? But whatever the case I wouldn’t run anything without Helen’s agreement.’

‘Fair enough. But as I said, I can’t help. Sorry.’

‘But you still haven’t told me why.’

‘I’m busy at the moment.’

‘I thought you’d finished the book you were working on.’

‘I have.’

She waited, saying nothing, levelling her intelligent gaze on him, and he knew he’d have to do better than that.

‘Alright. The truth is I’m not sure this is the direction I want to take.’

‘Oh. So it’s that again. Sorry, I must have mistaken you for somebody I knew who had a mission in life.’

‘I wouldn’t say it was a mission.’

‘Wouldn’t you? Righting wrongs. Helping people like Helen who don’t know where else to turn. That girl you wrote about in Suffolk, the one who was pushed off a train, she’d never have been found if it wasn’t for you.’

‘Liz Mount. That was her name. Perhaps it would be better if she hadn’t been. At least her parents could have clung to the hope that she was alive and well somewhere.’

‘I don’t think you believe that,’ Karen said.

‘Well, maybe not.’

Karen sipped her coffee thoughtfully. ‘So, what’s the real reason you don’t want to do this? I get the feeling you’re not telling me something.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘Then at least promise you’ll think about it.’

She had pricked his conscience, as of course she had intended. She gave no quarter, Karen, which was probably why he liked her so much. ‘Alright. I’ll think about it.’

‘Thank you, Adam.’ She reached across the table and briefly put her hand over his.

Just then a taxi drew up by the kerb. The rear door opened and Nigel poked his head out. He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket. His dark hair was smoothed back over his aristocratic forehead. ‘Come on, darling, we’ll be late.’

Karen withdrew her hand. ‘Sorry, I have to go. Will you call me tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

She bent to kiss his cheek as Nigel looked impatiently at his watch. ‘Hurry up, Karen. You know what the traffic’s like at this time of day.’ He held the door for her, and then belatedly remembered Adam. ‘Sorry to drag her off like this. You weren’t discussing anything important were you?’