CHAPTER TWELVE
Morning woke Zach, who had been dozing with his head on Dimity’s kitchen table. Sharp sunlight needled his eyes, and he lifted his head cautiously. It was thick with lack of sleep and the weight of his thoughts. His skull felt like an eggshell, liable to crack with all the new things crammed into it in the past twenty-four hours. He was alone in the kitchen, surrounded by cold, sticky mugs that stank of sour milk and brandy. He filled the kettle and put it on, drank a whole pint of water, and then went through to the living room. When he’d last seen Hannah, she’d been asleep in an armchair, curled up opposite the Sabris with her sweater pulled down over her hands and her mouth pursed so sweetly that he’d fought the urge to kiss it. Now the room was empty. Zach scrubbed at his eyes and tried to wake up.
“Hannah? Ilir?” he called up the stairs, but there was no reply. Then he heard a noise outside and opened the front door.
Hannah’s jeep was sitting in front of the cottage with its engine running and the doors open. Rozafa and Bekim were already in the backseat, and Hannah was swinging two canvas holdalls into the trunk. “Hey! What’s going on?” said Zach, shivering with fatigue in the cool of the early morning. Hannah looked over at him with a momentary flash of alarm.
“I’m taking them to the station. I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, dropping the bags into the trunk and striding over to him with her hands in her pockets. Zach raised a hand to shade his eyes.
“Is it safe to? Won’t the police still be watching?”
“I don’t think so. I spoke to James. They searched his place last night, too, and came away with nothing. He doesn’t think they’re still hanging around. They even apologized to me, last night. Apologized profusely, when they didn’t find anything.” She flashed him a quick smile.
“Will you be long?”
“No. We’re just going to the station at Wareham. Ilir is taking them north, to Newcastle. He has friends there-well, somebody he knows from home, anyway. Someone who can give them a place to stay and help get them settled, and my brother-in-law is a doctor there. He’s going to help with the asylum application, and start Bekim’s chelation treatment…”
“His what?”
“Look, there’s no time to explain it all now, we have to catch a train in forty minutes. They were going to stay with me for a few days’ rest before moving on, but after last night we thought it better not to wait,” she said. Zach took her hand, held it open in his, and studied it. Small and scarred, the nails broken off short and grubby at the cuticles, calluses on her palms, at the base of each finger. Tough, outdoor hands; hands that inhabited an entirely different world from his.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he said.
“No, there’s no need. Stay with Dimity. Look at the pictures,” she said in an odd tone of voice.
“Okay. See you when you get back, then.”
“I’ll be back as soon as they’re away. An hour and a half or so. We’ll talk then.” She turned and walked back to the car, and Ilir appeared in front of him.
Zach waited nervously to hear what the Roma man would say. His jaw still ached from the punch he’d been given the night before. Instinctively, he put up his hand to rub it, and felt how tender the bruise was. Ilir smiled slightly.
“I’m sorry for punching you, Zach,” he said. “But you understand, I was very afraid.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“No, I must. You have helped us… I am grateful.” Ilir’s face was tired and bruised, but he looked happier than Zach had ever seen him. A radiant kind of inner peace, as though the absence of his wife and child had always gnawed at him; a nagging pain that was now gone, in spite of the precariousness of their situation.
“Please. It was the least I could… I’m glad they’re safe.” He offered his hand to shake and Ilir took it and pulled him into a brief, rough embrace. They’d had no time to wash or change, and the man still wore the stink of last night’s stress and turmoil.
“Ilir, come on. We haven’t got time,” Hannah called from the car.
“Be kind to her,” said Ilir, in a low voice. “Now I am gone… she seems strong but she needs people. More than she will admit. She will need your friendship now I am gone. She is difficult sometimes, but she is a good woman.”
“I know,” said Zach. “Good luck.” Ilir clapped him on the shoulder, nodded, then turned and climbed into the passenger seat. With a cough of blue diesel smoke, they were gone.
Zach waited on the step for a while, sweeping his gaze to take in the view from the watery horizon to the green swell of the ridge inland. Part of him was desperate to go back upstairs and look through all the pictures again; start making some notes on subject and tone. But he hesitated, startled to find that it didn’t feel right to, not with Hannah gone and Dimity so upset. The pictures, however intently he had hunted them down, did not belong to him. And there was something else on his mind, something that Hannah’s revelation about her grandmother had made him think about. He waited for a while, chewing his lip as he thought, trying to tell himself it didn’t matter. But it did, there was no denying it. He went upstairs on soft feet.
“Dimity?” he called. He’d last seen her the night before, huddled by the doorway of the small empty bedroom where Charles Aubrey had lived, but she wasn’t there now. Zach knocked gently on the door of the other bedroom and peeped through it. “Are you awake?” he said softly. There was no answer from the small figure curled on the bed. Her knees were pulled up in front of her, her hands clasped to her stomach in their grubby red mittens. Seeing them, Zach felt a sudden tug of affection for the old woman, and admiration, too. Few people could have protected a secret with such steady faith, and such success, for so many years. He thought back over all the hours he’d spent talking to Dimity, studiously recording her tales of Charles Aubrey from the 1930s, when all the time she’d been guarding this huge and unimaginable truth. She’d always seemed to be holding something back; always seemed half afraid of letting something slip, or giving away too many clues. It must have loomed large in her mind. Dimity didn’t answer his call, and her breathing was soft and even, but as Zach retreated he had the strongest feeling that she was not sleeping.
Zach avoided talking to Pete Murray as much as he could, even though the publican was keen to gossip about the police presence in the village the night before. Zach shrugged and denied all knowledge. He was impatient to be moving, to see the one person who could settle something that was clamoring for his attention, louder all the time. On the two-hour drive north, he fought to concentrate on the road. He rehearsed in his head what he would say, how he would finally find out, once and for all, a truth that had been deliberately veiled all his life.
His grandmother lived in a tiny Victorian almshouse in a market town near Oxford. Neat little brick and flint cottages, joined together in a U-shape around an immaculate lawn carefully fenced from wandering feet. The last of the late-season roses showed their faded colors in the borders. Zach gave his name to the warden and made his way to the middle of the terrace. He knocked and opened the door, to save his grandma the trouble of getting up.
“Hello, Granny,” he said, and she stared at him with a small frown, smiling only when he bent to kiss her cheek.
“Dear boy,” she said, clearing her throat. “How sweet of you to come. Which one are you?”
“I’m Zach, Granny. I’m your grandson. David’s son.” At the mention of his father’s name, his grandma smiled with more conviction.