Stinging from the child jibe, Karen fired back. ‘What, you mean like the way I feel right now?’ Which didn’t miss its mark, and she pressed home on it. ‘What if it was your affair, asking him for a divorce, that made him kill himself?’
Her mother stood with her hands on her hips, eyes upturned towards the heavens. ‘A moment ago you were accusing us of murdering him.’
‘Well, maybe you did.’ Her eyes were burning now, too. ‘Dad would never have fallen overboard. And even if he had, he’d have been wearing his life jacket. So how come it was still in the boat?’
‘Because he took his own life, you stupid girl! Have you forgotten that he left a note?’
‘Oh, yes. The famous note. The one you’ve always refused to let me see. How do I even know it exists?’
Karen’s mother stabbed an angry finger at her. ‘Don’t you fucking move.’ And Karen was shocked to hear her swear. She stormed away down the hall, and Karen could hear her banging about in her den, slamming drawers and doors. When she returned, she was very nearly hyperventilating, and she thrust a folded sheet of paper at her daughter. ‘It’s not the original. The police still have that. But this is the copy they made for me.’
Karen stood looking at it, her heart in her throat, and she didn’t even want to touch it.
‘Go on, take it. You’re a big girl now. Or so you keep telling me. Time to face the truth. After sixteen years of marriage, this is all he could think to leave. Nothing about me. Not a word of apology. Or regret. Nothing.’ She pushed it at Karen again. ‘Go on, take it. It was only ever about you.’
Karen was shaking as she took the folded sheet from her mother’s outstretched hand. She opened it up very slowly, and saw her father’s familiar scrawl. Somehow she had expected there would be more. But all it said was, Tell Karen I love her, even if I never could be the dad she wanted me to be.
Chapter ten
Broken clouds are painted roughly across the sky, like a sketch in preparation for a painting. They reflect crudely in the still autumn waters of the Firth of Forth, off to the west. To the east, beyond the suspension cables of the road bridge, the triple humps of the rail bridge are painted rust-red. A paint that lasts much longer now, doing men out of work.
I can see the sails of occasional yachts tacking out towards the North Sea, and somewhere beyond the low-lying smudge of the south shore, the city of Edinburgh nestled tightly beneath Arthur’s Seat.
I am tired. It has been a long drive down from the Isle of Skye after an early ferry crossing from Tarbert. With stops, I have been nearly eight hours on the road.
Traffic is gathering already for rush hour, and I am glad to be heading into Edinburgh rather than out of it. Until I hit the town itself, and it all grinds to a halt. At Haymarket I smell the malt bins of the breweries. The all-pervasive stench of them, like stale beer in a pub at midnight, hangs in the air and suffuses the senses with strangely elusive memories that remain infuriatingly just beyond reach. Oddly, the streets of the city are familiar to me. I need no maps or GPS to guide me to the King James Hotel at the top of Leith Walk, where Sally booked me a room for two nights using her credit card. But I will pay with cash.
I am glad now that I thought to reserve a parking place in the tiny car park below the hotel. Driving in the city, I would be at much greater risk of being stopped by the police than I have been on the open road. Although that did not reduce my paranoia to any significant degree on the drive down.
The girl at the reception desk is tall and willowy. And difficult. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she says, ‘I need your credit card.’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘The room was booked using a card.’
‘A friend’s card. I am not authorised to use it. I’ll pay cash.’
She glances at her computer screen. ‘Well, the lady has authorised its use to pay for the room. We’ll add any other charges to that.’
‘No.’ I shake my head in frustration. ‘I want to pay cash.’
‘I’m sorry, we need a credit card to cover payment of any additional costs you might run up. Meals, room service, bar...’
‘I’ll give you a deposit. In cash.’
She sighs, as if I am the one who is being difficult. And I wonder how it can possibly be this hard to pay for something with real money. ‘I’ll get the manager.’ My turn to sigh.
The manager, who looks no older than fifteen, insists on deducting the room and parking charges from the credit card, since those amounts had been pre-authorised by the card holder, and in the end accepts a cash deposit of £1,000 to cover additional room charges, although he refuses to allow me to charge meals or drinks to the room. I am going to have to reimburse Sally when I get back.
When I dump my bag in my room, I am tempted to jump into a taxi and go straight to the address on the back of the birth certificate. But it is too late in the day, and I am tired, and even if I do not sleep well, I know it would be better to start fresh in the morning.
So I drink a couple of whiskies at the cocktail bar, trying not to think about why I am here, and have a salad in the restaurant, before retiring to my room to lie on the bed watching television until finally, sometime in the small hours, I drift off to sleep.
The taxi driver looks at me as if I am mad. It is a black hackney cab, and I have already slipped into the back seat and fastened the seat belt when I tell him that I want to keep him for the day. He shakes his head. ‘I don’t do that. Wouldn’t be worth my while.’
‘Well, what would make it worth your while?’ It’s strange how having all that cash makes me reckless.
He laughs. ‘Forget it, pal, you couldn’t afford me. I’ll take you and drop you wherever you want to go.’
I take out my wallet and count out a sheaf of notes, which I push through the gap below the glass separator. ‘Five hundred quid. And it might not even be the whole day.’
The driver looks at the notes, and I see him run his tongue thoughtfully between his lips. He takes the bundle without comment. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Hainburn Park. It’s just north of the—’
He cuts me off. ‘I know where it is.’ And he pulls away from the front of the hotel into the early morning traffic.
It is a dull morning that camouflages the beauty of this grey-stoned city. It seems flat and lifeless. The only colour is on the pavements, where multicoloured umbrellas are lifted in protection from fine rain that falls like mist. The green of Princes Street Gardens seems end-of-season weary, and a pall of gloom hangs over the capital, as if in anticipation of winter, just around the corner.
I watch the city slide past rain-streaked windows as we head south over the Bridges into Nicolson Street, and I suppose that this is my town. The place where I live. It all seems familiar enough to me, but I have no idea whether I grew up here, or moved back here later. What is my work, my job, my profession? I told Sally and Jon that I was an academic. If that is true, what is my subject, my area of expertise? Am I a teacher, a lecturer, a researcher? I close my eyes and stop trying to remember. If any of it is going to come back to me, I need to let it happen naturally. Trying to force it is only giving me a headache.
I start to get lost as we turn west at Newington. The streets have become unfamiliar. The leafy suburban streets of upmarket Morningside, where grand detached houses lurk discreetly in mature gardens behind screens of trees and hedges made impenetrable by leaves starting to turn towards autumn.