I glowed inside. The enquiry was not going to affect us, in spite of what I had seen as the open hostility of its chairman towards Robin. I was suddenly as determined about that as I was in my resolve to marry the man whose arms were around me, whose mouth was now seeking mine. Whatever the enquiry eventually decided, I willed it to have nothing whatsoever to do with the future of Mr and Mrs Robin Davey.
The Abri Island disaster enquiry sat for a total of 320 hours during which its chairman Lord Justice Symons heard accounts from 111 witnesses including a number of expert witnesses. He studied 2900 pages of transcript containing more than a million words and received almost 1000 letters from individuals and organisations.
The enquiry’s findings were made public in October, six months after the disaster, and were about the best result there could have been for Robin and I. Perhaps the judge’s manner belied his thinking, perhaps he had merely been playing devil’s advocate. Perhaps he simply believed that aggressive questioning of witnesses was the way in which to seek the truth, and that this did not actually indicate how his judgement was going to go. Whatever lay behind it, I was both surprised and delighted when he effectively cleared Robin of all responsibility.
The disaster, Lord Justice Symons’ report concluded inevitably, had been caused by the collapse of the complex network of old mine shafts which had been constructed dangerously close to the surface — the legacy of the gold-mining industry which had ripped the very core out of the island.
The mining operations run by Robin’s ancestors, principally his obsessive great-great-great-great-grandfather Ernest John as Robin had told me when he and I had first met, dated back to a time when safety regulations in that kind of industry had yet to be invented. Greed had been the order of the day and the island had been effectively raped so that the last of its gold could be extracted. And when supplies finally ran out there had been a flurry of exploratory shafts tunnelled in all directions in a last desperate bid to find new strains. The experts had found that it was during that period, between 1850 when the last map was dated and somewhere around 1860 when all mining work was believed to have ended, that the most damage had been done to the structure of Abri. The islanders, forced ultimately to return to their more traditional occupations of fishing and sheep farming, were quite oblivious to the hazard which had been created, and had blocked off all the shafts in order that neither sheep nor children would fall down them. The relatively brief period during which virtually the entire island was turned into a gold mine had been more or less forgotten — relegated almost to the level of some vaguely mythical folk tale passed half-heartedly down the generations. But beneath the fertile top soil of Abri had lain this complex honeycomb of tunnels which every passing year had rendered more and more dangerous. There had been an unseen cancer eating away the very heart of the island, and the influx of so many people for our wedding, plus the disruptive effects of laying the foundations for the new hotel complex, the first major new building works in over 100 years, had almost certainly contributed to the eventual collapse of a treacherously weakened infrastructure. In the words of Lord Justice Symons, Abri Island had been a disaster waiting to happen.
Under the circumstances it was recommended that no criminal charges should be brought against Robin. The enquiry accepted unequivocally, as did I, that he had had no idea of the great danger lurking within Abri, and that the only maps he ever had gave no indication of the true extent of the tunnelling. Even AKEKO’s surveyors had accepted the validity of the inaccurate maps, and had merely inspected the shafts known to exist. Robin could hardly be blamed for the sins of an irresponsibly obsessed nineteenth-century ancestor.
Nonetheless, the Abri Island disaster was a hell of a thing to live with and I knew that we were both close to being unhinged by it. But it never occurred to me that Robin could be speaking anything other than the 100 per cent truth and it was a great comfort somehow that a formal enquiry of such magnitude as this one had also not doubted him.
All in all, the findings were just a tremendous relief — although nothing would ever lessen for Robin the blow of having irrevocably lost Abri. He had devoted his life to preserving Abri Island for his family, and now it was gone for good.
Five days later the body of Stephen Jeffries was found in a shallow grave high in the Mendip hills, just over a year after the boy had disappeared. A dog being taken for a walk by its owner had unearthed Stephen’s remains. Unusually heavy rain had caused the various water sources in the higher regions of the hills to flood and pour down towards the lower regions, washing away much of the top soil which had effectively covered the boy for so long. Without the intervention of British weather the body might never have been found. I heard about it on the TV news. I was not involved any more. It was no longer my case — but the news devastated me.
Chief Superintendent Titmuss announced that he was now heading a murder enquiry. I suppose it had been a foregone conclusion that, after all this time, young Stephen had to be dead, but with all the other trauma in my life I had tried not to think about that. Instead, like a distraught relative, I had willed the boy to be somehow, somewhere, still alive.
He wasn’t. He had been killed and unceremoniously left to rot in a moorland pit. It sent shivers down my spine. This was yet another death for which I felt I had to take at least some responsibility.
Eighteen
Robin and I were married. We went to Barbados to do the deed, just the two of us, and we told nobody of our intentions until our return. We flew out of the UK just a week after young Stephen Jeffries’ body had been discovered, and for me it was the best therapy there could ever have been. We stayed in the Coral Reef Hotel on St James Beach in a little bungalow in the midst of tropical gardens and wed on the beach two days after arriving. I wore a simple cream linen dress and Robin wore white canvas trousers and a bright yellow shirt without a tie. Two other guests, people we hardly knew, were our witnesses. We celebrated alone over a long lingering dinner and then we danced bare-footed in the moonlight. Nothing could have been more removed from the wedding we had expected to have on Abri.
We remained in Barbados for a magical fortnight, and for fourteen glorious days we thought of nothing but each other. We were helped, of course, by the fact that nobody we encountered knew anything about us nor the terrible tragedy we had experienced. One of the worst aspects of being involved in something so appalling is the public knowledge of it. The way you cannot meet with friends or even buy a newspaper in the corner shop without being aware of watchful eyes, and carefully tactful words. Other people’s awareness, and indeed their concern, can actually make it impossible for you to move forward. On Barbados, albeit only fleetingly, it felt in a way as if life returned to a kind of normality — although I suppose holidays are never really normality.
Robin and I were blissfully happy together. The old companionship returned, and we talked endlessly about anything and everything, and most importantly, for the first time probably since the disaster, not always coming back to Abri. In fact I don’t think we ever mentioned it. It was as if we had an unspoken agreement that we would not discuss it. There really was nothing left to say. No tears left to be shed.
Robin and I had to look to the future not the past, and I for one, was quite determined that we would do just that. The truth, of course, was that Robin had become just about all I ever thought about. It was almost as if I were hypnotised.
Our happiness continued undisturbed during our first week back in Bristol. At last our beautiful Clifton house began to feel like a real home. Robin went straight back to work, which was a good sign. I knew by now that he was at his happiest when he was working. Alone during the day I was even able at last to keep the nightmares at bay. And I continued in my attempts to learn to cook, actually producing one or two meals which were almost edible.