In fact I determined to put everything that bothered me out of my mind as much as possible. I began to understand the true meaning behind the expression ‘past worrying’. I really was past worrying. I even refused to think about my job — and particularly not the Stephen Jeffries case which had so haunted me. I was asked to see a police doctor who seemed to have no doubt that I qualified to remain on fully paid sick leave. I suppose I vaguely assumed I would end up going back to work one day, but I knew I was still far from ready for it.
I had seen Julia only once since the days immediately after the disaster — at the enquiry when she had been required to give evidence — and I kept trying to persuade her to come and spend a weekend with us. I so wanted her to get to know Robin better. I felt we were at last able to cope with visitors again, and I missed her. But she continued to make one excuse after another until eventually I invited myself to lunch with her, travelling up to London, one chilly day in early December, by train from Bristol Temple Meads.
We arranged to meet at her club, the Soho House in Greek Street, and it was great to see her again although I had a feeling that all was not entirely well with her.
We ordered champagne. ‘What the hell else?’ muttered Julia, and that, at least, was utterly true to form. We gossiped about mutual friends, and I tried to tell her about my life now with Robin, but she seemed to have little interest in any of it, which was not like her at all.
There was a disturbing unease in her. Eventually I just had to confront her.
‘What’s wrong, please tell me, Julia,’ I said.
She sighed, put down her knife and fork, and pushed away her plate of only half-eaten seafood risotto.
‘Rose, you’re not going to like it...’ she replied.
I gestured for her to continue. She took a deep breath and began.
It seemed she had been to one of her impossibly trendy Hampstead dinner parties full of divorcees and second timers where the late-night conversation turned to marital betrayal. Everybody told a story.
‘There was a BBC producer there who told a story about Jeremy Cole. Do you know who I mean?’ Julia enquired.
I nodded. Sir Jeremy, knighted by the last Tory government, was a geologist who had become a TV personality and rarely seemed to be off the box.
‘Apparently Cole had this affair and used to take his girlfriend away with him when he was filming or whatever, the usual crap,’ Julia continued. ‘His wife got suspicious and one night turned up unexpectedly on some location and discovered that Sir Jeremy was indeed booked into a hotel room with another woman. She conned her way into the room while the erring couple were having dinner, stripped off and got into bed. BBC legend has it that when the pair returned she invited them both to join her — the girl fled and Sir Jeremy returned, suitably chastened, to the straight and narrow.’
There was a brief silence. I waited, puzzled.
Julia reached across the table and touched my hand. ‘Rose, get ready for the punchline. Apparently a year or so later Marjorie Cole, who they say is a real tough cookie and also filthy rich which is one reason why her husband returned to the nest, turned up at the Beeb tiddly and announced that she was celebrating what she considered to be the ultimate triumph because the girlfriend, in her words “had been dumped by some lunatic on a rock in the middle of the Bristol Channel and drowned”.’
I didn’t want to understand what she was getting at, although I was beginning to have a pretty good idea.
‘So?’ I responded quite aggressively.
‘Rose, Jeremy Cole specialises in the history of mining. You can’t have missed his programmes, there’ve been enough of them. Jewels in the Ground, Cole on Coal — and then there was Falling Houses. You must remember Falling Houses.’
I did. The programme had caused quite a stir. It had investigated what it called the scandal of how properties in long-time mining areas would every so often just be swallowed up into disused workings. I did not speak.
‘Cole is a recognised leading expert on the dangers of old mining complexes, Rose, that is his speciality. And it had to be Natasha Felks who had this affair with him. She went filming with him. She visited mines with him.’
I felt my stomach lurch.
‘That doesn’t make her an expert too,’ I snapped. ‘Natasha Felks was a debbie bimbo, I shouldn’t think she ever learned a damn thing about anything in her life.’
A waiter came and collected our discarded plates. Julia did not reply until he had walked away.
‘You’re being ridiculous, Rose,’ she said. ‘Natasha had a long affair with Cole, apparently — we aren’t talking about a one-night stand. She must have picked up something about his work, it must have been in her mind, surely, and there she was spending half her life on an island with a bloody great gold mine underneath it. Don’t you think it’s possible that she may have suspected they could be dangerous and even suggested that to Robin...’
I’d had enough. I glowered at her over my champagne glass for a few seconds. Then I stood up.
‘No, Julia,’ I said. ‘Robin never had any idea the mines might be dangerous, as, I’m sure, neither did Natasha Felks. You’re the one being ridiculous if you even think I’m going to sit and listen to this nonsense. I just don’t want to hear any more.’
With that I turned on my heel and swept out of the restaurant, down the narrow staircase and out on to the crowded pavement of Greek Street. I don’t sweep terribly well, being only five foot three tall, but I did my best.
Julia did not try to stop me. She knew me too well. But I could feel her eyes on my back. We had known each other for virtually all our lives and as far as I could remember this was the first time we had ever parted on bad terms. Yet in the heat of the moment, I really didn’t give a damn.
Nineteen
The train journey from Paddington to Temple Meads takes an hour and three-quarters. After leaving Julia at the Soho House it felt like several days long. I tried to dismiss what she had told me from my mind, as I had rather successfully with several of my other worries. But in this I did not succeed so well.
Robin was surprised to see me already home from London when he returned from work. I fibbed that Julia had been unexpectedly called back to her office.
‘Well, I’m delighted you’re here so early,’ he said. ‘I have something to tell you.’
I was beginning to wish nobody would tell me anything more about anything — ever.
‘First, we need champagne,’ he said, and set off for the kitchen. I gazed out through the living-room window over the rooftops of the city and tried to suppress the premonition that, in spite of his obvious excitement, I wasn’t going to want to hear Robin’s news.
Robin returned with a bottle of Tattinger cold from the fridge and two elegant glasses. With his usual efficiency he popped the cork and poured.
‘Rose,’ he said, and he was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Abri Island may not be lost for ever, after all.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
‘Robin,’ I protested. ‘Abri has been lost for ever. Forty-four lives have been lost for ever. What are you talking about?’
‘Look, I’ve been studying the new plans of the mines which the enquiry’s surveyors drew up, and I’ve had a good look around Abri myself, and tried to take an unemotional look at the damage.’
Abri had officially been designated a disaster area, and even the sheep had been evacuated. It went without saying that both boats and helicopters were no longer allowed to land there and visitors, including the island’s owner, were forbidden.
He saw my look of surprise and touched my cheek with one hand in a vaguely apologetic gesture.