‘Look, it’s OK.’ Sophie’s hair was blowing about her face. ‘We can walk. We don’t want to put you out. Perhaps you’re going back to Utra.’
‘No. We have to get back for the baby. He’ll need feeding.’ Anna thought again how poorly the girl looked. She couldn’t believe Sophie was capable of walking all that way in such a state. Sophie had always been so fit. Anna had recruited her into the Lindby women’s rowing team and the student loved the exercise and got out of the boat after a race beaming, hardly sweating. But Sophie was young. Perhaps she thought it was OK for an old woman to die violently, but not a person of her own age. ‘If you don’t mind waiting till Ronald’s finished talking to the boys we’ll take you back. Where do you want to go? The Bod or the Pier House?’
‘The Pier House,’ Berglund said before Sophie could speak. ‘We both feel like a stiff drink.’ He put his arm around Sophie’s shoulder. Anna supposed he could just be comforting her because she’d had such an upsetting few days, but it didn’t seem like that. It seemed more intimate and proprietorial.
Ronald waved to her and started walking to the car. She would have liked to ask him how he was feeling, what the Wilson men had said, but it was awkward with the strangers there. They drove to Symbister in silence.
On impulse at the hotel, Anna got out of the car to say goodbye to the visitors. She reached out and put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder.
‘Hattie must have been ill,’ she said. ‘Why else would she do something like that? Come in to the bungalow whenever you want to. It would be good to have the company.’
Sophie nodded. There were tears in her eyes again and she seemed unable to speak. Berglund held her close to him again and led her into the hotel.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Perez wasn’t there for Mima’s funeral. He’d explained his decision to Sandy the day before. ‘It’s not a lack of respect. Please tell Evelyn that. I’ll be thinking about you all. But it’ll be a distraction to have the police there.’
And Sandy had nodded, understanding how it would be. There’d be gossip enough over the means of Mima’s dying. Perez’s presence would just give the congregation something else to talk about.
Instead Perez sat in his room in the Pier House and read Hattie’s letters to her mother. Without any real decision having been made, it seemed he’d taken up residence in the hotel. He’d come back there the evening before after his meeting with the Fiscal. In the morning when he came down to breakfast Jean, the skinny Glaswegian, grinned at him. ‘Still here then?’ Now she knew what he liked: a big pot of very strong coffee, scrambled eggs, brown toast. She’d say, ‘Do you no’ fancy something more substantial this morning?’ But teasing him, not expecting a different order.
Before starting to read the letters, Perez went into the kitchen to find her and asked if she’d be kind enough to make him some coffee to take into his room. She was on her own; Cedric Irvine would be at the funeral. He could tell the woman would have liked him to stay and chat to her, but he was eager to get back to the letters. She had only been on the island a short time and he didn’t think she could have much to tell him. It occurred to him again that he should talk to Cedric about Mima, but because he’d be at the funeral it would have to wait.
The letters were kept in chronological order, though Perez didn’t read them that way. Sandy had told him that Gwen James treasured them, that she’d missed Hattie when she went off to college and would have found it easier to keep her daughter at home, protected. Perhaps Perez had misjudged the woman. His parents had thought it was in his best interests to send him away to school in Lerwick at the age of eleven. But really, he thought, they’d had no choice.
He dipped into the letters in a disorganized, irrational way. He’d read them in order later, but now he wanted a flavour of what Hattie had to say. The first few he came to had been written from a psychiatric hospital. They were short, rather incoherent, written on cheap lined paper, and the handwriting was quite different from the rest of the scripts – sprawling, the words slanting away from the lines. At first it was clear Hattie resented being there. Please, please let me come home. I really don’t need this. I can’t stand it. I want it all to end. Was this the reference Sandy had mentioned to her wishing she were dead? Later in her stay as an in-patient they became more chatty. We all went to the swimming pool in town today. I haven’t been swimming in ages and enjoyed it a lot. The minibus broke down on the way back to the unit. We had to walk back and Mark led us like a bunch of schoolkids along the main road. I almost expected him to tell us to get into pairs and hold hands. As her mood improved her handwriting changed, became tidier, more controlled.
There was a gap of two weeks. Perez assumed that she’d moved home before her return to university and there was no need to write to her mother then. He wondered how they’d got on. He wished he’d had the opportunity to meet Gwen James, so he could picture the household more clearly. Had there been long meaningful talks every evening? Or had both women found it easier to pretend that nothing much had happened in Hattie’s life, that the girl’s absence from home had been perfectly normal, like a holiday job or a trip away? Had Gwen continued to lose herself in her work?
Perez went right back to Hattie’s first few weeks at university, before the breakdown and the hospital admission. The paper was plain A4, but the letters were handwritten, not printed from a PC. She never missed the weekly letter. Perez was surprised by the discipline: most students surely led disorganized lives, they went to parties, gigs, had hangovers and last-minute essays to complete. But perhaps Hattie’s life at university was unusually ordered. It was clear that she was ambitious and determined to do well academically. The university letters were mostly about her work. If she had any social life she didn’t tell her mother about it. He read each one carefully, looking for references to friends who might be contacted for information about Hattie’s state of mind, but those who were mentioned were talked of in passing as colleagues. It seemed unlikely that Hattie had kept in touch with any of them.
He had almost given up hope of learning anything from the letters apart from an insight into Hattie’s life. He finished the coffee and stood up to stretch, looking down at the harbour. Everything there was unusually quiet. The ferry was making its way towards Laxo, but no other boats were moving. He supposed that most of the island would be at the funeral. Then, reading a letter from an address he didn’t recognize, he saw a familiar name.
It was dated at the end of June and came in Hattie’s first long vacation, the summer before the stay in the psychiatric unit. The tone was happy and enthusiastic. Perez thought how relieved Gwen James must have been to read it. I’m loving every minute of the experience. This is definitely what I want to do with my life. Paul Berglund, who’s in charge of the dig, came on to the site today and seems delighted with the way things are going. He took us all out to the pub after we’d finished for the day. Had a bit of a hangover the next morning!
There was no other reference to Berglund in that letter. Perez thought if that was their only contact, the professor could be forgiven for not recognizing a student who’d helped as a volunteer. However, two weeks later he was mentioned again.
Paul took me out to dinner to thank me for my help on the project. He’s such a nice man and the best in his field in the country. I’m even thinking of changing my course so I can work in his department. I don’t want to lose touch after he’s given me so much help.
Perez’s attention was caught by the sound of a car outside his window. It was Ronald Clouston’s enormous four-wheel drive. He wondered if the funeral had been so difficult for him that he was coming into the bar to drown his sorrows. But Ronald didn’t get out of the car. Berglund and Sophie got out of the back seat, then Anna emerged from the front. Perez couldn’t hear the conversation. Anna got back in beside her husband and the car drove off. Berglund and Sophie came into the hotel.