“The chief constable says he knows you,” I tell him. “Thomas Fryer.”
“Ah, yes, Fryer. I once punched him on a rugby field. He got up again, to his credit.”
“He says if I need help he’ll put you on the payroll as a consultant; a thousand pounds a day.”
“He thinks I can be bought.”
“I’d appreciate your help.”
“The trail has been cold for three years.”
“Look upon it as a challenge.”
His lips separate. It might be a grimace. He could be smiling. I cannot tell the difference. Retirement has never sat easily with Ruiz. He’s like an old racehorse put out to pasture: when other horses run, he wants to run too.
Behind him I glimpse Charlie clinging to the door jamb, ghostly pale. Heavy lidded. She’s wearing one of Ruiz’s old shirts.
“If you’re going to puke, Princess, please don’t do it on my floor,” he says.
She scowls at him and slumps at the table, putting her head in her hands.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Like crap.”
Ruiz begins opening cupboard doors, looking for a jar of jam. His bathrobe is too short. Charlie gets a glimpse of buttocks.
“Now I am going to be sick.”
“Don’t be cheeky,” says Ruiz, tugging it lower.
Charlie blinks at me and sighs. “OK, get it over with: the lecture. Tell me, ‘I told you so’ and ‘What were you thinking, Charlie?’ and ‘We raised you better than this, Charlie’ and ‘You’re grounded until you’re eighteen.’ ”
“Twenty-eight,” says Ruiz, who’s enjoying this.
Charlie shoots him a look.
“Just don’t give me the silent treatment. Mum does that. She looks at me with her big sad eyes like I’ve just drowned a sack of kittens.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. I screwed up, OK? I lied. I broke the rules. I didn’t listen…”
“And?”
“I’m never drinking again.”
Ruiz pours her a glass of orange juice. Charlie takes a sip and hiccups. “And anyway-it’s not all my fault. If you hadn’t been so unreasonable-never letting me do stuff.”
“You’re fifteen.”
“Almost sixteen.”
“Too young to be in London on your own.”
“You want to keep me locked up like some princess in a tower.”
“When have I locked you up?”
“I’m speaking figuratively.”
Ruiz laughs. “Figuratively speaking, you don’t look much like a princess. Unless you mean Princess Fiona-you’re the same shade of green.”
“Fuck off.”
“Spoken like a true princess.”
I tell her to mind her tongue. Charlie sulks for a moment and then stands, putting her arms around Ruiz’s waist.
“Thank you.”
“What for?” he asks.
“Coming to get me.” She turns to me. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
“I know.”
“How long before you think I’ve learned my lesson?”
“Some time shy of the next decade.”
Mid-morning I drive her back to Wellow. She sleeps most of the way with the nape of her neck against the back of the seat. I glance at her occasionally, studying her face. Her nose has a bump on the bridge and a smattering of freckles.
Watching her brow furrow and her lips part slightly, I wonder how much her behavior now is due to what she’s suffered in the past-the kidnapping and imprisonment. Gideon Tyler stole a part of her childhood-I can’t say how much-when he knocked her off her pushbike and bundled her into his car.
Psyches are harder to bandage than flesh. For all my training and experience, I don’t repair damaged minds. The best I can hope for is to help people cope.
Just outside of Bath, we stop for lunch. The pub has an open fire, fake rafters and smoked yellow walls, decorated with horse brasses and fox-hunting prints. The publican is a big slow man, polishing a pint glass, who frowns vacantly as though trying to remember something important.
Our meals arrive-cottage pie and a Ploughman’s. Charlie sips a soft drink.
“Are you ever going to get married again?” she asks, out of the blue.
“I’m already married.”
“She’s not going to take you back, Dad.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“But you could… if you wanted. That woman likes you.”
“What woman?”
“The one you had lunch with. She was flirting.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Of course she was. Women can tell.”
“You mean you? ”
“Yes, Dad, I’m a woman and I could tell.” She pops a chip into her mouth. “If you do get remarried, I won’t be a bridesmaid.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not wearing some lame burnt-orange dress that makes me look like a lampshade.”
“Understood.”
The cottage is near the end of a narrow lane that leads to a bridge over Wellow River. It’s barely a bridge and barely a river. Julianne is waiting at the door. Her hair is pinned up and she’s wearing old jeans and a sweater, but still looks like she could be starring in a TV commercial for multi-vitamins or shampoo.
Charlie accepts her hug and glances back at me, blinking through a veil of hair that has fallen over her eyes. There’s something knowing in her look-a shared secret.
Separating, she disappears inside, climbing the stairs to her bedroom. Julianne watches her go. Relieved. Anxious.
I’m expecting her to be angry, to slam the door on me, but instead Julianne opens her arms and hugs me.
“She messed up.”
“Yes.”
“What should we do?”
“Nothing. She made a mistake. We’ve all done that. The important thing is that she doesn’t give up. We want her to wake up tomorrow and shoot for another perfect day.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Not easy.”
Julianne asks if I want a cup of tea. Normally, I’d jump at the chance to spend twenty minutes in her company, surrounded by the familiar.
“I have to get back.”
“To London?”
“Oxford.”
I can’t tell her about Natasha McBain. She’ll know soon enough. Then she’ll put two and two together and realize that I’m helping the police again and look at me the way she always does, like my personal star is shining a little less brightly than before.
She kisses my left cheek and her lips brush against mine as she moves to my right cheek.
“Thank you for bringing her home.”
Charlie unlatches the window upstairs and pushes it outwards, leaning half her body through the opening.
“There’s a story on the TV about that guy.”
“What guy?”
“The one you talked to in Oxford-Augie Shaw.”
“What about him?”
“He tried to hang himself.”
I have this counting game.
I start counting backwards from a hundred and tell myself that Tash will come back before I get to zero. When I get to the end, I start again. I always slow down when I get to single figures, listening between each number in case I hear footsteps or voices.
It’s just the wind.
She’s not coming back.
Early morning, it’s dark inside and outside. Dark enough for the trees to look like a monstrous wave moving towards me.
When the sun rises pale and cold, I stand on the bench and look at the brightening sky. A train passes. Without it, I might be on another planet. I might be dead. I might be the only person left in the world.
I have no more paper to write upon. I have used up the last page. When George hosed me down, the book was under my pillow. The pages were wet and now they are buckling and curling as they dry. My pencil is just a stub, so I guess it doesn’t matter about the paper. From now on I’ll have to write in my head. Compose my lists. Gather my thoughts. File and forget.
People say that my generation lacks imagination and that we have a short attention span. We’re also super-sized and lazy and have no decent music. This is criticism from a Boomer generation that loves telling stories about the 1960s-the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll-but who swapped their protest placards for property portfolios and pension funds. My parents are like that: small people with small lives.