She was still sitting there when James walked in. She’d switched on a small lamp beside her; the rest of the big attic room was a pool of shadow. The baby had finished feeding and his eyes were closed, but she still held him, and he sucked occasionally in his sleep. A dribble of milk ran across his cheek. She had heard James moving around carefully downstairs, and the creaking stairs had prepared her for his entrance. She was composed with a smile on her face. Mother and child. Like one of the Dutch paintings he’d dragged her to see. He’d bought a print for the house, put it in a big gilt frame. She could tell the effect wasn’t lost on him, and he smiled too, looked suddenly wonderfully happy. She wondered why she had become more attracted to Dan Greenwood who could be slovenly in his appearance, and rolled thin little cigarettes from strings of tobacco.
Gently she lifted the baby into his cot. He puckered his mouth as if still looking for the nipple, sighed deeply in disappointment but didn’t wake. Emma fastened the flap in the unflattering maternity bra and pulled her dressing gown around her. The heating was on but in this house there were always draughts. James bent to kiss her, feeling for her mouth with the tip of his tongue, as insistent as the baby wanting food. He Would have liked sex but she knew he wouldn’t push for it. Nothing was so important to him that it warranted a scene, and she’d been unpredictable lately. He wouldn’t risk her ending up in tears. She pushed him gently away. He had poured himself a small glass of whisky downstairs and still had it with him. He took a sip from it before setting the glass on the bedside table.
“Was everything all right this evening?” she asked to soften the rejection. “It’s been so windy. I imagine you out there in the dark, the waves so high.”
She had imagined nothing of the sort. Not tonight. When she had first met him she had dreamed of him out on the dark sea. Somehow now, the romance had gone out of it.
“It was easterly,” he said. “On shore. Helping us in.” He smiled fondly at her and she was pleased that she had said the right thing.
He began to undress slowly, easing the tension from his stiff muscles. He was a pilot. He joined ships at the mouth of the Humber and brought them safely into the dock at Hull, Goole or Immingham, or he guided them out of the river. He took his work seriously, felt the responsibility. He was one of the youngest, fully qualified pilots working the Humber. She was very proud of him.
That was what she told herself, but the words ran meaninglessly through her head. She was trying to fend off the panic which had been building since she had heard the men talking on the square, growing like a huge wave which rises from nothing out at sea.
“I heard you talking to Dan Greenwood outside. What was so important at this time of night?”
He sat on the bed. He was bare chested, his body coated with fine blond hair. Although he was fifteen years older than her, you’d never have guessed, he was so fit.
“Jeanie Long committed suicide last week. You know, Jeanie Long. Her father used to be coxswain on the launch at the point. The woman who was convicted of strangling Abigail.”
She wanted to shout at him, Of course I know. I know more about this case than you ever could. But she just looked at him.
“It was unfortunate, a terrible coincidence. Dan says a new witness has come forward. The case has been reopened. Jeanie might have been released.”
“How does Dan Greenwood know all that?”
He didn’t answer. She decided he was thinking already of other things, a tricky tide perhaps, an overloaded ship, a hostile skipper. He unbuckled his belt and stood to step out of his trousers. He folded them precisely and hung them over a hanger in the wardrobe.
“Come to bed,” he said. “Get some sleep while you can.” She thought he had already put Abigail Mantel and Jeanie Long out of his mind.
Chapter Two
For ten years Emma had tried to forget the day she’d discovered Abigail’s body. Now she forced herself to remember it, to tell it as a story.
It was November and Emma was fifteen. The landscape was shadowed by storm clouds. It was the colour of mud and wind-blackened bean stalks Emma had made one friend in Elvet. Her name was Abigail Mantel. She had flame-red hair. Her mother had died of breast cancer when Abigail was six. Emma, who had secret dreams of her father dying, was shocked to find herself a little envious of the sympathy this generated. Abigail didn’t live in a damp and draughty house and she wasn’t dragged to church every Sunday. Abigail’s father was as rich as it was possible to be.
Emma wondered if this was the story she had told herself at the time, but couldn’t remember. What did she remember of that autumn? The big, black sky and the wind laden with sand which scoured her face as she waited for the bus to school. Her anger at her father for bringing them there.
And Abigail Mantel, exotic as a television star, with her wild hair and her expensive clothes, her poses and her pouting. Abigail, who sat next to her in class and copied her work and tossed her hair in disdain at all the lads who fancied her. So two contrasting memories: a cold, monochrome landscape and a fifteen-year-old girl, so intensely coloured that it would warm you just to look at her. When she was alive, of course. When she was dead she’d looked as cold as the frozen ditch where Emma had found her.
Emma made herself remember the moment of finding Abigail’s body. She owed Abigail that, at least. In the room in the Dutch captain’s house, the baby snuffled, James breathed slowly and evenly and she retraced her footsteps along the side of a bean field, making every effort to keep the recollection real. No fantasies here, please.
The wind was so strong that she had to force out each breath in a series of pants, much as she would later be taught to do during labour before it became time to push. There was no shelter. In the distance the horizon was broken by one of the ridiculously grand church spires which were a feature of this part of the county, but the sky seemed enormous and she imagined herself the only person under it.
“What were you doing there, out on your own in the storm?” the policewoman would ask later, gently, as if she really wanted to know, as if the question wasn’t part of the investigation at all.
But lying beside her husband, Emma knew that this memory, the memory of her mother and the policewoman, sitting in the kitchen at home discussing the detail of the discovery, was a cop-out. Abigail deserved better than that. She deserved the full story.
So… it was late afternoon on a Sunday in November. Ten years ago. Emma was fighting against the wind towards the slight dip in the land where the converted chapel which was the Mantel family home lay. She was already upset and angry. Angry enough to storm out of the house on a foul afternoon, although it would soon be dark. As she walked she raged in her mind about her parents, about the injustice of having a father who was unreasonable, tyrannical, or who had seemed to have become so as she grew up. Why couldn’t he be like other girls’ fathers? Like Abigail’s, for example? Why did he talk like a character from a Bible story, so when you questioned him it was like questioning the authority of the Bible itself? Why did he make her feel guilty when she couldn’t see she’d done anything wrong?
She caught her foot on a sharp piece of flint and stumbled. Tsars and snot covered her face. She remained for a moment where she was, on her hands and knees. She’d grazed the palms of her hands when she’d tried to save herself, but at least here, closer to the ground, it was easier to breathe. Then she’d thought how ridiculous she must look, though there could be no one out on an afternoon like this to see her. The fall had brought her to her senses. Eventually she would have to go home and apologize for making a scene. Better sooner than later. A drainage ditch ran along the side of the field. Getting to her feet the wind struck her with full force again and she turned her back to it. That was when she looked into the ditch and saw Abigail. She recognized the jacket first a blue quilted jacket. Emma had wanted one like it but her mother had been horrified when she’d seen the price in the shops. Emma didn’t recognize Abigail, though. She thought it must be someone else, that Abigail had lent the jacket to a cousin or a friend, someone else who had coveted it. Someone Emma hadn’t known. This girl had an ugly face and Abigail had never been ugly. Neither had she been so quiet; Abigail was always talking. This girl had a swollen tongue, blue lips and would never talk again. Never flirt or tease or sneer. The whites of her eyes were spotted red.