‘Robert, you’d drown.’ I gestured out through the hall window. The rain was still pouring down. ‘It’ll be blowing a gale up there, too. What are you thinking of? And where are your heavy-duty waterproofs, and your boots?’
I knew where they were well enough. In the boot room by the back door. We were standing at the front door. Robert was in no way dressed for a tramp over the moors, not even on a much better day than this.
Suddenly he yelled at me.
‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ His voice was not only loud but very Scottish again. He sounded furious. He’d never spoken to me so roughly before.
I took an involuntary step backwards.
‘I have to go out, Marion,’ he continued in the same loud and angry tone of voice. ‘And I have to be on my own. Just trust me, will you, woman?’
I thought I was going to break down and cry again. He saw it in me, I think. His manner softened as swiftly as it had become so harsh.
‘I’ll be back in a few hours, Marion. I promise. I just need a bit of time to myself, that’s all.’
He reached out and touched me on one shoulder. I half waited for the kiss. We never parted, Robert and I, even for a few hours, without kissing. No kiss came. Instead he swung around and left the house.
I found myself shuffling backwards until my heels hit the staircase, jarring my burned feet, and then I just sat down. I was shocked to the core yet again. The death of a son could make any man or woman behave strangely and in a totally out of character way, I told myself. None the less, I was further traumatized by Robert’s behaviour.
After a while I hoisted myself up off the stairs and wandered distractedly into the kitchen. I switched on the kettle but never quite got round to making myself the tea I had half planned. I just sat down at the table, my back to the door, in the same chair I’d been using when Robert had arrived at one in the morning, unexpected in every way. Neither looking nor sounding like the husband I so loved. And now he had walked away from me, when I needed him most.
I began to wonder again what it meant. One half of my brain and certainly my heart told me that it meant nothing at all. Robert was a terribly bereaved father. I couldn’t expect him to behave logically. I couldn’t expect him to be his usual self. No doubt I was not my usual self, either. The other half began to relive the events of the last twenty-four hours. To dissect them meticulously. And even to look further back into our shared past.
I thought about the Amaco emergency number he had given me being unobtainable.
The piece of card upon which he had written it all those years ago was still on the kitchen table in front of me, alongside the discarded shopping list upon which PC Cox had scribbled the main number of the Amaco head office in Aberdeen after she’d got it from directory enquiries.
I checked my watch. It was now just after 9 a.m. I dialled the head office number and asked for human resources, telling the operator that I was the wife of an Amaco employee.
‘Oh, and just before you put me through I wonder if I could check with you the direct-line number my husband gave me in case of an emergency,’ I said. ‘I can’t seem to get it to ring.’
The operator obligingly did so. Just one digit was wrong in the number Robert had supplied. A simple careless mistake, easy to make, or a deliberate one designed to present an obstacle, albeit not one that couldn’t be overcome with persistence, should I ever try to contact Amaco? It could have been either.
I ended the call before being put through. If the situation had not been so dire, and if PC Cox had not been with me, I mightn’t have persisted the previous evening, mightn’t have sought out an alternative out-of-hours number for Amaco.
I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know anything any more. I didn’t even know why I was torturing myself like this.
My son was dead. That was all that mattered in my life. What was I doing doubting my husband at such a time? I hadn’t doubted him in sixteen years. He had shown me and our son nothing but kindness and generosity. What was wrong with me? Why was I doubting him?
It was perhaps odd, but my brain seemed overly active at a time when I might have expected it to be anaesthetized. If I suddenly had all this mental energy, then surely I should be concentrating on Robbie’s death, the manner of it, and what might lie behind it, rather than questioning my husband.
Anyone was entitled to behave strangely in such circumstances, I told myself.
I went up to Robbie’s room again and spent an hour or so there, checking everything, looking around the place, once more studying those marks on the floor.
Then I made my way down to the kitchen to call DS Jarvis again and for the second time was patched through to Heavitree Road.
This time I didn’t even bother to speak. I just hung up.
I opened the back door. Robert had fashioned a kind of leanto gazebo, wooden uprights and a slate roof, beneath which we could shelter on wet days while still enjoying the garden. I breathed the Dartmoor air deep into my lungs and stood there watching the rain fall.
A song kept going through my head. Robert was a bit of a jazz buff, and it was one of his favourites, sung by Dinah Washington — ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’.
Could it really be only a day ago that I’d set off cheerily for work at Okehampton College, leaving Robbie in the kitchen tucking into the bacon sandwich I’d made him? Crispy, on naughty white bread. Just the way he liked it.
I tried to remember our last words to each other. And I couldn’t, which made things even worse somehow.
I was quite sure, though, that there had been nothing to give cause for concern. But had I missed something? No, I was sure of it. It had all been so ordinary and inconsequential.
I thought he’d just said: ‘Bye, Mum, see you tonight.’ Or something like that. He wasn’t a great talker in the mornings. What teenage boy was?
I couldn’t even remember what I’d said to him. Vaguely I recalled telling him I’d be stopping off on the way home to do some shopping, and then I’d just said ‘goodbye’. Or ‘cheers’ maybe. I said that sometimes.
I shivered. It was a cool morning as well as wet. I was still wearing only my fluffy dressing gown. And I’d never fully warmed up from the unnatural chill I’d experienced during the night. I stepped back into the kitchen. I really should eat and drink something. I needed energy. I needed strength. I toasted a couple of slices of bread and, using our fancy coffee machine, made a double espresso in a bid to wake myself up a bit, to hopefully become just a little more alert.
Then I switched on the TV in order to provide a diversion. It didn’t work.
I waited until nearly midday before I tried to call DS Jarvis again, with exactly the same result. I cursed under my breath. Perhaps I should speak to somebody else. Perhaps I should get dressed and just drive to Exeter, to Heavitree Road.
But that could so easily prove to be a total waste of time and effort. It would be better to be patient for a bit. I’d call again later.
I paced around the house. In spite of my throbbing feet I just couldn’t sit still anywhere. One half of me was drawn to Robbie’s room again. The other half wanted to stay as far away as possible.
The house phone rang and I rushed to it hoping the caller would be Robert, offering an explanation, apologizing for his behaviour, saying he was on his way home. Anything. I could see from the display panel that it wasn’t him. I had no wish to speak to anyone else so I waited for the answering machine to kick in. The caller was the bursar at Kelly. The school wanted to know where Robbie was, and why he hadn’t turned up for his mocks that day.
I didn’t pick up. I couldn’t pick up.
I made more coffee. Just to give myself something to do. On top of my shock and grief I was now just so bewildered and troubled by Robert’s behaviour. It hadn’t occurred to me that he would leave me for anything that morning. I had assumed, once he had made his so welcome middle-of-the-night arrival, that he would just want to cling to me as I’d so wanted to cling to him while we tried to make some sense out of the terrible tragedy which had befallen us.