I thought again about a derrickman called Rob Anderton. A derrickman working on Jocelyn the day my son died. On the same rig as my husband, Robert or Rob Anderson. I had tried to put it out of my mind without success. I didn’t know how many people Amaco employed. I didn’t know how big or small the coincidence was. But it continued to bother me.
On an impulse I dialled the direct line I now had for Amaco’s human resources department. Rather to my relief a different, female, voice responded.
‘I’m trying to get hold of my brother, Rob Anderton,’ I said, surprised by the ease with which the lie rolled off my tongue. ‘It’s a family emergency. His wife called me late last night and left a garbled message about some sort of tragedy, and now I can’t get an answer from either of their phones. Rob was working on Jocelyn. I don’t know if he’s still there. Or if... or if he’s hurt or something...’
‘Just let me check,’ said the voice.
There was silence. I was just beginning to wonder if I’d been cut off when the voice returned.
‘Could I ask who I’m speaking to?’
‘I told you. I’m Rob’s sister. Marion Jackson.’
I used my maiden name.
‘Well, I can tell you your brother is no longer on Jocelyn, Mrs Jackson. He was transported back to the mainland last night.’
‘But is he all right? What’s happened?’
‘Look, Mrs Jackson, we’re not supposed to give out information like that over the phone. I know you’re a relative but—’
I interrupted. ‘Please help me if you can. I’m about to get in my car and drive to Rob’s home. It’s all I can think of. But neither he nor his wife are answering their phones and I don’t even know if he’s back there. I mean, has Rob been taken to a hospital? Is he still in Scotland?’
There was another pause.
‘I can tell you that your brother is fine,’ said the voice, sounding, I felt, more than a little awkward and uneasy.
‘Then it’s his son, Robbie. I thought that could be it. Only my sister-in-law didn’t actually say what had happened. Is Robbie hurt? Is he... he’s not, not dead? Is that it?’
I tried to make myself sound as hysterical as possible, which wasn’t difficult.
The voice on the other end was being very calm.
‘Mrs Jackson, it’s your family that you should be speaking to, not me.’
‘But, I’ve told you. I can’t get through to them. Look, please help me. It is Robbie, isn’t it? Something terrible has happened to Robbie. Hasn’t it?’
There was an even longer pause.
‘Well, yes,’ said the voice eventually. ‘Something has happened to Robbie, I’m afraid. But you must get the details from your family, I can’t possibly—’
I hung up, cutting her off in mid-sentence.
She had told me all I needed to know.
Five
In spite of everything I could not wait for Robert to return. I hadn’t quite worked out what I was going to do or say. I just wanted him with me. I needed him more than ever and I loved him to bits. And I knew he loved me. Surely he did. There had to be some simple explanation for what I had discovered. There had to be.
However, that was my heart speaking. My head reminded me that, following the death of our beautiful boy, I had uncovered a dreadful secret about my husband. I still didn’t know quite what it was, but I knew I was already afraid of it.
And yet I had to find out.
I sat in the sitting room for a few minutes trying to make some sense, any kind of sense, of the telephone conversation I’d just had. Then I went upstairs, showered as best I could after wrapping my burned feet in plastic bags sealed around my ankles with Sellotape, and dressed in jeans and a warm cashmere sweater. The big old house felt cold again. The oil-fired central heating never really did the job, not when it was cold and wet anyway, without being supplemented by the Aga which somehow radiated heat throughout the place. And that day, that terrible day, I had been responsible for allowing the range to go right out. More wood needed to be brought in from the shed outside and I’d had neither energy nor inclination to do so. That day it had not been Robbie’s fault. It would never be his fault again. How I longed to be able to chastise him for it. Just one more time.
My head was full of desperate questions. I couldn’t believe that Robert had left me alone to face this first day without our boy. It just wasn’t like him. Not like the man I had thought I’d known anyway.
My imagination ran riot as I considered what he might be doing. Whatever could it be that was important enough for him to have left me alone? Even when he had behaved so aggressively towards me that morning, and perhaps half because of that, I’d realized that he had not wanted to leave me. But for some reason he had been unable to stay.
Therefore, in spite of myself, I still longed for him to return.
I spent most of the rest of the afternoon watching out for his return, sitting, with Florrie at my feet, on the wide sill of the landing window which provided a more or less uninterrupted view of our lane. The weather cleared after a bit, the change as swiftly dramatic as it so often is on Dartmoor. I watched the warm orange glow form over the yard as the sun began to sink in the sky behind Highrise. This was not the finest vista the old house provided, offering only a glimpse of moorland over the roofs of the little cluster of outbuildings across the yard, but I was struck possibly more than ever before by the beauty of the place. It brought a lump to my throat, and made the memories all the more poignant.
I waited in an almost trance-like state, barely aware of the passage of time. Darkness had fallen before I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching down the lane. I was jolted into some sort of awareness. I checked my watch. It was nearly seven o’clock.
The automatic security lights flashed on in the yard, and I recognized the approaching vehicle to be the rental car Robert had arrived in during the night. It was him then. And he still had the rental car. He had not even managed to return it in spite of having insisted that he must do so. I wondered yet again exactly what he had been doing all day. It was almost as important for me to know that as to learn the truth about the Rob Anderton scenario. This had been a crazy, muddling day, and remained so.
I stood up and stepped back from the window. I didn’t want Robert to know I had been watching there, waiting for him. I turned and ran, as fast as my injured feet would allow, downstairs to the kitchen, with Florrie at my heel, and closed the door behind me. I would wait for him there in silence. I wanted him to wonder if I was in the house, or what might have happened to me, just as I had wondered about Robbie, with so little apparent cause, when I’d returned from school yesterday.
Was it really only yesterday? My throat was tight and I felt as if I had to fight to get air into my body.
I sat down at the table and tried to control my breathing which had taken the form of short sharp gasps. And my thinking. Again I told myself how important it was that I kept a clear head.
I had deliberately placed myself with my back to the door from the hall, and I hadn’t switched on the lights. I did not want Robert to be able to see my face. Not at first anyway.
I’d been so angry when he left me that morning. Even angrier when I had made my revelatory call to Amaco. Since then I’d descended into a state of sheer misery. I was distraught, and I was totally confused.
This would not do. It would not do at all. But I could feel the world Robert and I had so meticulously built for our little family, the world that now seemed to have always been so fragile, disintegrating around me. Indeed, with the death of our son it had more or less disintegrated already.
I slumped in my chair, still fighting to contain my emotions.