She drives away into England, fighting back these initial feelings of disappointment. She is nervous of the twitchy handling of the small car, a Ford Escort, uncomfortable too with the impatient speed with which the rest of the traffic moves, and the erratic and apparently illogical way the intersections have to be negotiated.
As she becomes more familiar with the car, she casts quick glances away from the traffic and round at the countryside, looking with intense interest at the low hills, the winter~ bare trees, the small houses and the muddy fields. This is her first trip back to England since she left as a child, and in spite of everything it begins at last to charm her.
She imagines a smaller, older, more tightly constructed place, different from the one she knows, spreading out, not in endless stretches of featureless country, as in the US, but in concentrated time: history reaching behind her, the future extending before her, meeting at this moment of the present. She's tired from the long flight, the lack of sleep, the wait at the UK Immigration desk, and so she's open to fanciful thoughts.
She stops in a small town somewhere, to walk around and look at the shops, but afterwards returns to the car and naps for a while in the cramped position behind the steering wheel. She wakes up suddenly, momentarily unsure of where she is, thinking desperately of Andy, how much she wishes he could see this with her. She came here to try to forget him, but in many ways she had been doing better so long as she stayed at home. She wants him here. She cries in the car, wondering whether to go back to Gatwick and take the first flight home, but in the end she knows she has to see this through.
The short afternoon is ending as she drives on south towards the Sussex coast, looking for a small seaside town called Bulverton. She keeps thinking, This is England, this is where 1 come from, this is what 1 really know. But she has no remaining family in Britain, no friends. She is in every way a stranger here. A year ago, eight months ago, what was for her a lifetime ago, she had never even heard of Bulverton on Sea.
Teresa arrives in Bulverton after night has fallen. The streets are narrow, the buildings are dark, the traffic pours through on the coastal road. She finds her hotel but sits outside in the car for a few minutes, bracing herself At last, she collects together some of her stuff and climbs out.
A brilliant white light suddenly surrounds her.
CHAPTER 2
a
Her name was Amy Colwyn and she had a story to tell about what had happened to her one day last June. Like so many other people in Bulverton, she had no one to tell it to. No one around her could bear to hear it any more, and even Amy herself no longer wanted to say the words. How many times can you express grief, guilt, missed companionship, regrets, remembered love, lost chances? But failing to say the words did nothing to make them not thought.
Tonight, as so often, she sat alone behind the bar at the White Dragon with nothing much to distract her, and the story played maddeningly in her mind. lt was always there, like music you can't get out of your mind.
'I'll be in the bar if you want me,' Nick Surtees had said to her earlier. He was the owner of the hotel, someone else perhaps with a story to tell.
'All right,' she said, because every evening he told her he was going into the bar, and every evening she replied that it would be all right.
'Are we expecting any visitors tonight?'
'I don't think so. Someone might turn up, 1 suppose.'
'I'll leave that to you, then. If no one checks in, would you mind coming in and helping out behind the bar?'
'No, Nick.'
Amy Colwyn was one of the many leftover victims of the massacre that had taken place in Bulverton the previous summer. She had not been in physical danger herself, but her life had been blighted none the less by the event. The horror of that day lived on. Business at the hotel was usually slow, allowing her too much time to dwell on what had happened to others, and what might have been her life now if the disaster had not happened.
Nick Surtees, another indirect victim of the shootings, was one of the matters of regret on which she frequently dwelt. There had been a time, not so long ago, when it would never have occurred to her that she would see Nick again, let alone be working, living and sleeping with him. Yet that had happened and they were all still happening, and she wasn't entirely sure how. Nick and she had found comfort in each other, and were still there holding on when that need had begun to retreat.
Bulverton was situated on the hilly edge of the Pevensey Levels between Bexhill and Eastbourne. Fifty years ago it had been a holiday resort, the type of seaside town traditionally preferred by families with young children. With the conning of cheap foreign holidays Bulverton had gone into rapid decline as a resort; most of the seafront hotels had been converted into blocks of flats or retirement homes. For the last two decades Bulverton had in a manner of speaking turned its back on the sea, and had concentrated on promoting the charms of its Old Town. This was a small network of attractive terraces and gardens, covering part of the river valley and one of the hills rising up beside it. If Bulverton could be said to have an industry now, it was in the shops that sold antiques or secondhand books, in a number of nursing homes in the high part of the town known as the Ridge, and in providing homes for the people who commuted to their jobs in Brighton, Eastbourne or Tunbridge Wells.
lt was because of Nick that the White Dragon could not seem to make up its mind whether to be a pub or a seaside hotel. Keeping it as a pub suited him, because he spent most evenings in the saloon bar downstairs, drinking with a few of his pals.
The marginally more profitable hotel side, the bed and breakfast and the occasional halfboard for a weekend, was Amy's domain, mainly through Nick's own lack of interest. in the days and weeks immediately after the shootings, when Bulverton was crammed with journalists and film crews, the hotel had been full. The work had offered itself as a welcome distraction from her own preoccupations, and she had thrown herself into it. Business had inevitably declined as the first shock of the catastrophe began to fade, and media interest receded; by the middle of July it was back to what Amy now knew was its normal level. So long as there were never too many people arriving at the same time, Amy, working alone, could comfortably keep the rooms clean and have the beds made up, provision the tiny restaurant with a reasonable choice of meals, and even keep the financial records up to date.
None of these jobs interested Nick.
Amy often thought back to the times when she and some of her old schoolfriends would move across to Eastbourne every summer, from July to September, when there were always two or three major conferences taking place: trade unions, political parties, business or professional organizations. lt had never been hard finding shortterm but comparatively well paid Jobs: chambermaids and bar staff were always needed in the big hotels. It had been a laugh as well, lots of young men on the loose, all with money to bum and no one taking too much notice of what was going on. She had met Jase then, also working the conference business, but as a wine waiter. That had been another laugh, because Jase, who was a roofer in real life, knew less about wine than did even Amy.