Burial of Ghosts

Chapter Thirteen

That night I had the Blyth dream again and woke up shaking.

In the morning I went to Delaval. I hadn’t slept well, but I couldn’t put off seeing Thomas. I’d woken to the same obsession, the same drive, to carry out Philip’s instruction. Perhaps I had become so caught up with his commission because it was a way of burying my own demons. I didn’t think the flashbacks would end when I found Thomas. Not consciously. But I felt it was a way of taking control again. Of my own life and my own mind.

It wasn’t until I was sitting on the bus that I realized I didn’t know what I was going to say to the boy. Philip hadn’t given me any clues. We pulled up a bank past a row of grey, terraced cottages. A colliery wheel fixed in concrete surrounded by bedding plants marked the end of a village and an Alsatian dog was cocking its leg against it. What will I tell him, I thought. I’m a friend of your father’s. But by the way, he’s dead.

In the seat across from me sat a very fat woman, so fat that she was ageless. She had huge chins and sagging bosoms and she took up the whole double seat. She was muttering to herself about buying a pair of shoes, telling the whole story of what would happen when she went into the Co-op to choose them. No one took any notice of her. When you see mad people, usually you ignore them, put them out of your mind. But that day in the bus that woman really bugged me. I wanted to yell at her to shut up. I had plans of my own to make which were more important than buying shoes. I didn’t shout, of course, but that’s what I wanted to do.

I still hadn’t decided how I was going to play my meeting with Thomas when I got out of the bus. It was possible that he was well and contented – that, having escaped from his mother and stepfather, these new friends had provided a surrogate family. Perhaps he wouldn’t need my advice or my friendship. I could take him out occasionally for a drink or a meal, like a distant godparent. Stuart Howdon could deal with the rest. But somehow I didn’t believe in the fairy-tale ending, and anyway, wasn’t friendship what I was hoping for? I was confused and miserable. Perhaps my low mood had to do with the weather. A sea fret had come in from the coast, bringing a persistent drizzle. I felt paler, greyer, as if it had washed away my Moroccan tan. In the street everyone walked with their heads bent. It was so dark that I expected streetlights and their absence threw me.

There was something else. Something more worrying. For the last few days I’d thought I was being followed. It’d happened before. It happened just before I lost my temper that time in Blyth. However much I knew really that no one was following me, I couldn’t get the sensation out of my head

Seaton Delaval was once a pit village. The streets are straight and grey; little Tyneside houses or flats with two front doors side by side, one leading upstairs and one down, face onto the narrow pavements. In fine weather young mothers sit on the steps, smoking and chatting. Today Isabella Street was empty except for one figure in a long black coat hurrying to get into a car and out of the rain. Number 16 was a house. The upstairs and downstairs flats had been knocked together. Where the second door had been was now a sheet of plate glass, so I could see inside to a hall and staircase. There was a brown cord carpet on the floor, which was covered in so much muck and dust that it looked as if it hadn’t seen a hoover since it went down. A bike was propped against the wall and there was a mountain of random boots and shoes. I rang the bell. There was no reply. I didn’t try it again. The feeling that I was being watched was making me really jumpy and I fled back down the street the way I’d come. This needed more preparation and I was glad of the delay.

On the roundabout there was a shop run by an Italian family. The place was famous for its ice cream. Jess and I had queued there on Sunday afternoons after a ritual visit to the gardens of a local stately home. Jess had an immense curiosity about the aristocracy. Ray would have disapproved, I’m sure, if he’d known – he was something of a revolutionary on the sly – but I don’t think she’d ever let on. Inside the shop a few tables and chairs had been set out as a café. It was all dark-panelled wood and dusty shelves with jars of boiled sweets, brightly coloured sherbet and liquorice sticks. I sat over a milky coffee and tried to make sense of my position.

Suddenly it occurred to me that Thomas was unlikely to be at home at this time anyway. Wouldn’t he be working at Harry Pool’s? Perhaps Thomas’s student friend would be in on his own. If he could confirm that Thomas was living there, I could report back to Stuart Howdon and leave the friendship thing until I felt better prepared.

This time someone was in. From upstairs came the thud of a bass line, music I didn’t recognize. I pushed the bell and heard it ring faintly above the sound. Still there was no response.

The door of the next house opened and a girl looked out. She was fourteen or fifteen, dressed in black trousers and a white shirt which I took to be school uniform. Beneath the white shirt was the neat dome of a pregnancy. Otherwise she had the figure of a child – very slight and boyish. Her feet were bare and she stood in her own hall and peered round the door at me.

‘They won’t hear,’ she said. ‘They never do.’

‘Are they both in?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Lizzie Bartholomew.’ This time I didn’t show my pass.

‘From the social?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’

‘What, then?’

I only hesitated for a second. ‘Housing officer from the university. I have to check it’s a reasonable place for students to live.’

I know. Unlikely. But the girl bought it anyway. Or she was looking for an excuse not to go straight back to school. ‘Course it is. They’ve done it all out. It’s better than the other houses in the street. Better than in here.’ Her voice was wistful.

‘All the same…’

‘I don’t know who’s in,’ she said. ‘I’ve just come back from the doctor’s. I got caught short on the way back to school. You never stop pissing, do you, when you’re pregnant?’

I banged on the door again to show I was serious about getting in.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There’s a key. I’ll show you.’ She slipped her feet into black boat-like shoes with big square heels and joined me on the pavement. On the front sill of number 16 was a wooden window-box. There were three clay pots inside. The plants were dead; the student obviously wasn’t into gardening. The girl took one of the pots, knocked out the plant and inside there was a key. She tipped it into her hand, wiped the earth from it on her trousers and gave it to me. I expected her to go home then, or to make her way back to school, but she stood beside me, curious, proprietorial.

‘Go on, then,’ she said.

But when I put in the key it wouldn’t turn. I pressed the handle and the door opened. It was already unlocked.

‘They’re daft, those two,’ the girl said. ‘I’ve told them they should be careful. They’ll get burgled. They’ve got no idea what it’s like round here.’

She pushed ahead of me and charged up the stairs. I shut the door behind me. The music was louder inside. Much, much louder. And weirder, pierced by a sudden shrill high tone. Then the music stopped and the piercing screech continued. It was the girl wailing. The noise came from somewhere in the back of her throat. That was what made it so high-pitched. It must really have hurt her to make it. And even when I was standing right behind her she wouldn’t stop.

She stood in the doorway of a bedroom. I pushed her out of the way and suddenly I’d walked into my own nightmare. It was like reality and flashback had collided with the violence of a nuclear explosion. The result was blood. It was everywhere. Glossy and very red against the monochrome decoration, spreading out from the grey figure curled on the floor.

But where was the knife? In my dream there was always a knife. I scanned the scene but I couldn’t see it. It certainly wasn’t centre-stage, where I’d expected. Then the girl’s screaming got to me. I took her by the shoulders and shook her, forgetting about the baby she was carrying, just wanting the noise to stop. It was like a drill inside my head. It was hurting me, like all that red was hurting my eyes. There was silence. She turned and stared at me, her mouth still open. I touched her shoulders again, this time an apology, a clumsy attempt to comfort.

‘Is there a phone in your house?’ I demanded.

She nodded, still unable to speak.

‘Phone the police. Not from here. From your house. Can you do that?’

She nodded again.

She was halfway down the stairs when I called after her. ‘Who is it? Which one is it?’

Her voice was a croaky whisper, as if she’d regained her powers of speech at last after a lifetime’s silence. ‘Tommy Mariner.’

Of course, I’d known all along that it was Thomas. It was as if I’d been expecting it. As if I’d seen it before in a vision. Since I’d stabbed that boy in Blyth, I’d been waiting for it to happen again.

I began to sob. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘So, so sorry.’ I wasn’t talking to Thomas but to Philip.