Harbour Street

Chapter Nineteen

Kate was waiting for George Enderby to arrive. She wanted to book him in quickly because Stuart would be here soon. She was already excited, listening for the sound of Stuart’s key in the door. They had plans. The Metro into Newcastle for an afternoon of culture – a new exhibition at the Baltic on the river and a stroll round the Laing Art Gallery. Then dinner. Stuart had a mate from the Ramblers’ Association who’d opened a restaurant near the cathedral. ‘Nothing pretentious,’ Stuart had said. ‘But decent enough, and he could do with the support. You know.’ Stuart didn’t have many mates, but he was loyal to them. She liked that. She thought he’d be loyal to her.

And afterwards they had tickets for a concert in the small hall of the Sage. A Danish poet and a musician from the Faroes. ‘It’ll probably be awful,’ Stuart had said, ‘but if we don’t go we might miss something important.’ He was full of surprises. She’d never have thought he would go for something so experimental. It seemed to Kate that her world had shrunk with her marriage to Robbie and it was as if she was being given a second chance to explore it. They’d get the last Metro home and Stuart would stay over. She was daydreaming about that too. Since Rob had died all she’d had were daydreams; now there was flesh and skin, touch and taste. Some days it seemed that thoughts about sex swamped her brain, leaving room for nothing else. Maybe that was why she’d become such a crap parent and why she felt so little grief at Margaret’s murder. Had her infatuation for Stuart left her heartless and cold?

In the past there would have been no problem about leaving the guest house. Kate would have asked Margaret to let George in and show him to his room. Margaret would have made his tea and left it in the lounge, just as he liked it. She’d have kept an eye out for the kids too. Today Ryan was out and probably wouldn’t get back before Kate and Stuart. She never knew where he was. Sometimes he just wandered around the neighbourhood, marking the boundaries of his world. Even as a small child, if anything had upset him he’d walk miles, backwards and forwards from Margaret’s flat at the top of the house to the basement. Chloe was at the kitchen table, her nose to the laptop and the pile of books higher than ever. But she had her phone on the table next to her and Kate saw her attention stray to it occasionally, as if she was willing it to ring. She knew what that was like.

‘It’s the start of the holidays,’ Kate had said, trying to keep her voice light. Stuart never said anything, but she could tell that he thought she nagged the kids too much: Chloe for working too hard and Ryan for not doing enough. ‘Give yourself a break!’

But there was some competition apparently, run by a national science magazine, and Chloe thought it would look good on her CV if she won. So that was her project for the holiday. When she had a project she thought of nothing else. Except, apparently, the call she was waiting for, as her eyes moved again to her phone. They looked dark and bruised and Kate thought she’d been up all night brooding. About the project or about some lad? Kate wasn’t sure which would worry her most.

The doorbell rang and George Enderby was standing there with his wheelie suitcase full of books.

‘Me again. The proverbial bad penny.’ He gave her a hug and kissed both cheeks as he always did. Then he stood back to look at her. ‘You’re looking very smart. Going anywhere nice?’ She blushed and, though there was no hint of reproof in his words, she felt guilty. Should she be going out enjoying herself when Margaret was so recently dead?

‘Just into Newcastle with Stuart.’

‘Well, good for you! Don’t worry. I can see myself up to my room.’ He seemed tired too. His overcoat was crumpled and the jollity in his voice was rather forced. She supposed that perhaps he hadn’t received many orders for the novels he loved.

‘I’ll put some tea in the lounge,’ she said. ‘Though the biscuits aren’t up to Margaret’s standard, I’m afraid.’

They smiled sadly at each other. ‘I’m sure they’ll be delicious,’ George said. He began to take off his gloves and added, as if it were an afterthought: ‘Any news about that? Have they caught the killer?’

She was already on her way to the kitchen and turned back to answer. ‘I haven’t heard anything. There seem to be police in the town whenever I go out. They’re knocking on all the doors and asking questions.’

And as if in response to his query there was the noise of sirens in the street and they looked at each other, sharing a frisson of anxiety.

Stuart was late, so she was starting to panic, to wonder if she should call him. He was usually obsessively punctual and she was the one who made him wait. And now, with Margaret’s killing, she thought that he would make an effort to be on time because he’d know that she would worry. Then he was there. He had let himself in, and she heard his footsteps coming down the stairs to the basement. He was so tall that it seemed minutes after seeing his feet before his head appeared. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, very old and beaten-up, and jeans. It was what he always wore when they went out to town. A scarf was his only concession to the weather. Nearly sixty, but he looked good. Cool.

‘Sorry!’ His hands turned up in a gesture of contrition. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in Mardle this afternoon. The traffic’s a nightmare.’

Then he put his arm around her, very easy and natural, and she wanted to reach out and touch his face because she thought he was so beautiful, felt the pull of wanting him in her guts. If they’d had the house to themselves she’d have suggested staying here instead of going into town.

‘Hi, Chlo? Everything okay?’ He’d already pulled away from Kate and had his hand lightly on Chloe’s shoulder, looking down at her work.

‘Yeah, well, you know.’ Chloe stretched. ‘I don’t know how much detail they want. What do you think?’

He sat down beside her and leaned in to give his full attention to the laptop, and Kate felt jealousy, bright and sharp like the prick of a needle. She never talks to me like that. Does she think that I’m too stupid to understand? And, immediately afterwards: Does he find my daughter more attractive than me?

She left them chatting and went to see George, who was lingering over his tea. ‘Are you okay?’ She thought he looked ill, still wrapped up in his overcoat. She bent and turned up the fire.

He turned on his performer’s smile, the one he must use to charm publishers and booksellers. ‘You’re so kind to me, Kate. This is like a second home. You do know that?’ He smiled wistfully and she thought he was regretting the old days before Stuart had come into her life, when she would sit and drink with him all evening and listen to him talking about his magnificent wife.

Newcastle was full of people and friendly. They walked arm-in-arm between the art galleries, crossing the Tyne by the Blinking Eye Bridge. Then on to the restaurant. Kate could smell the leather of Stuart’s jacket and the city, sweet and enticing, all around her. Mardle only smelled of salt and fish and seaweed, and there was no adventure in that. The restaurant was tiny and cramped and they sat in the window, looking out onto a steep cobbled street. Stuart joked with his friend, the owner, about the background music and ordered a bottle of wine. Then he took her hand across the table. The candle threw odd shadows across his face and for a moment she felt that she was sitting with a stranger. There was a heady excitement in that too.

‘I’m so sorry about Margaret,’ he said. ‘I know you were close.’

She was disappointed. She’d hoped for something more romantic. At least a declaration that he was as obsessed with her as she was with him. She was sick of talking about Margaret, sick of the drop in her stomach every time the realization hit her again. She just wanted to forget about it. Move on.

‘It was dreadful,’ she said. Kate didn’t quite know how to explain out loud how she felt. ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but in a sense I have more options now. I can think of selling the house, for example. I know we’ve talked about it before, but really it would have been impossible when Margaret was still alive.’

‘A new start,’ he said. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, playing with the words, turning them into a riff.

‘Yeah.’ She found that she was grinning.

‘I could take early retirement,’ he said. ‘I’ve been teaching for long enough.’ He poured more wine. His face was flushed.

‘What would you do?’ She couldn’t imagine him as a pensioner, weekly walks in the hills, watching television in the afternoons, though the thought of him being free during the day when the kids were out of the house excited her again.

‘I’d manage your career – properly, not just the odd gig, like at the moment,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘We’d get you writing again. Performing. If you sold the Harbour Street house we could get somewhere smaller in town – a new start for the kids too, a better school. See if we can persuade Ryan to stay on for A levels.’

She thought that he’d been thinking of this for a while. ‘Are you saying that we should move in together straight away?’

‘If we can find the right place, why not? We’d get something decent if I sold my flat too. A new start.’ Repeating the words again. He’d never talked about moving into Harbour Street with her, though she’d dropped plenty of hints. It was as if the building itself – so public when it was filled with guests – put him off.

‘I’d love that,’ she said. ‘Really.’

‘Then I’ll give the head my notice tomorrow. He’ll need a full term.’ And so, it seemed, the decision was made.

He went to the counter to pay his friend and there seemed to be a flurry of anxiety for a moment. She wondered if he’d forgotten his cash or his credit card, but when she asked him he said it was nothing. A photo that he kept in his wallet seemed to have gone missing. She hoped he’d kept a photo of her, though she couldn’t remember him taking one. She didn’t like to mention it again because he seemed so put out to have lost it, and by then they were out in the street and on their way to the Sage.

When they returned from Newcastle, George must have gone to bed because the lounge was empty, the curtains drawn against the dark. Kate was buzzing. The concert had been so awful that it had been funny and the audience had shared the experience like a joke. In the end it was as if they’d all been present at a really special gig, with the small hall at the Sage warm and intimate, and they’d all wandered out talking and laughing about it like old friends. The last Metro home was full of partying drunks, but everyone was good-natured. A policeman got on at Haymarket and stayed on the train; someone said that had happened every night since the murder. They’d got the seat right at the front, so the lights of the approaching stations rushed at them and Kate felt as if it was a fairground ride, as if she was about ten years old.

Both kids were home when they arrived back. Ryan hadn’t long got in; it was raining and his jacket, thrown over the banister at the bottom of the stairs, was wet. Kate and Stuart had had a couple of drinks in the interval to keep them going through the second half of the gig and Kate was still not entirely sober. She felt very happy, in a tipsy, emotional way. Both her children were safe at home and she had this wonderful new man and her future seemed exciting.

The kids were in the basement sitting room in front of the television.

‘There’s been another murder,’ Ryan said as soon as they were in the room. ‘They were talking about it in the Coble.’

For a moment she didn’t take in what he’d said. She knew he went into the Coble occasionally, but she didn’t like it. Stuart had once said in his dry, practical way: ‘Boys that age are going to drink anyway. Better that they do it in the pub where there are other adults around.’ Her worry, which she’d never discussed with Stuart, was about where Ryan got the money from for drink. She gave him an allowance, but would that run to pub prices? She knew Malcolm Kerr paid him, but Ryan always seemed to have cash. Deep down she was anxious that he’d started thieving. It was as if she had a stranger in the house. She remembered the small, affectionate boy who’d held her hand when they walked to the park, but this stylish young man bore no resemblance.

Then the shock of another killing hit her and her concern about Ryan seemed petty.

‘What did you say?’

Ryan seemed sober, but hyper, and he repeated the words with a kind of repressed excitement that made her feel ill.

Stuart seemed not to notice the boy’s reaction. ‘Do you know who the victim was?’

‘Some woman,’ Ryan said. ‘She drinks in the Coble and lives in Percy Street. Dee Robson they call her.’

Kate recognized the name and remembered that Margaret had talked about her. One of her waifs. Dee needs someone to look after her, and all they can do is call her names.

‘We’re waiting for the late local news.’ Chloe was wearing the same black knitted jumper as she’d had on for school; it was too big for her, and she seemed to disappear inside it. She was drinking a mug of tea.

There was a strained silence. Kate was quite sober now, but she couldn’t find anything appropriate to say.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Stuart said at last. ‘Anyone else want a brew?’

But nobody answered because the local news came on the television and there were the flats in Percy Street, with blue-and-white police tape stretched around the lamp posts, and scientists in white suits and masks making their way to the door. Even Stuart paused on his way to the kitchen to watch.