Nightfall

22

Nightingale spent most of Saturday asleep. He woke up at six o’clock that evening, cooked himself eggs and bacon and made himself a coffee, then watched Sky News as he ate. A large computer company had sacked two thousand workers, two high-street retailers had gone into receivership, and unemployment was heading towards three million. The pound was continuing to slump, the stock market was in the doldrums, and the tame economist that Sky had wheeled out said things would get worse before they improved.

When he’d finished eating he sat with his feet on the coffee-table, flicking through a hundred or so cable channels, unable to find anything that held his attention. He switched off the television and stared at the sideboard. A dozen photographs in various-sized frames stood on it. There was his graduation picture, in which he was wearing a robe and mortar board, his passing-out at Hendon Police College, a photograph of Robbie and Anna Hoyle on their wedding day and, to the right in a small group, three of his parents. He stared at the family portraits. The middle one was a wedding photograph, his mother in white holding a spray of flowers, his father in a grey suit, his arm around her waist. He was thirty-two when he married, and Nightingale’s mother had just turned twenty-five. She was pretty, with curly black hair and green eyes, which suggested Irish ancestry, and a sprinkling of freckles across her upturned nose. She was smiling at her husband in the same way that Nightingale had seen her look at him throughout his childhood. There had never been any doubt that she had loved him with all her heart. The photograph to the right of that one was smaller, in a silver frame. It was the first picture of Nightingale as a baby, wrapped in a soft white blanket, his cheeks red and his eyes closed, clasped by his mother who was held by his father, both gazing down at him with love and pride.

It was, Nightingale now realised, the start of the lie. He wasn’t their child: he had been given to them. On the day that photograph had been taken, they had been strangers with no connection to him, no family link, no DNA, just a man and a woman who had been given a baby. The child they were holding could have been anybody’s. Everything that had happened to Nightingale after that day, everything he had become, was based on a lie.

The third photograph had been taken outside Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium. Nightingale was just twelve, flanked by his father and uncle, all three sporting red-and-white scarves. They were on their way to take their places in the stands. It was a few years before the stadium had been made all-seating and Nightingale’s father had always preferred to watch his football on his feet. A fellow supporter had taken the photograph with a camera that Nightingale’s father had given him the previous Christmas.

Nightingale stared at it. His uncle must have known. Good old Uncle Tommy. Laughing, joking Uncle Tommy, who always turned up with a present, a card and a bear-hug every birthday and Christmas, and had slipped him an envelope containing a thousand pounds the day Nightingale had headed off to university. Good old Uncle Tommy, who must have known about the lie right from the start. And Auntie Linda. They must have known because they’d have seen that his mother hadn’t been pregnant and that Nightingale had appeared from nowhere – and they had never let on, not even at the funeral. They had both been there, of course, standing either side of Nightingale as the two coffins were lowered into the ground. And neither of them had ever said anything about him being adopted, not then and not since.

He stared at the photograph of the three football fans. A father, his son, and the uncle. Except that Jack Nightingale wasn’t Bill Nightingale’s son and Tommy wasn’t his uncle. Until Nightingale found out the truth, he would never be able to look at them in the same way again.