Say You're sorry

17

It’s still early when I arrive at Ruiz’s house in Fulham. Mist hangs over the Thames, blurring naked trees on the distant bank. Rowers appear from the shroud, pulling into view with choreographed strokes like a ballet on water.

Ruiz answers the door in a short bathrobe, bare legs and Ugg boots.

I look at his feet. “You’re wearing dead sheep.”

“How observant of you. No wonder you’re a psychologist. They were a gift from Miranda. They’re so ugly I’ve grown fond of them.” He wiggles his toes. “I’m thinking of giving them names: Lambchop and Shaun.”

His arms fold around me in a proper hug. Not many British men can hug, but Ruiz makes it feel as easy as a handshake. I follow him down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Do you want to put some trousers on?”

“No.”

“Charlie?”

“Still asleep.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She puked her little heart out about 3:00 a.m. I gave her an aspirin and put her back to bed.”

Ruiz fills a teapot and covers it with a knitted cozy. Sits opposite. Pours. Milk. Sugar. Even dressed in a bathrobe he can look intimidating, yet there is a gentle stillness about him that I’ve always admired, a quiet dignity. He doesn’t offer unsolicited advice. His two children are grown up. One of them is married. Guidance might be reassuring, but it’s rarely helpful.

“So how are you doing?”

“Good.”

“Seeing anyone?”

“No.”

“How’s Julianne?”

“She’s being reasonable and polite. I wish she’d get angry.”

“Not everyone is like you.”

“You think I’m angry?”

“I think you’re furious. I think you wake up in the morning and if you’re not angry you hold a mirror over your mouth to see if you’re still breathing.”

Not rising to the bait, I try to change the subject. I don’t want to talk about Julianne. Instead, I start telling him about Oxford and the Bingham Girls.

He remembers the case. That’s one of the remarkable things about Ruiz-his memory. For him there has never been such a thing as forgetting. Nothing grows hazy or vague over time, fraying at the edges. Some people think photographically or chronologically, but Ruiz connects details like a spider weaving a web, threading one strand to the next. That’s why he can reach back and pluck details out of the air from criminal cases that are five, ten, fifteen years old.

“Natasha McBain’s body was found four days ago in a frozen lake.”

“How long had it been there?”

“Thirty-six hours.”

Ruiz whistles through his teeth. “So she’s been alive all this time. Any idea where?”

“No.”

“How did you get involved?”

“They want me to review the original investigation.”

“And you said no.”

“Correct.”

“But you’re doing it anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Why you?”

“I’m an outsider.”

“Which would normally count against you.”

“The chief constable is concerned about the fall-out. He wants to avoid allegations of a cover-up. It’s not a witch hunt.”

“Not yet,” says Ruiz, swallowing half a mug of tea and pouring himself another. “I remember they suspected a school caretaker and they also looked at Natasha’s old man. Isaac McBain served five years for armed robbery. He got mixed up with a couple of gangster-wannabes called the Connolly brothers who knocked over a payroll in London. When it all went pear-shaped, McBain copped a plea and grassed up the Connolly brothers for a lesser sentence. After the girls went missing, the police thought the brothers might have orchestrated the kidnapping as payback.”

“What happened?”

“They were interviewed; denied everything. Then the abduction theory ran out of steam.”

“What changed?”

“There was a third girl,” he says. “Emily Martinez.”

“The best friend.”

“She told police that Natasha and Piper were planning to run away. I guess everyone expected the girls to turn up once they’d run out of money or had a falling out, but it never happened.”

“And the investigation?”

“The Hadley family kept up the pressure. You must have seen the mother on TV. She can’t pass a camera without making a speech. She’s a good-looking woman, if you’re into hard-bodied, gym rat chic.”

“Not your sort of thing?”

“I like a woman with something to hold on to.”

“Handles?”

“Curves.”

Ruiz clamps his hands on the edge of the table and presses down hard, rising to his feet. He puts two slices of bread in the toaster.

“The chief constable says he knows you,” I tell him. “Thomas Fryer.”

“Ah, yes, Fryer. I once punched him on a rugby field. He got up again, to his credit.”

“He says if I need help he’ll put you on the payroll as a consultant; a thousand pounds a day.”

“He thinks I can be bought.”

“I’d appreciate your help.”

“The trail has been cold for three years.”

“Look upon it as a challenge.”

His lips separate. It might be a grimace. He could be smiling. I cannot tell the difference. Retirement has never sat easily with Ruiz. He’s like an old racehorse put out to pasture: when other horses run, he wants to run too.

Behind him I glimpse Charlie clinging to the door jamb, ghostly pale. Heavy lidded. She’s wearing one of Ruiz’s old shirts.

“If you’re going to puke, Princess, please don’t do it on my floor,” he says.

She scowls at him and slumps at the table, putting her head in her hands.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Like crap.”

Ruiz begins opening cupboard doors, looking for a jar of jam. His bathrobe is too short. Charlie gets a glimpse of buttocks.

“Now I am going to be sick.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” says Ruiz, tugging it lower.

Charlie blinks at me and sighs. “OK, get it over with: the lecture. Tell me, ‘I told you so’ and ‘What were you thinking, Charlie?’ and ‘We raised you better than this, Charlie’ and ‘You’re grounded until you’re eighteen.’ ”

“Twenty-eight,” says Ruiz, who’s enjoying this.

Charlie shoots him a look.

“Just don’t give me the silent treatment. Mum does that. She looks at me with her big sad eyes like I’ve just drowned a sack of kittens.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. I screwed up, OK? I lied. I broke the rules. I didn’t listen…”

“And?”

“I’m never drinking again.”

Ruiz pours her a glass of orange juice. Charlie takes a sip and hiccups. “And anyway-it’s not all my fault. If you hadn’t been so unreasonable-never letting me do stuff.”

“You’re fifteen.”

“Almost sixteen.”

“Too young to be in London on your own.”

“You want to keep me locked up like some princess in a tower.”

“When have I locked you up?”

“I’m speaking figuratively.”

Ruiz laughs. “Figuratively speaking, you don’t look much like a princess. Unless you mean Princess Fiona-you’re the same shade of green.”

“Fuck off.”

“Spoken like a true princess.”

I tell her to mind her tongue. Charlie sulks for a moment and then stands, putting her arms around Ruiz’s waist.

“Thank you.”

“What for?” he asks.

“Coming to get me.” She turns to me. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

“I know.”

“How long before you think I’ve learned my lesson?”

“Some time shy of the next decade.”

Mid-morning I drive her back to Wellow. She sleeps most of the way with the nape of her neck against the back of the seat. I glance at her occasionally, studying her face. Her nose has a bump on the bridge and a smattering of freckles.

Watching her brow furrow and her lips part slightly, I wonder how much her behavior now is due to what she’s suffered in the past-the kidnapping and imprisonment. Gideon Tyler stole a part of her childhood-I can’t say how much-when he knocked her off her pushbike and bundled her into his car.

Psyches are harder to bandage than flesh. For all my training and experience, I don’t repair damaged minds. The best I can hope for is to help people cope.

Just outside of Bath, we stop for lunch. The pub has an open fire, fake rafters and smoked yellow walls, decorated with horse brasses and fox-hunting prints. The publican is a big slow man, polishing a pint glass, who frowns vacantly as though trying to remember something important.

Our meals arrive-cottage pie and a Ploughman’s. Charlie sips a soft drink.

“Are you ever going to get married again?” she asks, out of the blue.

“I’m already married.”

“She’s not going to take you back, Dad.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“But you could… if you wanted. That woman likes you.”

“What woman?”

“The one you had lunch with. She was flirting.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“Of course she was. Women can tell.”

“You mean you? ”

“Yes, Dad, I’m a woman and I could tell.” She pops a chip into her mouth. “If you do get remarried, I won’t be a bridesmaid.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not wearing some lame burnt-orange dress that makes me look like a lampshade.”

“Understood.”

The cottage is near the end of a narrow lane that leads to a bridge over Wellow River. It’s barely a bridge and barely a river. Julianne is waiting at the door. Her hair is pinned up and she’s wearing old jeans and a sweater, but still looks like she could be starring in a TV commercial for multi-vitamins or shampoo.

Charlie accepts her hug and glances back at me, blinking through a veil of hair that has fallen over her eyes. There’s something knowing in her look-a shared secret.

Separating, she disappears inside, climbing the stairs to her bedroom. Julianne watches her go. Relieved. Anxious.

I’m expecting her to be angry, to slam the door on me, but instead Julianne opens her arms and hugs me.

“She messed up.”

“Yes.”

“What should we do?”

“Nothing. She made a mistake. We’ve all done that. The important thing is that she doesn’t give up. We want her to wake up tomorrow and shoot for another perfect day.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Not easy.”

Julianne asks if I want a cup of tea. Normally, I’d jump at the chance to spend twenty minutes in her company, surrounded by the familiar.

“I have to get back.”

“To London?”

“Oxford.”

I can’t tell her about Natasha McBain. She’ll know soon enough. Then she’ll put two and two together and realize that I’m helping the police again and look at me the way she always does, like my personal star is shining a little less brightly than before.

She kisses my left cheek and her lips brush against mine as she moves to my right cheek.

“Thank you for bringing her home.”

Charlie unlatches the window upstairs and pushes it outwards, leaning half her body through the opening.

“There’s a story on the TV about that guy.”

“What guy?”

“The one you talked to in Oxford-Augie Shaw.”

“What about him?”

“He tried to hang himself.”

I have this counting game.

I start counting backwards from a hundred and tell myself that Tash will come back before I get to zero. When I get to the end, I start again. I always slow down when I get to single figures, listening between each number in case I hear footsteps or voices.

It’s just the wind.

She’s not coming back.

Early morning, it’s dark inside and outside. Dark enough for the trees to look like a monstrous wave moving towards me.

When the sun rises pale and cold, I stand on the bench and look at the brightening sky. A train passes. Without it, I might be on another planet. I might be dead. I might be the only person left in the world.

I have no more paper to write upon. I have used up the last page. When George hosed me down, the book was under my pillow. The pages were wet and now they are buckling and curling as they dry. My pencil is just a stub, so I guess it doesn’t matter about the paper. From now on I’ll have to write in my head. Compose my lists. Gather my thoughts. File and forget.

People say that my generation lacks imagination and that we have a short attention span. We’re also super-sized and lazy and have no decent music. This is criticism from a Boomer generation that loves telling stories about the 1960s-the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll-but who swapped their protest placards for property portfolios and pension funds. My parents are like that: small people with small lives.

When I reached the England Indoor Age Championships and had to go to Birmingham to run, my mother didn’t come to watch me. She said running wasn’t very ladylike and suggested that I had a mutant gene that didn’t come from her side of the family. She also joked about checking my adoption papers or said that she must have shagged Seb Coe instead of my father.

She was always talking Dad down like that. “I didn’t marry you for your looks,” she’d say, “but where are the brains you were supposed to bring to the family?”

After I came second at the nationals for my age group my parents gave me a brand-new Raleigh bike. I was sick of running by then, but I liked my new bike. I rode everywhere, for mile after mile.

My grandmother died that month. When I got the news I rode my bike to Abingdon Station and waited for one of the express trains to come roaring through so I could swear and scream at how wrong the world was to take my gran. That’s what I want to do now. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, but this time I want the world to hear me.