Still Waters

Epilogue

Rowan’s brought flowers. Half a dozen red roses and half a dozen white. They lay on the table, wrapped in shiny plastic. There are tiny bugs climbing in and out of the velvety folds. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say with the gesture, but a gesture seems important, in this place and at this time: At St Olaf’s Church in the Wasdale Valley, on the day Derrick Millwards bones are given some company.

Rowan leans against the headstone of a mountaineer who died on Pillar Rock in 1923. He doesn’t imagine he will be reprimanded for the sacrilege. He already has the look of a resurrected corpse. He walked here with the aid of a stick, Sumaira’s arm always close enough to reach out for if he needed her. Snowdrop stayed within hailing distance, her whole being radiating pride. She’d been told to dress respectfully for the internment of Eve Cater’s remains. In her rainbow Wellingtons and short tie-dyed dress, she strikes Rowan as perfect. She’s a floral tribute among the cold, dark graves.

Dippy and Jo stand shoulder to shoulder. They both wear black, though Snowdrop is wearing a floppy-brimmed hat that looks to Rowan as though it would better suit a cartoon donkey.

He turns at the sound of a cough behind him. It’s Vicki-Louise. She’s looking well. She sports a Marbella tan. She didn’t cry during the service. Just gave a little nod as she tossed her handful of earth onto the coffin and told her boss she understood. Rowan, watching, had fought the urge to climb into the grave: to start clawing through Millward’s rotten coffin and half-eaten bones to look for the papers he was buried with. He resisted the urge. He was too tired; too sore.

“You going to write it then?” she asks, looking him full in the face.

Rowan readjusts himself, putting his palm down on the rams-head walking stick. It was a gift from Violet’s mum, hand-carved by a man in the valley. It’s been smoothed down so as to keep the friction against the new flesh upon his hands to a minimum. They hurt every day, but it is the damage to his legs that is taking longest to heal. Both legs broke when he smashed down from the cavern roof and crushed Freya into the hard ground. Were it not for Violet he would still be there.

“Write about it, Vicki?” he asks.

“You’re the man who solved it, aren’t you? Put the pieces together and made sense of it all. Who nearly died and who saved the day…,”

“Bollocks,” smiles Rowan. “I’m an arsehole who blundered about like a carrier bag on the breeze and who only stopped a killer because he fucking landed on her..”

“Aye, but that’s not what you’ll write.”

“Who says I’ll write anything?”

Vicki-Louise looks at him. “You know, don’t you? Eve. What she did. The way she played it …,”

“Like I say, I might not write a word ….”

“You will,” she says, smiling. “Your sort. You’re a slave for the adulation. Either way, I hope you write it here. In the Lakes. I hope you put down roots.”

Rowan glances at his niece. At his sister and her wife. On, across the endless silver of the waters to where the red-grey mass of screes plunges into the depths like a blade. He listens to the rustling of the birds in the branches of the yew trees. Watches the clouds scudding across the indigo sky like the baggage cars of a ghost train.

“I need to get well before I decide anything,” he says. “I’ll recuperate for a while, then see what happens.”

Vicki-Louise rolls her eyes. Looks at Sumaira, playing with her phone, and across to where Rev Marlish and his wife stand in silent prayer.

“Best of luck to you” she says, at last. “There’s a wake at Haskett’s. A few coppers. A few friends. You’re welcome to join us. There might be some people to talk to for your book…,”

Rowan shakes his head. “It’s a bit of a hike on the bad leg. “I’ll stay here for a bit.”

Later, alone, Rowan finds himself wondering what he truly thinks. There are days in which he yearns for simplicity. Peace. He daydreams of some rural idyll with a beautiful barefoot girl who will cook fruit pies in the morning and walk with him in the woods each afternoon. Other days bring less humble ambitions. He imagines an existence of spectacular debauchery. Of whisky poured onto his tongue by masked courtesans. Sees himself as Caligula amid ghoulish tableaus of fire and gold and flesh. He does not know if a man who can hold two such disparate concepts in equal esteem is deserving of either. Doesn’t know, in truth, if what comes next will be an improvement or merely an alteration. He simply knows that he wants his tomorrows to contain fewer problems than his todays.

He tries to ride the feeling as if he were a passenger on a wave. Feels his consciousness reaching and the air above the church flares briefly crimson and gold; a shimmering outline around its hard edges. He wonders what he knows and what he fears and what any of it matters to anybody.

His phone pings. It’s a suggestive message from Sumaira, overlaid like decoupage atop get-well wishes from Catherine Marlish, and Rosie, the neighbour who is helping Violet put herself back together.

He smiles to himself as he tucks the phone away without replying. Looks at his hands and shakes his head. He’s trying to be a better man. He hasn’t given the order for the thug who hurt him to be beaten beyond regret. He supposes, in some weird way, the little prick saved his life.

He sniffs. Breathes in the smell of sunlight and fresh air. He glances to his left to check that Vicki-Louise has drifted away. He doesn’t want to spoil his surprise.

He hears the swish of footsteps on the grass.

“I’m really pleased you’re not dead,” says Snowdrop, earnestly. “I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember. But I know it was you. You and me. You’re my favourite. My best.”

He turns to her, and grins. “You have a way with words.”

“I’m a writer,” she says, and looks as though she would give the earth for a hug. .

“You are,” he says, and means it. “You really are.”

He pulls a thick proof copy of a book from the pocket of his coat. “It’s with the lawyers,” he says, giving a lopsided smile. “I don’t know if it will see light of day but I’ve bought some time at least. Time to make it true. And look,” he says, as she clumsily peels back the title page.

Snowdrop smiles like summer as she looks at the dedication.

For Snowdrop, with love

THE END