The Cruellest Game

Two

I have no idea how long it took me to stop screaming. When I did, I used Robbie’s iPhone to dial 999. It too had fallen onto the floor, and lay there alongside his broken computer. I had to reach past him to get it, and in so doing I brushed against his body, making it sway a little more. My hand touched his deathly cold one. I felt sick.

I tried to bend down to pick up the phone but my legs gave way. I was kneeling when I made the call. Later, that always seemed appropriate somehow.

My voice when I spoke to the emergency services sounded as if it belonged to someone else.

‘Ambulance,’ I said, ‘I need an ambulance. It’s my son. Please. Come quickly, quickly...’

And yet I knew there was no need for speed. I was already aware that Robbie was beyond help.

I continued to kneel as I waited for them to come. I wanted to leave that room. And I wanted to cut my son down from that obscene hanging position.

I couldn’t do so. The emergency services operator had told me not to touch anything, but I didn’t care about that. I just didn’t have the strength to move. Barely a muscle. I closed my eyes. I could not look at Robbie’s body. It was almost as if by shutting out the image of him I thought I could make the whole thing go away. But even with my eyes shut I could still see him hanging there.

I was aware now of burning pains in both my feet where the hot tea had landed. I didn’t care about that either. It really didn’t matter. Nothing mattered much. In fact, I doubted anything would ever matter much again.

However, there was something I knew I had to find the strength to do.

I had to contact Robbie’s father. I had to give Robert the terrible news and I had to do so swiftly, even though I knew he would be destroyed by it. Perhaps more than I already had been. If that were possible.

I couldn’t phone Robert when he was on a rig — there were no mobile signals — but all the Amaco platforms had Wi-Fi. Robert and I spoke frequently on a Skype video link, his laptop to our computer in the office downstairs, or sometimes my iPad. And if I needed to get in touch with him unexpectedly, the routine was that I sent an email and he called me as soon as he could, either on my mobile or our home number, via Skype.

Ironically, Robert was actually due home at the weekend, two days later. Meanwhile, I had little choice but to email him. I was still holding Robbie’s phone in one hand. I hesitated for just a moment or two, trying to find the right words, which was, of course, impossible. I could not tell the man his son was dead by email. Instead I settled for tapping out a brief message asking him to call me urgently and giving no further information.

An ambulance crew arrived within about half an hour, I think. I heard them knocking on the front door and calling out. I did not move from my crouched position on the floor. I still couldn’t do so. Without any response from me the crew entered the house. I hadn’t locked the front door; we rarely did until bedtime. I could hear their footsteps on the stairs. I had been asked on the phone where in the house my son was. The crew must have been given that information. They climbed straight up to Robbie’s room and found me there, half kneeling, half lying by then, on the floor at my son’s feet.

I was vaguely aware of reassuring voices and someone putting a blanket around my shoulders. Strong arms helped me upright and I was led, limping as the pain from my feet began to hit me, out of the room. I complied meekly, but I think I cried out as I looked again at Robbie’s body. I’m not sure.

Two police officers, a man in plain clothes and a uniformed woman constable, turned up just as we reached the bottom of the stairs. I was by then leaning quite heavily on the shoulder of a small female paramedic, who’d told me she was called Sally and I wasn’t to worry about anything. Whatever on earth that meant.

I hadn’t asked for the police when I made my emergency call, but apparently they always attend a sudden death. Particularly of such a young person.

I vaguely heard Sally the paramedic tell them, yes, the boy was dead all right. And the body was upstairs. Then the male officer muttering about the SOCOs being on their way. Better get everything checked out before moving the body, just in case, he said.

I knew what ‘SOCOs’ were, of course. Didn’t everybody nowadays? Scenes of Crime Officers. Brought in to collect and evaluate forensic evidence. But why were they needed here? Surely Robbie’s death was suicide. A hanging like that always is, isn’t it? Even in my state of total shock I’d just assumed my son had killed himself, although, in my wildest imaginings, I could think of absolutely no reason why he would have done such a thing. But I’d read about unexplained suicides among young people. They seemed frighteningly common. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking straight. Far from it. But, perhaps surprisingly, I was just beginning again to at least think.

‘What’s going on?’ I heard myself ask. ‘Why are you bringing the Scenes of Crime people in? You don’t think a crime has been committed here, do you? Surely we know how my son died, don’t we? Don’t we...’

I knew I was babbling. The man in plain clothes interrupted me quite kindly.

‘Just routine, madam,’ he said. He introduced himself then as Detective Sergeant Paul Jarvis.

‘I’ll be in charge of this case,’ he went on, shocking me all over again somehow by referring to the death of my only son as a case.

Then he gestured to the uniformed woman officer. ‘This here is PC Janet Cox, and you must be Mrs Anderson. Is that right?’

I nodded. He murmured something I didn’t quite catch to PC Cox.

‘Look, Mrs Anderson, you must have had the most terrible shock,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go into the kitchen? Make a nice cup of tea?’

If my brain had been functioning more sharply I would have shouted out that I didn’t want a nice cup of tea. Indeed, I couldn’t imagine there being anything nice in my life ever again. Or anything that I’d ever want, come to that.

But I had no fight left.

Sally the paramedic told PC Cox she really should do something about my burned feet, they could turn quite nasty if they weren’t given some attention. So the three of us went into the kitchen where I sat at the big old scrubbed pine table in the middle of the room, as instructed. Sally crouched by my side and removed, as carefully as she could, my slippers and beneath them the black pop socks which I almost always wore on school days. In spite of her obvious care shreds of skin came away with the socks. Sally made soothing noises, told me to sit as still as possible, and that she was off to the ambulance parked outside to fetch the right dressings. Then she left the room. Meanwhile PC Cox busied herself filling the kettle, finding mugs, milk and tea bags.

She didn’t ask me where anything was, and it didn’t occur to me to assist by telling her. When she put a mug in front of me I obediently sipped from it.

The contents tasted as if at least six spoonfuls of sugar had been added. That old chestnut about sugar being good for shock. I hated sugar in my tea. Even at that moment, the most terrible of my life, I remembered that I hated sugar in my tea.

PC Cox pointed to my abandoned shopping on the worktop and asked if she should put the food in the fridge before it spoiled, and clear away the ice cream which had started to melt and form a gooey puddle. I didn’t bother to answer, but she did so anyway.

Sally returned carrying a red and black bag from which she removed some packets of assorted dressings, and began covering the burned areas of my feet with practised efficiency.

‘You’ll need to go to your local medical centre in a few days, have that lot checked,’ she instructed.

I nodded vaguely. I actually had no interest whatsoever in the state of my feet.

PC Cox also made tea for Sally the paramedic and for herself, mumbling something about the boys being big and ugly enough to get their own when they came downstairs, and then sat at the table opposite me.

‘You must call me Janet,’ she said. ‘And I’m just here to help as much as I can. If there’s anything I can do, just shout.’

I stared at her. Yes, you can bring my son back to me, I wanted to scream. You can bring my beautiful boy back to life.

She wriggled a bit under my gaze. Bizarrely, I wondered what it must feel like to be in her situation with a complete stranger.

She asked about my husband. I explained that he was away working in the North Sea and that I had so far been unable to contact him directly. But I had emailed him an urgent message.

‘Look, you should have someone with you,’ she said. ‘Someone close. Is there a relative you could get round, or a friend?’

I shook my head again. My mother had died when I was a child, the grandmother who had more or less brought me up had also died many years previously, and I had no brothers or sisters.

The only relative I had left really was my dad, who lived in the village of Hartland, on the North Devon coast, more than an hour away. He worshipped his grandson, and was notoriously bad in a crisis. The next nightmare on my agenda would be to tell him about Robbie. Having him anywhere near would be even worse.

There were people in the village I vaguely knew and passed the time of day with, and the parents of some of the other pupils in Robbie’s school, but none of them could remotely be regarded as friends.

We were a tight-knit happy little band, our tiny family. At least I had always thought so until that dreadful evening. Even Robbie had few friends, as far as I knew, anyway, and certainly none that he brought home with him.

Robert did not encourage visitors, not when he was at home certainly, although he tolerated occasional visits from my father with reasonable grace. And he didn’t lay down any rules for when he was away or anything like that. He just wanted us to be busy and happy, he said.

‘But when I’m home I do like my family all to myself,’ he would tell me and Robbie repeatedly. ‘In our own bit of paradise.’

‘A neighbour, perhaps?’ persisted Janet Cox.

I continued to stare at her and gestured out of the window at the far end of the kitchen, where the lights had not been switched on. You could still see through it quite well. Although darkness had fallen, the sky remained as clear as I had earlier thought it would. Dartmoor stretched before us, silver and black, lit now by the moon and the stars, its distinctively jagged tors bisecting an eerily bright night sky like something out of the Tate Modern.

‘Our nearest neighbours are five miles away,’ I said. ‘We’re not exactly in and out of each other’s houses.’

PC Cox, whom I somehow could not even think of let alone address as Janet, looked perplexed.

‘There must be someone...’ she said. ‘We can’t leave you on your own. The whole team will be going soon. I suppose I may be able to stay for a bit, I’ll have to call the boss...’

There was something annoying about Janet Cox, her incongruously fluffy blonde hair brushing the stiff collar of her uniform, her eager determination to help. She had rather more the manner of a harassed social worker than a police officer.

It was strange, perhaps, that I could even be aware of such stuff at such a time, but I was.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Honestly. I’m sure my husband will soon be in touch.’

‘But he’s in the middle of the North Sea, isn’t he? He still has to get to the mainland.’

‘They’ll chopper him back. They’ll get him here fast. They do in an emergency. Look, he’ll call any minute, I’m sure.’

Actually, I wasn’t sure at all. Robert and I had spoken early that morning, before I left for school, via Skype. I thought he’d mentioned something about being on a late shift, though I wasn’t sure of anything that day. He would probably only be able to check his emails at the end of his shift, or perhaps on his break, though that was less likely. The reality was that I had little idea when he would call.

‘Don’t you have some kind of emergency contact number?’ asked PC Cox.

I glanced at her in surprise. She had her uses after all. I did have an emergency number for Amaco Limited UK. Indeed, it was me who’d insisted Robert gave me one. Just in case I ever really needed him in a hurry. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it, but then, I was barely capable of any kind of thought. And, of course, I’d never used it before. Nor indeed envisaged any kind of emergency as extreme as this one.

I stood up. Robert had written the Aberdeen number on a piece of card and I’d pinned it to the cork noticeboard on the kitchen wall by the house phone. As was my habit. It was more or less buried by other more recently attached bits of card and scraps of paper. I retrieved it. Head office, human resources department. A direct line, Robert had told me, with a link to a 24/7 duty officer, and they can always get through to us on the rigs if they need to.

He’d joked with me that the riggers called them inhuman resources. I wondered if Robert and I would ever share a joke again.

I dialled the Aberdeen number. All I got was the number unobtainable tone. Janet Cox looked at me enquiringly.

I shrugged. ‘It was probably five or six years ago when Robert gave me this,’ I said. ‘Maybe the number’s changed.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Janet Cox vaguely. ‘It was Amaco you said, didn’t you?’

I nodded.

She used her mobile to dial directory enquiries, asked for Amaco UK in Aberdeen, scribbled the number on the shopping list which I’d earlier dropped onto the worktop along with my bags of shopping, and began to dial again.

‘It’ll be out of office hours now,’ I said.

‘Yes, but this is the oil industry...’ she began, then stopped to listen.

‘There’s a recorded message giving a number for a duty officer,’ she said, as she wrote that number down.

I used the house phone again to dial the new number, explained briefly to the duty officer who I was, that I had a terrible family emergency, and that I needed desperately to get through to my husband Robert Anderson.

There was no urgency at all in the young male voice at the other end of the line. Indeed, it seemed to me, not even much interest.

No, I didn’t know which platform Robert was on. I hadn’t realized it mattered. I’d never had reason to ask, not before. Anyway, as a drilling engineer didn’t he move from rig to rig?

I was pretty certain the voice sighed.

‘Anderson, did you say? I’ll need to go through our lists and cross-refer. It may take a minute.’

I thanked him, though for what exactly I was unsure.

‘Oh here, I have him,’ said the voice, returning quite quickly. ‘Anderton, Rob. A derrickman. He’s out on Jocelyn, that’s Moray Firth—’

‘No,’ I said, the frustration of it all adding to my distress. ‘Anderson. A N D E R S O N. And it’s Robert. He’s never called Rob. He’s one of your senior engineers.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t find an Anderson at all—’

‘But he’s been with your company for nearly twenty years,’ I interrupted, wishing I could reach down the phone line and slap the owner of this still disinterested-sounding voice.

‘All right, hold on then. I’ll have to check the complete database...’

I waited for what seemed like for ever. Then my mobile rang. Robert’s Skype number flashed at me from the display panel.

I ended the call to Amaco without bothering to explain or even to say goodbye. In any case, once again, there was no one on the other end of the line.

‘Robert,’ I said. ‘Oh, my darling Robert...’

I stopped speaking abruptly simply because I was unable to continue. I just could not find the words. I glanced across at PC Cox. She was looking down, fiddling with her mobile phone, unwilling, I thought, to meet my eye. Distancing herself. I didn’t blame her. There was, in any case, no way she could help me with this.

Down the line I could hear Robert’s anxious voice.

‘What is it, Marion? Whatever is wrong? Marion? Marion?’

‘I–I don’t know how to tell you,’ I said eventually.

‘Tell me what?’

‘I–I c-can’t, I don’t know how to—’

‘Just tell me.’ There was already a desperate note in his voice.

‘It... it’s Robbie,’ I said.

I heard his sharp intake of breath.

‘Yes?’

I think Robert knew before I spoke again. Finally I just blurted it out. There were, after all, no words in the English language that could soften the blow.

‘Our beautiful son is dead,’ I said. ‘Robbie is dead.’

There seemed to be a very long silence.

‘What? B-but how, what... what happened?’

‘It’s just so so awful—’ I began.

‘Was there an accident? Was it his bike? The car? Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m all right. But no, no, worse than any of that. So much worse. I came home and found him...’

I stopped again.

‘What do you mean, you found him?’ queried Robert. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘H-he was hanging, hanging from the beam in his room.’

‘Oh my God,’ Robert said.

I told him all of it then, in a jumbled burst.

Robert seemed as unable to take it in as I had been.

‘Suicide?’ he asked eventually, his voice high and squeaky, not sounding like him at all. But then, I already knew I didn’t sound like me.

I mumbled something incoherent.

‘It can’t be suicide, it can’t be,’ said Robert, suddenly stronger, almost authoritative. ‘Why on earth would Robbie want to kill himself?’

‘I don’t know.’ I half whispered the words. ‘I don’t know. It’s all so awful. And then I couldn’t get you. And I so needed you. I called Aberdeen. They didn’t even seem able to find you. Why couldn’t they find you, Robert?’

‘Oh, Marion, our business is like every other — they’ve sacked half the proper people and taken on children for a fraction of the wages. Especially in areas like human resources. They’re all worse than useless nowadays... Dammit, Marion, does it matter?’

‘No, no, of course not. Just come home, Robert. Come home quickly.’

‘Yes. Oh God, yes. Straight away.’

There was a pause. I could hear Robert’s voice, as if in the distance, and other people talking, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Then Robert spoke directly into the phone again.

‘Look, Marion, it’s dark already. You know the new regulations. They don’t fly from our rigs after dark. Health and safety. Plus one of the transporter choppers is out of action at the moment and the other one’s on some op for head office. I don’t think I’ll be able to get out until the morning. Anyway I’ve already missed the last flight from Aberdeen. I’m so sorry...’

I hadn’t thought it possible to feel any more desolate than I already did. But I realized that even now I was looking forward to the comfort of having my husband with me. Robert was a calm man. A typical dour Scotsman my dad had once said, though that had been when Robert had done something, I could not remotely remember what, to annoy him.

I didn’t know if Robert would be able to be his usual calm self, nor indeed whether he would have the inner strength to be able to offer anyone any comfort right now, even me. But I did so desperately want him with me.

‘Please, just get here as fast as you can,’ I said.

‘I’ll do my absolute damnedest and I’ll call you as soon as I have some news,’ he replied.

We said an awkward goodbye, almost like strangers, and I clicked my phone off.

PC Cox had unfortunately got the gist.

‘Probably won’t be able to get back tonight, then?’ she said.

I nodded, feeling numb.

‘Are you sure there’s no one else who could come over? Just to be with you until he arrives?’

She wasn’t going to give up, was she? I racked my brains.

Suddenly it dawned on me. There was Bella. She seemed to have become fond of Robbie too. She had often actively sought out his company and, unusually, as our son had inherited his father’s lack of interest in outsiders, Robbie had seemed to quite like having her around. Not that she had been to the house many times. But more than anyone else, that was for certain.

Bella was, I suppose, what people nowadays call ‘my new best friend’. I’d only known her for just over six months. We’d met on Exmouth beach at the end of April just before the summer dog-walking restrictions came into force. I’d had to take Robbie into Exeter to buy some stuff for school which we couldn’t get locally, and as it had been a decent day we’d loaded Florrie into the back of the car and driven on to Exmouth to take her for a run. She was not a young dog, but she still loved to scamper about on the sand and play in the sea, jumping over the waves.

Bella had been throwing a ball for her own dog, a spaniel cross-breed called Flash, and at one point had accidentally thrown Flash’s tennis ball straight at Florrie. Florrie had gratefully accepted the gift, taken it in her mouth, lain down on the sand and done her best to chew it to pieces, while Flash ran around her in frantic circles.

Bella had tired eyes, but a smile that changed everything. On the beach that day she’d stood by laughing while I’d tried to extricate her dog’s ball from Florrie’s enthusiastic jaws. We’d walked along the sands together for a bit. Chatting. Just ordinary stuff. But I was someone who didn’t often find strangers, or indeed anyone outside my immediate small family circle, easy to talk to. Yet I was somehow comfortable with Bella from the start, even though, on the surface at least, our backgrounds, apart from us both being mothers, seemed so different. My life was really quite privileged, whereas Bella told me that she was a single mum living in Exeter, struggling to bring up two children alone since her husband had walked out on her some years previously.

Just to make conversation really, I’d told her how I’d taught at the Bodley School in Exeter before I was married, and she’d said that was a coincidence because Bodley was her kids’ school. Then we’d made those remarks you do about what a small world it was.

Before I knew it we’d exchanged names and phone numbers and arranged to meet again with our dogs. One way and another, it seemed Bella was now the nearest I had to a friend.

I called her on her mobile. The phone seemed to ring for ever and I was sure it was about to switch to voicemail when she finally answered.

After I’d told her what had happened, just like Robert she didn’t say anything for what seemed like an age. Well, what did you say, exactly, to the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy who has just killed himself?

Eventually she spoke, quietly and slowly.

‘This is unbelievable. Are you all right?’

Of course I wasn’t bloody all right. What a stupid question. For a moment I thought it had been a mistake to call her. Then she spoke again. Somehow cutting straight to the chase without my having to ask.

‘Look, who’s with you? Is your husband there?’

‘No. And he doesn’t think he can get back until tomorrow. The paramedics are still here, and the police, they’re checking everything. It’s awful. But they’re going soon, I think, and then...’

‘I’ll be right over,’ said Bella. ‘As soon as I’ve sorted something out for the kids.’

I hadn’t met her children, but she’d told me they were aged eleven and twelve, and I remembered then that Bella also had a part-time job, working on the till in a supermarket, I think it was. But I hadn’t given any of that a thought when I’d called her. I was, perhaps understandably, totally wrapped up in my own devastating situation. I suppose I just expected her to drop everything and come to my aid. Which she more or less did.

‘You’ll need me to stay the night,’ Bella went on.

‘Th-that would be wonderful,’ I stumbled.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘And I’ll be as quick as I can.’

I thanked her and pushed the end button. Curiously, I’d only just met the bloody woman and hardly knew her really, but I suddenly couldn’t wait for her to arrive.

DS Jarvis, a thin man with an incongruously fleshy face, came into the kitchen a minute or two later. He didn’t look comfortable and was fiddling with the cuffs of his anonymous grey suit.

‘I should tell you that the paramedics have formally pronounced your son dead, and the SOCOs have nearly done, Mrs Anderson—’ he began.

‘I’d like to see my son,’ I interrupted him. ‘I’d like to see him, before... before he’s taken from here.’

Jarvis nodded, not looking at me but at the cuff of one sleeve which he seemed to be finding particularly fascinating.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And you may want to take the opportunity of formally identifying your son for us. It has to be done sometime...’

Still not really taking anything much in, I agreed to do so.

The detective sergeant led the way up the stairs. I limped behind him. Just before we reached the top a thought occurred to me. I reached out and touched his arm. He stopped and glanced back at me over his shoulder.

‘Is... is Robbie still...’ I began.

He understood at once and shook his head. ‘No, he’s on a stretcher.’

Jarvis continued up the stairs and led the way into Robbie’s room. My son lay with his legs straight and arms by his side. Someone had closed his eyes. At first glance he looked quite peaceful until you noticed the discoloration and swelling of his face and neck.

It was a shock all over again seeing him like that. I reached out to touch him. He was stone cold. I knew, of course, that he would be. None the less, that was another shock. I had planned to kiss him goodbye. I couldn’t do so. Already this was no longer my son, no longer my beloved boy.

I burst into tears and ran from the room, hurrying down the stairs as quickly as my damaged feet would allow me, and into the kitchen. Janet Cox made more tea and more soothing noises while I struggled to regain control. I really didn’t want to weep in front of strangers. Gradually I calmed down, superficially at any rate.

DS Jarvis appeared in the kitchen again and looked relieved that at least I wasn’t still having hysterics. He handed me a form to sign confirming that I had formally identified Robbie’s body. Then he announced that he’d done all he could for the moment, adding, with not a lot of sensitivity, that he had another big job on and couldn’t stay any longer.

‘But we’ll be getting back to you, and any time you want to be in touch with us, any time at all, I’m your man, just call me,’ he said, handing me a business card.

‘There will have to be a post-mortem, of course,’ he told me. ‘Just routine, Mrs Anderson, routine you see, with a sudden death. Especially in the case of one so young.’

I nodded. I hadn’t thought of that. Of Robbie being examined after his death, of his pale flesh being sliced into on a mortuary slab. Would they use one of those circular saws I’d seen on TV to cut into his skull and expose his brain?

I was numb. I just nodded. Then something else occurred to me. Something so obvious I couldn’t believe it hadn’t struck me straight away.

‘Was there a note?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t think to look. Did Robbie leave a note? Did you find anything?’

DS Jarvis shook his head. ‘No note, I’m afraid,’ he said.

‘But isn’t that unusual? D-don’t...’ It was hard for me to say the word. ‘Don’t suicides always leave a note? Some sort of explanation?’

DS Jarvis shook his head again. ‘That’s a common misconception, Mrs Anderson,’ he said, as he headed for the front door. ‘The vast majority don’t. We’re taking your boy’s computer hard drive away just in case there’s anything on there, and to check it out generally. His mobile too. But I wouldn’t expect too much, if I were you.’

The paramedics left soon afterwards. Then the coroner’s undertakers arrived, and Robbie, his beautiful body zipped into an ugly black bag, was carried out to a waiting vehicle which would, I was told, take him to the mortuary at Barnstaple’s North Devon Infirmary.

I watched him go. Watched him leave our lovely home, where I had thought, maybe just assumed, he had been so happy, for the last time.

That was the worst bit. My God, that was the worst bit. The tears ran down my face, much as I tried to fight them back. They were the first I had shed since discovering him hanging there from the beam in his room. Funny that. I would have expected to have been fighting back tears ever since. But I hadn’t been. Not until I saw Robbie’s body leaving.

The SOCOs finally finished their work and also left the premises.

PC Cox remained for a few minutes more, and I tried not to break down totally in front of her because I so wanted her to go. Eventually she seemed to accept that I wasn’t going to do anything silly, as they say, and she actually did say that. She patted my arm in what I supposed was intended to be consolation. There could be no consolation. Not ever.

At long last she left.

I wished desperately that Robert was already with me. I do not know if anything or anyone could have brought me comfort at that moment, but I may not have felt quite so desolately alone if my husband had been by my side.

Strange, the circles your mind turns in at such times. I couldn’t help thinking that the entire entourage which had more or less taken over my home that dreadful day had seemed as relieved to be leaving me behind and getting on with their lives as I’d been to see them go.

It was only then that I allowed my tears to fall freely, and once they’d got properly going, they would not stop. I was still crying when Bella arrived.

She didn’t say anything at first. Just took me in her arms.

I found myself holding on to her. Clutching her. Even in the midst of my shock and my grief there was this flash of the old conservative me. You shouldn’t behave like this with strangers. But I couldn’t help myself.

She held me until I stopped crying. For another ten, or maybe even fifteen, minutes, I think.

Then she began to lead me upstairs. Speaking, certainly in terms of anything more than an occasional murmured word of attempted comfort, for probably the first time.

‘Look at your poor feet,’ she said. ‘You must tell me what happened.’

I just said I’d spilt some tea. I couldn’t go into the details.

She expressed concern, and told me she was going to run me a hot bath.

‘You mightn’t think you want one, but warm water is one of life’s great restorers—’

‘I’m not sure I can, my feet are quite badly burned,’ I interrupted.

‘We’ll keep them out of the water, don’t worry, I’ll help you,’ said Bella. ‘And let’s get you into a dressing gown first. I’m sure you have a lovely warm fluffy one somewhere? In this house, eh?’

I did. It was hanging behind the door of the master bedroom. I realized, even then, that she was treating me like a child. Telling me what to do. I didn’t mind. I gladly allowed her to do so. Anything as long as someone else was doing my thinking for me. I didn’t want to think at all, because all that filled my mind was the horror of what I had seen within the walls of my own home.

On the beach, on the very first day we met, Bella had told me she’d been a nurse before she’d married. Maybe that had something to do with the way she was. She had a professional air about her, and seemed to instinctively know the right thing to say, and when it was best not to speak at all.

I entered the bedroom which had always been something of a dream room to me. It was probably the first time ever that its pink and white prettiness and the magnificent Dartmoor views offered from both its windows failed to give me joy. Gazing sightlessly out into the moonlit night, I let my clothes fall to the floor, a lined linen jacket and smart black trousers also bought specially for school, and put on my dressing gown. Bella stepped out of the room while I undressed. Normally I was an obsessively private person, but I wouldn’t have cared a jot if she hadn’t done so.

She waited for me to join her on the landing. The door to the main family bathroom, the only one with a bath as well as a shower, stood ajar and I could see steam already wafting through the gap.

‘You’ve got good water pressure,’ Bella said. ‘Bath’s almost ready.’

Meekly I followed her into the bathroom. She’d found my favourite evening primrose bath oil. I breathed in the musky perfume of it as I undid the tie of my dressing gown.

She leaned over the bath, tested the temperature of the water with one hand, and turned off the taps.

‘Just about perfect,’ she murmured. And again she began to move away to give me privacy, heading towards the bathroom door.

I restrained her. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you have to stay. I need your help. Remember.’

The throbbing pain in my feet had certainly reminded me that getting into the bath was not going to be straightforward. However, displaying both strength and efficiency, Bella, a substantially built woman, helped me lower myself into the bubbling tub without too much trouble, and in such a way that I could keep my feet dry, propping them on the rim by the taps.

There was a chair by the window and a DAB radio stood on the window ledge. She sat on the chair and gestured towards the radio. ‘Some music?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like that.’

She switched on the radio and the sounds of a Classic FM evening concert filled the room. She turned the volume down just a little.

I leaned back in the bath. The next thing I was aware of was the touch of Bella’s hand lightly on my shoulder. I jumped.

‘You’ve been asleep,’ she said. ‘The water’s getting cold.’

Indeed, the bath was now lukewarm and when I glanced at my hands and my legs I saw that my skin was wrinkled.

‘How long did I sleep for?’ I asked in surprise. I wouldn’t have thought it possible that I could have slept at all, indeed perhaps ever sleep again. Let alone fall asleep in the bath.

‘About forty-five minutes,’ she said, holding out a big white bath sheet. ‘I think you should get out now.’

With her help I stepped into the softness of the towel. It felt warm. And that was a welcome sensation, even in the state I was in. Or maybe particularly in the state I was in. I glanced at her enquiringly.

‘I warmed it on the Aga,’ she said.

‘It’s still alight then.’

‘Yes, I fed it some more wood.’

I nodded my thanks.

‘Don’t hurry,’ she instructed me. ‘And don’t get dressed. Just come downstairs in your dressing gown when you’re ready. I’ll try to find us some food.’

‘Oh, there’s plenty of food,’ I said. ‘I went to the supermarket on the way home from work. There’s chicken and fish, and several of Robbie’s favourite pizzas — they’re quick and easy...’

I stopped. Saying Robbie’s name hurt physically like I was being stabbed in the heart. The pain was just so much greater than the pain of my burns.

Tears threatened again. I so needed Robert. I would have expected him to have phoned again by now. But maybe he had whilst I was asleep. I asked Bella if there had been any calls. She said not. Then she asked me when I thought would be the latest he would get home.

‘Sometime in the morning, for certain,’ I said.

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘I’ll have to be off quite early for work, I’m afraid. I can’t really afford to risk my job by not turning up on a Friday. But I don’t want to leave you here on your own for long.’

‘I’m sure I won’t be,’ I said, with a confidence I didn’t entirely feel.

Why hadn’t Robert called? I couldn’t understand it.

I’d left my mobile, a BlackBerry, in the bedroom. I hurried to find it to double-check that I hadn’t missed him. I hadn’t. So I sent him another email.

‘I just want to talk to you, to hear your voice,’ I wrote.

But surely he would know that already, wouldn’t he?

Bella, who had not followed me into the bedroom, tapped on the door and sort of half leaned into the room.

‘Look, why don’t you have a bit of a lie-down on the bed,’ she said. ‘Close those eyes and maybe you’ll have another sleep. You never know. You think you couldn’t possibly but the body looks after itself at times like this. I’m sure Robert will phone you soon, and the ringing will wake you. Meanwhile I’ll put some food together and give you a call when it’s ready.’

Again I did as I was told. And again to my surprise I drifted off into a this time uneasy, rather unpleasant sleep, disturbed by nightmare visions of bodies with distorted faces and twisted or even missing limbs.

Eventually Bella woke me and led me downstairs. She’d heated a pizza in the oven and made a tomato salad, warmed a loaf of bread and put some cheese on the table.

I couldn’t touch the pizza. I’d bought it for Robbie. Just looking at it made me want to cry again. But this time I managed to hold the tears back. Perhaps there were no more tears to come. Not yet anyway.

I put some salad, some bread, and some cheese on my plate and began to eat mechanically. I ate quite a lot. There was a big empty hole inside me. It was almost as if I were trying to fill it. But it was, of course, impossible to fill.

I kept checking my mobile. Like a teenage girl waiting for a call from her boyfriend, or a woman waiting for one from a married lover, more than once I picked up the house phone just to make sure there was a dialling tone. Still no call from Robert. I was both bewildered and desperate to hear from him.

Bella had opened a bottle of red wine which I presumed she had selected from the rack in the kitchen, where we kept some of our stock, so that we didn’t have to scramble continually through the funny little door under the stairs which led to the cellar Robert was so proud of. Even at that moment I noticed that it was one of his best clarets. The bottles he would never share with visitors, not that we had many visitors. Our home was for us, not for showing off to other people, he said.

Bella’s hand shook as she began to pour for me and she knocked over my glass, the stem of which snapped as it fell sideways onto the tabletop. Bella, too, was suffering from the stress of that dreadful day, I supposed. She muttered apologies as she mopped up the precious liquid and replaced the glass. I barely noticed. Of course, if Robert had been with us, under normal circumstances he would have been furious. But these were certainly not normal circumstances.

I downed the first glass of wine in almost one swallow, hardly tasting it, and found myself also reflecting automatically on what Robert’s reaction to that would have been. The expensive mellow red liquid hardly touched the sides.

We were still sitting at the kitchen table when the grandfather clock in the hall struck once. It was one in the morning. Bella had a little earlier muttered something about it being time for bed, but I was afraid of going up, afraid of being alone, afraid of attempting to sleep in the room which was directly below the place where I had found my son hanging. And I was afraid that if I did sleep the nightmare images would return.

Also, I was still waiting for the phone to ring.

I suggested to Bella that we open another bottle of wine. As she moved to do so I heard the handle of the kitchen door behind me begin to turn. Florrie was lying under the table by my feet. She did not bark. Instead she jumped up and ran towards the door, her feathered tail wagging frantically.

I swung round in my chair just as Robert stepped inside. He always made his way round to the back door if he arrived home late, as he liked me to bolt the one at the front at night, even though, or maybe because, we were so far from anywhere. He was unshaven, ashen-faced and dishevelled-looking. His thick black hair, which he wore long, needed washing. Greasy curls flopped over the collar of a filthy denim shirt. He had not been expecting to be coming home and, in order to have reached Highrise by now, wouldn’t have had time to change or to shave. Even if he’d given such matters a fleeting thought after the news I had given him. His appearance still shocked me, though, even at that moment. Was this how he really lived out on those rigs, I wondered obscurely?

‘Oh, Marion, Marion,’ he said. Then again. ‘Marion.’

Just my name. Over and over. But there was such pain in his voice and in his eyes, which filled with tears as I rose from my chair and rushed towards him.

‘I c-can’t believe it,’ he stumbled. ‘Is it really true?’

I nodded, once more searching for words that wouldn’t come.

‘But why, why would he do such a thing?’

I had no words with which to answer that, either. I wrapped my arms around him and just clung to him. I could feel his weight. He seemed to be leaning on me.

Then I saw his glance shift. He had seen Bella standing behind me, a bottle of his wine in her hand.

His face seemed to turn even more ashen. His eyes widened. I could not detect quite what I saw in them. My first thought was that it might be anger. It was probably just a mixture of grief and distress, and the horror I know he would have of being forced to share any of this painfully private time with an outsider.

‘What the hell is she doing here?’ he asked quite quietly.

‘Somebody had to be with me,’ I burbled. ‘The police insisted on it. This is Bella. You know, Bella whom I told you about. I met her on the beach with the dogs...’

I stopped. He couldn’t be about to go into one of his tirades about unwanted visitors, surely. Not now. I wasn’t going to let him.

‘Robert, what does it matter?’ I asked. ‘You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’

I looked up at him pleadingly, although I had absolutely no idea really what I expected of him. I was clinging to him, but he made no move to touch or hold me. His arms hung limply at his sides. His face was so grey and so still. Frozen almost. I supposed it was the shock. I had never seen him look anything like it before. This almost wasn’t my Robert. Even his accent, usually very light, was far more Scottish than usual. Through stress, I assumed.

‘You’re here,’ I said again. ‘Thank God. But how did you get off the rig? You seemed so sure you couldn’t until morning.’

‘The boss pulled out all the stops,’ Robert replied in a distant kind of way. ‘He managed to borrow a ride from BP. He and the pilot decided the regs didn’t apply in an emergency. They choppered me straight to Glasgow airport. EasyJet do a 9.45 p.m. flight to Bristol. I didn’t even know that—’

‘Why didn’t you phone?’ I interrupted.

‘It all happened so suddenly. I only usually bother to recharge my mobile just before I’m about to go on leave and I didn’t realize the battery was flat until I reached the mainland. Then when I got to Bristol I just hired a car. I couldn’t wait to...’

His voice tailed off. What did it matter, I thought, how he’d got home so quickly? Why was I even bothering to ask? He was here. That was all that counted.

He still seemed to be looking at Bella over my shoulder. I knew him so well, knew just how much he would not want her or anyone else there with us.

‘I’ll be off then,’ said Bella, as if reading both our minds. She put the bottle of claret down with a bump on the table.

‘Now you’re home, Mr Anderson, there’s no need for me to stay,’ she continued. ‘You’d rather be alone, the pair of you, I’m sure. I’ll just clear this lot away and put the plates in the dishwasher—’

‘No, I’ll do it,’ Robert interrupted, rather curtly I thought. But surely neither of us could be expected to remember our manners. I managed to find a semblance of them.

‘I just can’t thank you enough, Bella,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know how I would have got through this evening without you—’

‘Bella,’ said Robert, interrupting. ‘Bella,’ he repeated. His eyes were still looking in her direction but I could see he was off in some other world inside his head. So was I. A shattered world which had once been made whole by a truly beautiful boy.

Bella backed away out of the kitchen towards the front door. Robert and I stood together silently as she left the house, and stayed like that until we heard the engine of her car start.

The expression on Robert’s face remained one of total despair. And he seemed rooted to the spot. I reached up to kiss his face. It was damp. I saw then that tears were rolling down his cheeks, but he wasn’t sobbing. It was as if he had no idea that the tears were falling.

He was still staring straight ahead.

As I kissed him he switched his gaze, with what seemed to be a considerable effort, and looked down at me, his troubled eyes meeting mine for the first time. He kissed me on the forehead. Just as he so often did. Only this time it was different. I supposed it would always be different in future. Now that we shared this terrible loss.

‘Oh, Marion, what has happened, what has happened to us, to our wonderful little family?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

I was fleetingly puzzled. That was a strange question. He knew what had happened well enough. Our family had been destroyed by an inexplicable tragedy.

‘What do you mean, what’s going on?’ I asked falteringly.

Something flickered in Robert’s eyes.

‘What? What? Did I ask that? I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m doing. I rushed here to comfort you and now I’m talking gibberish.’

Only then did he at last enfold me in his arms and hold me tightly. He began to kiss me all over my face. To my utter astonishment I felt my body react to him the way it always did. Even though the stubble of what must have been several days of beard scraped my skin and he smelt of stale sweat and something else I didn’t quite recognize. The stench of the rigs perhaps, which he had never brought home with him before. I didn’t care. I just wanted him close. As close as possible.

Robert and I had always had a wonderful sex life. He was, I thought, a truly fabulous lover, not that there’d been many men in my life for me to compare him with, but I just knew he was special. My body had always known that.

‘I’m so very glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘So glad you got here so quickly. I don’t know how I would have got through the night without you. As long as you’re with me, as long as you love me, I feel that maybe, just maybe, I can survive anything, even this.’

He kissed me hard on the mouth then, and I could feel the sheer power of his love, just the way I always did.

‘You will always love me, you will always be with me?’ I asked when he stopped kissing me, knowing as I did so that this was a question far more stupid than anything he’d asked. Robert and me. Mr and Mrs Robert Anderson. We were cast in stone together. Had been from the day we met and would be until the day we died. Even the death of our beloved only son could not change that. Surely it couldn’t.

‘Always, my darling,’ he said. ‘I will always love you and I will always be with you. Always, always.’

As he spoke he picked up the as yet unopened second bottle of wine, two glasses and a corkscrew. Then he led me upstairs to the bedroom and I could feel in him a determination greater and indeed grimmer than I had ever felt before. I didn’t quite understand it.

But then, we had never lived through a day like this before.