The Lamplighters

39

40

She got there early and could have gone in and waited for him. Instead, she stayed outside, despite the rain, and watched the entrance to the cafe from the other side of the road. After a while, he appeared – he was early too, but just by a minute – with his hair wet, beads clinging to his pea coat. His walk, the shape of his head, was so familiar; why hadn’t she noticed it before? She couldn’t believe she had missed it. Michelle had been right. When Dan Sharp embarked on the project, he’d told the papers it was nostalgia for the event plus an affection for the sea that had spurred him. Helen didn’t doubt this, but he hadn’t been honest about the rest.

She decided, after he’d gone inside, that she would leave him to get dry and organize his notes. She was ready, now, for the last confession. Now she knew who he was.

She had told him everything except this, the most important thing – and even then, she hadn’t lied about it, she just hadn’t revealed the full picture.

Before, she had felt a disconnect. How could he understand? He of pirate kidnaps and ocean jeopardy. But she recognized him now, as someone like her.

In the end, she couldn’t bear the idea that he would hear it from somebody else: that he would put it in his book using another person’s words when she had spent decades finding words that were in some way acceptable to her. It was relevant to the story. It was relevant to Arthur and who he was, and what he might have done.

She put up the hood of her coat and crossed the road.

41

It’s nice to sit down. The bus dropped me miles off – my fault, you’d think I’d be able to tell them apart by now, but I can never remember which ones come all the way in and which ones don’t. Yes, all right. A pot of tea, please.

I’ll begin at the beginning; it’s as good a place as any. Only memory doesn’t work like that, does it? It’s lots of little bursts of moments all popping up in a funny order. You can recall the oddest things, such as the couple we rented the summerhouse off. It always stuck with me that the man who owned it refused to work on Mondays. He never had and he never would, he told me; he’d let them know at job interviews – that he didn’t like to work on Mondays – because he didn’t want to have that Sunday-night feeling, you know, when you’re getting ready to go back to work and things seem, how should I put it? Off-kilter. I think the bigger the trauma that happens to you, the more your mind grasps on to frivolous things. It makes it more manageable. In a way, I owe a lot to that man who didn’t work on Mondays.

Our son’s name was Tommy. So, of course, the summerhouse wasn’t where it began. It began six years before, when I found out I was pregnant. It was a shock, at first. I don’t mind admitting the idea of it took some getting used to. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a child. It was just that I didn’t see having a child as the be all and end all of everything: I was quite comfortable with myself without having to be a mother.

Before Tommy died, I didn’t mind thinking that his conception had been an accident, but now I can’t say it. It makes me feel as if I made his death happen by imagining he wasn’t meant to be. He was always meant to be, and that’s why the surprise I got when I discovered I was carrying him seems a miracle to me now. We hadn’t planned him, but he was never an accident.

Arthur and I didn’t know how we’d manage, or what kind of parents we’d be, but nobody knows those things. All you can do is go into it and do your best.

Tommy was a lovely baby. I was no expert in what was normal for babies in those days, but compared with what Jenny went on to deal with next door he was a delight. He slept for me and he ate well, he was crawling at seven months and walking at fifteen, and, goodness, it’s sad what you forget. You think you’ll memorize every tiny thing because every tiny bit about it consumes you – what they eat, the noises they make, the balled-up fists and flapping arms, the wispy hair at the back of the neck and the soft, rounded shoulders at bath-time… But you don’t. You can’t. Every week your child gets replaced by a new one, a bigger, more advanced one, and I don’t think it’s possible to retain all the personalities faithfully. It’s like knowing ten different people in the space of two years. But we had something, Tommy and I: we liked each other. We were friends. Right from when he was a newborn, he had a smile that was just for me.

You look sad. You don’t have children? Well, that’ll make it easier. It’s easier for me to talk to you about it, too. With parents you feel contagious, as if they’re looking at you and worrying that this specific, unthinkable misfortune is going to infect them as well. Or you get the sense they’re hearing your story but not really listening to it, because they’re too busy thinking, thank God it wasn’t us.

When people ask me if I have children, it’s up to me what I say. Sometimes I say no, which is technically the truth: no, I do not have a child. Other times I say yes, I had a son, but he died. And do you know what I wish they’d ask me? His name. I wish they’d ask me his name. But they shake their heads and say, I’m sorry, that must be awful, and I nod and say, yes, yes, it was, it is.

Hardly anyone asks me his name. In death, he’s anonymous. He can’t have been a real child. He can’t have been Tommy, because that means it could happen to any of us and none of us is immune.

I do consider myself a mother, yes: a mother who loses her baby as soon as it’s born, or before it’s born, is still a mother. The mothers like me, the ones who’ve lost a child, always ask me his name. That’s how you can tell. For a long time after Tommy died, I hid from people – no one could understand the frame of mind I was in – but then I joined a bereavement group and it did bring me comfort. Grief can be incredibly lonely. Before you know it, you’ve gone inside yourself and it’s not so much as you can’t get back, it’s that you don’t want to.

Those mothers brought me back. I wish I could say it was Arthur who did that, but it wasn’t. Those of us in the group used to call the children ‘the gang’, and we’d celebrate their birthdays, not in a morbid way, just to acknowledge it. That was all I wanted: acknowledgement. Arthur never talked about Tommy. After the funeral, I don’t think his name ever passed my husband’s lips. He didn’t want to see photographs or share memories. Whereas I needed those things to keep Tommy with me. I couldn’t pretend he’d never happened.

I did pretend with you, yes. Aren’t you going to ask why? Maybe there are things you’ve pretended about with me, because that’s what people do. It’s easier than being what we are, all the things we can’t escape. You’ll know that it’s very forceful, sorrow. I cried and cried and thought I would never stop. For weeks I lay in the dark in bed, shivering and thinking I could hear his voice, a little whisper: ‘Mummy.’ That went on for months. Grief got me behind the legs. It still does, but now I sense it coming so I stay on my feet. Early on it caught me, a kick to the knees. I’d smell Tommy’s clothes and it didn’t seem real he’d gone. How could his smell still be there when he wasn’t? All his things waiting for him, but he was never coming back. You can understand why I kept it to myself.

Arthur returned to the Maiden straight after Tommy died. I thought we were going to leave the service and put each other first, but we didn’t. When he was off on the light, I’d be alone in the cottage, cutting crusts off toast by mistake and buying milk for bedtime that no one was going to drink. The bottles stayed in the fridge for days until I peeled their tops away and the stench of cheese came out, so I poured them down the sink.

Arthur and I grew further apart. I had never got on with the tower, but I despised her then. Whenever I saw her, I’d think what a monster she was, rearing up out of the sea. I was craving his comfort, but instead he gave it to her, or she to him, and that sounds doolally but that’s how it felt. I knew Tommy’s death had prompted it, but possibly he’d had it in him all along – this distance. Arthur told me that no man in his right mind would want to be a lighthouse keeper. I remembered that a lot in those days.

I knew he’d loved Tommy, so much. That was why he hadn’t dealt with it. Well, faced it, perhaps that’s better. Looked it in the eye, as you must do with these things, or they’ll chase you around the house for the rest of your life and kick you behind the knees.

Many times, I wished I never had to see my husband again. So, when they disappeared, I feared I had made it happen, by wishing it. Then I wouldn’t have to be part of the lighthouse service any longer. I could move away from the sea. I wouldn’t have to sit in our kitchen, in Admiral, listening to Arthur sorting his rocks or his pencil scratching the crossword puzzle and not understanding why he couldn’t just put his arms around me and tell me he thought about our son as much as I did.

Now I understand that Tommy wanted his father back. He needed Arthur more than I did, and that’s right, that’s how it should be. It was the sea that took Arthur, because that’s the place we lost our boy. Sometimes I consider the sea to be like a great big tongue, licking up the people around me, and if I get too close to it, it’ll lick me up too and swallow me down to the bottom. That’s why I live here.

Tommy had just turned five. The summerhouse was a lovely place; it didn’t deserve it. The people who let us stay, the man who didn’t work on Mondays, didn’t deserve it. Things happen in life and they hit you out of the blue, on an unremarkable Thursday when you’re getting out of the bath. There isn’t any warning. Those things you spend time worrying about never happen. At least not in the way you think.

Our boy was looking forward to his first holiday with a father he hardly got to spend time with. By that point Tommy was getting interested in Arthur’s job, the fact his daddy came and went and took a boat to get back to the lighthouse; the stories he’d return with about storms and smugglers that I assumed were for the most part made up, but maybe they weren’t. Tommy missed him when he was away. Arthur never wrote to me but he wrote sometimes to Tommy, but those letters were only picked up in fair weather when there was a boatman who felt like it. He used to tell Tommy that when the Maiden light came on after sunset that was his way of saying goodnight. When Arthur was off on the tower, we’d talk about what he was doing, and I invented as much for myself as for Tommy. Children have a wonderful way of seeing the world. He used to say his daddy was the sun after the sun had gone to bed, and all these years later, I still think that’s the best description I’ve heard.

He drowned. It was a beautiful morning, the summer of the Queen’s Coronation. I thought I’d have a bath after breakfast. The bath was claw-footed, and very deep, and I’d been soaking in it long enough for the water to cool when I heard Arthur shouting from downstairs. When I came out, he was standing by the door with his hands by his sides, but the palms were facing up to the ceiling. He had absolutely no colour in his face. It took me a few seconds to register he was wet all over.

‘Where’s Tommy?’

But Arthur just kept looking at me, and it was like throwing a bucket of water at a stupid person to wake them up, only they don’t wake up.

‘I lost him,’ he said.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Where?’ For a second we could have been talking about the car keys.

‘The sea,’ he said.

‘Where in the sea?’

‘The sea,’ he said.

Tommy couldn’t swim. Not without his floats. That’s what I was searching for when I went out and scanned that horrible water; I was looking for the red and yellow floats that Tommy wore around his little arms. I knew I’d be able to spot them. But I didn’t expect to see them sitting there in the porch, unused, with the waterproofs we’d brought down and hadn’t yet needed.

Gone. No, Arthur hadn’t said gone. Lost.

I had the irrational thought that it could still be fine; Tommy would come up the beach any moment, the current having delivered him to shore. But since when did the sea do anything like that for me?

I don’t know what happened after that. At some point we must have called for help because the people arrived and the ambulance, and it was me they wrapped in a blanket even though I wasn’t cold.

It was two days before his body washed up. Tiny, blue, his skin mottled, in the green bathing trunks he’d chosen at the supermarket four days before. Arthur said he would go to identify him, but I had to see for myself. He didn’t look dead, just sleeping. When I kissed his head it felt quite normal, a bit cool, that’s all. It struck me that his soul had left his body and the two weren’t holding hands any more. The body was a body and the soul had gone. Some say that’s a comfort, but it wasn’t for me. I worried the body would be lonely without the soul, no light inside it, nothing to keep it warm. I didn’t want Tommy buried because of this loneliness. It possessed me. I couldn’t get rid of the idea he was cold and alone in the morgue, in his casket, finally in the ground. I know to this day that if we’d buried him, I’d still be having sleepless nights that his bones were lonely in the earth. We had him cremated. I didn’t want anything left.

They’d gone paddling. Not deep, Arthur said, that’s why he didn’t take the floats. Tommy was up to his tummy button in the water, that’s what Arthur kept saying, and I wished he wouldn’t because it only made me think about Tommy as a baby, the point that had tied him to me, all those months when I’d kept him safe and twenty bloody minutes I was in that bath. Arthur had left him to get his camera. Only a few paces away, up in the porch. Always a curious boy, Tommy must have stepped further out, a step or two, and gone under. The currents were notorious. He stumbled, floundered and then he drowned. That’s how I have it in my head. As a quick, painless thing. By the time Arthur came back with his camera, it was too late.

Blame was a beast I had to shake off. If I let it get the better of me, I’d have killed Arthur without a second thought. I’d have smothered him in his sleep. But he didn’t need me to tell him it had been his fault. I don’t know how a person ever gets over that because the sadness is bad enough without the guilt, and I know he felt guilty and that was the root of it. Why he couldn’t look at me or touch me; why he wanted the lighthouse instead.

Of course, it’s occurred to me that he wanted to go with Tommy. Be with him again. That everything my husband felt built up and up inside him and then it exploded. I can’t say how he’d have done it and I can’t think of him doing it – not to Bill and Vince, not to himself, I can’t, but I do believe that any person is capable of any act, if the circumstances are right. If the moment is there. If they never show their full hand. The fact is, it isn’t normal for a man to be stuck on a tower lighthouse. Trident won’t admit that they shouldn’t have been making men do that at all, any man, ever, because it isn’t a natural state to be in and it takes its toll in the end.

I wasn’t ready, when we met, to talk about the clocks. But I can talk about them now. Eight forty-five is the time Tommy died. Both those clocks on the Maiden were stopped at eight forty-five. I didn’t believe it when I heard. I still think there’s a chance it’s not true. One might easily have caught at five or ten minutes on, or behind, in which case it’s nothing but an unlucky coincidence. But people like patterns, don’t they, and it’s a compelling detail. I never forgot it, though. It’s always in my mind.

What if Arthur was responsible? What if, what if, what if.

Countless paths not taken. What if I had never met him? What if he had never said hello to me in the queue at Paddington? What if we had never joined the service? What if we had never been on holiday, or the summerhouse had never been built, or the man had decided to work on Mondays and earned more and ended up buying not here but abroad, a little cottage on a Tuscan hillside? What if I’d never taken that bath?

I sometimes think that if I had the chance to say this to Jenny Walker, explain who I am, she might understand. My slip with Bill. My one mistake. Or else there is no excuse.

It’s more than Bill, yes, probably it is. I even agreed to Michelle going down to Cornwall to put my side across, but that was a silly idea, and besides, it has to come from me or no one. But I believe that if I can mend things with Jenny, if I can make it right with her, then there’s some good to come of it.

You see, there are words I should have said, and wish I had. To Arthur, and to Tommy – but there’s no going back to them. It’s too late.

It’s not too late for the others. There are some lights that can still be lit.

42

For a long time after she had finished speaking, they sat next to each other on the bedspread. Hannah was quiet. She held a rigid, unfriendly sort of pose, straight-backed, her hands on her knees. Jenny studied the quilt with implausible keenness: peach florals, it was one of hers from ages ago, softened and pilled by dozens of washes.

Downstairs, the front door closed, the last of the party guests dispatched. Greg had come up to see where they were; Hannah told him to make her excuses.

She turned to her mother and said, ‘You’re telling me you tried to…?’

Jenny wiped her nose on her sleeve.

‘I don’t know what I was trying to do, love. I never wanted to hurt him. You have to believe me. I only wanted him to…’

‘What?’

‘Be my husband again.’

Through the open window, a lawn-mower started up next door. An everyday sound, sharper now. The old world before Jenny revealed her secret, and the new.

‘That’s the thing about children,’ said Hannah. ‘You think you’re being clever in keeping things from them, but you can’t. Keep things. You can’t keep anything.’

Jenny didn’t take her eyes off the embroidery. She’d lain under it many times with Bill, the children clambering in, those precious mornings.

‘What do you mean?’

‘That I knew,’ said Hannah. ‘Somewhere, I did, deep down. I remember you standing there in the kitchen. Dad was about to go off. You were crying, not talking to him. I could smell bleach. There were those cases for the chocolates; the label on the bottle. I didn’t understand what it meant. I thought I’d made it up. You were my mother. You’d never do that. Then this happens and you’re telling me I was right.’

Hannah went quiet. Jenny made herself look up.

‘Do you remember him?’ she asked. ‘You always said you did.’

‘Yes. I remember he used to kiss me goodnight. Every night he was home, when he thought I was asleep. He came in and brushed my cheek with his hand. I remember sitting on his knee for a story, before bed. What he smelled like. Creocote and tobacco. We used to go outside to look for the moon, when the sky was clear, when the sun went down. I thought of his lighthouse like that. Like the moon.’

Jenny had never felt so ashamed.

‘When you’re seven,’ said Hannah, ‘it feels like life’s just made up of moments. Pieces of the picture with nothing to connect them. It’s not until later you can join the dots.’

‘Now you can,’ said Jenny.

Hannah shook her head. Outside, in the road, children rode past on bikes. Their shouts reached a crescendo then were lost in the distance.

‘When you told me about Dad being unfaithful,’ Hannah admitted, ‘that should have been a shock as well. But it wasn’t, Mum. I already knew. We went to Helen’s that time. You and me in her sitting room. Dad’s seashell was on the shelf, behind the photo frame. It wasn’t like the ones he did for you; it was meant for a lover, not a wife. You could see how she’d tried to hide it, but she hadn’t done it properly. I’d have recognized his anywhere, even on the beach with millions more.’

The pink stitching had turned to liquid, swimming in Jenny’s vision.

‘You squeezed my hand so hard when we walked home,’ said Hannah. ‘Beans on toast for tea. Only you burned the bread; you scraped it off in the sink.’

‘Yes.’

Hannah faced her; her eyes were wet. ‘Why didn’t you say anything to me?’

‘How could I?’

‘Not then. Later. When you said about his affair.’

‘And have you be horrified at me?’

‘I’m not horrified.’

‘You should be.’

Jenny saw her daughter in a new way then, as a woman, not her child, not anyone’s child. Concern scored between her brow, like slits in a mince pie. Readiness to understand, which had never come easily to Jenny. To listen and reserve judgement.

‘I know how much you loved him,’ said Hannah. ‘And how much he hurt you by doing what he did. It doesn’t make it right, Mum. It wasn’t right; it’ll never be. But…’ She felt for the words. ‘I suppose there isn’t any way of ending that. Just “but”. There’s always another way of seeing things, isn’t there? There’s always more to it.’

‘What must you think of me?’ said Jenny.

‘That you were angry and sad.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry, love.’

‘Was he?’

‘What?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny. ‘There was a lot I didn’t know about Bill.’

Hannah passed her a box of Kleenex. Their fingers touched.

‘I thought you’d hate me,’ said Jenny.

‘I don’t hate you.’

‘If I’d known that was the last time I’d see him…’

‘Don’t.’ Hannah wrapped Jenny’s hand in her own. ‘You were a good wife.’

She reached over and hugged her. It was the nicest hug of Jenny’s life, warm and tight and strong as tree roots, and nicer than any that Bill had ever given her.

Motorways made her nervous. She preferred the country roads, only they took twice as long. She’d heard it was safer on the motorway, if you believed the statistics, but she couldn’t see how that could be what with how fast everything happened. All it took was a split-second and that was her through the windscreen. Jenny had nightmares about this arrangement: bonfire of limbs on the hard shoulder; blood on shattered glass. Occasionally she saw herself in the wreckage; other times it was people she knew. Or else it was Bill – the scene of a fatal crash she happened across, only to recognize his face and that’s where he’d been, after all these years, living another life, driving another car, on his way to another home filled with another family, and he looked regretfully up at her as she realized all this, and she held his hand while he died.

‘I’ll drive, if you want,’ said Hannah, picking through a bag of jelly babies for the green ones, which she fished out and put in the storage slot under the handbrake.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Jenny. ‘They’ll stick and go furry.’

‘This is it! Junction six.’

Jenny indicated out of the slow lane. A lorry’s horn blared.

‘What did I do?’

‘You’re on the hard shoulder. There’s the slip road. Here. There. God! Mum.’

Half an hour later, they pulled into the Birmingham Spire of Light Psychic Convention. Crystals and cards, rainbows and angels, a man with a mohawk promising to discover her animal spirit guide: 50p only. Jenny normally hid the trip, lied that she was off to the pools. Now, she didn’t need to pretend – about that or anything else. She had wasted too much time pretending, when she hadn’t needed to pretend at all.

‘You’re sure about this?’ said Jenny, knowing it wasn’t Hannah’s sort of thing. Still, she’d said she was keen to come along if it meant she could meet Dan Sharp. They would give him an hour, they’d agreed, till eleven, when Wendy was doing a channel.

‘Yes,’ said Hannah. She unclipped her belt and unexpectedly leaned over to kiss her mother on the cheek. ‘I might’ve had my ideas about him – but if the last few weeks have taught me anything, it’s that there’s more than one side to every story.’

43

I’ve come every year since Bill went. I was into it before, a bit, but I never travelled up to anything like this; I didn’t have the time and it didn’t matter much to me then. It matters now because it’s something along these lines that’ll get me back in touch with him. They do a good show if you’re not going to get snooty about it. Wendy’s my favourite, Wendy Albertine; her guide puts her in touch with the other side and if she finds someone for you, she’ll call out your name. I keep waiting for it to be me.

After you first came to visit, I went and had my fortune read. The medium said then I was going to get taken advantage of and I thought, well, I bet I know who that’ll be. But then Julia dropped by and asked to borrow a fiver and later on I saw she’d taken twice that out of my purse, so that could’ve been it. I knew Hannah would roll her eyes at that. Come on, love – it’s not as if you haven’t done worse.

Each to their own, that’s all I’ll say. Go through what I have and you don’t care what folk think. I identify with the people here. They’ve lost a loved one, like I have, but they also know that person might still be out there for them. I hope in the course of us knowing each other, you’ve opened your mind a bit. Like Hannah said just now in the car, it’s important to be able to change your perspective about things.

Helen would never be seen dead at a convention like this. Ha, get it? She isn’t interested in what’s extra in life. She takes what’s in front of her. Anyone would think after her son died, she’d need it. Plenty come because of children they’ve lost. They’re the ones that get you. When there’s a child and they come back for Mummy or Daddy, we’re all sobbing by the end of it. I always keep an ear out for Tommy. If Wendy were to tell us one day Tommy was here, I’d put my hand up for him. It makes me sad to think of this little one on the other side and there’s no one there, no one’s coming.

If he did come through, no, I wouldn’t tell Helen. I never knew when we were living at the cottages if she took against me because of my three. Because she only had one, didn’t she, and he drowned. I felt bad for her, I’d be heartless if I didn’t, but she might’ve done herself a favour if she’d confided in me. Maybe she just didn’t think of me like that, as a friend she could talk to. I never asked either, which was awkward, but what was I meant to do? It might be making her feel bad when she doesn’t want to think about it.

Helen never forgave Arthur. I know that much. I can’t say if I would or I wouldn’t, with Bill, if he’d been responsible for that. But it always annoyed me how Bill thought of their marriage as perfect. He’d say how good it was that the Blacks didn’t have to live in each other’s pockets all the time, you know, do everything together and know each other’s business like a man and wife do. When we moved to Masters, I asked Helen how she coped with so many years of Arthur being off, and she told me it was in their natures; they liked being together, but they also liked being on their own, and it was really like two lives happening next to each other rather than one joined together. I thought it was all to do with Tommy. Didn’t our husbands get enough independence on the tower? They had all the time in the world to themselves on there.

Anyway, it turned out Helen did need someone, because she went after Bill. I’m not saying there aren’t shades of grey in it, what with the boy and what that did to her. I can’t think about it, to be honest; I can’t get my head around losing a child.

But I still don’t understand why Bill did it. The man who’d married me, who I thought loved me for all the reasons I’m me and not her. Helen wasn’t one of us. She wasn’t a Trident wife in the traditional sense. Whether it was up at St Bees or down at Bull Point, we were cut from the same cloth – wives and homemakers, recipe books on the shelves, Victoria sponge baking and tea on the table at six. We mucked in together. We never went behind each other’s backs and we didn’t have tea with each other’s husbands. Frank’s wife Betty was more up my street, a good honest Bolton girl, no airs and graces, and her boys and my girls often played together. I saw Helen was jealous of that. I’m not proud of it, but I admit I enjoyed it – that she was jealous. There was a lot she had that I didn’t, and this was one thing I’d won at.

I should have spoken to Arthur about the affair when he was ashore. Hannah says I should’ve, and I wish I had. Now they’re gone, it’s too late.

It makes me wonder about my mum. How I could have one last try with her. Find out if she’s still around, ring her up, send her a note. See, I’m protecting myself if I do that. It’s selfish, in a way. I want to know I’ve done everything I can. I know better than anyone how it feels to have that choice taken away from you.

If I’d talked to Arthur, we could have decided on a better course of action. Because it was only a silly thing; a silly idea I had to pay back some of what they’d made me feel. What can I say but that I wasn’t thinking straight?

I didn’t ever bring it up with Arthur because I suppose I was nervous of him. Hannah was too. It’s because the PK never made himself known to us. He didn’t come over or say hello or act friendly at any time. I never could work him out.

Looking back, he did seem unbalanced to me. One of those who never says boo to a goose then one day the building goes up in flames and the neighbours go, ‘Oh, but he was the quiet one, wasn’t he? He wouldn’t have done anything like that.’

What? Hannah thinks I’ve got too many fantasies. I do make things up in my head, then I think about them so much they start to turn real.

But it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? Especially when they’re pushed. Helen pushed him. She pushed him with the guilt then she pushed him with her lies. Arthur was the sort to keep it cooped up inside and not say a word and then one day, pow!

The fact is, if I found out, then he might have found out too. If Arthur did hurt Bill, I suppose I can… I mean I suppose I can understand it.

Oh dear, is that the time? We’ve got to get in for Wendy so we can get a good seat. I didn’t travel all this way to have to sneak in the back.

All right! Hannah made me promise. I don’t want to, but she’ll be in a huff with me all afternoon if I don’t. Here goes, then. Helen used to write me letters, but she hasn’t in a while. Hang on, love, I’m getting there. Give me a chance.

Is everything OK with her? With Helen. That’s what Hannah wanted me to ask. Because you’ve been talking to her, haven’t you? So you’ll know. If there’s been anything that’s meant she’s had to stop writing her letters. Not that I care. It’s not important. It just crossed my mind then Hannah made me ask.

Good. That’s good. Satisfied? I told you.

Now, can we get on with our day? If we sit up at the front at Wendy’s, there’s more chance of a name coming through for us. They can sense you there and that makes them find you more easily. The communication is better.

44

Tonight, when she made steak and kidney for Roger, he would ask about her day and she’d fib that she had done nothing much, ironed the girls’ school uniforms, sewed name tags on PE kits, pulled the weeds out of the veg bed. She would leave out the fact of coming to Clearwater Shopping Centre and drifting down the aisles at Woolworths, gazing at neon confectionery wrappers and checking her watch every minute and a half.

Part of her had known she’d end up meeting him. Her conversation with Helen started it. It matters, doesn’t it? To say what he was really like. Then those transcripts. What Pearl had claimed – unfair things that made Vinny into someone he wasn’t. Vinny wasn’t here to defend or prove himself. Michelle was.

She was tired of being afraid. Of Trident House, of Eddie Evans, of the truth.

The writer was standing beneath the clock in the atrium. She identified him from the black-and-white headshot on his book jacket. He had an agitated, restless demeanour, waiting to be approached but he didn’t know by whom: she could have been any of the women rushing past on their lunch hour.

Hesitating in Boots, Michelle wondered what ideas he had about her. Her idea of him had been wrong. She’d had him down as a Roger type, sharp suit, oiled hair, golf at the weekend, cufflinks and cognac. The writer’s clothes didn’t fit well, not because he couldn’t afford better, she suspected, but because he didn’t care much about clothes, and his shoes looked like they’d been worn every day of his life. If he was any type it was her younger brother’s, who was living back in Leytonstone with her dad and working in the local Done Bookmakers while he saved up enough money for a haircut.

She disliked this shopping centre intensely. Mainly it was the foyer part, with its chichi cafe selling overpriced grilled sandwiches, and the gigantic clock from which, on the hour, a plastic frog emerged from the cuckoo’s window and croaked the time.

She waited for it to finish its cycle before going over.

‘I’m Michelle,’ she said.

Dan Sharp smiled and shook her hand, and seemed relieved, she thought, that she had come.

45

There they are. Bloody depressing, isn’t it, keeping birds in cages. It’s the worst of the worst. Normally I’d never stop at this store cos I can’t stand the squawking. Either that or them sitting there all miserable. Here you go: £3.99 to take it home with you and the cage’ll be ten times as much. There was this girl at school who kept birds in cages. Her mum’s flat smelled rank, of cat food and droppings. She had a cockatiel called Spike and a budgie called Ross. Ross was the dominant one; he was in charge.

Do you like birds? I think it’s best if you like them to just let them be, out in the trees and things. I used to think how nice it’d be to let Spike and Ross free. Open the door and say, go on, get on with it then. I’m not sure they could fly, to be fair; might’ve just flopped down on the carpet. Maybe they weren’t sad anyway. That was just me.

All right then, you wanted to meet; you’re the one who’s been asking for it, so I’ll let you have it like it is. I’ve got nothing to hide. Vinny didn’t either. It’s been years since I read those interviews and to answer your question about why I’m here, why I changed my mind, it’s cos of them. I can’t let Pearl’s lies have the last of it. No matter how many times I tell myself it doesn’t matter what you put in your book, I can’t let Pearl be the person representing him to you. She didn’t know him. I did.

People’ve made their minds up about Vinny. He was the criminal, so he must’ve done it. They can’t say what he actually did, but who minds about the details when you’ve got someone to pin it on? Those other two, Arthur and Bill, Trident’d have you believe they never set a foot wrong – but scratch the surface and the dirt comes out. Vinny’s dirt was there for anyone to see. He had nothing to hide.

Trident knows you’re writing a book. They’re nice enough on the surface but they’ve got to be worried cos now they’re getting in touch with me saying that if I speak to you, they’ll make me pay. They’ll stop my compensation, which I never thought I’d get in the first place cos Vinny and me weren’t married, but they want to keep me quiet so they kept it coming. Roger, my husband, he’s happy to take it. He can’t stand any mention of Vin but he’s fine with taking the money. I bet Helen and Jenny have had letters as well. But I s’pose the time comes you get too long in the tooth to let people scare you off.

Trident have kept their distance, making out it was nothing to do with them. They wouldn’t want people knowing they had an enemy of Vinny’s in their ranks. It was bad enough having one criminal on the books. If people saw the connection between Vinny and this man, it’d drag the Institution right back into it again.

I can’t tell you what happened. But what I think happened, that’s another thing.

It was the person Mike Senner told them about. The mechanic. I’ve never accepted how Trident did away with that. Even Helen said it was rubbish cos of Mike’s character, he was a local loop, and yeah, maybe he was, but even if a crackpot gave that kind of information, I’d still want to follow it up, wouldn’t you?

Fact is, it didn’t suit Trident to give time to anything Mike Senner said cos that made a mockery of their operation. And it does sound impossible, when you know about tower landings – that this bloke went out there without them knowing.

Only it must have been possible. This so-called mechanic wanted payback on Vinny and sure enough he got it. But I’m jumping ahead, aren’t I. Shall we sit down?

Pearl had her mind made up about Vinny from the start. I get that she was standing up for her sister cos of how Vinny came to be, but to make a child believe that no one wanted him? To tell him he’s just like his rapist dad, then lock him up and batter him whenever he gave her lip? You ask then why he wound up in prison. Well, Vinny didn’t see a point in anything else. Nobody showed him there was anything else. You give back what life gives you and what can I say but life gave him shit.

Except for the lights. The lights gave him hope and there’s no sense thinking he’d chuck that away. If Pearl was here, she’d say, ‘Remember what he did the last time? Someone who does that’s got it in him to do anything.’ But she’d be wrong. Just like she was wrong saying he’d beaten Pamela up and spat on her when he was little. Vinny wasn’t even with his mum most of the time she was alive, and the way I see it he might’ve whacked her by accident like all babies do, like my babies did, when they’re learning to sit in a high chair or have their nappy changed, or have a bottle or go to sleep or whatever. It’s garbage to say he meant it. Pam’s bruises came from the needle.

Vinny did have a mean streak, yes. He must have, to do what he did. It wasn’t meanness in a petty way, as in saying something to hurt your feelings, but properly, like if he wanted to hurt you then you were probably going to get hurt. You didn’t want to get on his wrong side. But I have to tell you he was loyal too. Once he liked you, he’d never doubt you. That’s how I know he’d been loyal to Trident cos they were loyal to him. It was that job that made the difference to him.

Do you know about the White Rook? Real name Eddie Evans. Erica told me how it was back round where they lived. She said it was Eddie and Vinny that ruled the roost. They were always up against each other, out to pick the other one off – who was on whose turf, who had what girl, who’d nicked off with what, and the crap thing is no one remembers what any of it was about cos it was all so bloody pointless. But when Eddie went after Vinny’s best friend, that was when the situation changed. Erica said he smashed Reg up so badly that Vin had to go over there to sort it out. They only meant to warn Eddie off. They didn’t know he had a little girl. How were they to know that?

After Vinny got the job with Trident, he heard the news Eddie was working there. Vinny hadn’t seen him since that night, when the last thing Eddie’d said to him was that one day he’d get his revenge for what they’d done.

I told the investigators. And they talked to Eddie – at least they said they did – and Eddie said he couldn’t help. He hadn’t clapped eyes on Vinny in ages and that was for the best. He said that was a distant time in his life anyway and he was a new man by then. And how would he have got on there and done what they were suggesting, and made all three keepers disappear from inside a tower that’s hardly wider than this bench we’re sitting on? But it got me thinking then and it still does now. Just cos Eddie didn’t get his own hands dirty doesn’t mean someone else didn’t do it for him.

Trident kept to it that they’d never sent a mechanic to the tower. There was never anyone else on there but those three. They replayed the radio transmission, to prove it – Arthur asking them to send a mechanic then taking it back, saying it’s all right, call it off, it’s fixed after all. But Arthur didn’t say who fixed it or how. Trident just assumed, like they assumed everything else, that it was him or Bill or Vinny. I can tell you now Vinny wouldn’t have a bloody clue what he was doing with fixing anything, let alone a diesel generator. He could hardly change a light bulb.

It’s cos no one else saw this mechanic. Trident’s lot reckoned there had to have been someone who’d witnessed him, ’specially cos this man sounded so unusual looking. They couldn’t find any trace of the boatman either.

But that’s what Eddie’s men are. Ghosts. He could’ve had his pick out of any of the individuals that worked for him, but it was Sid he chose. Sid was told to kill all three and get rid of the bodies then make himself scarce. And that’s exactly what he did.

It got forgotten about with the other speculation. There was plenty of that at the time, so it was hard to know what to hold on to. Rumours flying everywhere, people saying crazy stuff and after a while you didn’t know what to believe. Take the length of rope missing from the storeroom. Trident denied that, of course they did, even though one of their investigators came out years down the line saying it was true. I know that could fit with a wave coming and washing them away, like Helen thinks, and the rope got thrown in to help… Maybe. I think this Sid bloke strangled them with it.

I’ve told you already how it was and how Vinny was in the thick of it. And when Eddie went for Reg that was it; Vinny got mad; he said they were going round to show him what for. The dog was never meant to come into it. It was wrong place, wrong time. They just decided on it last minute, a spur of the moment thing, and it was a bad thing to do; they only meant to break into Eddie’s flat and they didn’t know his six-year-old daughter was there. But then she came out in the hallway in her pyjamas and started crying and that woke Eddie up. Someone was like, ‘Shut her up, shut her up,’ and then Eddie found her and thought the worst, so he pulled a knife and it all went down.

Eddie put a knife in Reg and killed him. Reg died in Vinny’s arms. Vinny must’ve lost his head cos this had been his idea and now what; they hadn’t known about the girl and that was his fault too. He freaked out. They all did. Then they heard the dog outside, tied to its kennel. I bet Eddie wished he hadn’t tied it up that night of all nights – a German Shepherd; Vinny said it had a rotten nose and bits of its fur were missing. It wasn’t his idea to set fire to it, it was one of the others’, but no one’s thinking and there was blood all over and Reg was dead, so they did it. They strung Eddie up and made his girl watch her dog getting burned. Eddie watched her watching the dog.

It had been Vinny’s decision to go, even if it wasn’t his decision to do what they did, and he might’ve been a lot of things, but he wasn’t a coward. He took the hit with the police – he had nothing to lose, no family to look after, he already had a record, so it might as well have been him. Like I said, if he was loyal to you, he was loyal. At the end of the day it was a dog; he got a couple of years then out. But there’s something in the fire, right? And in making the girl watch. Yes, there’s something in that.

People can say what they want about Vinny and maybe he did have a bad side. Don’t we all? If we’re pushed hard enough, if something makes us lose our heads, all I’m saying is, don’t we all?

After Reg died, Vinny wanted out. That was the last time. He wanted to be better and he knew he could be. I knew it too.

Here. Vinny included this poem with the last letter he sent. You can make of it what you will. When Trident asked me if I’d had anything from him during that time, I said I hadn’t. I knew I’d never see it again otherwise. But the more years pass, the more I doubt that Vinny even wrote it. He was into his poetry; he loved words. He thought the poems made him look soft – but how good is it that a man with no education can put things down on paper like that?

The thing is, this isn’t the kind of thing he wrote. I can’t explain. It just isn’t, if you knew him. He sent me love poems from time to time but you’re not getting your hands on those. This one’s different. He said he talked to the PK a lot about poetry. I think Arthur was the one who wrote it, got Vinny to put it down, I don’t know. That’s just what I think.

Vinny always knew his past would trip him up. He thought that whatever he did and however fast he did it that past would always be there, waiting for him. And it did, that’s the saddest bit of it. It did wait for him. That he’d had that time on the lights at sea, thinking he could be free. It’s like a bird in a bloody cage, isn’t it, it’s fine while it’s in the cage but then as soon as you let it out it sees what it’s been missing. It sees it wasn’t ever meant for this, and its wings don’t work after all.

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