He took her into his arms.
She pressed against him at once, each movement its own form of caress. He didn’t know the dance, but that didn’t appear to matter. She raised both arms to his neck and held him close, one hand on the back of his head. When she lifted her face to his, the rest was natural.
His mouth lowered to hers, his hands moved from his waist to her bum, and he drew her tightly against him.
She did not protest.
Chapter Fourteen
THE IDENTIFICATION OF SANTO’S BODY WAS MERELY PART OF police routine. While Ben Kerne knew this, he still experienced a moment of ludicrous hope that a terrible mistake had somehow occurred, that despite the car later found by the police and the identification within the car, the dead boy at the bottom of the cliff in Polcare Cove was someone other than Alexander Kerne. All fancy of this died, however, when he gazed at Santo’s face.
Ben had gone to Truro alone. He’d taken the decision that there was no point to exposing Dellen to Santo’s autopsied body, especially when he himself had no idea what condition the corpse would be in. That Santo was dead was terrible enough. That Dellen might have to see anything that had reduced him to death was unthinkable.
When he looked upon Santo, though, Ben also saw that his protection of Dellen had been largely unnecessary. Santo’s face had been seen to with makeup. The rest of him, which undoubtedly had been most thoroughly dissected and explored, remained beneath an institutional bedsheet. Ben could have asked to see more, to see it all, to know every inch of Santo as he had not known him since early childhood, but he had not. It seemed an invasion, somehow.
Ben had given a nod in answer to the formal question, “Is this Alexander Kerne?” and then he’d signed the documents placed before him and listened to what various individuals had to say about police, inquests, funeral homes, burials, and the like. He was numb to everything during these proceedings, especially to expressions of sympathy. For they were sympathetic, all the people he had to deal with at the Royal Cornwall Hospital’s mortuary. They’d gone this route a thousand times before?more than that, probably?but the fact had not robbed them of their ability to express fellow feeling for someone’s grief.
When he got outside, Ben began to feel in earnest. Perhaps it was the light rain falling that melted away his meagre protection, because as he walked to his Austin in the car park, he was struck by sorrow at the thought of the immensity of their loss and he was ravaged by guilt at his part in having brought it about. And then there was the knowledge that he would live with forever: that his last words to Santo had been spoken in a disgust born of his own inability to accept the boy for who he was. And that inability came from suspicion, one that he would never voice.
Why can’t you see how others feel about what you do? Ben would say to him, the constant refrain of a song of relationship they’d sung with each other for years. For Christ’s sake, Santo, people are real.
You act like I’m a user or something. You act like I force my will on everyone, and that’s not how it is. Besides, you never say a word when?
Do not bloody try that with me, all right?
Look, Dad, if I could?
Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? I, I, and me, me. Well, let’s get something straight. Life is not all about you. What we’re doing here, for example, is not about you. What you think and want does not concern me. What you do does. Here and elsewhere. Are we clear on that?