Part Five:
Excursions
1
Logan called Irvine while he waited outside Ellie’s school.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he told her when she answered.
She didn’t say anything for a moment. He realised that it was probably a confusing opening gambit.
‘I mean, I’m flying to Denver with Alex. The plane crash I told you about. Sam is going to take Ellie.’
‘How long will you be away?’
‘I don’t know. Three or four days maybe.’
‘The timing isn’t such a bad thing. I think this new case of mine is going to keep me busy nights anyway.’
‘I’ll come over tonight for a while. After dinner. Say goodbye properly.’
‘I’d like that. I’ll call you when I get in.’
Logan could tell from the look on Ellie’s face when she saw his car and the brief but excitable discussion with her friends that followed that she wasn’t happy to see him there.
Ah, fatherhood.
Ellie opened the rear door, threw her bags in heavily and got into the front passenger seat. She made a show of huffing and sighing while she put the seatbelt on and shifted around in her seat in an overt display of petulance.
Logan tried to ignore her and drove off. She waved at her friends from the car.
After a couple of minutes, she rummaged in the door pocket and took out a CD to put in the stereo.
‘You had plans?’ he asked her eventually.
She turned her head slowly to look at him and said yes.
‘Sorry. There’s some stuff we need to talk about.’
‘Sounds serious.’
‘Depends on your perspective.’
Logan used the controls on the steering wheel to lower the volume of the stereo.
‘I have to go away on business for a few days. Maybe even a week.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
She turned back to look out of the windscreen. Logan glanced at her, couldn’t read her expression.
‘I’ve got school.’
‘I know, Ellie. You can’t come with me.’
‘I had kind of worked that out.’
She was trying to be sassy. That was her way. But he could tell from the uncertain edge in her voice that the confidence was just for show.
‘I’m going with Alex, and Sam said you can stay at their house.’
Ellie chewed on her bottom lip and squinted as sunlight fell across her face.
‘What do you think?’ Logan asked.
‘Might be kind of cool,’ she said.
‘Right. No dads.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘We’re going over for dinner tonight and you’ll stay there so we need to get you packed this afternoon.’
‘Fine.’
Logan was relieved. Her continuing maturity still surprised him. He reached over and ruffled her hair with his hand to annoy her. She pushed him away and tried to look perturbed, not really succeeding.
When they got home, Ellie went straight to her room and started laying out most of her wardrobe on the bed while Logan got a suitcase from the cupboard in the hall. He put it on the floor in her room, stared at all the clothes and shook his head.
‘It won’t be that long,’ he told her.
‘Just being prepared.’
‘Right. I mean, you are planning on coming back here when I get home? You’re not leaving me.’
She stopped and looked at him – serious now.
‘Don’t say that.’
His heart contracted.
She returned to packing. They didn’t dwell on difficult emotions, preferring to confront them and deal with them in a straightforward way.
He realised she had grown a lot even over the last few months. Maybe in some weird way the death of his cat, Stella, a while back had helped. It was from natural causes. She was an old cat. And Chris Washington’s death too. It had shown Ellie that death is a way of life and that it touches everyone. She wasn’t special, at least not in that way. She hadn’t been singled out for any unique suffering.
‘What about Becky?’ Ellie asked, surveying the clothes on her bed and nodding her head as though she was satisfied with her work.
‘What do you mean?’
She turned to him.
‘You’ll miss her.’
‘Yes. But she’s got an important job and so she needs to be here to do that.’
‘Uh-huh.’
That seemed to be the end of it.
Logan went to his room and double checked his own carry-on bag. It didn’t look like he was taking much, not compared to Ellie, anyway, but it was all he needed. And he could always pick up extras over there.
Ellie shouted that she was going for a quick shower and he heard the bathroom door close then the sound of the shower going on. He went back to her room to check her packing and was surprised to see that she had put a lot of stuff back in her wardrobe and the suitcase was ordered and ready to go.
He bent down to shut it and saw a mobile phone he didn’t recognise. It was wedged down the side of the suitcase, only the top of it showing above the clothes. He pulled it out and turned it over in his hands. It was an old Nokia, which would have looked new maybe three years ago.
He sat on Ellie’s bed and switched the phone on. It took a moment to warm up and then the logo for the phone company came on the screen. Logan paid the bills for Ellie’s phone and this one was on a different network. He frowned, not sure what he was looking at.
Ellie came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later in her robe with her hair piled up in a towel. Logan was on her bed, leaning back against the wall. She stopped when she saw him.
He held the phone up.
‘What’s this?’
Her eyes flicked to the phone.
‘It’s a phone.’
He raised his eyebrows at her.
‘I can see that, Ellie. I mean, why do you have it when I already pay for one? I’ve never seen this one.’
‘Becky got it for me.’
Logan sat forward, frowning.
‘What?’
Ellie came over and sat beside him, took the phone from him and started pressing buttons. He waited to see what it was she was going to show him, but when she was done she put it against his ear.
He heard her mother’s voice. Heard Penny.
‘Hi, baby. This is your mum calling to say congratulations on your very first phone. Hope you like it. Love you.’
Ellie took the phone and switched it off.
Logan blinked away blurred vision.
‘Becky said they were getting rid of the evidence in my mum’s case after Christmas. At the police station. And was there anything I wanted. She showed me a list.’
‘She never said.’
‘Told me it was our secret. Anyway, I knew that message was on my old phone. I never deleted it.’
‘And Becky knows about the message?’
‘No. I didn’t tell her why I wanted it. It was just for me.’
Logan put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She didn’t resist, leaning her head on his shoulder and toying with the phone in her hands.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She shrugged in his embrace.
‘You’ve got Becky now,’ she said.
Logan gently eased her away from him and faced her.
‘Your mum was special to both of us,’ he said. ‘Becky knows that. You could have told me.’
She looked down at the phone and back at him. She surprised him by saying okay, leaning in and kissing his cheek before getting up to plug in her hairdryer.
She was stronger than him, that was for sure. And he loved her all the more for it.