He slept in a doorway one night, too drunk to find his way to the hostel, and was awakened by the hot sting of urine on his face. The men, three of them on their way home from a nightclub, were equally drunk but, unlike Karl, they would stagger through their own front doors, and that distinction between them was seismic.
The following day he boarded a bus to Glenmoore and walked from the village terminus to Cronin’s orchard. The windows in the old house had been boarded up, the entrance closed off by a sheet of metal. The back door was still intact but a padlock had been placed on it. Karl was able to force one of the windows open. He could tell by the litter, the bleached scraps of paper and rusting beer cans that no one used the house as a refuge any longer. Perhaps those who once came at night with their syringes and bottles were afraid of meeting Constance’s ghost.
He rolled out his sleeping bag in one of the rooms and rummaged in his backpack for a bottle of whiskey. In the morning he would clear away the refuse. He needed so little to survive now and the house would provide him with shelter until he was ready to move on again.
Constance came to him in a swirl of green when he slept. Dancing through eternity, that was how he always saw her. Death by misadventure had been the coroner’s verdict at her inquest. An accident with fatal consequences. Cold hard fact explained by a pathologist and analysed by expert witnesses. How unsatisfying was that? But she always danced through his dreams and it was easy to imagine her being light-footed, wherever she was.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Amanda had intended to have a small party for Marcus’s first birthday. She would invite the children from his crèche and their mothers, whom she met briefly in the mornings. All of them rushing to work and stifling their guilt because the sand of sleep was still in their children’s eyes. But Lar calmly overrode her wishes and insisted on a major celebration. He reassured her she had no need to worry over catering or who to invite. Mrs Morris, their housekeeper, would organise the catering. His publicist would oversee the guest list.
Sylvia Thornton knew the backs he needed to scratch, the hands he needed to shake, the egos he needed to flatter. She had turned Marcus’s first birthday into an LR1 corporate event, yet one that was skilfully hidden behind the clamour of children as they twirled on a carousel, bounced on trampolines and were entertained by clowns, fire-eaters and magicians.
Marcus had cried when the one candle on his birthday cake was lit – he was unused to all this attention – but he recovered his good humour when Amanda carried him out to the terrace. Amanda’s mother sat down heavily on a chair and fanned her face with her hand.
‘It’s a wonderful party.’ She smiled as a group of children chased after a clown on a penny-farthing bike. ‘Are you happy with Lar?’
Amanda kissed the top of her son’s head. ‘Of course I’m happy. What’s not to love?’
Mrs Morris walked briskly past and spoke to one of the waiters. Giving orders, no doubt, and delighting in the authority she projected. By challenging every decision Amanda made, she refused to lay the ghost of Rosalind to rest. Like Lar, who rebuffed all Amanda’s efforts to change anything in the house, she had turned Shearwater into a monument to a dead woman. But Rosalind was rattling an empty cage, and it was Amanda who held the future of Shearwater in her arms.
She watched the clown almost tumble from his penny-farthing bike and ride off in wobbly loops. Children shrieked as they jumped on the bouncy castle. On the far side of the terrace Lar was speaking to Sylvia Thornton, who worked exclusively for him and seemed to come and go from LR1 at times of her own choosing. She was always at ease with him, deferential without ever losing her own authority, and Lar, who fired people on a whim, appeared utterly reliant on her.
Amanda had learned at a young age that it was possible to compartmentalise her life. To love her father when he was in the mood to be attentive to her. To sit down to a family meal and not anticipate his sudden outbursts, the whisk of a tablecloth scattering dishes. Pigeonholes, her mind was crammed with them, and Hunter would have remained in one of them if his wife was not a constant reminder of that night on the quays, and the intimate months that followed. Her presence, however inconspicuous, always sent a shiver along Amanda’s spine. Could she possibly suspect? As a publicist, she would have been trained to hold her emotions in check. A disturbing thought, but surely she would be unable to conduct herself so serenely around Amanda if she knew the truth? Her mask would slip, her nails scratch through the polite charade Amanda performed each time they met.
‘That went off well.’ Lar sat down heavily on the sofa when the guests had all left. Marcus was asleep and Mrs Morris had gone home. ‘I can always rely on Sylvia to run a successful event.’ He patted the cushion beside him, his firm, decisive slap against the leather making it seem like a command rather than a desire to hold her close. ‘Come here, Mandy. You look tired.’
He had abbreviated her name and, in doing so, Amanda felt less whole, somehow. She had asked him to stop but he insisted it was a term of endearment. Like the way he had always abbreviated Rosalind to Rosie when they were alone.
She stretched out on the sofa and rested her head in his lap. He glided his fingers through her hair. He told her once that Rosalind had loved having her scalp massaged at the end of a tiring day. She would then massage his shoulders and spine. What else did they do, Amanda wondered. Pick fluff from each other’s belly buttons?
She wanted him to stop stroking her scalp. It was irritating enough to make her teeth ache. He talked about rankings. Mandy Meets was continuing to build its audience and Behind the Crime Line was also performing well. She was pleased for Eric. Coming from the same tabloid background, they understood the reader’s need for immediacy, the power of a sensational headline, the lure of sex and crime.
Sometimes, sitting in Quix Cafe listening to him talking about gangland feuds brewing in the inner city, or the links between dissidents and criminals, Amanda would feel a nostalgic urge to leave the red carpet and return to the mean streets.
‘Out of the question,’ Lar had said when she suggested doing an occasional report for Behind the Crime Line. ‘I don’t want you receiving bullets in the post or, more importantly, in your head.’
‘I coped with that kind of pressure when I was with Capital Eye,’ she’d argued.