The Faroes are soon out of sight. The ship cleaves a foamy gutter in the petrol blue sea. I stand at the rear deck, where I thought I saw Beth on the outward leg. Was that really only two days ago?
There is longing, too, surging in relief’s wake. I’m semi-institutionalised to life at sea, but I’m getting sick of decks and rivets and railings; I don’t want to sleep on a boat tonight. I haven’t got the patience for tomorrow’s train and Tube. What I’d really like is to teleport home now, on to my doorstep or, better still, into my bed, to curl around my sleeping wife, one hand on her belly, and fall asleep to my children’s tiny arrhythmic kicks. I have travelled enough. This trip will last me for a long time. I won’t leave London until the great American eclipse of 2017, and we will go there together: me, Laura and our children.
I send Laura a two-line text:
Homeward bound. Turning my phone off for the night. Love you xxxx
We plunge into the North Sea, the bars on my phone disappearing one by one as the land mass dissolves behind us. When I am finally out of range, I slide my thumb and fade the screen to black.
Chapter 48
LAURA
March 20th 2015
The barman bends over a copy of today’s Standard, its front page a sickle sun through cloud. Beth’s drinking a pint of soda water with a half-moon of lime in it.
‘You came!’ she says. Her legs are crossed at the knee and her right foot kicks to a tune only she can hear. I suddenly crave alcohol. Ling drank throughout both her pregnancies: never to excess, but defiantly. Red wine’s good for you, isn’t it? Anti-oxidants or something? Mac would know.
‘Want a proper drink?’ I say. Beth eyes my belly: her hesitation is fractional.
‘I’d love a glass of white wine, thank you.’
Waiting at the bar, I can feel her eyes boring into my back. I get a pint of Guinness, for the iron. The barman pipes a shamrock into the foam. I lower myself into the chair opposite her, slopping the drinks on the wooden table. Ever the barmaid, she mops the spillage with a beermat.
‘Congratulations,’ she says quietly to my bump. ‘I didn’t know.’
Her face has changed. There’s a gauntness around the eyes and a slope to her cheeks that speak of weight gained and lost, as though in pregnancy. I wonder if Beth is a mother, but I won’t ask.
‘Thanks.’ I keep my voice hard. ‘So. You’ve come to warn me about Jamie. If you’ve known for ages, what’s the urgency? Why now, while Kit’s away?’
‘We’re launching straight into it, are we?’ She seems disappointed.
‘You said yourself it’s not a social call.’
‘No, fair enough.’ She produces more paperwork from her bag. Her nails are neat, a round red manicure. ‘Jamie wasn’t supposed to be out for another six months but they’ve brought his release date forward. He’s out next week. I’d been umming and aahing for ages and when I found that out I thought, no, I’ve got to say something today.’ She misinterprets my fear and says, ‘Don’t worry, probation will let Antonia know when he’s released, and she’s going to call me. Oh, that reminds me. Did you put our numbers in your phone?’
‘Yes.’
She registers the grudge in my voices, breezes past it. ‘Can you text me yours?’
I’m tempted to enter a false number, but then reason there’s no point in keeping my mobile a secret when she knows where I live. I tap myself into her phone.
‘Thanks,’ says Beth. ‘Ok, I’m going to Antonia’s tomorrow morning after breakfast, catch up with it all. I might need to call you.’
It has the ring of truth, but I seize on something. ‘Can’t they tell you directly? Because of your history with him? Because of the threats he made against you?’ Some knowledge comes back to me, gleaned from when I was researching the implications of Jamie’s letters. ‘Isn’t it a breach of his original probation even to make contact with you?’
Her laugh is like spitting bitter pips. ‘In theory you’re right, but you’re putting a bit too much faith in the probation service.’ Her foot kicks faster; I want to grab it. ‘I mean, it’s not their fault, they’re nice enough people, but they’re working like ten cases a day each. He only made the threat through a third party – that’s Antonia – so he hasn’t as yet committed a crime. If he does contact me, he’ll be in breach of the terms of his original sentence, so they can do him then. And he’ll be straight back inside if he even rings me. Although I don’t think he’ll stop at a phone call.’
My pint of Guinness sits untouched on the table. ‘And me and Kit have no protection at all,’ I say. ‘Fuck.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ agrees Beth.
I stare into my drink. The shamrock sinks as the foam settles, the picture fading fast. ‘What’s he actually threatening to do to me and Kit, though?’
Beth’s foot stills but she starts to roll a beermat on its side. ‘Well, his words to Antonia were, whatever it takes to make them eat their words. And we’ve seen what he’s capable of, so . . .’
‘So you come all this way to tell me that there’s a psycho out there with a vendetta, but it’s ok, you’ll give me a ring when he’s behind me with an axe?’
‘I didn’t have to tell you.’ She notices her own petulance, checks it, and tries reassurance. ‘But you’re forgetting something. He doesn’t know where you are.’
My biggest question is shuffled back to the top of the deck. ‘But you do,’ I say. ‘You said that you found us in a way that Jamie Balcombe would never be able to.’
‘Bit of detective work online,’ she says. ‘You’re bloody impossible to find. Kit wasn’t easy but I knew if I hung around the eclipse-chasing chatrooms for long enough he’d turn up.’
Anger at Kit’s mistake again bubbles up but I have to be careful not to let it spew out and obscure the real issue at hand here.
‘But how did the video lead you back here?’
She looks blank and I realise that we are talking at cross-purposes, even if I don’t yet quite know what that means.