Heath used to park up in that back road behind Parklands, they think, to go and see Sophie, using that cut-through that Nicholls mentioned that time I saw him outside. And if anyone did see the doctor’s car parked in a road nearby, well, nothing to worry about, GPs do house calls at odd times.
They think he cut himself a copy of the keys to Parklands long ago. Perhaps even when Nancy lived there: a teenage boy lifting his mum or step-dad’s keys from the dish in the hall one quiet afternoon.
‘It was a strong cover,’ said Nicholls, bringing me back to the bright morning. ‘But when I learned that you’d reported another breakin, I kept going – I told you I’d look into it. Finally, we got the phone records. It takes weeks, you see.’
‘And?’
‘And the call was untraceable, as I expected. It was just a mobile number that called you at the helpline, at the time that you said. The phone wasn’t registered to anyone, but that’s not surprising, if it’s just pay as you go. It had been used fairly locally – the call had gone through a mobile phone tower not too far from here. But they cover a wide area.’
‘The coverage is bad out here,’ I added.
‘Still, something just felt wrong. You see, the phone had only ever been used that night: two calls, just a few moments apart.’
‘The test call, to check I was there—’
‘And then Sophie was on the line. I was thinking about it, actually, when your sister called me to say she couldn’t find you, and I came straight round. But I’m sorry. I was almost too late.’
‘I felt like you were always warning me off,’ I said.
‘A bit. It’s easier to investigate without …’ He trailed off. ‘But it wasn’t just that. I was uneasy about this one. It reminded me too much of the past. But I thought I was letting it distract me from the task at hand.’
I changed the subject. ‘And you hadn’t seen him – Heath – since school?’
‘No. Even then I could barely have told you his name, to be honest, let alone where he grew up. I didn’t know about him and Nancy. No one did.’
Other stuff has started to come out now, sometimes in the papers, sometimes the police let me know. After medical school Heath went abroad, then he’d moved around, losing his soft Cheshire accent in the process, it seems. There were complaints filed, suggestions of inappropriate relationships with a couple of young patients. Overly friendly. But then he’d move on, to another locum position. When he eventually settled back in Amberton, he had kept himself to himself. So no one at the surgery would have thought to check if one of the quiet young doctor’s elderly patients was his mother – and that was only an irregularity, anyway.
But then Heath learned that Nicholls was looking into Sophie: I’d told him myself. And I bet he remembered him. It must have felt like the threat of discovery was getting too close.
‘How is Mrs Green doing?’ Nicholls asked, breaking into my thoughts.
‘Lily’s OK, I think. It’s hard to tell, but she seems much brighter. Clearer.’
We don’t really know what Heath intended with the drugs he gave her. He’d said that whenever she felt a bit lost or forgetful, she should take a pill. They kept her confused, certainly. But perhaps she’d been harder to manage than Heath thought. Asking too many questions about the little boy, or maybe my friendship worried him – what might she let slip? How easy it would have been for her to get mixed up, and take too much of her powerful medicine.
Because he’d been putting out feelers, they say, about locum work outside Cheshire, they think he was going to start again somewhere, with Teddy. They searched his house, a neat semi on the edges of Amberton, and found some of the stuff from the attic: Teddy’s clothes and toys, in bags in the loft.
It took a while to find out who Lily thought Teddy actually was – I didn’t want to upset her.
‘Such a good boy,’ she’d said, a little wistfully. ‘A good boy, underneath.’ She was talking about Heath. He’d told her that Teddy’s mother was a vulnerable patient, who just needed a little extra help looking after him. But she couldn’t tell anyone. ‘The authorities, you know,’ she told me, her eyes owlish. ‘They might take him away.’
And it was the truth, in a way. Heath was hiding his secret in plain sight. She’d long ago learned not to talk about her son, who liked to keep his humble background quiet. Handy, too, when he returned to Amberton, that no one would ask awkward questions.
Yet I wonder how much she knew about him, or had guessed at over the years. I remember the way she pretended not to know who Nancy was, the first time I asked. Of course, a housekeeper would have learned not to gossip about the family she worked for, and later to dodge curiosity about the painful past. And yet. I know how far we’ll go to protect the people we love.
In the end, I let it drop.
They had her new social worker break it to her that he was gone, but I know she spared Lily exactly how. She seems to think that Heath got mixed up in a fight. She gets confused, even now, but she’s out of hospital, where they put her under observation. She’s been moved into a new flat, where she’s with people who can look after her if she needs it, and we come and see her, Teddy and I, and even Sophie’s been once. I helped set it up: Heath’s estate went to Lily, as it should have. He’s had to go away, I tell her if she asks, and once – and I hope she’d forgive me the lie – ‘Oh, he sends his love.’
They found some of Sophie’s stuff, too, a bit later. He’d already taken it to the tip. If I’d done what he wanted, at the end … I don’t think he’d have kept her.
Suddenly I don’t want to think about any of this any more. I get up and put the kettle on again.
‘So. Got any more safety talks planned at the Grammar, then? Maureen will be delighted.’
Nicholls looks surprised, then laughs. ‘Maybe. You should probably be giving one too.’
50
Sophie, they say, is making a remarkable recovery, all things considered. I don’t really understand how strong she was. Is. ‘Youth, maybe,’ says the counsellor, Sally. ‘Teddy. And hope, that you’d find her.’ I’m seeing one again. I might as well, Sophie thinks it’s good for me.
And Teddy? He’s a little bundle of joy. We had to childproof the house, of course. It is full of people now. Mark’s here a surprising amount. Sophie likes it, so it’s fine, and I feel bad for him. He’s struggled with the knowledge that he stopped searching – that he gave up on her. But maybe, I thought the other day, it was neither of our faults. It came out of the blue, but something’s loosening in me.
He’s still nervous around her. And he keeps trying to say sorry to me, too. I was trying to be magnanimous, but it got to the point when I just wanted him to stop. ‘Mark, I forgive you, all right. Just please – stop following me about like a wounded puppy and make us all a cup of tea.’
‘Well,’ he said, the wind taken out of his sails, ‘there’s no need to be so rude about it.’
Incredibly, I heard a little laugh from the doorway. We looked round, both red-faced. I hadn’t realised Sophie had come into the kitchen to catch us bickering. ‘You two don’t change, do you?’ But she didn’t seem to mind. And the truth is, he doesn’t need to say sorry to me. No one does.
Ben’s been round again, too. Nicholls, I mean. He’s good company, actually – funny, in a deadpan way. Maureen at the school was right; he has got something about him, when you think about it.
I don’t know if it could be something more, one day. For now, a friend is enough. He knows: what it’s like to have something dark in your past that won’t go away.
I’ve been so lucky. I almost can’t believe it.
When I’m alone at night, my big house quiet again, everyone else asleep, and I’m in that drifting space between wakefulness and sleep, I still feel it: that cold familiar fear rising up to clutch at me again.