‘I can’t tell you. But I can show you.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

They met early the next morning. She was waiting for him at the end of his road. The cool air had flushed her cheeks and coloured her lips and given her a fresh-out-of-the-box appearance, all health and natural goodness.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’ Either of them might have said that.

They walked together through the town at a time when it was still empty, while the shops were still closed and the drunks still slumped in their doorways. His knee ached. It always ached in the morning, but it had ached more so since its altercation with the bin. It had stiffened up around the joints and when he climbed up or down stairs sharp shocks fizzed along his tendons. The pain made him walk awkwardly, more awkwardly, with an ungainly list and lurch that he was self-conscious of; he saw it, in his shadow, loping on the paving stones in front of him. Pigeons flocked around them, hopping from foot to scraggy foot, jabbing beaks into the cracks. Every now and then one would jump up in the air and flap its wings at them before settling down a yard further away.

They walked on, away from the centre and into the back alleys, the dirty gullies where teenagers and feral cats roamed with equal enmity. There was the bin tipped over, its contents half spewed out and already picked through; there was the garage door upon which someone had scratched their slogans and secret symbols; there was the wooden gate hanging open to reveal an unkempt garden, cluttered with junk – a sofa, a fridge, other incongruous items. All that waste. Those who lived here weren’t impoverished, not really, despite their best efforts to look the part. They were, despite their mutterings, among the most asset-rich people on the planet, and in the history of humankind. Yes, he thought, the world would be better without people in it.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Clare asked, a little uneasily.

‘It’s not far.’

The derelict part of town ended suddenly, at a wide road. On the other side a barren, windswept field rolled up to the crest of a hill upon which a thicket of trees stood stark against the pale sky. Within it, invisible from where they stood, was a church, around which, dug into the turf, this year, last year and a hundred years hence, neglected and not neglected, were dozens of gravestones. She was buried beneath one of them. She. Would he never speak her name?

‘That way?’ Clare asked, looking up the slope.

The weak sun was in front of them and they squinted into it. He didn’t belong where he was taking her. It wasn’t his place. As they drew closer the church steeple gradually began to show itself through the foliage.

‘Oh,’ Clare said, ‘I didn’t even know…’ Her voice trailed off into a silence that deepened around them, that went beyond not talking. It was much cooler under the trees, still damp from the night. Sodden leaves wrapped themselves around roots. A squirrel stopped, registered their presence without looking at them, scampered erratically up a trunk in long spirals. They walked on and as abruptly as they’d entered the wood they emerged from it, arriving into a secluded glade. For a moment they stood soundlessly on its edge, adjusting to the stillness, the deathly hush. It felt like everything, the air, the grass, the critters who spent their days fussing amongst the undergrowth and the fallen things, had frozen suddenly at their intrusion, and the silence echoed with things unfinished, interrupted. Amidst it all, in the centre of this secret world, stood the church, sentient, solemn, vigilant.

‘This way,’ he said, or whispered, or only thought, and set off between the gravestones, where the grass was flattened like deer-track. He hadn’t gone far into the graveyard when he stopped abruptly. He stared down at one of the headstones with a puzzled expression. He dropped to his haunches to read the inscription more clearly, to be certain, and then stood up again. He looked at the headstone beside it, and then on its other side. He looked at Clare, who titled her head at him questioningly.

‘It’s been so long,’ he explained.

Then he was off again. He’d only gone a few steps when he stopped suddenly for a second time, turned around, read the name etched into the stone. She read it too, looking for different things. He stood up.

‘No,’ he said, growing agitated now. ‘I thought I knew it. It must be here.’ He walked on, quicker this time, and this time she let him go, watching him zigzag back and forth, stop, retrace his steps, set off again in a different direction. The sun had crested the trees now and a hazy, yellowish mist hung about them.

As he paced she looked up at the white-blue sky; days often started like this, in hopeful, clear-headed sunshine. She hoped it would last. Perhaps they were in the wrong place. Perhaps he’d misremembered whatever it was he was trying to remember. She yawned in a deep, satisfying way, and put her hand to her head, feeling the bristles where her hair had been shaved. It was still novel. She hadn’t liked it at first, the cut, it had seemed too severe, but it was growing on her.

She realised that he had stopped pacing. He was on the far side of the cemetery and she made her way to where he stood. There were fresh flowers on the bright white tablet at his feet, and the grass around it had been meticulously cut. She read the name, and the two dates beneath it. ‘Taken too soon.’ She looked at the dates again. How old was he? He must have been very young. ‘Your daughter?’ she eventually asked.

He looked at her quickly. It hadn’t crossed his mind that she’d think that. But it was the obvious conclusion. He wondered if that would have made it easier or more difficult. He thought easier. He would, he knew absolutely, he would have followed her by now.

‘I killed her,’ he said.

They had just been outlines at first, her parents, just black shapes of people against the church but he knew immediately it was them. It was a year afterwards. To the day. He had watched from a distance. She had been kneeling down, or not kneeling, crouching, bent right over, arms and face pressed to the ground, in the same attitude she’d adopted on the road. He was standing behind her, very still, looking over his wife’s head towards something that wasn’t there, was no longer there. What is it about grief that singles people out, that makes others spot it in them when there are no obvious outward signs? Wherever they went, this couple, whatever they were doing, their pain would show through and pull them apart from the people around them. Finally she had stood up and placed herself alongside her husband, and they remained there, not moving. He had noticed from his shadowed spot beneath the branches that they were not touching, that between them there was an empty space that they had not noticed or not been inclined to close.

He took a graceless step forward – graceless in so many ways. His leg then was still unrepaired, unbending; he would require two further operations in the coming months. Like them, he was also maimed. Neither had turned as he approached, and he’d closed to within five yards without them hearing him or sensing his presence. Whatever place he had sent them to, they were alone there. When they did eventually turn around they stopped and stared at him in disbelief, as though he were another of the ghosts they had been in such recent communion with. Benjamin Tate – for he was by then Benjamin Tate, Ben had gone – watched the shock of recognition come to their faces. He realised he should not have been there and bowed his head. Through the blades of grass an earthworm was painstakingly at work submerging itself in the soil. It undertook the task in stages, extending its inner layer before its outer layer rippled after it. Which end was which?

‘It’s you.’

Benjamin Tate looked up again. It appeared as if the father had been holding his breath for a long time. Something behind his eyes was straining outwards making them bulge. He recognised him then as the same man he’d seen running in the park, the pot-bellied slogger he’d mocked and taunted with his splendid, athletic body, and the same man he’d spoken to in the playground days later. He realised suddenly who was beneath them. Maybe she’d been so light because she was almost gone.

Benjamin Tate couldn’t speak, but mouthed the two words he’d said to them before, as feeble and small as they were in the face of this great monstrosity. The father had shaken off his wife’s restraining hand and stepped forward. Benjamin Tate thought he was going to punch him, had hoped he was.

‘I wish it was me,’ he said.

‘So do I.’

Clare was holding on to him now. They were still in the cemetery. She was talking softly, her mouth close against his ear. She told him it would be all right, that he mustn’t blame himself, that it was so long ago and that it was a mistake, just a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes. She said other things. He didn’t hear them all. He realised he must have told her how it had happened. He didn’t remember when. She said that time would heal, that Ruby would be with her parents again one day. Would she, though? He wasn’t sure. How would that work? People often said that at such times, that we’ll find our loved ones in the afterworld, and that all our broken families would be put back together again. It was a comforting idea, and he’d tried to believe it, but it had never made sense to him. Which families would be put back together? The families of our childhood, or of our – or their – parenthood? Who would claim us? Are we forever to be cast as our parents’ children, or our children’s parents? Somewhere the chain must break.

The man beside her on the bed had his eyes closed. He had been talking for hours. A lot of what he’d said made no sense to her. It didn’t matter; she didn’t think he was talking to her. She had been shocked by what he’d confessed earlier in the day, a little repelled even. She didn’t blame him, felt incredible sympathy for him, for the burden he had carried, was carrying still. And yet… And yet. And yet something disgusted her. It was the act itself. And the act was a part of him. She wanted to know the details and was shocked by her morbid curiosity. She wanted to know if the girl, Ruby, had gone beneath the car or if the car had simply bumped her aside, and, if the former, had he felt her slip under his wheels. She’d driven over a daydreaming bird once. She had assumed it would fly away at the last moment, as they always did, but it had not moved. She remembered the sound it had made, the clean, quick thrump, like something disappearing down a drain. She hadn’t expected the little mite to even register. She wanted to know if there was much blood, and if the mother had looked at him afterwards. What had she said? Had she said anything? What could she have said? It was her fault, too.

What was he saying now, something about a book, a beautiful book. What book? Jonathan Livingston Seagull? The one in the television? Clare was only half-listening. The curtains were closed although it was still daytime. She realised this was the first time she’d been in his bedroom. It was awful, even in this dim light. There was nothing in it. Like there had been nothing in the rest of his flat. There were the slippers and dressing gown neatly placed on the stool, but there was nothing else to suggest a real person occupied this space. How had he spent twenty years here and left no mark?

No, it wasn’t the book that was beautiful, it was the bookmark, the bookmark that had fallen out of it. ‘Good,’ she said to him softly, stroking his brow, letting him blow himself out. ‘That’s good.’

Suddenly his eyes pinged open and he stared at her. ‘It wasn’t mine,’ he said, ‘but I took it. It was so special, and I took it.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The curtains were open now and the room half lit by a milky-grey sky in the window. It could have been morning or evening, Benjamin Tate didn’t know which, or care. He felt like he’d been asleep for a thousand years – not asleep, stupefied. He rose groggily and lumbered along the hallway. Faint traces of Clare’s perfume sweetened the air, otherwise, so feverish and broken were his recollections, he’d have doubted the whole thing had ever happened.

In the doorway to the living room – such an ironic term for that place – he gazed listlessly on the things about him. He was indifferent to them now. They were just things. They were just there. He wondered at the energy it had taken to break so many of them. He had none of it left. He walked to the open window and leaned out. The tree was so close he could almost reach out and touch it. He leaned out further, then further again, he could lean out too far if he wanted, if he was brave enough. But no, it wasn’t yet finished. He pulled himself back inside and sat heavily down on the carpet. How exhausting it had been, ignoring the thing that needed to be acknowledged and then finally dredging it up. His bones ached, and his skull, like it had been bruised on the inside by what had battered its way out. He looked at the carpet around him, imagined himself rolling over and closing his eyes. He might never open them again.

But the finish line doesn’t come to meet you. Grudgingly he climbed back to his feet, steadying himself against the wall while the dizziness passed, and then walked into his bedroom to retrieve the ledger from the drawer. He read and then reread the address that was scrawled on the last page until he was confident he’d memorised it. Good old Pete. He always knew people, or knew people who knew people. In the kitchen the sink was still full, and he felt beneath the oily water until he found what he was looking for – yes, this would do, this would do nicely – and then put on his coat.

One final effort. A last hurrah. Telling Clare hadn’t been the end he’d hoped for, but it had at least created the momentum that would lead to the end. At the door he paused and looked back into his flat. He didn’t think he’d return. A shiver ran down his spine. If not, it would be for the best. Whatever happened it would be for the best. He could not, he would not, live through another day like the thousands that had gone before.

It was nearly dark when he entered the street he’d been searching for. It was wide, the thin trees that lined its pavements were taller than the lamp-posts, behind them on each side vast lawns – elegant, soft, strangely aloof – unfurled themselves to lay at the feet of grand well-lit houses. Discreet lights hidden beneath hedges or atop walls turned on as he passed, throwing ghostly shadows around him, lighting up in yellow hues the underside of leaves. Number two. Number four. Woodlands. The Haven. Not everywhere is confident enough to give itself a name. Number twelve. Number fourteen. At the next house he stopped, taking in the gables, the bay windows. Was it Victorian, Edwardian, a modern imitation of either? It wasn’t what he’d expected, although he’d not have been able to say what exactly he had expected.

A pebbled walkway led away from the gate into a garden now black, like water at night. He started down it and a spotlight in the turf suddenly glared up at him, momentarily blinding him and vanishing all else behind a kaleidoscope of colours. At the porch a second light, softer, more tactful, turned on to reveal the white panelled door and the gold-leaf knocker. It was deceptively heavy in his fingers, and the dense, metallic sound it made against the door echoed through the small space where he now stood. He wondered if he would be recognised. How would he introduce himself if not? He realised he may be at the wrong house entirely, that the information he’d been given might be incorrect or out of date. Either way, this was as far as it went for Benjamin Tate, or this version of him at least.

He knocked again, waited, stepped off the porch and glanced up at the window where a light shone behind the curtains. Perhaps they were out after all. Was it Saturday night, or Sunday? He had already decided to wait indefinitely when the door finally opened.

The old man standing there looked at Benjamin Tate with blank, expressionless eyes.

‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘You finally came then.’

‘You’re not surprised?’

‘I’m surprised it’s taken so long.’ He turned then and shuffled in that familiar way back into the house. Benjamin Tate followed him down the hallway. To his left and right the walls were almost completely covered with pictures of her. Some had been blown up to poster size, some, most, overlapped in montages that looked haphazard but were anything but. All the hours he’d taken, cutting them, shaping them, arranging and rearranging them, removing them and then, years later, retrieving them from the box and sliding them again behind the glass. There she was as a baby, on a high chair with food around her mouth and on her fingers and a haughty, defiant look upon her upturned face; there she was, older now, on the beach, on a grey day, bent forwards, head thrown back and hair blowing, laughing, laughing in that unbridled way that children do, children and blessed adults who keep the inner child alive; there she was, gap-toothed and beautiful, astonishingly beautiful, revealing the woman she’d have been, but mournful also, profound even, as she gazed away at something unseen. What was it about these pictures, all of them together, the collective, that bothered him?

The hallway opened into an enormous room, larger perhaps than his whole flat. Tim was on the opposite side of it, pouring drinks. His hand was shaking. The neck of the bottle trembled against the rim of the glass. It was the only sound in the room, that brittle high-pitched tinkling.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d recognise me,’ Benjamin Tate said from the doorway.