Lost Summer. Stuart Harrison
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the way the police said it had, there was little to support her. But then there never was. He received letters from people all the time whose children or sisters or brothers had vanished or died. They all believed something had happened that didn’t tally with the official version, and they all asked for his help. Of course he couldn’t help them all, though he did reply to each and every one of them. But of the ones he did look into the truth was never obvious. Normally it was only the conviction of the family that convinced him to investigate.
He knew he wasn’t going to ghostwrite another book, and he wasn’t about to go back to doing lifestyle pieces either. The thing that really bothered him was the idea of going back to Castleton. Who knew what can of worms that would open up? But a quickening in his chest belied his reluctance.
His thoughts drifted back to the summer a year after Meg had vanished. Throughout the intervening year he and Angela had continued seeing each other though their relationship had stalled on the knowledge that he would eventually go away to university and from there would probably move to London to begin his career. For the same reason they hadn’t had sex. The commitment to one another that step seemed to entail foundered on the looming presence of the future.
In August the country was assaulted by a sudden heat wave after a long damp July. A crowd of them had gone to a pool in the river where the water was deep and clear. He recalled lying in the grass as he dried off, warmed by the sun, watching Angela climb the bank towards the bridge which some of them had been jumping from. Nick was smoking, wearing wet cut-off jeans, his body skinny and pale. He wore a familiar faintly contemptuous expression. He no longer suffered any outward scars or bruises, but whatever damage had been inflicted inside by a father who’d been dead nearly a year would probably always remain.
In the river David and Graham were encouraging people to jump from the bridge. A girl leapt out and shrieked as she hit the water and when David helped her up the steep bank she laughed flirtatiously. He grinned. He was tanned with a lean muscular build, his thick hair lightened by the sun.
Angela stood on the edge of the bridge and looked down. She stretched out her arms to the sides and balanced on her toes.
‘I’m going to dive,’ she announced.
Her hair was wet, and droplets of water glistened on her skin. She wore a one-piece black swimsuit cut high on her hips that emphasized the flat plane of her belly and the swell of her breasts. She grinned and raised her arms above her head and slowly tipped her weight forward. As if in slow motion she fell forward, entering the water with a muffled splash to emerge moments later in a cascade of spray. She swam smoothly to the bank where David took her hand and helped her up. In that moment they looked at one another and with a jolt of awareness Adam saw something unspoken pass between them. She smiled uncertainly and as she walked away David followed her with his eyes. Sensing somebody watching him Adam turned to find Nick looking on with an amused, sardonic light in his eyes.
After that the rest of the summer seemed fraught with unspoken currents and subtle tensions. Angela was prone to long silences, and sometimes he would watch unnoticed when she and David were together. The smallest gesture or an intercepted glance seemed loaded with meaning.
It all came back with a sudden vivid clarity that surprised Adam. It was strange, he thought, how long dormant memories could return, bringing with them the smell of hay drying in the fields, the sound of laughter in the air, and the sense in her silence and her startled smile when he spoke, that Angela had been drifting from him.
His knee was aching. He rolled up the leg of his jeans and massaged the bare ridged and curiously misshapen flesh. It hurt when the weather was cold or damp, like rheumatism, but sometimes the pain just came unexpectedly. He sometimes wondered if it was just a way of reminding himself. Of making sure he didn’t forget.
A little after nine he called the number Karen had given him for Helen, and asked if he could come and talk to her the following day after she had finished work. He said there were some things he wanted to clarify. She agreed, and gave him her address in Hammersmith.
Adam arrived just after six to find that Helen lived in a flat on the fourth floor of a converted building overlooking the Thames. He looked out of the living-room window at the view, comparing her flat with his own. Research must be rewarding, he mused. Helen must have guessed what he was thinking.
‘When our parents died Ben and I inherited their farm. Ben’s share was held in trust until he was twenty-one. I used mine to buy us somewhere to live.’
She handed him a drink and led the way to her brother’s room, where she lingered in the doorway. It was orderly, everything in its place. A life packed away.
‘When did you say he went to Cumbria?’ he asked.
‘June. The beginning of the month.’
‘The other two boys in the car, did you know them?’
‘Not really. I don’t think Ben had known them long.’
‘Who did the car belong to?’
She went to a dresser and picked up a framed photograph. ‘This one. His name was Simon Davies. The other one was Keith Frost.’ There were four people in the picture, which was slightly out of focus. Three young men and a young woman sat on a stone wall smiling at the camera, with trees in the background. ‘Ben sent this to me not long after he went up there. This is him.’
The colours in the picture had a vaguely washed-out look. A cheap processing shop, Adam thought, one of those one-hour places. Helen’s brother had short brown hair, and wore jeans and a T-shirt with some logo on the front. Next to him sat a girl with long reddish-coloured hair and a slightly more reserved smile than the others. She wore glasses, which gave her a slightly studious look, though she was undoubtedly attractive. Her hands, Adam noticed, were clasped in her lap, while Ben’s arm was around her shoulders. There was something about their body language that the picture had caught. They were out of balance.
‘Do the families of the others know how you feel about what happened?’ Adam asked.
‘No, I haven’t said anything. I spoke to them on the phone but I got the feeling they didn’t want to talk. I didn’t realize until later it wasn’t just because they were upset.’ There was an echo of anger in her tone. ‘I can’t entirely blame them,’ she said. ‘It’s just … I don’t know. They don’t have any reason to doubt the official version, do they? They think their sons were killed because Ben was drunk.’
Adam looked at the picture again. ‘I assume this is the girl Ben was going out with. Jane something?’
‘Hanson. Yes.’
Again he thought he detected the faint bitterness he’d noticed in Karen’s office. ‘You said you hadn’t spoken to her at all since Ben died?’
‘No. The last time I spoke to Ben he told me that Jane had left. This was about a week before he died. I gathered they had broken up, but he didn’t want to talk about it so I didn’t press him. I always got the impression that he was more interested in her then she was in him. Perhaps if Ben had a fault that was it. He wore his heart on his sleeve a bit.’
‘When you spoke to him then, did he say anything that struck you as out of the ordinary? Did he sound worried at all?’
‘He sounded a bit down, which I put down to Jane leaving him.’ Helen looked away. ‘She never even phoned me, you know. I didn’t really expect her to be at the funeral. She may not even have known about it, but she must have heard about what happened sooner or later. I thought she would have phoned.’
Adam didn’t say anything. What could he tell her? Who was to say what the girl’s reasons had been for leaving? Maybe she and Ben had split up because after a couple of months living in the woods together she couldn’t stand the sight of him any more, but he didn’t want to tell Helen that. Neither did he want to say that for somebody who lived with his heart on his sleeve, as she’d said Ben did, losing a girlfriend might be enough to make a person act out of character. Perhaps get drunk and get behind the wheel of a car he didn’t know how to drive.
‘What