Lost Summer. Stuart Harrison
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I asked him when he was coming home, and he thought about a week or two. He was vague.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’
He questioned her some more about the protest itself, but she really didn’t know much about it. He asked if he could keep the picture.
‘I’ll scan it into my computer and print you a copy. Would that be okay?’
‘Fine.’
She hesitated. ‘Does this mean you’ll be going there?’
Up until then, he hadn’t really decided, but once she’d posed the question he knew the answer. ‘Yes, but I can’t promise anything,’ he told her.
Relief and gratitude jostled in her eyes. Finally somebody was taking her seriously. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
A vague unsettling guilt niggled at his conscience. He wished he was more certain of his motives.
Later he called Karen at home, and told her what he’d decided. ‘Before you say anything I have to say I’m really not sure about any of this. Helen told me that Ben had just broken up with his girlfriend. You know how it can be. Heartbroken young guy gets drunk and kills himself. It could well be that the police have got it right. When you talk to her, try to dampen her expectations a little could you?’
‘Alright. But I’ll fax you a contract in the morning, anyway.’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Adam,’ she said quickly, before he could hang up. ‘Tell me something. You must have a feeling about this, an instinct if you like. I mean you wouldn’t be taking this on otherwise.’
He heard an underlying probing note to her tone. He was sure she was wondering what had changed his mind. ‘If I find anything I’ll let you know,’ he said.
She accepted the gentle rebuff. ‘Goodnight then.’
That night he dreamed. The images were confused. He was in a forest in the dark, the moon occasionally glimpsed overhead. Ahead of him a figure materialized and as he drew nearer, his heart pounding, fear tightening his insides, he saw that it was Meg. She was pale, her hair matted, her clothes ragged, and he knew that she had been dead a long time. Her wide eyes beseeched him, but he didn’t know what it was she wanted. And then it wasn’t Meg, but Angela. She was laughing, her head tipped back, and David was with her. Then suddenly a flash accompanied by a roar of sound and he woke with a cry escaping his lips and his body soaked with sweat.
The M6 cut a swathe through the industrial north midlands past Stoke-on-Trent. Adam stopped occasionally for petrol or to stretch his legs. The weather continued to be uncharacteristically warm, the whole country basking in a kind of Indian summer. It was a good day for driving and this was the first really long run he’d made in the Porsche he’d recklessly bought six months earlier. It was a 911, with muscular flared arches and a whale-tail. Metallic green with tan leather trim. His pride and joy. He’d always wanted a Porsche, and when he’d finally realized he would never be able to afford a new one he’d considered going the classic route. He’d bought a magazine and thought about it for a couple of weeks, pondering the upkeep and the fact that he didn’t know one end of a spanner from another, then decided what the hell and started making phone calls anyway. Eventually he’d bought a ’seventy-eight model from a man in Lewes who’d owned it for ten years, during which time the car had been fully restored and treated with the respect of an enthusiast. Adam hadn’t even haggled over the asking price.
She rumbled like a big cat, with a throaty growl, and when he put his foot down the power pressed him back against his seat. The insurance was a killer, but some things in life you just have to have.
Beyond Preston vistas of the countryside opened up, and after Morecambe he had the Yorkshire Dales on his right and the Lake District on his left and Ocean Colour Scene on the CD player. The quickest route was to follow the motorway all the way up to Carlisle and then it was less then forty minutes to Castleton through Brampton. An alternative, more scenic route was to turn off at Penrith and follow minor roads along the valley through the villages that huddled beneath the fells, and that was the way he chose.
The sun was going down as he plunged into the countryside. He opened up the throttle along the deserted roads and the sound of the engine echoed back from the dry-stone walls. In the hollows where the sun had already fled he switched on the headlights. Trees and fields flashed by on either side, the bleak high fells looming to his right. He slowed as he passed through villages where the old houses and buildings were built from local red sandstone, his memories stirred by familiar sights; the churches with their squat, square towers topped with battlements like castles; high hedgerows where cow parsley grew profusely among the hawthorn and crab apple and pink soapwort; village pubs and a local garage with two old-fashioned pumps outside that looked as if they belonged to another age.
He crossed stone bridges spanning rivers and streams and took arbitrary turns as he came upon them to delay his arrival, wanting to savour the last of the journey, and the odd mixture of apprehension and exhilaration he experienced at the prospect of his return. Finally, as he drove through Halls Tenement he pulled over outside a pub, its windows lit in yellow squares, a couple of Land Rovers and a handful of cars in the car park outside. He got out to stretch his leg, which was aching after the drive. The sun had vanished and dusk had taken over the countryside, casting villages, fields and woods in eerie purple half-light.
He drove the last few miles at a sedate pace and when he arrived in Castleton it was almost dark. As he crossed the bridge over the river he glanced across the water meadow to the dark line of trees that hid Johnson’s sawmill, if it was still there. Further on the main street narrowed as he passed the newsagent that was once owned by Angela’s father. The shop looked the same but the name above the door was no longer Curtis. He emerged into the partly cobbled square and turned through the gates of the New Inn, which was a pub and hotel and hadn’t been new since 1745 when the coach house had burned down and a new one had been built. The barns at the rear had been converted into extra rooms, four on ground level, four above, with steps leading up the outside and a walkway past the doors.
He hadn’t booked, but the tourist season had ended and there was no problem getting a room. He chose a new one in the conversion, and as he signed the register the young woman who checked him in asked if he would like to have dinner in the restaurant across the hall, which when he looked was empty. The hum of voices emanated from the bar, however, along with the smell of roast beef and gravy.
‘I’ll get something at the bar,’ he said. She smiled and asked how long he would be staying. ‘I’m not sure. Say a week.’
On the way past the bar he heard a woman laugh and when he looked inside and saw her standing among a group with her back to him his heart skipped a beat. For an instant time confused him and he thought at first it was Louise. She was slim with long blonde hair that shone in the light, but then he remembered where he was and it was no longer Louise he thought of but the person she had reminded him of the first time he’d seen her. He stood transfixed but then the woman in the bar turned and she wasn’t Angela after all.
He went to his room and sat down on the bed. His heart was still beating too fast and he experienced an odd sense of revelation. All these years he had harboured a memory of her, but it was like something covert and hidden. Only now did he begin to sense the force of everything he had kept shut inside himself all that time.
He went to bed early and woke at six-thirty as it was beginning to get light. The hotel was quiet other than the first sounds of stirring from behind the kitchen doors when he looked in the restaurant. He decided to go for a walk before breakfast, partly from curiosity and partly to loosen up his leg, which had stiffened overnight. The town was deserted, the sky purple, beginning to turn blue as the sun crept up over the hills. When he reached the river he followed the public footpath across the meadow and as he approached the trees