Lucas (40 page)

That night, as Dad started talking, the horizon came home.

‘You don't have to worry about Jamie Tait any more,' he said. ‘You don't have to worry about anything. Lucas left a full account of everything in a notebook in his bag. Dates, times, places, people—'

‘Everything?' I said.

Dad nodded. ‘After I brought you back from the beach that day, I found the bag in my room and hid it away. I was worried about the mob on the beach. I thought they might come back looking for more trouble … I needn't have bothered, though. Most of them just wandered off along the beach back to the village. I saw Jamie and his boys coming up the lane about an hour or so later, but the fight had gone out of them. They'd lost interest.'

‘They'd got what they wanted,' I said bitterly.

‘I don't think they ever
knew
what they wanted. Maybe Jamie did in a twisted kind of way, and Sara, but the rest of them …' He shook his head. ‘I don't know. They just got in their cars and drove away. Didn't even glance at the house. They looked half dead. Confused. Shocked. Ashamed. As if they'd only just realised what they'd got themselves into … as if they couldn't quite understand it.'

‘What about Bob Toms?' I asked.

‘I'll come to him in a minute.' He got up and went over to the window. He stood there for a while stroking his beard and gazing up at the stars, and then he started talking again. ‘As soon as the storm died out and the Stand cleared, the place went crazy. There were police all over the island. Police, ambulances, helicopters, coastguards … it was like something out of a disaster movie. Most of the police were from Moulton, and I didn't know if I could
trust them or not, so I kept quiet about Lucas's bag until Lenny showed up later that night. I told him as much as I knew and I gave him the notebook and bag, and then I left him to it.' He turned from the window and looked at me. ‘Jamie and Sara were arrested the next morning and Bob Toms was suspended from duty pending a full investigation.'

‘What about the rest of them?' I asked. ‘Lee Brendell, the bikers, Tully Jones and Mick Buck—'

‘It's still going on. It's a complicated process, Cait. The entire Moulton police force are involved. There's a lot to sort out. Various charges of assault, attempted rape, deception, corruption, complicity … I've been interviewed about a dozen times. Dominic's been interviewed. Bill, Rita, Shev … the whole island's under investigation.'

‘Good,' I said.

‘The police want to talk to you, too.'

‘What about?' I snapped.

He gave me a gentle look of admonishment, and for the first time in ages I felt the hint of a smile on my face. It
was
a pretty stupid question.

He came over and sat down next to me. ‘It's good to see you smile again.'

I looked at him. ‘It's all that talk of grief and dying – it's cheered me right up.'

He laughed quietly. ‘I do my best.'

‘I know – thanks.'

We sat in silence for a while. I gazed through the window at the night sky, wondering idly at all that space, all that blackness, all that nothing, and as I sat there looking up at the emptiness I began thinking about the creek, the hills, the woods, the water … how everything goes round and round and never really changes. How life recycles
everything it uses. How the end product of one process becomes the starting point of another, how each generation of living things depends on the chemicals released by the generations that have preceded it …

I don't know
why
I was thinking about it. It just seemed to occur to me.

I was also thinking, curiously, about crabs. I was wondering if they
did
have a memory, as Lucas had suggested. And if they did, what did they remember? Did they remember their childhood, their baby-crabhood? Did they remember themselves as tiny little things scuttling about in the sand trying to avoid being eaten by fish and other crabs and just about anything else that was bigger than them? Did they think about that, scratching their bony heads with their claws? Did they remember yesterday? Or did they just remember ten minutes ago? Five minutes ago? And I was wondering what it must be like to be dropped into a pot full of boiling water …

I was thinking about all these things and more, but I wasn't really thinking about them at all. They were just there, floating around in the back of my mind, thinking about themselves.

What I was
really
thinking about, of course, was Lucas.

‘Why do you think he did it?' Dad asked in a near-whisper.

I looked at him. Beneath the beard and the weary eyes I saw the face of a child, a small child asking his mother to explain something. Something so simple it was bewildering – why? why did he kill himself?

‘I don't know, Dad,' I said. ‘I've thought about it so much I hardly even know what I'm thinking about any more.'

Dad nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it's best not to know.
He had his reasons, his secrets … let him keep them. I think he deserves them.' He looked at me. ‘We all deserve our secrets.'

‘Yeah, I suppose … it's hard not to wonder, though.'

‘I know.' He gave me a long hard look, then patted my hand. ‘Wait there – I've got something for you. I think you're ready for it now.' He got up and left the room. I heard him go into his bedroom, open a cupboard door, and then I heard his footsteps coming back along the hallway. When he came back in he was holding Lucas's canvas bag.

‘The police have finished with it,' he said, sitting down. ‘They've kept the notebook for evidence but everything else is just as it was.' He passed it to me. ‘Lenny thought you'd like it.'

I took the battered bag in my hands and felt the tears welling up. It smelled of Lucas. Sand, salt, sweat, crabs … I gripped the rough green material in my hands and held it to my chest. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even cry.

Dad leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Make it good,' he whispered. ‘Make it part of you.'

Then he got up, said goodnight, and quietly walked out.

There wasn't much in the bag. Two green T-shirts, a pair of green trousers, pants, his water bottle, a length of twine, some fishhooks, a penknife, a handful of pebbles and seashells, and a small wooden carving wrapped in cloth. I suppose the rest of his stuff was in his pockets when he died, or got smashed up or stolen when his place in the woods was wrecked.

I keep his clothes in my wardrobe. The canvas bag hangs
on the back of my door. The rest of it is never far away. I can see it all now. As I sit here gazing out of my bedroom window, I can see the length of twine hanging from a pin on the wall, I can see the fish-hooks lined up in a row on my shelf, I can see the penknife resting in my pencil jar and the pebbles and shells sitting pretty in a clear glass jewellery box. And I can see the small wooden carving in my hand. I usually keep it on the bedside cabinet with the other one, the miniature Deefer, but I often find myself picking it up and holding it, not necessarily looking at it, just holding it comfortably in the palm of my hand. It helps me to think. It calms me. It's a carving of a face. Just like the one of Deefer, it's crude, but remarkably beautiful. No bigger than a finger, and carved out of driftwood, it feels smooth and warm, almost alive. I've spent many an hour studying it, staring at the face, the tiny eyes, the perfect nose, the beguiling mouth, and I'm still not sure what to make of it. It seems to change every time I look at it. Sometimes I'm sure it's meant to be me. It
is
me. And when I look at it, I see what I feel. If I'm happy, it's happy. If I'm sad, it's sad. If I'm lonely, it's lonely. But other times it doesn't look anything like me. It looks like Dad. And it mirrors
his
emotions, too. It's uncanny.

Sometimes, usually in the early hours of the morning, the carving takes on the appearance of Lucas. When the wind is blowing in the trees or the thunder is rumbling angrily in the distance, or when I just can't get to sleep for some reason, I wake up and look at the clock, and in the pale red light of the digital display I see Lucas's face gazing down at me from the cabinet. Unlike my face, or Dad's, Lucas's never changes. It's always the same: calm, peaceful, and beautifully sad.

Right now, as I hold the carving up to the light, I can
see all of three of us joined together. Three faces as one. I've never seen that before.

It looks nice.

Now it's late afternoon, about five-thirty. Mid-summer. Hot, but not too hot. Warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt. The sky is glowing with that wonderful silver light that lazes through to the early evening, and the house is quiet. Dominic is back from university again, taking a bath after a jog along the beach. I can hear the water tank dripping in the attic –
tack, tock, tock … tack, tock, tock … tack, tock, tock
– like a hesitant clock. Downstairs, I can hear Dad typing in his study. And from the garden I can hear Deefer chewing on a bone in the shade of the cherry tree.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Lucas's death.

I'll get up early and take a walk down to the beach and stand for a while looking out over the mud flats, just as I do every day. I'll probably say a few words and listen to the wind. I might even spend a few minutes searching for a glimpse of the coloured air, but I know I won't find it. I'll just stand there breathing in the smell of the sea and listening to the waves lapping gently on the shore, the wind in the air, the rustling sand, the seabirds … and then I'll come back home again and get on with my life.

That's what happens.

You just get on with it.

There are no endings.

Wednesday

I
t's hard to know where to start with this. I suppose I could tell you all about where I was born, what it was like when Mum was still around, what happened when I was a little kid, all that kind of stuff, but it's not really relevant. Or maybe it is. I don't know. Most of it I can't remember, anyway. It's all just bits and pieces of things, things that may or may not have happened – scraps of images, vague feelings, faded photographs of nameless people and forgotten places – that kind of thing.

Anyway, let's get the name out of the way first.

Martyn Pig.

Martyn with a Y, Pig with an I and one G.

Martyn Pig.

Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it. It doesn't bother me any more. I'm used to it. Mind you, there was a time when nothing else seemed to matter. My name made my life unbearable. Martyn Pig. Why? Why did I have to put up with it? The startled looks, the sneers and sniggers, the snorts, the never-ending pig jokes, day in, day out, over and over again. Why? Why me? Why couldn't I have a
normal
name? Keith Watson, Darren Jones – something like that. Why was I lumbered with a name that turned heads, a name that got me noticed? A
funny
name. Why?

And it wasn't just the name-calling I had to worry about, either, it was everything. Every time I had to tell someone
my name I'd start to feel ill. Physically ill. Sweaty hands, the shakes, bellyache. I lived for years with the constant dread of having to announce myself.