The Immaculate (40 page)

Thankfully, his pessimism was misplaced. If anything, the delay in the paperback release of
Splinter Kiss
worked mightily in the book's favour, to the extent that it almost became a marketing ploy in itself.

By the time
Splinter Kiss
finally did hit the shelves, the reading public were ravenous for it. It leapt straight onto the bestsellers list at number five, and for over a month had been vying for number one. It was outselling new releases from some of the biggest names in the world. There was a rumour that one of Hollywood's most famous directors was anxious to direct the film.

Sitting on the tube, white cotton shirt clinging to him like a second skin, leather jacket draped over his lap like a dead dog, Jack found it difficult to equate all this excitement with himself. The fifteen months since his return to Beckford had been tough for him. He had been through a lot of pain and trauma, both physical and mental. All the furore surrounding
Splinter Kiss,
and the even greater furore that was predicted to surround his forthcoming novel,
The Laughter,
had been both a curse and a blessing. At times it had been exhilarating, a more than welcome distraction. Alternatively, on bad days, it had seemed shallow, exhausting, stiflingly overwhelming. On these occasions he had simply had to grit his teeth and get on with it, snatch whatever solitude, whatever thinking time, he could and nurture it.

He drew in his knees a little as even more people piled onto the tube at Euston. As he did so, he heard the letter crackle in his pocket. He eased it out, taking care not to nudge the fat woman with the bad wig who was sitting beside him. Really he should have left the letter at home, forgot about it until after his lunch with the “film people” whom his agent was introducing him to. He didn't want to seem vague or uninterested in what they would undoubtedly offer him. But forgetting about the letter's contents was easier said than done. Selling his father's house was a big step for Jack, important in a way that only he could understand. He slid the letter from the envelope, unfolded it and read it for the sixth or seventh time.

His Aunt Georgina, who was conducting the sale for him, informed him in her small, neat script that a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Thomas, had offered £177,500 for the property. It was £7,500 less than the asking price, but Georgina had decided to accept their offer. She knew how eager Jack was to get rid of the house and how little the money mattered to him. He stared at the letter, reread it, as if afraid he had overlooked some vital loophole. Not for the first time, he found himself drifting back, reliving the aftermath of that fateful night.

Throughout his convalescence, Jack had constantly been informed of just how lucky he was to be alive. He had lain in the clearing, losing blood, for over six hours, and it was amazing, he was told, that he had managed to survive for so long. What was also amazing was that the man who had found him, a butcher called Dennis Barber, had only done so through sheer fortune. Not normally an insomniac, Barber had been unable to sleep on this particular May night. After tossing and turning for what seemed an age, he had finally got out of bed, leaving his wife sleeping soundly, when the first glimmerings of dawn had begun to streak the sky. He decided to go for a walk, was almost out of the door when it struck him that he ought to take the dog with him, a red setter called Suzy. Why he hadn't simply crossed to the local park, less than five minutes' walk away, and wandered around there for half an hour or so he couldn't say. Instead, on an impulse he had got the Landrover out of the garage and driven it four miles to Beckford Woods.

Once in the woods, instead of sticking to the main path, he had decided to follow a secondary route, which was both circuitous and largely overgrown. Suzy had bounded joyfully into the undergrowth, deliriously excited by the plethora of new sounds and smells that assailed her senses. Dennis was enjoying his walk—the crisp air, the sweet virgin light of a new day. He had been walking along this secondary route for perhaps twenty minutes when Suzy had started barking.

There had been something about the bark. It was not simply the exuberance of an overexcited dog. There had been a note of alarm in it, a sense of determination, of purpose. Dennis tried calling her, but Suzy did not come. Something told him that she was barking to attract his attention, to lead him to her, and he had begun to jog, and then to run, through the foliage, occasionally jumping over tree roots and hummocky sods of grass like green punk wigs.

He was not used to running, had not run since his college days over twenty years earlier when he had been a prop forward, and by the time he reached the clearing his lungs were on fire and his heart felt as if it were ready to burst in his chest. Part of him rejected this entire scenario. Suzy was not bloody Lassie, after all. He would probably find her venting her frustration at a rabbit hole.

And yet, Dennis Barber later told Jack whilst sitting at his bedside in Leeds General Infirmary, he had not been entirely surprised when he had found his dog standing over the body of a man who looked to have been killed in a shoot-out. At the time, he had thought Jack was dead.

What made him realise he was not was when Suzy dipped her head and daintily licked Jack's face, whereupon the “corpse” had feebly raised a hand, either to pet the dog or push it away.

“You must be the luckiest man alive,” Barber had said, grinning wildly, and Jack, returning his grin, had nodded. But oddly, Jack did not
feel
lucky. He felt empty, bereft. He wished earnestly that Barber had not found him, that he had simply been left to die.

It had taken him a long time to get over this feeling, and even now there were days when it took hold of him like a pit bull terrier and would not let go. But, on the whole, he was getting better. There were more bright days than dark. He was beginning to enjoy life again.

He had spent eighteen days at the hospital, during which time he had surgery twice, and afterwards he returned to London. For a time his best friend, Frank Dawson, looked after him. Jack found to his frustration that overexertion (which could mean something as innocuous as a trip to Sainsbury's) would make him sick as a dog and weak as a kitten. His physical convalescence was a long and boring process. For three months he felt like a prisoner in his own home. He had little appetite and lost eleven pounds, which ironically brought him down to his ideal weight. He filled in the time by working on
The Laughter,
reading the rest of his father's stories, watching TV, listening to music, and having long emotional phone calls with his Aunt Georgina.

It had taken a while for her to open up, but eventually, due to Jack's persistence, she had told him everything. The other baby, his twin, a girl who was to have been called Gail, had only been discovered during his mother's autopsy.

Appalled, even furious, Jack had asked, “How could anyone miss something like that? Didn't they realize—”

“It was 1970,” Georgina interrupted gently. “They didn't have the technology they have now. Mistakes were far more common in those days.” She hesitated a moment and then went on, “Besides, Gail was a wee scrap of a thing. It would have been touch and go whether she'd have survived even if she'd been born.”

“Still,” he said, “it was a disgraceful mistake to make.”

“It was a tragedy,” Georgina replied, “and it happened a long time ago.”

“But not for me,” he insisted. “For me, it's only just happened. Why wasn't I ever told?”

“Things were bad enough, Jack. You had plenty to contend with without this extra burden. Your father couldn't accept that part of it. He attended the funeral, but he never talked about the little girl. I even had to have the wording on the stone amended to include her name. I think it was because of this that your father never visited the grave. If he had, you might have found out sooner.” Her voice sounded strained, and Jack suddenly realised that this was hard for her, too. He felt a little ashamed for being so insistent, so accusatory.

“So you thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie,” he said wearily, and immediately realised how inappropriate the phrase sounded.

“Yes,” said Georgina. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time. Maybe I was wrong.”

He expelled an almighty sigh. “No,” he said, “you weren't wrong. I guess it would only have caused more misery. It would have given my father one more thing to blame me for.”

There was a short silence on the phone, and then Georgina said tentatively, “I wish you didn't hate your father so much, Jack. I realise how he treated you, but it was—”

“But I
don't
hate him!” he blurted, surprised that she should think so. “Not any more. I know now he was sorry for what he did to me.”

Now it was Georgina's turn to sound surprised. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think he was too.”

“It's just the situation I hate,” Jack said. “The whole mess. And what's so frustrating is that there's no focus for that hatred. Except maybe God, and that seems pointless to me.”

There had been other phone calls, other questions. Jack's emotions had veered from one extreme to the other during the course of his recovery, but Georgina had always been there to listen and respond. Throughout, he never told anyone what had really happened that last night in Beckford, not even his aunt. When the police asked him if he had known his assailant, or if he knew of anyone who might have had a grudge against him, he said no. He wondered at first why he didn't just drop Patty Bates in it, but even as he questioned himself he knew the answer. He wanted there to be an end to it, had no wish to resurrect what he finally considered to be dead and buried. Of course the police had their suspicions, and there must have been enough evidence at the house and in the woods to suggest that some sort of manhunt had taken place. But no one was ever charged with anything, and eventually the police visits tailed off.

Gail's mobile number yielded nothing but a failed connection, the number to her flat likewise. Even so, Jack tried this latter number again and again. For a while it became an obsession with him. Though he was met each time by the faint ticking of an attempted connection and then the dull hum of a nonexistent line, he would think, as his fingers punched out the digits,
This time. This time she'll pick up the phone and say hello.
Yet each time there would be that crushing sense of defeat, which would dwindle into black depression, and then deeper, into grief.

Jack knew in his heart he would never speak to her again. Part of him wondered whether he had
ever
spoken to her. But he remembered the taste of her, the softness of her kisses, their bodies together, loving. Had that been right, considering the circumstances? Could conventional morality even be applied here? His mind turned the matter over and over, digging up the same old ground, sifting through the same dark soil. When he asked Frank Dawson what he remembered of Gail, he was astonished to discover that Frank had never met her.

“What do you mean?” Jack said. “Of
course
you met her.”

“No.” Frank shook his head adamantly. “Never did. And neither did Nick and Julie, or Andre and Becca, or Wendy, or Kev, or James, or anyone. We used to joke about it, how you kept her to yourself, like a kid with a toy he didn't want to share. I think there were one or two occasions when she was
going
to come out with us—like when we went to Fino's for Becca's birthday—but for some reason she never made it; she was ill or you were away or something. I thought maybe you were just ashamed of us all. Or perhaps worried she'd be unable to resist my charm, sophistication and good looks.”

“But . . . I can't believe this!” Jack said. “Are you
sure
you never met her?”

“Positive,” Frank said. Seeing his friend's obvious distress, he patted his shoulder in an awkward gesture of consolation. As far as Frank was aware, Gail had finished with Jack out of the blue and had left town, making the break while he was in Beckford sorting out his dad's affairs. Apparently she hadn't even got in touch while Jack was fighting for his life in the hospital. In Frank's book that made her a complete cow. He didn't know the full story, but he felt sure Jack was the injured party and it upset him to see his friend torturing himself like this. “Forget her, Jack,” he advised. “She's not worth all this hassle. You're well rid, mate, believe me.”

It was obvious over the next few months that Jack could not forget her, and Frank was shrewd enough to realise he had to let the matter run its course. Only Jack could sort it out. Frank could be there, to listen and offer advice, but when it came to the crunch Jack would be on his own.

For his part, Jack racked his brains to think of somebody he knew who had met Gail. It took him a while, but at last he came up with a name: Tamsin Reynolds, the publicity manager at Cormorant. The three of them had gone out for lunch after his signing at Strange Worlds some months earlier. Jack was not sure exactly what it would achieve, but he phoned Cormorant at once, hands shaking with nerves, stomach in a flutter.

He was put through to the publicity department and after a few moments a female voice said, “Hello?”

“Tamsin, hi, it's Jack Stone. I wanted to ask you—”

“Oh . . . um . . . hang on. This isn't Tamsin. It's Liz Peacock.”

“Oh. Er . . . hi, Liz. It's Jack Stone here. Is Tamsin there?”

“No, Jack, she isn't. I'm afraid she's left.”

“Left?”
he exclaimed.

“Yeah, a couple of weeks ago. Didn't you know?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Oh. Well, it's been in the cards for a while now. You've been . . . er . . . away though, haven't you?”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “Look, Liz, is there any way I can contact Tamsin?”

“Well, I can give you her address in Sydney if it's urgent.”