The Son-in-Law (8 page)

‘Thanks,’ he said, as Bigwig disappeared under the duvet with just the tips of his ears sticking out.

I bent and kissed him on the forehead. Gramps often did that. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘You know Dad?’ he said.

It was a shock, coming out of the blue. ‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘Not anymore.’

‘Remember how he used to play football with us?’

‘No.’

‘Remember how he always used to carry us on his shoulders? I remember looking down at people’s hair. You must remember that.’

‘So?’

Theo squirmed deeper under the duvet. ‘Nothing.’

I sat on the end of his bed, trying to work out what was in my brother’s head. He’s a mystery sometimes.

‘You know Neanderthal man?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Not personally.’

‘We all have a little bit of Neanderthal man in us. They lived thousands and thousands of years ago, didn’t they?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Gramps said we all have some of their, um . . .’

‘DNA.’

‘DNA. Anyway, a bit of them. Right?’

‘Right.’

Theo was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘So we must have a
lot
of Dad.’

‘You’re mad. Shut up and go to sleep.’ Feeling cross and twitchy, I turned off the lamp and burrowed under the duvet at the opposite end, so that we were topping and tailing. There was plenty of room. I meant to go back to my own bed, I really did, but I thought Theo might drift off if I was nearby. His duvet cover was warm and smelled of Persil, and I didn’t want to be alone again. So I decided to stay for a minute or two. Or ten.

Sleep was settling all over me in a purple cloud when Theo broke into my cloud-drift. He’d been thinking. He does
far
too much of that.

‘Scarlet?’ he whispered.

‘Shh. Go to sleep.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Try counting sheep.’

I could hear his breathing, just a little wheezy, and wondered whether he was going to have an asthma attack. He could only have counted about twenty sheep before he piped up again. ‘I’m scared.’

I sighed. ‘Why’re you scared?’

‘I think I’ve got the nasty part of Dad in me.’

Seven

Joseph

‘You’re a bloody genius, Scott,’ groaned Akash. ‘Not
again
! Less than four days out of rock college and you’re begging to get sent straight back. What’s your problem?’

Joseph shrugged. ‘I just wanted to . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah. I know, spare me. You just wanted to see your daughter. Couldn’t you have waited? You’ve applied, right? You’ve got a date for court? So do yourself a favour and stop trying to get yourself locked up again. She’ll have run straight home and told your in-laws. Might be a warrant out for you already.’

They were on their way to look at the car for Joseph. Akash was driving.

‘I called her Zoe,’ Joseph confessed wretchedly.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’

It had looked so like Zoe, silhouetted against the Minster’s windows; as though he’d met a wraith in the icy dusk. After her death, his shock and grief were bound up with arrest and interview and criminal charges. He’d been forbidden to contact his children or anyone connected to the family—that was a condition of his bail. Turning up at Zoe’s funeral had been impossible, though he later discovered that she’d been cremated and her ashes scattered into Lake Windermere, a place she’d always loved. He had pleaded guilty to killing her, but a part of him didn’t believe that she was dead at all.

Even as he spoke her name, he’d realised his mistake. Scarlet was off, fast as a fox, darting down the alleyways of the old city with her violin case swinging. He was left sitting stunned on the bench.

Idiot,
he had told himself furiously.
You’ve blown it.

All he’d wanted was to see his girl. Well, now he had seen her and terrified the poor child into the bargain.

Akash was still ranting as they pulled in behind an elderly blue Fiesta. The pregnant-with-twins sister came to the door of her flat and handed over a set of keys. After a lot of fumbling with a rusty catch, Joseph lifted the car’s bonnet.

His friend watched proceedings with a sardonic smile. ‘You don’t know one end from the other, do you Scott?’

‘Nope.’

‘Stand aside,’ Akash ordered, pulling a small torch from his pocket. Joseph watched as his former cellmate revved the engine and fiddled with spark plugs, finally slamming the bonnet shut. ‘We can take it out for a spin, if you like. But it’s exactly what it looks like—bloody old and battle-scarred, like you. But honest, like me.’

Joseph had already been to the bank. Within ten minutes he was the owner of a battle-scarred, but honest, blue Fiesta.

‘So what next?’ Akash asked later, as they celebrated in the Prince Albert.

‘You mean assuming they don’t send me back inside for breaching my licence?’

‘Yeah. Assuming that.’

Joseph downed half his pint. ‘I appreciate your sofa, I really do, but it’s time I got on my own two feet. I’ll be off first thing tomorrow.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Akash looked doubtful. ‘Off where? To see your fairy godmother?’

‘You could say that.’

•

To a man who’d spent three years locked in a small cell, the North Yorkshire Moors felt surreally limitless. They stretched into hazy oblivion; bleak undulations, brooding in crystalline winter light. There were no walls here on the tops; no fences, no boundaries at all except the thin ribbon of the road. Sheep grazed freely, and once, Joseph was forced to stop and wait for an ambling pair to cross. On the seat behind him lay a kitbag with enough clothes to see him through the winter.

Several miles north of Helmsley a turn-off led into a steep valley, whose shadowed verges glittered under a layer of frost. The road twisted, slick with mud, and narrowed until it seemed no more than a farm track. Eventually it forded a beck before turning uphill again. Joseph negotiated a flock of hens as he turned through an open gate and into a farmyard. A sign hung lopsidedly from the bare branches of a tree:
Brandsmoor Camping
and Caravans.

As he climbed out, a collie arrived growling by his knee. She had opaque eyes, and walked with the stiff care of the arthritic. Joseph reached to let her sniff his hand. ‘Jess, Jessy,’ he said quietly, and her tail waved its white-flag tip.

The house had stood for two hundred years, weathered and stoic, mellow sandstone worn smooth at the corners. The roof was in trouble, the ridgepole hunchbacked and missing several slates. An iron boot scraper cluttered the front doorstep alongside a pair of tartan slippers, and herbs slept through the winter in pots and watering-cans. Joseph was caressing the collie’s ears when the door opened, and someone spoke.

‘Who is it, Jess?’

She was old; distinctly, decidedly old. She’d probably never been tall, but the years had shrunk her to hobbit proportions. Sturdy, though. She stood squarely in brown lace-up shoes and army surplus trousers, peering courageously through blue-rimmed glasses.

Joseph smiled. ‘Hello, Abigail.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s me,’ called Joseph, stepping closer. He felt about twice her height. ‘Joseph Scott.’

She hadn’t changed much since he’d last seen her. Her hair had been wiry white then, as it was now, her skin crazily creased. She was a little more bent, perhaps, and he thought she’d lost another inch or two.

‘Aha,’ she said calmly. ‘The wife killer. Come on in, come on in.’

The kitchen hadn’t changed either: the same warm clutter, the rose-patterned plastic tablecloth, the overriding smell of farmyard muck and smouldering coal and strong tea. An airer hung from the ceiling, bedecked with several pairs of Abigail’s trademark army trousers. The room was pleasantly gloomy, its windows set two feet deep. They looked across the yard towards the steep rise of the moors.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ said Joseph. Surprised by his own emotion, he took the old woman’s gnarled hands and squeezed them in his own. ‘You look marvellous.’

‘I doubt it,’ she declared tartly, disengaging her hands to lift a kettle from the range. Abigail had run the farm and campsite alone since her brother’s death thirty years earlier, and Joseph had never known her to take a holiday.

‘Everything’s just the same here,’ he said. ‘I’m just so . . .’ He shook his head, laughing bemusedly. ‘So bloody grateful.’

‘How long’s it been?’

‘Not far off four years.’

‘Sit here.’ She pulled out a chair from the table, shooing a prosperous-looking tabby from the faded cushion. When Joseph sat, the animal immediately sprang onto his lap.

‘Digby!’ cried Joseph. ‘He’s not wasting away, is he?’

‘Look at the soppy bastard, sucking up to you.’ Abigail put a mug of tea in front of Joseph. ‘It’s still there. The Scott family caravan. Sounds like a stately home. Your sister stayed last summer with a, um, friend.’

‘Male?’

‘More or less. Hard to tell, with all that hair. Nobody’s been since then, but Marie’s kept up the ground rent.’

‘Is there still a rope swing in that massive oak tree?’

‘Lightning got that tree.’

Joseph let his hand rest on Digby’s back, feeling the deep vibration of a purr. ‘I’ve just got out of prison.’

‘Did you knot your sheets into a rope and escape?’

‘Nope. I did half my sentence. I’m on licence.’

Deep canyons radiated from the corners of Abigail’s mouth. ‘You’re a celebrity. I hate to think how much forest was cut down just to plaster your name across the
Yorkshire Post
.’ She disappeared into the larder and came back with fruit cake in a tin. Joseph watched her wield a knife, while Digby stretched luxuriously.

‘This a social call?’ she asked, handing him a plate.

‘Thanks—lovely. Yes, a social call.’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘You weren’t,’ admitted Joseph, smiling. ‘I want to live in the caravan for a while.’

‘Heck, you’ll freeze.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

She considered him for a moment, chewing the side of her mouth. ‘I hope that sister of yours did the washing-up before she left.’

They crossed the farmyard with Jessy padding alongside them. A red Ferguson tractor was delivering bales of hay to cattle in an open-sided barn. At the wheel sat a burly man in overalls.

‘I see Gus is still here,’ remarked Joseph.

‘Not so much, nowadays. His father had a heart bypass, so he’s been doing most of the running of their place as well. When he is here he spends more time on the campsite than he does on the stock. It’s the only thing that pays its way.’

‘Farm not doing well?’

‘Nah, hardly worth the bother. Moorland farms are dying.’ A kissing gate in a dry stone wall opened onto the first of a series of broad terraces leading down to a beck. Campervans were parked at the top, and a group of teenagers played with a Frisbee. Abigail and Joseph strolled together to the lowest tier. It was muddier here, the grass thick and rank. Gus had evidently been neglecting his mowing duties; or perhaps there simply wasn’t enough of Gus to go around. Several static caravans lay among twisted trees overlooking the beck. Abigail and Joseph headed for the last of the row.

‘Huzzah,’ grunted Joseph, lifting a lichen-encrusted rock. ‘Marie left the key.’

He climbed two steps to unlock the door, standing back to let Abigail enter first. Their footsteps made the structure shake. The place smelled of damp, so Joseph propped the door open.

‘Well, she did the washing-up,’ said Abigail grimly, looking around. ‘But—silly girl—it wasn’t right clever to leave elder-flowers in a marmalade jar!’

A galley kitchen ran beside a built-in table and seats. One sliding door led into a bedroom only just large enough to fit its double bed; another door led into a tiny bathroom. The far end opened out into a living area with covered benches and windows along three sides.

‘Bingo!’ cried Joseph, peering into a cupboard. ‘It’s all still here. Duvets, linen, blankets, towels . . . I’d forgotten we even owned the gas heater. Zoe bought this stuff. She decided the caravan was manky, drove all the way to York and came back with brand-new everything. See? Some of these are still in their packaging. Cost a bloody fortune.’

Without comment, Abigail moved to a window and stood looking down at the beck.

Joseph was caught up in the excitement of the past-made-present. ‘Aha, yes! I remember her buying these, too. The kids loved ’em.’ He pulled out a packet. ‘Glow sticks. Little plastic tubes that glow in the dark. Zoe said no camping expedition was complete without glow sticks. We spent hours twirling them, throwing them, making bracelets . . . and at bedtime the kids each had their own personal light source. Brilliant!’

Noticing Abigail’s silence, Joseph realised that he’d spoken of Zoe as though she was alive and well and about to arrive for a week’s holiday. He closed the cupboard doors and joined Abigail at the window, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his coat. The valley was already full of shadow; he could scarcely see the beck. Patches of grass by the water hadn’t been touched by sunlight at all that day. The frost had never melted, and now another layer would form.

‘I forget,’ he said.

‘Forget?’

‘I still can’t imagine a world without her. That sounds ridiculous.
Can’t imagine a world without her
. . . Pretty crazy, coming from the idiot who killed her. Marie would have a field day with that. She’d say it proves I’ve got a narcissistic personality disorder, or something.’

Abigail fiddled with the window’s catch and slid it open. Clean air rolled in, carrying the tang of peat and bracken. ‘Doesn’t seem more than a week ago that your parents bought this caravan. State-of-the-art it was, then. You took your first steps out by that tree—see? The knotted old bugger there. All the mothers fussed over you, little curly head. Your big sister’s nose went out of joint. I caught her prodding you to make you cry.’

A muscle contracted beside Joseph’s mouth. It wasn’t quite a smile. ‘She still does that.’

‘You spent most of your summers here.’

‘Poor Mum was only too happy to bring us. She’d sit around with the other mothers and drink cider and laugh all day every day, while twenty kids ran riot and dammed the beck. I never once saw her laugh like that at home.’