Something Wicked This Way Comes Page 10

  But that evening when I left Vainguard, the chapel door was open again. I pushed it closed, listening to be sure the latch had caught, then hurried down the drive, uneasy once more.

  TUESDAY BROUGHT Martyn Armstrong’s funeral. I’d brought a suit up with me in case I needed to sit in on any official meetings, and I hoped it would look formal enough. It was a very small funeral. Rob Ademola met me at the crematorium, along with a man he introduced as his boss, Keith Elliot. Fiona, my landlady, drew up not long after I did. There was another service before ours, and we gathered in an awkward group outside the chapel, listening to the solemn music drifting out from within. It was a low, undistinguished building, high above the town, with a cemetery set around it in seemingly endless rows of narrow stones.

  The hearse drew in while we were waiting, and to my surprise a familiar van crept in behind it. While the hearse pulled off to the right, Forster drove left and parked beside my car. He came striding over to us and said, “Sorry. Not too late, am I?”

  Fiona reassured him, which was a relief because I was entirely preoccupied by trying to stifle a truly inappropriate reaction to the sight of Niall Forster in suit and tie. He might be a foul-tempered bastard, but dear lord, the man was beautiful. The suit accentuated his impossibly broad shoulders and the solid muscle of his torso but put a sheen of civilisation on him. With his hair combed back neatly, he looked like something out of a film—probably the type that advertised itself in black-and-white posters of ripped garters.

  And this was a funeral, and I was a horrible human being.

  The funeral director ushered us in. Music was playing, something bland and impersonal. We barely filled the front pew, and pity for the old man washed over me. Was this how I would meet my end too—unloved and barely remembered by anyone but my lawyer and a couple of neighbours?

  I hoped not.

  It was a short, solemn service. The little chapel was hot and stuffy. Someone had propped a side door open, and a tiny breeze crept in to brush my cheek. The faint sound of voices came with it—another, larger group waiting to see someone to their final rest.

  As the funeral director read slowly through a Bible passage, Forster shifted beside me on the wooden pew, and I remembered that he had complained about backache in the pub last week.

  Or was it something worse? Had Katie’s too short life finished here as well?

  As the curtains whirred shut and the committal began, he tensed. I was still watching his face, and I reached out without thinking to lay my hand over his.

  I regretted it immediately. It was intrusive and almost certainly unwelcome, given how much he disliked me.

  But his palm twisted under mine, and he seized my hand, squeezing it so tightly it hurt. He didn’t look at me, just stared straight ahead, but he didn’t let go either.

  Then we were being gently ushered out, and he released me, striding off with his shoulders hunched. I didn’t have the right to follow him, but I watched him go as I made polite, awkward conversation with Rob and his boss. Fiona soon excused herself, wiping her eyes with a tissue, and I realised she was the only one who had shown any emotion about poor old Martyn Armstrong at all. It made me wish Felix had come himself rather than trusting me to sit in his place. At least he had known the man.

  Rob and his boss headed off next, though not before Rob had invited me to dinner with his family later in the week. It was a nice gesture to a stranger, and I accepted it gladly. Before long, I was the only one left.

  Except Forster’s van was still parked next to mine. I wondered where he had gone.

  There was something else I had been wondering too, and I managed to catch the funeral director before he left. “Excuse me. I don’t suppose you know how I could find out if someone was buried here. If they died locally, I mean.”

  My parents’ death certificates were tucked away safely in one of Felix’s filing cabinets, and I didn’t know if they’d been brought home to London to be buried or whether it had happened closer to the accident. I hadn’t been allowed to go—I vaguely remembered being told later that it had happened while I was still hospitalised, and I had always hated the unknown person who had taken that decision on my behalf. Later, I had deliberately buried any curiosity in the fruitless quest to repress everything which had hurt me.

  The funeral director looked startled but pointed me towards a chapel of remembrance. There was an index of burials there, he told me, and somewhere I could sit if I needed to be alone.

  But when I found it, it wasn’t empty.

  Niall Forster was there, sitting on the low bench with his face in his hands. I tried to back away and leave him to grieve privately, but I must have made some noise for he looked up.

  For a moment, our gazes locked, and I couldn’t look away from his red-rimmed eyes. Then he said, his voice low and weary, “What is it that you want?”

  I didn’t know how to apologise, or even what I should be apologising for, so I just said stiffly, “I wanted to look something up. I’m sorry. I’ll wait until you’re done.”

  He waved his hand at the side room. “Don’t mind me.”

  I sidled past him, feeling very conscious that my dark blue suit was better suited to a parents’ evening than a funeral, that I was the stranger here, that his fresh grief was more important than my long-ago losses.

  “Why would you need to know about someone buried here?” he demanded suddenly, throwing the words at my back. “What possible relevance can it have to your job?”

  “It’s personal.”

  The book of remembrance was organised by day, handwritten lines recording the names of the dead, year on year. The open volume went back to the late nineties, but older ones were behind it. I found the one dating to the eighties and began to work through from January.

  I found it in the middle of the month—their names, dates of birth and death, and a single line—dearly beloved. By their names were numbers.

  I looked up, blinking, and jumped as a warm hand landed on my shoulder.

  “You all right?” Forster asked.

  I wasn’t sure I could deal with him in protective mode, so I answered shortly, my voice tight, “Fine. What do the numbers mean?”

  “Plot. There’s a map on the wall there.” He sounded curious.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice, and turned to the map, looking for the area where 306731 and 306732 would be. Once I’d worked it out, I turned for the exit, trying to make it outside before my eyes filled.

  I collided with Forster’s broad shoulder. He hadn’t moved from behind me. I froze, and it seemed a long time before he moved away.

  It only took me a few minutes to find the plot. There wasn’t much there—just two plain stones engraved with names and dates. I knelt, feeling the dry summer grass compacting under my knee, and stared at them. I didn’t know what to say.

  Soft footsteps crunched on the gravel path behind me, and someone came to a stop. I didn’t need to look up to see who it was, but I wasn’t expecting the soft brush of knuckles against the back of my head.

  “Your parents?” Forster asked softly.

  I nodded before I closed my eyes and confessed. “I can’t really remember them. I don’t know what they’d say if they knew I was here.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “I WOULD imagine they’d be proud,” he said, a little hesitantly.

  “I don’t know what they expected of me,” I said.

  “You’re at the funeral of a man you never knew, and you work to help kids in desperate need. I can’t imagine any parents who would be disappointed in that.”

  I had to swallow hard. Was that even true? I was self-aware enough to know I wasn’t quite right—too solitary, too obsessed with work, too easily blindsided by emotion. Would my efforts to be a decent human being really compensate for all that in my parents’ eyes? They had been happy, from what I remembered. Would they really be able to accept that I had decided a calm and settled life was better than a wild, joyous one?

 
“Eighty-eight? How old were you?”

  “Six.” I swallowed hard and spoke at the gravestones so I wouldn’t have to say it to his face. “They crashed on the moor road from Newcastleton. That’s why I was freaking out. And Martyn Armstrong, he… the news clipping about it was in his album. He told Felix to send me up here to sort out the house, and I don’t know why because none of this makes sense!”

  His hands closed on my shoulders again, tugging me up. I rose to my feet, stumbled a little, and he caught me, turned me round and drew me into a hug. I hadn’t been expecting it—who hugs a virtual stranger, even one who has breakdown after breakdown in front of them?

  It felt good, though. He was warm and steady in a way I had long stopped expecting of anyone, and I gave in and leaned into his embrace. He was taller than me, and his shoulders were so broad I was completely hidden in his arms. It felt safe, and I breathed in slowly. He had the musty smell of a little-worn suit, but under that was sweat, horse, and a tang that could have been steel. Put like that, it sounds unattractive, but at the time, I couldn’t think of anything more comforting.

  He rubbed my back slowly, and I wondered if this had been something he missed—had he been a tactile man before he ended up alone, without his lover or daughter?

  He said, his voice rueful, “I owe you another apology. I should stop jumping to stupid conclusions.”

  “It’s a bad habit,” I said and fought off the urge to burrow further into his embrace. Instead I stood back and tried to regain my composure. “Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”

  That did get me a frown. “Why the hell didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “Given the circumstances, I didn’t think it fair to remind you—”

  “So you let me rub salt into your wounds?”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. Instead I looked back down at the little grey stones that marked all that remained of my parents. “I’ve had longer to learn to deal with it. There was no reason—”

  “For the love of—” He caught himself and sighed. “Let’s try this again. Hi. I’m Niall. I’m a judgemental dickhead.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Leon. I’m an uncommunicative workaholic. I’m sure we’re going to get on fine.”

  He smiled at me, a little crookedly. “Pleasure’s all mine, mate. I want to hear the whole story, if you’re willing to tell it.”

  “Of course.” I glanced at my watch. It was nearly noon. “Lunch, if you don’t need to rush away? Or the pub tonight?”

  “I need to be out the other side of Bewcastle by two, but I’ve got time for lunch.” His expression shifted, weary again. “There’s something I have to do here first, though.”

  Katie, I realised. He’d been in the little chapel for more or less the same reason I had.

  “I’ll wait for you by the car,” I said.

  We headed back towards the car park until he stopped at the end of a side path. It led off under an archway covered in flowering honeysuckle, but he looked at it as if it were a torture chamber. I touched his arm, trying to reassure him, and asked carefully, “When were you last here?”

  He hunched his shoulders, looking away, then admitted, almost silently, “Funeral.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I kept my hand on his tensed forearm.

  “Fuck,” he said and took three fast steps along the path. Then he stopped dead.

  For a moment we both stood there with the summer sun beating down on us. Then he said, “Leon.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t wait by the car.”

  I went to him and took his hand again. It had helped during the service, and I hoped it might offer him some comfort now.

  He squeezed it tightly and led me to his daughter’s grave.

  Children’s cemeteries are simply awful, even when you don’t know any of the children there. I can’t even start to imagine what Niall was thinking as we stood by Katie’s stone. It was very plain—no desperately heart-wrenching carved cartoon characters here, just black marble and a flight of tiny stars around her name. Someone had left flowers—tumbling sprays of white lobelia stuffed into a small urn.

  We stood there for a while, his hand locked around mine. Then he knelt, pulled his hand free, and reached into his pocket. He set a small metal winged horse beside the flowers and bowed his head. I put my hand on his shoulder again, half-afraid he might collapse if I didn’t keep touching him.

  At last, he muttered, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “What fucking use am I, then? Terri, my ex-wife, she comes here every bloody week, and I can’t even face it once, and when I do… nothing. What kind of a father am I?”

  “She was happy,” I said, remembering the photographs. “That’s what kind of father you are.”

  He made a low breathless sound, like I’d stabbed him.

  I panicked, but he reached up and covered my hand where it lay on his shoulder. He said, his voice rough, “Thank you.”

  I knelt beside him. He’d shown me what to do next. Though I had nowhere near his ease with offering comfort. I could still put my arm around him.

  He leaned against me and closed his eyes. He was still breathing harshly, and when I turned my head, I could see that his lashes were wet. He didn’t say anything, so I held on and waited.

  At last he pulled away and stood up. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  I scrambled after him as he stalked away, worried until he reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard before he let me go.

  He didn’t speak again until we were almost back to his van. Then he said, with more vehemence than the idea deserved, “I could fucking murder a burger.”

  “I’m in, if you need an alibi.”

  That got me a half-hearted smile. “I know a good place. Take your car so I don’t have to get the van through the old town?”

  BY MUTUAL unspoken agreement, we kept our conversation light while we ate. Niall had brought me to a pub near the red-brick cathedral and proceeded to devour the heartiest pub meal I’d ever seen—not only burger and salad, but two extra orders of chips on the side. He must have caught my startled glance because halfway through his burger, he swallowed, put it down, and said, “I spent hours at the forge yesterday.”

  “I’m jealous, not criticising. What were you making?”

  He shrugged, and I thought I caught a faint flush on his cheeks. “Trinkets. I dabble a bit, when I have the time. Made my cousin’s little girl a charm bracelet once. That sort of thing.”

  I remembered the little metal Pegasus he had put on Katie’s grave and changed the topic. “You’re a man of many talents. You be careful or I’ll start plotting to get you into my school to teach.”

  “Like fuck you will,” he said succinctly and finished his burger in a few more bites. Then he asked, “Your school?”

  I shrugged. “If it does come to that, yeah. I’m senior enough, and I’ve got no commitments in Sussex,”

  “What about your family? The sister and your head teacher or your adopted dad or whatever the hell he is?”

  “They’d cope without me, especially as I’d be doing it for the school.”

  He gave me a long, slow look. “Me, I was glad to see the back of my school. Didn’t hate it but didn’t want to linger.”

  I shrugged. “Eilbeck’s different. It’s not just a school.”

  “Yeah? Tell me about it, then. What kind of school makes you willing to give up everything and move to a place that scares the shit out of you?”

  “I’m not scared of—”

  He gave me another look, and I stopped trying to protest. Instead, I finished up the last of my chips and thought about it. He waited, not impatiently but with a steady quiet which made me feel like he wouldn’t judge.

  At last I said, because it was the simplest place to start, “Eilbeck saved my life.”

  “Literally?”

  “Close enough.” I sipped my Coke so I didn’t have
to meet his eyes. “I was a mess as a kid. I mean, looking back, with what I know now, it makes perfect sense. I can put a label on every bit of behaviour I displayed. At the time, though, I was angry all the time. Add to that, flashbacks, wild mood swings, and plain, simple grief, and I was a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “You were a bereaved kid. Someone should have helped you.”

  I shrugged. “They tried, as much as they could. The system’s stretched too thin, and once the first few months went by, everyone began to run out of sympathy, which just made me lash out more. I went straight into care once I got out the hospital. My parents had moved here from Ghana, and I didn’t have any other family in the UK. Too old for adoption—everyone wants babies, and back then most of them wanted white babies. So home after home, and I didn’t last long in any of them. Too angry, too volatile, too violent.”

  “Hard to believe, talking to you now.”

  “Thank Eilbeck for that. I got expelled from a lot of schools. Eventually, someone suggested Eilbeck, and I was carted off, screaming abuse all the way. I was thirteen and thought I was twenty. They’d caught me in school with a knife, and that was it. Eilbeck—we’re the last chance saloon of the educational world.”

  “And they did what?”

  I shrugged. “They dealt with it. I understand it. If you’ve got thirty kids in a class and one of them is throwing desks around, you have to prioritise the other twenty-nine. Four kids in a room, all with anger issues, and you can listen, take their anger seriously, and teach them how to manage it—how to help each other, even. That’s the first thing Eilbeck did for me.”

  “That sounds like a game changer.”

  “It was,” I said and put my glass down. I made myself look up at him, bracing for judgement. People get strange when they hear these things. I don’t quite know why. Unhappy childhoods may not be the norm, but there’s enough people with one that you’d think people wouldn’t treat you like a zoo animal when you talk about yours.