‘I’d just like you to tell me if… you know… you ever get worried that he might come back into your life again,’ she continues. ‘We’re meant to share these things.’
She’s being disingenuous. Ever since he mentioned his fear of doppelgängers, she’s been worrying herself sick about it, and yet she’s never discussed her anxieties with him. ‘You said you met him once, a long time ago.’ She shivers, bracing herself. ‘What exactly happened?’
‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘No secrets. It was in Thailand. On a beach. I was twenty-one. Different time, different place.’ He pauses. ‘But thank you. For caring.’ She wants to ask him more but there’s a finality to his tone, as if he’s said all he’s prepared to say. ‘Have you told Bex about what happened yesterday?’ he asks, changing the subject. ‘When you were out swimming?’
‘She’s heard the whole embarrassing story.’ Kate flinches again at the memory of being rescued so publicly. And by the lifeboat.
‘She’s a good friend,’ he says.
Her best friend; Bex’s northern nous a perfect counterweight to Kate’s southern skittishness.
‘Did she mention we bumped into each other at Paddington?’ he asks.
‘She did.’
She starts to well up. Should she tell him about Jake and the boat? She leans in towards the phone, staring at the blurred profile on the screen, wishing she were with him now. Rob is back to how she knows him: kind, interested, open. A man who sends her snowdrifts of white flowers. She can cope like this.
‘There’s something else,’ she says.
He’ll be upset when she tells him about Jake’s boat, offer to help. There’s never been any hostility between them, at least not on Rob’s side. It’s a mark of his kindness, his confidence in their relationship, what they’ve built together in five short months. And she likes to think Jake has been good about it too, in public at least, an acknowledgement that what they had was no longer enough.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
And then the signal improves and she’s looking at a clear picture on her phone. Rob’s staring directly at the camera, smiling in a way that she hasn’t seen before, top lip curling a fraction into what looks like a taunt. Almost a snarl. Is she imagining it? The tingling feeling returns, her scalp prickling as the room begins to spin.
‘Rob?’ she asks. His smile seems to adjust, flatten out, as if he’s suddenly remembered he’s on camera. It’s the Rob she knows again, but the damage is done. She grabs the phone and smacks it face down on the kitchen table, like she’s trapping a wasp in a jar. She leaves it there for a few seconds, breathing fast and hard.
26
Jake
‘Thanks,’ the man says. ‘Back there—’
‘No problem,’ Jake says, interrupting him. He is still buzzing, in a shaken-up sort of way. It’s not every day he saves someone’s life. And within twelve hours of almost losing his own. After leading the man away from the railway track, Jake suggested they go for a walk together and he didn’t protest.
They are now seated on a bench in the woods on the far side of the railway, looking down through a line in the trees at Hotspur House, a country pile on the distant horizon. It’s an old vista, a legacy of when this whole area of woods and parkland was landscaped by Capability Brown. All around them are stacks of timber, ready to be taken away and logged.
‘Were you really going to go through with it?’ Jake asks. Although the immediate danger has passed, he still wants to keep the man engaged.
‘Of course,’ the man says, almost indignantly. They sit in silence. ‘Maybe,’ he adds quietly.
‘So what’s the problem?’ Jake asks.
He is happy to wait for an answer. He can never bring back the woman who died on Southall station, but it feels like he’s finally made amends of sorts. Kate would be proud of him. And the woods look so beautiful today. They used to come up here together in the spring, have picnics amongst the bluebells.
‘I never asked you your name,’ he says, a seed of an idea beginning to form in his mind. The man doesn’t answer.
‘Do you drink?’ he continues. No reply. ‘I’m Jake, by the way.’
He resists offering his hand. Too formal for a pair of washed-up bums on a bench. It was Jake’s idea to come up here, far from the railway line, from his boat. He smelt alcohol on the man when they walked through the trees, where the ground was recently a carpet of blue.
Bluebells.
‘I drink too much,’ he continues, filling the silence. ‘Can’t resist a pint in a nice country pub. Never been into drugs, though. I mean, we used to have the odd spliff on the boat, in the early days, but it always gave me such a headache. Food’s my drug. Love to cook. When I can find the right ingredients. I like to forage. You can get some great chanterelles up here. Wild garlic too.’
Maybe he’s got this wrong. The man remains taciturn, not rising to Jake’s elaborately laid bait.
‘You into drugs?’ He glances at the man’s sallow skin, his sunken eyes. The village has its alcoholics, a few people who sit outside the pub each day, waiting for it to open, but nobody who looks like this. Hollowed out, as if rotting from the inside.
The man leans forward, head lowered, hands clasped so tightly together that Jake can see the white of his knuckles. He senses he’s getting warmer, but there’s still no response. So he decides to come straight out with it, ask him if he’s got caught up in a county lines operation. It might explain his sudden presence in the village.
‘Gone cunch?’ Jake says quietly.
The man looks up at him, surprised by the question, maybe the language too, and lowers his head again. Jake remains silent, watching him, willing on the faintest of responses. You can tell me, pal. I’ve just saved your bloody life. After what seems an age, the man nods.
Jake takes a sharp in-breath. Already he can feel his sympathy for this man melting away like deer in the forest, but he needs to sideline his own feelings. Stay focused. He might prove useful, know something about the man who spiked Kate’s drink in the pub. Drug networks operate in a small world – at least they did when he used to report on them.
‘No choice,’ the man eventually says, staring at the ground.
Bollocks. In Jake’s experience, there’s always a choice. The man’s too old to be a mule, but Jake knows the way county lines operate, how they use people of his age – early twenties, at a guess – to recruit teenage dealers.
‘Swindon?’ he asks.
The man nods, staring at his feet.
‘Ever worked out the Bluebell?’
He looks up at Jake, sadness replaced by a hardening of his features. The name of the pub seems to have changed the mood. ‘Wouldn’t know, mate,’ he says, standing up.
‘Rockbourne, outside Swindon,’ Jake says, watching as the man starts to walk away. Their conversation is clearly at an end. He knows something about the pub, Jake is sure of it. And maybe about the barman who served Kate that night.
‘Couldn’t you go to the police?’ he calls after him.
The man spits to one side. And then he stops, about twenty yards away, his back still to Jake, and looks around him, as if taking in the forest for the first time, the still summer air. A shiver runs through Jake. Has he pushed him too far? The man pulls out a cigarette, lights it with a rasping strike of a match, and walks on.