Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(112)

“You two at the back: look up your mums’ blog,” he ordered them. Lola had it on her favorites page so was first to find it.

“Your dad wrote a piece, Eddie,” Manoshi said.

A surprised Eddie reached over and took the iPad. Bish watched him study the screen.

“Eddie? Are you okay?”

Eddie nodded.

“What does it say?” Fionn asked.

Eddie swallowed and started reading what was written.

“My eldest son Jimmy was killed in the Brackenham bombing when he was eighteen. It was how my wife Anna came to meet Noor LeBrac. A need to understand why our boy had died. My wife’s relationship with Noor introduced us to our second son who means everything to me…”

Eddie started crying and Violette leaned over and gently took the iPad out of his hands and continued to read. When she cried, Bee took over and by the end everyone had read it aloud and Bish felt like crying himself.





53



An air of tranquility had hit the bus by the time they reached Yorkshire. Bish welcomed the sensory overload of the landscape. Perhaps days without alcohol had opened him up to everything. Drystone walls lined with flowers, the fluorescent fields of rapeseed. It was functional beauty. Cottages advertised free-range eggs, black-faced sheep dotted the hillsides, farmers collected silage for the winter. A cyclist or two and seasoned walkers with sticks signaled that the cove was close by. Violette was alone in finding it too picture-perfect. Her farm in Coleambally, she said, was a different sort of beauty. More savage. Bish heard the homesickness in her voice. He didn’t want to think of Eddie and Violette separated. He didn’t want to think of any of these kids being apart. He wished he could drive them around the countryside for the rest of their lives, keeping them all safe and less lonely.

Ten miles out of Malham, Bish knew he had to let Grazier in on where they were. He was hoping they had at least a forty-minute head start. That Violette would get the chance to complete the journey she had begun all those weeks ago. So he took a chance and sent a text, and then sat back and enjoyed the rest of the drive.



They arrived in Malham just after 2 p.m. After parking in the village, they secured Fionn in the wheelchair and set off to the cove, a mile down the road. Violette led them, glancing back more than once at the sound of voices in the distance.

Bee nudged Bish and pointed to Violette, a silent order to catch up.

“She won’t want me walking alongside her, Bee.”

“She insisted you come along. We wouldn’t have done this with you if not for her.” She poked him in the side. “Go.”

Bish did as he was told but figured his daughter had got it wrong. Violette wasn’t interested in talking and at times he felt as if she were quickening her step to shake him off. Until she suddenly said, “I thought they were friends of my father’s who followed us up here that day. That’s what I told my grandparents and they wrote it all down.”

“Why did you think they were friends?” he asked.

“Because one of them said, ‘I know you.’”

They came to the foot of the cove, staring up at the vertical face of the cliff. It wasn’t merely the height that filled Bish with awe, but what seemed its impenetrability; a reminder of human frailty weighed up against the might of Mother Nature. Beside him, the kids were staring up at the ancient stone with reverence. No selfies here. Bish saw tears in Fionn’s eyes for the second time today. Reality didn’t hit you lying in a hospital bed. It was here that the kid truly realized that things would never be the same.

“I’ll take Violette and Eddie,” Bish said. “The rest of you stay.”

“I’m coming too,” Bee said.

Charlie looked in the direction of the village. “People were staring back there. I bet they’ve called the cops.”

Bish pointed to Manoshi and Lola. “Don’t let those two out of your sight.”

It was a somber journey up the steps, Violette still ahead as they took it in single file. At the top of the cove, on the limestone platform, the wind made their cheeks smart and eyes water. But regardless, the rock formations were stunning; clints and grikes as far as the eye could see, their strange hues in communion with the gray storm clouds that hung low and threatened to spill. Violette turned to them and Bish saw she was crying, holding her arms around her body.

“He hid me,” she sobbed. “They always say I was left walking on my own, but that’s not true! He hid me between the fissures big enough to fit me. It was to protect me. Not leave me behind. My dad wouldn’t have left me behind. It’s what I write in my letters every time I remember something. But the police here never believe me.”

And Bish thought it strange that seventeen-year-old girls who had sex with idiot boys could still cry like babies for their fathers.

“I believe you, Violette.”

Eddie wasn’t coping well with Violette’s reaction and was now crying himself. His sobbing seemed to come from the gut, a mixture of pain and grief. “I miss my mum,” he said over and over. And that got Bee started, and all Bish could do was hold on to the three sobbing kids and hide his own overwhelming anguish. All those years ago, a man had tried to protect his child on this rock. Etienne LeBrac hadn’t come here to die; he’d come to be reminded of beauty in an ugly year. If Bish were still a religious man, he would have sworn that the dead were with them in this ancient place. The beautiful dead. And he felt that the three in his arms sensed it too.