The Hiding Place(20)

“Right. And someone employed her as a barmaid?”

“You don’t think every kid should be given an equal chance?”

“I’m just saying that the hospitality industry might not be the best career match.”

“Judgmental.”

“Practical.”

“Tomayto, tomahto.”

“Actually, it’s tomahto. I’m very judgmental on that one.”

She grins. She grins a lot, I think. Makes me want to do the same, use muscles I haven’t exercised in a while.

“Anyway,” I say, sticking the card in my pocket, “you were saying?”

“Nope.” She jabs her fork at me. “Your turn. So why are you renting the Morton cottage?”

“You too?”

“Well, it is a bit weird.”

“It’s convenient, it’s cheap. And years ago it wasn’t the ‘Morton’ cottage, it belonged to a little old lady who used to throw scraps of bread to the birds and swear at the schoolkids who cycled past. It’s just a building. It has history. Most places do.”

Although most places do not have an infestation of beetles in the waste pipes. I fight down a shudder.

Beth regards me curiously. “So, talking of history—is it odd, coming back here?”

I shrug. “It’s always odd coming back to the place where you grew up.”

“Not being funny, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to come back to Arnhill. As soon as I can, I’ll be getting away.”

“How long have you been here?”

“One year, one day and about”—she checks her watch—“twelve hours, thirty-two minutes—”

“Not that you’re counting?”

“Oh, I’m counting.”

“Well, I know it’s small, parochial, a bit backward.”

“It’s not that…”

“Then what?”

“Have you ever been to Germany?”

“No.”

“I went once, just after college. Had a friend working in Berlin. She took me to one of the concentration camps.”

“Fun.”

“It was a beautiful sunny day. Blue skies, birds singing, and buildings are just buildings, aren’t they? But the place still had a feel, you know? Like it was in the very air, in the atoms. You knew a terrible thing had happened there, without even being told. Even while you walked around with the guide, nodding and looking all sad, a part of you just wanted to run away, screaming.”

“That’s what you think of Arnhill?”

“Nope. I’d go back to Germany.” She pops a chip in her mouth, then asks, “What’s the deal with you and Stephen Hurst?”

“Deal?”

“I sense you two weren’t exactly best buddies back in the day?”

“Not exactly.”

“Something happen?”

I spear a chip. “Just the usual teenage-boy stuff.”

“Right.”

Her tone implies she doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t push it.

We both chew our food. The chips are all right. The cheese bap tastes like plastic, if someone had tried to make plastic less flavorsome.

“Harry told me Hurst’s wife is ill?” I say.

She nods. “Cancer. And whatever your feelings about Hurst, that’s gotta suck.”

“Yeah.”

And sometimes, what goes around comes around.

“They’ve been married a long time?”

“Teenage sweethearts.” She looks at me. “In fact, if you went to school with Hurst, you might remember her.”

“I went to school with a lot of people.”

“Her name’s Marie?”

Time slows and stills.

“Marie?”

“Yeah—can’t tell you her maiden name, I’m afraid.”

She doesn’t have to. Another chunk of my ground-down heart crumbles to dust.

“It was Gibson,” I say. “Marie Gibson.”





9





Marie and I grew up on the same street. Our mums were friends, so we got thrown together a lot when we were small, shooed off to play while they drank tea and gossiped. We played catch and hide-and-seek and sat on the curb and ate chocolate ices when the ice-cream van came around. This was before Annie was born, so I guess we’d have been about four or five at the time.

I quietly worshipped Marie. She quietly tolerated me—the only other kid her age on the street. At school she would quickly abandon me in favor of more popular playmates. I suppose I took this as my lot. Marie was pretty and fun. I was the weird, insular kid nobody liked.

By the time we reached senior school I had started to notice that Marie was a bit more than pretty. She was beautiful. Her shiny brown hair—she wore it in pigtails when she was little—had been cut into a short, swingy bob. Sometimes she crimped it like her heroine, Madonna. She wore stone-washed jeans and baggy sweaters with sleeves that hung down to her fingers. She got her ears pierced twice in each lobe and at school she rolled up the waistband of her skirt so that it hovered above her knees, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of toned flesh between the hem and her over-the-knee socks.