The Hiding Place(34)

I place the page to one side and pick out another.


EZEKERIAH HYRST—MIRACLE MAN (1794–1867)

Hyrst was a renowned spiritual faith healer, alleged to have performed many miracles. Witnesses claim that Hyrst cured a young boy of paralysis of the legs, banished the devil from a woman and gave breath to a stillborn baby. Most of these took place in Nottinghamshire, in a small village called Arnhill.

Hyrst? Hurst? Not a coincidence, surely? And a charlatan healer seems to fit the family tradition. Miracles and tragedies. Tragedies and miracles. You can’t have one without the other.

I turn over the next page. My breath feels like it’s been sucked from my lungs.

search for missing eight-year-old continues

Annie’s face smiles back at me. Wide, gappy smile, hair in a high ponytail. Mum always tried to plait it, but Annie would never sit still for long enough. Always wanting to be off doing something else. Always looking for adventure. Always following me. I don’t need to read this story. I lived it. I push the folder away, reach for my drink and realize the glass is empty. Odd how that happens. I stand. And then I pause. I thought I heard something. A creak from the hallway. A floorboard? Shit. Gloria?

I turn, and my legs almost give out on me. Not Gloria.

“Heyup, Joe.”





15





Life is not kind. Not to any of us, in the end.

It adds weight to our shoulders, a heaviness to our stride. It tears away the things we care about and hardens our souls with regret.

There are no winners in life. Life is ultimately all about losing: your youth, your looks. But most of all, those you love. Sometimes I think it’s not the passing of the years that really ages you but the passing of the people and things you care about. That kind of aging can’t be smoothed away by needles or plumped out with fillers. The pain shows in your eyes. Eyes that have seen too much will always give you away.

Like mine. Like Marie’s.

She sits awkwardly upon the sagging sofa. Knees together, hands clasped tightly on top. She is thinner—much thinner—than the blossoming teenage girl I remember. Back then, her cheeks were round, with deep dimples when she smiled. Her limbs were long and lithe, cushioned with the firm flesh of youth.

Now, the legs in skinny jeans are stick thin. Her cheeks are hollow. Her hair is still thick, dark and shiny. It takes me a moment to realize that it must be a wig, her eyebrows artful pencil lines.

I hover, equally awkwardly. I swept up the papers I had been reading back into the folder, which I clutch beneath one arm. I don’t know how much Marie saw. I don’t know how long she had been standing there, after she let herself in when I didn’t hear her knock. At least, she said she knocked.

“Can I get you a drink? Tea, coffee, something stronger?”

The sentence makes me wince a little. Cliché, I mentally note, in red pen.

She tilts her head; her hair falls to one side, just like it used to. “How strong?”

“Beer, bourbon? Of course, you haven’t tried my coffee—”

A tiny hint of a smile. “Beer, thanks.”

I nod and walk into the kitchen. My heart is pounding. I feel a little faint. It’s probably just my hollow stomach. I really should eat something. Or have a soft drink. More alcohol is just going to make me feel worse.

I open the fridge and take out two beers.

Before I return to the living room I open the cabinet beneath the sink and chuck the folder inside. Then I walk back and place a can on the coffee table in front of Marie. I pop mine open and take a deep swig. I was wrong. It doesn’t make me feel worse. It doesn’t make me feel better either, but that’s not really the point.

I sit heavily in the armchair. “So, it’s been a long time,” I say, like the cliché-spouting machine I am tonight.

“It has. Are you going to tell me I haven’t changed a bit?”

I shake my head. “We all change.”

She nods, reaches for her drink and pops the tab. “Yeah. But we’re not all dying of cancer.”

The bluntness of her words takes me back. And then, as she tips back the beer, I realize. This is not her first drink.

“I presume you know,” she says. “This is Arnhill, after all.”

I nod. “How’s the treatment going?”

“Not working. Tumor is still spreading. More slowly. But it’s just delaying the inevitable.”

“I’m sorry.”

Cliché after fucking cliché. After the crash, I used to hate it when people told me how sorry they were. Why? Did you cause the crash? No? Then what are you sorry for, exactly?

“What have the doctors said?”

“Not a lot. They’re too scared of Stephen to give me a straight answer. He says they don’t know everything anyway. Reckons he can get me into a clinical trial in America. The Bardon-Hope Clinic. Some new miracle treatment.”

Ezekeriah Hyrst—Miracle Man, I think, and then, hot on its heels: Marie is not going to die. I will not let that happen.

“Did he say what the treatment is?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No, but I’d try anything.” She fixes her sunken eyes on mine. “I want to live. I want to see my boy grow up.”

Of course. And we’d all do the same. Even though there are no miracles. Not without a price.