The Hiding Place(35)
I look away. We both swig our beer. Funny how the more you share, the less you have to say.
“You’re teaching at the academy?” she says eventually.
“That’s right,” I say.
“Must be a bit weird?”
“A little. Now I’m one of the guards, not one of the inmates.”
“What made you come back?”
An email. A compulsion. Unfinished business. All of those and none of those. Basically, I always knew I would.
“I don’t know, really. The job came up and it seemed a good opportunity.”
“For what?”
“How d’you mean?”
“It was just a surprise, hearing you were back. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Well, you know me—a bad penny.”
“No,” she says. “You were one of the good ones, Joe.”
I feel my cheeks redden and suddenly I’m fifteen again, basking in the glow of her approval.
“What about you?” I say. “You never left?”
A small, lifeless shrug. “Things always seemed to get in the way, and then Stephen proposed.”
“And you said yes?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I think about a fifteen-year-old girl crying on my shoulder. A bruise around her eye. A promise that she would never let it happen again.
“I thought you had plans?”
“Well, they don’t always work out, do they? I didn’t get the grades I wanted. Mum was made redundant. We needed extra money so I got a job and then I got married. End of.”
Not quite, I think.
“And you have a son?”
“You know I do.”
“Yeah—real chip off the old block. Bet his dad’s proud.”
A glance so sharp I feel it sting.
“We’re both proud of Jeremy.”
“Really?”
“You don’t have kids?”
“No.”
“You don’t get to judge then.” She crumples her can. “Got another?”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, it’s hardly going to kill me.”
I stand and fetch two more cans from the kitchen. Then I pause. Marie must have driven here. I saw her slip her car keys into her handbag. She probably shouldn’t drink any more and drive home.
Not my problem, though. I walk back through and hand her a beer. She looks around and shivers.
“This place is cold.”
“Yeah, the heat doesn’t work very well.”
But that’s not it.
“Why here?”
“It just came up.”
“Like the job.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
And there it is. The bitter ball she’s been waiting to cough up since she arrived.
“If you’ve come back to start stirring up the past—” she says.
“What? What are you scared of? What’s Hurst scared of?”
She takes a moment to reply. When she does, her voice is softer. “You went away. The rest of us, we’re still here. I’m asking you, just leave things be. Not for Stephen. For me.”
And I get it.
“He sent you, didn’t he?” I say. “His thugs didn’t work, so he thought you might tug at my heartstrings, persuade me, for old times’ sake?”
She shakes her head. “If Stephen wanted you gone, he wouldn’t send me. He’d send someone to finish the job Fletch’s boys started.”
“Fletch’s boys?”
Of course. Stocky and Unwise Hair. That’s why they seemed familiar. I should have guessed. Fletch was always the brainless muscle when we were kids. Now, his offspring are carrying on the tradition.
“I really should have spotted the family resemblance,” I say. “The way their knuckles dragged on the floor.”
Her face flushes. And I do feel a tug inside. But it’s not my heartstrings. It’s the depressing yank you get on your guts when your worst fears about someone are confirmed.
“You knew about my welcome party?”
Which explains why she didn’t ask about my bruised face when she arrived.
“Not until afterward. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
She stands. “I should go. This was stupid, a waste of time.”
“Not completely. You can give Hurst a message.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Tell him I have something of his.”
“I doubt there’s anything you have that Stephen wants.”
“Call it a memento. From the pit.”
“For Christ’s sake—it was twenty-five years ago. We were just kids.”
“No, my sister was just a kid.”
It probably says something about me that I feel pleased when her thin, sallow face falls.
“I’m sorry about Annie,” she says.
“And what about Chris?”
“That was his choice.”
“Was it? Why don’t you ask Hurst something else—ask him if Chris really jumped.”
16