‘If you’re off on the run,’ Geoffrey warned her, ‘might I suggest that a dead beaver on your head isn’t the best attire? It’ll only take one confrontation with an animal lover and you’ll end up being arrested for disturbing the peace. They’ll see your new passport and, hey presto, you’ll be taken from me for ever.’
Geoffrey was a gibbering wreck. His entire body shook and he made strange noises as he tried to stifle his tears.
‘Geoffrey! You listen to me!’ Ester barked. ‘You can’t be like this. Once I’m gone, you need to go home and set about finding yourself another lover straight away. Someone who will think more of you than she does of herself. You deserve the best — so don’t settle for the first money-grabbing tart who knocks on your door.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what you did last time and look at the mess that got you into.’
Ester’s feelings for Geoffrey were as shallow as they were for any other human being, but she did have the emotional capacity to understand that he loved her with all of his pathetic, overly needy little heart. Unfortunately for him, Ester was a great believer in pulling the plaster off quickly and not prolonging the pain.
‘I don’t love you, Geoffrey, you know that — although I have always very much liked the idea of you. Buy yourself a suit — you look lovely in a suit — and go on the prowl. Oh, and, when you do snag yourself a willing lady, make sure you hide the dildos and whips until you’re sure she’s on board with all of that sort of caper.’
Ester took off her beaver fur hat and placed it on Geoffrey’s head. It slipped down his bald head and covered his face before Ester tilted it back to reveal his weeping eyes.
‘Don’t think I’m coming back, will you?’ she said over her shoulder as she marched off. ‘Because I’m not. Move on, my darling.’
As she headed for the Southampton ferry, Geoffrey waved goodbye to the love of his life. And Ester never once looked back.
The electric fire had been off for so long that it now filled the living room with the stench of burning dust. Packing boxes had taken over the whole of the kitchen, half of the front room and were threatening to bury Jack in the far corner of the living room.
‘You know, we could sort some of this stuff out before boxing it up, Jack,’ said Maggie, although she knew that Penny must be the one to decide which memories she kept and which she let go.
Behind a bookshelf in the living room, Jack found a wooden arrow covered in cobwebs. The shaft was beautifully sandpapered to a smooth finish and the metal head was made from a piece of a Coke can folded and hammered into a triangular point. Even the fletching, made of pigeon feathers, was still intact.
‘Our cat never actually killed birds,’ Jack explained. ‘But it’d bring stray feathers in and give them to Dad. We made a bow and arrows in the shed one day when Mum was out. We had enough feathers to make fletching for seven arrows, I think it was. I’ve no idea why we thought it’d be a good idea to test it in here. Maybe it was raining. Dad hates being cold.’
Jack looked up the wall. Directly above his head, just beneath the narrow cornice that ran around the edge of the ceiling, there was a deep gouge in the wallpaper.
‘This one hit the wall and fell down behind the bookcase, just as Mum came back. Dad almost shit himself! He threw the bow out of the window and we pretended we’d been reading.’
Maggie loved the ‘little boy’ version of Jack. His smile melted away as the depth of his impending loss dawned on him. She wrapped her arms round his neck, forcing him to dip his head and rest into her neck. She felt him breathe against her tight embrace and she didn’t let go until she felt him start to move away. She would have held on to him forever if he’d wanted her to.
By early evening, Maggie and Jack were eating pizza and drinking wine in front of the fire, happy just to be with each other in this comfortable, familiar space that, after today, they’d never see again.
‘I’m sorry for being a dick,’ Jack said, out of the blue. ‘With all the Jimmy Nunn stuff, I mean. I’m not after another dad, Mags. I want to know where this restlessness comes from — or if it’s just me not quite knowing where I fit. Foxy’s helping me find the answers I need but what I won’t do, I promise, is ever again allow Jimmy Nunn to distract me from the people who are really important. We should catch up with Mum and Dad, like we said we would. Do you reckon you can get the time off work?’
Maggie knew her work rota off by heart, so knew she was owed several days — but she was more concerned about the cost of two tickets to St Lucia, which was the next stop for the cruise ship. As she googled flight and hotel prices, Jack’s phone buzzed.
Foxy’s text read:
No DNA match.
In a split second, everything Jack had just said went out of the window. If Jimmy Nunn wasn’t the man in Harry Rawlins’ first grave, then he could still be walking around somewhere. He watched Maggie’s lips move, but he didn’t hear a word she said. He was getting to grips with the idea that his birth dad might still be alive.
Chapter 24
The next morning, while Maggie lay comatose, having drunk more than her fair share of the two bottles of wine from last night, Jack was in the kitchen having a whispered phone conversation with Foxy.
‘No, no, that’s not what I said at all,’ Foxy explained. He was stuck in traffic due to an accident up ahead, and was trying hard not to take that out on Jack. ‘I said that there’s no DNA match between you and the skeleton on my table. I did not say that the skeleton wasn’t Jimmy Nunn.’ There was silence from Jack’s end of the phone, so Foxy continued. ‘You told me about an old shoulder injury sustained when Jimmy fell off a fence. This was confirmed by his medical records, and the skeleton on my table has an identical injury. We don’t have DNA on file for Jimmy Nunn, but his dental records, I’m certain, Jack, will show that this is him.’
Still no reply from Jack. Foxy’s car engine stopped and started as he crawled forward, no more than ten inches at a time.
‘What does this mean for you, my friend? You thought he was — who? Your dad? I can tell you he’s not.’ Foxy glanced out of his window. ‘Look, I’m just driving past a pile-up that’s going to keep me busy all week, but how about a drink later? You can ask me anything you need to.’
Jack left a note on the kitchen table underneath a plate of apologetic pastries:
Something urgent came up. Back by midday. Sorry. X.
He had left Maggie stranded with no car, but he also knew that driving from his parents’ bungalow in Totnes to Fran’s house in Burnham-on-Sea would be the quickest way for him to get back to Maggie. He’d work out how to apologise properly on the return journey.
Fran was putting the bins out when Jack pulled up. She didn’t look particularly pleased to see him, but he didn’t care.
‘We need to talk,’ he said, standing over her until she had no choice but to invite him in.
Fran apologised for the mess, just as she had done the first time Jack visited. It would have been unlucky for him to catch Fran on two terrible housework days, so he concluded that she and Clay always lived in this half-hearted squalor.
Not wanting either of them to be distracted, Jack declined a cup of tea.
‘When Trudie left me with you, where did she go?’
Fran shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
Jack believed her. ‘Why did she go? Was she worried, frightened?’
‘She was very upset about something. She’d got a phone call a couple of days earlier and that had put her in a great mood. She took you and her suitcase and off she went — to start a new life, she said. Not a thank you, or nothing. As soon as she didn’t need us any more, it was like we never existed. But two days later she came back, tail well and truly between her legs. You were screaming, she was screaming — “The bastard! I hate him! I hate him!” We thought Jimmy had promised everything and delivered nothing again. The next day, she left you with us and disappeared for the last time.’