I think I knew as soon as I started watching what it was I was seeing. Once I was certain I had seen all there was to see, I closed the machine and now I’m sitting here staring out of the window, watching the sky slowly darken. Did I pick up the wrong DVD? Is there another disc somewhere in Lewis’ house showing Carol having sex in a car at Wythenshawe Park? Or somewhere on the Ringway Trading Estate or around the back of Somerfield? Or is Lewis shrewder than I gave him credit for? Is this what he wanted me to find, this glimpse into the past, and if so, why?
I stand in the back garden looking at what’s left of the ivy and the fence it has partially destroyed. I poke around in the soil to see if I can uncover any more bits of red plastic. Most of the rockery has gone now, carted off in the skip, and the garden looks bare, desolate. At least the rockery gave it some definition. A bit of shape.
The garden on the other side of the fence is completely out of control. I wonder if the current residents have any knowledge of the history of the house before it was converted into flats. I wonder if they know in which room the former owner committed suicide. If his action has left some kind of trace — a disturbance in the air, a shadow on the wall. I think of Pompeii. Hiroshima.
I approach the fence. It’s clear that the residents don’t use the garden at all; nor does it receive any attention. It seems unlikely that anyone has penetrated the thick growth on their side of the fence in years. I stick my head through one of the large holes created by the removal of the ivy. Brambles, nettles, privet; the remains of the ivy, now dying, cut off from its roots. I notice a splash of colour deep in the undergrowth off to the left. Further along I get a slightly better view, but can’t tell what I’m looking at, only that it’s red in colour.
I get the shears and secateurs from the cellar and return to the fence. I break off half a panel and climb over. Even with the tools and a thick pair of gardening gloves, it takes me twenty minutes to work my way to the heart of the thicket. Inching closer to the object of my labours I realise that it is a model aeroplane, badly damaged, that must have been abandoned here a considerable amount of time ago. It takes me a lot longer than twenty minutes to extricate it and get the plane back into my own garden without causing it too much further damage.
I lay it down on the lawn, then immediately pick it up again and take it inside the house. I put it down on the kitchen table and study it. The pieces of plastic on the desk in my study are from the nose cone, one of the wings and a central section of the fuselage. I could go and get them and fit them into place, but there’s no hurry. The plane is not going anywhere. There are obviously other bits somewhere else in either my garden or theirs, because the damage to the plane is fairly extensive.
With a wingspan of about three feet, the model would have stood almost a foot off the ground with its undercarriage intact. A serious model aircraft, then, complete with engine, propeller, authentically detailed cockpit. An enthusiast’s much-loved toy.
I remember talking to Lewis in the pub about the pieces of red plastic.
I hear the cat flap and moments later Cleo jumps up on to the kitchen table and sniffs at the model plane.
‘What do you reckon to this, Cleo? What does Lewis know about this, eh?’
Why don’t you ask him?
‘Why don’t I ask him? Because I’m not sure I like the way this is developing. That DVD of his wife and daughters getting into that plane, which I think he wanted me to find. And now this, which I also can’t help thinking he wanted me to find.’
You won’t know for sure unless you ask him.
I stroke Cleo, from the top of her head, pressing back her ears until they lie perfectly flat, to the tip of her tail. I tickle her under her chin and, as usual, she lifts up her head and starts purring.
‘I don’t know.’
I arrive outside Lewis’ house. There’s a slight bite in the air, the sky clear. I’m wearing a little white cotton beanie. The DVD is in my pocket. I have been to a photo lab and had a copy made, which is now in my study.
I stand in his drive, still not sure what I am going to do. Either I tell him or I don’t. About the DVD. And about the model plane. Either he is in or he is not.
I take my hat off and stuff it in my pocket.
I knock on the door and wait. Someone walks past behind me. I turn around. Wearing a dirty raincoat and a flat cap and carrying a big striped laundry bag, it is Laundry Bag Man. He will deposit his bag on the pavement after twenty or thirty yards and go back for the other one. Laundry Bag Man always has two identical striped laundry bags with him, but seems unable to carry both of them at the same time. I don’t know what he keeps in his bags, but I doubt that it’s laundry.
I knock again.
I walk slowly to his garage door, open it and slip inside. I hear my heart beating faster as I approach the door to the kitchen. It, too, is unlocked. I enter the kitchen. Everything looks the same as before. I cross the hall to the living room and get down on my knees in front of the TV unit. I quickly remove the DVD-R, in its blank case, from my pocket and return it to where it had been when I found it.
As I am getting back to my feet I hear the clatter of the gate.
Without stopping to think, I scuttle back across the hall to the kitchen, rising to my feet once I can no longer see the front door. I cross the kitchen on my toes and wait to open the connecting door to the garage until I can hear Lewis’ key rattling in the lock of the front door. As he moves into the hall, I negotiate a route from the side of the garage to the front and take care to lift the main door on its hinges so that it does not scrape against the tarmac of the drive as I leave.
Walking home, heart still thumping as I overtake Laundry Bag Man, I reach into my pocket for my hat, but it is not there.
At home, even though it’s probably the last thing I should do, I watch the DVD again. The red dress, the little yellow hat. The woman walking past the windsock holding the hands of the children. The balding man with the paunch and the weak shoulder. The woman walking away, holding the hand of the child in the red dress. The other child, in the yellow hat, looking back at the man, undecided, torn. He seems to be offering some kind of promise. You wonder how much of an enticement it could be, looking at him. He doesn’t look as if he has a great deal to offer. But the child in the yellow hat is considering it. Maybe that’s all it takes? One child’s hesitation. The woman walking away, the child in the red dress. Shall we say the girl? The woman and the girl walking away. The other child, in the shorts and the yellow hat. Shall we say the girl in the case of this child as well? The woman walking away, the girl in the red dress. The girl in the yellow hat looking back. The balding man’s outstretched hand. His offer, promise, enticement. The outstretched hand.
The woman walking away from the camera, the first camera, holding both girls’ hands. They walk slowly. As if relaxed? As if obligated? Either or. Compliant? Reluctant? Either or. The girls hold her hand, trusting. They will follow her anywhere. Do what she says. She walks away from the camera, holding their hands. Past the horizontal windsock towards the man standing by the plane. His plane? Has he hired it? Does he own it? Can he even fly? Maybe he’s just showing it to them? Maybe all four will eventually leave together, on foot? Maybe the woman and the two girls will leave and the man will stay? Maybe he’s still there, waiting, the woman and the girls somewhere else, not coming back?