I hear the approach of jet engines and turn around. In the sky to the north-east hangs a pair of white lights, close-set as a spider’s eyes, quickly increasing in size and brightness. By the time the plane passes above my head, it is 1,500 feet from the ground.
I walk around to the path between the river and the road. It leads down to the river’s edge. The bank is heavily overgrown, colonised by Himalayan balsam, its sickly sweet scent invading my nostrils. Bats swoop low over my head. I follow the path down into a dip and then up the other side. A series of steps on the left leads down to a wooden platform over the river. I walk down and stand on the platform, swaying slightly. The river is not especially high, as there’s been little rain, but at this point the waters swirl and eddy. You can drown in an inch. You’d probably die of exposure just wading out in this. All I can see in my mind’s eye is Grace — her face from various angles, the scars on her arms, her forest-trail scalp. I try to see Jonathan’s features in hers and I tell myself that I can, but I don’t know if that’s only because of what I now know (assuming she is telling the truth).
After an indeterminate length of time I climb back up the steps and continue down the riverside path away from the Pyramid. I know that on the flat land beyond the fence on my right, which I have heard referred to more than once as the Valley of the Kings, there have in the past been plans to build two more pyramids, but the money ran out. The path narrows and darkens as trees close over my head. The drop to the river is steep and long. I pass a tubular metal pedestrian bridge and keep going. There are gaps here and there in the wooden fence on my left. Brambles and rowan contest the available space; rosebay willow herb appears among the nettles and shrubs on the right-hand side of the path.
I pass beneath the motorway, the concrete bridge low above my head, graffiti adding sparkle to the supporting wall. Beyond the motorway the path curves and descends, following the course of the river. Bats are my only companions, guiding me. Another aircraft slips by away to the left. The path widens. Horses stand motionless in a field on my right. Erect on the remains of a railway bridge, a heron’s profile is as still as the slender weeds that sprout from the brickwork. I come to a complicated gate with different access points for cyclists and horse riders. I walk a little way along a metalled road and then encounter another similar gate, after which the path rises and winds through high blackberry bushes and low rowan trees. Power lines approach on the right, strung between enormous bristling pylons. A large bird forms an interrogatory silhouette perched on top of one of these. My blind pursuance of this path cannot silence the questions in my head. How long has Grace known who I am — if indeed she does? (She must.) Was it a coincidence that she applied to the institution where I was teaching or was she several steps ahead of me? Why is she writing what she is writing in her novel? What did she hope to achieve by exposing me at Lumb Bank? Did she expose me? Would it have been clear to the other students whom she was talking about? Did my sudden exit confirm suspicions or remove any doubts? What is her motivation? What does she want?
I collapse on a humped rise on the left-hand side of the path overlooking the dark ribbon of the river. The bird on the pylon — its neck in the shape of a question mark identifies it as a cormorant — has not moved.
What does Grace want? What do I want? What are my choices? That they are fewer now is the only thing I feel certain of. Do I have any at all? Is it up to Grace what happens next? Do I stop or go on? Either or. Do we achieve reconciliation or do I let her destroy me (once again, assuming that is what she wants)? Everything is either or, and inside each either or is another either or, like Russian dolls.
I move off the mound and take a couple of steps down towards the river, unsure what I am doing but feeling impelled to do it. Not really thinking beyond the next few seconds. The river is a channel of black ink. With it I will write the rest of my story. I picture my head going under, unseen by anybody. There is a tree on my right, a thicket of brambles, nettles and Himalayan balsam between me and it. A bird sings. Not the cormorant; a songbird, hidden in the tree. The notes slip out on to the soft night air like some kind of benign alarm or unknown signal. My foot slides on a flattened frond of bracken. I put my arms out for balance, look down and see a corner of gabardine emerging from the vegetation. The tail of an overcoat.
I hear a different sound and look up. A beating of black wings. The cormorant has left its perch.
I bend down, lift the corner of gabardine and see more overcoat material underneath. I drop it and straighten up, prod with a toe, meeting resistance. I sit down again, my previous course of action interrupted. I look at the power lines, at the procession of pylons across the fields on the other side of the river. I watch a plane sideslip towards the airport. I listen to the bird singing from somewhere in the blackness of the tree, its song a repeated pattern of descending arpeggios.
I have never used this path before, but it can’t be long before it reaches the playing fields at the back of Parrs Wood High School and then, beyond the playing fields, Wilmslow Road. The Parrs Wood end of the same dismantled railway line that I can access from the humpback bridge near my house can be no more than a third of a mile away. Either Overcoat Man walked here, lay down and fell asleep, never to wake up, or was carried here and his body dumped in the undergrowth.
I find a recently fallen branch still festooned with foliage and lay it over the exposed area of gabardine before returning to the path and walking on, more quickly now, downstream. I turn right up a path perpendicular to the river that runs between the golf course and the school playing fields, and when I reach the top I cut across the Green Pastures housing estate and reach the end of the dismantled railway line. From here it’s a straight line; I can be home in ten minutes.
The dismantled railway line will soon be cleared so that the tram system can be extended along it. A line will run from Trafford Bar via Chorlton to East Didsbury. It will take years for the line to be constructed and for all that time, once they have been down here and cleared the way, the path will be fenced off to the public. I think about the crowd of young people I saw jostling Overcoat Man on the humpback bridge. I picture them carrying his body down this path in the same thick, knotted darkness through which I am currently advancing in the opposite direction. They could have done it the night after I discovered the body. I picture Overcoat Man making his own slow, painful way down here instead, either in daylight or at night. I had assumed he was dead when I found him lying in the nettle bed, but he may very well not have been. Maybe he was still alive even now, down by the river? Although I doubt it. I could have been wrong once, but not twice, and in this case I doubt that I was wrong at all.
When I get home, I stand at the window of my study, panting slightly from the exertion. I’m looking down at the humpback bridge over the dismantled railway line and the beginning of the path that leads down to the old trackbed from which I emerged only a couple of minutes ago. When my breath steams up the window and I can no longer see, I allow myself to fall forward until my forehead presses against the cool glass. The misty grey field in front of my eyes swims in and out of focus.