After a pub lunch which he would have been unable to describe as soon as he was out of the pub, he strolled for a while through the historic part of Norwich, old uneven streets which no longer seemed ancient enough to satisfy him, and then headed for the bookshop. A photograph of Ellen and himself was enshrined in the window by their books. Mr Milligan opened the door and applauded him, to the bemusement of the customers. "Here's our celebrity," he announced, so enthusiastically that Ben had to feel pleased for him.
During the next hour the shop sold over forty of the Sterlings' books. Whenever a child brought him one to autograph, Ben wished that Ellen were there to see – that they were meeting her rather than him. As he kept up a stream of conversation, he felt as if he were talking for her. The last child was led away from the cash desk, clutching a copy of The Boy Who Caught The Snowflakes and being told that it mustn't be unwrapped until Christmas, just as Mrs Milligan bore a cake into the shop. The skullcap of white icing was inscribed well done, ben in pink so fierce it looked inedible. "That's fantastic, Mrs Milligan," he said. "I wish the children could have had some. Do you mind if I let Ellen know how we did?"
"You keep asking," she chided him, though behind her Dominic looked as if he would have liked to be asked.
She cut the cake as he dialled and tried to indicate to her that he would be happy with not quite so generous a slice. He listened to the ringing of the distant phone and eventually replaced the receiver. "No luck?" Dominic said.
"Ellen must be on her way to the school. I'll try again later. This is really kind of you," he told Dominic's mother as he bit through the white icing to the sponge beneath.
"We'll save some for you to take home to the family if you like."
"That's kinder still. I'll tell them when I speak to them," Ben said and took refuge in the staffroom, hoping that a few minutes by himself wou}d calm his nerves. Surely it was the last of the energy he'd used to entertain his audience which was making him feel as if he should be rushing onwards. One or more of the Milligans kept coming to find him, and he chattered to them, hardly aware of what he was saying. He accepted coffee, and then a refill of the mug, by which time it was four o'clock. Ellen would be home, the children weren't due to go anywhere. He went smiling to the phone, and listened to the ringing until his smile grew so stiff he had to let it fade. As the hands of the clocks in the jeweller's across the street crawled silently towards fiveo'clock Ben tried the Stargrave number several times, and each time the ringing seemed more distant in the midst of the silence and the growing dark. At last he could stand it no longer. "I'm sure there's nothing wrong," he lied, "but I think I'll head back."
THIRTY-ONE
It was almost six o'clock before he left for Stargrave. Dominic's mother followed him to the Milligans' house, trotting as fast as was safe for the plateful of cake she was bearing. He would have taken it from her to hurry her up, except that then she might have realised that he was more anxious than he was trying to appear. At least he had time to call home again while she searched for a container in which to pack the remains of the cake. But the phone in the Sterling house only rang and rang far away in the dark.
Mrs Milligan was securing the carton of cake with a festive bow when the rest of the family came home, Mr Milligan enthusing about Ben's performance at the shop. He wouldn't let Ben go until Ben had inscribed a copy of each Sterling book to the Milligans. "You'll have a coffee at least before you set off, won't you, Ben?" Mrs Milligan pleaded while he was struggling to think of a different inscription for each book, and he seemed to have no words left with which to explain a refusal. "We don't want the cold getting to you on your way home," she said.
While he sipped the scalding coffee as rapidly as he could she began to wonder aloud why Ellen wasn't answering. "Maybe she was out shopping, buying something special for the prodigal. Try her again if you like," she said, and when he had: "Maybe she's stopped to gossip. You know how we women are."
"We all of us talk too much and say too little," Mr Milligan said.
His wife took that as a rebuke. She turned her back to him and cleared away the dinner-plate and cutlery she'd set for Ben. Ben gulped the last gritty inch of coffee, grabbed his bag from beside his chair and stood up. "Thanks for having me. Next year you may see how grateful I am to all of you," he said, thinking of the book he planned to dedicate to them, but for an instant his plan seemed lost in a darkness which lay ahead.
Dominic carried the boxed cake out of the house and placed it on the passenger seat while Ben threw his bag onto the rear seat. Beyond the lit hall Ben saw Dominic's parents settling their disagreement before they came out arm in arm. "Give our love to your family," Mrs Milligan told him.
"Godspeed," Dominic said.
"So long as he doesn't exceed the speed limit," his father said, and was rewarded with a helpless grin from Dominic. As Ben swung the car away he saw the three of them beneath the leafless tree, standing so close together they appeared to be supporting one another. The sight stayed with him as he drove out of the lit streets.
The road wandered for hours before it reached the Al. It gave him no chance to think, but it couldn't stop him feeling. Whenever the headlights showed him a place-name which the family had enjoyed on their journeys to Stargrave – Swines-head, Stragglethorpe, Coddington, Clumber Park – he felt increasingly nervous. Not long after eight o'clock he had to stop for petrol near a pay telephone, shielded to some extent from the uproar of the motorway by a plastic hood which, in the glare of the lamps above the forecourt, looked like a giant helmet carved from ice. He dialled and poised the coin, which was chill even though it had come from his trouser pocket, and listened to the feeble pulse of the phone bell. Suddenly there was a lull on the motorway, and he heard the ringing isolated by a vast silence. All at once he could no longer fend off thoughts he had been afraid to think. He was hardly conscious of digging the edge of the mouthpiece into his lips while he tried to make up his mind what to do: ring someone in Stargrave, invent a story which would send them looking for Ellen and the children? He didn't know where the family might be or what to say to have them searched for: his imagination seemed to be out of his reach and fleeing towards Stargrave. He flung the receiver into its cradle and ran to the car.
Most of the vehicles on the motorway were lorries, which left the outer lane clear. He shouldn't be staying in it, he shouldn't be driving at over ninety miles an hour; suppose the police stopped him? He felt as if he was trying to leave his thoughts behind. He knew why last night he had fallen asleep thinking of the Milligans growing old together, and why the sight of Dominic and his family had followed him as he'd driven away.
He remembered hugging Ellen and the children in the Leeds bookshop, hugging them more fiercely than he had been able to explain to himself. Subconsciously he must have been afraid then, or even earlier – perhaps the October day he'd watched Ellen leading the children across the moor. Had the intensity of his emotions been preparing him for the day when he would lose them? The impression of loss felt like a wound at the centre of him, and yet at the same time it seemed infinitesimal beneath the endless dark.
At last the westbound motorway appeared, a curve of white and yellow lights racing above a curve of red – a luminous blade hovering above the gash it had opened from horizon to horizon. He followed the raw stream to Leeds and drove as fast as he dared through streets which felt somehow lifeless despite crowds of people, many of them dressed as if there wasn't frost on the ground, outside pubs and clubs. Whenever he passed a phone box he had to restrain himself from braking.