`Yes, she was fine. Just a few bruises. But she was knocked unconscious for a few minutes. Mike thought he'd killed her. He completely panicked. Just got back in the car and drove away. They didn't find him for three days. And when they did, he couldn't remember a thing about it.'
And suddenly it all clicks. `He was at Calshot Spit, right?'
Philip flushes, then nods.
`Why didn't you tell me all this when I asked you about the hut?'
He makes a rueful face. `I'm sorry. I should have been more open with you about that, I realize that now. But it was over twenty years ago `“ I couldn't see how digging it all up again was going to help anyone. Least of all Michael. It just didn't seem in the slightest bit relevant.'
`That's for us to decide, Mr Esmond. Not you.'
He stops walking and turns to face her. `I'm sorry. Really. I'm not a liar. That's not who I am. If you knew me better, you'd know that.'
She elects to ignore the covert message and moves on again. `And that doctor your mother mentioned?'
`My parents were panicking about the whole thing trashing Mike's chances of getting into Oxford so they paid for him to see someone in Harley Street. That way it stayed out of his NHS records. He said Mike was in a state of extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the accident and then went into some sort of traumatic amnesia afterwards `“ `њdissociative fugue`ќ, I think was the phrase. He wrote a letter to the police and they accepted it. And since the little girl was basically unharmed, my parents managed to make it all go away.'
He catches her eye. `And yes, I suspect the latter did involve a fairly hefty cheque.'
`And afterwards?'
`Mike saw the shrink for the rest of that summer and sat his entrance exams that autumn. The rest, you know.'
`And the other boy `“'
Philip gives an ironic laugh. `Totally redacted. I don't even know the poor little sod's name. And the way Mike went on afterwards, well, let's just say it was about as un-gay as you can get. He'd only had one girlfriend up till then. Janey `“ Jenny `“ something like that. But suddenly he was seeing them left, right and centre. Well `њseeing`ќ is perhaps an exaggeration. It was just sex, as far as I could tell.' He grins sheepishly. `I was pretty envious, if you must know.'
`So you were back from Australia by then.'
He nods.
`And how did your brother seem to you?'
`The same `“ and different. I'd never have guessed what had happened just from looking at him.'
`I don't follow.'
`Well, something like that `“ you'd expect it to knock you back, wouldn't you? But with Mike it was the opposite. It wasn't just the sleeping around. He was more confident, more assertive. You know, just louder.'
Just like the last six months, thinks Somer. Coincidence? Or has history been repeating itself?
However different our lives are, the way we leave them doesn't vary much. Not these days. Crematoria are like McDonald's. Identical in every town. Same layout, same chairs, same acrylic-looking curtains. And in most cases, the same embarrassing sense of one group of mourners being bundled out the back just as the next lot are coming in the front door. But not this time. The Esmonds' funeral is going to be all over the press this time tomorrow and the crematorium has clearly freed up the entire afternoon. I get there early, before Everett and Somer, but the vestibule is still packed, and I scan the crowd wondering who a lot of these people are. The smattering of smartly dressed women in their thirties is probably parents from Matty's school, but I reckon most of the rest are journos, sporting over-worn blacks and over-practised grief faces.
I'm doing my best to blend into the background, leaving Everett and Somer to manage the official presence. And they do it well, in their different ways. Somer is prompter to approach people, and I see her starting conversations, asking questions. I watch men underestimating her because she's attractive and in a uniform, and I watch her registering that fact and using it to her advantage. Everett, on the other hand, is more outwardly passive, as well as a good deal less comfortable in her uniform, which she keeps tugging at every few minutes. She does more listening than talking, making people feel they're the ones controlling the flow of information. But she's gathering it, all the same.
As the three hearses draw up outside, there's an unseemly jostling as the press photographers push forward to get the best angle. Samantha's coffin is covered in pink lilies and those tiny white flowers. Baby's breath. In the second car, Matty's is draped in an Arsenal flag, with a wreath of red roses I'm told was sent on behalf of the club. Apparently they're going to wear black armbands for the next game. That's social media for you. And finally Zachary's, the tiny coffin overwhelmed by his name picked out in cushions of daisies.
There's rain in the air, but the clouds part momentarily and a shaft of sunlight slants down across the grass and the shrivelled winter plants. There's a solitary blackbird at the edge of the gravel, darting at the municipal bark chips and digging out shreds of wood. I find myself staring at it as the bearers move forward, so I hear rather than see the swell of emotion as Gregory Gifford steps up to take his little grandson's coffin. It's Zachary who has the women in tears, but it's Matty I'm shrinking from. Any parent who's lost a child will tell you the same. Widows, orphans `“ there are names for people who've lost wives, lost husbands, lost parents. But there's no name for a parent who's lost a child. And so I avoid funerals when I can, and children's even more. It's bad enough at the time, when you're half dazed with the wreckage of your life, but reliving it in the rawness of someone else's grief is all but unbearable. I don't want to think about that day. I don't want to remember Alex's white tearless face, my parents clinging to each other, and the flowers, wreath upon wreath of them sent from all those people we'd asked not to come `“ people we'd asked not to send flowers. And yet they sent flowers all the same, because they had to do something. Because they felt as helpless as we did in the face of such unthinkable pain.
The procession forms now, the bearers adjust under the weight and the minister comes forward. I hang back, letting the last stragglers go before me, avoiding the eye of the one or two hacks I recognize. The music they're playing is classical. Bach, I'm guessing, but something richer, less austere than I usually find him. We had Handel for Jake. Handel and Oasis. The Handel was Alex's choice. `Lascia ch'io pianga', `Let me weep over my cruel fate'. I loved it once, but I can't listen to it any more. The Oasis was down to me. `Wonderwall'. Jake listened to it all the time. I always thought he played it so much because he was hanging on to the idea that we would save him. But we couldn't. I couldn't. I wasn't any sort of wall for my son. In the end, when he needed me, I wasn't there.
I slip into a seat in the back row. A seat with a view over the entrance and the grounds. Because that's the main reason I'm here. Michael Esmond's entire family is being cremated today, and we've done whatever we can to ensure that wherever he is, he'll know that. His wife, his two sons `“ it takes a special kind of coldness to turn your back on that: even hardened killers I've known couldn't do it. So I position myself where I can scan the long drive and the bleak flat parkland that quarantines this place of death and parting from the ordinary, busy, self-absorbed life going on outside. The words of the funeral service push into my brain `“ Devoted mother and wife`¦ Popular with all his classmates`¦ Taken so tragically soon `“ but all I can see is the blackbird. With its intent beady eye and its brutal stabbing beak.
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