Eleanor and Richard shot a look at each other which Rosie couldn’t interpret.
‘This evening,’ Richard said. ‘I promise. If she’s not back this evening…’
Soon after, they left – Rosie to town to check on some places Mel might be and Joe to sleep. They were standing, talking together on the corner of the street before going their separate ways, when the Volvo pulled out of the drive and accelerated away. Richard Gillespie off to do some other deal. Rosie imagined Eleanor Gillespie curled up again in the wicker chair waiting for the phone to ring or the door to open.
Chapter Eighteen
Hannah’s father had been cremated. Her mother had wanted the whole business over quickly, without any fuss. Hannah remembered the undertaker coming to the house to discuss arrangements. He was young, with impeccable clothes and a nervous cough. Perhaps Edward had been his first suicide.
‘No fuss,’ Audrey said immediately, before he had a chance to sit down. ‘No show.’
‘Nothing in the papers then?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Flowers?’
‘No!’ She spoke very fiercely and he asked no more questions.
Hannah and her mother stood alone in the crematorium and watched the flimsy coffin slide behind the curtains. Afterwards they went home for tea and Battenberg, a cake Edward had always particularly disliked.
Michael’s mother, however, had been buried. There had been mourners dressed in smart clothes, a black limousine which had taken Michael from wherever he had been living as a child to a church and then to the cemetery by the lighthouse. Had he mentioned a church? Hannah thought he had. The crocuses on the lawn, a church filled with weeping people, then another ride in the car to the cemetery.
Hannah had felt lousy all day. The encounter with the detectives had left her with a thick head and a jumpiness verging on paranoia. She was frightened that they’d turn up at any time to ask more of their questions. In the prison Marty saw at once that she wasn’t well and had the kettle on before she asked him. She was tempted to seek out Arthur at lunchtime but something stopped her. More pride. She didn’t want to admit to a hangover at her age. She didn’t want him analysing her problems, coming to conclusions about her weakness and loneliness. She’d always been a person to give support, never to need it.
When Hannah got home, the house was empty. There was a cryptic note on the table from Rosie saying something urgent had come up and she’d be back by eleven. Hannah’d had nothing to eat all day but she couldn’t face supper. She couldn’t settle. So she went for a walk to the cemetery to look for Michael’s mother.
Michael hadn’t started school when his mother died. She was sure of that. It was the way he’d spoken of the wrench of her going into hospital. She must always have been around before. So, Hannah thought, when his mother died Michael would have been five at the oldest, three at the youngest. His memories had a clarity and sophistication which would have been unlikely in a toddler. The death would have occurred between forty to forty-two years previously. Even then it would have been unusual for a woman to die so young. Perhaps on the headstone there would be mention of a child. At the very least, Hannah thought, she should be able to provide Porteous and Stout with a short list of possible names. Information for the team to check, to get them off her back.
She walked along the sea front towards the lighthouse. The salty breeze and the smell of seaweed cleared her head for the first time that day. The car ferry from Bergen slid past on its way to the dock further up the river. Hannah remembered a family holiday in Norway. Rosie had been six. She’d been sick on the boat. Jonathan had sulked all week because the food in the farmhouse hadn’t lived up to his expectations and he hadn’t been able to get hold of a decent bottle of wine. Even before the arrival of Eve the temptress it hadn’t been much of a marriage. ‘You’ll be better off without him,’ her friends said. Until now it had been too much like admitting failure to agree.
The cemetery was almost empty. In the distance a workman was mowing the grass paths but the sound of the machine hardly reached her. At first she wandered aimlessly, her attention caught and held by unusual names, ornate carvings, simple messages of bereavement. Then, as the shadows lengthened she brought more order into the search. The modern graves – those dug within the last twenty years – were at the far end, the furthest inland. Those could be ignored. The remaining plots were in a more random jumble. There seemed to be no chronological order. The space was divided occasionally by a high cypress hedge or a stone arch. Rooks were gathering in the trees which separated the graveyard from the road. She walked up and down the lines of headstones to the jarring sound of the rooks, moving on quickly if the deceased were a man or too old, only stopping for a woman and if the date was right.
Most of the women had been elderly when they died. Most, it seemed, had been widows. The Elsies, the Mays and the Maggies had all joined dear departed husbands. She had almost given up hope when she came across one which fitted her dates. The grave had been planted with ivy and she pulled the plant away from the headstone to read the letters. Frances Lumley, aged thirty, daughter of Elizabeth and Miles. Hannah crouched on her heels to clean the rest of the text, convinced that her search was over. But Frances Lumley had been drowned at sea and there was no mention of a husband or child. And she had died in September, not a season for crocuses.
Michael’s mother was buried in the grave next to Frances Lumley’s and, despite her care, Hannah nearly missed it. In comparison to Frances’s headstone the white marble was clean; the engraving looked as if it had been chiselled the day before. And there were fresh flowers in a brass pot which gleamed in the last of the sunlight. At first she thought this was a new grave, slotted in amongst the others to fill a space. It was only when she read the date that she saw the occupant had been buried the year after Frances. She had died on 19 February.
So there were relatives who lived near enough to tend the grave. She hadn’t expected that. She still thought of Michael as he had been then. Quite alone. With only her and the Brices to care for him.
She read aloud. ‘Maria Jane Randle née Grey. Daughter of Anthony and Hester. Beloved wife of Crispin and mother of Theo.’ The facts were as bold as the carving. There was no comforting verse or religious text.
She knew her search was over. If she had opened the shoebox in Michael’s bedroom on that day after school she would have found a birth certificate, and probably a passport too, in the name of Theo Randle. She couldn’t guess where Michael – because that was how she would continue to think of him – had filched his first name. The family name he’d taken from his mother’s parents. All the same she continued her walk past the last two lines of graves. She had to be sure and she hated a job half done. There were no other women of the right age buried in the place. She returned to Maria’s grave and though she could remember them by heart she jotted down the details of her death and her birth, copying the engraving word for word. The sun had almost gone and she was starting to feel cold.
Hannah hadn’t managed to eat anything after her interview with the detectives the night before, and after her walk along the sea front she was starving. In the town she queued up with the trippers to buy fish and chips and sat on a bench looking over the sea to eat them. She finished everything, even the thick pieces of batter she usually left behind, and licked her fingers. She had to pass the Prom on her way home and looked through the open door, thinking that Rosie’s urgent appointment might involve a drink with her friends. But there was no sign of her or of anyone else Hannah recognized.