The Trawlerman, стр. 55
The same driver who had taken them there was waiting on the Dover tarmac. ‘Nice day?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was, actually.’
In the car back Terry was talkative, jolly, telling the driver and her anecdotes about his former students. An English public school boy whom he caught cheating in exams who was now a minister in government. A Scottish girl who vomited with nerves whenever she sat an exam.
Alex was distracted, looking out of the window, deep in thought. It was a long drive home. The car smelt of leather. There was a copy of the Financial Times tucked in the seat back in front of her. Everything Terry did was like this, she thought. A little too much on the flashy side.
‘Unfortunately I was invigilating that day and before I knew, she’d thrown up all over me . . .’
Alex wondered if it had been a good idea to agree to go back to his house. ‘What?’
‘You weren’t listening, were you?’
‘Sorry. Not really.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t worry. It was a pretty dull story.’
When they arrived at his house he paid off the driver, took out his keys and opened the front door. She waited on the step until he had switched off the alarm, then followed him in. When he took off his jacket and hung it up on a hanger in the hallway, she took her own jacket off and put it over his. ‘Gin?’ he asked.
He led her upstairs and opened the patio doors, lit candles on the balcony, then returned a few minute later with two glasses and a bowl of olives.
They sat on the balcony outside, overlooking the beach below and watched the sky darken.
‘A lot of junkies I know can’t drink,’ she said.
‘As I said, I was never a junkie,’ he answered, and raised his glass.
She took a sip from her glass, then excused herself and went to the bathroom. ‘I just need to wash up a little.’
Behind the locked door she opened the cabinet and checked through its contents; then opened his washbag and looked through it.
By the time she got back he had almost finished his glass. Hers was still there, barely touched.
‘You were a long time.’
‘You missed me?’
He looked at her. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing I could arrest you for, anyway.’
He nodded. He knew precisely what she had been doing. ‘I understand. You don’t trust me,’ he said.
She felt a heaviness in her chest. ‘I’m sorry. I find all this hard.’
‘Yes. You do.’
‘I should go home, I suppose.’
He stepped forward and took both of her hands. ‘I understand. It’s OK. We can go easy, if you prefer. But you know I really like you.’
‘It’s been a lovely day and it’s done me good, but yes. Maybe it’s for the best if I go home now.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll call you a taxi,’ he said.
While his back was turned, she reached for her jacket, and while she was doing so, slipped her hand inside the pocket of Terry’s blue jacket. The inside pocket was empty; the passport was not there.
Forty
That night she didn’t dare sleep. Her brain felt like it was on fire.
Instead, she took a blanket and cycled out to Lydd and sat on the scrubland where Zoë and Bill had showed her badgers.
In the darkness she thought she saw shapes moving, but she could not be sure. She heard cracks of sticks and the rustling of dry leaves. Everything that had happened in the last few weeks lay around her like patterns and shapes that she could see and hear, but only obscurely.
At around one in the morning it started to rain; a light drizzle falling out of the darkness. She had not brought waterproofs, so she let the blanket soak up the water.
At around two in the morning, two men came, tramping across the path that crossed the patch of land. They caught her in their torch beams. ‘You all right, love?’ one of them asked. When he lowered the torch and approached, she saw a man in his sixties dressed in waterproofs and waders. They must have been night-fishing in the marshes somewhere. The man who had spoken put down his kit bag, lay the torch on the ground and squatted down next to her.
‘Are you OK, darling? Want us to give you a lift somewhere?’
‘I’m local. It’s fine.’
‘What the heck are you doing out here then?’ The other man said, his face hidden in the darkness.
In a more kindly voice, the man beside her said, ‘You’re shivering. You should get inside.’
She nodded, but didn’t move.
‘Is she crying? Is she on something?’ the other man muttered. ‘You get all sorts out here.’
‘I’m fine, honestly. I just don’t want to go to sleep tonight.’
The man beside her stood again, took an umbrella out of his bag and opened it. ‘Something bad happened?’
‘Pretty bad.’
‘What you doing?’ demanded the other man. ‘That’s my umbrella. It’s not yours to just give away.’
The gentler of the two men set it over her. Now rain pattered softly onto the nylon above her head.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s very good of you.’
‘It’s OK, love. Drop it into the Dolphin Inn next time you’re down there,’ said the man. ‘Hope everything’s all right, love.’
As they left, she heard the second man saying, ‘That’s the last I see of that, then.’
She sat, still thinking about how everything was not all right at all.
The nights were short at this time of year, but it seemed a long time before first light.
When the first rays finally warmed her, she stood, limbs stiff and cramped, folded her damp blanket and furled the umbrella, strapped it to her backpack and set off home.
The cold had made her hungry. After she’d plugged in her phone to charge, she fried two eggs and ate them on toast, washed down with strong coffee, then sat, watching the screen