“So you keep saying.”

“Mummy c” Hannah came roaring across the grass towards them, furious tears streaming down her face, her hands filthy.

Cat got up. “OK, if he really did throw Barbie in the hen muck, he’s for a roasting. But if it was because of something you did to him or said to him, Hannah, you’re for frying. Come on.”

Chris watched them march off, his wife, his daughter, Cat feisty, straight, fair-minded, Hannah less so. Hannah was what Sam called a wimp. He turned back to the paper, then thought better and went into the house. Ten minutes later, Sam and Hannah were both in their rooms, banned from re-emerging for half an hour, and Chris had made a jug of iced coffee and brought it out to the garden, where Cat had taken over the paper.

“What are we thinking?” she said, looking up.

“Why?”

“Max Jameson.”

“Yes.”

The inquest had been opened and adjourned for further reports but it was clear that the verdict would be suicide. There were no suspicious circumstances. Max had lain down on a bench in the garden of the hospice and slit his wrists and his body had eventually rolled off, on to the grass. The police report was incomplete. Cat had given a statement and might be called on by the coroner. She sat staring down at the newspaper, at the photograph of Max, her eyes full of tears.

Chris put out his hand to her.

“We mustn’t quarrel. Anything can happen. I’ll tell the kids they can come down.”

“Oh no. They were both being brats, they can cool off.”

“Thanks for making this. And I do mean it—about work.”

“I know. But it would put too big a burden on you, and if I failed, it would be very hard to get back into general practice. Forget it. Only c” She knew what he was going to say. “Would you think about taking three months off? Paying someone to take over for the whole of that time?”

“Australia?”

“The children are still young enough to have that time out of school but this will be the last year we can do it. They’d have the trip of a lifetime and we’d recharge our batteries.”

“Six would be better.”

“Six?’

“Months. If we’re going to do it at all. They could go to school in Oz, come to that.”

“Do you mean this?”

Cat poured more coffee and sat back, thinking. Six months away from everything was not the point for her, but it was for Chris. But six months travelling, living in Sydney, giving the children a taste of a different world; six months. If the farmhouse went with the practice, it might be easier to get people to take it over. House, car, pony, chickens.

“Simon,” she said aloud.

Chris groaned.

“Mum and Dad.”

“There’s always going to be someone.”

“Six months is nothing in terms of anyone except them.”

“How long does it take to fly home from Australia?”

“I know. You’re right. Of course you’re right.”

“Try harder.”

Cat laughed. “OK,” she said. “Deal. Start looking.”

“Oh, I already have.” He got up and ran.

Fifty-seven

The sands were almost empty. In the far distance, a family played a late game of beach cricket. Beside the railings on the south shore, two young men were stacking up the last of the deckchairs. The sea was far out, the sand at the edge flat and shining. It had been hot again, too hot. This was the best part of the day. Soon the foreshore lights would come on.

Gordon Prior walked along the beach, away from the town. He often went three or four miles in this direction. It was always deserted, he saw no one. It wouldn’t be dark yet.

His black-and-white sheepdog scurried along the edge of the water, skirting the ripples of the waves, making a line of pockmarks which vanished behind him as he ran. Then he stopped and waited. Gordon teased him with the ball, feigning a throw this way, then that, once into the sea, once back the way they had just come. Buddy waited. He knew.

“Go for it!” The ball sailed into the air. Buddy ran, sending up a little flurry of water.

Five seconds and he was back. The ball lay at Gordon’s feet. Buddy waited, quivering. This time there was no tease, Gordon threw, hard and far. Buddy raced away.

Gordon stood and looked out to sea. A tanker was on the horizon, a painted ship on a painted ocean, seeming absolutely still. He had lived here all his life and had never had the chance to enjoy it as he did now, morning and evening, bringing the dog down here, had never appreciated what was under his nose because he had not had the time to look. He was sixty-six. He hoped he had another twenty years of it.

He looked round. Buddy was nowhere. Gordon whistled. Back towards the town, far away and out of sight, the game of cricket would be over. The deckchairs would be stacked and covered. He began to walk away from the sea towards the rocks and the caves and the cliff, whistling all the time.

It happened. The ball would be lodged in a crevice or a rock pool too deep for Buddy to retrieve it. After a few minutes, Gordon heard the dog bark. At first, it was difficult to place where the sound came from. Gordon reached the rocks and threaded his way in and out of them, calling and whistling, taking care not to slip on the drapes of vivid green seaweed.

The barking grew more demanding and eventually he traced it to one of the caves that went back into the cliff. He stood at the mouth of it calling but the dog didn’t emerge. Sighing, Gordon went in. It was dark, probably too dark to find the ball, wherever it was stuck. He waited a moment to let his eyes get used to it, then went further in to where the dog was crouched, looking up and barking furiously. The ball had somehow bounced up, then, and was on a ledge in the rock at the back of the cave. Gordon hesitated. If he could not reach it by stretching, he was not about to start climbing up there on his own over slippery rocks in the semi-dark. They would go home without the blasted ball. He pulled Buddy’s lead out of his pocket.

But the ledge was just within reach. Gordon stretched up and felt about with the flat of his hand for the ball. At his feet, Buddy went frantic, leaping and barking.

“All right, calm down, how did the flaming ball get up here anyway? Buddy, shut up.” Each bark hit the roof and walls of the cave and bounced back double. “For goodness’ sake, Buddy.”

He felt about again and then his hand touched something. Not the ball. Gordon shuffled it forward to the edge. He could barely see. Only feel. He closed his finger and thumb over something cold and hard and pencil-thin. A stick or a twig. He edged his finger and thumb higher, to the top, where the straightness gave way to roundness and the thinness to a smooth knob. Gordon stopped moving his finger and thumb and let them rest. Buddy had stopped barking now and began to whimper.

*

It took half an hour to get back to the foreshore road where he’d parked the car. He ran but not as fast as he wanted to run. The dog was on the lead but kept dragging back, wanting to return, alternately barking and whimpering.

It was almost dark. The beach was empty but the cafés and arcades along the foreshore were open and busy, the smell of fish and chips and beer and hot candyfloss steaming out of the neon-lit doorways under the strings of lights.

At the entrance to an amusement arcade a waxwork clown opened its mouth and cackled with loud artificial laughter.

Gordon got to the car, pushed the dog on to the passenger seat and drove, away from the beach and the lights and the foreshore, faster than he ever usually drove, in search of someone to tell, someone who would know what to do and take the whole thing away from him.

Fifty-eight

“Waste of time,” DC Joe Carmody said, banging his way out of the Gents.