The Disappeared

the office.'

'I guessed as much.'

He leaned against the opposite side of the fence, out of touching distance she noticed, squinting against the sharp stabs of winter sunlight. He'd lost weight, the skin drawn tight against his jawbone, a slight hollowness to his eyes. He seemed pensive.

'Ross still with his dad?' Steve said.

'Yes ... I don't know, maybe he's better off in town for the time being. I'm not much company for him.'

'You said David took him.'

'It was my fault . . . Ross found me in a bit of a state one night. Had to put me to bed.'

Steve picked at a splinter on the weather-worn fence rail. 'You want to talk about it?'

'You must be sick of me coming to you for therapy. It's about time I got a grip on myself.'

He looked up at her. 'Can I say something?'

She nodded.

'It makes you tense having him around. It's as if the responsibility frightens you,'

She shrugged. 'It does. He's my son.'

'What are you frightened off?'

Jenny shook her head, feeling the tightness in her throat that meant she was resisting tears. 'If I knew that. . .'

Steve moved towards her and brushed her face gently with his hand. 'You don't need to get a grip, Jenny, you need to let go.'

'Yeah, right - an emotionally incontinent coroner. That'd inspire confidence.'

'You've got to try . . . And I think you want to.'

He ran his hand through her hair and stroked her neck, grazed her cheek with his lips.

It felt good to be close again, to feel the warmth of his skin.

Jenny said, 'On your message you said there was something you wanted to say.'

'There is . . . but I wasn't expecting . . .'

He closed his eyes, trying to find the words.

'I don't know how you feel,' Steve said, 'whether you want to be with me or . . . but I want to be with you, Jenny. I've spent months trying not to say it, but I have to. I'm in love with you.'

She was shocked. 'You don't mean that.'

'You've got enough to deal with without me saying things

I don't mean.' He kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'There, I've said it. Over to you.'

He stepped away and picked up his spade. 'I promised myself I'd finish this section before lunch. Do you want to stay?'

'I'm meant to be going to see my father.'

'Oh ... I didn't know he was still around.'

'He's in a nursing home in Weston. There's something I need to ask him about the past. Doctor's orders.'

'Then you'd better go . . . But if you're going to turn me down, I'd rather you put me out of my misery now.'

Jenny looked up at the ice blue sky. 'I could come back afterwards.'

'Will you stay?'

'Yes. I'd like that ... It feels like a day for a new beginning.'

For the previous five years Brian Cooper's life had been an eight-by-ten single room on the second floor of a large pebble-dashed villa a short walk from the sea front. He was only seventy-three years old and physically in robust health, but dementia had struck during his mid-sixties and his second wife, a woman for whom Jenny had never had any affection, took less than a year to dump him in the home and find another man to take her on cheap Mediterranean cruises. There had been plenty of visitors at first, but as Brian's lucid moments became rarer they dried up to a dutiful trickle. Jenny hadn't seen him since Christmas Eve, when he'd thrown his dinner at the television, believing it was his first wife, Jenny's mother, reading the evening news.

The nurse warned her that she might find him a little quiet. He was taking new tablets to help control his increasingly erratic and explosive moods. Jenny felt in no position to criticize.

She tapped on the door and pushed it open.

'Hi, Dad.'

He was sitting in his shirtsleeves, his armchair facing the window which looked out onto the street below. He was clean and shaved, his hair cut neatly.

'Dad? It's Jenny.'

She came to the corner of the bed by his chair and sat down.

'I haven't seen you for a while. How are you?'

His eyes flicked suspiciously towards her; his mouth started to move, but he made no sound. Then, seeming to lose interest, he turned his gaze towards a seagull which had landed on the windowsill clutching a crust of burger bun in its beak. He smiled.

Jenny said, 'You're looking well. How are you feeling?'

There was no answer. There seldom was, but the specialist had told her to keep talking to him like an adult as long as she could bear to. There was always a chance that some of it might be going in, he had said; she would know when he stopped comprehending entirely. Jenny looked for signs of recognition and saw a childlike quality in his face; almost playful as he gazed at the gull tearing at the scrap it had pinned beneath its foot.

'Dad, I need to ask you something. I've been trying to remember some things about when I was little. I thought it would be good to record them for Ross, put them together with some of the old photographs - something he can show his kids one day.'

Brian nodded, as if he understood perfectly well.

She dipped into her handbag and brought out several old Polaroids she'd dug out from a shoebox earlier that morning.

She showed them to him: pictures of her on a swing aged four or five in the back garden of their house, Brian smiling, pushing her with one hand, a cigarette in the other.

'I remember you putting that up. It was a birthday present, wasn't it?'

'Yes, that was your birthday. You were a little smiler. Look at you.' He took the photograph from her and stared at it.

Jenny felt a surge of excitement. 'You remember that?'

'That was the dress my mother made you. She slaved over that, cost her eyesight, she said.'

They were well-worn phrases, words she'd heard a thousand times before, but they'd been prompted by the pictures, not thrown up at random like most of what little he offered these days. She had to strike while she could.

'Oh damn, I must have forgotten to put it in. There was one I found with Katy written on the back. I couldn't think who she was . . .'

'Cousin Katy?'

Cousin? Jenny could only think of three first cousins, all of whom were boys.

'Katy's my cousin? You're sure?'

'Jim and Penny's little girl.'

Jim and Penny were Brian's brother and his wife. They only had one child, a son who was ten years younger than Jenny.

'I don't think that can be right, Dad.'

Brian dropped the photograph on the floor. 'You wouldn't get a cup of tea in this place if you were dying of thirst.'

Jenny picked it up. 'I don't remember a Katy. Jim and Penny only had Christopher, didn't they?'

'Oily bastard all dressed up in his suit and tie. Your mother thought he had money. Hah!'

Another familiar, but this time disconnected refrain – he was referring to the estate agent who had run off with Jenny's mother.