Thank you – it was your idea, wasn’t it? It must have done Mum so much good in those final months, to talk about her life. She felt very guilty about what she did but she had a very noble life in a way. Steadfast. That’s the word that Lyndon uses. We’re still listening. It’s painful – very painful for him.
‘We left the tape recorder in Laura’s room. We’ve cleared out the rest of her stuff – but we thought you should have it back.’
She returned to Dryden’s question. ‘I don’t think she ever regretted marrying Dad. But I got the feeling she did it to get away from here, from the memory. I think she fell in love with the idea of a new life. Away from Black Bank. He had a farm on Thetford Chase, Forest Farm, it’s sold up now and a private house. Mum moved there and that’s where I was born. He died in ’82. Heart. He’s buried out there,’ she said, nodding towards the fen. ‘The church on Fourth Drove.’
Dryden knew it. A wooden chapel built by the Victorians for the crop-pickers. Dilapidated now, it stood at an angle to the land, tipping its cheap tin belfry to the east. ‘St Matthew’s,’ he said, and made a squiggle in his notebook. ‘But you came back.’
‘When Dad died we sold the farm. There’d been a manager here and it had made money, it’s always made money. Black Gold, Mum called it, the peat… you can grow anything ten times a year. Mum wanted to come back.’ She looked out over the kitchen garden. ‘God knows why.’
‘You didn’t want to return?’
‘The place was haunted. It’s just the identity of the ghost that’s changed.’
Dryden tried to imagine it, a childhood overshadowed by the death of a baby she thought was her brother.
From somewhere to the rear of the farmhouse came the rhythmic thudding of a basketball hitting a wall. Dryden heaved a sigh and decided it was time to ask the only question that really mattered: ‘Any idea why she gave her son away?’
Estelle rose. ‘Drink?’ He followed her into the kitchen. By the door a noticeboard held snapshots covered by a clear plastic sheet. Most were of Lyndon, from the naked baby in the paddling pool with the sunburnt arms to the proud airman by his warplane on a windswept New Mexico airstrip. In several of the shots a grey-haired couple in expensive leisure clothes hovered in the background.
Estelle offered Dryden black coffee from a filter machine while she got herself a Pepsi from the fridge. She pulled the tab, slipped it back into the can, and studied the pictures.
‘Mum always made a point of keeping in touch. She’d not met Lyndon since the crash until this summer. There was a real spark – I guess now we know why,’ she said.
Dryden sipped the coffee and felt the promise of the caffeine lift his mood: ‘Jealous?’
She laughed then, forgetting whatever it was that was the backdrop to her life. ‘Of Lyndon! No way. It was dead exciting. An American cousin. And the family – the grandparents – sent presents. Toys and stuff. Clothes for me. It was great. He couldn’t be a threat – he was an ocean away. And it gave me an identity at school – the American kid. Least I wasn’t the Fen kid like the rest. That counts. No, I never resented Lyndon.’
‘And then he just turned up?’
‘He knew Mum was ill. We’d written. I’d even telephoned – we always did at Christmas. But he was out in Iraq and then he got shot down and we didn’t hear until the Koskinskis – the grandparents – sent Mum a letter. About Al Rasheid – the prison. It’s in Baghdad. They’ve always held their political prisoners there, tortured them there. Some US personnel were taken there too – for interrogation. But Lyndon had nothing to tell them. So they let him rot. That was how lucky he was.’
She turned her back on the kitchen table, put her palms down flat on the top, and jumped up to perch on the edge. ‘I’d never seen her cry like that. When she got the letter. She wept for days. I guess he’d died twice for her. It must have turned her inside out – and nobody to tell.’
‘But then he came back,’ said Dryden.
She crossed her legs in a perfect lotus position on the table top. ‘Yes,’ she said, and began to cry. ‘She was in The Tower by then. With Laura…’ She dabbed at the tears. ‘It’s odd. I feel I know Laura. But I never thought of her having a… family. Having you… I mean.’
Dryden wondered why this sounded so depressing. ‘He’s well? Lyndon? He seems withdrawn – I guess that’s hardly surprising. When he came back, had he suffered psychologically? There are scars, surely?’
She picked at the T-shirt at her neck, as if to lessen the heat. ‘Four weeks in confinement in a windowless cell is not something one can feel fine about, is it? I think he emerged remarkably unscathed. But who knows? Who knows what’s going on in someone else’s head? And whatever, it was hardly an ideal preparation for news like this…’
‘He must be disorientated.’
She nodded. ‘We both are. Lost, I think. And wary, very wary, which is understandable. I think it will be a long time before either of us trusts anyone again.’
‘Except each other?’
She smiled with her mouth. ‘Yes. Of course.’
Dryden closed his notebook. They listened again to the dull percussion of the basketball in the farmyard. The kitchen wall was covered in children’s art. Blue cows, green cats with giant whiskers, loads of tractors. Dryden walked over and got a closer look.
‘They’re my kids,’ she said proudly. That was it, thought Dryden – a teacher. Maggie had told him.
Then they heard it, the unmistakable sound of a highly polished limousine creeping sedately over gravel. Estelle grabbed at her throat. ‘It’s the undertakers. They just want to run through the details.’ She looked towards the rear of the house with something which again looked closer to fear than anxiety.
Dryden made for the back door. ‘I can tell Lyndon,’ he said.
Relief flooded over her. ‘Thanks. We should both see them. She’s his mother too.’
