‘Jimmy visit?’
‘Sure. Most days when he can get the cover or I can do the pumps.’
Dryden could feel the heat radiating from the metal canopy. ‘They must have found it hard to cope when the kid arrived?’
She slid a hand inside her jeans, stretching the belt out to reveal more skin, but didn’t answer.
‘D’you see him? Jude, wasn’t it?’
She turned back to the road as a people carrier swept in, mangling gravel.
She shook her head. ‘I never saw him, I don’t know anyone that did outside the Neates, and George Tudor I guess, and the doctor. He didn’t live two days, did he?’ She ran a rag through her hands. ‘Two days in summer.’
‘So if it wasn’t George Tudor, who was the father?’
Jimmy Neate walked quickly out to talk to the driver of the people carrier which had parked near the bungalow.
Julie turned to Dryden, dropping her voice just slightly. ‘Kathryn needed to know someone loved her, and there were plenty of people prepared to say they did. Don’t get me wrong, she was no angel, she learnt pretty quick how to use her body to get what she wanted. Ask me, I’d say she enjoyed the sex, it’s just it wasn’t what she was after, not in the end, and there was no one around to tell her that what she wanted didn’t just follow on from the sex. So who’s the father? How much gossip can you take? You could ask Jimmy – but don’t expect an answer. Losing that kid hurt them all. They protect the memory, in fact they’ve put more effort into that than they did trying to help her when she was here.’
The people carrier swept out onto the open road and Jimmy Neate retreated into the bungalow. Dryden found him eating one of his pre-wrapped sandwiches in the kitchen of the bungalow. The room was in a time warp: a Rayburn range stood in one corner, a wooden pine table grey with age filled most of the space that was left, at its centre a clean ashtray. The lino on the floor was scrubbed but cracked. A portable TV was on the draining board showing the horse racing from Lingfield without sound.
Neate let his eyes linger on the final furlong before turning to Dryden.
‘You’re back,’ he said, massaging his neck, the shoulders slumping down with fatigue.
He leant back and Dryden saw that he’d been reading the
‘Guess there’s no chance you’ve seen
Neate shook his head. ‘We get it delivered – mid-morning tomorrow out here. Welcome to the boondocks.’
Dryden nodded, calculating. ‘They’re making some progress on the skeleton in the cellar. Forensic science is a wonderful thing.’
Neate went to the fridge and pulled it open, taking out a can of beer. ‘Want one?’ he said, holding up the label so that Dryden could see.
‘Sure. Thanks.’
They took the first couple of inches off the top of the cans in companionable silence. Dryden watched Neate’s hands, shuffling the can, picking at the grain of the old table. Outside they could hear Julie serving a customer, the radio blurting out the local station. It was a news bulletin, replete with details of the
‘It was your sister I was interested in,’ he said. ‘Kathryn. She had a baby, didn’t she?’
‘Yeah. Yeah. So?’ But Dryden had seen the glance, out of the door into the bungalow’s gloomy hallway. There was a hardwood chest of drawers there in the shadows, the top crowded with framed photos.
Dryden took a chair. ‘Picture?’
Neate ran a hand through thick unwashed black hair and then stood, coming back with a small snapshot in an older wooden frame.
Despite the studied air of indifference Dryden could sense the pride Neate felt.
‘She’s beautiful – when was this taken?’
‘At the Ferry, before the end,’ said Neate. She was by a hedgerow, a summer’s view behind her of the allotments running down to The Dring, the ditch clogged with reed heads.
She had her brother’s hair, but the face was softer, an oval, the forehead high and pale, the hands long and white. An uncertain smile seemed to emphasize the fleeting nature of the moment in which she’d been captured, a single summer between childhood and the rest of her life.
‘You in touch?’
He shook his head. ‘She didn’t come when Dad fell ill. I couldn’t forgive her for that. She took a car in ’92 – said she’d send us the money. That was the last time I saw her – she was standing right there,’ he said, nodding at Dryden. ‘She said she wanted a new life. So that’s fifteen years ago, the November. We asked her what her plans were, who she knew, but she just went. I got a letter from Dorset, a farm down there. Married and that, but no kids. Well, no more.’
‘And George Tudor?’
He laughed. ‘George wasn’t the father if that’s what you’re thinking. George thought he knew what was best for Kath – which didn’t go down too well in our house. Family feuds, Dryden – Mum was a Tudor, and they always thought they were better than us. Ellen Woodruffe was Mum’s sister, another Tudor. It’s like the Mafia, only nastier. So George just tried to take over, said he wanted to take Kath with him to Australia, start a new life. Perth I think. Along with little Peter Tholy, just the three of them.’ Dryden sensed the ritual denigration of the runt, the village scapegoat. ‘Dad nearly killed him when he asked. Like we couldn’t look after our own.’
