Silva remembered the day of her release from prison. Sharp words, a pile of civvy clothes, an officer handing her the letter announcing her formal dismissal from the army. She’d been marched to the gates and had stepped into another life. As she’d trudged away towards the main road, not really knowing what the hell to do next, she’d heard a familiar voice call out her name.
Rebecca!
She’d turned and there, a few paces away, stood her mother. Silva had collapsed in her arms, all the hardness and bravado of the past year gone, nothing but tears left.
‘You know what?’ Her father’s words cut into her thoughts. He’d turned from his study of the chauffeur’s head. ‘The ironic thing is she’s the one who’s dead in a military conflict and we’re still alive. You get how that works, because I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘I don’t get anything much at the moment.’
‘She was a journalist, for God’s sake.’ Her father shook his head. ‘Bloody wrong place. Bloody wrong time. If it was down to me I’d bomb the fuck out of the bastards and be done with it.’
‘We tried that. I was there, remember? And anyway, who exactly do you bomb?’
Her father said nothing for a few minutes. They drove through winding country lanes between hedges bloated with thick summer greenery. A church spire in the distance seemed to get no closer.
‘Are you going to carry on working as a postie?’
‘I’m on sick leave.’
‘You mean on account of your mother’s death? Compassionate leave?’
‘No, Dad. Sick leave.’ Silva tapped her head even though her father was now looking forwards again. ‘Mental health. Any sign of stress and they sign you off. Like you might contaminate the letters or something.’
‘And are you mental?’
‘I don’t know yet. I was pretty sure I was, but then I thought about what happened to me. Considering the circumstances I’m probably verging on being almost normal.’
‘That’s good to hear, Rebecca. Normal. Good to hear. Your grandmother was nutty, remember? Very difficult to deal with.’
‘She had dementia, Dad.’
‘Whatever you want to call it, she annoyed the hell out of me.’
They rounded a corner and the church was there. A thin spire touching a blue sky. A grassy bank surrounding an acre of graveyard. Cars parked on the verges. People waiting.
They climbed from the car and heads nodded and there were half smiles intended to show sympathy. Silva spotted a government minister, tried to put a name to the face but failed. There was a local MP and a large group of her mother’s friends and co-workers from Third Eye News, the agency she worked for. Neil Milligan, the proprietor and chief editor of the agency, raised a hand. The poor man looked abject. Standing at a discreet distance were several photographers and a TV crew.
Silva began to greet some of the mourners before turning to see what had happened to her father. He stood by the limousine talking to the driver as if he had nothing better to do than pass the time in idle chit-chat. He shook the man’s hand and came across to Silva.
‘Colour Sergeant Wilkins. Gulf War,’ he said. ‘I knew I recognised him from somewhere. Top bloke.’
Chapter Five
A couple of weeks after the funeral, Silva’s father called her. It was the only contact she’d had with him aside from a package he’d sent her containing the keys to her mother’s place in Wiltshire and some documents relating to the will Silva had to sign and return.
‘You need to come and visit, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Asap. Think you can make it tomorrow?’
‘Today was my first shift back at work, Dad,’ Silva said. ‘What is it, are you ill?’
‘I’m fine, you’re the one who needs to be ill. Tomorrow. Tell them you’re mental again. That you might infect those letters. Get here before lunch. Shall we say eleven hundred hours, sharp?’
That evening she ran through the city. Followed the route she’d taken on her delivery round and pounded the same streets as she’d walked earlier. After the run she went to the seafront. A fleet of dinghies raced in the evening sun, and the ferry to Santander headed for the horizon. She returned to her boat and sat in the cockpit with a cup of cocoa. A swell caressed the hull and rocked her gently back and forth. Motion. Not staying still. It hadn’t struck her until then that the constant movement was why she’d ended up living on a boat. Back when she’d bought the little yacht the intention was simply for it to be a place to go to when on leave from the army. Her mother’s house was too small and her father’s… well, there was no way she could have stayed there for more than a day or two.
The boat had turned out to be a godsend, providing a bolthole to retreat to after she’d completed her prison sentence. It was berthed in a marina that hugged the west bank of the river Plym. A collection of decaying pontoons and equally decaying yachts sat opposite an industrial quay where aggregate rumbled along conveyors from ship to shore pretty much 24/7. Freddie, the security guard who lived on the marina site in a Portakabin, was pushing seventy, but assured her he was more than a match for men half his age. He had two Dobermanns to help him but their natures could be deduced from their names: Beauty and Cinders. More often than not the dogs could be found curled up at Freddie’s feet in the cabin, while he worked his way through an ArrowWords puzzle magazine, only occasionally glancing at the CCTV monitors. Still, the haphazard set-up suited Silva. Nobody came down the pontoon to chat to her; nobody, aside from Freddie, knew her name.
The last thing she wanted to do was visit her father. They weren’t close and never had been. He was all stiff upper lip
