Darkmans - Nicola Barker

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true,’ she nodded, ‘you were.’

      She nodded again.

      ‘The critical thing,’ Beede continued doggedly, ‘is that you need to get some rest – you both do; you and Dory – otherwise neither of you will be able to function properly.’

      Elen patted her eyes with the tissue, then unfastened her hair to try and disguise their blotchiness.

      ‘And as I said before,’ Beede persisted, ‘there’s Fleet to consider…’

      ‘It was such a surprise,’ she said softly, changing the subject (exchanging one son for another), ‘to see Kane there this morning.’ ‘I know,’ Beede grimaced, ‘apparently he goes there all the time. I had no idea.’

      ‘I hadn’t seen him in so long…’ she smiled, vaguely. ‘Not since…Well, since Heather…’

      Beede tipped his head, momentarily at a loss, then his brows lifted. ‘But of course – you would’ve met him as a boy…’

      ‘He…’

      Elen began to say something, then suddenly checked herself. ‘He had a…’ she gesticulated, vaguely, ‘on his arm. He had a burn. He showed me.’

      Beede frowned. ‘On his arm?’

      ‘Yes. He said he got it in the desert. In America.’

      ‘I don’t actually…’ Beede slowly shook his head, then something struck him; a memory ‘…Yes. He does have a burn there. He got sunstroke as I recollect. It was very severe…’

      He still wasn’t quite following her.

      Elen touched her own arm, ruminatively, in exactly the same place. Beede frowned, perplexed. ‘Did he mention it for some reason?’

      She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could answer, they were interrupted by a quick knock. A member of staff thrust an impatient hand into the office, proffering an invoice. Beede scrambled up and followed them outside. A terse conference took place, and then they headed off, Beede cursing, towards the storeroom.

      When he returned to his cubby (five minutes later) Elen had gone. On his blotter she’d scribbled, ‘Danny – Thanks. And SORRY. See you later. Godbless.

      E.’

      He ripped the page out, turned it over, sat down, picked up a pen in one hand and the phone receiver in his other. He pressed it between his cheek and his shoulder and he dialled the line for Casualty, then waited. As it rang he quickly wrote: Eva Barlow. He stared at it for a moment then scratched it out. Eliza Barlow (his next attempt). He crossed this out, too.

      He frowned, gazing out into the middle distance, racking his brains to remember the proper name of the client Elen had mentioned with the malfunctioning pace-maker.

      ‘Liz? Lizzie Brownlow?’

      He grimaced.

      ‘Damn.’

      He slammed down the receiver.

      ‘Damn.’

      He leaned back in his chair, ruminatively.

      ‘Cunning,’ he eventually murmured, ‘two names I would’ve remembered. But the nickname on top…’

      He threw down the pen.

      ‘That was clever.’

      He picked up his mug of tea and took a quick sip of it –

      

       Cold

      He leaned over and took a hold of Elen’s mug –

      

       Virtually untouched

      His eye casually alighted upon the tea-stained tissue where he’d rested the spoon, previously –

      

       What?!

      He peered around him, thoroughly puzzled –

      

       But where…?

       EIGHT

      It never rang; not ever. The last time Kane could actually remember (and the fact that he could still clearly recall this occasion – and in florid detail – said it all, really) was when his Great-Aunt Glenda (a true family gem) had died, aged ninety-six, in 1994.

      To mark her passing, Beede’s cousin, Trevor (who was horribly burned to death – a mere eight months later – in a tragic house blaze), had rung him up on that distinctive, brick-orange phone with a complex assortment of funeral arrangements:

      1. All mourners to wear pink (she’d considered it a ‘sacred’ colour).

      2. Lengthy, heartfelt readings to be performed (and then distributed in the guise of a commemorative pamphlet within a one-mile radius of her home in Esher, Surrey) from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Joyce’s Dubliners and Problems of Reconstruction by Annie Besant.

      3. A proper, old-fashioned High Tea to be served, accompanied by home-made egg-custards, cinnamon buns (from Fitzbillies’ traditional bakers in Cambridge), tumblers of apricot wine and her own very smoky blend of Lapsang Suchong.

      4. Marigolds to form the centre of all her flower arrangements (she’d been a devoted gardener, but had suffered from chronic hayfever, and this cheerful, brightly coloured genus had been one of its main perpetrators. In consequence of this fact, she’d thought it might be ‘a bit of a hoot’ to make her final journey in a coffin absolutely swathed in the damn things: ‘Bring along a jemmy,’ she’d said, ‘and if you hear a sneeze, then be sure and prise me out…’).

      She’d died – inevitably – in the depths of winter. Not a single humble British marigold to be had. The import costs had been astronomical and Beede had been furious (although his objections – he’d insisted – weren’t so much monetary as environmental –

      Yeah, right…)

      Kane had just loved her for that.

      And then –

      

       But of course…

      – there was his father’s magnificently choleric expression as he stood, in church, determinedly booming forth one of Gibran’s more flowery flights of fancy dressed in a crazily lurid, salmon-coloured shirt –

      

       Absolute fucking class!

      Even now, all these years later, Kane could distinctly recall over-hearing that landmark conversation through the cracks in his linoleum. He’d been upstairs stewing in the bath at the time – eight…nine Christmases ago. Ten, even.

      And the phone had barely rung since (so far as he was aware – I mean he didn’t stand guard over it or anything). It lived a very quiet existence (what could it comprehend, poor soul, of the advent of touch-tone, of texting and the internet?). It was almost superfluous (like Sleeping Beauty, in the midst of that great, big doze); to all intents and purposes, it was pretty much dysphonic.

      Beede was resolutely ex-directory and nobody but distant (and now mainly dead) family had ever been privy to that particular number (even Beede’s brother only ever contacted him via the hospital laundry).

      But it had a fantastic bell. When it rang it produced an astonishingly pure, clear, old-fashioned sound; an elevated, almost ecstatic ‘peal’, a rousing, piercing, energising clamour.

      Kane loathed phones.

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