The Homecoming Read online

  ‘Your men?’

  ‘I was a major in the army. You sort of feel responsible for the men because … erm … you are,’ he admitted, rubbing his forehead. ‘Anyway, enough of that now. Don’t you need to open up?’

  She checked her watch. ‘I suppose so. God knows where the bar staff are. Has Patrick been running the place on his own?’

  ‘There’s a guy called Kevin.’

  ‘Kevin Brown?’

  ‘Rings a bell; not sure. Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘No!’ she replied, turning away and busying herself straightening a bar towel that was already straight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The lunchtime session was busy. Lots of regulars had already heard about Patrick being taken ill and the ones that hadn’t soon did. As well as serving the drinks in Kevin’s absence – clearly he had decided a day off was in order – Maddy had to fend off questions that she didn’t have the answers to. Asking her own questions as a form of self-defence, she learnt that, for several months, Patrick had been in the kitchen doing the food, leaving Kevin to run the bar pretty much single-handed.

  She also discovered that Kevin didn’t seem to have a large fan club, which was something she could relate to.

  After having been woken by the phone call from the hospital at two that morning Maddy was exhausted. As a result she felt she probably hadn’t been enthusiastic enough about greeting people who hadn’t seen her for three years and appeared to be pleased to see her now. Trouble was, they all wanted to know what she had been up to since last being in Havenbury Magna. Worse, despite being much more recent, the drama of Patrick’s illness was very nearly matched by the drama of Maddy’s departure. People were plenty keen to wallow in both equally.

  Being busy conveniently prevented her from engaging in long conversations about awkward topics but there was no escaping her kindly tutor, Linda, who discreetly took her to one side when she was forced to leave the security of the bar to collect dirty glasses.

  ‘Maddy, how are you? You’ve not kept in touch like you promised.’

  She blushed. ‘Hi, Linda. I know, I’m so sorry …’

  ‘I’m so disappointed for you,’ Linda went on. ‘If you could just have filed your dissertation like we discussed at the time … your marks were so strong, even missing the final exams, you’d have scraped a Third at least.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Maddy, blushing. ‘But that’s life, eh.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Must just …’ she added, and scooted back to the relative safety of the bar. If only she hadn’t picked such a small, friendly campus. The very thing that made Havenbury Magna attractive to her and her anxious mother was her downfall now. Three years wasn’t long enough for people to have forgotten. Not nearly.

  The lunchtime customers had gone and, just as she was loading the last of the glasses into the dishwasher, she heard someone open the door.

  ‘Closed, I’m afraid,’ she called, without turning around.

  ‘What, not even a cup of builder’s tea?’

  ‘Oh. You again.’

  ‘Would you be more pleased to see me if I said I’m here to give you a lift to the hospital?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Not really, it’s not as if I haven’t got a car of my own. How do you think I got here?’

  ‘You look done in.’ Ignoring her rudeness, he took the damp cloth from her as she limped wearily around, giving the tables a wipe. ‘You’re obviously too tired to drive safely, and I was planning to go and see Patrick anyhow.’

  ‘Oh, okay then.’ Maddy sat down with relief and rubbed her ankle.

  ‘Is that from kicking the bucket this morning?’

  ‘Kicking the barrel, actually – the whole bucket thing means something else entirely – and isn’t tactful either, under the circumstances.’ Suddenly self-conscious she realised the ugly purple scar tracking down it was clearly visible. She pulled down her trouser leg and put her foot back on the floor, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

  He had.

  ‘You’ve been in the wars. Got a metal plate in there, have you?’

  She nodded sharply. Plus half a hardware store, she thought.

  ‘It must have been bad to still be hurting so much. Looks like you did it a couple of years ago now.’

  She wished he would shut up about it. ‘Three, actually. Like I said – it’s fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, clearly deciding to let it rest. ‘Shall we?’

  Fancying he was more of a jeep man, Maddy was surprised when Ben led her to a dark-green MGB, old but clearly loved and cherished.

  ‘It’s my Achilles heel. I’ve got a Land Rover for most days. Truth be told I have to leave this little beauty at the end of the track to my cottage. The road is so rough it would rip her exhaust off, at the very least.’

  ‘“Her”? Don’t tell me – I bet “she” has a name too?’

  ‘God no. That would actually be weird.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Ben said, once they were bowling along the main road, ‘how did you hear Patrick was ill?’

  ‘The hospital called me.’ She remembered how her heart had crashed and leapt in her chest when the telephone in the bedroom shrilled into life. In the seconds she took to get to it, she lived a thousand lifetimes of horror. It would be her mother, she decided. Some hideous car accident. A coma. Or killed outright at the scene. Fumbling in the dark and dropping the receiver she feared she had disconnected the call, but when she answered a calmly efficient female voice had replied immediately.

  ‘So, are you next of kin?’ Ben asked.

  ‘No. At least, I wouldn’t have thought so. I don’t know what relatives he has, apart from a very elderly sister in Pontefract. She wasn’t well last time I heard and that was three years ago so possibly she’s not even alive any more.’

  She felt a pang of guilt that Patrick should have no one else to call than a so-called friend who had made no contact with him for years.

  ‘He’s sort of my honorary godfather,’ she went on. ‘That’s what Mum told me, anyhow. An old friend of hers who I made contact with when I came here to college. He looked after me. That’s all. Actually, no, more than that. We became good friends.’

  Ben nodded, thoughtfully.

  ‘But I can’t be next of kin, can I?’ she said, thinking that, really, she should tell her mum. That was a call she wasn’t keen to make.

  ‘In the medical context,’ Ben explained, ‘the patient can name anyone as next of kin. In extremis – and he must have been in a lot of pain – your name is obviously the one that popped into his mind.’

  Her eyes filled with tears. He deserved a better next of kin than her. Come to think of it, clearly Ben was a better friend to Patrick than she was. No wonder he was questioning her. He must be wondering why Patrick didn’t name him, but if he was curious to know more he was discreet enough not to ask, at least for now.

  He pulled into the road leading to the hospital.

  ‘So, would you like me to drop you at the entrance or shall we stick together?’

  ‘Let’s stick together,’ Maddy said quickly. ‘I mean … I don’t know where he’ll be by now. We could be chasing around after each other …’

  ‘Good point.’ He gave her a reassuring smile.

  Patrick had been moved to the cardiac ward to Maddy’s relief. He had spent too long on a trolley in a bay of the accident and emergency department when she saw him that morning, grey and exhausted after being in pain all night.

  When they got there, he was asleep, alone in a little side ward of four beds.

  ‘Are you family?’ asked an Irish nurse as they stood together looking through the glass and wondering whether to go in.

  ‘Pretty much,’ replied Maddy. ‘I’m his god-daughter.’

  ‘And you must be his son-in-law, then.’ She turned to Ben.

  ‘Godson-in-law, if anything,’ Ben said. ‘Actually, we’re not – you know – together,’ he added apologetically, cocking his head in Maddy’s direction.

  ‘Oh right, I
’m sorry. Anyhow, if you’re family,’ she returned her attention to Maddy, ‘you might want to have a word with the doctor who is looking after your father.’

  Maddy shot a warning look at Ben, defying him to put her right, but he kept a straight, concerned face. ‘That would be great,’ she said.

  ‘Not you,’ said the nurse to Ben over her shoulder, grabbing Maddy by the arm and carting her off.

  When she came out again, Patrick was awake and laughing at a comment from Ben, who was sitting, relaxed, on the nearest empty bed.

  ‘Maddy, my darling,’ he said, reaching to pull her in for a kiss. She saw him afresh, this afternoon, less horrifically grey than the night before but distinctly older than she remembered. Although still handsome, the lines on his face were deeper; his hair, still thick and swept back from his face, was now almost entirely white. She gave him a bear hug, alarmed to be able to feel his broad shoulders were bony.

  ‘You’re looking better,’ she said brightly when she came up for air.

  ‘I’m feeling it,’ he replied, too jauntily. ‘I can’t say I approve of that bossy ward sister insisting you come all the way down here,’ he added. ‘What a fuss … and I suppose now that doctor has been wringing every ounce of drama out of the whole sorry episode …’

  ‘That “sorry episode” was a heart attack,’ she said reprovingly. ‘It’s no good, Patrick, the truth is you do need me down here. The doctor says you will need surgery and then several weeks to recuperate.’

  ‘No time for that. That bloody oik Dennis has been all over the place like a rash recently.’

  Ben and Maddy looked at each other, tacitly agreeing to keep his visit to the bar that morning to themselves.

  ‘Yep,’ Patrick continued, looking at the back of his hands, ‘obviously I have to suck up to the little creep a bit because my lease is coming up for renewal … We’ve not been getting on too well …’

  ‘Why?’ Maddy probed gently. ‘Other than him being an obnoxious little runt, obviously.’

  He gave her the ghost of a smile and then looked away. ‘Can’t say we’ve been making the income,’ he admitted. ‘Working my bloody socks off but the dosh just isn’t there and Top Taverns would bloody love to put my rent up. Probably can’t justify it on the current figures so he’s been hinting at finding a new tenant. Damned cheek.’ He looked bleak. ‘What I suspect they really want to do is get change of use to residential and sell the place as a renovation project – it’s a big, valuable property.’

  Maddy noticed, with concern, that some of his grey pallor had returned.

  ‘Not a problem,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll see what I can do, as long as you promise to stay in here and do exactly what the doctors tell you.’

  ‘I’m sorry to drag you back here, Maddy. I know it’s not exactly … I can’t imagine you would have chosen to come.’

  ‘Of course I chose to come,’ she insisted, refusing to meet Ben’s curious eye. ‘I’m only sorry I’ve not been back to see you more,’ she said, both of them knowing she hadn’t been back at all. ‘I would have, but setting up the business, work, you know … I’ve been really busy.’

  ‘And now all that will be neglected while you sort out the self-inflicted problems of a daft old bugger like me,’ observed Patrick sadly.

  By the time Ben had dropped Maddy back at the bar there was no time to call home and catch up with Simon. Instead, she set herself the task of seeing how much cleaning she could get done before the customers appeared. After setting light to the fire laid in the inglenook fireplace, she took a bowl of hot soapy water and a cloth, working meticulously around the bar, damp-dusting the spokes of the chairs, the windowsills, shelves and tops of picture frames. The water was quickly transformed into a murky grey soup. Maddy got the public bar finished and was just turning her attention to the saloon bar when the door creaked open and a skinny figure slunk in out of the growing gloom.

  ‘Kevin – how nice of you to join us,’ said Maddy, hoping her acerbic manner would hide the nervous wobble in her voice.

  ‘Yo,’ he said, not meeting her eye. ‘It’s you,’ he elaborated, on reflection.

  ‘I take it you are here to work a shift this evening,’ she continued. ‘I was expecting you at lunchtime.’

  ‘Busy,’ he muttered.

  She waited for further enlightenment but there was none forthcoming.

  He sullenly began pulling tonic bottles out of a crate and loading them onto the shelf. Surprisingly, she noted, her nervousness at seeing him again was easy to change into irritation on Patrick’s behalf. Irritation was a lot easier to deal with.

  ‘Would you like to know how Patrick is?’

  Kevin shrugged. If he hadn’t then redeemed himself by looking up and waiting for her to tell him she was sure she would have slapped him.

  ‘He’s a bit better but he’s going to need an operation – open-heart surgery – and then several weeks to recover.’

  ‘You stopping here, then?’ he asked, a glimmer of interest in his eye, along with a hint of – what was it? Threat? Triumph?

  ‘I …’ Maddy paused. Weeks? Could she really be away from Simon and the business for that long? ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll be here for as long as he needs me.’

  Kevin shrugged again and disappeared out the back to check the barrels.

  Even with Kevin in the bar, Maddy found herself working at full stretch all night. The customers were understanding about her having closed the kitchen, especially as she promised to get it open again as soon as she could. A couple of the groups of lads brought fish and chips from the shop on the corner and were happy to eat them out of the paper while they drank their pints. Maddy was pleased not to lose the custom. The pub would not survive long without the bar takings of those coming in primarily to eat. That said, she was impressed at the amount of business for a Thursday night, although the after-work drinkers were largely gone by ten o’clock, giving Kevin and Maddy a chance to collect up the glasses and restock the shelves. By the time the bar closed there wasn’t a lot to do, other than wipe tables – again – and put the chairs up ready for hoovering the carpet the following day.

  Maddy was keen to be released from Kevin’s mildly malevolent presence, which seemed more oppressive now the customers had all gone. She found she was painfully aware of where he was at all times and was unaccountably nervous of having her back to him.

  ‘I’ll cash up,’ she said.

  ‘No!’ he blurted. ‘I’ll do it.’ He flushed, his eyes flashing with what looked like anger. Or fear.

  She blinked in surprise. ‘I am simply offering because I imagine you would like to get off home,’ she replied levelly.

  ‘It’s my job,’ he said, going even redder in the face. ‘It’s my responsibility. You’re not my boss.’

  ‘No, okay,’ said Maddy, her heart pounding. ‘You do it, then. I’ll just, er, – you’ll lock up, will you?’

  He nodded curtly, dismissing her.

  Maddy trailed up the stairs to Patrick’s flat. It was nearly midnight. Less than twenty-four hours since she received the call from the hospital but it felt like weeks.

  Oh Lord, her mother! She should have given her a call.

  First thing tomorrow without fail, she decided. As far as she knew Patrick and Helen had not seen each other at all for donkey’s years, but telling her felt important.

  Her little hastily packed rucksack was in the narrow upstairs hallway with her rolled-up sleeping bag. Thank goodness she had brought it, being far too tired for digging out clean sheets and making up a bed. That was even assuming Patrick’s housekeeping standards ran to clean bedding. She poked her head around the door of the spare room where she had occasionally slept as a student when Patrick had fussed about her travelling back to her digs after a shift.

  It was even more filled with random junk than she remembered but, after she had removed a pile of old vinyl records and – intriguingly – a ventriloquist’s dummy in an evening suit, she uncovered a narr
ow single bed with a bare mattress. Fetching a feather cushion from the dusty old sofa for a pillow, Maddy barely managed to wash her face and give her teeth a glimpse of her toothbrush before falling into her makeshift bed.

  Irritatingly, she then lay there, aching with fatigue and staring at the ceiling through the dark. Rather than counting sheep, she found herself counting all the things that she felt guilty about: there was her failure to visit Patrick since she left – obviously a really big guilt trip that one – right down to not yet calling her mother and deciding against checking her emails, even though she just knew the inbox would be filled with work messages, waiting for her efficient, professional response; all her worries spiralled endlessly in her head, her eyes fluttering shut despite herself, dragging her down into sleep like a drowning woman.

  Consciousness returned in flashes, like a strobe light slicing through the darkness. Moments of awareness, shot through with a nameless terror. The rusty taste of the oily liquid running down her face into her mouth. Blood. She stared into the blackness, waiting for help – or for her attacker to return. Her mind nagged her about the paralysing cold, telling her to escape it or die. She groaned, moved and all other sensations were consumed by a new one.

  Pain.

  Maddy woke with a start, feeling the bed shaking beneath her from the aftershock. She groaned. The dream was back, in all its intensity and horror, just like she had never been away. She quickly drifted off again but – within minutes – was fighting her way up into consciousness out of a spiralling dream where the dark, the journey there and the evening in the pub combined to create a cycle of anxiety and panic where she was desperate to reach Patrick but there were barriers in her way. Kevin’s angry face suddenly confronting her in her dream jerked her eventually into grateful wakefulness, and she sat up, to shake off the last of the nightmare, checking her watch, before lying down again and floating off on a tide of exhaustion.