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Shay let go of his hand and walked slowly around the place that had been so dear to them. They always pitched their tents in the same formation, Denny’s here where her feet were. He’d bought it from a car boot sale for twenty pence and Jonah teased him that he’d paid twenty pence too much.It was functional though – after they stuck electrician’s tape over the holes, anyway. Jonah had given him his sister’s old green sleeping bag and he’d been over the moon with it. Over there was where they’d stored the barbecue grill in a plastic sack, covering it with foliage so it wouldn’t be found and nicked. She looked up to the sky as if she were her young self staring at the stars again, tracing the shoulders of Orion upwards from his belt, hardly daring to breathe because she was here with Jonah Wells, the two of them alone together, and there was expectancy in the air, thick and sweet as molasses. There had been so much laughter and fun and affection in this place before Denny had wiped it away with his final actions; they could never have come back again.
A cool breeze shivered through the trees and made her spine tingle.
‘One of the policemen called me a prick-tease. The others were kinder but it’s only him I remember. He made me believe for a while that’s what Denny thought of me.’
‘You weren’t. And you didn’t lead Denny on at all,’ Jonah was quick to refute that. ‘You were lovely to him. Can’t you remember standing up to Glynn Duffy for him? He even terrified me. I’m just glad I had half the rugby squad with me that night.’
‘Oh God, he really was a beast, wasn’t he?’
‘He’s been dead about twenty years, which might come as no surprise. Tried to be a gangster in Manchester but there’s far harder than him over there.’ Jonah dropped a sigh. ‘I have to say, the police were really good to me when I was interviewed, Shay. I told them it wasn’t your fault, I told them to believe your version of events before Ella’s.’
‘I can’t bear that he did it in this lonely place. He must have meant that we’d find him before anyone else.’
‘Denny’s grandad was always bragging that he had a woman and he was going to run off with her and “dump his useless baggage”. I think he did exactly that and the responsibility fell on Denny to look after his mother and Rachel and it was all too much for him. I can’t think of any other reason and trust me, I’ve tried.’ Jonah shook his head. ‘But then again, Bradley Smith wouldn’t have just left them to sit on the money the land would have fetched. He’d have sold up, surely? Unless he’d won the lottery and could afford to.’ He made a little laugh and so did Shay, though it was a very different sort of little laugh to his.
Denny’s grave was in a quiet corner, tucked out of the way as he had been tucked out of the way in life. His stone was small and plain, the words on it simple and few.
DENNYSMITH
14.3.75 – 20.6.91
DEARESTSON ANDBROTHER
BELOVEDFRIEND
‘THINK OF ME INGOD’SGARDEN’
It was hard seeing his name chiselled into the stone. It was the name of a long-dead person, not a boy with all his life in front of him. Not a boy who should be a man now, with children and a job working in the open air and a house and a dog and a garden full of trees and flowers.
The graveyard was beautiful, serene, a place to be at peace. She had always imagined if she came here that she would feel his presence in the air, a benign warmth wrapping around her, but there was nothing.
‘There was a collection for the stone,’ said Jonah. ‘I’m not sure Ella was going to bother, though I don’t think she would even have known how to get one. She was never the brightest bulb in the hardware shop.’
‘What are they living on?’ asked Shay.
‘They sell eggs and I imagine they’re getting some sort of benefits for Rachel but other than that, no idea.’
‘I wanted to go to the funeral but Mum said I shouldn’t. I’d have been damned either way, wouldn’t I?’
Jonah gave a small unconscious nod; that’s exactly what had happened. The village gossips, like those two bitch sisters at the post office, had had a field day when none of the Corrigans turned up. Jonah’s mother had given them a very public piece of her mind about the malice they were spreading.
‘You had more friends here than you might have thought you did,’ said Jonah.
She hadn’t realised that, imagined herself judged as a blanket pariah. She reached in her handbag for a tissue, saturating it almost immediately. Jonah pulled her towards him, his hold tight and kind. It felt wrong and right at the same time.
‘I hate his family,’ she said. ‘I know it’s wrong of me, but—’
‘It isn’t wrong of you, Shay. They destroyed us. They twisted our friendship out of shape and made it into something it wasn’t. Neither of us would ever have hurt Denny. Can’t you remember how happy he was for us when we told him?’
‘Or was it an act, Jonah? Was he saying what he thought we wanted to hear?’
‘He wasn’t that great an actor or a liar,’ said Jonah, taking the tools from his bag. ‘He was happy for us, I know he was.’
Chapter 34
Instead of driving her home, Jonah pulled into the car park of the Black Sheep. There was no more apt name for a pub than this one, thought Shay with a wry smile to herself. It had been the Shoulder of Mutton back in the day, very much a man’s sanctuary. Women didn’t go in on weeknights, they’d have choked on the testosterone, pipe smoke and barely veiled hostility. Only the most brazen crossed the threshold on Sundays. No one wanted ‘pudding burners’ in their midst.
Now it was a totally different story, it was family-friendly and an indoor play park had been built on at the back. There was, as Shay discovered, even pot pourri in the ladies; a sure sign of the sea change that had occurred.
