‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s a bit overwhelming just trying to work out where to start, there’s so much information out there.’
‘That’s where Tash comes in,’ Dolly put in proudly. ‘The staff here are wonderful; such a great help to us.’ Yes, I thought, cleaning up after you every week, listening to you wittering on for hours at a time. Such a great help.
‘Why don’t you take these,’ I said to Jenny, handing her a pile of leaflets. ‘They tell you what we can search for, how much it costs, but – you know, I hope Dolly hasn’t given you the wrong impression, we don’t actually do the research for you, you have to do it yourself.’ I tried to push the file of research I had spent the last couple of hours working on for Ed out of her line of vision. ‘You know, we’re really not allowed to, we just don’t have the time.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘of course. Well, that’s the fun part, surely, the research?’
If you say so. ‘Well,’ I said with a not-very-surreptitious glance at the clock, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you in Dolly’s capable hands. Christine’s next door in the lending section, she’ll be popping in and out if you need anything. I’m afraid I’ll have to dash off, I’m meeting someone.’ As soon as I uttered the last sentence I realised my mistake, but it was too late.
‘Oh! Oh Tash, “meeting someone”? Oh how lovely!’ Dolly had somehow cobbled together the impression that I was a sort of cross between Bridget Jones and Miss Jean Brodie – a single woman, soon to be past her prime, both desperate for a man and yet totally fulfilled by my wonderfully absorbing work. ‘A young man, is it?’ And then, ‘Oh it’s not that nice young man we saw waiting outside, do you think? Is it Tash? Is he lovely and tall with a great head of hair and beautiful teeth?’
I cast about for something to say. The most I had noticed thus far about Ed’s teeth was that he had them all. ‘Um…’
‘Oh, well, if it is, then bloody good for you, Tash! Oh, well done indeed. It’s not often, is it, that a single woman of your age is lucky enough to find a wonderful specimen like him? Oh, and such a pleasant manner. I do believe that if young men still wore hats he would have doffed his at us, wouldn’t he, Jenny?’
It was then that I realised that she must indeed be talking about Ed. And I was surprised to notice that, though Dolly Cheswold was undoubtedly Doncaster’s biggest and busiest pain in the arse, she was, for once, right about something. I did feel lucky.
*
He was waiting for me, just as before, with his dark, 1990s trench coat and his shaggy hair, yet still, somehow, looking like a film star. Same time, I thought, same place. Same clothes. It was close to becoming a routine, and I was surprised by how much I liked that idea.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t find all that much,’ I told him, after we had sat down. We had gone to Dove again, neither of us having a clue as to where else might be half-decent in Doncaster these days. ‘Edgarsbridge was one of the more productive pits in Yorkshire during the strike, but it’s all relative and you’re talking about starting from a pretty low base. Ninety-seven percent of the miners in Yorkshire came out on strike – probably more round here – so yes, maybe more went back to Edgarsbridge than some of the other pits but you’d still only be talking about a handful of men. The one interesting thing about those personnel files is that the other blokes who went back were all employed at that pit before the strike and after, in a lot of cases. This Peter Milton – the mystery man – he was the only one who just worked there for those few months. Now – ’ I leaned back in my chair, feeling like Hercule Poirot, ‘I don’t want to tell you how to do your job but, you know, Milton’s not an especially common name. Say this Peter Milton – yours, ours – say he needed, or wanted, to go back to work for whatever reason. He probably couldn’t risk doing it over at Oldfield where people might see him, where word might get out. But if he was desperate enough to go back in the first place he might have been desperate enough to do it over in Rotherham. Plus, he was taken off their books a few weeks after our Peter Milton disappeared. I know that the strike was pretty much over by then anyway but… What?’
Ed was paler behind his freckly tan and he looked slightly sick.
‘What?’ I said again.
‘Nothing. So – you think it’s definitely the same Pete Milton?’
I shrugged. ‘Anyone can change a date of birth. Remember, it was way before the days of ID fraud and money laundering paranoia. He wouldn’t even have had to give them bank details.’
He nodded, still looking sick. ‘There’s something I should tell you.’
I could tell he hadn’t been properly listening to me. He had that look that men get when they wish you would hurry up and finish talking so that they can blurt out the thing that’s been bothering them the whole time they’ve been pretending to pay attention.
‘I am a journalist, that’s all true.’ He said it as though his being a journalist was the thing that had made me like him so far. ‘But – I’m not working on a story. Or at least, not just any story. I’m – Pete Milton is – was, whatever – The thing is, I’m his brother.’
‘Right.’ I blinked. Seemed as if it was family history research of a kind, after all. ‘Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know,’ I said needlessly. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have been so blunt.’
Ed shook his head. ‘You weren’t – you haven’t been. Don’t be sorry.’
‘I meant – ’ I blurted, then stopped.
‘What?’
I remembered what he’d said to me when he found out about Mum and Dad, and how grateful I had been to him. ‘I meant I’m sorry for you,’ I said. ‘Him being gone so long, not knowing. It must have been terrible for you.’ I wasn’t asking, it was a statement of fact. When he’d asked me about Mum and Dad, about how I managed to carry on, I’d had the feeling then that he knew already that I was just a moving, talking shell, that in some ways he was one too.
He was silent a minute. ‘I know everybody says that the not knowing that’s what everybody thinks is the worst, but I’m not sure. What about you? What would you choose? Not knowing, maybe never knowing, whether your parents were alive, or, well…being where you are now? Knowing.’
Tears sprang into my eyes. I looked down, hoping the light was dim enough that he wouldn’t notice. Ed did not seem like the kind of man who would be attracted to, or wish to exploit, a damaged woman, nor was I the type of woman who would wish to appear damaged. Although, seeing as I was crying in front of him for the second time in as many meetings, it was probably already too late.
He had been the first person to speak about my loss with such honesty, and I wanted to respond in kind. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I mean, I know – ’ I swallowed. ‘I know that they’re gone, even if I don’t know where they’ve gone to.’ I tried to laugh and he smiled in sympathy. ‘But – Oh, Ed, there’s no good way of saying this. What I mean is, I do know that they didn’t choose to go. I wish – I wish so much that there was any possibility they might still be alive, and if the reason I didn’t know they were still alive was that they weren’t able to tell me, then it would be OK. But – I can’t imagine a way that that could be true.’ He was staring at me levelly, his mouth set in a flat line. ‘Can you?’
He shook his head. ‘No. No, you’re right. If Pete’s dead, then he’s dead and that’s terrible. If he’s alive then, obviously, that’s better, but – but, you know… Why?’ He lifted a hand as though he wanted to smash it heavily on the table, but he brought it back down slowly and tapped it once. ‘Why?’ His voice was flat, emotionless but his hand, I noticed, was shaking very slightly.
‘Christ,’ I said, ‘what a pair of tragic life stories.’
He smiled, picking up on my need to