Cora nodded. ‘I did see it, when I looked you up. Your book, I mean. Sounds like a great idea. A bit like that woman who cooks on a shoestring or bootstrap. Jack somebody. It’s all about saving money.’ She looked away. ‘I also read about your sister and all that happened.’ She pulled on her cigarette wishing that damn phone would ring.
Alex didn’t flinch. ‘She’s had a tough time, but she’s doing well now. I’m proud of her.’
‘I’m proud of Rick,’ said Cora. ‘He’s had one or two problems, but we were dealing with them together, and—’ she chewed her lip. She had to be careful, Alex was too easy to speak to.
‘It must be difficult, with him being homeless.’
Alex’s voice was so gentle it almost made Cora cry, so she busied herself with the kettle and cups and a box of teabags. She wished that phone would bloody ring.
‘It’s not great, I have to say, but we manage.’
‘You manage?’
Careful. ‘We used to live around here, near the coast anyway, but had to leave when I was eighteen.’
‘Had to leave?’
Sharp.
Alex was too on the ball. ‘Sort of. Anyway, we were living near Bury St Edmunds and Rick was working on a farm. When I qualified as a nurse, Rick decided to sign up for the army.’
‘So, how did you get here?’
The kettle boiled. Steam curled under the kitchen cupboards. Cora poured water onto teabags in mugs. ‘Rick was here. I wanted to be near him, so I followed him to the city and managed to get on the bank. Plenty of work at the hospitals around here.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Everyone going off with stress, you see. They need agency nurses.’ She squished the teabags against the side of the mug, poured some milk in and handed one to Alex. ‘Sorry. More caffeine. Rick saw action in Afghanistan. Watched his friends get blown up, maimed. But it was on his second tour that the worst happened.’
‘Go on,’ said Alex.
She sighed. ‘There was a young girl – look, you’ve got to know that part of the reason they were out there, in Afghanistan, was to “capture hearts and minds”.’
Alex nodded. ‘I know. I read about that.’
‘They would give out sweets to the kids, help the women, helped the men if they could. And they were winning. They were.’
‘A young girl?’ prompted Alex.
Cora gripped her mug even tighter. ‘Rick was at some sort of checkpoint. The girl came towards him. She was fifteen at the most, he reckoned. But she was already beautiful. Lovely eyes. As she came closer, Rick said he saw tears in those eyes. She spread out her hands. And then—’
Cora stopped, took a deep breath, gathered her thoughts. Every time she told this story – and she tried not to tell it often – she had to damp down the tears, talk about it as though it had happened to someone else and not her brother.
‘She blew herself up.’
Alex drew a sharp breath.
Cora knew the stark brutality of her words was shocking, but there was no other way to say it.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Alex said.
Cora gave a brief smile. ‘It doesn’t end there. One of his friends was killed and Rick received shrapnel wounds. He came home but he was a different man. Helen – Rick’s wife – got her husband back in one piece, but he wasn’t the man who’d left for Afghanistan, and no one seemed to care. He tried so hard for so long. He even held down a job in security for a year or two. The photography helped for a while – it had been a hobby of his for years – but it didn’t keep the demons away in the end. He would lose his temper at the slightest thing, just fly off the handle.’
‘Did he hurt his wife?’
‘Once. And that was it for Helen. She worried he would hurt the girls.’ Cora saw Alex’s questioning look. ‘His daughters.’ She gripped the sides of her mug to stop her hands trembling. ‘They were only four and five and they didn’t understand why Daddy had changed towards them. I think he was pushing them away deliberately.’
‘So Helen threw him out?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Cora, sadly. ‘He left before, as he put it, he did any more damage. He also said that every time he looked at his girls he thought of the girl in the village and how she’d been young and carefree not so many years before. But when he left he had nowhere to go. Or nowhere he wanted to go. So he got on a bus and ended up in Norwich.’
‘On the streets.’
Cora sighed. ‘Not straightaway. He had some money and he stayed in a hotel, then a hostel. But then the money ran out.’ She shrugged. ‘He went on the streets. Said he’d met someone who could help him get a good pitch, that sort of thing. I tried to get him help, but Rick didn’t want the bit that was offered. Said he didn’t deserve it. Said no one could understand what he was going through. And I suppose they couldn’t. I came this way because I wanted, no, needed, to keep an eye on him. I couldn’t bear the thought of him being all on his own. But he didn’t seem to care whether I was around or not.’ The best lies contained a grain of truth.
‘And Helen?’
‘Moving on. She took the girls to her parents in York. My nieces. I won’t see them grow up now.’ She sniffed, rubbed away some tears from the corner of her eyes. ‘We – Helen and I – know now that he was suffering from a head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. Still is. He didn’t tell us it was so bad. We didn’t understand.’
Alex took hold of one of her hands. ‘I’ve been there, Cora. Regret, lost opportunities. I know how guilt can eat away at you until it takes over your whole life. You have to let it go or it will destroy you.’
How Cora wished that bloody phone would ring.
‘And what about you?’ asked Alex.
‘Me?’ Cora sniffed. She lit another cigarette.
‘Yes, you. You’re entitled to a life too, you know. Rick made his choice. It doesn’t mean you have to give up your life.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Okay.’
‘Really, I’m not, so can you leave it, please.’ She made her voice deliberately sharp. There was no way she wanted this woman, this journalist she hardly knew, to start poking her nose into that business. Finding Rick, well, that was another matter. She would just have to make sure she kept Alex Devlin pointed in the right direction, didn’t allow her to veer off course. She jumped up and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘This isn’t getting us any nearer to finding Rick.’
‘No. But I wanted to get a sense of who he is.’
‘Perhaps if you hadn’t left him to be taken in a strange car to God knows where you might have done just that.’ Cora knew she sounded mean and unforgiving but she couldn’t help it. Alex had got under her skin.
Alex picked up her bag. ‘That’s unfair, Cora. He was probably taken to a hospital and left before they could treat him. I’m sure he’s fine. That could be the answer. I’m really sorry I didn’t do better. I hope you find him soon.’
‘Please don’t go.’ Cora grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘Look. He would have been in touch with me by now.’
‘Really? How?’
Cora could see the doubt written on Alex’s face. ‘He always finds a way to get a message to me.’ She sat down again, her shoulders slumped. Up and down. Mercurial, Rick had told her that once. ‘Sit down. Please.’
Alex