The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,50

was all a sham. The earnest elderly women in their mushroom-shaped hats, the bluff good-natured men – they were all deluding themselves. They were here for their own reasons, for the power trip or because they’d grown up with the group and couldn’t let go. Through cowardice or habit. With the understanding there’d come a liberation, a sense that he was now free to do what he wanted and be who he wanted to be.

Perhaps it had been youthful arrogance or perhaps he’d been suffering some stress-related minor breakdown, but he’d needed to speak about this sudden new insight, to spread the word. He’d felt different, lit-up, excited. To sit there, listening to the worship, knowing he didn’t believe a word, had made him want to yell at them all; he couldn’t just sit there pretending. At the end when Salter had asked if anyone wanted to share with the group, Matthew had raised his hand and got to his feet.

‘None of this is true. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe any of it. You must be mad if you think it’s true!’

There’d been silence. He still had an image of faces turned towards him in horror and disbelief. His mother had given a little gasp. After that, he could remember little detail. There were muddled memories of confusion and embarrassment. His mother and father shepherding him out of the hall. Dennis Salter standing at the door, sad and stern-faced. ‘Are you sure, boy? You’re turning your back on the Brethren?’

‘I can’t lie.’ He’d still been a little defiant then.

‘You’ll always be welcome back when you see the light, but until then, you’re a stranger to us.’ Then the door had been shut on them and they’d driven home, his mother weeping all the way.

The next day he’d left for Bristol, seen his tutor and told him he was leaving university. The day after he’d got a job entering data for an insurance company, because he needed to earn a living. The following week he’d applied to join the police. He’d realized that he still needed rules and the idea of justice, that chaos made him panic. He’d tried to communicate with his parents, but half-heartedly, through birthday cards, a present at Christmas. There’d been no response. In the beginning, his father had phoned occasionally, begging him to reconsider his denial of faith. ‘Can’t you just go along with it for the sake of your mother? She’s in pieces.’

But Matthew was stubborn. ‘She taught me not to bear false witness.’ He’d dropped them a note when he moved to Barnstaple, but they hadn’t got in touch. The separation had gone on for so long that neither side had known how to bridge the gap.

When he’d heard about his father’s condition from a neighbour, Matthew had called his mother immediately. She’d been almost speechless with rage.

‘I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to speak to me. You do know it’s your fault, the heart attack? We saw it in the North Devon Journal. Marriage to a man.’ The last phrase explosive, as if she was spitting into the telephone. Spitting at him.

He’d wanted to visit his father in hospital, but had never been brave enough to go, anxious that there might be some truth in her accusation, or that he might bump into her in the hospital ward. She’d never minded making a scene. But he’d longed to see his father, to chat about football and music as they had on those summer days when Matthew had gone with him visiting the coastal farms, to hold his hand.

The net curtain at the window moved. She’d seen him. He got out of the car and rang the doorbell. She wouldn’t want him to know that she’d been looking out for him, so it was best to pretend he hadn’t seen the twitching curtain.

He hadn’t seen her for twenty years, except a couple of times by chance recently, at a distance, in the street. She hadn’t changed so much. She was small, fit for her age. The obsession with healthy eating might not have saved his father, but it had worked for her. She still walked most days into town to get her own shopping. She’d never learned to drive. She stood aside to let him in quickly, so ashamed of who he was, it seemed, that she didn’t want the neighbours to know he was there.

‘I was expecting you earlier.’

‘I’ve only just been given your message. I was out working.’ He