to call it shame. She knew it was liberation.
She went to tell her father that they would need to reschedule his doctor's appointment for another day.
Kevin Whateley had not gone to the Royal Plantagenet, which was the pub next door to his cottage. Rather, he had walked along the embankment, past the triangular green where he and Matthew had once learned to operate their pair of remote-control planes, and had instead entered an older pub that stood on a spit of land reaching like a curled finger into the Thames.
He'd chosen the Blue Dove deliberately. In the Royal Plantagenet - despite its proximity to his house - he might have forgotten for five minutes or so. But the Blue Dove would not allow him to do so.
He sat at a table that overlooked the water. In spite of the night's falling temperature, someone was out, night fishing from a boat, and lights bobbed periodically with the river's movement. Kevin watched this, allowing his memory to fill with the image of Matthew running along that same dock, falling, damaging a knee, righting himself but not crying at all, even when the blood began to seep from the cut, even when the stitches were later put in. He was a brave little bloke, always had been.
Kevin forced his eyes from the dock and fastened them on the mahogany table. Beer mats covered it, advertising Watney's, Guinness, and Smith's. Carefully, Kevin stacked them, restacked them, spread them out like cards, restacked them again. He felt how shallow his breathing was and knew that he needed to take in more air. But to breathe deeply was to lose his grip for an instant. He wouldn't do that. For if he lost control, he didn't know how he would get it back. So he did without air. He waited.
He didn't know if the man he sought would come into the pub this late on a Sunday night, mere minutes before closing. In fact, he didn't even know if the man came here at all any longer. But years ago he'd been a regular customer, when Patsy worked long hours behind the bar, before she'd got her job in a South Kensington hotel. For Matthew's sake, she had said when she'd taken on the job, in spite of the fact that the pay was lower than what she'd received for years at the Blue Dove. No boy wants to tell his mates that his mum's a barmaid.
No indeed, Kevin had agreed.
They'd bring their son up proper, they decided. He'd have more opportunity than they'd had. He'd have a solid education and a chance to make something grand of his life. They owed it to him, after all, and they knew it. He was their miracle baby. He was their dear little chap. He was the bond between them. He was the living fulfillment of all their dreams, dreams brought to nothing on that stainless steel cart in the hushed postmortem room where Kevin had been taken to identify the body.
Matthew had been covered by some sort of regulation green cloth, the incongruous words LEWISTON LAUNDRY AND CLEANING stamped across the front, as if he were waiting to be bundled into a washing machine. Although the quietly sympathetic police sergeant had uncovered the face, there had been no real need for him to do so. Sometime in the process of moving the body from one location to another, the left foot had become loosened from the material that enshrouded it, and Kevin knew at once that he was looking at his son.
It was odd to think that one could know a child's body so well, that merely the glimpse of a foot could wreak such horrible devastation. But that had been enough. Still, he had done his duty and made a formal observation of the rest of the body.
Kevin thought of the sight of Matthew's face, the glow wiped from it by the impartial hand of death. He had heard once that people's faces reflected the manner in which they died.
But he knew now that old tale wasn't true. Matthew's body bore evidence of brutality and violence, but his face was serene. He might have been asleep.
Kevin had heard himself asking the impossible, the ridiculous, the unutterably laughable.
"The boy's dead? You're sure of it?"
The sergeant had lowered the cloth to cover Matthew's face. "Quite sure. I'm sorry."
Sorry. What did he know of Matthew to be sorry at his death? What did he know of the railway they'd