Soon she would be snuffed out for eternity. As would he, as would his son, as— (‘For Christ’s sake, Jackson, give it a break,’ Julia said crossly.)
Jackson had begun to wonder if Penny Trotter took some kind of masochistic pleasure in what amounted (almost) to voyeurism. Or did she have an endgame that she wasn’t sharing with Jackson? Perhaps she was simply waiting it out, Penelope hoping Odysseus would find his way home. Nathan had a school project for the holidays about the Odyssey. He didn’t seem to have learned anything, whereas Jackson had learned quite a lot.
Nathan attended a private school (mostly thanks to Julia’s fee for Collier), which was something that Jackson objected to on principle but was secretly relieved by as Nathan’s local comp was a sink school. (‘I can’t decide which you are,’ Julia said, ‘a hypocrite or just a failed ideologue.’ Had she always been so judgemental? That used to be the job of his ex-wife, Josie. When had it become Julia’s?)
Jackson had grown bored with Gary and Kirsty. They were creatures of habit, going out together every Monday and Wednesday evening, in Leeds, where they both worked at the same insurance company. The same pattern: a drink, a meal and then a couple of hours closeted in Kirsty’s tiny modern flat, where Jackson could guess what they were up to without, thank goodness, having to actually witness it. Afterwards Gary drove home to Penny and the brick-built, character-free, semi-detached house they owned in Acomb, a flat suburb of York. Jackson like to think that if he was a married man conducting an illicit affair – something he had never done, hand to God – then it would have been a little more spontaneous, a little less predictable. A little more fun. Hopefully.
Leeds was a long drive over the moors and so Jackson had contracted a helpful youth called Sam Tilling who lived in Harrogate and had been kicking his heels between university and joining the police when Jackson recruited him to do some legwork for him. Sam cheerfully carried out the more tedious assignments – the wine bars, the cocktail lounges and the curry houses where Gary and Kirsty indulged in bridled passion. They occasionally tottered off on a day-trip somewhere. It was Thursday today so they must have bunked off work on account of the good weather. Jackson, with no real evidence, imagined that Gary and Kirsty were the kind of people who would deceive their employers without any qualms.
As Peasholm Park was practically on Jackson’s doorstep, he had chosen to follow them himself today. Plus, it gave him something to do with Nathan, even if Nathan’s preferred default position was to be inside playing Grand Theft Auto on his Xbox or chatting online with his friends. (What on earth did they find to say to each other? They never did anything.) Jackson had tried dragging Nathan (almost literally) up the hundred and ninety-nine steps to the gaunt ruins of Whitby Abbey in a vain attempt to make him understand history. Similarly the museum, a place that Jackson liked for its quirky medley of exhibits, from fossilized crocodiles to whaling memorabilia to the mummified hand of a hanged man. None of that interactive, keep-the-ADHD-kids-amused-no-matter-what stuff. Just a gallimaufry of the past, still in its original Victorian cases – butterflies pinned, birds stuffed, war medals displayed, dolls’ houses open to view. The odds and ends of people’s lives, which, when all was said and done, were the things that mattered, weren’t they?
Jackson was surprised that Nathan wasn’t attracted by the gruesomeness of the mummified hand. ‘The Hand of Glory’ it was called and it carried an elaborate, confusing folktale of gibbets and opportunistic housebreakers. The museum was full, too, of Whitby’s maritime heritage, also of no interest whatsoever to Nathan, and obviously the Captain Cook Museum was a non-starter. Jackson admired Cook. ‘First man to sail round the world,’ he said, trying to engage Nathan’s interest. ‘So?’ he said. (So! How Jackson hated that contemptuous So?) Perhaps his son was right. Perhaps the past was no longer the context for the present. Perhaps none of it mattered any more. Was this how the world would end – not with a bang but a So?
While Gary and Kirsty were gallivanting, Penny Trotter was seeing to business – a gift shop in Acomb called the Treasure Trove, the interior of which smelt of an unholy mix of patchouli-scented incense and artificial vanilla. The stock consisted mostly