said Lyndon simply, turning back towards the screen. Dryden stood, aware that he was about to be asked to play some role other than sceptical observer. He felt unease seep through his guts like a bad curry.
Estelle Beck sat at her mother’s bedside. Her slim, athletic body squeezed into a pair of stone-washed jeans and a white T-shirt. Her hair was a trendy blonde bob cut asymmetrically, which captured what little light surrounded her mother’s bed. The bedside lamp showed a face younger than her twenty-five years. The unmarked, olive skin held a bloom in both cheeks; the eyes a sensational lichen green. She could have been looking out of a sixth-form end-of-term picture. Dryden had met her at visiting time, and once out at Black Bank before Maggie had been admitted for the cancer treatment. She’d told Dryden her daughter was a teacher, in a primary school out on the Fens. He couldn’t remember where: Ten Mile Bank, or Barrowby Drove.
She smiled now, seeing him. ‘Hi. Thanks, for everything. I just feel so guilty we were away…’ she said, her hand seeking out her mother’s on the counterpane.
The heat was suddenly overpowering. Dryden felt a trickle of sweat begin on its long journey from his hairline down one temple. It wasn’t just the heat. Since childhood he had feared being asked to play any role other than bystander. Why did Maggie Beck want him now?
Estelle must have known it was going to happen just before it did, because she leant forward and stretched out a hand towards Maggie’s face. Her mother’s eyes opened slowly and she raised her head from the uncreased pillows with surprising force.
‘She’s not going to die,’ thought Dryden, mistaking the morphine-induced serenity for self-possession.
‘Estelle?’ Maggie said, taking her daughter’s hand. She smiled then, and Dryden saw the truth – the irrational exuberance the drugs were pumping through her bloodstream.
‘I’m here,’ said Estelle. ‘And Lyndon. And Dryden, as you asked.’ Dryden felt even less comfortable, like an interloper. He saw the fear in her eyes as she clutched at her own wrists, as if seeking a pulse. Lyndon crouched down beside Estelle and the three held hands together. Maggie’s other hand covered her mouth, afraid perhaps to tell a secret she had vowed to keep. Suddenly exhausted she slumped back and let her hand fall, the eyes closing and rolling back. Lyndon stood, retreating to the shadows. In the long silence that followed he retrieved the lighter from his pocket and sat, rhythmically flicking the flame on and off. On and off.
In the silence Dryden considered Maggie’s life. A life of predictable Fen insignificance, flat and featureless except for that single night of unspeakable horror. What had it done to her? What scars had lingered within, as the corkscrew burn on her cheek had faded with the years?
They all jumped at Maggie’s voice, suddenly loud in the hushed space around the deathbed. Her eyes remained closed and still but the tendons in her neck flexed visibly with the effort of speech. ‘I lied,’ she said, and Dryden was astonished to see tears running in a beaded stream from one eye. She struggled with herself, twisting in the bed as if resisting questions in an interrogation.
They waited. The windows were open in the heat and the sound of a bus changing gears came across the fields from the main Cambridge road. Dryden watched skylarks in the patch of china-blue sky which marked where the sun had set. The Tower was silent except for the cool snapping sounds of linen being folded by a nurse in the corridor outside. The caretaker whistled, perhaps outside, crossing the lawns.
Maggie’s eyes opened again, but this time she saw nobody, at least nobody there.
‘Dryden. My witness. I lied.’
She raised a hand. ‘Lyndon?’ He came forward from the shadows and folded long tanned fingers around hers, enveloping her wedding ring, which had caught the light like a candle in the darkness in the shadows of a church.
‘We all lie,’ he said, and Dryden noticed a glance of complicity with Estelle.
‘I’m sorry, Lyndon,’ Maggie said. ‘It was your life. I stole your life and ended it. Matty didn’t die, Lyndon. He’s never died. I lied. I lied to the coroner. To the police. To…’ She fought for breath for the first time and Lyndon made to get help. ‘No. Stay, please stay. This is all I have left to do. I lied to give you a different life. You’re Matty… You’re my son…’
There was