Beth shaves twenty minutes off the satnav’s predicted journey time back to Broadchurch. Mark’s explanation, designed to soothe her, has made everything worse. Boyfriend! How could Chloe have a boyfriend and not tell her? How could Mark know and not tell her?
Guilt has been a constant presence since losing Danny, but now she is choked by a new source of the same emotion. She has been so wrapped up in her little boy that she has forgotten about her little girl. She understands why Chloe would hide this boy Dean from Mark – who wants to tell their protective, angry dad they’re seeing someone? – but from her? She thought they told each other everything.
Mark waits for her on the drive, engine running, passenger door open. ‘He lives on a farm past Bredy Hill,’ he says as she buckles herself in.
‘When were you going to tell me?’ She presses the window down as far as it will go.
‘She wanted to tell you herself,’ says Mark. He’s taken his eyes off the road to look at her, and he has to pull sharply to the left to avoid a cyclist. He’s driving too fast, hurtling towards a pothole in the road. He crosses it at speed; the car jolts. Instinctively Beth puts her hand on her stomach.
They turn into a winding lane banked by high hedges. Beth bites her tongue, afraid to break his concentration again.
‘What’s this Dean like then?’ she says, when the road widens and straightens. ‘Did she meet him at school?’
Mark pulls a face. ‘He doesn’t go to school. Um, he’s seventeen.’
Beth lets rip. ‘Brilliant. Brilliant. And you’re all right with that?’
‘’Course I’m not bloody all right with it!’ Mark roars back, still not slowing down. Finally he puts his foot to the brake and Beth watches the speedometer drop below sixty. ‘But I’m not gonna push her away now,’ says Mark. ‘Look, I bet she’s with him. I’m sure she’s OK.’
‘How can you ever say that now?’ says Beth. She turns her face to the window as the van crowns Bredy Hill. The early evening sun casts a golden filter over the picture-postcard landscape. Beth barely sees it.
With little warning, Mark swerves into a run-down farmyard cluttered with old threshing machines and a rusting yellow tractor. Sorry-looking cows munch hay in a vast rusting barn. The only new thing is a shiny motorcycle with two crash helmets hanging on the back.
‘He’s got a bloody motorbike!’ says Beth, but Mark shushes her with his hand on her forearm. She follows his gaze to a small outbuilding in the corner of the farmyard; there’s movement inside. Mark stays calm on the short walk to the shack, then loses his composure at the last minute, shouting Chloe’s name and shouldering the door at the exact second that Beth remembers the kind of thing she and Mark got up to in the middle of the afternoon when they were young, and thinks it might be a good idea to knock.
Whatever Beth was expecting, it wasn’t this. The interior of the shack looks like a youth club. There are beanbags, a couple of battered chairs, fairy lights draped from the rafters and a flat-screen TV that’s showing a video game. In the centre of the room, Chloe stands wearing a pair of headphones. Her eyes are closed and she’s gently swaying. Dean – good-looking, Beth registers that even in her shock – is frozen with a games controller in his hand. After what seems an eternity, he pulls the plug on Chloe’s headphones. Her eyes saucer when she sees her parents.
‘Mum! Dad!’
Beth doesn’t know whether to slap Chloe or hug her. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Dancing,’ says Chloe. ‘Dean made me a happy room.’
Dean gets up to take her hand. ‘Somewhere she can just shut herself away,’ he explains. ‘Enjoy herself without feeling guilty.’ Chloe smiles gratefully up at him. Beth looks at Mark and knows he’s thinking the same thing: it’s us, fifteen years ago. She is consumed with the most bittersweet feeling, like a longed-for kiss on broken skin.
‘What happened to your day out with the girls?’ asks Beth. Her anger has melted away.
‘They were too nice to me,’ says Chloe. ‘Kept asking me if I was OK. Watching what they said to each other. Like I was a freak. I rang Dean. He came and got me from the train station.’ Beth tries not to wince at the thought of Chloe on the back of Dean’s bike across miles of open countryside. ‘I just wanted a break from being sad. I loved Danny, you know I loved him, but I need a break from being the dead boy’s sister. It’s suffocating me. And I know you can’t understand that.’
Beth fights the tears: she doesn’t want to embarrass Chloe by crying in front of Dean. She’s grateful when Mark speaks for her.
‘No,’ says Mark. ‘We do understand. Don’t we?’
Beth nods, swallowing hard.
‘Are you keeping the baby?’ says Chloe. Beth looks to Mark – if he’s told Chloe, she’ll kill him – but he shakes his head. ‘I heard you fighting about it,’ says Chloe patiently, as if she’s the parent. ‘What you gonna do?’
Beth decides to repay Chloe’s honesty. ‘We don’t know.’ She looks around at the soft lights and the music and the sofas and feels ashamed as well as grateful that Dean has been the one to do this for her. ‘But first we need to make a happy room for you at home.’
The door of St Andrew’s church is always open, but Steve Connolly tiptoes through it with a trespasser’s unease. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands: they are too big for the pockets on his fleece, so he worries at his zip, then smooths down his hair. He looks around, studying each stained-glass window in turn, moving his lips as he reads the leaded inscriptions. There is a large stone statue of Christ in the transept: Steve touches the hem of its robe, then dips his head awkwardly. He lights a candle but doesn’t find any money in his pocket, so he blows it out and places it back on the shelf. He seems eager to please, even though the church is empty. After making two circuits of the nave, he settles in a pew halfway down and bends his head in prayer. It is in this position that Reverend Paul Coates finds him half an hour later. At the sound of footsteps, Steve Connolly’s eyes fly open as if a trance has been broken.
‘You don’t mind me being here, do you?’ he says. There is apology in his body language: he is almost bowing. ‘I’m not a regular.’
‘Of course not,’ says Paul. He squares off a pile of hymn books without taking his eyes away from Steve.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Steve leans forward in his earnestness. ‘I know it sounds daft, but… with God… do you hear a voice? Does God talk to you?’
‘No. Not directly. I just have faith that he’ll show me the way.’
‘This thing happens to me, and I’m still trying to work it out. I hear a voice, in my head. And it gives me messages. I had a message from Danny, I had to give to Beth Latimer.’ He gives a short, bitter laugh. ‘See, say it out loud and it sounds bonkers. But the Bible’s full of talking angels and that, isn’t it?’
‘There’s a bit of that, yes.’ Steve doesn’t seem to register the effort it takes Paul to keep a straight face.
‘But what I keep wondering is, what if I was wrong? What if the message wasn’t from Danny Latimer. What if it was from God? Or… What if it’s not from either of them, Danny or God, and it’s just voices in my head?’
Paul sits down next to him. ‘Who have you talked to about this?’
‘The police. Beth. Now you.’
‘What about medical advice?’
Connolly rolls his eyes. ‘I reckon we both know where I’d end up, if I went in to a GP talking like this. I thought you’d understand.’ His obvious disappointment is shot through with accusation. ‘I thought we were both people who heard voices that weren’t from the living.’
‘I’m sorry to let you down,’ says Coates patiently. ‘Is that why you’re in here?’
‘No. I came to pray. The voice has stopped. So I’m praying to make it come again. ’Cause they need me: the family, the police. If I could just get another message, I could convince them. I could help them solve it.’ His eyes glaze. ‘But I’m getting nothing. And it scares me. What if I imagined it in the first place? What if I was wrong? What if I’m a liar? If I don’t hear it again, what am I?’
The reverend is uncharacteristically lost for words.