Hiring a car took longer than Ben had anticipated. When he landed, the place was deserted. The taxi rank was just as empty and in the end he settled onto the bench just inside the door to the ferry terminal, using his bag as a pillow and closing his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t be too late by the time he got there.
He slept restlessly, each time he stirred, he had the horrible feeling that his father had died. It was hard to shake the idea and by the time the sun rose the next morning, he was anxious to be going. He sat up, noticing the light was on inside the car rental booth. He crossed to it and found the place manned by a bored teenage girl whose badge proclaimed, “Happy to help!”
“Hi,” Ben said, setting down the bag beside him. “I need a car.”
“All out.” She said it without looking up from her magazine.
“Excuse me?”
“All out.”
“You’re telling me you have no cars at all?”
She shook her head slowly. “Nope.”
“Do you know when you’ll have one?”
“Fiesta’s due back in the next half hour.”
“Great, can I book that one?”
“Suppose.” She flicked a piece of paper out at him and he filled it in before leaving it with her.
“I’ll wait outside,” he said.
He walked over to a bench that overlooked the harbour. He was about to sit down when he noticed a cafe was open further down the road. He bought a coffee before returning to the bench to wait for his car.
When he’d finished the drink, he dropped the cup into the nearest bin before returning to the rental booth. “Me again,” he said, evincing a slight nod in return. “Do you know if there’s a phone box around here at all?”
“Outside the arcade.”
“Which way’s that?”
A sigh before she responded. “Down there.” She lifted a finger and jabbed to her left.
“Your heart’s not really in this, is it?” he asked, getting a blank look in response.
He headed back outside and made his way down the road, following the curve along the shoreline. The arcade was closed, the graffiti covered shutters pulled down to the ground. The phone box next to it had seen better days, the glass in two of the panes broken, the red paint peeling. At least the phone inside worked. He rang the castle but no one answered. He hung up when the answerphone kicked in and tried his parents’ house. No answer again.
He closed his eyes with the receiver in his hand, trying to remember his mother’s mobile number. He drew a blank but then he thought about his journal. Hadn’t he written all the numbers down in the back of there before he left? Maybe he’d known he might need them someday.
The number was there. He punched it into the phone, wondering if she’d answer. Was she at the hospital? Sat by his side?
It was answered on the third ring. “Look, if you’re trying to sell me something I’m not-”
“It’s me, Mum.”
“Ben?” A pause. The only sound was that of the waves crashing on the beach behind him. “I almost didn’t answer, it says unknown number on here.”
“I’m calling from a phone box. How is he?”
“Who?”
“Dad.”
“Your father? How should I know?”
“What? Aren’t you there with him?”
“Benjamin, me and your father broke up quite some time ago. Did he not tell you?”
Ben tried to keep the shock from his voice. “I haven’t spoken to him.”
“You two still refusing to talk? Why am I not surprised?”
“But you know about the car crash, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I know all about that.” There was something in her tone that he couldn’t pinpoint. Was it anger?
“So, how is he?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“But you said you knew about the crash?” He realised he was gripping the phone too tightly and he forced his hand to relax. “How can you have no idea how he is?”
“I had a phone call from the hospital, Doctor Harris, I think. Where are you? The line’s awful.”
“In Scotland but I’m on my way down tonight.”
A man’s voice in the background. “Who is it, darling?”
“Who was that?” Ben asked, gripping the phone again. He thought he might recognise that voice.
“It’s Ben,” she said, her voice faint for a moment as she spoke to whoever was next to her. Who the hell was that? “Look, Ben. This is probably all for the best. I’ve been trying to get him to sell up for ages. He’s been wasting his life away in that place.”
“Wasting his life?”
“Exactly. Twenty years I waited for him to sell up.”
Waited. She said waited. Why was she talking in the past tense? All of a sudden the pieces fell into place in Ben’s head. She’d tried to persuade him to sell. The entire time he’d been growing up, she’d talked about how much the place was worth, the conversation morphing into how much better it would be if they passed it on, spent some of that money on themselves. He realised his mother was still talking and he tuned back into what she was saying.
“-and I thought he’d want to retire and have some fun, not have that millstone round his neck forever. Alex made him a very generous offer and do you know what he did? He turned him down flat. I swear he only did it to get back at me.”
“What kind of an offer?” Ben asked through gritted teeth.
“A very substantial one. He was going to turn the place into the Tower of London of the North. We’d come up with a better name for the adverts, obviously.”
“We?”
“Well we were going to do it together. Alex had the idea and he’s got the people lined up to get started. All we needed was for your Dad to stop being such a stubborn bloody fool and accept the inevitable. The world’s changing, Ben. People don’t want boring old castle ruins anymore, they want fun, they want excitement. They want jousts and knights and sword fights. It costs a fortune to look after the place and he’s working himself into the grave. An accident like this could be just what he needs to bring him to his senses.”
Ben shook his head, looking out of the phone box at the rolling waves out at sea. He should have stayed on the island. If he’d done that, he wouldn’t have heard any of this. He could have happily remained oblivious.
There was still time, he thought, putting the receiver away from his ear for a moment. He could turn around, head onto the ferry, head home. It would be leaving in about twenty minutes for the return trip. He could just hang up, go home, unplug his phone, put them all of his life, put him out of theirs, leave their problems to them.
He closed his eyes and a vision came to him. He was looking up at his father, the sun blinding him. He was five years old, toddling across the grass, marvelling at the fact that he was playing in a real castle. He felt like the luckiest boy in the world. “I’m looking after this for you,” Peter said, smiling down at his son as he ruffled his hair.
Was the memory even real? Was his subconscious playing tricks on him? Trying to trick him into feeling something, into tugging at his emotions? He realised his mother was still talking. He put the phone back to his ear and interrupted her. “I’m going to see him,” he said before hanging up.
The last thing he heard as he replaced the receiver was his mother’s faint voice saying, “Try and talk some sense into-”
He stepped out of the phone box and leaned over the railings, looking out at the horizon. She wanted him to sell the place. She wanted to turn it into some gaudy tourist attraction and his father wasn’t even dead yet.
Who had she been talking to? Alex. That was the name she said. It came to him in a flash. That was Alexander Hill. His voice was deeper than it had been but it couldn’t be anyone else. He’d got his hands into the Robertson family in the end, even if it hadn’t been Zoë like he originally planned.
All of a sudden, Ben felt nauseous. He let out a long slow breath from between his pursed lips, waiting for the dizziness to pass. He stood up slowly and took his time walking back to the ferry terminal. When he got to the car rental booth, the girl inside had the keys ready for him.
“You’ve got one week on here,” she said, running her eyes over his form. “You want the extra insurance? Without it you’ll be liable for-”
“I’ll take my chances,” he snapped back at her, his eyes narrowed.
“All right, touchy,” she said, visibly affronted. “It’s out front. Bay three.”
Ben didn’t thank her and then headed outside, throwing his bag into the passenger seat before climbing in and starting the engine. There was a GPS built into the dashboard and it came to life at once.
It took a few minutes and more than a few swearwords to get the hang of it but eventually he had it programmed to take him to York. Four hundred and ten miles and he’d be there in just over nine hours. It was half past eight in the morning. If he didn’t stop, he’d be there at half past five that evening. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.
During the first few miles of the journey, he thought only about his father, trying to reconcile the depth of emotion he felt about hearing he was dying with the anger he still felt towards him. Would he still blame Ben for Zoë's death? Would that be his final words on this earth? To curse him for what he did? As if Ben hadn’t cursed himself often enough over the years. As if the death of his only sibling hadn’t torn him up inside, broken a part of him that he thought would probably never heal. The best he could hope was that it would scar, the tissue thin, never as strong again, ready to be ripped open with the slightest provocation.
He blamed himself for what happened. His thoughts moved from his father to his mother and to Alexander.
Alex was like a virus. He’d been a part of Ben’s life for a long time when Ben had wanted nothing to do with him and now here he was, back again, cropping up with a whole new round of infection to try and destroy him, to wipe out his ability to cope.
Ben aged five, not long after the walk around the castle with his father in the sunshine. Moving into the first year of primary school, Alex older, in the top year, about to go on to Secondary. Taking a dislike to Ben. He remembered being in the classroom and seeing his books had been pulled from his drawer, tossed onto the floor. No one ever found out who did it. Ben knew. It was Alex. It had always been Alex.
Being bullied was like an inverted friendship. He had developed a bizarrely inverted relationship with Alex. Whatever friendships he developed, Alex would try to take them away, warning them not to get involved with the Robertson kid. By the time Ben moved into secondary school, he’d gotten used to constantly watching over his shoulder, watching for the predator on his heels.
The worst thing was that Alex always held back. He never went too far. Ben might get a bruise, but only on his upper arm, occasionally his stomach, locations his parents were unlikely to spot and if they did spot them, they put them down to horseplay, not the violence of which only children are capable, the violence of the sadist. It was never a full fight, adults would have found out.
Ben’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as he drove through the Scottish countryside. The view was spectacular, the mist hanging in the valley, the loch next to him smooth as a millpond. There was no wind. Birds flew overhead, the trees were all the colours of autumn. Ben didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to calm himself down. This is why, he thought as he turned into a bend, heading gradually uphill. This is why he went away. Dealing with people meant dredging up the past. He would go and see his father, either to say his goodbyes or pay his respects. Then he would turn around and drive the four hundred miles back to his real home, his new home, the place where no one could get to him, where he could be alone and at peace.
He did his best not to think about getting involved with his mother, with stopping the sale of the castle. It wasn’t his battle. He’d failed against Alex before, he’d fail again.
He shook his head. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was an adult. He was tougher than he’d ever been, years of solitary life with no one to rely on had made sure of that. But just the thought of what happened with Zoë made him regress. Get down there, see his father, get out. If the castle was going to be sold, so what? It didn’t affect him. I’m looking after it for you. No, he thought. Just drive, don’t think. He turned the radio up, the sound of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody blasting out of the speakers. He hoped it would drown out his thoughts. It didn’t.