Chapter 45 Kier

45

Kier

Devon, July 2018

Music is playing as I make my way back to the van. A local band, all drums and twanging guitar, heralding the start of the annual food festival.

Smells are already wafting from the stalls. Onions. Fish. Meat. The nausea that gripped me on the beach has intensified to a deep, unsettling queasiness. I push on, forcing my way through the crowds surging towards the stalls lining the promenade, but I'm caught in the groundswell, fighting against the tide.

The festival has drawn more people than I've seen in days, but there's an odd energy about the crowd. Something frenzied. Tense. Empty beer cans being tossed into the air. Hysterical laughter. Most years it ended in a drunken free-for-all, but I got the feeling that this year would be worse than most.

With one last push, I thread through the last of the crowds and head up onto the path, letting myself back into the van. The quiet is a welcome relief, but I don't give myself the chance to sit or compose myself .

I pour a fresh bowl of water for Woody and start scouring the van for Zeph's laptop.

Eventually, I find it at the end of the bed, snarled up in the duvet. Clambering up and onto the bed, I flip it open, one eye on the door. Zeph said he wouldn't be back from Exeter until later, but I need to be careful.

No messing around this time: I know exactly what I'm looking for – his search history. Portugal. Any references to it. I'm close to 100 per cent certain I saw it the last time I looked, but I want to know for sure.

I start to scroll.

Nothing this week, but last week … yes, these are tabs I'd seen the first time. Places I hadn't recognised then or thought important: the official tourist office page for the Portuguese National Park, YouTube videos of travellers exploring it. Restaurants. Hotels. Information about the main town. Maps, blogs. The spa town Janey mentioned.

I keep clicking, my heart racing. All the Portuguese hits are clustered around the national park. There's no way this keen interest in the exact location Romy was rumoured to be is a coincidence.

Hot, sour bile rises up at the back of my throat.

Although I knew, deep down, that this was only an exercise in looking more carefully at what I'd already seen, it's still a sucker punch.

Taking a breath, I try to look at it objectively, run through every possibility, but all I'm left with are more questions. Far from being over Romy, as Zeph always reassures me, he's been obsessing over where she might currently be living.

More questions fill my head. Had he been out there? Looking for her?

I think back to when we first met, how he told me that he'd just returned from Portugal. No mention of Romy, just references to the food, the places on the south coast that he'd explored. He'd confided that he'd liked it, but wouldn't be in a hurry to go back.

I've got no idea if he met Romy there or not, but either way, he hasn't been honest with me. Hasn't given me the full story.

Despite the sun flooding through the window, I feel cold.

I glance up at the photograph of us on the wall. We're lying on the bed, the back door of the van open. We'd travelled to southern France, spent a month on the beach.

I remember coming to the realisation during that holiday that I loved him more than I'd loved anyone. Loved him with a ferocity that scared me. The map I'd made of those weeks is still one of my favourites. Places we'd found off the beaten track. Restaurants, bars, hidden coves.

In the photo, my face is tan, splattered with freckles, a faint splotch of one of Zeph's sauces below my lower lip. Zeph's hair is longer, the dark grazing of hair making the blue of his eyes pop.

We're doing those wide, unselfconscious smiles you can only do when it's a selfie or you know the person taking the photo well. It was one of those moments of total freedom and joy that you try to capture in an image, but know you'll never quite be able to do justice.

I scrutinise his face.

Could someone else be lurking under there?

I know it's possible. My father was two people our whole lives.

Double-sided, that's what I used to call it. Double-sided, like the tape my teacher used in school.

I was only six years old when I realised that my father had two different faces he showed to the world.

There was the face he showed to my teacher when he'd drop me off at school, all smiles, asking polite questions: How are you? Do you have any holidays planned?

This was the same face he showed to neighbours when he mowed the lawn or work colleagues when they came to ours for a meal. The same face when he was the dad who showed me how to tie a line on the boat and helped me with my history assignments.

I asked my mother once when she was getting changed for dinner if there were two people inside Daddy.

She couldn't look at me, just stared at the faded flowery bedspread and gave a high-pitched laugh, said: ‘No. Only one.'

‘So Daddy being mean is the real Daddy?'

‘I'm afraid so,' she replied, smiling, and she asked me to leave the room so she could get ready, but I knew something was wrong by how her words wobbled as she spoke.

Outside, I peeked back through the crack between the door and the frame, saw her press her face to the pillow. An ugly noise came out.

It sounded like the scream she made when our father put his hand over her mouth when they fought. Wet and muffled, but at the same time big and bottomless, like the sound didn't just come from her, but hundreds of people.