Eden didn’t want to tell her father that she no longer cared if Teddie’s first word was bloody, or even something worse, she just wanted him to speak. Six months ago, when she’d moved in with her parents, and Teddie was five months away from his fourth birthday, she’d still hoped his first word might come before that milestone. All new mothers ached to hear the word Mama, but that ache had intensified over the last four years to the extent that it was almost a physical pain. She wanted to hear him say it so badly, but she wanted to hear him say something – anything at all – even more. It could be the key that unlocked a path of communication between them. Eden would do whatever it took to be her son’s voice, but she still wanted him to have his own and to know that the things she was fighting for on his behalf were the things he really needed.
‘I hope it’s the good kind of shock, Dad?’ Felix embraced their father with Teddie wedged between them, the little boy not seeming to mind.
‘Of course it is, but why on earth didn’t you let us know you were coming?’ Their father stepped back as Felix released him, rubbing his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. ‘We could have rolled out the welcome mat, your mum would have cooked your favourite dinner and I could have made some cake pops and turned it into a proper celebration.’
Eden couldn’t look in her brother’s direction, otherwise she’d have laughed. Their father had ‘perfected’ his recipe for cake pops in time for Felix’s tenth birthday, and he’d proudly unveiled them on the day, to the bemusement of his son and all of the other ten-year-old boys. Felix had wanted a laser tag party, but their mother had forgotten to book it and she’d gone on a bender when the oversight was discovered, ranting about how she was useless and everyone hated her, and attempting to numb the pain with red wine and vodka. Instead, Felix’s party had taken place at home, a damp squib of an affair, where rain had even stopped play in the garden. It wouldn’t have been hard for the cake pops to be a highlight of the event, but Eden wasn’t sure she could find the words to do justice to just how dry they’d tasted. Unfortunately, their father hadn’t seemed to realise and it had become his way of marking every special occasion since then. Neither Felix nor Eden had ever been able to swallow one of their father’s cake pops without the aid of water. Lots of it.
‘I didn’t want you go to a load of trouble, that’s why I’ve rented an Airbnb for while I’m here. I didn’t want Mum trying to rearrange the rooms or make up a bed for me downstairs. Where is Mum, by the way?’ Felix craned his neck to look towards the back room. Teddie had slid out of his grasp and was dropping a ball into an empty box over and over again, clearly enjoying the sound it made as it bounced around inside each time.
‘She’s at her book club. She should be home any minute.’ Eden’s father glanced at his watch, at the precise moment she heard the sound of her mother’s keys in the lock. Karen had managed to find a tee-total book group, because watching the other group members sharing opinions about the latest Richard Osman novel over a glass of merlot, could so easily have been the path to ruin for her.
‘Here she is, she’s going to be thrilled to see you, son.’ Dave clapped a hand on Felix’s shoulder, and Eden finally exchanged a glance with her brother. Just like her, he was probably wondering whether their mother would react the way her husband expected her to, or whether she might be upset, at least at first, that Felix had kept it quiet.
‘Felix!’ Karen shrieked his name as she spotted her son, hugging him tightly and launching a flurry of the same questions his father had already asked him. By the time he’d answered them all, she’d pulled away and her mouth was slightly downturned at the corners. ‘I can’t believe you’re staying in a holiday rental. Haven’t you seen any of that stuff online about what goes on in those places?’
‘Should I even ask?’ Felix widened his eyes, but there was probably nothing their mother could come out with that would shock either of them all that much.
‘You’ve got no idea when you book these places who they belong to and what they get up to. Some of them have been used as brothels and I’ve even read about ones that have satanic artefacts lying around that could cause you long-term problems. Aren’t you worried about what might have been going on there?’
‘Funnily enough, no.’ Felix rolled his eyes, and Eden had to dig her fingers into the palm of her hands to stop herself from telling their mother she was being ridiculous. Karen had an addictive personality, so it had been almost inevitable that when she finally managed to stop drinking, something else would take its place. She’d started quite a few different hobbies and she went all in on every single one of them, but there was one obsession that overrode everything else. Karen spent hours on internet forums and conspiracies sites, getting sucked down a rabbit hole of outlandish ideas and opinions, which Eden’s mother mistook for fact. After all, they had to be real if someone had written them down and published them on the internet.
‘You can try to make light of it, but don’t tell me you’ve never stepped inside a building that has a bad atmosphere, and heard your inner voice telling you to get the hell out of there. What if this place is like that?’
‘Oh yeah, I know the feeling.’ Felix looked as if he might be experiencing it right now. ‘But none of the five-star reviews for the apartment I’m renting mentioned anything about satanic pentangles being scrawled on the wall. It’ll be fine, Mum, I promise.’
His voice softened towards the end and he put an arm around her shoulders. ‘We’ll have the best of both worlds this way. I’ll get to see lots of you while I’m here, but you won’t have to rearrange the whole house to try and make room for me. I can even have all of you over to dinner at mine too. That’s if the holiday let passes your satanic ritual inspection, of course.’
‘You shouldn’t joke about that kind of thing, Felix.’ Karen laughed despite her words, and Eden forced herself to smile too. She understood why her brother hadn’t mentioned his upcoming interview to their parents, he probably didn’t want to build up their hopes, as well as hers, if it ended up coming to nothing. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was hedging his bets and keeping his options open about going back to San Francisco permanently, even if he was offered the job. He’d seemed really keen, but now she wondered if there was something he wasn’t telling her either. Maybe it was because Jesse had spent their entire relationship saying one thing and doing another. Although if she couldn’t trust her brother, she couldn’t trust anyone and she had to stop letting her imagination run away with her, otherwise she could end up as paranoid as their mother.
5
Drew and Saskia had spent all morning in full PPE undertaking a postmortem ordered by the coroner’s office, on a patient who’d been very close to death when he was discovered by walkers on Bodmin Moor, less than twenty miles away from the hospital. By the time the man had reached the emergency department, he’d gone into cardiac arrest and, despite attempts to save him, had sadly died. There was every indication that he’d fallen and that the shock of his injuries and exposure to a violent storm overnight had ultimately caused his death, but it was Drew and Saskia’s job to keep an open mind and undertake the postmortem as if it wasn’t already a foregone conclusion. If Drew ever reached the stage where he thought he had all the answers before he even started, it would be time to leave the job.
In a place as beautiful as the Cornish Atlantic coast, it seemed hard to believe that tragedies occurred. Of course accidents happened everywhere, and the stunningly rugged coastline and beautiful moorland within easy reach of the area each held their own risks, despite their appeal, especially if people chose to ignore the basic principles they needed to follow to safeguard themselves. Just like the man who’d gone into the sea for a swim, drunk and alone as night was falling, the moorland walker had taken foolhardy risks. He wasn’t wearing the right kind of clothing for a walk on the moor, and he hadn’t had a phone with him when he was found. He hadn’t been wearing a coat either. He was ill-prepared, but that didn’t make it any less of a tragedy. In Drew’s experience, many people, especially men below the age of forty, carried around a feeling of invincibility. He’d never had that; perhaps it was because of his neurodiversity, or maybe it was because of Flora’s death and the way it had affected Drew and everyone else around him. Either way, that sense of surety had alluded him, and he wasn’t sorry. Not when he saw what it cost so many others.
Despite the sometimes foolish behaviour, Drew never blamed the people whose death became a part of his working day. Anyone could make a mistake, and even if their actions had been reckless to the point where the outcome had become almost inevitable, Drew didn’t judge. He hadn’t walked a mile in any of their shoes and he didn’t like the idea of judging people on that basis. It would have made him far too much like his father, and that was one thing he definitely didn’t want to be. Drew’s father had spent his professional life judging other people, in his role as a high court judge, but his personal life had been far from beyond reproach. He was a cold and manipulative man whose affairs and cruelty towards Drew’s mother had driven her to the edge more than once. No one who’d encountered him on a professional basis knew the real him, and he was a skilled actor even with some of his inner circle, playing the bereaved father after Flora’s death to an Oscar-worthy level. Yet he’d failed to be there for his broken-hearted wife, or the son left bereft by the death of his sister. All he really cared about was his career and the things that inflated his already sizeable ego, including the string of much younger women fooled into believing his public persona. So no, Drew didn’t want to be like his father, not the least little bit.
‘I’m going to go to the shop after I’ve cleaned up.’ Drew made the announcement as Saskia began the scrub down process, once Connor Deakin’s postmortem was complete. They’d been able to confirm that his cause of death was as suspected. Evidence of both drugs and alcohol had been found at the scene, although the toxicology report that would confirm the extent of the role they had played in his death would take several weeks to be finalised. Taking drugs and drinking definitely wouldn’t have helped the way Connor’s body had responded to the exposure overnight, and the compound fracture to his left leg had also caused internal bleeding. It was no less of a tragic loss of life, but at least his family didn’t have to contend with the fact that someone else had been involved in his death.
‘What’s the matter, did you forget your wine gums this morning?’ Saskia turned to look at him, her eyes widening in response to Drew’s announcement.
‘No, I think it might just be a two packets kind of day.’
‘I didn’t know they existed.’ By now she was looking at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted two heads. He should probably have been offended that something as simple as him deciding to make a second trip to the hospital shop in one day seemed so extraordinary, but he was a creature of habit and he could hardly blame his assistant for being shocked. The truth was he didn’t want her questioning him further, because he didn’t like lying; in fact, he hated it. The first pack of wine gums were still untouched and the reason he wanted to go to the shop had nothing to do with wanting to buy more of them. He wanted to go there because the early shift in the emergency department would be finishing soon and he’d seen some of the A&E staff at the shop, grabbing a coffee after work. He couldn’t be sure Eden would be there, but there was a chance she would.
Drew couldn’t have explained why he wanted to see Eden, even if he’d been up front with Saskia about his reason for going to the shop. Eden hadn’t got in touch with him to arrange to meet up and, even if she had, it would only have been for them to talk about her son. He couldn’t rationalise his reason for wanting to see her, because it wasn’t rational. He wanted to see Eden because he was attracted to her, and he didn’t want to be. Relationships were complicated, and in Drew’s experience, far more painful than they were worth. Yet here he was, lying to his assistant about where he was going, with the sole intention of hoping to see Eden.
‘Double wine gum days definitely exist and today is one of them.’ Drew shrugged. ‘Can I get you something? You’ve worked really hard today. You always work really hard, and I’m sorry if I don’t tell you enough, but I’m very grateful.’
He meant every word, but as Saskia looked at him again, tilting her head to one side as she did, he suddenly realised she might think he had an ulterior motive for the compliment he’d just paid her. He was fifteen years older than Saskia, and any kind of romantic connection was the last thing on his mind when he thought of her. Although the nuances of social interaction could be as treacherous for Drew as open moorland could be to a drunk man who’d left his jacket and phone behind in the pub. He wanted to tell her that he absolutely didn’t mean anything by the compliment, except to express his gratitude for her help, but the last thing he wanted was to make things worse. He’d done that far too often in the past.
‘Thanks, Drew.’ Behind the clear screen of the face shield she was wearing, her expression relaxed into a smile and the tension left his shoulders. Saskia knew him well enough now and there’d been no misinterpretation of what he meant. Thank God. ‘I appreciate working for a boss like you too. You’re always giving me the opportunity to learn and you treat me like an equal, even though you’ve got enough certificates to wallpaper this whole mortuary.’
‘Not quite.’ Sometimes Drew just couldn’t help being literal, but he needed to get out of here before he said something else awkward. ‘So can I get you anything?’
‘I’ll have a Snickers bar if they’ve got one and a can of Coke. My boyfriend thinks I’m a total weirdo, but I’m always ravenous after a postmortem. Maybe it’s just my body reminding me that I’m alive.’
‘Could be, but there’s nothing wrong with being a weirdo. The world needs us.’ Drew knew there was a good chance that Saskia had deliberately reminded him she had a boyfriend, but he was trying not to overthink it. His head was already full of how to handle imagined conversations with Eden if he did bump into her, he didn’t need anything else to worry about.
