The Third Shadow

Twenty-three

Having grown up on the banks of the Tees Estuary and after an early adulthood spent criss-crossing the globe in the merchant navy, it's fair to say that I feel at home by the sea. While property hunting in Italy, the one overriding criteria on which I'd been stubbornly unprepared to renege was that of a sea view. A canvas upon which I could paint my thoughts.

It was the North Sea rather than the Ionian I gazed out at that following morning of course, Friday June 13th. Not quite so crystalline perhaps, no; the weather that day was refreshingly  bright however, the sky clear enough to tint the water below a pleasant shade of blue.

As I stepped along the beach, I could almost hear my father's voice echoing back through the decades. Why waste all that money going abroad for your ruddy holidays when there's Saltburn just down the road? The Costa Del Sol it was most certainly not, but on a sun-blessed day like that perhaps he hadn't been all wrong. Ahead loomed the high sheer face of Hunt Cliff, an ascent of which was rewarded by breathtaking views of the raggedy North Yorkshire coast stretching southwards beyond. Much nearer, snuggled into the bottom corner of the cliff, lay the old part of of the village - a single line of houses centred by the infamous eighteenth-century smuggling hub of the Ship Inn. How many times had I walked down this beach as a kid, I wondered? Pint of beer for dad, mum a glass of sherry, lemonade and crisps for Frank and I.

Then as now it was a decidely windswept stroll however; indeed, in recent years the place had become something of mecca for the region's surfers. I paused to watch the breakers for some moments, one after the other rearing upright as they rushed at the shore. That moment before they break, the lick of sunlight along their glassy, sinewed backs.

I turned then; ahead of me now was the pier, the Saltburn Cliff Lift - the Victorian-era funicular by which I'd descended, would now go back up again.

Perched beyond was the main part of the village. My ex-wife's new marital home.

*

The address had been memorised from the little black book I'd found in the drawer of Ellie's telephone stand while she and Adam had been asleep, the entry under 'M' for mum. I didn't have any kind of clearly defined plan - a casual drive past perhaps, a quick glance at the house. Just enough to get some sort of feel for her new life.

It therefore came as something of a surprise to actually see her. As I cruised past I glimpsed her bent over the front garden roses with pruning scissors in hand. It was enough to provoke a tight, burning tangle of emotions, one I would defy even Shakespeare to have accurately summed up in mere words.

I parked thirty metres or so further up the street. Tried to catch my breath.

The street was one of those quiet, residential-only affairs where the passage of an unknown van provokes a certain level of curiosity, an involuntary glance upwards as one snips at faded blooms. I was pretty sure she hadn't recognised me though. For one thing, the sun had been in her eyes. For a second, she almost certainly wouldn't connect her ex husband to a white Ford Transit but rather the silver Audi A3 he'd traded it in for. Most convincingly of all, she'd got immediately back to her roses as if for all the world believing I were just some plumber or electrician a neighbour had called out.

With a slight adjustment of wing mirror, I brought her back into view. A still elegant figure in the same wide-brimmed sunhat she'd bought on holiday on the Devon coast several years earlier. Her neck was stooped, eyes squinted, locating exactly the right place to snip, pruning scissors poised. She was the sort of woman to imbue even the most mundane of tasks with the maximum attention and care. Her movements however were just a touch slower than I recalled, not quite so sprightly. We'd gone and got old, the pair of us.

What if we'd had another kid?

It wasn't the first time I'd wondered it. A second child, yes. Ellie's little brother or sister, would still be university age. Young enough to not quite be fully independent, visits home for the holidays accompanied by rucksacks full of dirty clothes. Reckless in the way all healthy young adults should be, still finding his or her  place in the world.  Would it have made any difference? Would Heather have been happier with someone else to fret and worry about alongside Ellie and I?

It wasn't that we ever really officially tried. Not that we ever didn't officially try. It was just one of those vague ideas which become ever vaguer with the passing of the years.  All of a sudden we'd found ourselves in our mid-forties and the chance had passed.

I don't know, there was just always something which seemed to get in the way. Ellie, physically - yet another bad dream. Then Sergeants' exams. Inspectors' exams. The next big case following hot on the heels of the last. Rolling home at all hours of the night too tired to even take my shoes off.

My job. Principally, it was the fact of me being a copper which had got in the way.

But wasn't that one of the things she'd always said she'd admired about me? Those first few years at least, almost constantly. She loved the fact that I'd done something worthwhile, made a contribution to the community. Loved it so much that she was prepared to make all those sacrifices for me. The curtailing of her own teaching career so that Ellie wouldn't have to spend her childhood tossed between grandparents and chilcare facilities. The endless evenings by herself waiting for me to come home. Worrying that maybe that would be the night something would happen. That maybe I never would.

Two more years, I thought, watching as she began to rake up her trimmings. Just two more years of sacrifice and all this - the house on the coast, the windswept constitutionals along the beach, the sunny mornings devoted entirely to the garden - it would have been ours to share.

My thoughts were then interrupted by a tap at passenger door, one sudden and surreptitious enough to have my heart twisting a somersault. A familiar face beamed in through the half opened window, a newspaper tucked under arm.

"Jim! Thought that was you."

Gordon Foster, larger than life.