Chapter 26
The interview doesn’t go well.
It’s one of those where you get a bad vibe right from the moment you walk in, from their body language, their faces, as you answer the first question.
Where they don’t like you as a candidate and you don’t really like them either, but both of you have to string it out for at least another half an hour, to do the dance, go through the motions before it can be brought to a merciful end.
Even though I know, deep down, that I would snap their hand off if they offered me the role just to be able to sleep at night when the first of those huge mortgage payments slides out of the joint account.
I find a café to drown my sorrows, drinking a strong black coffee as I fire off my CV to another recruitment agency. I have a hefty mortgage and no job, but until something comes along I still have a purpose—a chance to do something meaningful. A chance to help Maxine and her son.
I’m a few minutes early, so I take up position in front of the large statue of a reclining lion that flanks the left side of the steps.
The left lion is the traditional meeting place for anyone who knows the city even a little, one of a pair of statues that guard the entrance to the council building.
The square is busy, as usual. Office workers eating sandwiches on their lunch break, shoppers laden with bags, a group of teenage skateboarders lounging on the steps next to me, laughing and joking, phones pointed at one of their mates as he tries to flip his board and land on it right side up.
There is a faint but lingering smell of weed on the breeze. A silver-and-green tram winds its way slowly down the hill and around the edge of the square, stopping in front of the Wetherspoons to disgorge passengers onto South Parade.
Just as I’m starting to think Maxine has stood me up, I turn back to find a young man in a black leather jacket making his way toward me.
He’s in his early twenties, with wild black hair and dark-framed glasses, making steady but careful progress with the aid of a metallic walking stick.
He stops in front of me as if sizing me up.
“Adam?” His voice is calm and quite soft.
In person, the resemblance to his mother is even more striking. Perhaps a few inches taller but the same slight build, the same cheekbones, the same dimple in his chin.
“Yes,” I say. “Hi, you must be… Charlie?”
“Yeah.” He extends a hand and we shake. “Mum says sorry we’re late. It was a nightmare finding parking so she dropped me a bit closer.”
“No problem.”
He points across the square. “There’s a little place just off Friar Lane that she likes. She’s going to meet us there.”
We make our way down to the café—an old-fashioned place called Stapley’s Tea Room—Charlie walking steadily beside me accompanied by the tap-tap-tap of his stick on the pavement.
“Cerebral palsy,” he says. “In case you’re wondering. Most people stare but don’t want to ask, or they just assume the stick is a fashion accessory.”
“Sorry.”
“For what?” His tone is even, as if this is a conversation he’s had many times. “Mum had me by emergency C-section, cord was wrapped around my neck when I was born.”
Maxine is already at the counter when we arrive, greeting me with a hesitant wave and asking what I’d like to drink before following her son to a table tucked away in the far corner.
Only two other tables are occupied, a pair of elderly ladies sipping tea and a couple with a teenage son in the seat by the window.
The air is filled with the smells of freshly ground coffee beans and the sharp sweetness of thickly iced cakes on the counter.
I take off my backpack and pull out a chair. Charlie sits down stiffly opposite me, propping his walking stick against the wall and appraising me with careful, intelligent eyes.
“Mum’s not stopped talking about you,” he says quietly. “You’re not a practical joker are you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You don’t look the type.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “But then again, it can be hard to tell.”
I start to explain what had led me to his mother’s house yesterday when Maxine arrives with the coffees on a tray, setting a cappuccino down on the table in front of me.
“Thanks for coming,” she says. “Charlie wanted to meet you too. I hope that’s OK.”
“Of course.”
She’s wearing white jeans and trainers, with a lightweight beige jacket that she makes no move to take off, despite the warmth of the café.
“This is so weird,” she says abruptly, shaking her head. “Still can’t get my head around it.”
“I can’t begin to imagine how hard it’s been for you.”
“Sorry.” She holds both hands up. “It’s just been so long since we heard anything, like anything at all, about Adrian’s disappearance.
So long since anyone even mentioned him apart from us.
I’ve just got used to having zero expectations, got used to the idea that we’re never going to know what happened, where he went, or where… where he is now.”
“I hope I can help.”
“Sorry,” she says again. “Had to get that off my chest. I was awake half the night thinking about it.”
Charlie puts a hand on her arm. “Stop apologizing, Mum. It’s OK.”
I open my backpack and lay out the other contents of the dresser on the table between us, one by one.
The scarf. The wallet. The glasses. The old mobile phone.
The single key, two rings looped through the key ring.
The dusty little collection looks incongruous in this homely café with its net curtains and doilies on the tables.
Maxine doesn’t say it, but I know she’s hoping to recognize some of these things, hoping the dog collar wasn’t a one-off.
Because if there is more here that belonged to her husband, more clues, then perhaps she will be one step closer to finding out what happened to him.
One step closer to the truth.
“I don’t know if we’ll find an answer,” I say, putting the backpack down on the floor. “But maybe it means we can ask the police questions about your husband again.”
I try to imagine the thread that might connect the Hopkins family to Adrian Parish.
They had lived in different parts of the county and presumably moved in different circles.
Could the two men have worked together, or had something else in common?
Adrian Parish would be in his fifties now, decades younger than Eric Hopkins.
Maybe there had been a professional connection through work.
Combining their names in a Google search last night hadn’t generated anything useful—but it was more than twenty years ago, when the internet was nothing like it was today.
Maxine’s eyes flick from one object to the next and back again, a hand covering her mouth as if she’s frightened of crying out.
After a long moment she reaches out tentatively and begins to pick up each item in turn, starting with the wallet.
Holding it gingerly, almost reverently, as if concerned that it might fall to pieces.
Studying it from all angles, lifting her glasses to her forehead so she can peer close up.
None of us speak. Charlie rests a protective hand on her back while she goes from one item to the next.
He catches my eye for a moment and the message is the same as when we first sat down: This better not be a joke.
I give him a tight smile and turn back to Maxine as she lays the wallet down on the table and picks up the glasses with their cracked lens.
The only other sounds in the café are the low background hum of a radio somewhere in the kitchen, the occasional chink of crockery, the soft murmur of conversation at another table.
Finally, Maxine lays the last item back on the table with a trembling hand.
There are tears streaming down her face. Charlie hands her a napkin.
“What is it, Mum?” he says. “Did some of this stuff belong to Dad as well? Do you recognize it?”
She tries to speak but at first it comes out in a choking sob.
Instead, she shakes her head.
“I hoped I would,” she says through her tears. “I prayed that I would. But I don’t remember any of this. Not a single thing.”