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109 Days Before Christmas
Morning
It must be the most beautiful supermarket view in Britain. The new Sainsbury’s, looking out over Mount’s Bay. To my right is the crowded and steepled town of Penzance, the marina bobbing with boats and activity. On my left is the softly curving coast, disappearing towards the Lizard. And directly in front of me is the tidal island of St Michael’s Mount, surrounded by vast and shining sands, topped by its medieval castle, comical yet romantic.
There is a coffee shop on the first floor, overlooking the bay. When I come here I always order a skinny cappuccino, and then I step past the dentured pensioners nibbling their pastries and sit outside at the metal tables even when it is cold, as it is today. Cold but sunny, with clouds gathering far to the west, like a rumour.
My coffee sits on the table, neglected this morning, because I have my mobile phone pressed to my ear. David is on the other end. Listening to me, patiently. I am trying very hard not to raise my voice. Trying not to alert the pensioners. Ooh, look at her, that’s the woman who married David Kerthen …
‘So, again, why didn’t you tell me? About the body?’
‘We’ve been over this already.’
‘I know. But think of me as an idiot. I need to hear it several times to understand. Tell me again in small words, David. Why?’ I know this is difficult for him. But it is surely more difficult for me.
He answers. ‘As I said, because it’s not the sort of thing you chat about on a romantic date, is it? Oh, my wife is dead but the body is trapped in a mine, shall we have another drink?’
‘Hmm.’
Maybe he has a point, yet I still feel angry. Or perhaps unnerved. Now it is in my head I can’t get rid of the mental image. The gruesome idea of a body, preserved in icy minewater. Mouth and eyes open, suspended in lightless clarity, and staring into the silence of the drowned corridors, under the rocks of Morvellan.
David is very silent. I can sense his restrained impatience, along with his eagerness to calm me. He is a husband, but he also has a busy job, and he wants to get back to work. But I have more questions.
‘Were you worried that I might not move here? Into Carnhallow, if I knew they never found her?’
A pause. ‘No. Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘Well, perhaps. Maybe there was a slight reluctance. It’s not something I like to dwell on. I want to forget all that, I want us to be us. I love you, Rachel, and I hope and believe you are in love with me. I didn’t want the tragedies of the past to have any bearing on our future.’
For the first time this morning I feel a twinge of sympathy for him. Possibly I am overdoing it. After all, he lost a wife, and he has a grieving son. And what would I have done in his situation?
‘I do kind of understand,’ I say. ‘And I love you, David. You know that, you surely know that. But—’
‘Look, hold on, I’m sorry, darling – I have to take this call.’
The moment I am coming to terms with all this, the agitation returns. David has put me on hold. For the second time this morning.
I tried calling him last night after I discovered the truth about Nina, but his secretary patiently told me he was in some endless, mega-important meeting, until 10 p.m. Then he simply turned his phone off without responding to my many messages. He does that sometimes when he is tired. And normally I don’t mind: his job is hard, if well rewarded, and the hours are insane.
Last night, I minded. I was shaking with fury as I kept reaching voicemail. Answer. The. Phone. This morning he finally picked up. And he has been dealing with me ever since, like a store manager with a furious customer.
As I wait for him to come back on line, I gaze at that view. It seems less appealing today.
My husband returns. ‘Hi, sorry, that damn guy from Standard Chartered, they’ve got some crisis, he wouldn’t let me go.’
‘Great, so glad you’ve got more important people to talk to. More important things than this.’
His sigh is heartfelt. ‘Darling, what can I say? I totally messed up, I know I messed up. But I did it for the best reasons—’
‘Serious?’
‘Truly. I’ve never deliberately deceived anyone.’
I want to believe him, I want to understand. This is the man I love. Yet now there are secrets.
He continues, his voice smooth, ‘To be perfectly honest, I also presumed you might know much of it already. Nina’s death was in the papers.’
‘But I don’t read the bloody papers! Novels, yes. Papers never.’
I am nearly shouting. I must stop. I can see a pensioner with a cinnamon whirl on her plate, looking at me through the glass walls. Nodding, as if she knows what’s going on.
‘Rachel?’
I lower my voice. ‘People my age don’t read newspapers, David. You must get that, no? And I had no idea who you were till I met you at that gallery. You might be a famous Cornish family. But, I’m from Plumstead. Sarf London. And I read Snapchat. Or Twitter.’
‘OK.’ He sounds genuinely mortified. ‘Again, I’m truly sorry. If you want to know the brutal details, it’s probably all online now, you can still find it.’
I let him hang on, for a second. Then, ‘I know. I printed everything out, last night. The pages are in my bag, right here.’
A pause. ‘You did? So why are you cross-examining me, like this?’
‘Because I wanted to hear your explanation first. Give you a chance. Hear your evidence.’
He allows himself a small, mournful laugh. ‘Well, now you’ve heard my evidence, Justice Daly. May I please step down from the witness box?’
David is trying to charm me. Some part of me wants to be charmed. I reckon I am prepared to let him go, after he has answered one last important question. ‘Why is there a grave, David? If there is no body, why a grave?’
His answer is calm, and his voice is sad. ‘Because we had to give Jamie some closure. He was so bitterly confused, Rachel, he still is sometimes, as we know. His mother hadn’t just died, her body had disappeared, been spirited away. He was bewildered. Kept asking where she’d gone, when Mummy was coming back. We had to have a funeral anyway, so why not have a grave? A place for her son to come and mourn.’
‘But,’ I feel prurient, yet I have to know. ‘What’s in the grave?’
‘The coat. The last thing she wore, that coat with her blood, from the mine. Read the report, from the inquest. And also a few of her favourite things. Books. Jewellery. You know.’
He has fairly and candidly answered my questions. I sit back. Half relieved, half creeped out. A body. Under the house, in the tunnels that stretch under the sea. But how many bodies are already down there, how many drowned miners? Why should another be any different?
‘Look, David, I know I’ve been pretty hard on you, it’s like, well – it was a shock. That’s all.’
‘I understand entirely,’ he says. ‘I only wish you hadn’t found out this way. How is Jamie, anyway?’
‘He’s all right, I think, he calmed down after that outburst. He seemed fine this morning. Quiet, but fine. I drove him to football practice. Cassie’s picking him up.’
‘He is getting used to you, Rachel. He is. But, as I say, he’s still confused. Look, I have to go. We can speak later.’
We say our goodbyes, and I slip the phone in my pocket.
A sea wind from Marazion, laced with the tang of salt, ruffles the printed pages as I take them out of my bag and set them on the table. There is a lot of information: I googled and printed for an hour.
Nina Kerthen’s death was, as David said, definitely a news story. It even got as far as some national papers for a day or two. And it filled the local press for weeks. And yet, it seems, there wasn’t that much to it.
It is believed Nina Kerthen had been drinking on the night in question. There is no suspicion of foul play.
Foul play. The antiquated phrase, from the Falmouth Packet, conjures ghoulish, fairytale images of a dark man in a long cloak. A Venetian assassin, grasping a beautiful woman, and throwing her in the canal. I see a pale face staring up through the watery grey. Veiled with darkening liquid, then gone.
More pages flutter in the wind. Even the southerly breezes are fanged with freshening cold, today. Distracted for a moment, I gaze out.
There is a lone man walking the flooding sands out past Long Rock. Walking aimlessly, in circles, apparently lost. Or looking for something that he will surely never find. Abruptly he turns and stares my way, as if he senses he is being watched. A strange panic fills me, a quick and sharpened fear.
I calm my anxieties. Hints of my past. Turning back to the pages, I read on. I need to know all this detail, nail it down in my mind.
The initial idea of a murder was journalistically appealing. At the time of her death the newspapers spiced their reports with the delicious possibility of homicide.
The questions were never asked outright, but clearly they hung in the air: the captions are unwritten but the meaning is implicit. Take a look at this. Isn’t David Kerthen a bit too handsome, a bit too rich, a man you want to hate? A potential killer of his beautiful wife?
When all this was ruled out, early on, the national papers gave up, while the local journalists turned, with a rather forlorn optimism, to speculations of suicide. Who would go to a mineshaft in the dark? Why take the silly risk, on a cold christmas evening?
Unfortunately for the local press, the coroner was prosaic in his verdict.
I sip my cold coffee as I scan the coroner’s summation for the third time.
It was a clear moonlit night: December twenty-eighth. Nina was seen by Juliet Kerthen, David’s mother, walking down the valley and along the cliffs, in the vicinity of the mine stacks, as she sometimes used to do, to clear her head. She had been drinking that night, with the family.
Her actions were not unusual: the area around the mine houses was a fine place to take in the spectacular view: of the brutish sea, raging at the rocky cliffs below. Especially on a bright moonlit night.
But when Nina did not return, the alarm was raised. At first it was presumed she had merely got lost, down a path, in the dark. As her absence lengthened, speculation grew more negative. Perhaps she had fallen down one of the cliffs. Bosigran, maybe. Or Zawn Hanna. No one imagined she had actually fallen down Jerusalem Shaft: she knew the dangers well enough. But then, amidst the confusion, Juliet spoke up, and made the suggestion. Search Morvellan. That was the last place she was seen, after all: walking near the mineheads.
And it had been raining heavily in the preceding days. And the mine houses were unroofed. And she was wearing heeled shoes.
The little search party – David and Cassie – made for the Shaft House, where the door was found ajar. David turned his torch-beam down the shaft. The watered pit revealed no body, but it did offer up one significant and melancholy piece of evidence. Nina’s raincoat, floating in the water. Nina had been wearing that coat. She had surely, horrifically, fallen down the pit, then thrown off the coat as she struggled to save herself. But she had nonetheless succumbed. A person would swiftly freeze in those icy waters, then sink beneath them.
The raincoat was initial and crucial evidence. Two days after the accident, divers retrieved traces of blood and splintered fingernails from the brickwork of the shaft, above the black water. They also found strands of broken hair. The DNA was matched with Nina Kerthen: it was her blood, these were her broken fingernails, this was her hair. Here was the evidence of her desperate attempts to climb out of the mine, of her doomed and failing struggle to get out of the watered shaft. Evidence that could not be faked or planted.
Taken with the eyewitness evidence from Juliet Kerthen it seemed conclusive. The coroner delivered his verdict of accidental death. Nina Kerthen was drunk, her judgement was marred, and she therefore drowned, after falling down the Jerusalem Shaft of Morvellan Mine. Her body had sunk in the freezing water and would probably never be retrieved: lost as it was in the unnumbered tunnels and adits of the undersea mine, shifted by unknowable tides and currents. Trapped beneath Carnhallow and Morvellan, for ever.
I shiver, profoundly. The wind off the bay is cutting up, and venomed with hints of rain. I need to do my tasks, and get back to the house. Binning my empty cup, I go downstairs and do my shopping and the shopping is done in seventeen minutes. It is one advantage of my frugality, born of my impoverished upbringing. A relic of Rachel Daly, from south-east London. I rarely get distracted in supermarkets.
Spinning the car on to the main road, I take a last look at St Michael’s Mount, where a shaft of September sun is shining on the subtropical garden of the St Levans, a family five hundred years younger than the Kerthens.
Then the clouds open, and the sun shines on us all. And I realize what I need to do. I believe David’s answers, but Jamie still needs help. My own stepson unnerves me, and that has to be explained: I need to read him, to decipher him, to understand. Maybe David doesn’t need to know any more. But I do.
102 Days Before Christmas
Afternoon
It’s taken me a week to pluck up the courage to come in here. David’s study. Where I will maybe learn more about Jamie. My husband has come and gone from London, the days have come and gone, palpably shortening now, I’ve done the school runs and talked to the gardener and read my books on marquetry, carpentry, and masonry, and I have hesitated maybe twelve times in front of this imposing door.
The house is deserted. Jamie is still at school; Cassie has gone shopping. Juliet is with friends for the day, in St Ives. I have an hour at least. So now I must do it. I know I am, arguably, going behind David’s back, but the grief in this house is too intense for me to keep asking questions, directly. That way is too painful for everyone. So I must be more subtle. Discreet.
A fine but angled autumn sun makes a rich amber patch of light on the polished floorboards. These boards creak as I step forward, and open the door.
I’ve only been in this spacious, cedar-scented room three or four times before, and always in David’s presence. Now I gaze about, in faint but definite awe. There are several ancient portraits on the wood-panelled walls. Clumsy, vernacular portraits of patriarchal Kerthens: portraits of rich men who could only commission very provincial painters.
I know the biggest and darkest of these portraits shows Jago Kerthen, the man who sank the Jerusalem Shaft in the 1720s. He had a reputation, David says, for severity, if not brutality. Damning men to death down risky pits, urging them on through day and night, his troops of willing Cornishmen with their tallow candles glued on to their little hats. Jago Kerthen’s pale blue eyes glint with avarice in the gold-framed portrait: however clumsy the artist, he caught that look well enough. Yet it was Jago Kerthen’s appalling greed that turned the Kerthen thousands into millions in the early eighteenth century.
David has positioned the portrait so that it stares out of the tall sash window, down the last of Carnhallow Valley to the just-visible blackness of Morvellan Mine. And then onwards, to the shimmering wastes of the sea. The greedy and violent Jago Kerthen is staring at the very same mine he sank into the granite.
I’ve no doubt this positioning is deliberate.
The rest of the room is also very David. A couple of fine abstract paintings, possibly even a Mondrian. The floor is softened by some of those Azeri rugs David likes, apparently superior to Turkish or Persian rugs. As I look down, I can hear him airily explaining, as is his wont, ‘Oh, them, yes, the rugs, I bought them in Baku.’
Dominating the room is a large desk, solidly built, and clearly old. I walk closer, swallowing my sense of impropriety, the sense that I shouldn’t be here. Prying.
A brand new Apple laptop, firmly closed, sits right next to military memorabilia, from all the Kerthens who went to England’s wars: there are medals with faded sashes, from the Crimean and Peninsular wars, and beside them a rusty old revolver with mud still visible in its metalwork – probably, I’m guessing, from the First World War. Then a long, gleaming sword with a gilded hilt. Looking close, I see that it is engraved Harry St John Tresillian Kerthen, Paardeburg, 1900.
On the other side of this big desk there are three photos. Paired together is a tilted photo of me and David – and one of Nina and David. Both photos taken at our respective weddings. I try not to compare them: the swaying beauty of her wedding dress compared to my humble summer frock, the sense of grandeur in Nina’s glamorous nuptials compared to my modest London party. I resist the urge to slap the photo of Nina face down on the desktop.
The third silver-framed photo is of Jamie, aged four or five, laughing unselfconsciously in the sunlit kitchen here at Carnhallow. It is a poignant, lovely image: Jamie is looking at his beloved mother, almost off-camera, who has apparently made him laugh. He looks piercingly happy, in a way I have never witnessed. I have never seen this laughing, happy boy, the untroubled son before his mother’s death.
The sense of loss throbs, in this study, like a reopened wound at the heart of Carnhallow. And I feel like I am the shard in the flesh. Renewing the hurt.
And yet I am doing this for the best reason: helping Jamie. So I will carry on. Crossing the room, I examine the bookshelves. I know, from being here before, that one of these shelves is dedicated to Jamie: it holds everything from his school reports to his football rosettes. The last time I was in here with David I saw him take out Jamie’s medical records.
I run my hand along the shelf. A school photo. Some exercise books. Vaccination records. Blood type, A. Birth certificate, 3 March. Gold star for English, Year 2. I pause at an untitled folder, then pull it out, and open it up.
There’s not much in here. A few loose pages with some childish writing. Yet, as I read on, I am choked with unexpected emotion as I realize that I am holding Jamie’s letters to his dead mother.
Dear mummy
I am riting this because the therappist in the hospittal says it is good if I rite to you now you are dead. I miss you mummy. You were funny wen you put sand on yor nose in France when we went on holliday. Every day I think of you after you fel down
Since you
Lots of things hapend some of them were very sad and daddy went away a lot like and he says he misses you to. I have a new pencil case now mummy.
After you fel in the water granny tolld said sayed you were on a very long holiday and I askd somewere like France and she says Yes. But daddy sayed you are not comeing back and granny sed a ly and you were dead and not comeing back.
I have a lift the flap book
After you
Today we lernt about dinosaurs ubdcefalus had a bony club on its tail for swinging at enemys.
Today we did litteracy here are my Sentences
can you hear me singing?
Did you ever see me kicking?
I am jumping.
I am starting to jump
I am lifting.
I’m shifting a table.
I’m crying.
I am flying in the air.
The man in the hospittal says I must talk to you mummy in my letters but sometimes it makes me verry sad and I remember the hollidays. Do you remember them mummy?
My best day with you and daddy was wen we went to France. Me and daddy went up a lighthouse then we went to the Shops with you and we got some mashmalows and delicous hot choclit. When we got back we toasted them on the fire. then I was going to have dinner but instead We went on a boat to go to another house to stay in. I was so amazed. Evryone was happy.
After you died
Mummy it rained a lot since Cristmas now you are not here. I got some wellys. Then I splashed puddles with daddy then we made lasanya and watched that film you liked again. Daddy cryed a little bit it is the onley time I have seen daddy cry he doesnt cry and he told me it was because I was alone like him. and he said sorry to me and mummy loved me I musnnt dout this und
Why did you say that about Cristmas
Why did you
Anyway now I must go granny says we are having macarrony and cheese for tea. I hope you have a dog in heaven as you mite be lonely to
I love you mummy. I want you to come back but you cant come back because you are dead daddy says. I miss you every day are you in the ground so deep no one can get you even with a bulldozer
Jamie
The letter trembles in my hand. It has dark spots on it. I think they may be dried tears.
There are two more letters. Shorter. The writing is better in these; this is Jamie a little older, I think. I have to lean close to look at the words – then I realize the room has grown very dim. A glance at the window shows me that rainclouds have raced across the sky, in that startling Cornish way, turning day into darkness. The impatient fingernails of rain tap the windowpane. I reach across and switch on David’s angular brass desk lamp, then read on.
Dear Mummy
Daddy said I must stop riting to you cos it makes me upset. He said this in case you got angry and I was worried you wud came back as a ghost wich wud be very scarry.
Ghost
I dont want to stop riting to you because I can imagin you in my head when I rite. You used to kiss me on the nose to make things better France
Mummy I remember it was Cristmas and evryone was drinking their drinks and geting louder and louder. Im sorry and daddy said it was your fault and I ran out I cant rite it down I am sorry you died I am sorry if
Saturd
Here are the sentences we did yesterday
I’m liking my book exceptionally
I am not going swimming today it is too boring
I’m hoping I will see my mummy once more
I’m taking a toy robot to school
I’m guessing you haven’t got a dog
Daddy is shaving
Mummy is waving
Mummy some nites I dream of you floting in the water. Someone at school said that bodys come back will you come back? They say that if you drowned in the sea then your body would be washed up on rocks like a starfish why weren’t you washed up at Morvelan like a starfish?
Bleeding
THEY CUT YOUR FINGERTIP OFF
BLOOD IN THE
Fizzy drinks are bad for you and I remember at Critsmas I gave you a fizzy drink and I thought it was my falt you were dead and they buryd your coat but I don’t think this any more.
I listen to the sea it sounds like a big man breathing, a big scarry man and mummy in the darkness and the blackness. I have fritening dreams about you with no fingers to Im sorry. you are smiling
Jamie xxxXXXxxx
One more letter to go. One more is enough. This final letter looks to be the most recent, the handwriting is significantly improved. I can see my name in the first paragraph, this letter must have been written after I entered his life.
Leaning closer to David’s desk lamp, I take up the notepaper, and read.
Dear Mummy
Daddy’s new wife is here now and her name is Rachel Daly but she is now a Kerthen like you and me and Daddy. Are you angry with her for taking yor your place? Don’t be she is nice she teaches me photography but she is not my mummy YOU are my mummy.
Sometimes I do not like to look at the mine where you fell down Mummy I know you are alive and alright now but the mines friten me. They look like monsters. Rachel is sad sometimes she laughs a lot but then she looks unhappy.
I remember when you were sad a lot before the accident fall. When Daddy and then you said what you said I wont tell anyone?
Today at school Miss Anderson showed us pictures of heaven but I do not think I believe in heaven any more because I used to think you lived in heaven with grandad. But now you arent in heaven you are in the house at night so how does that work? Did you swim in the mine and climb out?
Yesterday we had swimming. I can do front crawl and back crawl but I can’t do butterfly. It is very hard. You swam a long way in France when you went on and on and Daddy was laughing and saying you were swimming to England because you want to get away from us.
Wish you ha
I loved you just as much as daddy, I am sorry
I learned a story about penguins. There are penguins in Antartica that spend all the winter looking after the baby penguins. It is very cold so cold your eyes turn into ice and then you have to wear gogles. The penguins looking after the little penguins are daddy penguins. The wind blows and blows and blows and the daddy penguins keep the baby penguin warm with there fluffy feathers. Then after ages they see the mummy penguins. they thought the mummy penguins were dead but then they see the mummy penguins come back through the wind and the snow and they are happy. The mummy penguins always come back.
We are going to go to a castle this weekend and have a picnic with Daddy and Rachel. But it may be raining so we may stay in but I think it will be sunny. Today it is hot and we went swimming me and Daddy and Rachel at zawn hana and Mummy you were there in my head and then I saw you in the house.
I miss you lots and lots like wisky shots thats what Daddy says and I am going to go to sleep now. Bye bye
Jamie xxx
Carefully, I slip the letters back into the folder, and replace the folder on the shelf. Cassie will surely be back soon with Jamie, and Juliet too. I do not want to be caught in here, even though it is my own house. And I do not want anyone to suspect I was snooping.
Making my way around the study, I straighten anything I might have disturbed. Then I pause at the window and follow Jago Kerthen’s gaze down the darkened, rain-streaked valley to the mines and the cliffs and the sea.
What do these letters tell me? They tell me that Jamie is deeply confused, on a level I had not suspected. They tell me that I am possibly not helping, even though he seems to like me, or tolerate me, at the same time. They tell me that his grief is pure and ceaseless, that he is suffering deeply; they tell me it is my duty to help this poor boy in any way I can.
They also tell me one final thing. There were arguments that night Nina died. Arguments that were bad enough for Jamie to remember them.
Yet there were no arguments mentioned in the inquest.
What do I do with this information? Approach David? That would mean revealing that I have been sleuthing around his study. Sifting through his private papers.
My thoughts are brought to a stop by a piercing scream.
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