November 4, 1966

A furious argument is raging between the two groups of ten year old boys gathered on Farwell Field beside the ruins of Northcroft’s thirteenth-century Town Wall. The dispute has arisen because they cannot decide where to play their long-awaited football match. If they use the area to the east of the tumbled limestone blocks, the team representing Hart Street school will have home advantage; otherwise it will pass to the squad from Throston.

One or two of the less willing participants, pressed into service like medieval peasants, have begun to move away from the others in case a full-scale brawl breaks out. None dare stray too far. Better a black eye or a split lip than the lasting derision he will have heaped upon him if his friends think he is about to turn tail and run. Snapper Brookbank, tall, skinny and so short-sighted he must wear his glasses even for an event such as this, knows that in a scrap he will be of less use than a sugar umbrella in a monsoon — yet he has had an idea he hopes may prevent it coming to that.

He sidles up to Basher Howell, the Hart Street captain, and tugs at his elbow. Nervously, he gabbles out his suggestion. If Basher’s initial reaction is one of scorn, he is surprisingly quick on the uptake for a thug who spends hours every week sitting cross-legged in the hall for answering back to Miss Cattrick, and within moments his Palaeolithic features are lit by a grin so broad the Magnificent Seven could gallop through it side by side and still leave room for the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

“Tell yer what,” Basher says to his opposite number Paul Addison, “giz a goal start an’ yers can be at ‘ome.”

The Throston cohort exchange doubtful glances. Many of them are bright enough to have worked out that the choice of venue will have little bearing on the outcome. Addo, not the most luminous of candles, agrees to Basher’s proposal without consulting anyone. The blazers and jumpers go down on the Throston side of the wall, and at long last the game can begin.

Snapper volunteers to go in goal from the kick-off. That way he is sure to make a contribution to the Hart Street cause — unlike Piggford, who reacts to the approach of a football as if it were a poisonous snake. Yet although he acquits himself reasonably well behind a defence with no more ability to maintain a tight formation than a brood of decapitated hens, with the score tied at six-apiece and the light fading fast, Snapper yearns to play a more positive role. A few of the girls from his class have stopped by to watch the action on their way to Brownies: Paula Harbron is there, whispering something to Ruth Pattison, who according to Topsy Taylor has had to wear a bra since the end of the third year, and he seems to know about these things; best of all Trisha Hodgson, the one who makes his willy feel all funny whenever she flicks back her long, carrot-coloured hair. Think how impressed she would be if she saw Snapper Brookbank notch the decider!

But time is not on his side. Some of his teammates are already complaining to Basher that their mams will murder them if they stop out after it gets dark. There can only be a minute or two left at the most.

“Next one the winner or what?” cries Addo.

“Aye, better ‘ad be,” Basher shouts back. “Mergie goalies?”

“Yer on!”

This is what Snapper has been praying for. Now any member of the team can nominate himself as ‘keeper should the need for one arise. Full of unused energy, he sprints up the field.

By some fluke, a wild clearance lands the ball at his feet with only one opponent in front of him. He pushes it forward, leaps over a lunging, mistimed tackle and finds himself bearing down on a completely unprotected goal. Even Piggford might have fancied his chances of rolling it in. All he has to do is keep a clear head, and–

“SNAPPER!!!”

Basher has charged after him, determined that no swot from the top class is going to deprive him of the glory that is rightfully his. Snapper can ignore him, of course, but he is only too aware that should the ball strike a divot and bobble wide his next music lesson will be held on a big white cloud and involve learning to play the harp. The price of failure is too high. He will sacrifice his place in the Hart Street hall of fame for the satisfaction of knowing he deserves the real credit for the winning goal.

He turns and sees that Basher is almost level with him. He must make the crucial pass now, before accusations of offside can be levelled. But Trisha is still watching, and he has one more trick up his sleeve.

Scooping the ball up so that his captain can take it on the half-volley, he looks on in horror as it careers off the end of his plimsoll and smashes into Basher’s face, knocking him flying. A Throston player is on hand to boot it away, and no one seems very interested in fetching it back. At the other end of the pitch the ‘goalposts’ are being removed. The match is over, the opportunity to record a famous victory has been squandered.

Trisha and her friends walk away in fits of laughter. Meanwhile, Basher has lifted himself to his feet. There is a livid red mark on his left cheek.

“You useless four-eyed lanky streak of shit.”

The insult is all the more ominous for having been spoken so quietly. Snapper decides this may not be the best time to remind him that without his brainwave Hart Street would have lost six-five. In fact he can think of only one way to escape the beating of his life.

He legs it.

Over Farwell Field, past the tennis courts on Garrison Point and across a Town Moor still churned up after August’s carnival until he reaches the muddy lane that leads past the back of the hospital and the rugby ground, each breath an agonised gasp as the lighthouse looms ever nearer and he can finally turn the corner into the blessed sanctuary of Princess Terrace. Not a moment too soon either, for Basher and the pack of bloodthirsty hounds trailing in his wake are almost upon him.

At his front gate he stops dead, aghast at his own stupidity. He has forgotten that on Fridays they always have their tea at gran’s. He still has to run the length of Tennent Street, through St Hild’s churchyard and down Brougham Street as far as number 41.

But it is too late. He is surrounded.

Hands push, poke and drag him across the road and onto the neglected patch of grass where a tarnished King Neptune, his trident broken off at the haft and his crown used as a nesting place, looks forlornly out to sea. Basher is waiting beside the statue; his fists are clenched, his anger unabated.

“Give ‘im a good knackin’, Bash.”

“Aye, kick ‘is fuckin’ ‘ead in.”

The circle closes, and a tribal chant is taken up.

“Ooh-ah, ooh-ah, ooh-ah…”

Snapper can do nothing to ward off Basher’s ferocious assault except curl up on the ground and shield his glasses with his arm. He begs for mercy. None is forthcoming. He promises to be Basher’s slave for ever and ever. His pleas are snowflakes landing on an exploding volcano.

“What is going on here?”

He knows that voice! It belongs to Mademoiselle Malraux, who takes Miss Sutton’s class for French on Monday afternoons and sometimes on Thursday mornings as well. They’re such good friends they live together on the far side of the Triangle, in the house at the end of Redheugh Close nearest the sea wall.

Now that Basher has stopped hitting him, Snapper looks up in reverence at the young woman who has come to his aid. She’s wearing a smart black jacket, a short black skirt, black leather knee boots and those kinky stockings with holes in them he thinks are called fishing nets. Her sleek raven hair falls loosely about her shoulders, encompassing flawless olive-skinned features and alluring oriental eyes that suddenly ignite to send the spectators fleeing like ants from a burning nest.

Only Basher stands his ground.

“Nowt miss,” he protests, though his face is full of unfinished business. “We was just playin’, honest.”

Mademoiselle Malraux steps over Snapper.

“Close your eyes,” she says to him.

He obeys at once; but he cannot keep them shut, for he has already seen the silver, lozenge-shaped object she is holding…

No, that’s not right.

That was someone else, and in another place entirely.

Wasn’t it?

The alarm goes off, yanking me back into the waking world with all the subtlety of an enraged rhinoceros. I fling out a hand to silence it, but only succeed in knocking my watch to the floor.

“F...fiddlesticks.”

Yawning loudly, I sit up and stretch my arms above my head. The movement loosens the thread holding the last remaining button on my pyjama top; it falls into my lap, allowing my breasts to shove the material aside like two divas pushing their way through a crowd to pose for the paparazzi.

“Fu...fancy that.”

I sweep away the covers, then launch my feet into the air. They land on the carpet in such a fashion as to send my watch hurtling across the room. It smacks into the skirting board beneath the dressing table, accompanied by a portentous tinkling sound.

“Fuck it.”

I have to get down on all fours to retrieve the unfortunate timepiece, dugs drooping like a cow’s udders. It’s an ungainly beginning to my first full day as Kerrie Latimer’s trusty sidekick.

Luckily the watch is still ticking.

Twenty-five to eight. I’d better get a move on.

Before I do anything else I light a cigarette. Of course the head breaks off the match as it flares into life, missing my right nipple by less than an inch.

It’s going to be one of those days, obviously.

Then again, I ought to have learned by now that there are some pleasures a girl really should forgo when her tits are hanging out.

I pull back the shower curtain, my thoughts already skipping ahead to the look I ought to adopt for the coming ordeal. Thanks to Suki Tatsukich’s tenacity — some might have called it bullying, but I don’t believe anyone’s written a set of guidelines for that particular training programme — I’ve grown into the habit of wearing a skirt once or sometimes twice a week, though I draw the line at anything that ends above the knee. There’s a big difference between being at ease with your sex and wanting to flaunt it.

Yet I need to submerge myself fully in my new identity, for who knows where Kerrie Latimer’s investigative zeal will lead us? The chances are we’ll meet Carol Vasey, and if she guesses that I’m the same Ruth who went to school with her daughter I’ll have my work cut out just keeping my cover intact.

Scrubbed and rinsed, I towel my hair dry. Once again the centre parting I try to put in insists on migrating abruptly to the right as it reaches my forehead, so that my fringe falls appealingly — or irritatingly, depending on your perspective — across my left eye. Sylvia’s friend Janice, who runs a hairdressing salon in New Stranton, has offered to take the scissors to my unruly tresses free of charge, but I’d rather wait until Ruth is caught; then I’ll make her watch me have them shaved down to a quarter of an inch all over.

Spiteful, I know. And that’s the most lenient of the punishments my imagination has devised for her.

I’m opening the drawer to pick out fresh underwear when...

What is going on here?

Mademoiselle Malraux, who came to my rescue when I was being beaten up on Neptune’s Triangle because of that stupid football match. God knows why I had to dream about her after all these years.

Maybe I’m conflating her with the posh tart Egerton brought along — Yvonne or Yvette or whatever her name is. And it might also have something to do with finding out I can speak such good French.

Funny thing, the mind.

Especially when it’s been transplanted into someone else’s brain.

To more practical matters...

A close-fitting light green T-shirt to go with my jeans, leaving no one in any doubt that I’ve got just as much up top as Kerrie and I don’t care who knows it. Brown leather calf boots rather than trainers in case the weather forecast is correct for once. A little more mascara than usual. Carmine lip gloss to hint at the femme fatale lurking within me. A dab or two of Charley behind the ears.

I feel like a proper pansy.

But I don’t have to make any beds this morning. Better a painted doll than a skivvy.

The fun begins a minute or two after I’ve arrived in the dining room, when Kerrie breezes through the door and discovers that the table at which she had expected to sit is occupied by a dapper young gentleman in a stylish checked sports jacket and an open-necked shirt, together with a glamorous older woman wearing an eye-catching floral cheongsam and reading Balzac’s Eugénie de Grandet in the original French.

“I think you’ll find that belongs to room 7,” Kerrie says in a tone that suggests she’s not used to protracted arguments and doesn’t anticipate one here.

J G Egerton picks up the piece of folded cardboard wedged between the milk jug and the basket filled with those infuriating individually wrapped pats of butter that are always too big for one slice of toast but never contain quite enough to spread across two.

“Well I never!” he exclaims, flashing her a smile that would have had Lucrezia Borgia simpering.

Kerrie doesn’t even blink.

“So I can have my table back.”

It’s most emphatically not a question.

Egerton leans over to his fiancée, who clearly considers the exchange undeserving of her attention.

“We seem to have committed the most frightful faux pas, poppet,” he tells her. “What say we do the decent thing and move?”

She rests bejewelled, damson-nailed fingers on his sleeve.

“Weren’t we here first, darling?” she murmurs in a faultless BBC accent. “I’m sure we were, you know.”

“I understand, Yvette...but let’s not have another scene, eh?”

With neither woman prepared to abandon the disputed terrain, I fold up my newspaper and sit back to watch the fur fly.

“I thought so,” Kerrie says suddenly, commencing hostilities by snatching Yvette’s book from her hand. “I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?”

Yvette de Monnier allows her eyes to roam across every square inch of her adversary’s body, taking in the asymmetric multicoloured hair, the tight cheesecloth shirt, the black leather pants and scuffed ankle boots all in one smooth, dismissive movement. She could hardly have demonstrated less respect if she’d been examining a flea-bitten old mare on her way to the glue factory.

“I very much doubt it,” she drawls in a voice oozing with disdain. “I’m not in the habit of frequenting bring-and-buy sales.”

Miaow! This is shaping up to be a real humdinger!

Sadly — though perhaps not from the standpoint of world peace — Sylvia comes in from the kitchen to explain that since Ms Latimer and I will be spending much of the day together it makes sense for us to have breakfast at the same table. She apologises to Kerrie for not giving her prior notice of the altered seating arrangements, adding as a muttered aside that there’d be no need for misunderstandings of this kind if her employee had been up and about at the usual time.

It was bound to be my fault, wasn’t it? If a hurricane tore the roof off she’d find a way to shift the responsibility onto me.

Kerrie flashes her enemy a look of pure malevolence before taking her seat and pouring herself a glass of grapefruit juice. That the liquid doesn’t go flying over her shoulder to ruin Yvette’s cheongsam is a miracle that would have had the thousands in the desert who’d dined handsomely on five loaves and a couple of fishes trudging home telling one another they’d seen more impressive conjuring tricks at children’s birthday parties.

“Anyway sweetheart, how are you this morning?” she asks me. “All set and raring to go?”

“Ready when you are,” I reply, hoping for the sake of my last clean pair of jeans that I sound keener than I feel.

“That’s what I like to hear. We’ll make a good team, you and I. Okay, I’ve been having a think. We should start off at the cemetery, then–“

“She must be going to apply for a job as a gravedigger.”

Yvette de Monnier’s stage whisper has approximately the same effect as a rabbi walking into a crowded synagogue on Yom Kippur clutching a pork pie in one hand and a half-eaten bacon sandwich in the other. The two old ladies have ossified into statues, egg yolk dripping from their forks. Mrs Sourface’s mouth has fallen open wide enough to catch a swarm of locusts, let alone the odd fly. The skeleton impales a mushroom that will never reach his stomach.

With geological slowness Kerrie turns her head.

“That’s a nice dress,” she remarks. “I might get myself something like that when I’m your age.”

All over the developed world sirens wail, television and radio broadcasts are replaced with rolling news bulletins, police leave is cancelled, hospitals are placed on emergency alert, fighter pilots scramble and politicians scurry for their underground bunkers.

Egerton hisses words of restraint into his fiancée’s ear. He’d enjoy as much success having a quiet chat with a lioness whose cubs are on the brink of starvation about the feelings of that lame zebra she’s been shadowing.

“When you’re my age, darling,” Yvette comes back, “you won’t be buying clothes from anywhere that doesn’t specialise in camping equipment.”

The retort crackles and spits through the charged atmosphere. It strikes its target with the force of a ballistic missile. Even Mrs Sourface is tittering to herself. My glee is marred only by the certain knowledge that one person, and one person alone will pay the price for Kerrie Latimer’s humiliation as the day wears on.

Northcroft cemetery is situated about a mile north-west of the hotel at the very edge of the built-up area, on top of a wide railway embankment running alongside the coast. Consolidated in the 1830s from spoil excavated during the construction of the Victoria Dock and the deepening of the medieval harbour, by the middle of the following decade it carried more coal than any other line in England. That trade has gone now, and if the hourly passenger service from Middlesbrough to Newcastle-upon-Tyne by way of New Stranton keeps the main section open, on the spur going down to Northcroft only a few forgotten sleepers poke above the tangle of thorn and scrub growing the length of the dismantled track, each a grim memento of a lost industrial heritage. A cheerless, unlovely place under the brightest of conditions, on a dank Wednesday morning beneath leaden skies it weighs at the soul like a duplicitous lover.

Standing with her back to the gates, Kerrie zips up her windcheater and gazes past her white Volkswagen Beetle at the empty dock basins and silent waterfronts in the distance, the wasteland that separates Northcroft from New Stranton.

“Not quite what I had in mind when I set off yesterday,” she sighs. “I thought it was all cliffs and castles up here?”

“That’s Northumberland,” I correct her, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my cagoule to stop myself looking at my watch for the fourth time in as many minutes. Although I have no great love for my birthplace, I abhor the ignorance so many southerners show towards it. We’re not Geordies, we don’t support Scotland when the Home Internationals are being played, and we never pour brown ale on our corn flakes.

(Actually I did that once when I was a student, but only to wind up this turd from Congleton who was forever harping on about his superior ‘northern’ sense of humour.)

“I wonder why Helen stayed so long? If she had that kind of money, I mean. No offence, sweetheart, but it’s not exactly the English Riviera.”

She’s spot on there. A dense mist has begun rolling in from the sea, concealing the disused wharves, coal staiths, piers and slipways with the urgency of a relief worker disposing of a leprous cadaver. Soon all that can be seen in that direction will be the rough ground fringing the dark ribbon of Cleveland Road as it arcs southward to disappear in a wall of unrelenting gloom.

“Beats me,” I admit with a shrug.

This apparent indifference earns me a disparaging frown, not the first I’ve had to put up with since the contretemps in the dining room. When Sylvia and I gave Kerrie an abridged account of the circumstances surrounding Bob Hodgson’s death we received a frostier reception than the Pope trying to get served in a bar on the Shankill Road. Even the florist on Northgate Street, whose only crime was to express surprise at her southern accent, got a mouthful in return. I just hope that none of the things last night’s dream has made me start to remember about Helen Sutton and her relationship with Mademoiselle Malraux come to light; I shudder to think what Kerrie’s reaction might be if she learns what kind of person her dad may have been messing around with.

We find Helen’s final resting place with the assistance of a chart the grizzled, triangular-faced warden must keep in a subterranean vault if the time he takes to fetch it is any guide. The more recent plots are at the western end of the cemetery, without so much as a tree or a bush to provide a sense of seclusion. All that protects them from the bitter northerly winds that so often sweep unopposed across the broad, grassy hummocks of Hart Warren is the husk of what was once an isolation hospital, located here in a typically macabre instance of Victorian town planning.

I hang back a few feet, allowing Kerrie to pay her respects to a woman she never met by resting a simple spray of roses on the bare earth. Then I notice the headstone, no more than nine or ten inches high. An epitaph has been written on it, and in French.

The game is up. With a mounting sense of foreboding I watch Kerrie take a pair of round-rimmed spectacles from her shoulder bag and put them on to read the words inscribed in the polished white marble.

“You didn’t tell me she was only forty-three, sweetheart?”

“You never asked,” I mumble, a little too loudly.

“Well I’m asking if you can translate that message for me.”

The acid in her voice would eat its way through the casing of a nuclear reactor before you could finish reciting the rhyme about little Johnny drinking H2SO4. I do as I’m told.

“‘Farewell, my love. You died to save the women of the whole world.’”

“How odd. I don’t suppose you know who he is or what he meant by that?”

Bollocks to it. She’s going to find out sooner or later.

“It’s a she. And no, I haven’t the faintest.”

I’ve gone and done it now. The worms are wriggling out of the can, and the lid has rolled down a drain. Kerrie is still wearing her glasses, but that doesn’t stop her eyes shooting a hail of bullets into mine.

“Go on...” she growls.

“Helen taught me when I was in the fourth year at junior school. She wasn’t from Northcroft originally, but I don’t think she ever said anything about where she’d lived before she moved here. If she did I was off that day. Anyway, I remember she had a friend who used to come in now and again and teach us French. Mademoiselle Malraux, her name was. From the Far East, Vietnam if I remember right. Everyone in the class fell for her, she had the ability to leave you hanging on her every word. Then all of a sudden we had to make do with this other girl, who was hopeless. It turned out that Helen and Mademoiselle Malraux were more than just friends — you can’t keep something like that secret in a close-knit community such as Northcroft — and one or two of the parents had complained to the headmistress. Considering it was 1967 and attitudes weren’t anything like as tolerant as they are today, Helen was lucky not to have been shown the door as well.”

Kerrie steps closer. She’s struggling to keep her temper in check. One wrong move and I’ll be as supine as the corpses beneath my feet.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. I confess to you that my father may have had a clandestine affair with someone, and you only now see fit to tell me she was a lesbian? Any more bombshells you’d like to drop? Take your time.”

But something deep within me has decided that enough is enough.

“You think the world revolves around you and your precious family? Some of us have got more on our minds than dredging up stuff that happened when we were kids. If you’re not happy then go and hire yourself a private detective. It’s not as if you can’t afford one.”

I march up the slope to the low brick wall beyond which the ground falls away steeply through high dunes to a long, narrow beach. After a minute or two Kerrie joins me and asks if I’d like a cigarette. We share a light, our freckled fingers cupped around the flame. For a long time neither of us speaks; instead we look out at the formless horizon and listen to the waves lapping against the shore. Only the far-off sound of a dog barking ruptures the near primordial serenity.

Kerrie is first to break the spell.

“You don’t like me very much, do you? I shouldn’t really be surprised. I admit I can be a bit overbearing at times. That’s one of the words my husband used when he packed his bags last August. He said that being shackled to an overbearing Irish sow like me for fifteen years was longer than he’d have done for armed robbery. I flew at him, I’m ashamed to say. I’d just been told I needed to have several of my top teeth taken out, so it wasn’t the best moment to discover that my marriage was over. Don’t feel sorry for me, by the way. I didn’t love him. Alan was a shoulder to lean on at a bad time in my life, nothing more. I gave him two lovely children, and I let them visit him whenever they want, so he can’t turn round and say he’s done all that badly out of it.”

I don’t know how to respond. It’s hard to believe she would be so open with a girl she met less than twenty-four hours ago.

“You’re Irish?” I manage after an increasingly awkward silence.

“I was born Carmel Assumptor O’Rourke in Ballymahon, County Longford. But I’ve lived in this country since I was seven. We moved around a bit at first, Lancashire and Cheshire mainly but also the Midlands.”

“Yeah, I thought I detected a northern accent when you got annoyed with me last night.”

“That obvious, was it? Of course, you’ve lived in the south, you’ll have picked up on it straight away.”

“So where did Kerrieanne come from?”

“I’m not actually sure. It was after we settled in Reading when I was fourteen, I know that. Alan didn’t like it. He always calls me Mel, just to be contrary. And David, that’s my current boyfriend, insists on shortening Kerrie to Kay.”

“You said you’d been with your husband for fifteen years. You can’t have been very old when you got married.”

“Old enough. I’m thirty-eight, if that’s what you’re angling for.”

“I didn’t–“

“Yes you did. Now it’s your go.”

Only fair, I suppose.

“Twenty-three. Twenty-four in September.”

“Your husband, silly,” she laughs.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

I wonder what she’d say if I told her I’ve only ever seen photographs of him.

“Have it your own way.” She pats my arm. “Come on, let’s give 6 Redyuff Close the once-over before the heavens open.”

As we make our way back down the path I’m struck by a series of puzzling thoughts. Mademoiselle Malraux left Helen the summer I sat my A levels, and by all accounts the couple parted on less than amicable terms. That fits neatly with the date of the will quoted in the solicitor’s letter; it’s natural that Helen should want to exclude her former lover from any settlement she may previously have made.

Yet it rests uneasily with the message on the headstone.

Adieu, mon amour.

That doesn’t sound like a woman who still felt scorned and rejected. Not forgetting what it must have cost her, even for a memorial that size.

As for the rest of it, how on earth could Helen have saved the world — no, the women of the world — by dying? Had she found she was suffering from a contagious disease that only affected the female half of the population, and done herself in to stop it spreading?

But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.

“Sad, isn’t it?”

Kerrie has stopped beside a grave festooned with fresh flowers, the borders swept clean of wind-blown sand and other debris. A few feet away lies an altogether more neglected plot, marked only by a small wooden cross leaning at a precarious angle and an urn from which jut a handful of withered stalks.

“Comes to us all in the end,” I remind her, for want of anything more profound to say.

“I mean that some are remembered and others aren’t.”

“Luck of the draw, I suppose.”

“I believe it’s more to do with the distance we put between ourselves and other people. Isn’t there a saying, ‘every stranger is a friend you haven’t been introduced to yet’? Or something like that.”

She takes my arm, as though we’d known one another for years. For a reason I can’t put my finger on I’m grateful for the contact.