in the car, or before leaving the house even. Yet here were Harvey's parents hanging about with him on the Penzance platform in an awkward and unnatural silence waiting for a train that was ten minutes delayed. 'You can go if you want, you know. I'll be all right.' I'm thirty-five, for Christ's sake. But he couldn't say that because he had a rule: never leave under a cloud. You don't want your last face-to-face words to your parents until next Christmas to be unkind ones.
'No, we'll stay, darling. We want to see you off. We see you so rarely, we have to take every minute we can.' His mother's sentimentality was kicking in and he thought he could detect actual tears imminent.
'Yeah, OK, it's nice to have some company actually.' Not yours, of course, but . . .
'You could lose a bit of weight, Harvey.' His father was not, as Harvey had learned to his cost in the past, afflicted by his own concerns around departures. He remembered vividly the day he went off to university, his first real leaving home and his father's last words to him: 'You can't do much worse there than you did at school, can you?' Half his journey had been ruined thinking about it: what kind of valediction was that when the only child leaves home for ever? Shouldn't there be some rite of passage, some passing on of wisdom from father to son, not just a wanton insult? Where was the ceremony? Where was the passion? Jesus.
'Piss off.' Rules, after all, are there for the breaking.
'Now, Harvey, don't be rude to your father.'
'He said I was fat.'
'No he didn't, he said you could lose some weight. That's a different—'
'He is fat.'
'Look, will you piss off. You're not exactly the glamorous grandad yourself.'
'He's not a grandad, Harvey. I'd so love him to be, but he isn't ...'
'Oh, for fuck's sake, I don't believe you are going to start on that now ...'
And so the leave-taking descended into abuse as, in truth, it almost always did, rules or no rules.
Harvey had been looking forward to the journey home. His father had roused him at half past six by coughing outside his bedroom door and padding up and down the landing. Harvey, who rarely arose before nine, was feeling the pace a little. The journey, he felt, could be restful. A time for clear and considered thought. He needed to draw a line under everything that had happened. Get some distance, literally and figuratively. Move on. But instead, almost at once, he found himself thinking in circles. And they were circles of guilt. 'I should have gone to the police at once'; 'I should have found out where she was staying and telephoned her'; 'I should have stayed and talked it all through with Bleeder.' This last was the most wretched cycle of all. If he had just had a little courage he might have found out how much Bleeder knew. Instead, he had left himself open to hope and fear in equal measure. For all his efforts on his future self 's behalf he had let him down after all and he felt bad about that. What if I never know? That was one of the fears assailing him. It was perfectly possible that there would be no coverage of a murder in Cornwall in the national press. He would find it hard to ring his parents more than once a week without causing major suspicion in their minds. There was the possibility that he would never hear anything further about the murder of Mrs Odd. And that was a good thing, of course, except that he knew his sleep patterns were going to suffer.
The journey from Penzance to London is of nearly six hours' duration and there is a limit to how much of the English countryside any man can take. Harvey had a book in his bag, a biography of a seventies rock star. But somehow groupies and drug binges seemed a bit shallow and unexciting; compared to the last few days at the seaside they sounded like a rest cure. So to stifle the anxiety attacks that were threatening to send him heaving to the tiny train toilet, he drank beer from outrageously overpriced tins of Watneys, warm and sticky, but
'No, we'll stay, darling. We want to see you off. We see you so rarely, we have to take every minute we can.' His mother's sentimentality was kicking in and he thought he could detect actual tears imminent.
'Yeah, OK, it's nice to have some company actually.' Not yours, of course, but . . .
'You could lose a bit of weight, Harvey.' His father was not, as Harvey had learned to his cost in the past, afflicted by his own concerns around departures. He remembered vividly the day he went off to university, his first real leaving home and his father's last words to him: 'You can't do much worse there than you did at school, can you?' Half his journey had been ruined thinking about it: what kind of valediction was that when the only child leaves home for ever? Shouldn't there be some rite of passage, some passing on of wisdom from father to son, not just a wanton insult? Where was the ceremony? Where was the passion? Jesus.
'Piss off.' Rules, after all, are there for the breaking.
'Now, Harvey, don't be rude to your father.'
'He said I was fat.'
'No he didn't, he said you could lose some weight. That's a different—'
'He is fat.'
'Look, will you piss off. You're not exactly the glamorous grandad yourself.'
'He's not a grandad, Harvey. I'd so love him to be, but he isn't ...'
'Oh, for fuck's sake, I don't believe you are going to start on that now ...'
And so the leave-taking descended into abuse as, in truth, it almost always did, rules or no rules.
Harvey had been looking forward to the journey home. His father had roused him at half past six by coughing outside his bedroom door and padding up and down the landing. Harvey, who rarely arose before nine, was feeling the pace a little. The journey, he felt, could be restful. A time for clear and considered thought. He needed to draw a line under everything that had happened. Get some distance, literally and figuratively. Move on. But instead, almost at once, he found himself thinking in circles. And they were circles of guilt. 'I should have gone to the police at once'; 'I should have found out where she was staying and telephoned her'; 'I should have stayed and talked it all through with Bleeder.' This last was the most wretched cycle of all. If he had just had a little courage he might have found out how much Bleeder knew. Instead, he had left himself open to hope and fear in equal measure. For all his efforts on his future self 's behalf he had let him down after all and he felt bad about that. What if I never know? That was one of the fears assailing him. It was perfectly possible that there would be no coverage of a murder in Cornwall in the national press. He would find it hard to ring his parents more than once a week without causing major suspicion in their minds. There was the possibility that he would never hear anything further about the murder of Mrs Odd. And that was a good thing, of course, except that he knew his sleep patterns were going to suffer.
The journey from Penzance to London is of nearly six hours' duration and there is a limit to how much of the English countryside any man can take. Harvey had a book in his bag, a biography of a seventies rock star. But somehow groupies and drug binges seemed a bit shallow and unexciting; compared to the last few days at the seaside they sounded like a rest cure. So to stifle the anxiety attacks that were threatening to send him heaving to the tiny train toilet, he drank beer from outrageously overpriced tins of Watneys, warm and sticky, but
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