Free A Question of Identity by Susan Hill Page A

there in time . . .’
    ‘Sit down, Sam. Now, tell me slowly. What’s happened?’

Eight
    HARRY ANSWERED THE phone. It was gone eight, the boys were in bed, flat out after playing in the snow since the early morning. There was a smell of bacon coming from the kitchen and Harry had a bottle of lager in his hand. Things couldn’t get better, he thought, picking up. Things could not get better. Funny that.
    ‘Harry?’
    ‘Hello, Rosemary. How are you?’
    Rosemary didn’t answer to the usual description of ‘the wife’s mother’. She never interfered, was always good-humoured and had her own life. She had welcomed Harry from the start, and never breathed a word of criticism. Harry would not have gone so far as to say that he loved Rosemary Poole but he had no problem with her at all.
    ‘Karen’s cooking supper – can she ring you back?’
    ‘No, just give her a message . . .’
    ‘Have you been OK in this weather? I meant to ring you only I know you’ve got the neighbours.’
    ‘Oh yes, Geoff Payne has been wonderful, got a gang together, cleared everybody’s front. No, I had a letter . . . post didn’t get through until after two and then what with everything . . . only I’ve got one. One of those sheltered bungalows. You know – Duchess of Cornwall Close.’
    ‘The new ones?’
    ‘That’s it. I’ve been allocated one. It was in the letter.’
    Rosemary had been on the waiting list for shelteredaccommodation for three years, long before she needed it – she was only seventy-six now – but she had diabetes and the previous year a hip replacement operation had been unsuccessful. She was struggling to cope in the old three-bedroomed family house which had a big garden and was too far out of Lafferton.
    ‘Now that’s a bit of good news. When do you get the key?’
    ‘Two weeks. The thing is, Harry . . .’
    ‘You need help with moving. I’m working all hours but we’ll sort something.’
    ‘It’s brand new. I can’t get over it. Never moved into a brand-new house, Harry, I’m over the moon.’

He had a thin moustache, like kids draw on faces with a biro. He never took his eyes off me. Staring, staring. I hated him. But who else had I got?
    ‘You’re nobody. This is no-man’s-land, here. You’re not the person you were any longer and you’re not the person you’re going to be either. It’s my job to graft that new person onto you until the graft takes and it’s part of you – no, not part of you, that’s wrong. You. It’s you. Do you follow?’
    I couldn’t sleep for it. I’d get up and look out of the window onto that bloody square where they did their drill and I’d try not to think about it because it was the future and the future scared the shit out of me. What he said. The stuff he made me repeat after him. Scared me.
    So I stood and looked out at the empty square and I thought about the past. I felt good then and they couldn’t take that out of my head even if they took it in every other way. The past was mine and it’d always be there, to make me feel good.

Nine
    NIGHTS WERE BEST. Days, he mostly slept. People walked their dogs along the towpath past his shack and annoyed him, them chatting and the dogs barking, and when the kids went by on bikes the tyres made a screechy sound and that annoyed him too. Nights were best.
    He generally went out, even in the rain. Didn’t mind the rain. The snow he hadn’t liked at all, it went over his shoes and soaked his trouser ends and once he got a few yards it was too deep anyway, so he stayed in. Got his stove going, got some soup on. Thought a lot.
    But before the snow, it had been very good. Cold but good. He’d been walking for a bit, watching, listening, waiting, and then it had happened, right where he was. That had been a good bit of luck, the car reversing fast, the man and the woman on the corner nearly getting run over, then the crash of the shop window as they backed in. He’d felt his heart thump. He could have told