Part Two
…
Watching her as she walks slowly among the raised beds, her fingers trailing through the flowers, the crisp, bright sunshine soaking into her skin, highlighting the colour in her hair… Boyd feels his chest swell, his heart ache with emotion. There is peace in the way she moves, something that's been missing for a long time, something he's been waiting weeks to see return. He can see it in the way she reacts to the rich life of the garden around her, and there is something in her expression that is so full of simple joy that it fills him with both the need to go to her, to gather her up against him and hold on, and to leave her alone so that he can keep watching, keep taking in the view.
"You love her." It's not a question, and Boyd doesn't treat it as such as Iris moves to stand beside him, looking out at her youngest child.
"She's beautiful," he replies, his thoughts still in the same place as they were during lunch. "She has a beautiful soul."
He can feel the raised eyebrows that are being directed at him before he even turns to look down at her. "Those are not words I would ever have expected to cross your lips. Far too poetic for the likes of you," she says, and he has to smile at just how quickly she's got his measure.
"Very true," he agrees, smiling. "But on the odd occasion…"
"Hmm." Iris does not sound convinced.
He lifts his hands, unsure how to convey how much the sight of Grace as relaxed and content as she is means to him. "Look at her. Just look at her – she's happy, she's healthy, and you can see it in her. The shadows are gone, the fear is gone. She's found some kind of peace that's been missing for months, and it's wonderful to see it. To not be afraid for her." He pauses, breathes in sharply, aware of the intensity of his tone, the feeling behind his words. He wonders what she's thinking of his reaction, whether she realises, too, just how much it means to him. How hard it is for him to admit it. Oh well, he thinks, in for a penny, in for a pound. "And yes, you're right. I do love her." He looks down again, into cool, considering blue eyes, feels a need to add, "I hope you approve."
Lips purse, an eyebrow raises, and he wonders if this is what Grace will look like in twenty-five, thirty years' time. If he's staring into a tiny glimpse of what he fervently hopes is his future. "I think I'm beginning to."
"Good."
Iris's expression changes, becomes unreadable. "Then again…" she adds, as she looks up a few scant inches at him.
He wonders what she's about to say, raises an eyebrow in return. "Yes…?" he prompts, disliking the wait, and the wondering.
The older woman scowls at him, blue eyes narrowing in an expression that is eerily familiar. "You, young man, are the one responsible for getting my daughter to go poking around the lives of dead people. You should be letting them rest in peace, not disturbing the dust left behind by old ghosts."
"I don't think ghosts have dust."
Iris pins him with a stare. "Don't try and be clever with me, boy. You know damn well what I mean."
"True," he grins. "I do."
A natural, easy sort of silence falls between them as they continue to clean the dishes.
"Why do you object to what Grace does?" he eventually asks, curious.
Iris sighs. "I don't," she tells him, rinsing a stack of soapy plates. "I'm very proud of her, and I love that she does something she loves. But Grace… she's too serious about some things – she forgot how to laugh after John, and so I tease her and needle her to keep her on her toes, to make her smile. She knows I do it, and she enjoys it, too. Grace likes to argue – it's like sport to her."
"That," smirks Boyd, "I know."
Iris eyes him sidelong, eyes glittering. "I don't doubt you for a moment."
He laughs again, both at the implication, and at the old woman's tactics.
"Growing up she was so damn clever – every day it was endless questions and discussions that went round and round in circles. I used to go to bed with my head spinning, wondering how on earth she managed to get from one obscure train of thought to the next. She drove her brothers crazy."
"Trust me," says Boyd, with feeling, "she drives me crazy as well."
Another sidelong glance, accompanied by, "I'm sure she does." He opens his mouth to respond, sees the smirk, and then closes it again, resolutely not rising the provocation and instead reaching for a handful of cutlery to dry.
"Her father liked to debate with her, he would spend hours winding her up, playing devil's advocate, just to see how far he could stretch her mind, how much he could make her think. It was fascinating to watch, but exhausting."
He knows that feeling, too. "What was she like? As a little girl?"
Iris nods her head towards a photograph on the wall by the door and Boyd moves over to it, studying the three boys aged in their early to mid-teens and the tiny young girl sitting on the lap of the oldest boy. Only seven or so in the photograph, there's no chancing of him failing to recognise Grace. Her smile is still the same, still lights up her face in exactly the same way when she's truly happy.
"Quiet, mostly," Iris tells him. "Serious, empathetic. Always listening to people, always taking things in. Observing. From the moment she learned to read she was always lost in books. Always. She loved school, loved her teachers. I never had to chase her to do her homework. Nothing like her brothers – they were forever coming up with excuses about why they couldn't get it done, or why they had to rush off and do something else first."
Boyd nods to himself, recognising something of his own childhood in her words, the glass in his hands long since dry though he continues to polish it with the cloth unknowingly, utterly preoccupied as he studies little Grace.
"She was too quiet, really. It worried me for years that she only had a few friends, that she didn't seem to like going out, didn't want to party because she had exams to study for, or music lessons to go to, or dance classes."
"What happened?"
"University forced her out of her shell. She excelled academically – we knew she would – but she met people, she mingled, she went out. Every time she came home I could see the difference in her, see the growth. It was… everything I wanted for her."
Turning from the picture, Boyd moves to the window again. It's hard to picture the confident, assertive woman he knows as a quiet, introverted child. "She worried you that much?" He starts a little when the glass he is still polishing is taken from his hands and another is thrust at him instead.
"Grace is one of the strongest people I have ever known, but she has an incredibly vulnerable side to her as well. She just hides it very well."
It's a thought he's entertained himself a few times, particularly during the last several months. The closer he and Grace have grown the more he's been able to spot the occasional chinks in the armour she holds closely to herself, the more he has been able to understand that beneath the calm front there are not always clear, still waters. It fascinates him, and troubles him; ignites all his protective instincts.
The washing up is done; the suds gurgle in the sink as they drain away. Hands that are wrinkled with time as well as water stack plates, fill the kettle, put the cutlery away. Diversionary tactics. Boyd's seen them all before, in many, many guises and forms, and so he waits. He's learned over the years. From Grace.
He pours the tea into mugs that have surely seen a lot of history, replaces the teapot under the cosy, gets milk from the fridge. Feels completely comfortable about it, without even realising. He says nothing, keeps waiting.
"Three times I've thought I was going to lose her," remarks Iris, finally, her voice incredibly soft as she turns and watches her daughter still pottering about in the garden. "When she was a little girl – just a week before her sixth birthday – the boys were playing in the fields behind school and of course she wanted to go too, and I let her because it meant she wasn't sitting alone with her books somewhere. I was talking to some of the other mums – I can remember the conversation to this day. We were discussing who was doing what for the school Christmas play, and then suddenly Simon came flying through the gate screaming that Grace fallen. He was terrified, shaking. I dropped my bag and ran."
She pauses and swallows, eyes darkened by memory. "There was an old well at the edge of the field – there'd been a farm there years back, but it burnt down and was never rebuilt – most of the land was turned to housing. The cover on the well was rotten, and it gave way beneath her. She cracked her head and nearly drowned – we spent Christmas in hospital that year."
"But she recovered?"
"Yes. She doesn't remember it though – nothing from that day, or the weeks before it."
"How did you get her out of the well?" he asks.
"Jack climbed straight down – he was fifteen and skinny as they come – and he's the reason she didn't drown, but he couldn't get her out again. There were metal rungs set into the brick work, but most of them were worn or useless. In the end it took both the police and the firemen to get her out again. It even made the papers."
"So he saved her life then," remarks Boyd, turning to look at the photograph again, studying the young teenager holding his little sister, observing the protective, affectionate way his arms appear to be wrapped around his youngest sibling.
Iris nods, her expression grave. "He did. Twice now, in fact."
"Twice?"
The old woman closes her eyes for a moment, and Boyd wonders if perhaps he should withdraw the question and leave the rest of this conversation unfinished, but then Iris shakes her head, opens her eyes and continues. "When John… snapped… Jack was the one who found her. It was pure fluke – he had a book he'd borrowed from her, and he was in the neighbourhood so he went by to drop it off, thinking they could have a cup of tea and a chat because it was a Saturday and John worked Saturdays."
Iris stops, and Boyd feels a swell of something horrible in his stomach, feels his heart start to beat just a tiny bit faster. He's heard Grace's side of this story, what he thinks is an abbreviated version of the full tale that she will, at some point in the future, expand upon. When she is ready. What he already knows, though, is still enough to make him feel ill, and this, he suspects, watching Iris, might be even worse.
"I'll never forget the day – the moment, even – when Jack called me and said he'd found her. He was hysterical, absolutely falling apart on the phone. He couldn't even talk, tell me what had happened. All I heard was Grace and blood and the bottom of the stairs. I thought she was dead, the way he was talking. I've never felt so cold as I did in that moment."
The kitchen around them is silent, only the big clock above the door is ticking.
"I was cleaning the brasses. My hands were filthy, my apron was filthy…"
Boyd says nothing, for once in his life patience taking hold and making him wait out the tale. The old woman shivers and pulls her cardigan tighter, trying to ward off a chill that isn't physical. "Their house was only five streets away, and so I ran. You'd have thought that having three boys and with all the scrapes they got into that I'd have spent my life running after them, but no, it was only Grace that made me run. All the broken bones, the sports accidents, the falling out of trees and off bikes – the boys somehow always managed to do it in a controlled, calm manner. Not Grace. I got there before the ambulance men moved her…"
Iris pauses again, and her eyes are a long way away, years back in time remembering it all. Her voice drops to barely a whisper as she continues. "She was covered in blood. Absolutely covered in it – it was like a scene from one of those dreadful films my grandsons like, truly it was. She looked dead, lying there at the bottom of the stairs. I screamed; I know I did, because I remember Jack grabbing me and pulling me back. I could see the stripes across her back where her blouse was torn – her skin was ripped the same as the fabric. So many I couldn't count.
"And her face… I've never been able to get the image out of my head. Even today I can see it as clearly as I did that day. He'd beaten her so badly that had I not known it was her I wouldn't have been able to recognise her. My own child! It was days before the swelling came down and she started to look like my Grace again. Days."
She pauses and swallows heavily, shivering. "When Thomas went to see her he went as white as a sheet and then threw up all over the floor. Simon insisted it wasn't her – that Jack had made a mistake. My husband, my Henry, he… I'd never seen a look like that on his face before. I think it broke him, seeing his baby like that, because that's how he always thought of her, what he always called her. His Little One."
When Iris stops, hands shaking as she grips her cardigan, Boyd takes his turn. Says quietly, "She told me she was in a coma."
The older woman nods. "Eight days. He beat her unconscious, and then threw her down the stairs, cracking a bone in her neck. And then he changed his clothes and left for work. Just like that."
Boyd's seen it before, heard Grace's complicated theories on such behaviour many times, but that doesn't lessen the outrage that roars through him, that makes his skull pound and his heart burn. Doesn't stop him from taking a white-knuckled grip on the window ledge as he stares out down the garden, checking and rechecking.
She's still there. Still safe.
Iris sounds far away as she speaks again, as though she's lost inside thoughts buried a long, long way inside her head. "What I don't understand is why he did it. What made him snap. He was a nice lad – not the brightest star in the sky, but decent, hardworking. Likable enough. I've never understood what Grace saw in him, either, but she loved him and she was happy. And then one day… it was over."
Outside Grace is running her fingers through the leaves and stems of a herb bed, her expression peaceful, serene, and it is that serenity that calms him, that pulls some of the outrage and horror out of him. Boyd watches her lift her hands to her face, breathe in the scents clinging to her skin and smile deeply, her entire face lighting up at the simple pleasure of it, and it's that pleasure, that happiness that loosens the death grip he has on the window ledge, that relaxes some of the tension in his muscles, his stance. She looks like she is remembering things, he thinks. Memories that are far more pleasant than the tale Iris is sharing with him. Not for the first time he thinks of her as the calm at the centre of the storm, the one person who has always been a steadying, grounding force for him in the chaos of their working lives, in the pain of his own personal tragedy.
That she is now that same soothing, reassuring influence in their shared personal life… In all the hours he spent fantasising about her, about what they could do together, have together, be together, he never imagined it could be like this, feel like this. He never thought he would find what they seem to have found together, what they are beginning to build and share between them. Never imagined that they would fit so remarkably well, strengths seamlessly counteracting flaws, similarities effortless counterbalancing differences. It's like two pieces of a jigsaw, cut to fit precisely side by side, interlinked to build a stronger whole, a bigger picture.
He wonders if it is the same for her. If she feels the same way. Imagines not, because she doesn't think the same way as he does, doesn't feel things the same way he does. He'd like to know, though, and he makes a mental note to ask her at some point, to find out how she sees it, what she feels.
This tale though… this account of such a traumatic event, the hints into who Grace really is that Iris has been freely giving him… It fits with the things he has begun to see tiny glimpses of in unguarded moments, and it makes him wonder how much more there is hiding away, how long it will take him to get beneath the surface and get to know the real Grace, the rest of who she is and what she thinks and feels. To get to the point where he doesn't have to ask, or wonder. To where he just knows.
"Why are you telling me all this?" he asks, genuinely curious.
Iris raises an eyebrow. "Because you need to know."
Not the answer he was expecting. "Why? Don't you think it's down to Grace to tell me?"
Iris sighs heavily, gazes out of the window again, her expression clouded by the weight of time and history. "If you were anyone else, I'd agree with you. But you're not. You… mean more to her than anyone else, than all the men who've come and gone in her life over the years."
Boyd opens his mouth to interrupt, but Iris shakes her head and continues. "Oh, she hasn't said as much to me, but she doesn't need to – I know. And like I said, she's too serious sometimes, too afraid, and I don't want what I think is the best thing to happen to her in a long, long time to fall apart if it doesn't need to."
"That's…" begins Boyd, but she raises a hand and cuts him off.
"No, don't say anything. I'm well aware that it might not work out, and if it doesn't for whatever reason, then it doesn't, but this thing between the two of you… it's been a long time coming, and it seems to me to be serious, to be deserving of the truth and everything that goes with it."
She's been honest with him, thinks Boyd, as he weighs his possible answers, before settling with the simple, honest truth in return. "I meant it when I said I love her," he says, watching out of the window as the breeze stirs her hair and Grace reaches up to tuck it back behind her ear, a gesture that he's always found incredibly endearing. "What I didn't tell you, and maybe I should tell her, is that I've been in love with her for years. When I first met her I was torn between wanting to strangle her, and fancying her like mad. And then when I worked with her again and again… each time it was such a mix of feelings. But when my unit was created there was never any question in my mind about wanting her to be part of it, it was just a question of how long it would take to convince her to work with me on a daily basis."
"Quite a while, as I recall," smiles Iris, fondly.
"Indeed."
"But it was worth it all in the end."
"Absolutely," he agrees, recalling a few of his favourite office memories from the last few years.
"You do know that there's such a thing as too much work, though, don't you?"
Boyd swallows a mouthful of tea. Takes a moment to consider his response. This feels like a sore topic, like a conversation he and Iris will revisit again in the future. He wants to say the right thing, to reassure her as well as defending himself and Grace. There's something… unnerving… about the clear, level, blue-eyed gaze that is fixed firmly on him, though. It's like looking in to the past, the present, and what he very much hopes will be the future all at the same time.
"Dedication," he begins, glancing down into his mug. "It was drummed into my skull growing up, and then again at Hendon. It's who I am, what I do. And this job… it's not just old bones, it's people's lives, their stories. It's justice for those who were wronged. It's about those who are left without any answers. Their pain and suffering, and their uncertainty. We look for the truth – what Grace calls closure – and we try to give that to those that are left behind."
He pauses, inhales, exhales slowly. Takes another sip of tea. "No one else will do it. No one else cares. But this job, this team… I wouldn't want to do anything else. We make a difference. Maybe only to a small few, but we do make a difference."
Iris is still watching him, her expression utterly unreadable. "That's quite a speech," she comments.
Boyd shrugs, not knowing what else to say. "When we succeed, when we give someone the answers they are looking for… it makes it all worth it, and that feeling… it's –"
"Addictive?" she supplies.
"A little bit," he admits. "But it's more than that, it's… about humanity. Hope. Listening. Finding something that couldn't be found before. Easing someone's pain, giving them answers when before there was only months or years of the agony of not knowing."
"Closure," nods Iris.
"Closure," agrees Boyd. Then he looks sideways at the elderly woman. "But don't tell her I said so, okay?"
Iris rolls her eyes in a very Grace-like manner. "God, you two really are made for each other."
"I hope so."
"Mm. Just… remember to slow down occasionally, all right? Life is for living and you only get one chance at it. Don't work so hard you forget all the other things you should be enjoying. Don't work so hard you make yourself ill."
After thirty years in the job Boyd is a master at reading the subtext. "You think I make her work too much," he states.
The response he gets surprises him. "Oh no, no I don't. No one makes Grace do anything – she's far too strong-willed for that – but I think your work ethic and her work ethic conspire to make her work far more than is good for her."
Sighing deeply, he takes his time in answering, thinking back over the last few long months when he has done his best to both be accommodating to her wish to work and also shepherd her out of the building at a reasonable time in an effort to ensure she spends plenty of time resting. It's been a difficult task. "I can't stop her from being dedicated, from loving what she does," he says at last. "I do my best to make sure she isn't wearing herself out, but she's… stubborn."
"Oh, I know, trust me, I know. But you lead by example, and the amount of hours you put in…"
"I put in so many hours during the week," Boyd says, "so that I can have as much time to myself as possible at the weekends. And these days I have a much more vested interest in having the weekends to do as I please."
One eyebrow raises in a very familiar arch as lips purse in a knowing smirk that almost – almost – makes him squirm. "I bet you do," is all she says.
Two can play at that game. Holding her gaze, he unleashes that slow, wicked grin Grace is so, so fond of. "I do," he tells her, seriously, "I definitely do."
For a moment Iris is clearly ruffled, her words visibly failing her. It's incredibly amusing, makes the wicked grin turn into an unholy smirk. One that is greeted with a brow that lifts slowly, archly, and a tart, "You, young man, are what my mother would have considered to be a most unsuitable kind of boy."
The smirk only widens, any sense of propriety or an appropriate response far from available, as relaxed as he feels in Iris' impish, entertaining company. He finally settles with, "I guess it's a good thing she's not here to disapprove of me then."
"Mm," is the reply, coupled with a nod of agreement. For a moment there is nothing, and then, "Actually, my mother would have been happy just to know Grace was happy."
Boyd lifts an eyebrow of his own, a wordless question.
"She adored Grace. She was her only granddaughter – I have a sister and she had three boys. Grace is the youngest of them all, by a good few years. The baby. My mother taught her to read, to love books."
"Really?" It's another hint at all the things he doesn't know, at the history of the woman he knows so much, yet so little, about.
Iris opens a drawer, begins to sift through chaos inside it until she can pull out a small, battered brown envelope. "I've been meaning to give her these for ages," she mutters, revealing a stack of photographs and flicking through them. She stops at one of a woman whom she bears a striking resemblance to, holding it out to him. Boyd studies the photo, the woman sitting in an armchair and the small child with a mass of long dark hair and tiny, delicate hands cradling a well-worn hardback book, who is tucked into her lap. The pair wear identical looks of concentration, of fascination. As though they are a long, long way lost in whatever it is they are reading.
Boyd knows that look, knows it very well indeed. He's seen it on Grace's face more times than he can count when she's been engrossed in reports in her office, when she's been studying material given to her by others, and more recently he's witnessed it at home, watched her curled up on the sofa with a book late at night, or gone to bed to find her tucked beneath the covers and lost in the pages of a novel.
An unwelcome feeling of intrusion begins to creep up on him, one he's unable to explain or understand. It's just a photograph, after all, but he can't shake the feeling that it depicts a moment that was significant to Grace, that he's trespassing on something she should be sharing with him herself. Putting the photograph down he lets his hands fall to his sides, suddenly inexplicably unwilling to touch. To pry.