Almost Home: A Novel

  “No one, really. I’ve run into Andy a few times in the pub and Roger once on the Tube. Mark lives out in the country in Oxford-shire. Wife and two kids.” I smile, trying to picture the skinny, freckle-face rower with a family of his own. “You?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “No one.” I take a bite of the beef, swallow. “This is delicious. I mean no one except Sarah Sunderson. My grad friend from South Africa.”

  “Oh yes, I remember her,” Chris says, but I can tell he is trying hard to picture Sarah’s face. To me, Sarah was everything, but she was quiet, and tended to fade into the scenery for others.

  “She’s the reason I came back. She’s alone and very sick. I wanted to be here for her.”

  “That’s too bad,” he says. He does not, I realize, look surprised. Of course not. He already knows about Sarah. He knows everything.

  “Why?” I blurt.

  “Why what?”

  I take a deep breath, meet his eyes levelly. “Why did you track me down?”

  “I heard you were coming back,” he replies, trying unsuccessfully to make his voice light. “I wanted to say hello.”

  I shake my head. “No good, Chris. No one just ‘hears’ about my travels, not in my line of work.”

  He manages a weak smile. “Found out through a mutual friend?”

  “Not even Sarah knew I was coming.”

  He leans back and clasps his hands behind his head, exhaling sharply. “Okay, Jordie, you’ve got me. I tracked you down, called in a few favors at the Foreign Office to learn your whereabouts.” I guessed as much. “I expected to find you in Africa or Asia something,” he continues before I can ask why. “I was surprised you were on your way back here. Just dumb luck on the timing. But I would have tracked you down wherever you were.” He swings forward, grasping the table with both hands. “I had to find you, Jordan. I need your help.”

  “Help?” Wariness rises in me. I have been approached by friends for help before—generally it involves information or access, something related to my job that I’m not able to give. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s about Jared, Jordie.” At the sound of his name, I freeze. The piece of beef I have just swallowed seems to stick in my throat, making it difficult to breathe.

  “What do you mean?” I manage several seconds later.

  “I want to find out what happened to him.”

  “We know what happened. He died.” I remember then the sharp rapping sound, and how, through a fog of sleep and alcohol, I threw on my robe, stumbled downstairs, and opened the door. There stood Chris and Mark, wordless, their hollow eyes illuminated by the flashing light of the police car behind them. In that moment, even before they spoke, I knew.

  “The police said that Jared drowned,” Chris says.

  “He did,” I reply quickly. Found by a fisherman—a strange voice behind the boys in the darkness of the doorway explained, when their words failed them—down by the lock.

  Chris shakes his head. “In the River Cam, eight feet deep and twenty feet wide? Impossible. Jared was one of the strongest swimmers I knew. I saw him go five times that distance when our pair capsized at Henley, and he wasn’t even out of breath. There’s no way he wouldn’t have made it to shore.”

  Suddenly it is as if an enormous hand is squeezing my chest. I look away, forcing myself to swallow, breathe. “So what are you saying?”

  Then I turn back. Chris is staring at me, eyes wide.

  “Jordie, Jared’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  It is difficult to hear over the buzzing in my ears. “They said alcohol…the May Ball.”

  “We were all drinking, but none of us enough to walk into the river and drown. Especially not Jared.”

  “He didn’t…” I start emphatically, but I cannot bring myself to finish the sentence. After Jared’s death, there was speculation. Suicide, some said. People knew that he had been withdrawn. A wave of guilt washes over me. We fought that night and he stormed off in anger…

  “He didn’t kill himself,” Chris finishes for me decisively. “Jared had everything. He was happy.”

  Or should have been. Jared was about to complete his doctoral program and had secured a prestigious teaching fellowship at Oxford for the following year. But he was moody in the weeks before his death, distant. I attributed it to the end of the school year, to my departure, which hung between us, looming and unspoken. “So what then?”

  “I don’t know, Jordie. There’s so much we never learned. Like what was he doing down by the river in the middle of the night, alone? He wasn’t with you or me or any of the others. And it’s not like there was another woman.”

  “No,” I said quickly. Jared was faithful. Of that I am certain. “Why now?” I ask.

  Chris pauses. “I’ve had my doubts over the years. Something about his death, the way it was explained, just never made sense. My gut always told me that—”

  “Your gut?” I interrupt. “You’re a journalist, Chris. I’m in intelligence. We deal in facts.”

  “I know, but I keep thinking back…the whole thing was such a circus, and the college wanted it over and done with as soon as possible. We only had access to what they wanted us to know. We were young, numb…we didn’t know to ask questions. And then I received this.” He reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. “It came in the post a few weeks ago.” At the sight of the familiar article, my stomach churns. It is the front page of the Cambridge Evening News from the day after Jared’s body was found. STUDENT DROWNED, the headline reads. Underneath it is Jared’s college photograph and a picture of the river.

  “Someone sent you a newspaper article, Chris. Probably some nut who doesn’t like something you wrote or the way you covered a story.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s more than that. The article doesn’t mention me. This came from someone who knew us, our connection to what happened. No, I don’t know who or why, but getting this, ten years after the accident…it’s like someone is trying to tell us something. I think we owe it to Jared to figure out what it is. And to ourselves.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  He reaches across the table and takes my hands. “I want you to come with me.”

  “Where?” I ask softly, already knowing the answer.

  “Cambridge. Help me figure this out. I need you. No one knew Jared like you did.”

  I look away, swallowing hard. Now I am the one who is drowning, cold water running thick into my nose and mouth, filling my lungs.

  “Jordie, what is it? Are you okay?” I turn back to Chris, his face a mask of concern.

  Nausea rises up in me. “No,” I gasp, pulling from his grasp. I stand up, grabbing my bag and coat. “I have to go.”

  “Please wait.” I hear him calling after me as I dash across the restaurant, feeling the stares of the other diners.

  I barrel down the stairs and make my way through the crowded bar as quickly as I can. Outside, I speed to a run, expecting to hear Chris’s footsteps chasing after me. I careen blindly down the street, barely seeing Saint Paul’s as I skirt the edge of the cathedral grounds. He has not followed me, I realize, several minutes later, looking over my shoulder. I slow to a brisk walk. The nausea subsides, soothed by the cool air, but my breathing is ragged, as though I have just finished a race. This is the second time I have fled in two days, and it isn’t like me. At least this time I remembered my coat.

  Outside it is dark now, the traffic thinner, sidewalks nearly deserted. I am close to the river, I recognize instinctively. I make my way down the winding street toward the water, still seeing Chris’s wide eyes as he leaned across the table, feeling his hand warm and heavy on mine, taking me places I did not want to go. Pain rips through my chest like a knife. The past, neatly buried for so long, has been released from its moorings. It seems to loom before me now with all of its questions and recrimination, ominous and unyielding. This is why I didn’t want to come back, why I avoided it all of these years.


  I reach the concrete embankment at the river’s edge, then stop, taking in the panorama of the Thames, the boats nestled along the near shore for the night. The Millennium Bridge, an arched pedestrian walkway not here a decade ago, spans the river, connecting the City to the South Bank, ending at the Tate Modern. To the far right, I can make out the top of the London Eye, also new since my last visit, framing a tall office building in an enormous circle of red and blue lights.

  I inhale deeply, brackish air filling my lungs, before continuing east along the concrete promenade. Streetlights cast yellow pools on the pavement, illuminating a couple kissing on a park bench, the tree branches lashing the sky above. Chris’s words play over and over in my mind: Jared’s death was not an accident. He does not believe that Jared drowned, or that he committed suicide. That means…I halt. My breath catches. Though he hadn’t said it, Chris was suggesting that Jared was murdered. Another wave of nausea overcomes me and I double over, vomiting what I had eaten of dinner into a sewer grate.

  A moment later, when the heaving subsides, I straighten, willing my stomach to calm with slow, shallow breaths. Stop overreacting, I tell myself as I wipe my mouth and start walking again. Just because Chris is suspicious because he received an article in the mail doesn’t mean that Jared was murdered. Chris is wrong. He has to be.

  But as I continue walking, the nagging sensation in my stomach grows. There is something about Jared’s drowning that does not make sense. Always has been, at least in those fleeting middle-of-the-night moments when I permitted myself to think about it. I attributed my uneasiness to the grief. In my darkest places, I never allowed my mind to go there, to make the leap that Chris just had, that someone could have deliberately caused Jared’s death. And even after the paradise I knew as Cambridge had been shattered, it still seemed impossible that something so evil could have happened there.

  What if Chris isn’t wrong? I turn the idea over in my mind, considering. For ten years, I managed to live with the fact that Jared, the only man I ever loved, somehow drowned in the river. But what if that isn’t true? What if, as Chris said, there was more to Jared’s death than we thought? I shake my head. The idea is unbearable.

  And now Chris wants me to go to Cambridge, to open up the door to all that had happened. Even in making the deal with myself to come back to England and be here for Sarah, I never imagined actually going there again, walking those paths that I locked away so many years ago.

  Then in my mind’s eye, I see myself and the seven rowers who remained the morning after the memorial service. As if by silent agreement, we arrived at the boathouse before dawn and climbed in the boat and rowed down the river, the June air thick and stale, gnats hovering over still water. We rowed more slowly, of course, with six than we would have with eight, Ewan holding his oar still, not rowing to compensate for the empty seat behind him where Jared would have been. When we approached the middle of Plough Reach, we pulled the boat into the right bank and climbed out, forming a circle around the freshly covered grave. We stood there not speaking, heads bowed. A flock of geese, flying low over the railway bridge, called out low and guttural, breaking the silence. In that moment, as the sun rose over the fens, it had seemed that a silent pact was made: the remaining members of the Eight would be there for one another forever.

  Owe it to Jared, Chris said. And to ourselves. I see his haunted eyes across the restaurant table as he had spoken. We won’t find anything. But maybe opening these old wounds is what it will take to put it behind us for good.

  I turn and begin climbing the road that leads away from the river. About halfway up the block, I step into a red telephone booth and dial directory assistance. “Bannister, Christopher,” I request, hoping that there will only be one listing. The operator gives me the number, then connects the call. The phone rings five or six times, and it occurs to me that I might have a wrong number or that he might not be home.

  “Hello?” Chris’s voice sounds thick with sleep. How long was I walking?

  “It’s me,” I say, clutching the receiver.

  “Oh, hello.” His voice is alert, filled with anticipation.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you. I didn’t know it was late.”

  “It’s not. I’m just knackered. I didn’t sleep well last night.” Chris was always a sound sleeper, able to nod off anywhere. He must have been nervous about our meeting. “Dozed off a little while ago. Too much wine.” I wonder if he finished off the second bottle after I left. “Jordie, I’m so sorry if I upset…”

  “It’s okay,” I reply, cutting him off. I bite my lip. “I should apologize for running off like that. It was terribly rude of me.”

  “I understand,” he says, and I can tell he really does.

  “The thing is…” I pause, taking a deep breath. “Yes. I mean, I’ll go up with you.”

  There is silence on the other end of the line. I wonder if he is mad. Maybe he has changed his mind about going altogether. “Really?” he asks a moment later.

  “Yes. When do you want to go?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  I am reminded of the other obligations in my life. I have a terminally ill friend to care for, mobsters to thwart. I don’t have time for this. Then I remember once more the rowers at Jared’s grave the morning after the funeral, and know I have no choice. The sooner I put this behind me, the better. “Tomorrow,” I reply at last. There are questions I want to ask him: How does he propose to get information about Jared’s death? What will we do in Cambridge? A wave of exhaustion sweeps over me. There will be time for questions later. “Meet me at two-fifteen at the Chimney,” I say quickly, before he can suggest we travel to Cambridge together. I need time, and I need to go there alone. “Oh, and thank you for dinner.”

  “No, thank you,” he replies. “You won’t be sorry, Jordan.” I do not answer, but set the phone back in the cradle with a click. I’m already sorry, I think, stepping out of the phone booth and into the night air, which has suddenly grown thick with fog.

  September 1997

  The predawn air is brisk and still as I close the door behind me and step into the darkness of Lower Park Street. Cool moonlight illuminates the row of gray brick houses set close to the winding road, servants’ quarters turned student housing. At the top of the street, a deliveryman moves between the doorways, putting down glass bottles of milk.

  I make my way to the edge of Jesus Green. The nylon sleeves of my splash top rubbing against my sides, breaking the silence as I follow the path across the flat parkland. Though the trees are still full with leaves, the air is cold enough that I can see my breath if I look closely and a faint early frost covers the grass. In the narrow canal that hugs the right side of the park, a family of ducks nestles close to bank, heads tucked in sleep. The fetid smell of still water mixes with the smoky remnants of a bonfire the previous evening.

  I first made this pilgrimage almost a year ago on a morning much like this. Then, as I crossed the deserted park, my skin prickled. What was I doing? I had been persuaded by an attractive blond-haired boy at the Freshers’ Week activities fair two evenings prior: everyone at Lords joined the boat club, he said, and since perhaps I was a bit too short to row, wouldn’t I like to cox? In the rush of alcohol and excitement, I’d accepted, and then forgot until the next day when I received a notice in my pigeonhole informing me that rowing started at six the following morning. I’d considered canceling, but there was no contact information on the note. So I made my way across the park, questioning my safety and my sanity, cursing my inability to say no. Perhaps it was a mistake, I thought as I reached the road that separated the green expanses of Jesus Green and Midsummer Common, taking in the sleeping boathouses across the river. Maybe there will be no outing. But as I started to turn back, a moving speck of light appeared at the far end of the park. A bike light, I realized, as a second, then a third appeared, dancing like fireflies, forming a beacon to the river.

  This morning I do not see bike lights. It is late September,
nearly a week before term time, and only a handful of crews from the bigger rowing colleges are back early to get a head start on the season. The novices will come the following week after being recruited as I had been, first learning to row in metal tubs and later clogging the river with slow wooden boats. The boy at the Freshers’ Fair (Chris, I would later learn) had not lied—everyone, it seemed, rowed at some point in their college careers. It is as egalitarian as it is popular, one of those rare sports that you didn’t have to start as a child, that you could learn at eighteen and advance as far as your talent and physical form would allow.

  And then there is me. Normally a second-year would not be coxing the first boat at a top rowing college like Lords—there would have been some snotty little guy who coxed at Eton, or at least a seasoned third-year. But owing to various transfers and situations, there is something of a coxing vacuum and so, Chris explained at me at the end of the May term before we went down for the summer, I am it.

  I cross the deserted roadway without waiting for the light. Halfway across Midsummer Common, I pause, taking in the pub Fort Saint George and the footbridge beside it, which leads across a thin, winding strip of river to the boathouses. The anticipation that has been building inside me through the long summer months rises, breaks wide open. I am home.

  On the far side of the footbridge, I make my way along the hard, sloping pavement that runs between the boathouses and the water’s edge. Lights come on in one of the boathouses to my left, and I hear voices joking, the clacking of oars being pulled from the racks.

  Ahead, fifth on the left, sits Lords boathouse, dark wood and square. The three wide metal garage doors, painted black with red stripes, are still closed. I am early, as usual; it is a family curse, a dominant trait inherited from both of my parents. But here I do not mind—I’ve always welcomed the few minutes of quiet, the chance to collect my thoughts, to assess the current and the wind and how they will affect our outing.