The bolt struck some trees at Mons Wood with a crack like an artillery shell, the light and sound in almost perfect harmony. The tallest pine torched itself, a crackling suicide of sudden purple flame. The sight of fire seemed, incredibly, to deepen the heat. The featureless horizon appeared to pulse, the hot air on the fen boiling over the shadowless fields.

Humph’s Capri skidded to a halt in the red dust before the old farmhouse. Estelle was at the door, one hand clutched defensively to her throat. She looked a generation older, but nothing like her mother. Maggie’s almost Victorian stoicism was beyond her reach. She looked very modern in the timeless surroundings of Black Bank. And very frightened.

Dryden produced the tape from his pocket and held it up like a trophy: ‘I think we should listen to this. It’s the last one. She said everything would be explained.’

‘Everything is,’ said Estelle, her voice crackling like the air. She turned on her heels and disappeared inside the cool blackness of the farmhouse. He found her in the kitchen, up on the wooden worktop with her legs folded beneath her. Beside her was a portable tape recorder.

‘Your husband?’ said Dryden, leaning against the whitewashed wall.

She flinched at the word, then began to twist the drawstrings of her sweatshirt in a tight knot. ‘I told him you’d find out. He had some crazy idea we could just live in the States–Austin, perhaps. Say we were married in the UK. Keep the other secret. Pretend we didn’t know about that.’ Her hands shook as she lifted a can of Pepsi. ‘But you can’t keep a secret from yourself. And the passport was wrong. They’d have to change that. So we couldn’t just go. Could we?’

Dryden sensed time opening up to let them talk. ‘And the tapes… she did say why she gave Lyndon away?’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Another lightning bolt struck the peatfields to the east and she jumped, every nerve alive to the fact that her world was being ripped apart: shredded by the lie Maggie had told twenty-seven years before.

‘I know too,’ said Dryden. ‘Constance Tompkins just told me. I went to see her this morning.’

Estelle looked at him. ‘We listened to the tapes after the funeral. Lyndon was there. Mum wasn’t very explicit, I guess. But it’s pretty clear. About Johnnie, Johnnie and the pictures… pictures of them, pictures of others. I think Mum was sick. Sick with anxiety. Sick that Lyndon – that Matty – would be abused–sucked into that life. How could she have married him? And in shock. She’d just seen her parents die, die horribly. And then she made that decision, almost instantly. I told Lyndon… he has to see it through the eyes of the girl, the girl Mum was.’ Water welled freely out of her eyes and down her chin. ‘She loved her baby,’ she said, as if insisting on a great truth which had been disputed.

‘But Lyndon doesn’t believe that?’

‘I think he feels it’s not the reason he wanted. He wanted something else… I don’t know what, Dryden. Just something that made it OK. This doesn’t make it OK. I don’t think anything could…’

‘You knew who the father was, didn’t you?’

She looked scared then. ‘Mum never said. I think she wanted it forgotten. That’s one of the reasons she went away. And Johnnie went away too for a bit. When he did come back he must’ve kept his distance. She never mentioned him. People forget, even in a place like this. But I knew. Kids, they talk. When we got back to Black Bank I was twelve. I went to the secondary school and I was famous – infamous. I came from the place where the plane had crashed. At the time, everyone knew Johnnie was the father. Why else would he have run into the flames? But you can imagine the scandal. So I found out pretty quickly. Sometimes, for a dare, we’d go to the Ritz and I’d buy a Coke. It was weird. He never knew I hated him.’

‘Did Lyndon know?’

‘Not before Mum died. But I told him that night–and it was on the tapes.’ She bit her lip.

Dryden walked towards the tapedeck. ‘Maggie said that the tapes would answer all the questions. We should give her that chance,’ he said. He took the last cassette and slipped it into the recorder, and as he did so he felt some of the burden of his promise to Maggie lift. They listened to the silence together and Dryden wondered if it might be blank. Somewhere he could hear seagulls trailing a tractor. Then they heard Maggie’s breath, laboured and intimate, unnaturally close. It filled the kitchen with a tangible sense of her, like an answerphone message played back for the first time.

Estelle watched the spools turn with appalled concentration. This was her mother’s last testament, save for those few words on her deathbed; the two words nobody ever heard: ‘The tapes’.

‘Estelle?’ The voice was an echo of the woman, speaking directly from what she knew would be her grave. It sounded extraordinarily strong and vital.

‘My love,’ said Maggie. ‘I lied to you as well.’

Estelle covered her mouth and waited to see which way her life would turn.

‘We promised each other we’d tell you. But then each year came and went and we wondered why. It made no difference to us. No difference… Every Christmas. Every birthday. All those chances missed…’

The breathing interrupted her, the failing heart bruising her ribs.

‘Then Don died. Don died and it was all down to me. I just couldn’t. He loved you too, Estelle, loved you more than anything–more than his life. He said that before he died – believe me – I haven’t the breath to lie. He didn’t count for anything without you. He told me that for you. His daughter…’

She took a breath and held it.

‘But you weren’t, love. Or mine. We tried to have a family, but it didn’t happen. I think it was a punishment for me, although the doctors said it was Don. But it was my punishment for giving Matty away. For walking away from a child. And a punishment for both of us for wanting a son. Only a son.’

The tape clicked off, then almost immediately back on. ‘The adoption service promised us a son. It was easier then, even with Don’s age. But it went wrong, the family took the boy back at the last minute and it broke my heart, Estelle, broke my heart again. So we said we’d be happy to take the next child. We didn’t mind then if it was a boy or a girl. We just wanted it… wanted you. And when Don brought you home I loved you from the minute I first saw you. I loved you like my own… more than my own.’

Estelle was frozen. ‘Mum,’ she said, and began to cry again.

‘More than my own,’ said Maggie again. ‘A few people knew. But Connie had gone, and I didn’t really have anyone I could tell at Black Bank. So we thought it was best left. School: it worried us. That you might be teased. So we brought you back to Black Bank as our child. You are our child, love.’

Out on the fen seagulls wheeled, calling, sensing the long drought was about to break. The laboured breathing on the tape returned and slowly tapered into sleep. Dryden switched it off.

‘My God,’ said Estelle, and Dryden knew instantly that she was thinking about Lyndon. About the consequences of another lie.

‘Where is he?’ said Dryden.

‘My God,’ she said again.

‘Laura told me to watch out for Freeman White–Lyndon’s roommate.’

Estelle just said ‘Laura’, and cried again. ‘We didn’t know she could hear us. I’m sorry. We just used to talk. About us. About what to do after Mum died. We didn’t do it in front of Mum because she could hear us, even, sometimes, when she slept. We couldn’t be sure. We wanted to surprise Mum – about us, when she was better. We still thought that then – that she would get better. And after she died we went back to pick up her things. Laura must have heard. We talked about what to do. We thought she was in a coma. I’m sorry.’

Dryden nodded so that she could go on: ‘We asked Freeman to follow you. We were desperate. You were asking questions, so many questions. I couldn’t refuse because you were right, it was what Mum wanted. She wanted it all out. And you came out to see us. We thought you were close to finding out about the marriage.’

‘And the fire at the register office? White too?’

She looked him in the eyes, a silent affirmation. ‘We thought it would destroy the evidence. Give us some time to think. We told Freeman not to hurt you. Lyndon told him that. But Freeman owes him everything, his life, really, because of Al Rasheid. Lyndon kept him alive, gave him water, food. When the Americans got to Al Rasheid they were both nearly dead. Freeman knows that, the loyalty’s fierce. So he agreed to help, when we told him we just needed to know if you’d got close. And if you had, we wanted to stop you. Warn you off.’

‘Where’s Lyndon?’ asked Dryden.

‘I have to tell him,’ she said. ‘Before…’

In the silence thunder rolled. ‘Has he ever talked about suicide?’

She nodded. ‘Sometimes, since Mum died. It got worse – when I wouldn’t go back. Back to the States. He left, left here, the night before Mum’s funeral.’

Dryden thought Mum? but asked: ‘And you’ve no idea where he is?’

‘He took the Land Rover and went. Said he’d find somewhere to think. Rent, I guess. He didn’t have any friends outside the base. He just wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t here, somewhere that wasn’t the air force. He wanted space. He said he knew a place… out there.’ She looked out over Black Bank Fen as another lightning bolt zig-zagged down into a stand of trees.

Dryden counted the seconds before the thunder struck, 1–2–3–4, and then the rumble which made his joints vibrate. She was still looking out. ‘He said you’d told him of a place he could go.’

‘Me?’

‘To be on his own. That’s what he said… a place you loved. Somewhere like Texas – somewhere he could be free.’

Dryden saw it then as he’d seen it last; the black peat of Adventurer’s Fen stretching out to the reed beds by the river. ‘Does he have a mobile?’ he said.

‘Yes. But he never answers. Just listens to the messages.’

‘Ring him. Ring him quickly. Tell him about the last tape. And tell him we’re coming.’

‘Just tell me,’ said Johnnie, as though the answer marked the only difference between the real world and the hellish distortions of his hexagonal cell.

‘I’m being punished. I know that. I’m going to die here. Tell me why.’

Lyndon took the decision then. He’d planned to stay silent, but the appeal was so direct, and he had such an overwhelming answer, he knelt before his victim and took his face in his hands.

‘What do you see?’ he said, feeling his nails puncture Johnnie’s bristled flesh.

Johnnie felt his life hinged here: in an airless pillbox where he’d once made love to Maggie Beck. His jailer’s voice, he noticed, was American. It surprised him, where the educated cadences did not.

‘I can’t see the glass,’ he said. Lyndon’s head obscured the diamondlike beauty of the water on the shelf.

Lyndon dug his thumbs into the sallow dehydrated flesh. ‘What do you see?’ he said again, knowing now he would have to give his father the answer. And he knew why he’d avoided speaking until now, for he felt an urge to be tender, to cradle the head of the man who had run into the flames of Black Bank to save his son.

He fought it back, and thought instead of his mother, tortured too by the knowledge that to save her son she must give his life away. ‘Think of a mirror,’ said Lyndon.

Johnnie tried to think. His mind screamed for water, for the glass beyond the jailer’s eyes. His head swam and those eyes filled his world.

‘My eyes?’ he said, knowing instantly he was right, feeling his heart contract with dread.

‘I’m your son,’ said Lyndon, and let him, brutally, fall to the ground.

Johnnie fainted then, the thirst beginning to destroy his brain, as it had ravaged his flesh.

When he came to the pain had gone. His mind floated free, and he could consider what he knew with shocking clarity. ‘You can’t be,’ he said, angry that the jailer should torment him further. ‘Matty died. In the fire.’

‘Maggie switched us. Me and the American kid. She did it to cheat you. Because of what you were.’

Lyndon stood and Johnnie noticed that his fingers shook violently and a nerve in his lean, tanned face was in spasm.’You made her do it, and it’s destroyed my life. Our lives.’ He showed Johnnie the wedding ring on his finger, balled his fist, and hit him hard. The cartilage of Johnnie’s nose collapsed, pushing up towards the brain, and the blood flowed out in gouts.

But this time Johnnie didn’t pass out. He sat back on his haunches despite the cramp in his legs. ‘What was I?’ said Johnnie, trying hard to remember how he’d lost Maggie, how he’d lost the life he could have had.

‘You took pictures. Making love to Maggie. Was it in here? Or did that come later?’

Johnnie remembered then, and felt ashamed that he had forgotten this crime, rather than all the others. ‘Later,’ he said, looking at the water in the glass as the thirst returned.

Lyndon hated him then, not because of what he’d done to Maggie, but because he couldn’t know what he’d done to him. So he wrapped his bleeding hand in his T-shirt, took the glass, stood before his father, and drank it dry.