Evan's Gate by Rhys Bowen Page B

and I—what very different lives we lead. Who would have thought it when we were kids? You a priest! You were never particularly holy, were you?—I seem to remember you sneaked out of chapel at school as often as I did.
And our parents certainly didn’t encourage any more observance of our religion than church on Christmas Day.”
    “And who would have expected you to be an artist?” Nick countered. “I always thought you’d take over the family business and be the driven CEO type.”
    “I discovered I don’t like being tied down to one thing,” Val said. “I get bored easily, and I seem to have a knack for painting pictures for which people pay large sums of money. Suits me just fine. I don’t think I could ever have been the proverbial starving artist, any more than you could have been the humble, starving priest. We were obviously brought up to expect the good life.”
    “After boarding school? The food was abysmal, and we had to have cold showers.”
    “Ah, but that made men of us, didn’t it?” Val laughed and tossed across some pound coins to the young woman who had put a glass of wine in front of Nick. “Between you and me, I was damned glad to go away to school. I don’t think I’d have survived if we’d been stuck at home.”
    “Me too. I couldn’t wait to get away. That was why I went to Canada, I suppose. The farther, the better.”
    “You can’t go far enough though, can you? I don’t think even Australia would work.” There was no longer a smile on Val’s attractive face.
    Nick nodded agreement. “No, it sort of follows you, doesn’t it?”
    After leaving Mrs. Paul, Evan visited holiday bungalows farther down the beach. Two of them were occupied by families who recalled seeing the little girl on the beach on several occasions but had only been on the beach briefly that morning. They had seen no strange men or cars parked along the road. But then they wouldn’t, would they? Evan reasoned as he walked back toward the caravan park. When he’d been on holiday as a boy, he’d been so intent on having fun and making the most of his time on the beach that a spaceship could have landed nearby and he wouldn’t
have noticed it. And parents on the beach watch their own children, not other people’s.
    He was walking toward his car, when he remembered what Mrs. Paul had told him about the heart transplant. It was just possible that she had got it wrong, but if not … he was sure that transplant patients had to take antirejection medication on a regular basis. And it could be fatal if they stopped taking it. Mrs. Sholokhov had been clearly distraught when she’d spoken to them, but how could she have forgotten to mention such an important factor for the child’s survival? Evan almost broke into a run as he crossed the caravan park. The small blue car Mrs. Paul had mentioned was parked in front of Shirley Sholokhov’s caravan, but when he tapped on the door, he got no answer. He knocked louder, wondering if she’d fallen asleep, then clambered up on the wheel to peep in the window. The caravan was empty.
    He turned and hurried back across the field. Did that mean the child had been found? Had he missed all the action while he was out here, doing useless legwork, repeating what had been done before? He sprinted the last few yards and jumped into the car.
    As he drove back along the road, the wind got up and sand peppered the seaward side of his car. Evan glanced down at the beach where there was a gap between the dunes, then pulled over abruptly. A man was standing on the beach, looking up at a flight of gulls through binoculars. A bird-watcher with binoculars might be just the break they needed. He might not even know a little girl was missing and might have witnessed something he hadn’t understood that morning.
    Evan crossed a field and waded through the soft sand of the dunes. The man continued to stare through his binoculars. Evan didn’t want to startle him, so he yelled out,