The Family Lie

by P L Kane

  ‘It’s how they got the better of me, really. If I’d been with it then …’

  Vince nodded sombrely. ‘Ruffians. I warned you about them, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did, yeah. I hadn’t realized things were quite so bad here.’

  ‘They aren’t,’ said Helen.

  ‘They weren’t,’ Vince clarified. ‘Strangers,’ was all he needed to add. It was clear they put everything that was wrong in the area down to this incursion from outside, and at the moment Mitch would have trouble arguing against that. People didn’t used to get attacked in their own home when he had lived here before, and it was not the only thing that had changed. What he’d seen out there in the world was slowly encroaching on one of the few untouched parts of the country, maybe even the world. Progress, he thought to himself.

  ‘I was thinking, maybe all that had something to do with what happened to my dad, do you think? He was looking into the Commune, the development schemes – among other things.’

  ‘Who knows,’ Aunty Helen said, giving a half-shrug. ‘Thomas always had his obsessions, and he was getting very strange by the end. Paranoid, you know? Fixating on things. That happens with people who’ve got what he had.’

  Mitch gave a small nod. ‘“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Kurt Cobain.’

  ‘Actually, I think you’ll find it’s Joseph Heller in Catch-22,’ his uncle pointed out.

  ‘Same sentiment,’ Mitch said.

  Aunty Helen looked around again. ‘How about we give you a hand to tidy up,’ she said to him.

  ‘That would be … Hey, shouldn’t we take some photos before we start? For the insurance, I mean. Did Dad even keep up with all that?’

  ‘I-I’ve absolutely no idea,’ Helen admitted. ‘Maybe there are some papers in the study, or upstairs?’

  ‘Fu—’ Mitch began, then remembered he’d been told off the last time he swore in front of this woman. ‘Fudge. I haven’t even been upstairs yet, and Wilkinson didn’t even seem to give a … toss. Who knows what kind of a mess they’ve made up there!’

  ‘Let’s take a look then, shall we, lad?’ Vince suggested.

  Mitch nodded, following him. Only stopped when his aunty shouted after them: ‘And I’ll get the kettle on, make us a nice cup of tea.’

  ***

  As it happened, the burglars had been everywhere but upstairs.

  Perhaps they’d been disturbed before they could ransack the bedrooms, but Mitch couldn’t help thinking again that they’d been in the only places they wanted – or needed – to. That the kitchen, the living room, had been a misdirection. That the main target had been the stuff he’d been looking into last night, and was now gone. Apart from the books he’d brought in with him the previous evening.

  ‘Someone’s been in here, mind,’ said Helen when she saw Mitch’s bedsheets had been rumpled in his old room. ‘Is this where you’ve been sleeping?’

  ‘Oh, no. That’ll be the cat,’ Mitch told her.

  ‘Cat? Your dad didn’t have a cat.’

  ‘To be honest, I think the cat had him.’ Mitch smiled and shook his head. ‘It seems quite at home. Or rather I think it’s a stray from another home. Doesn’t have a collar on, though.’

  ‘I wondered what that tray was doing down in the kitchen,’ offered Vince.

  Helen’s face scrunched up. ‘Not very hygienic, that.’ Ever the doctor.

  ‘He … she … it’s good company,’ Mitch argued, realizing he hadn’t even seen the animal since first thing that morning; his relations weren’t the only ones who didn’t like strangers.

  ‘Filthy animals, cats. Can’t abide them!’ Helen had informed him, insisting on changing the sheets on all the beds upstairs.

  They failed to find any insurance papers, but Mitch needed to get in touch with places like the solicitors anyway about his father’s estate so he’d make some enquiries then. As it was, Vince managed to persuade the neighbour who’d alerted the police (male, it turned out) to let Mitch in so he could cancel his cards and report his phone as stolen, which were the real priorities. The best his bank could do about replacements was send out debit and credit cards to his home address in a few days, or he could call in at his nearest branch – which was miles away from Green Acres. He’d have been better off losing it abroad, they told him helpfully. As for the phone, maybe get a ‘pay as you go’ in the meantime, though his aunty and uncle didn’t hold out much hope he’d be able to buy one from the local shop. They never really bothered with those things themselves, Vince told Mitch.

  However, with the three of them working on the tidying up operation, and constantly supplied with cup after cup of tea (seriously, his Aunty Helen was obsessed!), they soon had the downstairs looking much better. It was well into the afternoon by the time they were done, however – and it was only then that Uncle Vince mentioned eating. ‘We’ll head off to The Plough, get some dinner inside you. I bet you’ve not had a decent meal since you got back, judging from that ready meal box in the kitchen.’

  It was hard to argue with that, and Mitch was starting to feel hungry now. Helen shot Vince a look that said, ‘Is the pub really such a good idea?’ Probably had Mitch down as some kind of raging alcoholic, but then if you couldn’t drink when you found out your dad had set himself alight (been set alight?) then when could you?

  Like father, like—

  Before his aunty could say anything about it, Vince was fetching coats and leading them off down the road. ‘The hub of any community,’ was his argument.

  As with the police station, and the hospital, nothing much had changed inside this place either. Mitch felt the familiar twinge of nostalgia he’d experienced so many times since he’d returned. Seeing the sepia-toned photos on the wall of farmhands working the land, pushing those ploughs the pub was named after – it had been established a few hundred years ago to cater mostly to that clientele – made him long for a simpler time.

  It wasn’t very crowded so they soon found a booth, sliding onto the benches and grabbing menus. ‘The rib-eye of beef is very nice,’ Vince told him, and Mitch almost immediately felt his mouth watering. He decided instead to plump for the traditional beer-battered fish ’n’ chips – his favourite dish – knowing that he’d probably be trying most things on this menu before his time was done here.

  ‘I’ll have to owe you,’ Mitch said as Vince rose to go and order – adding a Diet Coke to go with the food.

  ‘Nonsense,’ his uncle told him, flapping a hand. ‘This one’s on us, son.’

  When Vince had gone, Helen said, ‘And we’ll give you some money to tide you over for a bit.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. I did ask about a cash machine yesterday, but …’

  ‘They used to have a standing one inside the shop a while back, but it broke,’ Helen said. ‘Had to go in for repairs or what have you, and never came back. Kept giving people the wrong amounts anyway.’

  ‘I’ll try the post office there, see if they can sort me out with—’

  ‘It’ll be quicker, and easier, for us to just lend you some. You can pay us back as and when. Your mum would have wanted us to look after you,’ Helen told him. Not his dad, his mum. But then the woman had been her sister, he was Helen’s nephew on her side – and he wondered then how close his aunty, or both of these two really, had been to his dad. Had their loyalty to him just been about who he’d married so long ago? Or the way they’d looked out for Thomas medically just been about Helen’s former profession? That he would have been her patient if she hadn’t retired. Not for the first time, Mitch realized there was so much about his family he didn’t know, that couldn’t be found out just by looking at old photos in an album. Maybe he’d discover more while he was here, get to know these folks a bit better. Reconnect. Introduce Lucy to them at some—

  Oh God, Lucy!

  He should have rung her when he was using the neighbour’s phone, but it had taken so long to get through to the bank and phone comp
any. In all honesty, he hadn’t really thought about it: about how she might be trying to get through to his mobile and failing. Mitch was about to get up and ask to use the phone in the pub, when Vince returned with the drinks – an orange for himself, tea yet again for Helen – and it wasn’t long after that the meals arrived. They were probably the only people in the entire place eating, which explained the quickness. Brought over by a burly man Mitch didn’t recognize, who could have been the cousin of the guy from the service station, complete with apron, Mitch soon began hoovering it up. He hadn’t realized quite how starved he was and being in a fight, however brief or half-hearted, had really given him an appetite.

  Vince had plumped for the rib-eye and let him try a bit, while Helen had just gone for a shepherd’s pie. She smiled when she saw how quickly Mitch was eating. ‘Nice to see a growing boy enjoying his food,’ she commented.

  ‘I’ll be growing outwards at this rate,’ Mitch said, swallowing down another mouthful.

  ‘Tuck in, you’ve earned it.’

  ‘It’s all home-cooked on the premises,’ Vince added. ‘That’s what makes it so tasty.’

  ‘Because it’s cooked by someone else?’ said Helen, then looked at her husband seriously – before laughing. ‘Relax Vincent, food always tastes better when you eat out and someone else is doing the washing up afterwards.’

  ‘Truer words have never been spoken,’ said Vince.

  The conversation had flowed quite easily after that, doing the reconnecting thing Mitch had been thinking about. But also finding out more about what his father had been going through in the last few months of his life.

  ‘You’d pop in and find that he’d left the taps running in the bathroom, or the oven on or something. We did our best to keep on top of it, but it was getting to the stage where he was going to need help twenty-four hours a day.’ Helen sipped at her third cup of tea while they’d been there. ‘But you know how obstinate he could be. Getting him to agree to something like that would have been like … Well, it would have been hard. And I didn’t want to be the one who signed off on that, doctor or no doctor.’

  ‘I can see where you’re coming from, but surely if he was that bad …’ said Mitch, still nursing his first Coke.

  Vince nodded. ‘I suppose we just didn’t want to admit it.’

  ‘I really wish you’d let me know sooner,’ Mitch told them again. ‘I’d have come straight away.’

  ‘But your job, your life,’ Helen reminded him.

  ‘I’d still have come.’ Mitch began picking at a beermat, tearing little bits of cardboard from the edge. ‘Actually, look, I didn’t want to tell you this when I saw you the first time, but, well, I kind of lost my job.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said his aunty. ‘Are you all right, love?’

  ‘What happened?’ asked his uncle, so Mitch gave them the broad strokes. ‘The world’s such a violent place, isn’t it?’

  ‘You poor thing,’ said Helen, rubbing his arm. ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘It’ll be okay, I’ll figure something else out. Security, maybe?’ He stopped picking the mat and laughed. ‘Although I should probably remember to lock the doors if I’m going to go into that line of work. Not the best of starts, is it?’

  His uncle shook his head, but he was actually disagreeing rather than agreeing. ‘You’ll be fine, son. I can see big things in your future.’

  Mitch laughed again. ‘Bills probably.’

  Vince couldn’t help laughing at that one. ‘No, although those don’t stop coming, do they? What is it they say, taxes and—’

  ‘Death,’ said Mitch looking at him. ‘Death and taxes.’

  That killed it stone dead, literally. But then Mitch was good at doing that. Could ruin a fun night out in seconds, so Lucy had told him … Lucy, he really should let her know what’s going on.

  His aunty and uncle had headed off not long after that, though Mitch said he’d hang around for a little while. Didn’t fancy going back to his dad’s just yet – not after everything that had happened there overnight. ‘All right, just don’t drink too much, okay?’ said Helen, shoving notes into his hand. It felt like he was getting pocket money again, and no one had monitored his drinking since he was in his teens.

  As Vince held out a hand, letting Helen go first, he winked at him and whispered, ‘You do what you want, young Mitch. Have one on me.’ The man slipped him another couple of notes, then clapped him on the arm.

  When he’d woken up, the last thing on his mind was having another drink – not after two nights on the trot. But, sitting there these past few hours, and watching as more people filtered in, the evening crowd he guessed, Mitch had suddenly started to fancy a drop or two of the real ale here. His taste for booze returning.

  Plus, as his uncle had said, this was the hub of any community. The longer he hung around, the more he might find out. Perhaps he could even sniff out the culprits from last night, get a lead on them?

  Just take it steady, he told himself. Dull the ache in those ribs, if nothing else. Take the edge off more than a beermat. Just don’t get into another state.

  Oh, all right, he thought. Maybe just a little bit.

  Chapter 12

  She looked in a right state.

  That’s what his old mum would have said if she’d seen this woman: hair in disarray, black bags under her eyes. If anything, Bella looked even worse than she had the day before, like she’d aged about ten years.

  Watts hadn’t been able to get her off his mind all evening, all night. Had had about as much sleep as Bella, judging from her appearance. What had she done: waited up in case those people who’d broken in had come back? If there even had been anybody. He was beginning to wonder whether it had been a good idea to check up on her, though, during his lunch hour – because this was doing very little to put his mind at rest. Watts was more worried than before about her now that she’d answered the door.

  He’d knocked several times, after pulling up outside the caravan park itself and heading in on foot; Watts wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to park inside, there only seemed to be one space and that was currently occupied by Bella’s lime-green Beetle. Which was how he knew she was in, or should be.

  It had taken ages to get a response, however, and when Bella appeared in the doorway it was as if she was emerging from hibernation, or she’d been in a coma. Except she didn’t look as rested as someone who’d been asleep for the winter, not by a long chalk – dressing gown pulled tightly around her like a shield. The first thing she’d done was yawn, before either of them could get any words out.

  ‘I … hey there. How’re you … Are you okay?’

  Bella gazed at him like she didn’t recognize who he was, and it had been less then twenty-four hours since he’d seen her last. ‘Ashley?’

  ‘Yeah. Are you—’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she told him, though not even she seemed to believe a word of it. ‘Just this headache, you know?’

  ‘You’ve still got it?’

  She nodded, then winced. He couldn’t help peering into the caravan behind her, which looked in just as much of a state as the woman who owned it. How had it got in that much of a mess in a day? It had been fine when he’d been here last. ‘I’m finding it hard to concentrate as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Do you mind if I come in?’ he asked her, not wishing to be pushy but his detective’s radar was kicking in and he really wanted to see the place.

  Rabbit trapped in the headlights didn’t even begin to cover it. ‘D-Do you fancy a walk instead, maybe down on the beach? It might clear my head a bit.’ She was waking up apparently, enough to work out a way around him seeing inside the caravan proper. Enough to stall him, by getting him to wait outside while she ducked back in to ‘get changed’, as she told him when he agreed to the walk.

  Watts heard the banging around inside, her clearing things up – clearing things away, possibly in case he wanted to call and look inside upon their return. Just what the hell was she doing in there
? he wondered. But before he could knock again, there she was at the door, wearing trainers, shorts and a sweatshirt. Dressed for the beach, which was more than Watts was in his suit.

  As they’d taken the steps down to Golden Sands beach, and walked alongside the ocean, he’d loosened his tie and slung his jacket over his shoulder, though not before rolling his sleeves up.

  Neither of them had spoken to begin with, Watts stopping to pick up a pebble or two and skimming them into the water. He’d always loved the sea, but then he would do having lived here all his life. Watts wondered then about how long Bella had been here; he knew she hadn’t been born in this area but not a lot else. He was just about to ask her, for something to say more than anything, when she stopped and turned to him.

  ‘Ashley, do you think I’m crazy?’

  ‘What? Why? Because of the whole medium thing?’ He recalled tapping his temple the last time he’d seen her, had kicked himself afterwards – even if he didn’t really believe as such.

  ‘That wasn’t … But, yeah, I guess. Usually I don’t care about what people think of me. Or what I do. I’m just trying to help folks, you know? Lately, though, I’m starting to wonder if …’ She shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m thinking that I might be losing the plot.’

  ‘You don’t, I mean forgive me for saying, but you still don’t look that well.’ Should he say something? He figured he might as well. ‘Actually, you look worse than yesterday, Bella.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, you look great to me, I just …’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘God, I’m not coming across very well, am I? I just meant you look very tired. Did you get any sleep at all?’

  ‘Yeah. A bit. But it was difficult with all the—’ She stared at him. ‘After what happened.’

  ‘I get that, people in your situation. It’s bound to destabilize you, make you question things. As for whether I think you’re crazy.’ Watts shook his head finally. ‘No, I don’t think that at all.’