The Anna McColl Mysteries Box Set 1

by Penny Kline

  David would be back home now. Talking to Iris? Or had he really moved back in with the osteopath? What difference did it make? It was over. Finally ended. I was free, let out of a self-imposed prison; but like many newly released prisoners part of me wanted to return to captivity. Still, I had known it would be like that.

  The street that led down to the pub was deserted, apart from a large dog with a black curly coat that bounded up to me then swerved and started sniffing among the empty fast-food containers that littered the pavement. A moment later, its owner appeared. A man in his early twenties with a shaved head, brown boots with no laces, and jeans and a denim jacket, caked in dirt. He stared at me, then whistled at the dog who returned obediently to his ankle.

  I paused in the entrance to the pub, peering through the glass into the public bar, where a game of darts was in progress. Six or seven men and a couple of young women, dressed up for an evening out. I watched them for a moment, wishing I was part of a large cheerful group, then I pushed open the other door and entered the relative quiet of the lounge bar.

  As soon as I stepped inside I could see him, standing by the bar counting out small change and chatting to the landlord. He had his back to me and when I spoke his name he jumped.

  ‘Eh? Oh, it’s you. I didn’t expect to see you in here.’ He paid for his drinks, then picked them up, his hands cupped round the three glasses.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Come and join us.’ He gestured with his head towards a dark corner at the back of the room. ‘No, wait, I’ll buy you a drink. What would you like?’

  ‘Put those down a moment, Rob. It won’t take long.’

  He replaced the glasses on the bar. The landlord asked if he could serve me and I ordered a half of bitter, then turned to face Rob.

  ‘Have you been in my flat?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I believed you when you said it wasn’t you sending the post cards.’

  ‘I told you, I hadn’t clue what you were on about.’ He kept looking at me and his face never moved a muscle. Usually he was clean-shaven but today he had the beginnings of what might be going to be a beard and moustache.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ I said. ‘The cards have gone.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’ He wasn’t angry, more intrigued. ‘Some bloke’s sent you picture post cards, then broke into your flat and stolen them back? When was this, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yesterday. Maybe before.’

  ‘And all he took was some post cards?’ His hands had returned to the glasses. ‘Look, I don’t know about any cards but there’s someone I want you to meet. Come on. Over here.’

  ‘No, hang on.’ But he was moving away.

  I paid for my drink and followed him across the room. He wasn’t lying. I was pretty certain of that. He hadn’t been in the flat and he knew nothing about the cards. I had wanted it to be Rob because that was the simplest explanation and because I wasn’t frightened of him.

  At a table near the empty fireplace sat a middle-aged man and a girl. I was surprised the landlord had agreed to allow the girl in, she looked so young. I suppose I had known, as soon as Rob said he had someone he wanted me to meet, that it would be Jenny. The middle-aged man had a thin sensitive face and light brown receding hair. He was wearing a fawn raincoat, and under it a dark sports jacket and a grey roll-neck sweater. He looked so like Jenny that there could be no doubt about who he was.

  ‘Right,’ said Rob, placing the drinks on the table and fetching another chair. ‘This is Lewis, Jenny’s dad. Lewis, this is Anna McColl, the lady Jen’s been going to see for help with her headaches and that.’

  Lewis Weir stood up and held out his hand.

  ‘How d’you do.’ His voice was almost as quiet as Jenny’s. His hand was long and narrow, and slightly damp. He looked nervous, a little bewildered, but extremely happy.

  Jenny seemed wildly excited. Her eyes darted from side to side but she avoided looking at me directly. On the wall above her head a picture of two sailing ships and a lurid orange sunset had started to slip out of its plastic frame.

  ‘I suppose you’re wondering what’s going on,’ said Rob, enjoying taking charge of the situation.

  ‘It’s not really any of my business.’

  ‘Oh, come on, that’s crap talk. Stop acting like a bloody psychologist, you’re part of all this. If it wasn’t for you — ’

  ‘Jenny,’ I said, leaning towards her, ‘does your mother know where you are?’

  I realized I was treating her like a child, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  Rob opened his mouth to explain, but Jenny spoke first. ‘Mum’s in hospital.’

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Stomach pains,’ said Rob. ‘Appendicitis.’ His voice was cold, cruel. He stood up and took off his leather jacket.

  Jenny was making patterns with her finger in a small pool of beer. I touched her hand.

  ‘When was your mother taken ill?’

  She looked at her father, then at Rob.

  ‘It was when you got back home, wasn’t it?’ said Rob.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Jenny. ‘Mum was lying down. She said she had a terrible pain. And it’s not her appendix, she had it out when she was only eight years old.’

  ‘You sent for an ambulance, did you?’ It was the first time Lewis had spoken. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he explained, ‘it didn’t seem wise to go round to the house.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny, ‘but it took ages to arrive.’

  ‘They always do.’ Rob turned to me, anxious to explain his part in things. ‘I got in touch with Jen’s dad. I mean I wrote to him a couple of weeks ago. Jen said she wanted to see him but she never thought he’d come.’

  ‘Perhaps Jenny should have told her mother first.’ I sounded like a strict school teacher, a killjoy who was spoiling the fun. But I felt sorry for poor Val.

  Rob gave me a pitying look. ‘Did Jen tell you about the headstone?’

  ‘No!’ It was the first time I had heard Jenny speak above a whisper. Now she was shouting. ‘Don’t talk about it. Be quiet.’

  People were turning round. Jenny stood up but her father put out an arm to restrain her.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I don’t think this is the best place to discuss any of this. I’ll leave it up to you, Jenny — I don’t want to interfere — but if you want to see me, come to my office. And bring your father if you’d like to.’

  I stood up and started walking away, but Rob came after me.

  ‘Listen, I wanted to tell you before, but Jenny wouldn’t let me.’ He broke off, breathing hard. ‘It’s sick, really sick.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The headstone. Jenny had an abortion. Last year it was. Some bloke she met at a disco.’

  ‘Oh, come on, she’s been telling you some fairy story. Jenny never goes to discos.’

  ‘A friend persuaded her. Someone from her old school. Then some guy put vodka in her Coke. You can guess the rest.’

  ‘I find it hard to believe, but even if it’s true what’s the headstone got to do — ’

  ‘Jenny can tell you tomorrow when she comes to your office.’

  He looked sullen, as though he felt he had been left out, as though he should have been invited to come and see me, as well as Jenny and her father.

  I thought of Val in hospital. Poor lonely Val. Why hadn’t she told me about the abortion? She had left it up to Jenny. It was the ‘bit of bother’ that Dr Ingram had referred to. Surely he could have told me about it. Surely it was his duty to tell me.

  ‘I must go,’ I said.

  ‘Right.’ Rob steadied himself against a table but he wasn’t drunk. Jenny had squeezed past him and was pushing something into my hand. Then she disappeared into the Ladies’ Room.

  I nodded to Rob, then pushed open the door, shoving Jenny’s exercise book, the one I had given her, inside my coat. Did it mean I had seen her for the last time? What was in the notebook or
had she returned it to me without writing a single word?

  Within moments the rain was running down my neck. I turned up my collar but it made no difference. Water spurted up from between broken paving stones. The smoke from inside the pub still clung to my hair. My mouth felt dry and I remembered that I had eaten nothing since breakfast and even then it had only been half a piece of toast and a cup of coffee.

  Back on the main road I paused to look at the lights reflected in the floating harbour. In the Royal Infirmary, less than a mile away, Val would be lying in one of the wards. Or even now she might be on the operating table, anaesthetized, dead to the world, oblivious of the little celebration that was going on inside the pub.

  Tomorrow I would call round and see if she was allowed visitors. Someone would have to tell her about Lewis’s visit and, later, she would want to know all about Jenny’s friendship with Rob. Somehow I had a feeling, during the next few weeks, it was going to be Val, not Jenny, who needed all the help and support.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I was home just after nine. I hung my coat over a chair, kicked off my wet shoes, and picked up Jenny’s exercise book which had fallen on the kitchen floor. It was slightly damp and when I opened it up the first page was blank. I was just about to toss it aside when I noticed writing which was just visible through the thin paper. It was large and spidery, written with a blue ballpoint pen, and when I flicked through the pages I discovered that she had filled up the notebook right through to the bottom of the final page. There were no dates, just line after line, almost as though it had been completed at one sitting.

  I left it lying on the kitchen table while I did my usual check of the flat. Bathroom. Everything the same as usual apart from a slightly dripping cold tap which I could easily have overlooked first thing in the morning. Bedroom. Unmade bed, but with no stray tissues wedged between headboard and mattress. Windows firmly closed, dressing-gown lying exactly where I had left it, muddle of bottles and jars the same as I remembered it. Next, the living room. The curtains were still drawn but recently I had left for work on several occasions without remembering to pull them back.

  When I switched on the light I noticed a paperback book lying half under the armchair. It was one I should have taken with me to the rubbish dump. A collection of Canadian short stories that David had bought off a stall in the market but never read. It could have been under the chair for ages and worked its way out. Or perhaps David had taken it off the shelf last time he came round. I picked it up and tossed it into the waste-paper basket, glancing at the title but barely taking it in. The Uninvited Guest by H. G. Wheal.

  Back in the kitchen I switched on the kettle, then the radio, then sat down with Jenny’s diary and started reading.

  ‘I don’t know what to put,’ it began. This had been crossed out several times and a couple of lines had been left empty before she had another try.

  A. says I have to keep a diary. I suppose it’s the treatment for people who don’t talk enough. I’m in my bedroom where there is a bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a chair, and a mirror. In the drawers there are eight pairs of pants, three bras, two vests I never wear, four pairs of woollen tights, six jumpers (four of them knitted by Mum), four shirts, and my school tie. In the wardrobe is my school skirt and blazer, two corduroy skirts, a dress I wore to my cousin’s wedding when I was fourteen, and an old anorak that’s too small. My duvet is pink with white roses. There is a matching pillow case and the curtains are made out of the same material. They all came from a place in the new shopping galleries at Broadmead. I had them for my sixteenth birthday.

  I paused to squeeze the rain out of my hair. I felt damp and chilled. I should have changed my clothes, got out the hair dryer, but I wanted to read on.

  Mum is downstairs. She thinks I’m resting. She says I’ve always been delicate. If I get better I may go to the college and study for my exams but Mum says you can study at home through the post and that might be better because then she could help me with the work.

  We get up at a quarter to eight. Then we have breakfast. Cereal with milk and sugar, then some toast and honey. Then I tidy my room and Mum does dusting or puts washing in the washing-machine. Then at ten o’clock we watch a television programme. People sit in the audience and a man says there’s going to be a discussion about domestic violence or bereavement or something. Mum thinks it’s really good. She only switched it off twice. Once when it was about abortion and another time when it was about dating agencies and finding a husband. Then when the commercials come on I make two cups of coffee and we drink it during the next programme which lasts about an hour and a half and has lots of different items about cooking and fashion and television personalities. We only have a light lunch. Soup or cheese and biscuits. After lunch there is a quiz programme and then two serials set in Australia. If Mum has to go to work I watch television on my own and I have to tell her what happened when she gets back. The children’s programmes are mostly quite boring but they have quizzes on the other channels and a programme from America which is a bit like the one after breakfast except the audience is bigger and people cry a lot.

  It was warm in the kitchen. I stood up and removed my tights and skirt. The tights felt itchy and my skirt was damp round the hem. Someone on the radio was talking about transvestism and whether small boys should be discouraged from dressing up in their mothers’ clothes. I switched it off and returned to Jenny’s diary. Her writing was untidy and didn’t stay on the lines of the exercise book but it was easy enough to read.

  I saw Rob today while Mum was at work. If she found out about him she would kill me. Rob has written a letter to Dad but it won’t get there because I couldn’t remember the address properly. Anyway he won’t answer it because he hates me and Mum. Rob says that can’t be right. He’s never met Mum but he says he knows her type only that’s not really fair because he doesn’t understand what she’s been through. I met Rob when I was coming back from my appointment with A. He asked me if I knew what the time was and it made me jump. Then he walked along with me and asked if I saw A. or one of the other ones. He used to see her but she got fed up with him. He wanted to know why I had to see her and I said it was because of my aches and pains. He said she wasn’t a doctor and I said I knew that but the doctor thought she might be able to help.

  I laid the notebook face down on the table. I wondered if Val had read it or if Jenny had kept it in a secret hiding place. The answer was on the next page.

  Rob keeps asking me about A. although he knows I’ve missed my last two appointments. He wants to know what she was wearing when I saw her. I can’t remember her clothes but he says I must try harder. Think. Think. Think! He asked if Dad’s got another bird and I said yes she’s someone he met at a conference but Mum doesn’t like talking about it. Mum says it’s better to think of him as dead. We don’t need him, me and Mum, we’re all right just the two of us. Rob says that’s bollocks. Poor Mum. I shall hide this notebook in the shed at the bottom of the garden because she hardly ever goes there in the winter although she might if she got suspicious and I expect she’ll find it like when she found the packet of sanitary towels and guessed what had happened.

  After Dad went Mum said it had affected me badly and I was disturbed because I was the child of a broken marriage. If I ever felt at all unwell it would be better if I stayed at home until I got my strength back. When I had headaches or a bad back Dr Ingram gave me a sick certificate. I don’t like him much. He has cold floppy hands and dandruff on his shoulders but Mum says he’s the best doctor in the area especially if you suffer from recurrent symptoms.

  Dr Ingram had a lot to answer for, I thought grimly. On the other hand, overbearing as he might be he was clearly no match for Val Weir.

  I turned the page.

  After Muffin was run over Mum cried for hours and hours. She said he’d been our last link with the past. Then later she said it would be all right as long as we had each other. She keeps asking me what A. says when I go to
see her. I told her she doesn’t say very much and Mum said that was probably just as well and it would be best if I did the same thing. If I told her about the baby she would think I was wicked. She wouldn’t understand it had all been because of that interfering busybody social worker.

  At this point Jenny had paused, or stopped for that particular day, but a few lines further down the page she started again, this time in pencil.

  I wanted to tell A. about the baby but if Mum found out I’d told her she’d get one of her moods and refuse to speak to me for days and days. I showed Rob the headstone and he said it was sick. It’s not a proper headstone, just a slab of something that the workmen next door left behind. Mum wanted to put it down the end of the garden but when I made a fuss she said we could take it to an old graveyard in Clifton then we could visit it and nobody would think anything of it. We took it in the car in the evening.

  It was raining but Mum said it had to be done straight away. I only went to the disco because Mum’s friend at work’s got this daughter and she thought we could be friends. If you have an abortion can they see a real baby? Karen said whatever I decided there was no need to feel guilty but Mum said the baby had been murdered and it would have been a girl and we would have called her Melanie. She wanted to write MELANIE on the headstone but I screamed so she said there was no need and anyway we would never forget who it was in memory of.

  There were still three or four pages left. The cover of the notebook had come away from the staples. I put it on one side and continued reading.

  I feel sorry for Mum because I’m all she’s got and although she smiles a lot and sings pop songs I don’t think she’s happy. She says things could be a lot worse. We’ve got plenty to be thankful for. A roof over our heads and enough to eat. I think I’m getting another headache. My neck aches and behind my ears. The doctor’s useless and I don’t see what A. can do. Mum followed her to the park and introduced herself. I expect they talked about what a problem I am. Later she asked A. round to the house because she wanted to know why I hadn’t come back from the shops until after six o’clock.