The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  Gwen did not try to deny this. ‘You have to try to understand him, Dave. He’s an old man, and it’s all just going a little too fast for him. Whenever he gets taken by surprise by something, he closes himself off even more. It’s always been like that.’

  They climbed into Dave’s rickety old car, which as usual played up a bit before starting. He asked himself yet again how long the rust bucket would keep going.

  ‘Where are we off to?’ asked Gwen as they drove down the drive and out. The large brown gate hung crooked on its hinges. For years it had not closed, but no one had repaired it. On the whole of the Beckett farm, which had been handed down from generation to generation of the family, it seemed as though no one repaired anything any more, either out of inability or a lack of money.

  ‘Let me surprise you,’ replied Dave mysteriously, although he himself still had no idea and hoped something would turn up spontaneously.

  Gwen leant back, then sat bolt upright in her seat again. ‘Today that policewoman was on the telly. Detective Inspector What’s-Her-Name. The one who’s investigating the Amy Mills case. You know, that girl …’

  It was almost three months since the horribly mutilated corpse of the twenty-one-year-old student had been found in the Esplanade Gardens in Scarborough, and people around here still talked about it almost every day. Nothing like that had happened here for a long time. The victim had been grabbed by the shoulders and her head smashed repeatedly against a stone wall. Leaked forensic details had left the public shocked. The culprit had repeatedly paused in order to let his victim become conscious once more, before then redoubling his violence. Amy Mills had suffered for at least twenty minutes, regaining consciousness again and again, before she finally died.

  ‘Of course I know who Amy Mills is,’ said Dave, ‘but I haven’t seen the news today. Has there been a development?’

  ‘There was a press conference. There’s a lot of pressure on the investigators, so they had to talk to the public again. But at the end of the day it looks like they don’t have anything. Not a trace, not a clue. Nothing.’

  ‘Must have been a real crazy, the guy who did it,’ said Dave.

  Gwen shrugged, with a shiver. ‘At least she wasn’t raped. She didn’t have to endure that too. But that also means the police are completely in the dark about a possible motive.’

  ‘I’ll say one thing though: it wasn’t too clever to walk through that empty place on her own at night,’ said Dave. ‘The Esplanade Gardens – what a godforsaken place that late at night!’

  ‘It can’t have been about money,’ stated Gwen. ‘Or jewellery. Her purse was still in her handbag, and she was still wearing her watch and two rings. It’s almost as if … as if she died for nothing.’

  ‘Do you think it would have felt any different to her if he had smashed her head in for a thousand pounds?’ asked Dave rather sharply. Seeing her shocked face he added soothingly, ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. Either way it’s not a pretty thought that there’s a madman running around in Scarborough and apparently killing women without any reason. But who knows? Maybe it was motivated by jealousy or something like that. A ditched boyfriend who couldn’t deal with his anger … Some people lose it when they are rejected.’

  ‘But if there had been an ex-boyfriend who could have done something like that, then the police would know about him,’ replied Gwen.

  They were driving through the dark October evening. The Yorkshire Moors began here. Under the pale light of the moon the landscape was hilly and bare. Wooden fences alternated with stone walls. Now and then the shape of a cow or sheep loomed out of the night. It was late for an evening meal, but Dave had had to give a Spanish lesson and had only managed to leave Scarborough after eight.

  At least he finally had an idea where they could go: a simple pub not far from Whitby. Not exactly romantic, but cheap and certainly not a place where the people whose opinion mattered to him would go. He had already realised that Gwen never complained – she made no demands at all. He could have promised her a candlelit dinner and then taken her to Kentucky Fried Chicken. She would have accepted without a word. The only man in her life until now had been her father. Although she was devoted to her father, feeling love, loyalty and a need to care for him, she had no illusions – as Dave had found out – about their lives. Their monotonous existence, without any hope of a change, on an isolated and dilapidated farm in Staintondale was neither healthy nor fulfilling. She knew that and was thankful that Dave had turned up so unexpectedly in her life. Day and night she was tormented by the fear that she might lose him again. She made every effort not to annoy him with complaints, demands or even by quarrelling.

  I’m a scoundrel, he thought, a real scoundrel. But at least I’m making her happy for now.

  And he wouldn’t hurt her. He would see the matter through. He had decided to do it, and there was no alternative.

  Gwen Beckett was his last chance.

  And I’m her last chance, he thought, and he only suppressed the dawning panic with difficulty. He would spend the rest of his life with this ageing girl at his side. That could be another forty or fifty years.

  He often thought about her. She had told him some things about her life. Other things he had worked out for himself. Her father had always been very indulgent with her. She interpreted this behaviour as displays of his love, although Dave sometimes thought that it could also be an expression of his indifference. When she was sixteen she had left school, because it ‘wasn’t fun any more’ as she said. Not even then did Daddy object. Gwen had never trained for a skilled job, but had considered that keeping house for her widowed father was her life’s task. She contributed to the family kitty by turning two rooms in the farmhouse into B&B bedrooms. The little business pottered along without any real success, which was no surprise to Dave. The worn old house desperately needed renovation if it were to attract people who wanted to spend their free time on the North Yorkshire coast. After a number of decades, the region was again becoming popular as a holiday destination. However, people today wanted a decent bathroom, a shower with a boiler whose hot water had not run out after a few minutes, pretty and clean crockery for breakfast and a place which looked reasonably attractive as they rolled up for what would be the most expensive weeks of their year. Overgrown with weeds and decorated with muddy potholes, the Becketts’ farmyard hardly invited people to stick around. Indeed, apparently there was only one couple who came back regularly to spend their holidays here. The main reason, as Gwen had admitted, was that they had two Great Danes which no one else allowed them to bring.

  Who is this Gwen Beckett, he asked himself many times each day, much too often.

  She was very shy, but he had the impression that this resulted largely from the fact that she led such a retiring life and had forgotten how to deal with other people. She spoke warmly and respectfully about her father, and sometimes she gave the impression that she could imagine nothing more wonderful than to spend time with him, letting her best years pass her by in the isolation of Staintondale. Yet then he had to remember her words from that July evening, when they had met: ‘It’s not as if I was particularly happy with my life.’

  Off her own bat she had found a course that aimed to give people like her self-confidence and a winning appearance. She had registered and driven every week for three whole months to Scarborough, to not miss a single hour. She had done exactly what the agony aunts in women’s magazines suggest to readers with the same problems as Gwen: do something! Go beyond your comfort zone! Meet other people!

  Gwen must really have the feeling, thought Dave, that in the blink of an eye she had been as successful as they promised. Sometimes she herself seemed barely able to believe it. She had gathered her courage and driven to the Friarage School, and on her very first day there she had met the man whom she was now going to marry and spend the rest of her life with.

  She was happy. And yet he also sensed her fear – the fear that something could still go wrong, that
the dream could still burst like a bubble, that everything looked too beautiful to be true …

  And when he thought of that, he felt rotten. Because he knew that her fear was justified.

  As if she could guess that he was going over and over the relationship in his head and that his thoughts were not all completely happy ones, she asked out of the blue: ‘The engagement is still on for Saturday?’ She sounded apprehensive.

  Dave managed to ease her worries with a smile. ‘Of course, why ever not? Unless your father suddenly boycotts the whole event and doesn’t let us leave the house. But then we can still find a restaurant.’

  Please, not that! A friend, of Gwen’s was coming from London, then the married couple with their two Great Danes who happened to be holidaying on the Beckett Farm right then, and Fiona Barnes, the old family friend. He could not quite see how she fitted in with the Becketts. Seven people! He had almost no money left. He would not be able to afford a visit to a restaurant. If old Mr Beckett caused a ruckus, he would be in a real jam.

  He tried to not let his worries show. ‘Nothing will wreck our engagement,’ he reassured her.

  Gwen reached a hand out to him, and he took it in his. It was ice-cold to the touch. He turned it over, drew it to his lips and breathed warm air onto her palm.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said. Those words always worked well, he knew that. They worked particularly well with women like Gwen, not that he had ever met such an extreme example of this kind of woman before. ‘I’m not playing with you.’

  No, it was not a game. It certainly was not.

  She smiled. ‘I know, Dave. I can feel it.’

  Not true, he thought. You are afraid, but you know that you cannot give in to your fear. We have to go through with it. Both of us get something out of it. Each in our own way.

  It had now grown completely dark around them. They drove on into the lonely night and Dave felt like he was driving through a black tunnel. His throat tightened. He would feel better after the first whisky, he knew that; after the second even better, and he did not care whether or not he would still be fit to drive by then.

  Just as long as these thoughts stopped hammering so hard in his head. Just as long as his future started to feel more bearable.

  Friday, 10th October

  1

  Jennifer Brankley was reminded of her school days – not so much of the years when she dressed in a blazer, pleated blue skirt and wore a big brown satchel on her back, but rather the years when she herself taught. Every morning she would arrive at school ready for action and looking forward to the day that lay ahead of her. It felt as if it were decades ago; sometimes it felt as if it were a memory of another life. And yet only a few years separated her from that time which she privately called ‘the best time of my life’. A few years … and now nothing was like it had been once.

  She had leant the plastic bags with the shopping – mainly dog food for her Great Danes, Wotan and Cal – against a tree just behind the high black wrought-iron fence which surrounded the Friarage Community Primary School. It was a large complex, with a number of one- or two-storey red-brick buildings. All with blue blinds in the windows. Up to the left behind the school rose the hill on which the castle stood. In front of that was St Mary’s Church, widely known because Anne Brontë is buried in its churchyard. The castle and church seemed to protect the town, the school, the children.

  A pretty place, thought Jennifer.

  It was the sixth or seventh holiday that she and her husband Colin had passed on the Beckett Farm in Staintondale, and Jennifer, in particular, had come to love North Yorkshire. It had high windswept moors and wide valleys; endless meadows with stone walls; precipitous cliffs which plunged straight down into the sea; and small sandy bays nestling into the rugged rocks. She loved the town of Scarborough also, and its two large, semi-circular bays divided by a spit of land, as well as its old harbour, the fine houses up on South Cliff, and all the old-fashioned hotels whose façades had to stand up to the wind and the salt water and so were always peeling a little. Colin mumbled sometimes to himself that it might be nice to spend the holiday somewhere else, but that would have meant leaving Cal and Wotan in kennels, which was out of the question for such highly sensitive animals. Luckily it had been Colin’s idea originally to have pet dogs, and he had been clear that they should be particularly big dogs. Jennifer could always remind him of that when he complained. The main point for Colin had been the daily need to take them for walks of several hours. ‘A miracle cure for depression,’ he had said, ‘and healthy in every other respect too. One day you won’t be able to do without the activity and fresh air.’

  He had been right. The dogs and walks had changed her life. They had helped her to climb out of the trough. They might not have made her a really happy woman, but certainly one who found a meaning in her life once more.

  The dogs had been given to her by a charity that tried to find new owners on the internet for Great Danes who needed a good home. Cal had been found tied up at the side of a country road as a one-year-old, while Wotan had been brought to the animal shelter by his owners, after they realised slightly too late that life with such a big dog was not easy on the eighth floor of a tower block.

  People’s stupidity is terrible, Jennifer often thought. It’s often worse than intentional cruelty, because it’s so widespread. Stupidity and carelessness. That’s what causes so much suffering, particularly for animals.

  Today she had left the dogs on the farm with Colin and had gone to town with Gwen. Gwen had been taking part for three months in a course to conquer shyness. Its last class had been this past Wednesday and the course tutor had arranged a little leaving party on Friday afternoon. Jennifer had made sure she did not comment on the course. She did not believe in all that stuff. Were people who had become set in their ways over decades supposed to be trained in three months in how to change completely and take charge of their lives? In her opinion, this kind of thing was out to make money from the very real problems and issues of often desperate people – people who were willing to grasp at any straw and pay good money for it too. Gwen had admitted that she had spent all her savings on the course, but Jennifer did not have the feeling that Gwen had really benefited greatly from it. Of course, she was different now, but that had nothing to do with the mumbo-jumbo of those Wednesday afternoons, not in Jennifer’s opinion. Instead it was down to the absolutely astounding turn her private life had taken. A man. A man who had fallen in love with her.

  The engagement party was tomorrow. Jennifer had scarcely been able to believe it. Seeing as Gwen had met him here in this school, she had to admit that taking part in the course, and the sacrifice of her savings, had not been completely in vain.

  Gwen was getting married! This was sensational, a gift, an amazing turn of fate to Jennifer, who although she was only ten years older than her friend had always felt motherly towards her. And yet it was also something that filled her with unease: who was this man? Why had he chosen Gwen? She might be friendly and caring, but she had never yet managed to catch herself a man. She was so old-fashioned, so naive. She could only ever talk about her father, Daddy this and Daddy that, and which man would not be driven crazy by that, sooner or later?

  Jennifer wanted to be happy for Gwen, with all her heart, but she could not. She had caught a glimpse of Dave Tanner the day before, when he came to the farm to pick up Gwen for a meal out, and since then she was even more uneasy. Judging by the car that he drove, he barely had money, and how could he? He made ends meet giving French and Spanish lessons, and lodged in a single furnished room. That did not exactly suggest hidden wealth. However, he was good-looking and seemed sophisticated. She had seen that in the few short moments in which she had observed him from the window of her room. Without a doubt, he could have very different women to Gwen – younger, more pretty and dued-up women, even in his financial difficulties.

  His obviously catastrophic personal situation might be the reason for his romance with Gwen, and t
he thought of this had not let Jennifer sleep that past night.

  She had held her tongue. To Gwen, at any rate. She had talked about her fears with Colin, who warned her strongly against getting involved. ‘She’s a grown-up. She’s thirty-five years old. It’s time that she made her own decisions. You can’t always protect her!’

  Yes, thought Jennifer, as she looked at the school, peaceful under the afternoon sun of the quiet October day, he’s right. I have to stop trying to save Gwen from all possible mishaps. She’s not my daughter. She’s not even related to me. And even if she were – she has reached an age when she has to make her own choices about her direction in life.

  The door of the front building opened. The people coming out must be on the course that Gwen was on. Jennifer tried not to fall into easy prejudices, nor into an excessive curiosity. What do they look like, the people who see in such a course their last chance to change their lives? Were they like Gwen, blushing easily, somewhat old-fashioned, reserved and actually really nice? Or were they unpleasantly uptight, bitter, frustrated? Aggressive? So ugly that it took your breath away?

  They looked pretty normal, Jennifer realised. Many more women than men. Only two men, in fact. The women were wearing jeans and jumpers, light coats. It was not a cold day. Some were pretty. Not that any of them were stunning beauties, nor were any wearing very bright or provocative clothes. All in all, they were indeed rather retiring people, who would not want to be the centre of attention. They certainly did not give the impression of being at all disturbed, strange or disgusting.

  Jennifer smiled when she saw Gwen, who was wearing a flowery calf-length skirt as always, and big boots. And where had she got that terrible coat? Hopefully her fiance would be able to persuade her to do without it one day.

  Gwen came over, in the company of a man and a woman who both looked to be between thirty and forty. At first glance, the woman looked rather nondescript, but on second glance you noticed that she was really rather attractive. Gwen made the introductions. ‘This is Jennifer Brankley. Jennifer – Ena Witty and Stan Gibson.’