by Ann Troup
‘Where in the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick!’ She yelled, before he’d even had chance to put his keys down.
‘Don’t start, I’m a grown man and where I’ve been is my business’ he shot as his eyes took in the scene in front of him, ‘what the hell happened here?’
Delia was on her feet now, ‘you might well ask!’
He spotted Amy’s bag on the floor. ‘Oh my God, where’s Amy, what happened, where is she, is she alright?’ he demanded, adrenaline surging through his system like acid, making his heart cringe with fear.
‘How should I know? This whole bloody mess is all your fault!’ Delia cried hurling Rachel’s SOS bracelet at him, so that it hit him square in his chest. ‘She could be anywhere thanks to you, you stupid sod.’
Charlie bent to pick up the bracelet. ‘Where did you get this?’ His voice a hoarse tight whisper.
‘I found it on your coffee table, and before you ask I don’t know where Amy got it from, but I’m pretty damn sure she worked out what it was and who it belongs to. Look on the computer, she found out where she lives.’ Delia said desperately. ‘She’s been in your box upstairs too; I found this in the garage.’ She showed him the ravaged tin, empty of its contents.
Realisation dawned on Charlie, draining the colour from his face, and robbing the strength from his legs. ‘Fuck, she’s gone to look for her hasn’t she?’ He said staggering towards the sofa and collapsing on to it. Glass crunched under his feet, he picked up the shattered picture frame. ‘Oh God. Everything was in that tin, letters, the marriage certificate, Rachel’s ring, everything. She knows we lied! Oh God.’
‘Well, he isn’t going to be much good to us is he?’ Delia said, her anger suddenly ebbing away, leaving her feeling like the tired old woman she really was.
Charlie leapt to his feet and lurched towards the kitchen where he flung open the cupboard door and saw the false pipe hanging loose.
‘What the hell are you doing now?’ Delia called.
‘She’s got five hundred quid in cash; I think she’s gone to London,’ he said, already back in the lounge searching for his keys. ‘I’m going to get her.’
‘You think she’s going to want to see you after this?’ Delia demanded, waving her hand across the room, framing the chaos for him as if he hadn’t noticed the significance of it himself.
‘I’m not prepared to give her the choice. Besides it was you who told her Rachel was dead, not me. I didn’t have a choice but to go along with it did I?’
Delia set her mouth into a grim line. ‘It was for the best.’ She said defensively.
Charlie hit the door with his fist, ‘What so she could find out like this? Did you honestly think Rachel would stay away forever, that one day it wouldn’t all come out?’ He yelled, making Delia jump.
In Delia’s mind, the best form of defence was always attack. ‘Don’t you bloody well blame me for this mess! All I did was to help make the best of a bad job, clear up after yet another of your balls ups. She agreed, the day she left, and she agreed that Amy should think she was dead. It was the best way, the only way. If it were up to her she would never have come back, but you, you had to keep pushing it, going up there, pushing her and pushing her. You’re like some filthy dog, having to go back again and again to smell your own shit!’
Charlie stared at her, confused. ‘What did you say? The day she left, what about the day she left?’
Delia looked away from him, her temper had got the better of her and she had said too much.
Charlie leapt across the room, grabbing her by the arm, pinching the loose flesh and shaking her. ‘YOU SAW HER DIDNT YOU?’ he yelled.
Delia closed her eyes and tried to pull away from him.
He dropped her arm and turned away from her in disgust, clutching the sides of his head as if it were a bomb about to explode. ‘Eighteen years mum. Eighteen years you’ve let me believe that she dumped my daughter on your doorstep and walked away. Why would you do that, why would you let me despise her for something she didn’t do? You talked to her, you saw her, and you let her go.’ He was shaking his head in anguish, unable to accept this new information, which was so fundamentally undermining to everything he held to be true.
Delia couldn’t answer him. Grief and regret were overwhelming her, causing her whole body to tremble. Her world was falling apart and she didn’t know what to do to stop it. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry.’ It was all she could say.
‘Tell… me... what... happened,’ Charlie demanded through gritted teeth.
Delia shook her head, having to hug herself to stop the shaking. ‘I didn’t know what else to do, she came round with Amy, and she was in such a state. She was in bits. She told me to tell you she’d abandoned her, she knew you would never let her go if you didn’t have a reason to hate her.’
‘Damned right I wouldn’t have let her go! She and Amy were everything to me, my whole world. We would have been OK, we would have coped, once I got her away from that damned family she wouldn’t have had the fits anyway, you know that, she was always all right when she was away from them. I know she was scared, but we would have been OK. So what was it mum, did she come to you for help? Did you talk her out of staying, so damned glad to see the back of her that you persuaded her to go? Tell me how it was, tell me what you thought was better about letting her go and destroying our lives?’ He spat so angry he could have grabbed her by the throat and gladly squeezed.
Delia was in bits, everything she had tried so hard to hold together was slipping away. Amy had run away and her son could do nothing but look at her with hate in his eyes. All she had ever done was do her best to protect him, all of them. That day there had been no choice, to tell him the truth would have destroyed him completely. What she had done had been the lesser evil, the choice with the least collateral damage attached. He needed to know that, he needed to hear the facts, and then he would know that she had never done anything other than shelter him and Amy. She took a breath ‘Alright. I tell you how it was, but you’re not going to like what you hear, so we’d better both sit down and pull ourselves together.’
Charlie dropped heavily into a chair and stared at her, waiting, his jaw twitching with anger.
Delia lowered herself wearily onto the sofa, ‘Yes, you can look at me like that and blame me for everything that’s gone wrong for you. Why change the habit of a lifetime? Always someone else isn’t it? Everyone always out to get you aren’t they? Well, son, did it ever occur to you that this whole, vile mess all comes back to you?’ She looked at the expression on his face, ‘yes Charlie Jones. You, and believe me it is a vile mess too.’ She paused, ‘as for Rachel, I loved that girl like she was my own. I would never have hurt her, not in a million years. But you, you hurt her deeper than anyone ever could have and you didn’t even know it, because you were so wrapped up in yourself. If anyone has a right to be bitter and hard it’s that poor girl, and she was the one left alone to shoulder the lot, while you screwed you life up feeling sorry for yourself.’ She shook her head sadly, wearily.
Charlie sighed, ‘are you ever going to get to the point, or would you just like to carry on digging at me?’
Delia rounded on him. ‘Shut up! You arrogant little sod! You have no idea what you are asking me to tell you here, so shut up and have the decency to hear me out, or by God I’ll slap that look off your face once and for all! I’m seventy five years of age and about to tell you about the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, so show me some damned respect you little shit!’
She took a breath, and crossed her arms. ‘That day Rachel had gone back to the house, to tell them that you and her were married, that Amy was yours, and that she was leaving for good. You knew that, you were the one that wanted her to do it, stand up to them, remember? Yes, so don’t sit there looking all innocent like. Anyway, I got a visitor that day, her Ladyship herself deigned to call, and she had something very interesting to say. Got your attention now have I? Good.’ She took another deep brea
th, her face creasing in distaste as she went on. ‘She had a tale to tell alright. Quite a tale. You see Charlie boy it turns out that she isn’t Rachel’s mother after all, Frances is. Yes Frances, your little playmate way back then. Pregnant at fourteen. Of course, Valerie couldn’t face the shame of it, so she took Frances away, and came back telling the world that the baby was hers. Remember that? Yeah thought you might. No one was any the wiser were they?’
‘Yeah, bit of a shocker admittedly, but what does it have to do with Rachel leaving?’ Charlie asked with a shrug. ‘Makes no difference to me who her mother is, the fact that it’s not Valerie is a bonus in my mind’. Jesus, poor Rachel!
Delia shook her head from side to side several times. ‘See there he goes with the arrogance again. Rachel overheard that conversation Charlie, she had come in the back door, was standing in the kitchen listening to the whole thing. So how do you think she reacted when she found out who her father was? Eh?’
Charlie was confused. ‘What the hell are you on about Mum, get to the point will you!’
Delia stood up; she didn’t want to be sitting down when she said the next words. ‘Put it this way, how do you think Rachel felt when she heard that she and Amy have the same father?’
Nothing happened for a minute or so, no sound intruded save the ticking of the clock, nothing stirred except the shifting look of horror that crossed Charlie’s face again, then again. His stomach erupted sending a torrent of thick yellow bile up into his throat so that he had no choice but to spew it out onto the carpet until he was empty, feeling nothing but spasms of pain in his gut.
Delia could do nothing but stand and watch. ‘I’m sorry son. I never wanted to tell you, but you gave me no choice. Perhaps now you’ll understand why she left.’ She said eventually.
Charlie, head hanging over the side of the chair, gulping in air to stop the retching turned to her. ‘I was a fourteen year old kid mum’ he gasped, incredulous.
‘I know, doesn’t make it any less the truth.’ She said sadly, still ashamed.
Charlie gripped the arms of the chair, anchoring himself to its structure because it felt so much more solid to him than his own body did. ‘Truth? Truth? I can’t remember that last time I heard a word of that from anyone’s mouth. Are you telling me you actually believed what that poisonous old bitch told you? That I had got Frances pregnant?’ he demanded, he felt feverish, he felt weak, the implications of what he had just heard bombarded his brain like angry hornets. Sweat born of growing panic beaded his forehead.
Delia didn’t speak.
‘Like I said, I was a kid. Fourteen.’ He was running it through his head, the past, going over it again and again, just to make sure he had it right. Could he have forgotten something like that? Could a man forget his first sexual experience? No. Without a doubt no. ‘It never happened, she was lying. If you want to know the truth, the real truth. Patsy was the first, and I didn’t meet her until I was seventeen.’ Christ, at fourteen he had barely just discovered that you could do anything else but piss through it!
Delia just stood there, blinking like a dumb animal caught in the beam of a torch.
Charlie suddenly started to laugh. ‘Is ironic isn’t it, you never believed I was capable of murder, stood by me through all that. But ask if a man is capable of keeping it in his pants and you don’t believe a word of it! Thanks Mother, thanks a lot!’
‘No one would lie about that surely?’ Delia asked, not even to him, but to the ether as if it could give her a more convincing answer.
‘They lie about murder, why not that?’ Charlie reasoned bitterly. Then he roared in frustration, pain and grief, ‘How many years of my life does that family want? How many pounds of my flesh?’
Delia started to shudder again, she was defeated, suddenly feeling every one of her years hanging off her bones like lead weights.
Charlie looked at his mother, feeling nothing but disgust for her. He stood up, watching her flinch away from him as he moved across the room. ‘I’m going for a shower. I need to think. When I come out I want you gone.’
‘What are you going to do?’ She whispered, her voice trembling.
‘Go and find my daughter, and my wife, and fix this mess.’
From all the calls, they had received from people claiming they had seen Stella Baxter, only one warranted a follow up in Mike Ratcliffe’s mind. Putting anything in the papers always brought the cranks and the hoaxers out of the woodwork, but a phone call from the NHS didn’t exactly fit that category. It even seemed like he might have caught two birds with one stone. He had a reasonable suspicion that he had tracked down William Porter too.
Ferris had completed her work up on Roy Baxter and was currently awaiting the DNA results on the hair that was found on his body. With a bit of luck he’d be able to close the file soon, get Sam Benton off his back and take a bit of time off. A fishing trip, alone, away from home seemed like a good idea, a beatific smile came to his lips at the thought.
‘Looking smug boss, what’s making you so happy?’ Watson asked, placing a mug of tea down in front of him.
Ratcliffe grinned at her, ‘nothing more gratifying than a plan coming together Angela, we all sorted for this afternoon?’
‘All ready to go. Apparently, our woman always visits at two O’clock. We’ll be in place well before then. We need to set off from here by ten at the latest.’
Ratcliffe leaned forward and rubbed his hands together in fervent anticipation, ‘bring it on DC Watson, bring it on.’
‘I contacted Roy Baxter’s sister, about the body being released for burial.’ Angela said, perching on the edge of his desk, and then standing again quickly when he raised his eyebrows at her.
‘And?’
‘Didn’t want to know, in fact her exact words were “you can shove him in a bin bag and stick him on the local tip for all I care”. Nice woman’ she added with a wry grin.
‘I think we can safely say that he was not a popular man then. Better contact the relevant and get them to sort it then.’
‘What about the baby, doesn’t seem like anyone wants to sort that out either.’
‘Same goes.’ Ratcliffe said with a resigned shrug.
Angela nodded, though putting an innocent child into an unmarked mass grave, didn’t seem right to her.
The director of nursing didn’t want either his staff or his patients involved in the arrest of the suspect He insisted that whatever intervention the police were planning, it must take place outside the unit.
Given that the unit couldn’t be accessed without a key code, it wasn’t likely that they would miss Stella, if she was Stella, when she arrived. The plan was to intercept her calmly as she made her way to the building. Two officers would be inside the building just in case, and uniformed units were stationed discretely at all exit points. As they were dealing with a small, nondescript middle-aged woman, Ratcliffe didn’t anticipate too many problems. After all, she was hardly likely to pull a gun on them and start shooting, but it was best to be prepared, because you never knew what was going to pan out. It always paid to be one step ahead of the game.
According to the unit staff, her habit was to arrive at around 2 O’clock. She always signed herself in as Barbara Smith, never engaged in conversation with the staff, and left promptly an hour later. The biggest risk of the day was that she would have seen the media coverage and would know that she was likely to have been recognised by someone, ergo she wouldn’t turn up and Ratcliffe would have to justify some expensive policing to the powers that be. But, the unit staff had said that she looked very similar to the photograph, just older, so it didn’t seem that she had gone to any great lengths to disguise herself.
Having arrived early, they had attempted to interview Bill Smith, but had got nowhere, unable to get any sense out of him at all, he hadn’t even remembered that he’d had a visitor, let alone who she was. According to Peter Haines, William Porter had died in 1970, leaving his family practically destitute having lost the family
fortune through bad management and ill temper. Their only means of support was the income from a small stationary shop, which was run by Stella, but had been closed down when Valerie Porter had had her first stroke. Peter had urged them to sell the house and put Valerie in a nursing home, but Stella had refused to budge on the issue, even Frances Haines had been surprisingly reluctant according to Peter. Of course, it was now apparent that if Bill Smith were in fact William Porter then the house would not have been able to be sold, notwithstanding the fact that someone was concealing dead bodies on the premises. So Ratcliffe felt that he could safely conclude that Stella at least knew that her father was still alive. Had she bolted from the house after Valerie’s death because she knew the game was finally up?
Sitting there, in the car park, waiting for his first glimpse of her, Ratcliffe was impatient for answers.
‘Do you know what I don’t get’ Watson said as they scanned the area, ‘how come no one ever questioned that Baxter or Porter had disappeared?’
Ratcliffe thought it was a fair point, and something he’d been giving a fair deal of thought to, ‘well, the way I see it is that someone would have to give a shit about you to notice you were gone. As we have established, there are no friends, no relatives that give a damn. No work colleagues, not even a bloody milkman, hence no one to notice, no one to make a report. Porter was a recluse, and Baxter was a bastard, so it was good riddance to the Baxter, and Porter, Porter who?’
Watson had to agree; she had done most of the interviews of the neighbours, and had the misfortune of meeting Baxter’s sister, Maureen. None of the neighbours could remember William Porter, as all of them had moved in since 1970, besides not many of those big detached houses were private homes anymore, not many people could afford them. The house next door had been a Dentist’s surgery for the last thirty years. The one opposite had been converted into bedsits in the 1980’s and had an ever-shifting population. One was a bail hostel, one a residential home for the elderly, another owned by an elderly woman who had fallen foul of Valerie Porter somewhere back in the annals of history, and had stoically ignored her existence ever since. Ratcliffe was right, nobody knew and nobody cared. Even the family GP had to get their medical notes out of long-term storage and couldn’t recall ever having seen any of them. His predecessor was the one who had treated Rachel’s epilepsy, and there was no mention of any maternity care for any of them. Stella had done all the shopping, banking and paying of bills, and she had been so faceless that people had struggled to place her at all.
