by Jessie Keane
I’ll be your wife, Clara remembered saying to him in the kitchen, when she’d slashed him with the carving knife.
But . . . oh shit, now Clara was starting to feel bile rising in her throat . . . had the lines between her and Bernie been blurred in Frank’s eyes? He’d taken on Clara, Henry and Bernie. They were part of a package, never to be split apart.
Clara swallowed hard. Then again. Finally she was able to get the words out. ‘Did . . . are you saying that Frank interfered with you? Is that what you’re saying, Bernie?’
Bernie looked at her with expressionless eyes. ‘Whenever you weren’t around, there he’d be. Waiting to pounce on me. On poor innocent little Bernie, so sweet-tempered, so accommodating.’ Bitterness laced her voice now. She let out a harsh, tremulous laugh. ‘Jesus, I was so glad when he died. If he’d lived any longer, you know what? I’d have poisoned the bastard.’
105
After that, Clara had to excuse herself. She asked for the loo, and Bernie directed her out along the hall. Liam looked at her white, waxen face curiously, but said nothing as she passed him by. Once in the toilet with the door securely locked, Clara lifted the lid on the stained and reeking communal toilet and vomited hard into the pan. She retched until only clear bile came up, thinking all the time Oh God, Bernie . . . oh, Frank, you fucking shit.
She had done everything for her family but in the end it turned out she had not done anywhere near enough. She had not saved Bernie from an elderly man’s depredations, in fact she had done worse: she had delivered her to his door. She had placed her in harm’s way.
God forgive me, I didn’t know. How could I know . . . ?
Composing herself, empty of sickness, Clara flushed the chain and turned to the sink. No soap. She rinsed her mouth, splashed her face with cold refreshing water. Looking around for a towel, she found none and so she wiped her face and hands on her dress. There was no mirror in there and she felt glad about that; she must look a fright.
She unlocked the door, went back along the hall, past Liam, and into the overheated, pot-stinking room again. Bernie was still sitting on the couch; she was on her third cigarette now. Chain-smoking – when had she started doing that?
Clara took her place opposite Bernie again and looked at her steadily. Clara’s heart was still racing, her stomach screwed up with tension, and her mind was turning it all over, thinking Could I have seen the signs? Did I miss anything that would have told me what was happening?
But she remembered nothing. Whatever Frank had done, he had done in secret, stealthily, creepy as a spider, waiting for her back to turn and then leaping in.
‘The pound note. You said you found it in Henry’s bed,’ said Clara.
‘I lied.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted to cause someone else as much pain as I was feeling. I wanted to hurt someone, something, it didn’t matter who or what. Poor little Henry was such an obvious target. And so were you.’
‘I thought it was all Henry, but he said it was you. God, Bernie, why? Why?’
‘He said he’d never tell,’ said Bernie.
Clara’s heart seemed to twist in her chest. That was the cry of a child, of the dear sweet Bernie she had always known. Not some monster who could steal from her own sister, burn an animal to death, and let her innocent brother take the blame.
‘I pushed him into it,’ said Clara. ‘Don’t blame Henry.’
‘I don’t. Not at all. I blame you.’ Suddenly Bernie’s tone was vicious. She pushed back her long sleeve. ‘Look at this, Clara. Look at what you’ve done to me.’
Clara looked and felt her stomach turn over with horror. There were countless red weals on Bernie’s arm. They looked like slash marks from a razor or a knife.
Bernie always wore long sleeves.
How long had she been doing this to herself? Months? Years? Forever?
‘Sometimes it helps,’ said Bernie with a crazy laugh. ‘If I cut myself, sometimes it just feels better, takes the pressure off, you know? That’s how it felt when I burned the dog.’
‘Frank’s dog,’ said Clara, aware that her voice was shaking.
‘Oh, I enjoyed that. That fucking thing. I hated it.’
‘And you let Henry take the blame. You let me think the worst of him.’
‘He knew I did it. He caught me in the act. And I told him that if he gave me away, if he didn’t take the blame, then I would be put away in jail and it would all be his fault.’
‘So he covered for you.’ Clara could see how this would happen: Henry, dragged from pillar to post all his childhood, had craved stability. Bernie’s actions had threatened that. And he would have wanted to protect his sister, to smooth these awful incidents over . . . yes, he would have covered for her. Of course he would.
‘Jesus, Bernie, I’m sorry,’ said Clara, her voice breaking.
But Bernie only shrugged. ‘You will be,’ she said flatly, and it sounded like a threat.
106
Clara was staring at her sister, at this hostile stranger, searching for some remnant of Bernie, the real Bernie, the kind and gentle girl she had once been.
Or pretended to be.
Because, for much of her life, that’s all Bernie had been: a pretence. Deep down she had been wounded, hurt beyond belief. Dragged into a situation in which she felt powerless. Clara’s heart bled for her, but at the same time she felt a shiver of complete revulsion. Who could do those things that Bernie had done? Who but a cold-blooded person, someone without any human feelings.
‘You said something died in you when we moved in with Frank,’ said Clara, trying to connect, trying to build some sort of bridge between herself and this woman she realized she barely knew.
‘Oh now, that’s the truth,’ said Bernie. She took up the cigarette packet but it was empty and she flung it aside, started chewing her lip. ‘I make the right noises though, don’t I? I watch the news and pretend to care. I talk to friends – I do have friends – and make out I give a shit for their troubles. Which I don’t. I tried . . . ’ Bernie clutched at her head at this point and gave a rueful smile . . . ‘I really tried with David. To get into it, into a proper relationship with a man, but somehow I couldn’t. I was frigid. Sexually. And maybe emotionally too. He wanted to marry me, of course. And of course it would have been a fucking disaster because he would have seen in the end that I was only pretending, only trying to be normal, and he would have wanted kids and I don’t think I could have faced that – but who knows? I wanted to make it work. But you stepped in, didn’t you, fixing it so I found those pictures, showing what he was really into.’
‘To be fair,’ said Clara, ‘I think he only did it for the money.’
‘As if that helps!’
‘You could get help,’ said Clara.
‘What, with what goes on in my brain? I suppose I could, yes.’ Bernie was staring at her sister. ‘You did all right out of it all, though, didn’t you? I doubt poor tubby old Frank bothered you very much. You wouldn’t let him, would you? Tough, that’s you. Always in charge, always in control. And now you’ve got that Redmayne bloke eating out of your hand.’
‘I don’t think Marcus Redmayne eats out of anyone’s hand,’ said Clara. ‘He’d bite, I promise you. Right through to the bone.’
‘D’you love him then? D’you feel all tingly,’ said Bernie mockingly, ‘when you see him?’
Shit, I do. I really do.
But Clara wasn’t about to share that with the wider world. Not even with her sister. Suddenly she felt tired, drained to nothing. All her life, she’d had the knives out for Henry. And she’d been so wrong, so completely and utterly sucked in by Bernie’s deception. It was Bernie who should have been her focus, her concern, not him.
And now . . .
Clara had to swallow hard to form the words. ‘Bernie . . . about Sal. The murdered girl, the one in the pictures.’
‘Oh, you mean the whore. David had a fling with her, you know. Not too big a surprise, wh
en you consider what they were up to together. I expect he found her a lot more accommodating in bed than I was. I bet she’d do the oral stuff and everything. I even struggled with the missionary.’
Clara felt as if someone had punched all the wind out of her. She felt disgusted, sick to her stomach. ‘Tell me you didn’t. Please. Just tell me it isn’t true, and you’ll never hear another word about it from me.’
Bernie’s eyes were wild and bright in her pixie face. ‘And if I don’t?’ she asked.
‘Then . . . I don’t know. I suppose I’ll have to go to the police. Or something.’
‘Oh shit, Clara. Of course I didn’t kill that bitch Sal Dryden. But you know what? I did kill your precious Toby. I set his house alight and him in it after you ruined my chances with David. Why should you be happy, and not me? Huh?’
Clara could only stare. Toby had died because of Bernie’s bitterness toward her, Clara. Where was Bernie, where was her sweet ever-moving, jittery sister?
Now Clara was remembering that night, the awful night when she had lost Toby.
‘Jasper said he passed you in the hall as he was leaving. You came home at ten o’clock,’ she said, dry-mouthed with horror and revulsion and a chilling fear. Bernie sounded mad, unhinged, capable of anything.
‘Was that the blond bit of fluff? But you saw me coming in at two, didn’t you,’ said Bernie. ‘Well, I did come back at ten. But to make it all look convincing, I went out the back later and reappeared at the front gate at two, when I knew you’d get home after the clubs shut. Not that any of it matters now.’
There was a heavy knock against the door, raised voices. A man shouted. Then there was a dull, reverberating thump against it, a muffled groan, and then silence.
‘Oh, and now we have visitors,’ said Bernie, hopping to her feet almost gaily. ‘I made a call, you just wait and see . . . ’
Clara lurched to her feet, all her senses alert, her heartbeat accelerating. She knocked into the coffee table, sending it flying as Bernie shot past her to the door. Whatever was coming through it, Clara knew it wasn’t good news.
And she was right.
Bernie threw the door open wide. And there, standing on the threshold was Fulton Sears, but unbandaged, undamaged. Clara stared at him in horrified disbelief and then she remembered what Henry had said: Big brother Ivan had come down from Manchester.
This wasn’t Fulton.
This was Ivan, the head of the Sears clan.
And he’d come for her.
107
‘What have you done?’ Clara turned to Bernie.
‘Nothing much. Sold you down the river, that’s all,’ said Bernie, her face twisted. She was sweating, hopping from foot to foot.
Jesus, she almost looks possessed, thought Clara, and felt a fresh stab of fear catch her midriff.
‘All these years, and you didn’t know how much I truly hated you for what you put me through with that vile old man. Now, here’s my revenge. At last.’
Ivan Sears was lumbering into the room. Beyond him, Clara could see Liam on the floor, groaning, out of it, his face bloody.
She was on her own here.
Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to burst straight out through her chest wall. She was on her own here. She could barely breathe, she was practically choking on fear as she stared at Sears walking toward her.
She had no razored lapels today. Nothing.
Move, she thought. Come on, for fuck’s sake. Move!
Her feet seemed glued to the floor, she was paralysed with fear.
Move!
Somehow she got her legs going, and she went in the only direction she could. Sears was blocking her path to the door and he would grab her, kill her, if she tried to pass him. Bernie, her face alight with almost demonic malice, was in front of the other door and would slow her down, stop her passing. There was no handy little kitchenette in here that she could raid for a knife, for anything to use as a weapon.
Ivan Sears was only four feet away from her now.
‘So you’re the cunt who’s got my little bro wound up like a corkscrew. You’re the one with the dirty tricks, the copper’s nark, yeah?’
Christ, I’m going to die, she thought.
Clara moved, breaking into a run from a standing start. She ran straight at Bernie, saw surprise on Bernie’s face. Summoning all her strength, Clara shoved her sister aside and lunged through the door to one of the bedrooms, hearing Bernie’s yell of shock as she did so. There was a lock inside – a miracle! – so she turned that, locking herself in and them out. She heard Sears’s weight pound against the other side of the door and staggered back from it, the air whooping down into her chest in panicky gasps.
Clara glanced around her. The bed. It was a single, she could move it. She ran over, dragged and shoved and pushed the thing until it was across the doorway. Again Sears lunged at the door, making it quiver in its frame, and he let out a roar of frustration.
One good kick and he’ll be through, thought Clara. Then he’ll get the bed out of the way and kill me.
She looked around again. There was the window, and there was a fire escape beyond it. Behind the door she could hear Bernie – Christ, Bernie! – shouting ‘Get her! Go on!’
Clara flung herself across the room, yanked up the sash window and scrambled out onto the fire escape. As she did so, she heard Ivan Sears kick the door in and then come crashing through, shoving the bed back so hard that it tipped over.
108
Marcus drove them in the borrowed Hillman Super Minx while Henry directed him through the traffic-packed streets. Marcus pulled up in front of Bernie’s building with a screech of brakes and both men flew out of the car.
‘Which floor?’ Marcus snapped as they ran to the front of the building.
Henry told him.
‘You stay at the front, I’m going round the back and up the fire escape,’ said Marcus.
‘OK,’ said Henry.
Marcus took off at a run.
Hearing Sears coming behind her, Clara slipped in panic and fell, hitting the hard metal of the fire escape. The sharp impact pounded into her hips, her knees, her shoulder. All the breath left her in one loud whoosh.
She tried to haul herself to her feet, stumbled on unsteady legs and fell down the first zigzagging flight of stairs and landed with another crash that shook every bone in her body. Agony erupted in a dozen places but she struggled upright and staggered down the next half-flight of jagged rusted stairs, and lay there for a second, winded, terrified, thinking, Oh God, help me.
Ivan Sears was coming after her.
She crawled upright, lurched and stumbled down another flight and, oh shit, there, she could hear him now, pounding down the steps, she could feel the whole structure trembling beneath his weight and the quick heavy tread of his steps as he flung himself after her.
She glanced back and she could see him, thundering and cursing as he chased her down.
Horribly, she saw Bernie not far behind him, looking down too.
Something hardened in Clara at that moment and she told herself: No, they won’t beat me. I won’t let them beat me.
She hurled herself further on down the escape, and prayed. Because Sears was faster than her. And Sears was furious, vengeful and determined.
He’s going to catch me, she thought as he pounded on downward, shaking the whole structure under her feet.
I can’t outrun him.
He’s going to kill me.
109
‘There! Up there, look!’ Henry shouted.
Henry hadn’t stayed at the front; he’d followed Marcus round to the back of the building where there was a road full of parked cars, some rubbish bins, no pedestrians. Marcus looked up the huge black iron structure of the fire escape and there was Clara, running down, Sears coming after her. Sears was so close behind her that if he reached out right now, he would touch her, grab her, finish her off, throw her the rest of the way down to the ground.
&nb
sp; ‘Fuck!’ muttered Marcus, and started up at a run.
Clara could hear Sears’s grunting breaths as he hauled his bulk down the fire escape after her. He was that close. Too close. She tried to run faster, but her legs felt like cotton wool, she was shaking with shock and fear. Down below she could see Henry and then she spotted Marcus, on the fire escape below her, but Sears was so close, she couldn’t outrun him and in a moment he was going to grab her.
She’d bought herself a little time by running, that was all. Because now, right now he was reaching out, his huge bulk crashing and thumping on the metal stairs, and . . .
It was all too late, too late.
Sears grabbed her arm, yanked her to a staggering halt.
Clara screamed and turned, raking her nails over his face, but he was grinning, the bastard was grinning. He’d got her.
Blood sprang from the scratches but he didn’t even seem to notice, far less care. Clara’s body hit the front of his and she was enveloped in his heat, his hatred. He pulled one huge fist back—
Here it comes
—and there was nothing she could do, she couldn’t run, couldn’t escape, she was finished. She sagged, helpless, out of strength, out of hope.
His fist moved, angling toward her jaw. He would knock her unconscious, throw her over the edge, break her to bits on the road below. Marcus was too far down to help even if he wanted to.
I’m dead, she thought.
110
Wincing, panting, frozen with horror, Clara waited for the blow to fall, the one that would knock her unconscious before she took a long downward plunge into the next world.
But Sears was hesitating. His arm was raised, his fist pulled back, but he was still, frozen mid-action.
Clara stood there, gasping, almost moaning with fear, but he didn’t move.
