In-Laws and Outlaws

by Kate Fulford

  They watched as it flew through the air and landed with slight ‘pfft’ in the snow. For a moment all three of us froze but then, with a bellow loud enough to shake the snow from the trees, Marjorie launched herself after her ring. Unfamiliar as she was with the topography of Richmond Park she had no idea what was beneath her feet. I grabbed Meg’s arm before she could follow her sister.

  “Careful,” I called to Marjorie’s retreating back, “you’re on thin ice.” Marjorie turned her head to look at me without stopping her forward motion and began to speak, or rather to shout.

  “I don’t need your advice about . . .” Whatever it was that Marjorie didn’t need my advice about I wasn’t destined to know. An enormous cracking sound rent the air and she disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER 31

  “You madam, are a boney fido heroine. But if I could give you a bit of advice, it would be to stay away from open water from now on.” The man I had come to think of as my own personal paramedic had come to my aid for a second time. This time, though, I was not the drowned wretch, Marjorie was. “This woman,” Clive, for that was his name, turned to the assembled crowd while gesturing towards me, “very probably saved a life today.”

  As soon as Marjorie had entered the water a throng of previously unseen dog walkers had appeared as if by magic, drawn by the sound of cracking ice and shrieking. Most came to gawp under cover of offering help, but one or two suggested that someone should enter the water and attempt a rescue. One elderly man even went so far as to take his coat off, but I insisted, not that I had to insist very hard, that no one should follow Marjorie into the water, quoting the advice Clive (not that I knew that was his name at the time) had given me following my misadventure in the Serpentine. I think Clive was as surprised as me that we should meet again, and under such similar circumstances.

  Having called the emergency services and established that the fire brigade were the go to service for getting people out of ponds, and also asked for an ambulance, both arrived in no time flat. Marjorie was hoiked from the (not very deep as it turned out) pond by the fire brigade and then Clive and his crew stepped in. Having loaded Marjorie’s limp form into the ambulance, Clive had delivered his little homily in which I was, for the second time in my life, hailed as a hero. He, Meg, and I then climbed into the ambulance and we headed off, sirens blaring, to the nearest hospital. Under other circumstances I would have found the journey quite exciting. A friend of mine, who has a very boring job in Whitehall, was once whisked to RAF Northolt as part of a diplomatic cortege accompanied by motorcycle outriders. It was, she told me, one of the most thrilling experiences of her life, and not at all what she’d been expecting when she went to work that morning. Turned out she’d got in the wrong car and got in terrible trouble when she got back to the office, but it had been worth it she said, to go through all those red lights. I think the lack of windows in ambulances reduces the thrill factor somewhat anyway, but having a prone Marjorie next to me would have taken the shine off it even if I had been able to see out.

  As we hurtled along, presumably running numerous red lights (not that I could see them), Clive asked endless questions. How long the patient had been in the water? Did she have any known medical conditions? Was she allergic to any medication? I seemed to have temporarily lost the power of speech, but luckily Meg took charge. It was only when Clive asked the patient’s name that it suddenly struck me that there was really only one way out of this situation. I had to speak up. But the only thing I could possibly say was a lie, and it wasn’t my lie to tell.

  “She’s my boyfriend’s . . .” It was the first time I had spoken since getting into the ambulance. I paused mid-way through the sentence. It was as I was internally debating whether I dared tell the lie, the biggest I had ever had cause to tell, that Meg piped up.

  “Aunt,” said Meg. “She’s your boyfriend’s aunt, isn’t she my dear. Her name is Mar . . .”

  “Margaret Stuart,” I completed Meg’s sentence. “That’s who she is. Margaret Stuart.” I opened my eyes as wide as they would go at Meg behind Clive’s back. Do you really think we can get away with this? I mouthed. Meg looked back at me, a little smile playing around her lips, and nodded.

  “Yes, that is her name. Margaret. She’s two minutes older than me you know.” I opened my eyes wide again in an attempt to get Meg to stop talking. Lies are best left unembellished if they are to succeed. “We’re twins.” Meg added, rather unnecessarily. “My name is Marjorie, Marjorie Rowe.” I put my index finger to my mouth in the internationally recognised sign for ‘shut up’ and glared at Meg. Too much talking can be the death of a good lie, and this was a doozy and therefore required as little talking as possible to ensure that it would shimmy through this stage unquestioned. It was going to get much harder when, as they inevitably would, Malcolm and Gideon arrived on the scene, without blowing it right now. Luckily we drew up at the hospital at that moment causing all conversation to be suspended. Marjorie was rushed off into the bowels of the building while Meg and I were led into a waiting room that was thankfully unoccupied by anyone else.

  “It’s the only solution,” a very calm Meg explained. “If she comes round we can just say that I made a mistake and that I’m mad.”

  “What about me, am I mad too?” I asked.

  “You can say that I misled you.” Meg replied. “It’s the only solution,” she repeated. “She was never going to agree to your silly plan. All those boxes!”

  “It was a good plan,” I said, somewhat affronted.

  “No it wasn’t.” Meg continued. “But even if it had been, this is a better one. If Marjorie falls into a pond, there’s lots of awkward questions. Why were we all there? How did she come to be in the water? Did she fall or was she pushed? But if I fall into a pond, well, I’m a well-known loony.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “You know very well that I am. That’s what she told Gideon and Helen.” Meg made a good point. “So it would arouse far less suspicion if an accident of this sort happened to me than if it happened to my sister.”

  “But what if she doesn’t die?” I asked. Up until now I had been very much in the driving seat, plotting wise, but Meg and I seemed to have swapped roles somewhere between Richmond Park and the hospital.

  “We’ll cross that bridge if, and it’s a big if, we come to it.” Meg said decisively. This was not the slightly ditzy woman I had come to know, but an altogether savvier one. Had she, I wondered, been planning something like this all along? But that was ridiculous, she couldn’t possibly have been, could she?

  “But how,” I asked, “will you pull it off?” If she dies, I mouthed, hardly wanting to say the words. “Can you really pass yourself off as her?”

  “You forget, my dear, that I am her, to all intents and purposes. You can check my DNA if you don’t believe me.” Meg giggled at her little joke, which reassured me that she hadn’t changed beyond all recognition in the last few minutes.

  “But won’t everyone realise straight away?” I asked. As if in answer to my question the door of the waiting room was flung open and Gideon walked in. Without a glance towards me he made straight for Meg, enveloping her in a huge bear hug and saying “Mum, this must be awful for you.” Catching Meg’s eye over his shoulder I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

  “Yes, Ian, my darling, it is,” she said, as cool as an especially cool cucumber. I was impressed.

  The next few hours were not the most pleasant I have ever spent as Marjorie hovered between life and death. I found myself examining my conscience in minute detail. I had not done her any physical harm. I couldn’t possibly have known when I threw it that she would chase after the ring. And I had done the right thing (the heroic thing according to Clive) by stopping anyone following her into the water. I had even gone so far as to warn her that she was on thin ice, although I could see how my words could have been misinterpreted in the circumstances. Still, I was left with the nagging feeling that I was responsible for Marjorie’s sit
uation in some way, and much as I had disliked her, and even in light of the fact she had tried to murder me, I had never contemplated that our relationship would end like this.

  I even began to wonder if she really had been so bad after all. She had given up a kidney to a complete stranger, which must count for something, so she certainly understood maternal love despite her many faults. I had also been pondering whether there was even the slightest chance that the deception Meg and I had embarked on would work. I didn’t hold out much hope.

  “You OK?” Gideon, who had been sitting by what he thought was Meg’s bedside, entered the family room where I had been put some hours before.

  “I’m fine, but how is she?” I asked, although I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to know. Gideon sat down beside me and took my hands in his.

  “She’s gone I’m afraid,” he replied. “I know you didn’t know her but . . .” I think he was rather taken aback by the fact that I had burst into tears on hearing the news. It was the shock really. In an instant everything had changed, and I had no idea what would happen now. If Meg were to lose her nerve and admit to the deception I would have to say that I had been deceived by her, but was that plausible? I had been seen having a pretty furious row with Marjorie in the hotel and there must have been plenty of witnesses to the strange chase that had ended at Pen Ponds. If it came out that it was Marjorie and not Meg who was dead there would be quite a lot of explaining to do.

  It was as these thoughts swirled around in my mind that the door opened again and Meg and Malcolm walked in. I held my breath, or rather I stopped breathing. My throat and chest had constricted in such a way as to make breathing impossible. The moment seemed to go on forever and I thought it was possible I might actually pass out when, finally, Malcolm spoke.

  “I’m going to take your mother home,” he said, directing his comment to Gideon. My first thought was can you do that, just take a cadaver out of a hospital, even if it was one of your family when alive? Then I realised that he meant Meg. He believed Meg was Marjorie. The air re-entered my lungs in a great rush. I felt lightheaded from all the oxygen and even went so far as to burst out laughing. “Well,” said Malcolm, obviously slightly taken aback, “we’ll be off then. If there’s anything that needs signing you can deal with that can’t you Gideon?”

  “Yes, Dad, not a problem.” Gideon replied.

  “Oh, come here you two,” said Meg, “I need to hug you both.” Gideon and I went over to where she was standing and leant in for a rather awkward group hug. “Everything is going to work out fine.” Meg hissed in my ear.

  “I do hope so,” I replied, equally quietly. “I really do hope so.”

  “I’m really glad that you and Mum are getting on so well now, especially after what’s just happened,” Gideon said once Meg and Malcolm had left. “She’s going to need a lot of support. I know it might seem as if she isn’t upset about Meg’s death but they were sisters, and twins, so it won’t be easy for her. We all need to be there for her.”

  “Yes, yes we do,” I murmured. I really wasn’t up to having any sort of discussion. I knew that Marjorie had died and that Meg had just left the room, but Gideon and Malcolm were so convinced by the deception that I was left wondering if it had actually happened and it was I who was deceived. I was also unsure of how to continue with the deception. I had heartily disliked Marjorie but if I was to avoid any slip ups I knew I should really start believing, like a method actor, that Meg was Marjorie. Unfortunately my feelings for Marjorie resurfaced every time I tried to do this. Just keep calm, I told myself and it will all work out fine. But I needed a bit of time to get used to the new situation and I couldn’t keep my mind straight with Gideon gabbling on about supporting the loathsome Marjorie, even though I knew it was actually Meg who I would be supporting. Luckily, just as I was about to have a minor nervous breakdown, a nurse came in and said she needed a few minutes with Gideon and I was left alone.

  On Gideon’s return I was able to claim extreme tiredness (it was by now after midnight) and feigned sleep on the journey home. By the next morning I was feeling slightly more on top of things, although it was the strangest experience, to be with a man whose mother I knew had died the day before who was not only ignorant of that fact, but would have laughed at the very suggestion.

  That day we visited Malcolm and Meg/Marjorie. During this visit I was amazed again by the coolness of Meg/Marjorie (I found that this was the easiest way to think of her for the moment). She did absolutely nothing that might arouse suspicion. She had even managed to come up with a perfectly believable version of the previous day’s events, which explained the presence of all three of us and how come we had ended up at Pen Ponds. Like all good lies it stuck to the truth as much as possible.

  “So there we were, Eve and I, having had an absolutely delightful afternoon tea, although I was a bit of a twit and nearly knocked over the tea stand, but you caught it didn’t you dear?” Meg/Marjorie looked at me for confirmation.

  “Yes, I caught it,” I said before shutting up sharpish. This was Meg’s show and I figured I had best leave the details to her.

  “So there we were,” she repeated, “making our way across the car park, when Meg suddenly appeared from behind a parked car. I hadn’t seen her for several months and she looked simply dreadful. Her hair was unkempt and she was, I’m afraid to say, a little unsteady on her feet. And then she just lunged at me! It was quite frightening, wasn’t it Eve, my dear?”

  “Yes, yes, it was.” I replied quietly, as if this might minimise the lie. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. How many lies had I told in my life? Too many to count, but this one was by far the most high stakes ever. I couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong.

  “And then she started raving about my ring,” Meg continued. “She said she had it, and do you know what, she had! She knew where we kept the spare keys, they’ve been in the shed for years, and I think we do forget to put the alarm on occasionally, don’t we Malcolm?”

  “We may do,” Malcolm (almost) concurred. What, I wondered, did he make of all this? He knew that Meg had been there the night the ring went missing. Did he know that the woman with whom he was now sharing his home was the thief rather than the victim? And if he did, did he mind or was he happy to go along with the deception? It would increase the chances of it succeeding exponentially if he did.

  “So Meg was waving the ring about,” Meg went on with her story, “and, inevitably I suppose considering the state she was in, she lost her grip and dropped it. I picked it up and headed off, but she chased me. I really didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to get away, but she came after me. Poor Eve was running between the two of us trying to calm me down and talk sense into Meg. Anyway, Meg caught up with me by the pond, and made a grab for the ring. I really didn’t mind if she took it, I was just terrified of what she might do to herself. So I decided that the best thing to do was to give her the ring, but as soon as I did she threw it over my head, but then she must have decided that she wanted it after all . . . and well, we all know what happened next.” Gideon, I could see, was lapping all this up as it concurred entirely with his view of his ‘amazing’ mother. How it affected Malcolm I was less sure. Only time, I supposed, would tell.

  CHAPTER 32

  “You’re going to see who?” I asked in disbelief.

  “The donor woman.” Gideon replied. I had been clearing the table after breakfast one morning a few weeks later. If I had thought that I was out of the woods, it would seem that I had thought wrong.

  “The what? I mean who, why, how?” I gabbled, unable to string a coherent thought, let alone sentence, together.

  “Meg was on the donors’ register, so I agreed that everything could be donated.” Gideon said as if this was the most reasonable thing in the world rather than the end of it.

  “But she was really old, who’d want bits of an old lady?” In my wildest imaginings about what could go wrong, this had not figured. I was furious with myself f
or being so stupid, but then what could I possibly have done to forestall such an eventuality?

  “That’s not really the point.” Gideon said. “They can still take whatever is useful. Corneas, heart, lungs . . .” and then he said the fateful word “ . . . kidneys.”

  As a rule I find breathing comes very naturally to me, it’s not something that I have to put a lot of thought into, but recent events had overturned a lifetime of thoughtless breathing and left me gasping like a fish in the bottom of a boat on more than one occasion.

  “I’ll come with you.” I said once I had regained control of my oxygen intake.

  “Oh, OK, if you really want to.” Gideon looked doubtful.

  “Oh . . . I’d love to. I think organ donation is . . .” Breathe, I told myself, breathe, “fantastic.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. OK, let’s go.”

  “Now? Right now?” This was very little notice to get of the upcoming apocalypse. I would have liked a little time to prepare myself. I might have been able to come up with a reason for neither of us to go given enough time. But I wasn’t to have any time and so off we went. As we drove to the hospital, I tried my hardest to find ways in which the situation could be salvaged. There must be reasons, other than having taken on the identity of someone who only had one, for someone to have had fewer than the average number of kidneys. I just had to come up with one. Just one, that’s all I needed.

  “Did you know,” I said, “that some people are born with a different number of organs than normal? Sometimes fewer, or more even.” I added, in an attempt to disguise my intent.