Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  Kayleigh thought she would like being one of Andrea’s babies and had said so; Andrea had been tickled about that. And she was easy to talk to; it was like having a sister, she supposed. Andrea drove a car; it wasn’t her car, it belonged to the lady she worked for, but it was for Andrea’s use, and that seemed terribly glamorous to Kayleigh.

  She waited until Andrea had finished eating before she told her.

  “Australia?” Andrea repeated. “But how? When? How long have you known?”

  “He was offered the job in January. But he said he didn’t want to go—so did she. And the first I knew of it was when I got home from school today. She said he’d changed his mind. So—” Kayleigh shrugged. “She says we’re going.”

  “But you can’t! What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Kayleigh felt utterly miserable. “I wish I knew where Phil was.”

  “Could he help—I mean, after what happened? Would your mum listen to him?”

  Andrea knew about Phil’s window-breaking act—she disapproved, Kayleigh thought, though she had never said so. And Kayleigh knew that he shouldn’t have done it, but she understood how he had felt. What he had done was all Andrea knew about him; if she met him, she would like him, Kayleigh was sure, even if he did break things when he got angry. But he had gone off traveling, and they had moved before he had come back.

  And she had thought she would hate not living in London, but she really had enjoyed the last few weeks. The school was all right, and it was good to be able to leave it when lessons were over. She could talk to Andrea, tell her anything, everything. She didn’t judge her or give her good advice. Andrea was a bit like Phil, really. Kayleigh had always been able to talk to him in a way that she had never been able to talk to her mother. But it was better with Andrea, because she didn’t tell her off like Phil sometimes did.

  “My mum tried to ring where he used to work, but they don’t exist anymore, so we’ve lost touch with him.”

  “How long was he going to be away for?”

  “He said a month. He sent postcards, but that was always from where he had just been, so my mum couldn’t get in touch with him to tell him we were moving, and he doesn’t know where we are.”

  There was a silence, then, which Andrea finally broke.

  “Do you ever think about your real mum and dad?”

  Kayleigh nodded, shrugged a little. “He could be anyone. But I remember her. Just.”

  Andrea’s eyes widened. “I always thought you meant you were adopted when you were a baby. How old were you?”

  “I was four when I was adopted.” It wasn’t a memory that she had of her mother, not really. Just an impression, a feeling. A presence that she had known had suddenly no longer been there. She couldn’t even put it into words in her head, never mind pictures. “She abandoned me when I was two and a half.”

  Andrea was openmouthed. “I don’t know how anyone could do that. I mean, if you were a tiny baby, and she was panicking . . . but if she’d had you all that time, what would make her abandon you?”

  “I don’t know. She just left me with a neighbor and vanished.” She had never really told anyone about her background before; she’d told Dean some of it but not all. Somehow, with Andrea, it just seemed natural to tell her.

  “Have you seen her since?”

  Kayleigh shook her head.

  “Ah, well.” Andrea used the tone of voice she used to soothe the baby. “Maybe something happened to her.”

  “No. The police found her. But she gave me up for adoption.”

  “Do you know what happened to her after that?”

  “She died. I think she took an overdose or something.”

  “Oh, poor you. It must be awful, knowing you were abandoned like that.”

  Not really. Not knowing who her father was, that was what Kayleigh found difficult. She wasn’t that bothered about her mother having abandoned her. And right now she wished her adoptive mother would abandon her, too, and go to Australia without her.

  Theresa listened to the message, a slight frown on her face. She was glad the machine had taken the call—it gave her time to consider how to approach him.

  She had been out viewing a prospective home, as the estate agent called it. A flat in Byford Road had finally come on the market, and she had gone to see it, would probably make an offer for it. The fleeting thought that had formulated the night Ian told her about Lesley Newton had somehow become a goal, and she hadn’t looked at any other properties at all.

  This house, surrounded by woodland and quite unlike the rest of Stansfield’s modern housing, was one that would sell for a lot of money, and it shouldn’t be a drain on Ian’s resources—that had been her conscious thought. But her subconscious had had a different opinion. It wasn’t that she was desperate to live either in a flat or on Byford Road; it was whatever part of her, buried so deep that she had truly been unaware of its existence, wanted to get its own back. Being specific about what she wanted provided an excuse to make Ian wait until she was good and ready to move, because she didn’t suppose he would want this informal arrangement going on forever, however guilty he felt.

  She made herself a cup of tea and sat by the phone, wondering what Phil Roddam wanted. Only one way to find out. “Hi,” she said when he answered. “My name’s Theresa Black—you left a message on my answering machine.”

  There was a little silence. “Oh,” he said. “Right. I suppose Mrs. Waring doesn’t live there anymore.”

  “She never did. There isn’t a Mrs. Waring. I lived with Ian Waring until he went off to pastures new, as you put it.”

  Another silence. “Do you have children?”

  “No.” Puzzled, she waited to hear why he wanted to know.

  “Well—the house you’re living in . . . is it yours?”

  Her dark eyebrows lifted slightly. “Is that any of your business?”

  “Oh—oh, God. No. No—look, I didn’t mean to . . . that is, I—oh, hell.”

  Theresa laughed. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  She heard him take a breath. “I want to know where Lesley is living.”

  “And how does that relate to whether or not I own this house or have children?”

  “It doesn’t. It was just that—well, I thought if your expartner was paying half the mortgage, or had to pay maintenance or something, then you must be in touch with him. Do you know where he’s living? Is he still with Lesley?”

  At least that explained his interest in her personal affairs. “Yes,” she said, a little warily. “I do know where he’s living, and he is still with her.”

  “Can you give me their address? Lesley seems to have sworn people to secrecy.”

  “Well . . .”

  She heard a sigh. “Oh, please, not you as well. Just their phone number will do.”

  Theresa thought about how Ian had gone rushing to Lesley’s aid after this man had thrown a wobbly, as he had put it. In Ian-speak, that could mean anything from using four-letter words to brandishing a meat cleaver.

  “Is Lesley scared of you?”

  He laughed. Really laughed. “I don’t think Lesley’s scared of anyone. Least of all me. One day she just said, ‘By the way, Phil, you are the weakest link—good-bye.’ And that was that.”

  “Then why does she want to keep her address secret?”

  “Well . . . I went back to see if we couldn’t try again—that’s when I found out that she’d been having an affair for months. I’m afraid I took it rather badly. I expect she thinks I’ll do it again.”

  Theresa frowned. Perhaps it was the meat cleaver. “Do what again?”

  “I broke some windows. I’m not proud of it—I just . . . well, I lost my temper, and I tend to break things when I do that.”

  “Did you hurt anyone?”

  “No! She was outside with me. There was no one inside. I wouldn’t have done it if it had been going to hurt anyone.” There was a pause. “I’d have taken a sledgehammer to the ornamen
tal fountain instead.”

  Theresa smiled. “I have to say I can see why she might not want you to come calling again.”

  “I don’t want to call on her. I just want to talk to Kayleigh, ask her if she’s happy. I’ve only seen her once since July, and I couldn’t talk to her properly then, because Lesley was there all the time.”

  Of course—Kayleigh must be the problem daughter. Theresa’s eyebrows rose slightly; she had assumed the girl would have a middle-class, upmarket name. Perhaps she had misheard. “Kayleigh?” she repeated. “As in the old pop song?”

  “Yes. Not Lesley’s choice—Kayleigh was adopted. She tried to change it, but Kayleigh is just as formidable as Lesley herself, and was even when she was four years old. She just shook her head and said her name was Kayleigh Scott and that’s the way it stayed. She kept both her names, despite the adoption.”

  “Adopted? But surely you have the same rights as any other father—”

  “No—I’m not her adopted father. He died. But I brought her up, and I don’t want to lose contact with her.”

  Theresa wasn’t at all sure what to do, an unusual state for her to be in.

  “You’re my only hope,” Phil Roddam said, into the silence.

  “Do you have any reason to think that she is unhappy?”

  “No, but I’ve no reason to assume that she’s happy. I know she wasn’t asked what she thought about Ian moving in.”

  “I kind of got the impression that Ian didn’t have much say in the matter, either.” Theresa decided that she liked the sound of Phil Roddam, but she didn’t think she could go against Lesley’s wishes. “I honestly don’t think I can give you their phone number, but if you give me your address, I can ask Ian to let Kayleigh know where you are. Will that do?”

  “That’s kind of you. Thank you.”

  Tom Finch came out of the bathroom to see Liz looking in on Charlotte, who was in her carry-cot in their room.

  “Is she making you broody?” he whispered.

  Liz smiled and shook her head, leaving the door ajar, then checked the other bedrooms in which their own children slept just as soundly, before heading downstairs. “No. Two’s quite enough.” She turned to look at him as she reached the hallway. “Why? Is she making you broody?”

  “No,” he laughed. “I agree. We’ve got all that out of the way now.”

  In the living room, he flopped down on the armchair. The bag stuffed with all the things babies had to take around with them was on the sofa, bringing back memories; it was hard to believe all that belonged to someone who had been around for only two months. It was a reminder that babies cost a fortune, as he told Liz.

  But they would have more money, of course, if he passed Part II. He’d passed the mock one that his instructor had held—he had tried very hard to remember to be what they thought of as professional and correct, and he had even managed to keep his cool during one scenario that had really got to him. He would never have thought that playacting could become so real, but it did.

  Liz ruffled the blond curls that were now almost back to their full glory, much to his and everyone else’s relief. “You’ve got your worrying about Part Two face on.”

  “I don’t think I can go through all this again, Liz. If I fail this time, I think you’re stuck with a career sergeant.”

  “Then I’ll just have to divorce you. I expected a superintendent’s pension at the very least.” She sat down, and picked up the remote control, putting on the early evening news. “Stop worrying. Just wait and see how it goes.”

  “But we could do with the extra money.” He was getting morose now, convincing himself that he had failed before he even took it. Of course, as a DI he would still find himself working odd hours, so even if he passed, there might be problems. Liz would want him to go into uniform, work regular hours, and that wasn’t what he had in mind at all.

  But worrying about passing or failing was useless; he would just have to take it, then wait and see.

  Dean Fletcher had been in prison twice before, and at this point in previous stays he had been confident of early release. But this time he was a sex offender, and the statistics for the granting of parole, like everything else in this place, went against him. Despite that, he had made an application and hoped fervently that he might, just might, be able to start crossing the days off, because he had been a model prisoner and had stayed, as far as was possible, out of trouble. It hadn’t been entirely possible, because this time all the minor irritations of being locked up were eclipsed by the ever-present fear of trouble finding him.

  His trouble had come in dribs and drabs to start with, like the business in the holding room. Random violence, arbitrary malice. The real punishment had arrived in the form of three of them administering a beating while the sole prison officer on duty on their landing was dealing with a not-unrelated disturbance elsewhere. Dean had told the prison medical staff that he had fallen downstairs. They had pretended to believe him but had mentioned Rule 43. Dean didn’t want that.

  Rule 43—actually, Dean had discovered, Rule 45, but no one called it that—was a desperate measure that he had been advised not to take. And he had been right to stick it out, because after that beating things had improved; the word presumably had gone out that he had got what was coming to him and to lay off him unless he stepped out of line. He was warily and wearily treading that line every minute of every day of every week he was in here, and he wanted out.

  But even then, he wouldn’t be a free man, not for ten long years, maybe never again. And that was what Dean was finding hardest to forgive.

  Judy hadn’t left Charlotte in anyone’s care except her mother’s, until today. It was a foretaste of what was to come between when she returned to work and when Lloyd got early retirement, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

  Half of her felt certain that almost anyone else in the world was better equipped to look after a baby than she was, especially since anyone could feed her; Judy had, as Lloyd had irritatingly predicted, given up trying to breast-feed. Neither she nor Charlotte seemed able to get the hang of it, really.

  Judy had thought that today would be difficult enough without a baby in tow, and Charlotte had, thankfully, been entirely happy to be handed over to Liz Finch, who, having had two of her own, was Judy’s first choice of baby-sitter. Indeed, Liz had been her only choice; she wouldn’t have trusted Charlotte to anyone else. If Liz hadn’t been available, there would have been no option but to take Charlotte to the funeral. As it was, she had fallen blissfully asleep in Liz’s arms; like Lloyd, being awake at that time in the morning wasn’t for her.

  But Judy would be back at work at the beginning of July, and she really would have to start thinking very seriously about child care, find someone she trusted. Liz, unfortunately, wasn’t at home anymore now that her children were both at school, or she would have been happy to look after Charlotte. It had been sheer luck that the funeral had been on Liz’s day off—or so she had said; Judy had a suspicion that the day off had been engineered, just to help out. The Finches were like that.

  People were beginning to leave now, and the day that had begun with everyone tense and uncomfortable had, thanks to Lloyd, turned into one where people felt relaxed and even happy, glad to have known her father.

  She would miss him, miss his unfailing support. He had known, even as he had given Judy away to Michael on her wedding day, that her heart was with Lloyd and had gone out of his way to cultivate Lloyd’s friendship, to find out what made him tick. She and her father had never spoken about it; she had never told him how she felt about Lloyd, and he had never told her his feelings about her mistaken marriage; he had just made sure that she knew he was on her side, whatever she chose to do in the end.

  When everyone had gone, the family spent some time together, but eventually she and Lloyd had to leave; her mother declined the offer to come back with them, assuring them that she would be perfectly all right on her own. Judy’s uncle had been with her mother
until the funeral, but he had had to get back to work. Judy didn’t like leaving her mother there alone, but she was adamant.

  “I have to get used to it sometime,” she said. “It might as well be now.”

  The rain that had fallen on London all day still flecked the windscreen as Lloyd drove off.

  “Pity you don’t wear a flat cap,” Judy said.

  “Why?”

  “You could have twisted it.”

  Lloyd laughed.

  “One of the neighbors told me how brave he thought you were, getting up and speaking in front of all these clever lecturers.”

  “I thought the boy from the valleys would go down quite well. A few ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and false starts. Doesn’t do to upstage professionals—let them feel superior, and they’ll respond much more readily.”

  Judy pulled a face. Even her mother, while she knew a lot of it had been acting, had thought that he had been genuinely nervous; it had taken Judy herself twenty years to know when it was all an act, and then only if it wasn’t for her benefit. And she still couldn’t be sure what was real and what was invented. “Did he really say he would like to have jazz played at his funeral?” she asked.

  “Well . . .” Lloyd pursed his lips. “Not in so many words.”

  Judy sighed. “Or—to put it another way—he never said any such thing?”

  “That would be a fair assessment of the situation.” He took his eyes from the road for a second to glance at her. “It worked, though. Didn’t it?”

  Oh, yes. It had worked. She smiled, a little reluctantly. “Thank you for rescuing us.”

  “Anytime.”

  Lloyd pulled in at a service station to fill up with petrol, and for the first time that day Judy was entirely alone. Her emotions, all over the place since Charlotte was born, were even more mixed than they had been on the journey down. There was sadness, obviously, because she would miss her father dreadfully; the funeral had made her realize that she really wasn’t going to see him anymore and that Charlotte would never have any memories of him. But now there was worry, because her mother had never lived alone and Judy didn’t know how she would cope. And relief, that the funeral was over.