The Rumour

by Lesley Kara

  He carries me out of my bedroom and into the hall. I struggle in his arms, start to whimper into his jacket. He smells of smoke.

  Now I’m in Mummy and Daddy’s bedroom, but their bed is empty and the window is open. I feel the cold night air on my bare arms and legs. Hear the clank of something hard and metallic. Raised voices in the distance. People shouting.

  I start to cry, but the fireman whispers in my ear. ‘Sshh,’ he says. ‘You mustn’t cry, because Mummy and Daddy are waiting for you. You mustn’t be scared.’

  And then I’m not cold any more because something is being wrapped around me. It feels like a big warm towel and it’s over my head too. I cling to the fireman’s jacket as he climbs out of the window and on to the ladder.

  Now he’s running down the garden with me. I hear the latch of the gate and his steps on the path at the back where the garages are, and suddenly I’m in the ambulance with Mummy and Daddy, and Mummy’s arms are tight around me and Daddy’s voice is telling us it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.

  I open my eyes. Michael is watching me, a wary expression on his face. I look at the photo of the house again. ‘Where did you say this was?’

  ‘It’s in Canley, on the outskirts of Coventry.’

  Something ominous hurtles towards me. Something so dreadful I can hardly bear to form the thought. But I have to. I have to.

  I force myself to take a sip of the brandy and almost choke as it rasps against the back of my throat. No sirens. There weren’t any sirens. And why was the ambulance waiting in the access road at the back? Surely it would have been at the front of the house. It was Mum who suggested I join the book club. Mum who gave me Liz’s number. She said she’d got it from the man in the bookshop, but …

  Oh my God! I think it’s me Liz is trying to protect. Me and … me and Mum!

  I feel like I’m dissolving. One realization gives way to another. A house of cards collapsing in on itself. It’s not just photos of me as a child we don’t have – there are none of her either. All of them were lost in the fire, along with our personal possessions. But what if they weren’t? What if they were deliberately destroyed?

  My throat closes up. If this is true, then my whole life is a lie. My grandparents. Were they even …?

  ‘Joey, what’s the matter? Talk to me.’

  Lucy Locket lost her pocket. Kitty Fisher found it.

  It was my favourite nursery rhyme. That’s why I named my imaginary friend after her. At least, that’s what Mum’s always told me. But if Mum had to be given another name, I’d have needed one too. She’d have had to convince me I was called Joanna now.

  Joanna, not Lucy.

  I want to scream, but I can’t. I can barely breathe.

  This is a mistake. It must be. It’s preposterous. Unthinkable.

  How can my own mother be Sally McGowan?

  43

  I don’t remember finishing the brandy, but I must have, because the glass is empty.

  ‘Let me get you another one,’ Michael says.

  ‘No. I don’t want another one.’ My voice sounds alien. Disembodied.

  I try again. ‘The fire was just a story they told me. To make sense of what happened. To explain why we couldn’t go back.’

  Michael holds my hands in his. My breath judders at the back of my throat and he squeezes my fingers tight.

  ‘Which means my whole life is a story. Everything I’ve ever known is based on a lie.’

  Michael speaks at last. ‘You mean …? Oh my God, Joey.’ He lets go of my hands and leans back in his chair, his mouth hanging open. ‘It wasn’t a fireman at all, was it? It was someone from Witness Protection, bundling you out of the house.’

  I hang my face in my hands, press my fingertips into my eyelids. Maybe if I press hard enough, the image of my mother’s face – Sally McGowan’s face – will disappear. But it doesn’t. It gets sharper and sharper. How could I have missed the resemblance? The narrow bridge of the nose. The shape of her mouth. It seems so obvious now. It’s been staring me in the face. Literally.

  ‘How could she lie to me like that? How could she pretend for all those years?’

  Michael takes my hands again and massages his thumbs into my palms. ‘How could she not?’

  ‘Maybe she lied to Dad too. Is that why he left us?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joey. Only your mum can answer those questions.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Maybe he just couldn’t stomach what she’d done.’ I pull my hand away and clap it over my mouth as I start to retch. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  I make it to the Ladies just in time. Fold over a toilet bowl and throw up. After the first acrid rush of brandy and Coke, all that’s left is bile. It keeps coming up till there’s nothing left and I’m dry-heaving, my whole torso cold with sweat.

  Then I feel a hand between my shoulders. It’s Michael, rubbing my back in circular movements. He helps me to my feet and over to a sink. The face that stares back at me from the mirror is grey, hair plastered to its forehead. It’s like looking at a stranger.

  Michael waits with me while I splash cold water on to my face and swill my mouth out. He pulls a wad of paper towels from the machine and hands them to me. A woman comes in and stares at us crossly. Stares at Michael. He leads me out into the carpeted corridor and back into the bar.

  Michael asks for some water.

  ‘Have a few sips of that.’

  But I daren’t. I doubt I could keep it down.

  ‘I still can’t believe it. None of it makes any sense. I don’t even know who I am any more.’

  Michael leans towards me and strokes my cheek with his finger. ‘You’re still the same person, Joey. You’re still you. That hasn’t changed.’

  ‘But it has! Don’t you see? I’m not Joanna Critchley. I’m not even Lucy Holmes. I don’t know who I am.’

  Tears burn my eyeballs. I don’t want to cry in the middle of this anonymous hotel bar that’s fast filling up, but I can’t help myself. My eyes can no longer hold the tears.

  ‘My mother killed a child.’ Even though I’m whispering, the impact is the same as if I’d screamed the words out loud. I feel as though everyone has heard.

  Somebody approaches our table. All I see is a pair of navy shoes with a Cuban heel at the bottom of green-trousered legs. The trousers are wide and silky and swish against her ankles. I can’t bring myself to raise my head because I know whose legs they are and I don’t want to see her face. This woman who’s known all along. My mother’s protector. Her lover, for Christ’s sake!

  She slides into the chair next to me. I see the skinny shape of her thighs, the bony mounds of her knees pressing up through the fabric of her trousers. She rests her left hand on my shoulder. It’s the lightest of touches, but still I flinch. Some form of non-verbal communication flows between Michael and her – I sense its energy. Tap into its sad waves.

  ‘Your mother loves you very much, Jo,’ Liz says.

  ‘Not enough to tell me the truth.’ My voice is jagged. A piece of broken tin scraping on concrete.

  ‘She wanted to. She knew she should, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Well, she’s lost me now.’

  ‘No. You’re in shock. You need time to adjust. You won’t think like that for ever. I promise you.’

  I lift my head to look at her. The weight of it is almost unbearable. The muscles in my neck are as brittle as glass. They could snap at any second.

  Liz’s mouth is moving. She’s forming words with her lips and tongue, but I can’t hear them. There’s a whistling in my ears and my back is slick with sweat. I’m going to faint.

  Now Michael is pushing my head between my knees, telling me to breathe. I want to stay like this for ever, hanging over my feet, blood pooling into the top of my head. I focus on my ankle boots. The scuff mark on the left toe. The tiny piece of dried leaf stuck to the side of the heel. Right now, these boots of mine are the only thing groun
ding me to the earth. Everything else has crumbled away. I’m frightened that, if I sit up, I’ll crumble away too. Disintegrate into powdery dust. As if I never existed.

  A murmuring swells in my ears. I’m aware of bodies clustering round our table. Other people’s shoes. Concerned voices.

  Then Michael’s. ‘It’s okay. Thank you. She’ll be fine. We’ve got this.’

  If it weren’t for his hands on my shoulders, guiding me back up to a sitting position, I’d still be down there. Just me and my boots. Blocking out this strange new world.

  I lift the glass of water to my lips and drink. I’m so thirsty all of a sudden I’m downing it too fast and it sloshes over the rim and down my chin. I set the glass down, so clumsily it almost topples and spills. I wipe my mouth with my hand. Liz delves into her bag and produces some tissues, hands one to me and wipes the table with another one. Dries the bottom of my glass. There’s a concentrated look on her face and her eyes are unnaturally wide, as if she’s trying not to blink.

  ‘There’s so much I could tell you, Jo,’ she says. ‘So much I want to tell you. But it isn’t my story. It’s your mother’s. You need to hear it from her, not me.’

  A solitary tear slides from the corner of her eye. For a second or two it clings to her cheek like molten glass, then breaks free and rolls down.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she says. ‘For the tweets.’ Her voice falters. ‘I didn’t want to scare you, but I didn’t know what else to do.’

  44

  We’re in Michael’s car. I don’t remember how we got here. I have vague memories of walking – or rather being led, guided, piloted to an underground car park. Propelled along wet pavements, not properly in charge of my own feet. My body little more than a flimsy structure, supported only by the ballast of Michael’s stronger, sturdier frame.

  Liz isn’t with us. I don’t ask where she is. Don’t want to know.

  Michael drives through the darkening streets. Stops and starts in the endless flow of traffic. If I lean to the left, I can see myself in the wing mirror. Dark hollows where my eyes used to be. Nothing is in the right place any more. Even my internal organs seem to have shifted out of kilter.

  We don’t speak. There is nothing to say.

  There is too much to say.

  Alfie. He arrives in my mind like a thunderbolt. The shock of the last hour has erased him till now. Guilt slams into me so hard that, for a second, I think we’ve hit something.

  Michael’s hand shoots out to my thigh. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have to ring Karen. Tell her we’ll be late.’

  ‘Do you want me to pull over and speak to her?’

  ‘No. Just drive. I’ll do it.’

  I scrabble around for my bag. My phone. Stare at the locked screen in confusion. I’ve forgotten what to do. How to make it work. The cry takes us both by surprise. Curdles the air in the car. It’s coming from me, spiralling up from deep in my belly. A tornado of anguish.

  The indicator ticks, but the stream of traffic on our left won’t let up.

  ‘Don’t pull over. I can do it.’ My brain is working again. Telling my fingers what to do. Scrolling through my contacts till I come to the name Karen.

  ‘Karen, it’s Jo.’ I gasp for breath. This is important. I have to pull myself together. Talk normally. Let her know we’re on our way.

  ‘Hi there,’ Karen says. All bright and cheerful. The tone of it grates, like an unexpected insult. ‘Alfie’s had his supper. He’s got quite an appetite, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, yes he has. Look, we might be a little late. The traffic, it’s …’

  ‘Hey, no problem. Really.’ A pause. ‘You okay, Jo? Only you sound a bit …’

  ‘I’ve had some bad news.’ I screw my face up to hold the words back. The words playing in my head in a loop. I’ve just found out my mother is a child killer. I’ve just found out my entire history is a fabrication, that I’ve been lied to since the day I was born.

  ‘Joanna? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m still here.’

  But am I? Am I really? Someone is still here, hunched in the passenger seat like a wounded animal. Someone pretending to be Joanna Critchley. Mother of Alfie Critchley. Daughter of …

  ‘I have to speak to my … my mother. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. I’m so sorry …’

  ‘Take as long as you need. Alfie will be fine.’ She knows something bad’s happened. I can tell by her voice. The way it’s changed from bright and breezy to serious and concerned.

  ‘If he gets sleepy I’ll make him up a bed on the settee. Just do what you have to do. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ It’s hard to believe that, just a short while ago, I thought she meant Alfie and me harm. I thought she was Sally McGowan’s daughter when, all along, it was … all along, it was me.

  It’s dark now and rain falls hard and fast. Michael puts the wipers on top speed, but visibility is poor. Headlights dazzle and distort in the windscreen. Tail-lights bleed red. It’s the worst time to be driving out of London, but Michael is a good driver. Calm and steady. If he’s frustrated at all, he keeps it hidden. He doesn’t react when someone cuts in front of us, or when traffic slows to a snail’s pace, picks up again, then slows. He just deals with it all. He just drives.

  I’m dimly aware of the city draining into the suburbs through the rain-blurred windows, and then into the dark nothingness of the countryside. Vast chasms of black rearing up at us on either side and only the short span of road ahead, illuminated by the arc of the headlights.

  It’s all I’ve got, that short span of road. The only thing that’s real. I can’t take my eyes off it.

  Michael puts the radio on to break the silence and the sweet, raw voice of Ed Sheeran singing ‘Castle on the Hill’ fills the car. An arm appears from nowhere to turn it off. It’s mine, the finger already poised, but Michael beats me to it. It’s too much. Too real and poignant. A love song for his home town, and here am I, returning to mine. But everything has changed now. I’ve been dug up like an unwanted plant and tossed on to the soil, my roots exposed to the air.

  My roots. I close my eyes and try not to think of them. Diseased roots. Gnarled and foul. Kenny and Jean McGowan. The swagger and the fist. The fear and the shame. And Sally, their daughter. Sally, my mother.

  The car is warm, the air stale. I open the window just a crack, rest my fingers on the top of the glass so that their tips are poking out into the night air. I used to do this as a child whenever we went on a long car journey. Mum at the wheel – a cautious driver, hands always in the ten-to-two position, gripping too tightly, her knuckles white from the strain – me lolling in the passenger seat. Gazing out of the windows. Daydreaming.

  Cautious driver. Cautious woman. Cautious life. It all makes sense now. The pieces fit. She gives a good impression of having lots of friends and acquaintances from her choir, but now I come to think of it, she’s always kept people at bay. She’s never allowed them to get too close. What did Michael say to me that time in the restaurant? That I’ve always been so fiercely independent, that he was worried I’d pull the drawbridge up if he asked for more. I’ve learned that from her, haven’t I? I must have done.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  The question reaches my ears at the same time as icy water shoots sideways through the gap and spits on my face.

  Of course I’m not okay. I lean my head against the window and close my eyes. I’ll never be okay again. The days of being okay are gone for ever.

  ‘I’ll come in with you, if you like. Or do you want me to stay in the car?’

  I haven’t even thought about that. About what will happen when we get there. When I climb out of this car and enter that house. How will I drag myself from this warm, protective cocoon? Michael calm and steady beside me. The slanting pool of light beyond the windscreen.

  What will happen when I come face to face with her? What will I say? What will she?

  If only Alfie were here in the car with us, we could just
drive away and never come back. Start again someplace else. Leave it all behind us. Shed the past like an old skin. It’s what she did, after all. And not just once.

  We’re getting closer now. The last leg of the journey. Familiar roundabouts and turnings. The ribbon of road no longer straight but bending. Full beam on. Full beam off. Villages glowing like clusters of jewels. Pubs and restaurants. Tesco Express. Everything normal and where it’s always been. The only thing that’s changed is me. My past, present and future. Warped beyond recognition.

  The last village before Flinstead winks at us in the darkness.

  Liz only ever rings in the dead of night. Most people dread a phone call at that time. For them it can mean only one thing: something bad has happened. Something that necessitates immediate action.

  An accident.

  A tragedy.

  A death.

  So when I see her name flash up at 17.11 on my caller-display screen, I know. I know something is up. The game I’ve been playing all my life. The game I almost won.

  I know what she’s going to say even before she says it and when she does … when she does, the words pierce my heart, over and over again. A thousand vicious stabs.

  Joanna knows. Joanna knows. Joanna knows.

  I won’t leave the house tonight. I won’t don my running gear and sprint through the streets like a ghost. I won’t be drawn to the glow of her window like a moth to a flame. To the sweet warmth of her eyes and her mouth. To the hot bliss of her bed.

  She cannot comfort me now. My dearest love. My Liz.

  No one can.

  The monster is out of its cage.

  45

  I’m shaking as the car draws up outside her house. Her house. Not Mum’s house. Is it happening already? The separation?

  Michael turns off the ignition and shifts in his seat to face me. He takes my hands in his and kisses them in turn. His lips are warm and dry. His stubble grazes my flesh.

  ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’

  I shake my head. It’s easier than speaking.