The Rumour

by Lesley Kara

  The light is on in her porch. She doesn’t usually put it on unless she’s expecting someone, or if she goes out and won’t be returning till late. She hardly ever goes out at night. She locks the doors early. Always has done. Ever since I was a little girl and Dad left us. The doors were always locked by suppertime, and the curtains drawn. Now I know why.

  ‘Nice and cosy,’ she used to say. ‘Just you and me, as snug as a bug in a rug.’

  My finger trembles as I press the bell. It doesn’t work. I press it again, harder this time. The jaunty little tune that Alfie and I often dance to while we’re waiting on the step is an affront to my ears. It comes from a happier, innocent time. It has no business striking its relentlessly upbeat message this evening.

  I should have knocked instead. A sombre rat-tat-tat. Too late now.

  As soon as she opens the door and I see her face I know she knows. Liz must have phoned ahead to warn her, and I’m glad. Glad she isn’t greeting me in the normal way. The warm smile. The soft kiss on the cheek. The squeeze on the shoulders. Glad I don’t have to find a way to broach the subject all on my own.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she says, her eyes skating across mine and fixing on Michael’s car, waiting outside.

  She turns and walks ahead of me into the living room. A small glass of something amber-coloured is sitting on the occasional table by her armchair. She rarely drinks alone. At least, she never did. Although how am I to know what she did when I went up to bed? How am I to know what she does now, when I’m at home with Alfie and she is here, alone with her terrible secret? How am I to know anything about this stranger who calls herself my mother?

  She inclines her head towards the sideboard. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  My first instinct is to decline. I haven’t eaten anything since lunch and after that first, rasping mouthful of brandy in the hotel, that searing sensation at the back of my throat, the rest of the glass slithered down only too easily.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve only got Disaronno or sherry,’ she says, crouching at the sideboard and reaching into its depths.

  ‘I’ll have a sherry.’

  This seems wrong. Sitting down sipping sherry like a guest when she’s about to confirm the worst possible news. Expand on the grisly detail, no doubt. Explain. But, of course, I know exactly what she’s doing. She’s delaying the moment for as long as possible. She needs this time fussing with glasses and bottles, laying another coaster on the coffee table, shutting the sherry away in the sideboard. These are normal activities. Things one does when someone pops round for an early-evening drink. She’s trying to stretch the illusion of normality till the last possible second. Maybe we both are.

  The illusion of normality. That’s all it’s ever been. An illusion.

  I take the proffered drink, the too-full glass of Harveys Bristol Cream, my hand shaking as I set it down on the table.

  Now, and only now, do we dare to look at each other.

  ‘Where do you want me to start?’ she says, holding my gaze. It’s me who looks away first.

  I stare at my hands in my lap, the raised veins. ‘The beginning seems as good a place as any.’

  She nods. ‘But first, I need you to know that you and Alfie are the most important people in my life.’

  ‘More important than Liz?’

  She looks as shocked as if I’d just marched over and slapped her. ‘How can you even ask that?’

  ‘Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that she knows everything about you and I know nothing. You haven’t been lying to her for thirty-four years. Maybe that’s why.’

  She brings her hands to her face – a prayer-like gesture, her fingertips meeting at the top of her nose – and rocks gently in her chair like a damaged child. I’ve wounded her with my words, I know I have, but I can’t help it. Something cold and contained has lodged itself in my heart.

  ‘Yes, she’s the only one who knows the whole story. But that doesn’t mean she’s more important to me than you. You don’t love Michael more than Alfie, do you? Of course you don’t.’

  My fingers curl into fists. How dare she bring Michael and Alfie into this? How dare she make comparisons between her life and mine?

  ‘Liz believed in me. She was barely an adult when she started working at Grey Willow Grange. It was her first proper job after university. It must have been a baptism of fire, walking into that place for the first time.’

  She closes her eyes and leans back into her chair.

  ‘Before I was released, Liz broke the rules and gave me a PO box number address. She told me I could always get in touch with her if I needed her.

  ‘And I did need her. I sent her letters. It was a risk, writing to her under my new name, giving her my address, but I trusted her. I’ve always been able to trust her. Liz was my touchstone. Still is.’

  She breathes in, and her face softens for a moment. ‘All through that scary time when I was on my own, out there in the world where everyone I met, everywhere I went, there was always the danger of being discovered, Liz was there. In her letters. They were the only thing that kept me going. Until I met your father, of course.’

  She leans forward and reaches for her drink. Takes a sip. ‘But I’ve jumped too far ahead. I was going to tell this story from the beginning. I need to go back. Back to where it started.’

  ‘No, tell me about Dad first. Did he know? Did he know who you were?’

  She turns to the wall. ‘I wanted to tell him, just like I wanted to tell you, when you were old enough to understand, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Every time I tried to find the words, I lost my courage. I didn’t want to lose him, just like I didn’t want to lose you. Don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘But he found out in the end.’

  ‘Yes. And in the worst possible way. Hateful words painted on the front door. A brick through the window. All the neighbours standing outside screaming and shouting.’

  I think of that picture. It must have been taken the day after, when we’d all been spirited away. In the ambulance I now realize must have been an unmarked van.

  ‘Is that why he left us? Because of who you were? The other woman, the new family – were those more of your lies?’

  ‘No! Yes. But not lies exactly. We had to come up with something to explain things.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The small group of people who looked after me. Who look after me still. Keep me safe. Keep you safe. You and Alfie.’

  I recoil. Hearing his name on her lips sounds all wrong. I don’t want him to be part of all this. It’s too much. I picture him now, in Karen’s flat. He’s probably watching a DVD with Hayley, or maybe she’s got him play-acting a scene from Frozen. What I wouldn’t give to be back at home with him. He’s all I’ve got now. Him and Michael. The only two people in my life that are real. No, that’s not true. My dad was real.

  ‘Did he have a choice about seeing me again?’

  ‘He stayed for a bit. They took us to a safe house in Gravesend. We lived there for a while, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t deal with it. He said he still loved me, and of course he loved you, but things were never the same after that. How could they be? He did have the choice, though. He had the choice to stay with us and for all three of us to have new identities, or to leave and move away. Never to see us again.’

  She looks at the wall again. ‘He chose to move away. He went to the States. He had family there.’

  My jaw aches from where I’ve been clenching it shut. Poor Dad. It must have been Hobson’s choice. Give up your whole identity – your job, all your relatives and friends – and stay with a woman you no longer know or trust for the sake of your child, or move away and start again. Put the whole sorry mess behind you. Part of me hates him for not staying, for not putting me first, but a bigger part understands. How could he love her after all those lies? How can I?

  My phone buzzes in my bag. I pull it out. It’s a text from Michael.

  ‘Are you ok?
Do u want me to come in, or go and get Alfie?’

  I tap out a reply. ‘Can u collect him? It’s Flat 2a, The Regal. Take him home. Will ring u later.’

  I glance at Mum. Her face is the colour of putty and she’s drained her glass already. It’s going to be much, much later. We’ve barely begun.

  46

  I slip the phone back into my bag, wishing more than anything that I could be with Michael now. Picking Alfie up. Going home together. A normal evening. Instead of which I’m here, listening to my mother systematically dismantle my life.

  ‘So Dad left and you decided to turn him into the monster instead. Well, thanks for that. Thanks for making me think he was an absolute bastard, that he didn’t love me enough to keep in touch.’

  All those broken promises. All the times I cried myself to sleep because Daddy was gone. None of it was true, was it? He couldn’t keep in touch. Once we had new identities, he wouldn’t have known where to find me.

  ‘It was hard for me too,’ she says, her voice barely a whisper. ‘He was my husband, remember? I loved him. And how else could I have explained his absence? Would you rather I’d told you he was dead?’

  ‘Maybe it would have been better, yes. For all I know, he might be dead now.’

  ‘He isn’t.’

  I force myself to swallow. My throat is thick and swollen. ‘How do you know?’ I lean forward, staring at her. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  I’ve never wanted to know before. Never wanted anything to do with him. She saw to that. But it’s different now. This changes everything.

  ‘No. But I’ve been told he’s alive and well and living somewhere in New York.’ She wrings her hands in her lap. ‘Not all of it was lies, Jo. He does have another family. Two daughters and a son.’

  ‘What made you do it? What made you kill a little boy?’ The words are harsh and jarring in the stillness of this ordinary sitting room. ‘A little boy not much younger than your own grandson.’

  She clutches her stomach as if she’s been shot. For a second or two I almost feel sorry for her. Almost, but not quite. How do I know what’s real any more?

  She stands up and walks to the other side of the room. Rests her hands on the wall and hangs her head.

  ‘When I talk about her,’ she says, ‘about Sally, you have to understand that I’m talking about another person.’

  She straightens up and returns to her chair. Folds herself back into it, her hands clasped around her knees.

  ‘I suppose in some ways it’s like that for everyone. We change. Evolve. From one year to the next. One month. One week. Sometimes all it takes is a day. An hour. A minute.’ She inhales deeply. ‘A second.’

  All this time she’s been speaking she’s been staring into space. Now she squeezes her eyes shut, as if she’s trying not to see something. When she opens them again, they slide towards me. A fleeting glance.

  ‘She didn’t have a childhood. Not in the same way you did, or Alfie does. But then, you know something of her background already. You’ve read up on it, haven’t you?’

  I don’t respond.

  ‘I saw your browsing history when you went to book club.’

  I stare at her.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t being nosy. I was doing a crossword and I needed to look something up. Your iPad was on the sofa. I saw all the tabs at the top of the screen. All the windows you’d opened. Windows into her life. Sally’s life.’

  ‘Your life,’ I say.

  ‘No!’ Her eyes flash, and for a second I’m scared. Scared of my own mother. Scared of the person she was, maybe still is, somewhere deep inside. Did she know about the tweets Liz posted? Were the two of them behind that photo too? They must have been. How could she do that to me? To her own daughter.

  ‘Not my life,’ she says. ‘Her life. I’ve told you. She’s not me. I’m not her. I haven’t been her for so long, I can’t …’ Her voice breaks.

  I focus again on my hands. They’re glued together so tightly the muscles in my forearms ache. I don’t know who she is any more. I don’t know the first thing about this woman.

  ‘You’re so lucky, Jo. You don’t know what it feels like to fear a man so much your blood freezes in your veins at the sound of his key in the door. You wet your knickers as he comes up the stairs; every step nearer to you he gets, your time is running out. There’s nowhere to hide and no point screaming, so you wait. You wait for it to happen all over again, and it does. It does. Every time, it does. It never lets up. If he’s not beating you with his belt, he’s unzipping his trousers. Planting his feet either side of you as you cower on the floor. Making you do things no child should even know about, let alone be forced to do.

  ‘And when he wasn’t terrorizing me, he was taking it out on my mother. Sometimes he used to grab her by the throat and lift her like that – by her throat – pin her up against the wall till her face went blue and her legs started flailing about. I’d watch her slither down when he let her go. Crumple on the floor like a rag doll. Sometimes he’d kick her for good measure.’

  She cringes into the back of her chair as if he’s right there in front of her all over again.

  ‘Oh, he was the devil himself, Jo!’ she cries. ‘The devil himself!’

  I should comfort her. Scoop her into my arms and hold her tight. This is my mother. The woman I’ve loved and looked up to all my life, and here she is, reliving the horrors of her past, whimpering in her chair like the terrified child she once was. But I’m stuck to the sofa. Rigid and numb. It’s horrendous, what she’s telling me. Worse than anything I could have imagined, and I know there’s more to come. I can see it in her eyes. I can barely breathe.

  This can’t be real. This cannot be happening. I am not sitting in my mother’s living room, drinking sherry at seven o’clock in the evening, listening to this vile story. Watching her dredge up the memories, one by one, reliving them all in front of me. None of it is real.

  ‘Are you telling me all this to make excuses for what you did? Because there aren’t any excuses. You killed a little boy.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I didn’t. It was a game. A game that went horribly, horribly wrong. You have to believe me, Jo.’ Her hands grip the armrests of her chair. White claws digging into the fabric.

  My phone rings in my bag. I fish it out and see that it’s Michael. For fuck’s sake. Why is he ringing me? Surely he knows what this must be like.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jo, there’s no one there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s no one at the flat. You did say 2a, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. It’s on the ground floor. You have to press the buzzer on the door outside and …’

  ‘Yes, I’ve done that. But there’s no reply. Don’t worry, I’ll buzz one of the other flats and see if I can get someone to let me into the building. Maybe her bell’s not working.’

  The register of his voice changes. Becomes lower, more confidential. ‘How’s it … how’s it going there?’

  I sigh. ‘How do you think?’

  ‘Shit. Stupid question. I’m sorry I’ve interrupted things. I was just worried I’d misheard the address. Don’t worry. I’ll take Alfie home and then I’ll wait for you to call me.’

  47

  I fold my hands in my lap, do nothing to keep the bitterness out of my voice. ‘So, where were we? I think you were about to make more excuses about why you killed a little boy.’

  Mum winces. ‘They aren’t excuses, Jo. I’m just trying to tell you the whole story. Put it in some kind of context. I’ve waited this long to tell you, you might as well hear everything.’

  ‘Waited this long to tell me?’ I shake my head in disbelief. ‘You make it sound like it’s your decision to come clean. You wouldn’t be telling me any of this if I hadn’t found out.’

  ‘You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. I’ve been agonizing over it for years. Long before I saw what you’d been looking up on your iPad. Long before that poor woman in the high street g
ot targeted. I said as much to Liz. I told her I wanted to tell my story and set the record straight. Show them how a monster is made.’

  She taps her chest with the forefingers of both hands. ‘Is that what you think I am, Jo? A monster?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what I think any more. I just know I can’t forgive you. Whatever you tell me, I can’t forgive you for lying to me all these years. For making me believe my dad was a bastard, for ruining all those lovely memories I have of Nana and Grandad.’

  Tears stream down my face. ‘Who were they, those people? Who were Lilian and Henry Brown?’

  Now Mum’s crying too. ‘They were your grandparents. They might not have been your biological grandparents but, in every other respect, they were. And they were the closest I ever got to a loving mum and dad.

  ‘When they moved us to Romford, I started looking after guide dogs. Walking them, training them, looking after them when they retired. It was part of my new identity and I loved it. It’s how I first met them – Lilian and Henry. I took on Henry’s dog, Lulu, when she got too old to work and Henry needed a younger dog. They were a lovely couple, so sweet and kind. They didn’t have any children of their own and they doted on us, Jo. My new backstory was that my own parents had died in a car crash when I was fifteen. They were only too happy to be your stand-in grandparents. Lilian loved it when you started calling her Nana. You meant the world to her.’

  She pulls a hanky out of her pocket and blows her nose. ‘I was supposed to tell you they weren’t your real grandparents, but I couldn’t. I always intended to, but the longer I didn’t, the more I couldn’t see the point. If I told you the backstory I’d been given, that your real grandparents had died in a car crash, I knew you’d be upset. And besides, that was a lie too, wasn’t it? Because your real grandparents are … well, you know who they are.’

  That awful picture of Kenny and Jean McGowan materializes im my mind. I screw my eyes shut and try to replace it with one of Lilian and Henry Brown.

  ‘Then Henry died, followed shortly afterwards by Lilian. All the meaningful people in my life had gone,’ she says, twisting her hanky in her hands. ‘Your father. Lilian. Henry. You were all I had. You and Liz.’