Hush Hush

by Mel Sherratt

  ‘Did you only have the one?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t want any more. I remember my friend having several and I thought at the time it was greedy. How can you give attention to more than one thing at a time? They’re collectors’ items now, you know.’ She clicked on to Google. ‘That one has a sixty-quid price tag.’

  ‘Maybe Ken will be delivered tomorrow,’ Alex smirked, butting into the conversation.

  ‘I’m surprised you know she had a beau!’ Grace laughed.

  ‘I have two older sisters. They used to nick my Action Man and hide him all the time.’

  ‘You wuss! You let them girls walk all over you,’ Sam teased.

  As everyone took a few moments out to join in with the toy-related banter, Grace ran a hand around the inside of the envelope again, but there was nothing else inside it.

  ‘Do you think it’s anyone from your Manchester crew, winding you up?’ Perry asked.

  ‘I bet it is,’ Grace said, but she felt strangely unnerved.

  Would it be someone she knew? She wouldn’t put it past any jokers at the station where she used to work, although they would probably have done something like this during her first week here. But how would they know about this doll? Could it be a coincidence?

  She opened a desk drawer, placed the doll back into the envelope and popped it out of sight for now. When she looked up, Nick was beckoning her into his office.

  ‘Can you go and see Kathleen Steele?’ he asked as she got to him.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll take Perry with me,’ Grace said.

  ‘No, go alone – try and get her at home. Pry gently, if you know what I mean.’

  Grace knew exactly what he meant. Go against their DCI’s instructions. ‘I don’t think—’ she started.

  Nick put up his hand. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll square it if necessary.’

  FIFTEEN

  Then

  She woke to the sound of screams and sat up quickly in bed.

  ‘Mummy?’ Pulling the covers back, she tiptoed across the carpet. When she reached the door, she hesitated. What if Daddy was so cross that he hit her again?

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  A bang. She jumped and almost ran back to hide under the covers, but there was another scream. She couldn’t leave her mummy in the hands of a monster.

  She opened the door. Another bang and the sound of breaking glass. She padded across the tiny hallway. The living room door was ajar so she peeped around the corner of the frame. Mummy and Daddy were on the floor. Daddy was on top of Mummy, but Daddy had his hands around Mummy’s throat. Mummy was going red in the face.

  ‘Mummy!’ she screamed.

  They both turned towards her, the room dropping into silence except for the sound of heavy breathing.

  ‘Get back to bed.’ Daddy pointed at her.

  ‘You’re hurting Mummy!’

  ‘If you don’t move by the time I count to three, it will be my hands around your neck.’

  ‘Go back to bed, darling,’ Mummy said. Her voice didn’t sound like Mummy. It was all croaky and had a shake in it.

  She shook her head.

  Daddy got to his feet slowly. She froze as he clenched his fist and came towards the door. Then he slammed it shut in her face.

  She ran back to her room. Because she knew what would happen next. Her plan hadn’t worked. Grabbing her teddy bear, she crept into the wardrobe. She covered her ears with her hands to block out the sound of Mummy’s screams. On and on they went.

  ‘Don’t hurt my mummy,’ she sobbed.

  She hated it inside the wardrobe. It was dark and things dangled over her and scared her. But it felt safer than being in bed.

  And then it went quiet. She squeezed the teddy to her chest. She could hear Mummy crying too.

  ‘Don’t hurt her, George, please,’ she begged. ‘She’s only six.’

  ‘Get her in here.’

  ‘No, let her be.’

  There were bangs, as if someone had fallen. She heard Mummy groan. And then the bedroom door opened.

  ‘I’ll break every bone in your body if you don’t come out from where you’re hiding.’

  Daddy’s voice was so loud and scary. She held her breath, trying not to let him know where she was.

  The wardrobe door was flung open. Daddy stood there. He had taken off his belt and wrapped it around his hand. She could see the buckle hanging down.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me, Daddy,’ she cried.

  He reached inside the wardrobe, grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Come here, you little bitch.’

  SIXTEEN

  After dropping her team off at Steele’s Gym, Grace headed for the north of the city. It was an address she hoped she’d never have to revisit and just the thought of it was enough to make her want to drive to the M6, the city’s nearest motorway, and go anywhere instead.

  Moreover, she wondered if maybe after her chat with the DCI she shouldn’t be going to this address alone, but ultimately this wasn’t Steele’s Gym, and that was the only place she’d been explicitly warned about.

  Brown Edge was a small village built on one of the south-westerly spurs of the Pennine Chain and looked particularly colourful now that autumn was creeping up on them. After she had passed fields and farms to get to the address in Woodhouse Lane, she pulled in at the side of the road and took a deep breath. Hardman House had been her childhood home. It wasn’t a happy place. Even after this length of time away, there would still be ghosts of the past around, and in, every corner.

  She got out of the car and walked up the driveway. Her footsteps were heavy, her heart beating as loud as a soldier’s on a quick-march. The house was a pre-war detached with a double frontage and large bay windows. Years ago, her mum had told her that George had inherited it from his parents and hadn’t spent any money on it so it had deteriorated, along with their marriage. The building itself was exactly as she remembered it, bar replacement windows and doors and a lick of paint here and there. The concrete on the driveway was old and breaking up, revealing pebble lakes that she walked around.

  All at once, she remembered the places she used to hide: behind the bin store, the outhouse that led out to the garden, the attic with its winding staircase that George found hard to negotiate when he’d had a drink, the cupboard under the stairs – until he’d put a lock on it and used it to keep her in.

  And the place where her nightmares had started.

  She knocked briskly on the front door and took out her warrant card. A woman who appeared to be in her late fifties answered it. Her face was made-up as if it had been professionally done, her clothes immaculate. She pushed long tendrils of dark hair, flecks of grey apparent, behind her ears. She looked well, no clear signs of age interfering with her health. Her eyes reminded Grace of Jade, but her colouring was like Eddie and Leon’s.

  She almost bounced forward a step on heels as Grace held up her warrant card.

  ‘Mrs Kathleen Steele? I’m DS Allendale and—’

  ‘I know who you are,’ the woman interrupted, smiling brightly. ‘Come on through.’

  Trying not to show surprise at Kathleen’s over-friendly manner, Grace stepped inside the hallway, flinching as the door was closed behind her. It had always seemed dingy in her memories, but now it was light and airy. The wooden panels were still on the bottom half of the wall but the colour above them was a bright baby blue rather than the oppressive red she could remember.

  She looked up to see the large opaque window above the stairs had been replaced with coloured glass, the image of a sunflower as bright as the sun coming through it. Yet even though the decor had most likely been changed several times since the night Grace and her mum had left, no one could erase the memories of those torturous years from within its walls.

  If she stepped into the kitchen, which was the doorway at the far end of the hall, she would see George Steele holding her mother by her hair, a hand raised up ready to slap her. If sh
e went into the dining room, she would see her mother flat out on the floor after he had hit her too hard and knocked her out. If she went upstairs to the family bathroom, she would see her curled up in a ball after he had assaulted her.

  As she followed Kathleen Steele into the living room, a memory washed over her so vividly that fear gripped her insides and her stomach tightened. Blood rushed to her head and she had to sit down on the settee before her legs gave way.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Kathleen questioned. ‘You’ve gone deathly pale. Would you like a drink?’

  Grace could only nod, thankful for a few moments to regain her composure while she was alone. An image had come to her mind. George Steele coming at her with a knife. She’d had no recollection of it until then, but the memory was of her mum stepping in front of her to shield her. Was that where the scar on Martha’s forearm had come from? Would George have killed her if her mum hadn’t been there?

  Kathleen came back into the room with a glass of water. Grace took it from her gratefully.

  ‘I’m sorry to sit down uninvited,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t apologise. I hope you’re feeling better soon. At least your colour is returning. You gave me a fright.’

  Grace sipped at the water for a moment before putting it down on the coffee table. ‘I wanted to ask you a few questions about Steele’s Gym.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Just a few routine things, so that I can understand how it’s run.’

  Kathleen smiled. ‘You mean that neither Eddie nor Leon are being of any use to you?’

  Grace smiled. ‘There was a little obstruction when I asked them anything. Do you have any say in the running of it?’

  Kathleen sat down on the settee opposite. ‘Not until recently. George would never let me work. He was a debt collector for some years – I’m sure you might know that already. But he was an alcoholic and the disease took over him eventually. He hardly went anywhere but the pub during his last year alive.’ She paused for a moment. ‘After he was murdered, Jade and I got to know each other better. I thought it would be good for us to work together on something, so we opened Posh Gloss, on a part-time basis. It’s not terribly busy, but we get by; although mostly I’m in there on my own, or the receptionist, Clara, takes over.’

  ‘Jade doesn’t like doing nails?’

  ‘My daughter doesn’t like doing anything.’ Kathleen sighed. ‘Jade has always been a fragile soul. She’s never been married but the last man she was with was hideous. She spent several years with him before he thankfully left her. She and my granddaughter Megan have been living back in Stoke for about a year now, in their own house, but they spend a lot of time here with me since George was murdered. To tell you the truth, I like having them around; they each have a bedroom of their own here. The house is too big for me without him. We were married in 1996, just after you left, you know.’

  Grace looked away fleetingly. It was awkward talking about it, but it was better out in the open. Kathleen had had an affair with her father. He had been married to her mother when her half-siblings were born. Kathleen had also lived with the beast. Even if she had no visible physical scars, Grace assumed she must have some mental ones. Grace did and she’d been a mere child.

  Unless of course George Steele never laid a hand on Kathleen. And Grace couldn’t ask her. It was none of her business.

  ‘I didn’t have it easy with George,’ Kathleen said.

  Grace jumped. It was almost as if the woman had read her mind.

  ‘I bet he was as brutal to you and your mother as he was to me and my children?’ Kathleen added.

  Grace said nothing, then gave a small nod.

  Kathleen looked at Grace, regret clear in her expression. ‘I couldn’t stop him,’ she continued. ‘But I couldn’t leave with three children. I had no money, nowhere to go, so it was better to put up with it until the children were old enough to fend him off. And then it was too late for me.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘I only wish I had your mother’s convictions. But George wore me down. Thankfully’ – she swept her hand around the room – ‘the house was put into my name, as George began to fear having anything in his own. Business sense, he called it, although he never made a will.’ She half-smiled then. ‘It did mean that when he died it was passed to me.’ She paused. ‘I hope you don’t feel bitter that nothing was left to you.’

  ‘Of course not!’ Grace shook her head and refrained from saying what she was thinking. George Steele had ceased being any part of her life once they had moved to Manchester. If he had left her anything, she would have refused it.

  ‘Eddie and Leon have never really seen eye to eye,’ Kathleen added. ‘You’d think they would, only a couple of years between them, but George made them rivals. It wasn’t nice to witness.’ She stopped as if thinking what to say next. Then, with a shake of her head, she continued. ‘George Steele had a lot to answer for, but I’m afraid I had too. I should have found the courage that your mother did and left him years ago. He was a monster.’

  Grace couldn’t imagine how hard life had been for Kathleen, living in a house full of dread and fear, amongst so many family feuds.

  She stayed for a few minutes more, asking basic questions about Kathleen’s movements at the gym on the night Josh Parker was murdered, but she had got what she’d come for.

  As she drove away, leaving all her demons in the house, she knew that everything she had witnessed yesterday at the gym had been a front. With what Kathleen Steele had just told her, it seemed that none of them really liked each other. But most families stuck together, and they didn’t seem to be an exception.

  SEVENTEEN

  Kathleen watched as Grace reversed her car and drove out onto the lane. She stood in the window for a long time after the detective had gone, watching the leaves falling from the trees as they were taken away in the wind. Her shoulders drooped but her anger continued to rise. It had been such an effort to be pleasant to the bitch, but she had a reputation to uphold and if that meant being nice to her face, then, well, she’d have to do her best for the sake of appearances.

  Because she hated Grace, and her mother, in equal measure. They had left her at the hands of George. She’d known about the girl and Martha Steele, long before they had moved to Manchester. If she was truthful, part of her had wanted them out of the equation so she could have George all to herself. But she hadn’t realised how terrible things would get for her and the kids once they had gone.

  If Martha Steele hadn’t left with Grace, then maybe things would have been different. At the time, Kathleen had been fine living in her flat with the children, their father sleeping over two or three nights a week, even if it was a tight squeeze.

  But George wanted them all to move in with him when he’d found himself alone. On his own territory, he became even more predatory. And then he became obsessed with getting married. He’d managed to track Martha down and got her to agree to a quick divorce, on the grounds that he had committed adultery. To this day, she had no idea why he’d wanted to do that, rather than go and drag Martha back because his pride had been dented. Maybe it was all about saving face. Replacing Martha with Kathleen made it look as if it was George’s choice to end his first marriage.

  Kathleen hadn’t wanted to marry George straight away. She would have preferred to see how things panned out. She’d always hoped that one day he would change, but like a lot of people whose lives were blighted by abusive partners, she had been taken in by sober George. Drunken George didn’t give a stuff about anyone but himself. So she lived for the days of sober George.

  He’d said he’d change if they moved in together on a permanent basis. But it was all lies. Living at the hands of a monster was not just degrading, it was debilitating. He had not only beaten her down with his hands, he had beaten her mentally. Saying she was never good enough, never able to leave because she didn’t have anywhere to go, no one would want her. He’d given
her no money, she had been dependent on him for everything. What did her children know about real hardship?

  George had mellowed in his later years; he wasn’t quite the bully he used to be, and Eddie and Leon had taken his place in the respectability chart. Since George had been murdered, things had improved drastically for everyone. There was no longer that sense of fear, and no anticipation that things could erupt at any time. Now Kathleen had to make sure her children didn’t get into too much trouble instead.

  It was a ceaseless battle. Half the time they never listened to her. They still blamed her for their suffering. How wrong they were when they said she could have got away from him.

  Her shoulders drooped again, thinking of her daughter, and her granddaughter. It wasn’t entirely Jade’s fault, but she did play the victim card far too often. Although, to be fair, Kathleen didn’t mind so much; Jade had all but left her to look after Posh Gloss since her last boyfriend had deserted her and she had moved back to Stoke, and it was Kathleen’s first chance at running a business; during the past few months she’d found she’d really enjoyed it. Being around people was a joy compared to having to stay cooped up in the house all day, waiting for George to come home from wherever it was he’d been, figuring out what mood he was in as soon as he came through the door, as she had for so many years. And it was all because of Martha and her daughter.

  So, despite putting on airs and graces, that woman coming to the house had annoyed her. What if Grace Allendale saw through her act and began to pry? There were secrets in their family, things no one was ever going to find out. She’d need to think what to do next, to keep everyone safe.

  Now that George wasn’t there, she would go to any lengths to protect them all. Nothing would come between her and her children. Not even the fact that Eddie had chosen not to include her in the meeting after Josh Parker had been found murdered on their premises. She was still angry they hadn’t called for her to go in.

  But she would protect them to the end, as any mother would. She always had done and she always would. Now would be no exception.