My Mother, the Liar

by Ann Troup

  Ratcliffe was sure that Rachel knew more than she was letting on too. It was a bit too convenient that she sparked out every time the questions got tough.

  The radio crackled into life, breaking into his thoughts. One of the other units had spotted Stella Baxter.

  ‘Come on, kid, we’re on!’ he said to Angie as he launched himself out of the car ready to intercept Bill Smith’s mystery visitor.

  Chapter 15

  By rights Charlie shouldn’t have been driving. He was knackered and probably more distracted than he would have been if he’d downed a bottle of scotch before getting in the van. Sick of trying to work out how he felt, he had mentally extracted himself from the emotional melee and was busy trying to work out how many bricks he would need to build a one-extension on the back of a three-bed semi. Anything to rein in his thoughts. He would have recited his twelve times table out loud if he thought it might help.

  Memory was playing tricks on him. He knew that he had never touched Frances, yet now it had been suggested to him, the vision of it kept nudging at him, insistently inviting him to give it credence. Could he have? Did he? Had he blocked it out? No one would lie about such a thing; they had to think it for a reason.

  Unable to accept that anyone could indict him like that, his mind could only make sense of it by trying to make it real. But it wasn’t – he knew it for a fact. Patsy had been the first and an event in his life that he would always remember, so indelibly was the humiliation of it carved on his psyche. Oh sure, she’d been sympathetic when he’d only managed to last two minutes, but he would never forget the sly smile that had gone with it, or the sigh of tolerance when she had told him it was OK.

  No, his mind could play as many tricks as it liked. He had never touched Frances Porter. Not that she hadn’t wanted him to; in fact, he distinctly recalled her calling him a filthy cretin when he turned her down. She had treated him with the utmost contempt ever since. She and Valerie were bloody twin souls.

  To the best of his knowledge the only child he had ever fathered was Amy. Although the marriage to Patsy had only come about because she’d claimed to be pregnant – no wonder his mother had been so ready to believe the Porters. Patsy’s baby had never materialised – she had claimed a miscarriage. He’d pitied her at the time, married for only a month and losing their baby.

  Hindsight had often made him question whether there had ever been a baby at all, or whether she’d just wanted a ring on her finger as an excuse to leave home. Her mother had died years before and Patsy hated being her father’s skivvy and having to be nice to his frequent, ever-changing girlfriends. Maybe she’d just wanted a home and a family of her own, just not with him it seemed.

  He had known when Patsy died that she was going to leave him. That knowledge had been one of the things that had sealed his fate that day – that and being stupid enough to pull the knife out of her.

  The papers had called it a crime of passion, but he’d be hard pressed to remember any passion in their relationship. From the minute they’d got married, she’d treated him like an inconvenient stray dog. Her affair with Roy Baxter had probably started at the wedding reception, but Roy had been his boss and back then Charlie hadn’t had the balls to challenge it.

  In fact, he’d been relieved when she’d told him she was leaving. Patsy had let him off the hook. Marrying her had been a huge mistake and he’d known it before the cake had been cut. Not that anyone had wanted to believe that. Being found next to her body with a knife in his hand had obscured any objective views. Patsy had been beautiful and he’d been in awe of her. He’d mistaken it for love, but not for long. Not everything that glitters is gold and Patsy had been pure brass.

  There was only one woman he’d genuinely loved and he had brought her nothing but misery. He didn’t even want to imagine what it must have been like for her all these years, having to believe that disgusting lie. Even thinking about it made him want to rage and roar and break the world. It must have been like ten kinds of hell for Rachel.

  She would have blamed herself, sucked up the responsibility of it and worn it like a hair shirt. The whole woebegone Miss Havisham set-up in the flat began to make sense. It was her idea of penance. Change nothing, affect nothing. He had spent all these years feeling so sorry for himself, he’d forgotten to wonder what it might have been like for her.

  Why had she believed them? Why had she listened to a word Valerie said?

  A memory of her sprang into his mind: she’d had her back to him, her flesh bare, the light from the bedside lamp washing over her skin, highlighting the scars left by Valerie’s weapon of choice: a thin leather belt. Of course Rachel had believed it. She would have been too afraid not to.

  The only time in his life he had ever felt capable of cold-blooded murder was the day he had first set eyes on those marks. If Valerie had been standing in front of him at that moment, he could swear now that he’d have ripped her heart out with his bare hands and spat in the hole he’d left.

  He had not long been out of prison, a few weeks at most, paroled to his mother’s house. On the walk from his weekly visit to the Probation Office, it had started to rain so heavily that he’d had to shelter in an alley. As he’d waited for the downpour to ease, he’d spotted Rachel, running up the road with her boyfriend in tow. He hadn’t taken to the boyfriend, had him down as an obnoxious little shit the first time he’d clapped eyes on him.

  The kid had been yelling at Rachel to hurry up, dragging her along the road, yanking at her arm. She’d stumbled, gone down on her knees, and the arsehole had lost the plot with her. Hauling her to her feet, the little shit had screamed obscenities into her face and had shaken her like a rag doll. She had started to seize. Charlie saw her head go back and her body stiffen as the guy dropped her, right into the gutter. He’d wanted to move then, instinct taking over.

  It wasn’t the first time Charlie had had to deal with her having a fit. When she’d been a little kid he had often been the one who’d had to see her through it. If Stella wasn’t around no one else had cared. The boyfriend didn’t – he’d looked around, checking to see that no one was watching before he’d kicked her in her ribs.

  Something primal had risen inside Charlie’s head. Ten years in prison and an ingrained abhorrence of injustice took over and propelled him across the street, balled his hand into a fist, and sent it smashing into that pompous, evil, spotty, arrogant little face.

  The kid had gone down like a sack of shit, and Charlie had warned him with his fist an inch from his busted nose that if he ever went near Rachel again, he – Charlie Jones, the convicted killer – would personally rip his head off and crap down the hole.

  The kid had threatened him with the police. Charlie had said, ‘Bring it on, kid. I’ve already done one stretch for murder, another won’t make much difference.’ If it hadn’t been so wet from the rain, he could have sworn that the kid had pissed himself. All those long boring days inside with not much else to do other than fool around in the prison gym had made him twice the man he had been, in every sense. The kid had been scared witless and had scurried away like the rat he was.

  Rachel had been a mess. She had cracked her head on the kerb when she fell, and was covered in muck and God knows what else from the wet gutter. She was fuzzy after the fit, and he’d had to pretty much carry her back to his mum’s house. Delia had been out at the time, so he’d had no choice but to try to sort her out himself. He probably should have taken her to A&E, but reality had kicked in and he’d started to feel panicky about hitting the kid and the prospect of being arrested again.

  Rachel had been in shock, teeth chattering, unable to speak, unable to look at him properly. He’d run her a bath – she’d been filthy and freezing, her clothes soaked. She’d sat in that bath for an age, probably would have stayed in there if he hadn’t knocked on the door, bringing a towel and some dry clothes. He’d given her an old T-shirt and a pair of jogging trousers of his own. The only alternative had been one of Delia’s frilly dre
ssing gowns – it hadn’t been an occasion for frills.

  When she’d come out of the bathroom, he’d asked her to show him where the kid had kicked her. She was moving awkwardly and he reckoned she had a busted rib. She’d sat on the edge of his bed and lifted up the top. Purple spots of bruising had already started to pepper her skin. He’d told her they should strap her ribs, so he’d dosed her with paracetamol and ripped up an old sheet for long bandages. He’d had to strap his own ribs a few times over the years, so he knew what he was doing.

  She couldn’t hold the T-shirt up – it hurt too much – so he’d helped her to ease it off, looking away as she blushed and tried to cover her breasts. He’d told her to turn around and lift her arm. It was then that he first saw the scars.

  His mother had written to him ages before and told him that Valerie had hit her, but he thought Delia had been exaggerating. She had a habit of it – making the nice too nice and the dramas into crises. Rachel’s scars were old, but still red and raised where they hadn’t healed well. He’d touched one and she’d flinched away from him, gasping in pain from her injured ribs. He’d strapped her up and helped her put the T-shirt back on, then he’d made her get into the bed, and he’d brought her a cup of tea. The memory was so vivid he felt as though he could step back into it as if his recall was a time machine.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ he’d asked.

  Rachel had looked at the wall when she answered, her damp hair hanging in strands and covering her face. ‘Because I wouldn’t shut up about you. I kept telling them you hadn’t hurt Patsy, but no one would listen. She said if I didn’t shut up about it she would shut me up, so she’d get the belt.’

  ‘But the scars – she must have nearly killed you.’

  She hadn’t said anything more for a long time. She’d just sipped at her tea. ‘She rubbed salt in when they got infected.’

  He hadn’t been able to believe what he’d heard. The thought of the pain she must have been in still made him feel nauseous. All because she’d defended him when nobody else would. He remembered wanting to cry at that moment. Rachel had noticed, and told him she was sorry for upsetting him. The irony of it had made him laugh. Then she’d put her arm around him and laid her head on his shoulder, and he’d pulled her onto his lap and started to rock her because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  It had begun there. On that day. When he’d first realised she wasn’t a little girl any more.

  Nothing happened between them, not then anyway. But he’d thought about it. She’d been in his bed, curled up against him, her face tensing every now and again with the passing flicker of bad dreams. It was a woman’s body that he’d held, but he couldn’t shake off the memories of the little girl. He’d felt bad, perverse. Warped even, and he’d wondered if the years inside had twisted him in some way. As if the essence of immorality that pervaded the prison air had seeped into his being and left him diseased.

  When she’d woken, he’d fed her toast and made her drink more tea, and had asked about the boyfriend.

  ‘Mother likes him – she approves. His father is a bank manager,’ she’d said, as if it explained everything. She’d said they had met in the shop, where Rachel had been working with Stella since leaving school. He’d been OK at first, given her an excuse to be away from the house sometimes. She’d welcomed that.

  Charlie had wanted to know when the violence had started.

  ‘You know me, I get things wrong. I annoy people,’ she’d said with a shrug, as if it were normal to be beaten up.

  What had she got wrong that day?

  She wouldn’t agree to sell Lila’s flat and hand over the money. The boy, Simon, had asked her to marry him and she’d said no. Everybody had been annoyed.

  Charlie had liked Lila, not least because she had always been kind to Rachel. The only person in the family who had ever given her a break, in fact. Lila had died a month before from several cancers that she’d kept a secret until they had finally consumed her. Lila had lived a vivacious single life well away from her extended family. She had never settled for marriage, preferring the company and support of other women’s husbands from what Charlie knew. Given her background, Charlie didn’t blame her.

  He didn’t think Lila had ever worked; there had been some kind of benefactor who had given her independence and a flat in Bayswater. When she died, leaving everything to Rachel, it turned out she had owned the whole building. She had conducted her fiscal affairs with the kind of business acumen that through some genetic fluke had completely bypassed her brother William.

  Rachel had become a wealthy woman overnight. Valerie had nearly succumbed to an apoplectic fit when she’d heard the news, and had immediately challenged the will. Lila had been a shrewd woman and the will was watertight, so Lilian Porter had the last laugh on her greedy, needy sister-in-law.

  Valerie had given Rachel an ultimatum: sell the property and release the money to the family, or leave. Rachel had chosen to leave. Simon had sided with Valerie, had made his move, even bought a ring. He hadn’t been a lad who took rejection well, and that day had been dragging Rachel back to her mother’s house to ‘talk some sense into her’. He had never coped well with her epilepsy, and had called her a retard. She hadn’t argued with him – Rachel didn’t do arguments – but she had stuck to her guns about her intentions.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Charlie had asked after hearing the story unfold.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I could cope with London. There are too many people; it scares me. I don’t really know what to do.’

  He’d told her she could stay with him and his mother until she’d made up her mind. Anyway, Delia was out most of the time. She’d met a bloke, Howard, and was half shacked up with him in his three-bed semi across town. So Rachel had stayed. He’d let her have his room, sleeping instead in his mother’s garish boudoir under her pink nylon sheets with the smell of her perfume preventing restful sleep.

  He’d blamed the constant insomnia on that – though the truth was that his nights were dominated by thoughts of the girl in the next room. He would lie there every night, hemmed in by Delia’s kitsch. A row of sinister-looking china dolls on a shelf peering down at him like some toytown jury, their chubby china fingers pointing and their glassy goggle eyes full of accusation.

  The memory of them made him shudder. He had never once bought Amy a doll. Though his mother had foisted a few on her. Delia had argued that it was normal for little girls to have dolls. He hadn’t dared to tell her that it wasn’t normal for grown women to have them. His mother could be strange at times: happy, loving and the soul of kindness one minute and the shortest of fuses the next. He’d learned over the years that it was better to just keep her happy and let her have her way. If it looked like a happy family, it was a happy family in Delia’s mind. Charlie just wanted a quiet life.

  Looking back, he saw that he and Rachel had been the same back then – two prisoners released into a world they weren’t equipped for. They had naturally gravitated towards each other, finding comforting traits of institutionalised behaviour that felt less gauche and less insane if they stuck together.

  Nights in front of the TV, eating food that came in tins, drinking copious amounts of tea, going to bed at half past ten. Lights out. Neither of them went out unless they had to, Rachel almost never. She didn’t want anyone to know where she was. Charlie stayed home because he didn’t know where else to be, despite his probation officer pushing him to look for work.

  They existed like that for weeks. Rachel bought new clothes, ordered from Delia’s catalogue and paid for with Lila’s money, but mostly she slopped about the house in Charlie’s old T-shirts. She’d said that it was like wearing a comfort blanket. He had been secretly chuffed, though he’d told her she looked like a reject from a concentration camp in his oversized shirts.

  Things got near the knuckle one night when they had been watching some ridiculous old horror film. Like bookends, they had been sitting at either e
nd of the sofa, nursing mugs of tea and sharing a packet of custard creams. As the atmosphere of the film grew more tense, she had edged her way towards him, curled into a tight ball, and watched the film from almost behind him, clinging to his arm and peering out from time to time.

  Eventually, he had turned around very slowly and scared her half witless by yelling, ‘Boo!’ – reducing her to a screaming heap of hysterical laughter. She’d clung to him, tears streaming out of her eyes – he’d been about to kiss her, had her face in his hands, an inch away from giving in to the moment.

  Then his mother had walked through the front door and they had sprung apart, but Delia hadn’t missed the look on his face or the blush on Rachel’s. She’d frowned at him and cornered him in the kitchen after Rachel had gone to bed.

  ‘What’s going on with you and her, then?’ she had demanded. ‘While the cat’s away, the mice will play?’ There was a meanness to her tone that surprised him. He’d always thought she was fond of Rachel.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Mum – nothing’s going on. We were just having a laugh, watching a film, that’s all.’

  ‘Hmm. I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t,’ she’d said, her lips pursed with doubt and disapproval.

  Delia stayed home that night and he’d been relegated to the sofa. At least there’d been no accusatory doll eyes to disturb his peace. The cushion he’d laid his head on had smelled of Rachel, and that was enough to make for a very uncomfortable night.

  His mother left again the next day, the lure of her social life greater than the pull of her conscience. ‘Watch yourself; she’s half your age,’ she’d said in the hallway as she’d put on her coat.

  ‘Not quite, Mum, she’s a grown woman.’