‘You never told the police any of this.’
‘Why should I. They were looking for Miranda. I knew it wasn’t her.’
‘And you didn’t see her come back.’
‘No. I pissed off home soon afterwards. Anyway, why all the interest?’ I shrugged my shoulders, looked down at the table. Time to ease off, wrap it up in a bit of sorrow.
‘I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I try and kid myself that Miranda isn't really dead, that this woman might have been her after, that Audrey never killed her, that somehow she escaped to a better life. After all they never found a proper body. Mistakes are made.’ My voice was choking. It was partly true. Back in prison I used to think exactly that. Mary put her hand over mine. She might have faded away over the years but I could still feel it lying under her skin, her lost years. Maybe a military man would come along. Maybe he’d come on a horse. Maybe he’d come on a tank. Maybe not a man at all.
‘Well, it’s all in the past now,’ she said, trying to brighten me up, rubbing my knuckles. ‘You must be all excited.’
‘Must I?’
‘Seeing her after all these years.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’re leaving it a bit late aren’t you, if you’re meeting the seven forty. It’s gone half past already.’
‘I’m not running a taxi service anymore Mary.’
‘I know that, but isn’t that the train Carol’s coming in on? She’ll be wondering what’s…’ she caught my look. Her hand flew to her face. ‘Oh Jesus. It was meant to be a surprise. She told me not to tell you, and now I’ve gone and spoilt it. Please don’t tell her Mr Greenwood. She’ll kill me. Please…’
But I didn’t hear the rest. I was already half way out the door. Carol was coming down. And Robin’s scrabble set was laid out on the table.
I ran back to the bungalow. Mary’s watch was wrong, and not in the right way. It was already seven fifty. Carol would be walking through the front door any minute. I gathered up the scrabble set and stuffed it under the mattress in the master bedroom. Later, when it was safe I’d put it back in the garage. I went back into the living room, fluffed some cushions, tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t stop. Perhaps I’d get rid of it after all, borrow a boat, chuck it over the side, like I should have done years ago. Meanwhile, had I hid it properly? I went back into the bedroom to check it wasn’t peeking out. I was sure I could see a little lump where it was. What if she came in here for some reason and sat down, wouldn’t she feel it? I sat down. She’d feel it all right. Then she’d peel the mattress back and…
I could feel myself sweating. I had to find somewhere else and quick. Trouble was, it wasn’t easy. Main room, spare room, bathroom, there was nowhere suitable. The airing cupboard only had a few sheets in, the bookcase was nearly bare, and I’d have to be seven types of idiot to try and hide it in the jumbo box of cornflakes. Two minutes past. She should be here already. I banged round the bungalow one place to another like a ball in a pinball machine, ending up in the conservatory, the bloody thing stuck to my hand. We had a wood burning stove in there, one that Audrey had bought after seeing a film about saving the Amazonian rain forest. I think she got the wrong of the stick, because this was a brutal bastard that ripped through wood like an Australian bush fire, with double fire doors at the front and a long sliding drawer underneath to catch the ash. I pulled tray out, stuffed the set in, shoved the tray back, ran and got the dustpan from the cupboard under the sink, swept up the tell tale cinders that had spilled out, put the dustpan back under the sink and fished out a lager from the fridge. I could hardly pour it properly my hands were shaking that much.
I went back in into the conservatory, sat myself down, stared at the bloody thing. It sat there all squat and black and stared back, like its door were going to fling open like a cuckoo clock and blurt the secret out. It was a pretty stupid place to put it wasn’t it? What was wrong with the mattress? I mean she wasn’t going to lie on my bed, whereas the conservatory…what happened if it got cold all of a sudden? I lit a fag, tried to calm down. Through the window I could see there was a light on in Kim Stokie’s place. Michaela was back. Probably changing into another outfit before she finished Audrey’s postcard. I’d give her repulsive. Of course it wasn’t addressed to Audrey as such. It just said Dimpled Darling. Did Audrey have dimples? She had rashes. But dimples? I couldn’t remember. Maybe it wasn’t for Audrey. Maybe it was to this Nelson character. Maybe he got dimples while flushing her fork. I’d never thought of that.
A shadow fell over my glass. Carol was standing looking through the French windows. I sat up with a start, dropping my fag into my drink. She had these big dark glasses on and was carrying two long, creepy-looking boxes, one in each hand. She’d done it despite Mary’s screw-up. She’d surprised me.
‘Carol!’ I jumped up, opened the door, gave her a hug. She didn’t avoid it, but she didn’t respond either. She just stood there, still holding on to her luggage. I recognised them right away, cause Audrey had brought something similar coming back from the Costa del Sunburn. Giant Toblerones. What every homesick stomach lining craves.
I never understood it myself, this addiction holiday makers had to outsize bars of Toblerone. The ordinary ones fair enough. You go on holiday, you lose your taste buds, on the way back you buy a bar of Toblerone. But apparently that is not enough, because at airports you can buy these monsteroony versions, nearly three foot long, one point five kilograms in weight, with teeth like those concrete welcome mats the Krauts put down on the Normandy beaches to stop our tanks rolling in. What’s more they parcel it all up in this Al Capone style cardboard box with a cardboard handle to match. Carry one through the checkout wearing dark glasses and a Hawaiian shirt and you just look like what you are, a prat back from holiday. But Carol had the two. She looked a bit different. She looked a bit mad, a bit dangerous, a bit Reservoir Chocolate. I shouldn’t have, considering what she thought of me, but in a weird way I was quite pleased to see her. Flesh and blood after all.
‘What’s all this then?’ I asked, pointing to the portable bloodbath.
‘I bought them at the airport. One’s for Mary Travers, I don’t suppose you remember her.’
‘Course I do. She had that horse Bamber. Brown and white.’ Carol look surprised that I’d remembered. ‘And the other one? Sweetheart you shouldn’t have.’ She shook her head.
‘That’s for Robin,’ she said, jiggling it up and down. ‘When I get you behind bars, I’m going up to the Beacon to eat it in memory of him. He loved Toblerone. We often shared a bar together, sitting on the pimple there. You still got a freezer? They got a bit warm on the journey down.’
I followed her as she carried them through. Yes, and that’s all she had up the pimple with him, gorse bush or no, bloodless smart-arse.
‘You staying then?’
‘Why shouldn’t I? It’s still my home isn’t it? The rest of my luggage is in the hire car outside, if you want to bring it in. I’ll have a look around. Funny to think this where I grew up.’
I went out, carried her luggage into what used to be her old room. The bed was all roughed up. Those bastard tenants hadn’t even had the decency to tidy up proper when they left. She looked a bit dismayed. I felt it too. She was right. It was her home, or had been.
‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. You should be comfy enough, though.’ She sniffed, put her hand down, tested the mattress.
‘It’s damp,’ she said.
‘Damp?’ I put my hand down too. Michaela and me must have had a swift turn on it after the shower. I didn’t remember that at all. ‘I’ll sort it out, don’t you worry.’ I pulled the cover off. ‘So, what’s next?’ She straightened up, looked right at me.
‘I told you. I’m here to find you out. He was a good man, Robin. Yes, he was a bit of a prat-fall, but so what. I liked him. Mum did too. We had things in common. He was an only child, like me.’ She stopped and stared hard at me. ‘Like I thought was me.’
‘You
were an only child,’ I told her, facing it up to it as best I could. ‘I might have been Miranda’s father, Carol, but she was never my daughter. We didn’t go shrimping together. I never took her to tap-dancing lessons every Saturday morning or sat her on my knee and let her drive the Vanden Plas all the way to Wool when she was only ten. That was you. Best drive of my life.’
Christ, I could feel tears coming into my eyes.
‘Anyhow, let’s leave that aside for the moment. How are you? How’s life in the new country?’
‘An absolute riot, ’she said. ‘Malcolm’s threatening to leave us. He doesn’t feel safe with me and the children anymore. We got too many killer genes inside us, that’s what he says. Your mum and dad eh. How does the poem go?’
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘And the little ones?’ I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names.
‘They’re fine. No one messes with them at school. Not with grandparents like theirs splashed all over the Sundays.’ She looked about her. It must have felt strange to be in the room she grew up in, yet nothing of hers there, not even the paintwork. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t stay here. They got rooms in the Bindon still?’
‘Far as I know. If you’d rather stay there, I’ll understand. I’d pay of course.’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course. As I said, you’re my daughter.’
‘I am, aren’t I.’ She stood there defiant. ‘I always was. Was that why you did it, a father daughter thing?’ She was staring at me again, like expecting me to confess.
‘Come on, Carol, calm down. Have a drink.’
‘A drink. That’s your answer to everything isn’t it.’
I led her into the living room, brought out the vino, poured her a glassful of red. She sat down, took a gulp, then another, then another, like a dog at a bowl. I filled her glass up again, took a swig myself. This was going to be a two bottle evening, minimum.
‘Carol, Carol. What’s brought all this on? You’ve been living on the other side of the world for all these years, living the good life, Malcolm, the kids, all that factor eighteen sun. Why spoil it all now?’
‘I’ll tell you why. I was reading the account of your release, those ridiculous claims you made that you’d pushed someone off a cliff, mistaking her for mum. Then it hit me. You were telling part of the truth, like good liars always do. You had pushed someone off a cliff, only it wasn’t a cliff, and it wasn’t some stupid mystery woman. It was Robin up in the Lake District.’
She sat there, arms folded, looking just like her mother. It struck me, that in some way she wasn’t really upset at all. It was just as excuse to get even with me, for all the wrongs I done her over the years. Some things never change.
‘Look, Carol. I know you haven’t had it easy. Losing Robin, losing your left leg, your mum being sent down for murdering your half sister, but believe me…’
‘It was my right leg.’
‘What?
‘It was my right leg that was taken off. God, don’t you even know that.’
‘That’s what I said wasn’t it?’
‘No. You said left.’
‘Yes. The left was the one left. I know it’s not much consolation but aesthetically speaking I always thought your left leg was better looking than your right.’
‘Dad!’
‘It’s true sweetheart. The right one was great, don’t get me wrong, but your left, your left is a real corker. Robin thought so too. I mean look at it.’ We looked at it. It could have lost a few pounds.
‘Did he?’
‘Well he liked both of them, but whenever I saw him looking at them, it was the left one that seemed to catch his eye.’
‘Malcolm likes my right better. Or he did.’
‘Does he?’
‘He was always running his hand up it. He liked the join, where the soft bit meets the hard.’
‘He probably still is, in his imagination. You should go back to him, make it up. Forget about Robin and what happened. It was an accident darling. I might not have liked Robin very much, but I don’t go pushing off people of a cliff just because I don’t get on with them, or because they cheat at scrabble.’
She banged her glasses down on the table.
‘He never cheated at scrabble, never! He had no need to.’
‘Excuse me? That word in the tournament? I don’t want to speak ill of the dead Carol, especially a dead fiancé, but the facts speak for themselves. Faced with superior play and better rack management, Robin cheated.’
‘What tournament?’
What tournament!
‘When we were rained in! With the little silver cup what Mum found as the prize! By rights it should have been mine. I was going to beat Robin with that last word I had, until he objected to it.’
‘Were you? I don’t remember.’
‘Don’t remember! It was the most memorable moment of the whole holiday.’
‘Dad. The most memorable moment of the holiday was loading Robin’s coffin into the back of the camper van.’
It was true. After the police released the body, we brought his coffin back with us, wedged on top of the double bed. Well, it was the least I could do. It would have cost a fortune to get it delivered to the funeral parlour in Bristol. Carol and Audrey stayed over for the service while me and Monty took the camper van back to Weymouth. Just as well really. Apart from his mum and a representative from Mensa, Audrey and Carol were the only mourners. He wasn’t liked much, Robin. Rather proved my point, I thought.
‘All right. I’ll give you that one. But before that – the tournament, which I would have won with the word Twerp, you remember? Robin claimed it was slang and it wasn’t allowed. Adamant he was, and him being an educated bloke, I believed him. But I looked it up later, and there it was, in the dictionary. It was a proper word, Twerp. I would have won and he knew it.’
She ran her hand through her hair. Her roots were showing.
‘Dad. Just because it’s in a dictionary, doesn’t mean to say it isn’t slang. Didn’t I see a dictionary somewhere in here?’
She walked over to the shelf, fished it out amongst the guides to the spring cruises and the koi-keeping handbook. It was only when’d she’d picked it up that I realised what she was holding, Robin’s pocket book. I’d forgotten to hide it away with all his other stuff. She only had to open the front page and she’d see his neat little handwriting staring her in the face. Wouldn’t that be a call from the dead. She started to leaf through, looking for the right word, just like I had done in the caravan ten years ago. I could hardly bear looking at her, her fingers touching the pages, maybe the very same pages as I had. Didn’t she recognise it at all? Then with a cry, she slapped the book down in front of me, jabbing her finger down. Her hands were all wrinkled, like they’d been stuck in a washing tub for a week. I remembered them suddenly, how small and pink they’d been, clutching that wheel.
‘See?’ she said, all pleased with herself, like she’d just won first prize at quiz night. ‘There it is. Twerp.’
‘I don’t know what you’re crowing about. That’s exactly my point Carol. It’s in the effing dictionary. It was a proper word. I’d won and he knew it. Your fiancé cheated. Hardly the sound basis for a father- future-son-in-law relationship is it?’ She shook her head, her voice all quiet.
‘Dad. See those brackets after it? See what it says between them?’ I looked.
‘It doesn’t say nothing. Just a few letters.’
‘Sl, that’s what it says. That stands for slang. Robin didn’t cheat, dad. He was simply playing by the rules.’ I stared hard. Sl?
‘Are you sure that’s what they mean?’
‘Course I’m sure.’
‘It’s a slang word after all then, twerp.’
‘Course it is. Everyone knows that.’
‘Not allowed then, in scrabble.’
‘Not in a month of Sundays. Unless of course…’ she stopped.
‘Unless what?’ She
shook her head.
‘Unless what?’ She looked at me defiant.
‘Unless you were playing filthy scrabble.’ Her face started to go red.
‘Filthy scrabble? I don’t quite follow.’ She took a big gulp.
‘Sometimes we played filthy scrabble, you know, where you try and use slang and swear words. No need to look like that, dad. It’s just a bit of harmless fun. Twerp would have been OK then.’
‘I don’t know. Filthy scrabble. Is this what we paid you to go to college for?’ I drew the dictionary closer, rested my hand on top of it.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. You weren’t playing it then and Robin didn’t cheat.’ She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes all wide. ‘Is that why you pushed him off. Because you thought…it was nothing to do with me, was it? It was because you thought he’d cheated.’
‘Carol, how many times have I got to say it. It was an accident. Like your leg was an accident.’
‘Yes and you were the shark. When did you ever go for a walk up a mountain before? Never! And the first time you do, my fiancé falls down a ravine?’
‘It had been raining, you know how hard. The paths were all slippery. I didn’t want to go, but you know what he was like. There was no stopping him. I had trouble keeping up with him and no mistake. A proper rambler was Robin, reading maps, eating mint-cake, hiking in ugly socks. It was in his blood.’ Her face went all soft, remembering.
‘He loved the outdoors.’ I pressed home the point.
‘Dead knowledgeable too. There wasn’t a rock he wasn’t on first names with. Could have written a guidebook, the stuff between his ears. He wanted to phone you when we got to the top, take a picture for you. He was looking for his mobile when he lost his footing. It might not be much comfort Carol, but on the way down, his last thoughts must have been of you.’ I moved the dictionary out the way, opened up the second bottle. She sniffed hard. I poured her another drink, moved the dictionary off the table, next to me.
‘I still got his tartan slippers,’ she said. ‘His mum gave them to me. They don’t play that tune any more, but I could never throw them away. It’s the only thing I have of him. I used to write to his mum, but when the kids were born it didn’t seem right, boasting of my new life while Robin was stuck in a jar on the mantelpiece.’
Fish Tale (Cliffhanger Book 2) Page 13
