Bad Blood
Page 37
Bill shook his head. ‘Hard to take in the scale of the destruction Lee caused. And to that poor girl Marnie, as well.’
‘Between them they inflicted a miserable life on her and now she’s still in intensive care, thanks to them. The outlook isn’t good, from the medical reports we’ve had.’
‘Don’t write her off,’ Bill said. ‘She must be tough. Maybe if she’s used to weathering hurricanes she’ll have the strength to fight through.’
‘If she wants to try.’
The fire was burning strongly now, with the flames licking at the apple logs and their warm scent filling the room. Meg stretched herself out with a sigh and Marjory leant back in her chair tiredly.
‘I’ve had enough for today. Let’s talk about something else. Do you know, Cat actually called me today, wanting to ask me about managing probation orders for a paper she’s doing for the course? Maybe it’s a sign of a thaw. It’s about the first time she’s asked for my input since she went to senior school.’
‘She was just preparing herself for the hurricanes,’ Bill said.
‘She wouldn’t have to if she didn’t whip them up for herself,’ Marjory said dryly. ‘But look at the time, Bill! Get to bed, right now!’
‘Haven’t finished my dram,’ he grumbled, but he drank what was left in his glass and got up. ‘You should come too – you’re looking awful.’
‘Oh good, that makes me feel so much better. I’ll take these through and then I’ll lock up.’
At the door, Bill turned. ‘You haven’t told me all the gory details but since there’s to be an inquiry about firearms regulations I assume you were right in there with the man with the gun. Next time you feel a bout of heroism coming on, just remember you’ve a husband with a heart condition who might take badly to a shock and wait for armed response, OK?’
‘Thought you told me you weren’t to think of yourself as an invalid?’ she said, but as she set the fireguard in place she thought guiltily of the number of times Bill must have thought he might be left with a broken world. Perhaps she owed it to him to be more sensible in future, though it was easier to decide that in principle than in practice. Somehow she couldn’t quite see herself in the heat of the action stopping to think. ‘Ah! Mustn’t do anything rash.’
Bill’s health was still a worry, of course. They were all putting on a brave front, pretending everything had been put right, as if he’d broken his leg and now it had been fixed. Bill himself was in a sort of euphoric haze at the moment, which was natural enough. If you were facing execution and had been given a reprieve, you would feel almost giddy from relief – she was experiencing a touch of that herself right now.
But once that wore off, in the dark days of winter that lay ahead, what would stick with you would be that very graphic reminder that you were mortal. Even more than the wrinkles and the grey hairs, actually believing that one day you would die, whether tomorrow or in thirty years time, marked the end of youth. When you were young, though you knew all about death in theory, you blithely didn’t believe it would really happen to you. She and Bill had been young, by that definition, until last Saturday afternoon. They weren’t any more.
Bill had suffered from depression once before. She would have to watch out for the signs and make sure it didn’t take hold this time.
Meg was waiting for her by the back door, her tail wagging in happy anticipation of the final run around outside before bedtime and Marjory looked at her with a rueful smile. Dogs had it right; live in the moment and enjoy it to the full – a lesson both she and Bill would have to learn.
Epilogue
2014
She didn’t recognise her mother when she came in.
Somehow DI Fleming had managed to arrange a prison visit out of hours. The visitors’ room, with its vending machines and children’s toys in one corner, seemed vast and as she sat waiting at a scarred table Marnie had time to consider jumping up, saying it had all been a mistake and leaving.
Then a door at the further end opened and a prison officer ushered in an old woman, very thin, with slumped shoulders and untidy, rusty-white hair. She looked across and without any sign of animation or interest came over to Marnie’s table and sat down. She had bright-blue eyes.
Like her own, Marnie realised. It was a shock. She remembered her mother with black hair and eyes that were an indeterminate grey; she couldn’t be much more than fifty now but this woman looked twenty years older than that.
‘Mum?’ she said uncertainly.
The woman gave a thin smile. ‘I suppose so. They said my daughter wanted to see me.’
‘Did you want to see me?’ It was all she could think of to say.
Kirstie shrugged. ‘I don’t want anything, really, any more. I’ve had enough.’ She leant forward across the table. ‘They watch me, you know. They won’t let me do it.’
Marnie had imagined her mother cruel, harsh, mocking. In hopeful dreams she’d imagined her at last responding to the ties between them. She’d never thought of this. Struggling with a sense of unreality, she said, ‘I wanted to ask you a couple of things.’
‘If you like.’
‘When you left me at the cottage, when I was struck over the head, was it Drax who hit me?’
A little animation came to her face at the name. ‘Drax?’ She lingered on it lovingly. ‘No. He wasn’t there. He was waiting for me, of course.’
Sick bile rose in Marnie’s throat. ‘You hit your own child? You hit me, then you left me? I could have died.’
‘I told you,’ Kirstie said, as if she was explaining to a child. ‘Drax was waiting for me at the station. It had all gone wrong, the business. We had to go. He wanted you out of the way – you just came back at the wrong time.’
She was disposable, worthless. When she was tense, the scar from her bullet wound hurt; it was hurting now. With her throat stinging from suppressing the tears, Marnie said, ‘Was he my father?’
‘No!’ It was a cry of pain. ‘He should have been. But he would never give me a child. You were just a mistake. He’d left me then, you see.’
Marnie heard the words but if she didn’t block their meaning she couldn’t go on. Just one more question, then she could leave.
‘Who was he, then?’
‘One of the screws at the prison. Peter Redford. Never said anything but I knew he fancied me.’ She smirked. ‘I was pretty then, you know, prettier than you are. When I was discharged I’d nowhere to go so I went to him and he took me in. Didn’t care what I did – Drax was gone.
‘I said I’d marry him. Then Drax came back, so of course I left.’
‘Did he – did he know about me – my father?’
‘Never saw you.’
‘Did he – did he look for me?’
‘I don’t know. We’d gone.’
‘You didn’t want me. Why didn’t you leave me with him?’ Marnie burst out.
Kirstie gave her an impatient look. ‘I was only six months gone. I couldn’t have.’
‘You could have waited—’
‘Drax would have vanished by then. Don’t you understand?’ Her voice was impatient.
And somehow, all of a sudden, Marnie did. His name had been short for Dracula and he had sucked out the essence of her mother’s humanity and left her less than human too.
She had only one more question. ‘What was my father like?’
‘Oh kind, soft – a fool!’ There was nothing but contempt in her voice.
Now she could go. Without farewell, without a backward glance, Marnie walked to the exit door and said to the prison officer, ‘I want to leave now.’
Outside the prison, the air was very fresh and cool. It had stopped raining for the moment and Marnie walked fast, as if to put distance between herself and the woman she had known as mother.
It would be easier now. It wasn’t that Marnie was worthless, it was simply that long before she was born Kirstie Burnside had no love left, as Peter Redford had found.
Peter Redford. I
t wouldn’t be hard to trace him, the ‘kind, soft fool’ who was the better part of her heredity. By now, the heartbreak he had felt would be long forgotten, though, and he would have his own life.
She wouldn’t try to find him. The price she, and others, had paid already in her search for answers was too high. She was simply Marnie Bruce, a name without connections, a name that was hers alone. Tonight she would be back in North London in the tiny flat Anita Loudon’s legacy had bought her, beginning on the task of quelling the memories, clearing the ruins of the past and trying to build her new life.
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About the Author
ALINE TEMPLETON grew up in the fishing village of Anstruther, in the East Neuk of Fife. She has worked in education and broadcasting and was a Justice of the Peace for ten years. Married, with two grown-up children and three grandchildren, she now lives in a house with a view of Edinburgh Castle. When not writing she enjoys cooking, choral singing, and travelling the back roads of France.
www.alinetempleton.co.uk
By Aline Templeton
Evil for Evil
Bad Blood
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2013.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2013.
Copyright © 2013 by ALINE TEMPLETON
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1402–5