The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel

by P. D. Viner

  “Forgive me,” the widow says.

  “What? Why?” Patty’s head is spinning.

  “I didn’t mean it to happen, I just couldn’t lose him—I loved him so much, he was my world. I told Lorraine—but she already knew—knew her from university. Knew your daughter, had seen them together.”

  “What do you mean, together?” Patty asks but Audrey Cobhurn doesn’t hear the question. She sees the young beautiful woman again. Sees Dani Lancing, who has listened to all Audrey has to say—all she has to offer and then …

  “I don’t want your money—you can’t buy me. I’m not a whore.” Dani’s voice cuts through her—then she laughs, deep and throaty—it makes Audrey Cobhurn spasm.

  “I had begged Lorraine to tell me where to find her so I could talk to her. I had to make her see what she was doing to me, to us—to his family. I went to see her—offered her money, anything to leave him alone.”

  Patty can’t feel her arms or legs—totally numb.

  “I couldn’t believe he’d want her—she was a kid, the same age as our Lorraine. I gave him everything, you know. He owed me—we were a team. Then this snot of a girl came in and threatened to ruin it, destroy it. I knew it wouldn’t last, he’d have realized he loved me, but then she tricked him. Dug her claws into him with the oldest trick in the book …”

  Patty feels bile rise in her throat.

  “She got pregnant.”

  Patty’s hand drops to her stomach unbidden, some physical memory hardwired into her. In a rush she is back at Christmas with Dani. That final Christmas, with Dani so moody, so fractious. So plump. So pregnant.

  “Oh, Christ.” How had she not seen it?

  Audrey Cobhurn reaches out with her hand, lays it on Patty’s arm and grips her hard.

  “I was at the end of my rope. I didn’t want her hurt …” Audrey Cobhurn breaks down, tears stream down her face. “My brother knew some men. I asked for them to frighten her, scare her off so we could get back to how it was, the three of us.”

  “Oh my God …” Patty tries to pull away from her, but Audrey holds on—Patty twists her body—but Audrey won’t let go. She needs Patty to listen; she needs her to know—to hear her confession.

  “They went to see her, those men my brother got me, and they told her to leave us alone—leave Duncan alone. She wouldn’t listen, threatened to call the police and so they grabbed her. Things got out of hand.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Monday, January 9, 1989

  He checks the notes and signs the box to start his rounds. It is 2 p.m. He walks onto the ward and goes to the young woman’s bed. She has been there for two days. She has barely spoken in all that time, first name but no address. She has one question, which everyone has avoided answering.

  The doctor dreads sitting down with her. Her bruises are healing well. She has three cracked ribs but they’ll soon knit and begin to mend. She has lost two teeth, but not at the front; so long as she doesn’t smile she looks fine. Smiles are probably not on the agenda for a while anyway. On the ward everyone else is at least fifty and most are sixty plus—that is the normal age for women to have hysterectomies. Of course he has, sometimes, dealt with younger women, those with ovarian cancer generally, never someone who has been kicked repeatedly and savagely in the stomach. It had been a matter of life and death when she’d been brought in, and while she may know that—understand the truth of it …

  “Will I be able to have a child in the future?” she asks him the question.

  He cannot say the words to her. All he can do is shake his head. He avoids her eyes and their hope for another answer.

  “The pain …”

  “Of course.”

  He writes a note for extra medication. He can see how tight her jaw is, how she grits her teeth when it gets bad. He leaves quickly, writes that a counselor should see her tomorrow or the next day, then continues his rounds.

  A nurse sits on her bed a short while later and washes her, helping her to move as the pain tramps around her, making her woozy and weak.

  “Is there no one to come see ya, pet?”

  “No. No one.” She wants Duncan, but she can’t tell him what has happened. It is all such a mess. She grits her teeth, more at the thought of telling him, than the pain flecking her abdomen.

  “I’ll get ya some morphine, love.” And the angel rises and leaves.

  Later, as evening draws in around her, she remembers how she felt when she had her abortion. How stupid she had been to let it happen, and with that bloody art student who was such a shit. How could she ever have been interested in him? Back then she had told herself that she wasn’t killing anything, she was just postponing the moment when she met her child and held it. That was what she told herself then. Now, she will never hold a child from her own womb. Life plays such awful tricks.

  “Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy …” She is twenty-one. In Greenwich she knows her Mum and Dad will be worried—they have never missed seeing her on her birthday. Birth-day …

  When the nurse returns she will call Duncan. She needs him.

  Duncan sits in the dark. Waiting for Audrey. A bag lies by his feet, packed.

  Finally, there is a scratch at the lock and the front door opens.

  “Lorraine, why are you here, pet?” Audrey calls out as she arrives—knowing someone is in the house. “You’ll not guess where I’ve been,” she calls out excitedly, glad to have someone to share the gossip with. She’d been to a salon—exclusive. Had her hair done, her nails as well—feet and hands—plus a wax. Downstairs. It feels really odd. All part of her plan to get him excited in her again.

  “Aud.”

  She almost jumps out of her skin. She flicks on the light and sees him at the table. She knows it’s awful news. His skin is chalk, his eyes bloodshot and his cheeks are streaked with tears. But it is the bag that tells the story.

  “I love you, Audrey, but … she needs me.”

  There was no need to reveal her name. Duncan knows his affair is an open secret.

  “No!” she moans.

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I owed it to you to tell you face to face. But I’m going.”

  “You can’t, Dunc. We’re your family.”

  “You will always have everything you need.”

  “Lorraine …”

  “She’s grown, Aud—she doesn’t need me and neither do you.”

  “We do!” she is on his lap in a second, wrapping her arms around his neck. Trying to kiss him.

  “Don’t, Audrey. Have some dignity.”

  He pushes her off his lap and she lands on the floor.

  “Do you want me to beg? Look, I’ll beg.” She is on her knees, shuffling forward, arms outstretched. “Please, Duncan. Don’t do this to me, to us.”

  “I’m sorry, Audrey. Christ, I shouldn’t have come home.” He goes to walk around her but she grabs his leg.

  “No, No. No!” she screams.

  He tries to shake her off but she won’t budge. “Audrey, don’t. Christ, sweetheart, don’t make this worse.”

  “It can’t be worse. You can’t leave.”

  “She needs me.”

  “I need you!” Audrey screams.

  “She lost a baby. She lost my baby.” He is all tears now, they stream out of him, snot too. “Someone beat her to a pulp—almost killed her. They killed my baby.”

  Audrey lets go, and slides to the floor. He walks around her.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Wednesday, December 29, 2010

  “He left,” Audrey Cobhurn continues as Patty tries to reel her mind back into her body.

  “I lay there on the kitchen floor, shocked. I’d called my brother. He said it all went fine and she wouldn’t be troubling me again. He said nothing about the violence—I found that out later. They’d beaten her badly. She’d been lippy and they were the type of men who liked hitting woman and … I hadn’t told them she was pregnant.”

  The cold bites at the
two women.

  “I lay there all night, praying, cursing … then, at dawn, the front door opened. He was back. He didn’t say a word. Just came in and unpacked his bag. Showered and went to bed. I didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what happened—but he stopped with us. I thought they must have had a fight, him and your daughter. Or he realized it was just the baby that had brought them together. We never talked about it and then a few weeks later we saw her photo in the papers. She was missing.”

  Patty remembers how she and Jim had finally driven up to Durham. She had been so angry with Dani. Starting with that stupid Christmas visit—how the hell could she give up on her education when she was so close to finishing? Then keeping quiet on her birthday, her twenty-first. She had seen how all this had hurt Jim. He kept asking Patty to get in touch with Dani, but she refused. Then they had a letter from the university, asking if Dani was deferring her final year or had dropped out. They had to speak to her. They called and called, but no reply. They decided to drive there.

  When they arrived there was no one there. They let themselves in, they had a key, and waited. After a few hours the flatmate came back, very surprised to see them. She hadn’t seen Dani since before Christmas.

  “I knew she’d gone home to tell you she didn’t want to do her final terms. I think she was going to defer them but … I thought she was with you. There’s a pile of post …”

  Jim went through the stack of mail for any clue to where she might be. Nothing. Patty sat on the sofa. She already felt something awful had happened. That evening they went to the police and reported her missing.

  Audrey continued. “Duncan was beside himself. He was out every night—I think he was searching for her. He didn’t talk to me, or Lorraine. Didn’t go to work—left his assistant to run the business. Almost ran it into the ground. Duncan was in the same house with me but wasn’t my husband anymore. I know that if he’d have found her, he would have left me. Just know it. I prayed she’d stay gone—forever. And then … then she was dead.”

  Patty sees Tom’s mouth move but she doesn’t understand. The drugs have slowed everything, disengaged her eyes from her ears. The words make no sense. Then she looks to Jim and she knows what Tom is saying. Jim’s face says it all.

  Patty closes her eyes and her heart.

  “I never said anything to Duncan about what I’d done. But in those early days I saw what it did to him. He thought he’d let her die and it was killing him. That’s when the charity work started: young offenders, drug addicts. I helped him with it and we slowly became a team again.”

  For a few seconds Audrey Cobhurn is lost in her thoughts, memories of the two of them fighting the system, the dynamic duo. Then she is back in the cold reality.

  “I thought he’d forgotten her. That it was all over. Then he dies, my poor lovely man. And you show up at his funeral. I hadn’t even put him in the ground and you were there. Of course I recognized you right away—knew you were her mum. Then the policeman comes and shows me the photo—this photo.” She holds up the picture of Dani and Duncan.

  “Now I don’t think he ever got over her. I think he loved her for twenty years.”

  She looks lost, caught in a maelstrom of memories—reaching out to touch them and judge if they’re real. Remembering each kiss and thinking—did he mean that for me or for her? Suddenly her face changes—pain streaks it.

  “The policeman told me you killed Duncan.” Her eyes flash naked hatred for a second, directly at Patty.

  Patty closes her eyes. “I thought your husband killed Dani, all those years ago. I kidnapped him to force him to tell me and … I killed him. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t—” but her words sound empty. Patty knows she wanted him dead.

  The widow sighs and folds into the earth, whispering softly, “I might as well have killed them both.”

  The two women are quiet, both locked in their own grief. Until something in Patty’s brain switches on. She suddenly feels a chill in her chest, realizing the importance of something Audrey had said.

  “What policeman?”

  Audrey Cobhurn says nothing, lost, dancing somewhere far away with her Duncan.

  Patty grabs at her coat and pulls her up. “What policeman?” She feels something under her hand. She pulls at the coat and jumper; there’s a box tucked into Audrey’s waistband—a wire runs out of it to a microphone taped to her chest.

  Patty panics, she pushes Audrey away from her, and she staggers but doesn’t fall.

  “That policeman.” Audrey points to a figure on the other side of the Cathedral Square, walking toward them.

  “He told me you did it, killed Duncan, but he was wrong … it was me. I killed him—all those years ago. Killed the baby, killed our love and then killed him.”

  Patty is superglued to the spot—watching the figure get closer and closer—until …

  “He isn’t a policeman,” she calls out to Audrey. She knows him. This is all wrong. She backs away, her eyes searching for an escape.

  “Don’t run, Mrs. Lancing,” Marcus Keyson calls out as he walks closer. He waves a box in his hand. “I have you on tape, confessing to the murder of Duncan Cobhurn. Stay right there.”

  He is almost on her. She can’t run anyway, not in these stupid shoes. She pulls her leg back …

  Keyson calls. “There’s nowhere to—”

  Patty lashes her leg out with all the speed and agility she has. The shoe flies off her foot, streaking like a bullet and slams into Marcus Keyson’s face.

  “Hell.” He staggers and drops to his knees. Patty kicks the second shoe off and runs as fast as she can. She can see, by the side of the graveyard, there’s a path that leads back down into town. She goes hell-for-leather toward it.

  Marcus Keyson feels his nose. It’s tender but not broken. There’s a dull ache and he will have quite a bruise there tomorrow, but he doesn’t care. He watches Patty run to the side of the graveyard and drop out of view. He could probably catch her, she’s in her sixties and he’s twenty-five years younger, but it doesn’t seem worth it. He’s got what he needs. The thought makes him all warm inside. He walks over to the other woman, kneeling on the cobbles.

  “Hello, Audrey, thanks for finding Patricia for me. I have her confession on tape, well not tape, of course, all digital now—but you get my point. You should be happy.”

  He smiles. Audrey curls into herself a little more, wanting him to go away.

  “I do have a teensy confession to make though. Patricia was right: I’m not an actual policeman. Sorry. I really wanted her confession—and as a bonus, I got you too, ouch nasty. Having a young woman almost beaten to death and her pregnant. Not good, really. Not something we want in the papers, is it—and they would love it, I’m telling you.” He laughs. “It’s been a bad Christmas for you, hasn’t it?”

  Patty runs as fast as she can, on cobbles that threaten to tip her over and break an ankle at every step. She almost falls as she reaches the Market Square. If she can only …

  “I see her,” a shout comes from somewhere to her left. She veers away from the voice, toward the little church at the end of the square. To the left, in the shadows, is the entrance to the indoor market.

  “Where is she, Ronson?” Keyson calls out from somewhere behind.

  She slams into the wooden door—it’s chained and padlocked. The wall curves into a black corner—a dead end, she can’t go that way.

  “No!” She slams the heel of her hand into the gate. A slat gives ever so slightly. She pushes at it, and a tiny gap appears; barely wide enough for a child to crawl through. Patty scrapes through it, and tumbles into the dark of the market hall.

  She lies where she’s fallen; her hands are scraped but there’s nothing more serious. Her eyes strain into the dark, trying to see something, anything, of her surroundings. She can see nothing. The only sound she can hear is the pounding of her own heart. Suddenly she is hit again by the awful knowledge that Dani was pregnant—it folds her into a ball, clawing her stomach
. She wants to scream, howl, but she can’t. She needs to get away first, that is the priority. Any thought of confessing to the police for the murder of Duncan Cobhurn has evaporated, this is survival now. She wants to live and she wants to be free. She wants Jim.

  With a supreme effort of will, she pushes herself onto her hands and knees. Grief can wait. The drumming of her heart begins to lessen and she listens. To her right she hears footsteps—they’re so close, but they’re on the other side of the fence. Slowly her eyes adjust to the darkness and she can see she’s in some sort of walkway between stalls. She can just about see a large pile of secondhand books and a tray of CDs and DVDs. It will be difficult to get past them without making any noise—and she will need to be totally silent as the men chasing her are so close. From behind her she hears the slam of boots on the gate into the market, testing it to find a way in, just like she had done.

  “Where the hell is she?” a voice she doesn’t recognize calls out.

  “She can’t have gone far—keep looking,” Keyson yells back.

  She can’t stay in there, they’ll find the way in soon and then she’ll be trapped. She crawls on, through a mass of dropped clothes hangers and past a stall smelling of fish. Up ahead she can see a light, spilling through from somewhere. It may be a streetlight. She can …

  Her phone rings. “Oh shit.” She rolls onto her side and scrambles in her pocket, desperate to extinguish the sound as quickly as possible.

  “I hear something, boss,” the unknown man shouts. “She’s in the market. How the hell did she get in there?” He starts thumping on the fence, hard and loud.

  The phone screen shows Lorraine Cobhurn’s number.

  Patty answers in a whisper. “What?”

  “I asked you to forgive me,” Audrey Cobhurn’s voice sounds far-off, barely audible above the wind and sounds of traffic.

  “I heard you,” Patty answers in as low a voice as possible. “I can’t forgive you.”

  “I didn’t really expect you to. I wouldn’t if I were in your shoes. And I don’t forgive you either—for Duncan. I just don’t blame you. I can’t imagine twenty years of feeling like this.”