Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

  ‘Call me if you need anything?’

  ‘Of course. Now, go on. I’ll see you later if you feel like some supper. We can have sandwiches with some of the cold lamb. But don’t bother to come down if you’re not hungry. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK. Thanks, Dad.’

  He watched her climbing easily on her long, long legs until she disappeared round the turn of the stairs. He worried about her so much. She had far too big a load to carry, but he was already beaten to his knees with his own and he couldn’t help any more with hers.

  He hoped she’d find a way to deal with her genetic inheritance somehow. She was a credit to her upbringing, honest and kind and serious, but you never knew when inherent characteristics were going to emerge out of the manufactured self. Like with Deb: so kind on the surface and so volcanically angry beneath it. Just like her terrifying father, in spite of everyone saying she was her mother all over again. If only …

  Stiffening himself, Adam turned to face his responsibilities, smiling as brightly as he could. ‘Now, kids, how about cooking something for tea?’

  ‘Yeah, great,’ said Louis, while Marcus scowled. ‘Flapjacks?’

  ‘And chocolate cornflakes,’ shrieked Millie.

  ‘Must we?’ sighed Marcus, sounding as though he were in his sixties.

  ‘Not if you don’t want to, and if you can amuse yourself quietly. But I don’t want you disturbing Kate. She’s done enough for today.’ Adam knew Marcus would sneer and pretend to loathe the idea of cooking, only to sidle into the kitchen eventually and join in.

  Adam tied tea-towels round the waists of the other two and set them to measuring and mixing, while he tried to make himself believe he could carry on for as long as it took. Provided it was just the family, he thought he probably could manage, but if he were faced with any more penetratingly perceptive women like Anna Grayling’s pet barrister, he might crack.

  It had been shaming to see Trish Maguire pick up his certainty of Deb’s guilt. He should have hidden it better. But he didn’t know how. He could manage to keep it from the little ones and, he thought, from Kate. He wasn’t so sure about Deb herself, but at least now they had only the odd hour alone together and there was plenty else to talk about. It had been hell for the year she’d been on bail waiting for the trial.

  They’d gone on sleeping – or more often not sleeping – in the same bed, just as they’d always done, and Adam had tried not to think about her father’s death, or what she might do if he himself triggered one of her rages. Setting them off had been all too easy throughout the long, anguished months of her bail.

  He’d tried so hard to go on thinking about her as the gentle, uncertain, hurt woman he’d fallen in love with, and the mother of his children, but more and more as she retreated into her angry silences, or burst out with diatribes about his and everyone else’s failings, he’d seen her as the killer of her father. And he’d hated himself for it.

  He knew the barrister had understood. He just hoped she hadn’t picked up the rest. Even to himself it was hard to admit that he was afraid of his own wife.

  ‘Where’s the treacle, Dad? Dad!’ Louis’s voice broke in. From the irritation in his round blue eyes, which were so like Deb’s, it was clear he’d been asking the question for some time.

  Adam found the heavy green-and-gold tin and reminded Louis how to weigh out the necessary 150 grams. Marcus was back already, loitering on the edge of the busy little group, flinging sarcastic comments around, but not yet joining in. He would, given time. Adam had no trouble understanding him or knowing how he’d react. He felt safe with Marcus. Louis was more difficult, as emotional and incalculable as Deb, as well as looking out of her eyes. Funny that twins, even fraternal twins, could have turned out quite so different.

  He wished he believed in God – or any god. Then he could have prayed: Don’t let any of them see how terrified I am that their mother may get out of prison.

  While she was locked up, the children were safe. They could believe in her innocence and love her, write their pathetically brave letters and draw their pictures of what they’d been doing and what they thought she’d like to see. If she came out and they were faced with her little spurts of temper and the few but appalling bigger ones, they too might come to question her innocence.

  Adam knew he was a coward. He’d discovered it a long time ago. If he’d been braver, he’d have told Anna Grayling what he believed and she’d have dropped her plans for the TV programme. But perhaps the barrister would tell Anna for him and that might be enough. Trish Maguire certainly knew. She’d sussed him for the weak man he was, terrified of his own wife and appalled at the idea of ever having to live with her again.

  ‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’

  Millie was looking so frightened he realised he must have groaned aloud. He made himself grin again.

  ‘Lumbago,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a kind of backache old men get,’ he said, tweaking one of her blonde curls. ‘They used to say that the only cure for it was to make a roll of old flannel filled with hot salt, like a kind of swiss roll, and lay it on the afflicted part.’

  ‘There’s some salt here,’ she said, scrambling off the chair on which she’d been perching to stir her sticky mixture. There was chocolate goo all over her hands and face and a goodly lot down her front too. ‘We can put it in the cooker and make it hot and I’ll get my flannel …’

  ‘Oh, Millie, my darling,’ he said, swinging her up into his arms in spite of the chocolate, ‘you are a sweetie, but it’s not that bad. We can keep the hot salt for another day. Now, we need to get you some paper cases, don’t we?’

  ‘Millie’s feet are in my way, Dad,’ said Marcus, elbowing them both aside. ‘Move her, for goodness sake. Then I can stir. You are useless. Lumbago’s no excuse.’

  Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, Adam thought.

  The letter was already limp from overhandling, even though Deb was trying to ration herself. She knew if she read it as often as she wanted, it would lose its power, but it was hard not to take it out of her pocket for a quick look every time she felt low.

  Her door was open and the others were milling about outside, making the usual racket. It amazed her that the women who were penned up with her could produce such a volume of noise for so many hours at a time. Ghetto-blasters, raucous laughter, tuneless singing, and, of course, the screams of the self-harmers and the attention-seekers.

  Anna Grayling’s letter opened itself between her fingers and her eyes caught the magic sentences again:

  Trish really liked you, Deb, and she’s told me she’s sure you’re innocent. She fights like a tiger for people she takes on, so I know you’re going to be all right. It may take time, but it will come right in the end, and you will be going home. I’m sure of it. You’ll be with Kate again, probably before she takes those A levels of hers.

  Chapter 8

  Trish let herself into George’s house as quietly as she could. He’d had a briefcase full of work, and she didn’t want to disturb him before he’d finished.

  ‘Trish? That you?’

  She could feel the smile stretching her cheek muscles as the sound of his voice reached her from the garden. He never worked out there, so he must have finished the briefcase. He’d be prepared to talk.

  ‘I was beginning to get worried. Traffic hell?’

  ‘Yes. And a lot of tough questions to ask.’ Trish plumped down on the chair beside his and pushed off her shoes. Her bare feet were grubby from exhaust fumes, but as the soles met the cooling bricks and her toes flexed she sighed in pleasure. She knew George wouldn’t mind the grime.

  ‘You look as though you need a drink,’ he said. ‘Then you can tell me all about it. Pimm’s? I’ve made a jug.’

  ‘I’d rather have wine, actually,’ she said, wrinkling up her nose. ‘Pimm’s isn’t really my—’

  ‘Nor it is. I can’t think why I keep forgetting.’

  He
disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Trish to wonder why she should mind that he’d forgotten something as trivial as her dislike of the sickly drink. There were so few days hot enough to persuade George to mix himself some Pimm’s that the subject had hardly ever cropped up. There was no reason for him to remember.

  ‘Here.’ He handed her a tall, dewy glass of white wine, which tasted like her favourite New Zealand sauvignon. She felt his hand on her head. ‘Someone’s been horrible to a child, haven’t they, Trish? One of Deborah Gibbert’s? Do you want to talk about it, or would you rather …?’

  She looked up quickly. Her taste in drinks might occasionally escape his memory, but not the important things.

  ‘Not this time. This time it’s an adult who’s suffering.’ She told him about her discovery that Adam Gibbert, like Deb’s mother, believed her guilty. ‘So no wonder the police and the CPS and the jury thought so too.’

  ‘But you’re still convinced she’s innocent?’

  ‘Not convinced. I never have been. But I still think she could be. Don’t ask me why.’

  ‘Why?’

  She laughed. He could always make her feel better, less stressed, more rational.

  ‘Because you liked her?’ he suggested.

  ‘That, yes. And …’ Trish tried to fix on the conviction that sat like a stone at the bottom of the muddy river of ideas and suspicions in her mind. She thought of Deborah’s face as she explained why Kate mustn’t be given false hope. Trish had taken that as devoted mothering; was it in fact the sign of a woman aware that no one would ever find any evidence that she wasn’t guilty?

  ‘Because she’s a good mother?’

  Trish reached up to take his hand from her head and kiss it. ‘You know me too well, George. Though lots of them say she has a terrible temper.’

  He moved away to sit in his own chair and lifted his heavy tumbler of tea-coloured liquid, picking a fly out of it with a small bunch of borage flowers.

  ‘But you knew that. A terrible temper, clearly, and a sharp tongue, and an inability to hide outrage.’ George’s face softened into a smile that made her flex her toes again in pleasure. ‘She sounds just like you, my love.’

  ‘Bastard.’ Trish stuck out her tongue. ‘Maybe that’s why I liked her.’

  ‘So what are you going to do next?’

  ‘Interview the doctor who treated her parents, if I can, and find out whether there was any reason for him to want Deb to be guilty. Interview the old couple’s neighbours in case they’ve got anything useful; then see Deb’s sister to find out what she really thinks, now she’s had a chance to cool off.’

  ‘And maybe find out a bit more about the real Deb who may be hiding behind the mask you saw?’

  ‘That, too. There can’t be anyone who knows her better,’ said Trish, who had no sisters.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ said George, who had two.

  He laughed and, when Trish had asked what was so funny, told her horror stories from their adolescence. It sounded as though it had been a hell of unwittingly shared boyfriends and terrible rivalries, of clothes borrowed and spoiled, an enmity that sometimes threatened to swamp the whole family, and an absolute defence of each other in the face of outside threat, which made a nonsense of all the rest.

  Trish liked it when George talked about his past. He didn’t often do it, but it always made her wish she’d known the dogged, fat child who’d battled with the school bullies. They’d tormented him about his shape and his specs and his swotty tendency to come top in all exams.

  ‘Are you going to see your father this evening?’ he said, as the last of the sun sank behind the houses opposite and the light turned from yellow to pale grey.

  ‘Yes, I must. I haven’t been in for a couple of days.’ Trish stretched and checked the time. ‘I suppose I’d better go now or visiting hours will be over. Thank you, George, you’ve sorted me all over again.’

  She finished her wine and got out of the low deck-chair in one easy movement. ‘I’ll let myself out,’ she said, when she’d kissed him. ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure, if you’re not busy. Shall I come to Southwark?’

  ‘Lovely. I’ll cook something.’

  George raised an eyebrow. Trish aimed a punch at him and said with great dignity that she was beginning to enjoy cookery these days and would have something on the table by the time he got to the flat.

  ‘I shall look forward to it all day,’ he said, with an expression of fainting ecstasy on his face, which meant that she left him laughing.

  It didn’t take long to get to the hospital and there were plenty of parking spaces between the concrete pillars. Trish had hoped to buy more grapes at the hospital shop, but it was shut, so she was empty-handed when she got up to the ward.

  There were a few visitors still hovering around the beds and she squeezed past their chairs on her way to the corner, only to see screens around her father’s bed. Slowly, with feet that felt as though they’d been dipped in lead, she walked towards a gap in the screens. Then she stopped. Her breath stuck in her throat and her hands were sweating.

  The bed was empty, stripped, and smelling of disinfectant.

  But he was getting better, she told herself, wondering how she could possibly have left him for forty-eight hours without visiting or even phoning to find out if he needed anything.

  She looked round at the patient opposite, whom she thought she recognised, and then at the others nearby. One of them must know when it had happened. None of them said anything. One after another, as she met their gaze, they turned away.

  Trish waited another moment, staring at the bare mattress and picturing her father’s fleshy, unshaven face with the bright black eyes. Then she walked briskly away, the heels of her flat sandals clicking on the polished vinyl floor.

  There was no one at the nurses’ station near the lifts. Trish waited, not knowing what else to do. There seemed to be no medical staff of any kind. She was teetering on the brink of fury; all that was holding her back was the knowledge that she’d left him alone for forty-eight hours and it had happened then. She was partly responsible for this appalling hole that had been torn in her life. She’d been out of reach when he died. She’d never told him any of the things she’d come to understand about him and about herself. Her teeth clenched against the pain and guilt.

  A nurse appeared and Trish burst out, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me about my father?’

  ‘Who is your father?’

  ‘Paddy Maguire,’ said Trish, and heard a note of pride wobbling somewhere in her voice.

  The nurse leaned over the paper-strewn counter for a clipboard. She had stumpy legs, so she had to strain to reach it, perching on one foot.

  ‘Ah, Maguire, Patrick.’ She looked up and seemed surprised at the sight of Trish with her eyes heating up and her mouth trembling.

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Ten thirty yesterday morning,’ said the nurse, consulting her notes again. She was utterly matter-of-fact. ‘He called for a minicab and left half an hour later.’

  ‘What?’ Trish felt the heat transferring itself from her eyelids to her brain as the misery and guilt metamorphosed into a lava-flow of fury. ‘You mean you allowed a man who’s just had a massive heart-attack to go home alone? In a minicab?’

  ‘It wasn’t that massive,’ said the nurse pettishly. ‘He’s made a good, quick recovery.’

  ‘But why wasn’t I told?’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘His daughter, I told you. My name’s Trish Maguire. I’ve given your colleagues all my numbers and asked to be told as soon as there’s any change. Why didn’t anyone ring me?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I? I’ve only just come on duty. But he was fine. They wouldn’t have discharged him if he hadn’t been.’

  Trish felt as though the pent-up feelings were about to split her skull and emerge as a red-hot river that would devour everyone and everything in its path. The nurse seemed to understan
d. She backed away, reaching for the phone. ‘I’ll call the doctor, shall I?’

  ‘I think you’d better.’ Trish retreated to a row of orange chairs, hugging her midriff so tightly she could feel the edge of her watch pressing through her T-shirt. She sat down and tried to control her temper.

  Twenty minutes later a harassed young man in a flapping white coat appeared and looked at the fat little nurse, who gestured towards Trish.

  ‘Ms Maguire? You wanted to know about your father?’

  ‘Yes. You let him go, alone, without telling me anything about it.’

  ‘Yes.’ The young man rubbed his eyes like a small boy. His blue plastic label said he was the senior house officer. He had probably been on duty all weekend. Trish tried to feel kinder. ‘The results of the angiogram came through. He was fine. There was nothing more we could do for him here, and we like to send patients home at the weekend, if we possibly can.’

  ‘I’ll bet you do,’ said Trish, surprising herself as much as him with the force of her scorn. ‘And what did you send him home with? An aspirin?’

  ‘No. He said he had plenty of aspirin at home.’

  ‘I was joking,’ she said grimly.

  ‘Were you?’ The doctor looked puzzled. ‘Aspirin is used to thin the blood in patients who don’t need Warfarin.’

  ‘Rat poison?’ Nothing would surprise Trish about this place – or the medical profession.

  ‘It’s an anti-coagulant,’ the doctor said impatiently, as though she should have known exactly what treatment heart patients might be offered. But she’d never had close dealings with one before. ‘It’s used for patients at risk of thromboses – clots.’

  ‘But when I was first in here, they told me that if he recovered this time he’d have to take the greatest care because it was likely he’d have another heart-attack.’

  ‘It’s always possible, of course, though in his case we don’t think so – at the moment anyway.’