Prey to All

by Cooper, Natasha

  She thought of bloody Cordelia the last time she’d seen her outside court. Cordelia would probably be sitting in her shady courtyard sipping some pink champagne and eating caviare.

  She had to get out of here. With Mandy dead and the screws all convinced she’d been murdered, life wasn’t going to be endurable. If the film didn’t work, she could always …

  But Kate needed her. She couldn’t put her head in a plastic bag while Kate was still so vulnerable.

  Deb had tried to phone her back after their row, but something had been wrong with the line and she hadn’t got through. There were only a couple of units left on her phonecard after the call to Sprindler’s.

  She tried to turn over, but the mattress was even worse agony on her front. It squashed her breasts flat and pushed her back out of line. Her breasts were nearly as sore as when she’d first tried to feed Kate. Oh, Kate.

  Her hard little head, covered in silky black hair, had pressed against Deb’s chest and her urgent gums had bitten hard into the already sore nipples. It had been agony, but worth it. There was no one in Deb’s whole life she’d ever loved as much as Kate.

  No wonder bloody Cordelia was jealous. She’d always been jealous of everything. Jealous of their mother’s preference, jealous of Malcolm, jealous of the babies, jealous even of Adam, whom she’d professed to despise.

  That had always been her favourite tactic. If Deb had something Cordelia couldn’t have, she’d affect contempt, to make it seem worthless. And for years Deb had been a sucker for that and believed she and everything she liked and everyone she cared about was crap. God, she was a fool. And Cordelia was a bitch!

  Standing in the dock, listening to Cordelia’s hate, had been like standing under a river of tar that stuck to everything it touched, ruining it. Deb’s only consolation now was that their mother hadn’t been alive to hear any of it. She’d always done her best to protect Deb, but it had probably only made Cordelia’s hate worse.

  An eye was looking through the door again, a gloating, pleased eye that promised more humiliation, more fear to come.

  Adam heard Kate crying and looked at his clock. It was four in the morning. He knew he ought to get up to ask what was wrong. He lay there, listening to the sobs, half stifled in a pillow, trying to work out whether she’d meant to wake him. If she hadn’t, going into her room would be an intrusion.

  He hoped she wasn’t going to wake the younger ones. He’d had an awful time with Marcus, who’d been struggling with his maths prep and hadn’t been able to bear to ask for help. Adam had tried unobtrusively to offer advice, and been blitzed with a stream of contempt from his son. It shouldn’t have hurt, that sort of thing, but it had. Marcus’s last fling had been the worst bit: ‘If you’d looked after Mummy properly, she’d be here now. It’s your fault.’

  At that point, Louis had looked up from his books, his big blue eyes flooded with tears. Between the two of them, trying to soothe Louis’s fears and Marcus’s inexpressible anxieties, reassure them both in their different languages that one day Deb would be back with them, Adam had almost lost it. He’d been tempted to yell at them that he had needs, too, that he couldn’t always be calm and kind and strong. Luckily he’d just managed to hold on, but he wouldn’t if he had to deal with Kate as well. She might need him, but he hadn’t got anything left to give her.

  He strained to hear what was going on and was rewarded with silence. She must have got over it then, whatever it was. Perhaps it was a boyfriend or a spat at school. Adam turned over and tried to ignore the space on the other side of the bed. One day he might sleep well again. One day.

  Chapter 18

  Trish’s head was buzzing from a difficult conference. Her day in court had gone well, but the two clients who’d come to see her in chambers afterwards had been in such anguish that she couldn’t now think of anything else. They wanted the court to force their local health authority to pay for experimental treatment for their daughter, whose leukaemia had just been pronounced incurable.

  Tonight it seemed to Trish as though she would never get away from miserable families. If they were not tormenting each other, they were bludgeoned by fate or else by impersonal agencies, whose priorities could never match theirs. For the health authorities, there would always be at least fifty equally deserving cases to be balanced against each other.

  She remembered the way Anna had involved her in Deb Gibbert’s case in the beginning. ‘Families being what always get you going,’ Anna had said. Or something like that. But didn’t they worry everyone? The hurt, the quite unnecessary hurt that washed about in the unhappy ones, seemed more important than anything else sometimes. Everything else came from it, after all; certainly most of the crime she’d ever come across.

  This was the kind of evening when Trish needed George, but he was off on another frolic of his own, so she’d have to get herself back together again – and get her own supper. Do me good, she thought, if I’ve got the energy to eat anything anyway.

  She’d probably end up washing off the sweaty grime under the shower and taking a huge glass of wine to bed, to fall asleep watching a light-hearted video. She knew she shouldn’t have been quite so tired, but she’d been working on her papers most nights until well after midnight, and she was still angry with Anna.

  Trish reached her iron staircase and put her hand on the banister. Suddenly the fifty steps up to her eyrie seemed like Everest. She hauled up one foot and put it on the bottom step. The metal reverberated under her heavy tread. She hadn’t been this knackered for years. So much for the summer meaning less work.

  ‘Hello?’ said a young, vaguely familiar voice, which sounded very scared.

  Trish looked upwards towards her front door. A figure was uncoiling itself in the dusk. Kate Gibbert.

  ‘I say, are you all right?’ Kate asked, staring down in the dark.

  ‘A bit tired.’ Trish gathered her forces and achieved a smile. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came, Kate. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. I’m really sorry to hang about, but I had to talk to you. And this is the only address I had. I tried to phone your mobile, but it wasn’t taking calls. And I … I haven’t any money to go anywhere else.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Trish had forgotten how tired she was and had almost reached the top of the steps.

  ‘Since five thirty. I sort of thought you’d be out of work by then. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘You’ve been here for five hours? Kate, my dear child, I’m so sorry. Come on in.’

  Trish flicked on the lights and rushed to find wine and biscuits to put into Kate before she even tried to think what real food there might be to cook. With a tin of Roka cheese biscuits under her arm and the bottle in one hand, two glasses and a corkscrew in the other, she came back to see that Kate was in tears.

  Trish put down her load and offered a hug. Kate tried to relax into it, but they couldn’t get it right. Trish withdrew, wishing George was with her. He’d be just the man to deal with this. Trying to think what he would have done, Trish persuaded Kate to sit down. She found a box of Kleenex and dumped it on the black sofa, poured the wine and thrust a brimming glass at her guest.

  ‘Oh, thanks. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ve been having an awful time, I know.’ Trish sipped some of her own wine, letting it trickle slowly over the back of her tongue and down her dry throat. ‘In any case, anyone would be in a state having had to sit out there on their own for so long, not knowing if I was ever coming. What did you want me for?’

  ‘I needed to talk. I couldn’t … I can’t tell my father.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It hurts him if I talk about my – my real father.’ Kate looked shyly over the top of her wine-glass. ‘I don’t know if you knew, but my real father was the man who’s just been shot.’

  ‘Malcolm Chaze. Yes, in fact, I did know. I recognised the likeness.’ Trish smiled. ‘It’s not hard to spot when you know what to look for. I’m
so sorry he’s dead. It must make an already difficult life hard to bear at times.’

  Kate put down her glass and rubbed a screwed-up Kleenex over both eyes, sniffing.

  ‘It seems so unfair. You see, I’d only just met him. And it was … He was amazing. Dad, my ordinary father, told me the truth when Mum went to prison, but I didn’t think I’d need him … you know, Malcolm.’ She smiled shyly. ‘Then, one weekend, after I’d heard he was going to work with Anna Grayling to get Mum out, I somehow thought I’d better meet him. I just wanted to talk. That was all.’

  ‘I know you went to his house.’

  Kate looked astonished, her mouth opening and shutting like a hungry carp’s as she tried to ask a question. All the shyness had gone and her eyes were angry.

  ‘We’ve all been asking a lot of questions of a lot of people since he was shot,’ Trish said gently. ‘We’ve had to. I heard that you’d been round to Pimlico.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t think.’

  ‘I never had a chance to talk to him about you. Did you like him? Was he kind to you?’

  Kate nodded, her eyes leaking again. She gulped some wine to try to get control but only made herself choke. ‘He was wonderful. He said he’d often wanted to find me, get to know me, but didn’t think it would be fair to unsettle me. He didn’t know if I knew about him, you see. He said he’d been watching me from a distance.’ Kate’s face was full of the kind of shaky pride Trish had felt when Paddy had first come round in front of her in the intensive care unit. ‘He said he’d found it hard to wait, but he hadn’t wanted to throw me off my stroke till after my exams next year.’

  So he charmed you, too. ‘And did you ever see him again?’

  Kate shook her head. But her eyes warned Trish there was more to come.

  ‘Or talk to him?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Once was the night it happened.’ Kate raised her head. Her long straight hair flicked itself across her face as she moved, and she pushed it away impatiently. ‘The A-level English group came up to London to the National Theatre that night. It was the last week of term.’

  Her voice rose towards the end of the sentence, as though to make sure Trish knew what she was talking about. Trish nodded.

  Kate was chewing her lip and looking as though someone was poking a hot wire into the soles of her feet. ‘And I phoned him,’ she said. ‘In the interval. There was a phone near the loos, you see. I thought he might tell me how his campaign for Mum was going.’

  ‘That seems fair,’ Trish said encouragingly when Kate brushed a finger over her eyes. She shook her head again.

  ‘It was only an excuse. I was being selfish. I wanted to talk to him for me. Not her.’

  ‘Did you get through to him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate was staring straight ahead. The wires still seemed to be being driven up into her feet. Then she shook herself all over and produced a brave smile that didn’t convince Trish for a moment. ‘We talked for ages, nearly all through the interval, and he was … well, lovely, really. He promised he would get Mum out if it was the last thing he did. He said you were being brilliant.’

  ‘Was that exactly what he said?’ Trish asked, wondering who else he’d told. Kate nodded, apparently too full of her story to see the significance. ‘I don’t mean about me, but about your mother?’

  ‘And he said that when that had happened, he and Mum and I would get together and work out how to make up for everything that had gone wrong in the past. Then his doorbell rang. I heard it even down the phone. He said there was a motorbike messenger there. He could see down to the front steps from his study window. He had to go.’

  Kate stared at Trish, blank dread in her eyes. ‘That must have been when he was shot.’

  Trish felt wholly inadequate. She could advise on all sorts of legal and family problems, but she had never yet had to console a girl of this age for such a horror. ‘Have you talked to the police about this?’ she asked, carefully avoiding any hint of doubt or censure.

  ‘No.’ Kate sniffed and rubbed the back of her hand under her nostrils. She remembered the Kleenex and cleaned first her hand and then her face.

  ‘I think maybe you should,’ Trish said, as calmly as though she were advising a brisk walk in good weather. ‘They need to know everything that happened that night. It’s a bit late now, but we could talk to them tomorrow. Look, why don’t I make you up a bed in the spare room? You can get some sleep and we’ll call them first thing in the morning. Now, does your father – I mean Adam, does he know you’re here?’

  ‘No. I left a note saying I was going out.’ Kate looked up. ‘The little ones are OK, honestly. A friend of mine’s sleeping over, so even if Dad was late they couldn’t have been alone.’

  ‘That’s fine. But he’s probably worried. I’ll give him a ring now. You drink your wine. It’ll help you sleep later. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Not really. But, please?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If he says he wants to talk to me, I – It’s so hard. I don’t want to have to explain. Not now.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll say everything that has to be said. You concentrate on getting some rest. I’ll be back in a minute with some sheets.’

  Trish phoned Adam from her bedroom. As she’d expected, he was jittery with anxiety, talking faster than usual and sounding aggressively demanding. Trish explained her plan for the morning, adding that she’d see Kate into the hands of the police herself, and make sure she got safely to the bus or train that would bring her home.

  ‘I see.’ Those two words had come out slowly, leaden. Trish detected understanding and distress in them, but couldn’t be sure whether she was imagining the menace. ‘Thank you. D’you know what triggered this flight?’

  ‘No. I haven’t wanted to ask too many questions. She’s in quite a bad way, but I think she’ll be better after she’s slept. If there’s no improvement tomorrow, I’ll take her to my doctor before we talk to the police. He’s very good. Now I must go. I’ll phone again as soon as there’s any news.’

  ‘I need to talk to her. Now.’

  ‘I think, Adam, that it really would be better not. She’s very tired, and very emotional. And she feels so guilty for upsetting you. Could you let her off, just for tonight?’

  There was a brooding pause.

  ‘So be it,’ he said at last. ‘Give her my love, if you think that wouldn’t upset her too much.’

  Trish briefly closed her eyes, but she didn’t protest at the sarcasm.

  ‘And tell her I’m not angry with her.’

  That was better, she thought. That sounded almost sincere.

  ‘Sure. I’ll phone you tomorrow, Adam. Good night.’

  With her arms full of bedclothes, Trish made her way down the spiral staircase into the great open living room. Kate was lying back against the sofa cushions. Her eyes were pink and swollen. There was still a lot of wine in her glass.

  ‘I don’t really like wine, much,’ she said, noticing the direction of Trish’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It couldn’t matter less, and I should have asked anyway. I’ve got Diet Coke, if that would be any better. Or mineral water. Let me make up the bed and then I’ll fetch whichever you’d prefer.’

  ‘I can do the bed. I’m used to it.’

  ‘We’ll do it together.’ Trish led the way to the spare room. A few minutes later, as they were bending down at either side of the bed, tucking in the bottom sheet, she said, ‘Did your real father talk at all about the time when he and your mother were together?’

  It wasn’t fair to press Kate when she was in such a turmoil, but there might never be another opportunity.

  ‘Yes, a little. He said he’d come to understand that she was the real love of his life, but at the time when they were having their … when they were together, he was in so much of a muddle about himself that he hadn’t realised that.’ Kate looked up, hooking her long s
traight hair over her shoulder. ‘And he said that she never told him about me. Not till much later. He didn’t know why not.’

  Trish wished she’d been able to talk to Deb herself about all this before she heard Malcolm Chaze’s version filtered through whatever censorship he’d applied for Kate’s benefit.

  ‘So, I asked her.’ Kate was looking older than usual and her voice had taken on a bitterness Trish hadn’t heard from her before.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When she phoned me on Friday.’ Kate’s eyes flooded, and she was a child again. ‘Last Friday. We were talking about his death. Dad sends her phonecards every week, you see, and she always phones me on Fridays before school.’

  Kate dropped the sheet and stood up, staring at Trish. ‘She told me my real father had lied to me. She said she’d told him about me as soon as she’d had the pregnancy test and he’d said she had to have an abortion.’

  Trish finished the hospital corner she was tucking under the mattress to give herself time to think. She wasn’t sure if she was angrier with Malcolm Chaze or Deb.

  ‘And when she said she couldn’t ever kill her baby, he said in that case it was her responsibility. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it or her. That’s what she told me he’d said. He called me “it”.’

  ‘Kate, he didn’t know you.’ Trish could see she wasn’t helping. She tried again. ‘It wasn’t you he was talking about, just a responsibility he hadn’t expected and didn’t know how to cope with. Try not to take it too personally. Your mother wouldn’t want you to think like that.’

  ‘But she does. She wants me to be angry with him. She said it was important I didn’t go turning him into a hero. That Dad had looked after me and loved me, and that she and I owed him everything. That my real father had been selfish and mixed-up, and although she’d once loved him, she couldn’t let me believe in his lies now.’