Gemma's Journey

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘You sod!’ she yelled. ‘How dare you!’ And bounded forwards at him, holding her crutch before her like a shield.

  It was as if she’d frozen him to the spot. They were standing face to face, so close that she could smell his sweat and see that his eyes were pale blue and fringed by short gingery lashes, but he didn’t step back and although he seemed to be trying to pull away from her, he didn’t run.

  ‘Geroff!’ he yelled. ‘Geroff! You’re fucking hurting.’

  For a second she couldn’t think what was the matter with him. Then she realised that she was standing on his foot with her prosthesis. It was the thing she’d been warned about at the rehab centre, to take care where she was putting her new foot because she wouldn’t know when she was standing on somebody. And now she hadn’t taken care and she’d pinned a burglar to the floor. How perfectly bloody marvellous. ‘Gotcha,’ she said, and reached up to pull off his balaclava.

  He fought her off violently, punching at her and twisting his body to get away from her. She had to struggle to keep the crutch under his chin and it took all her strength to hold him, even though she pressed down on her false foot as heavily as she could. She had no idea how long they fought. It could have been seconds or hours. At one point, she lost her grip on the crutch, and grabbed him by his collar, his T-shirt, scrabbling and pushing to beat off his punching hands. But seconds later she made an enormous effort and managed to pull that awful balaclava off his head.

  With his face revealed he was far less frightening. Now he was just an uncouth boy, with a shaven head dyed blond, a line of earrings in one ear and a dragon tattooed on his neck, and young – fifteen or sixteen at a guess – and far less bulky than he’d appeared at first glance. But he went on fighting. By now she knew he’d certainly stolen something and that whatever it was it was stashed away in one of the pockets of that leather jacket. She pulled at it furiously as they struggled, throwing out various odd things to right and left, an oily rag, keys, a newspaper folded in half, a collection of credit cards that tumbled on to the duvet cover one after another like falling leaves. And at last she scrabbled her right hand inside his jacket, found an inner pocket and, panting with the effort she was making, pulled out a jeweller’s velvet pouch and emptied the contents on the bed, all her little precious pieces – the signet ring, the diamond cluster Jerry had bought her in a rare moment of drunken affection, her gold chain with its two medallions, even the little gilt bracelet she’d brought back from a school holiday in Spain.

  ‘You bloody little toe-rag!’ she screamed at him. ‘How dare you steal my things!’

  But turning to tip out her belongings had given him the chance he needed and he was out of her grasp and halfway to the door.

  He paused. She couldn’t catch him now. Not on crutches. ‘So I nicked ’em,’ he said, sneering at her. ‘So what? You got ’em back. Right? They’re nothing special. Only worth a few quid. You can spare it. What’s a few rings an’ things to you. I know who you are. I been watchin’ you. Right? You got millions. Right? Millions. I seen it in the paper. That’s well out of order. You wiv millions an’ me with nothink. So you can spare me a bit, can’tcher. I got a right to it.’ Then he was out of the room, hurtling though the hall, banging through the front door. Escaped.

  She stared after him, open-mouthed and panting. What was he talking about? What paper? Then she got her breath and her senses back and remembered the reporters.

  The newspaper she’d thrown out of his pocket was still lying on the carpet. She picked it up, put it on the bed and unfolded it. There on the front page was her own uninjured face staring up at her and below it a picture of Andrew Quennell with his mouth open and his hair bristling like a white mane. And in enormous headlines: TV GURU AND CRASH HEROINE. It was such a shock and made her so angry that the words of the text swam out of focus as she read them. But she saw enough to know what was going on. ‘Dr Quennell, speaking on …’ ‘Gemma Goodeve … suing for half a million …’ ‘Tug-of-love tussle …’ He’s been talking about me on TV, she thought.

  There was a sharp sound ringing behind her. A sharp familiar sound. Oh shit! The phone! Well whoever it is can get off the line. I’ve got to phone the police.

  ‘Yes,’ she said crossly. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Nick,’ his voice said. ‘Are you all right?’

  She was suddenly weary and sat on the edge of the bed, glad to be off her stump. But she was too caught up in her anger to feel anything beyond a mild surprise. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Paris. Look, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fantastic!’ she said, cynically. ‘Couldn’t be better. I’ve just been burgled.’

  He drew in his breath with alarm. ‘What?’

  ‘Rotten little toe-rag with a crew cut. Said he’d come for his share of my ill-gotten gains. Didn’t get them though. I saw to that.’

  ‘You mean he was there? You caught him? Oh Christ, Gemma. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. I caught him.’ There was pride in the answer. ‘I can stick up for myself,’

  ‘How did he know it was your flat?’

  ‘Your bloody father’s been opening his mouth on TV, that’s how. Telling everyone I’m a millionaire. We’re both all over the front page.’

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he said again. ‘I knew it was a mistake, all this media business. Are you sure you’re all right?’

  She was short with him. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’

  ‘What did the police say?’

  ‘I haven’t called them yet. It’s only just happened.’

  The warning pips were sounding. ‘Oh Christ, Gemma,’ he said again. ‘This is awful. Look, wait a minute and I’ll find some more coins.’ The line went dead. ‘I’ll come back,’ he said, as the disengaged tone began to purr. ‘I’ll catch the first train. You’re not to worry about a thing.’

  It upset Gemma to be cut off in mid-sentence. There was so much more she wanted to say, so much more she ought to have said, and now that they were disconnected she was aware of all the distances between them that they hadn’t begun to bridge. But there was no time for regret. There wasn’t even time to think about it. She had to phone the police. She looked down at her hand as it replaced the receiver and was shocked to see that the knuckles were torn and bloodstained. It had been more of a fight than she’d realised. I’d better get cleaned up first, she thought, and have a look at my stump. It felt all right but it had taken a lot of pressure.

  But the phone rang again before she could stand up.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, thinking Nick had rung back. ‘You found your coins, then.’

  There was a pause, then a small, uncertain voice asked, ‘Is that you, Aunty Gemma?’

  One of Susan’s girls, Gemma recognised, and she softened her tone. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Is that Helen?’

  ‘Yes. Could you come and get us, please.’

  It was such an odd request that she was alerted to trouble at once. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In a station near Grandpa’s. Putney South.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  The explanation was breathless with tears and very muddled. ‘Grandpa Quennell’s gone out and Mummy’s locked in her room and she said to go away and Daddy’s not in the garden centre and there aren’t any lights on and the taxi driver was horrid. He said he had a good mind to take us back to King’s Cross because we couldn’t pay him and we ought to be smacked and it wasn’t our fault because we couldn’t help it if Grandpa was out. I did give him my silver bracelet …’

  It was trouble. And pretty serious. The police would have to wait and so would cleaning up. ‘Stay where you are,’ Gemma said. ‘I’m coming to get you.’ Her response was so quick it didn’t enter her head that she would be driving to a railway station.

  Chapter 33

  The two girls were standing just inside the station next to the flower stall, small, still, solemn and hand in hand. They looked like a pair of statues in their identical black padded jacke
ts, identical blue jeans, identical bobbed blonde hair. There was trouble in every line of them.

  Gemma pulled up as close to the station entrance as she could get and let down the passenger window, delighted to realise that there was no fear in her at all, only anxiety for their safety. She’d parked on double yellow lines, so she’d have to be quick.

  ‘Come on you two,’ she yelled. ‘Hop in.’

  It concerned her that they didn’t run. They walked hand in hand with frozen deliberation, hardly like kids at all. And even when they were safe inside her car they sat bolt upright and pale-faced and didn’t speak. But she wasn’t worried about them. She was in a state of such extraordinary euphoria she felt she could cope with anything.

  ‘Home,’ she said. ‘You can put me in the picture as we go.’

  But they couldn’t tell her very much more than they’d told her already and it upset them to be questioned. They’d left Poppleton because they’d been alone in the house and their mother was locked in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out. They didn’t know what was going on, nor where their father was, nor where Grandpa and Grandma Quennell were, and they were cold and hungry and wished they’d stayed at home. No, they said, their eyes strained, they didn’t know why their mother was locked in. She hadn’t told them.

  ‘Never mind,’ Gemma reassured them. ‘Your daddy’ll know. He’ll look after her, won’t he.’ But she was thinking hard. It was so unlike the power-dressing, high-flying, businesswoman she thought she knew that she couldn’t make any sense of it. Why lock herself in? It hadn’t been by accident or she’d have asked them to let her out. She’d said she wasn’t ill or hurt. But then why did she say she was never going to come downstairs again? That sounded hysterical. It must have been something pretty traumatic to cause such an extreme reaction.

  They’d arrived at St Mary’s Court. ‘Let’s get you in the warm,’ she said, as she pulled up at her garage. She took hold of their chilled hands and led them to the flat.

  The air in the hall was so cold that Naomi shivered when she took her coat off. That damned kitchen window, Gemma thought. She’d forgotten all about it.

  ‘There’s a window open,’ she explained, leading them into the living room and through the arch into the kitchen. ‘That’s why it’s cold. Hang on a tick and I’ll shut it.’

  But it wasn’t just open, it had been wrenched off its hinges.

  ‘Crikey!’ Helen said, roused out of her misery by the sight of it. ‘How did you break that?’

  There was no point in trying to hide what had happened. She’d have to call the police once she’d found their father and they were bound to see the mess in the bedroom. In any case she felt so confident in this odd euphoric state of hers that lying was out of the question. So she told them.

  She expected them to be alarmed but they were thrilled, their faces animated for the first time since she’d picked them up. ‘A real burglar?’ Naomi wanted to know. ‘In a mask?’

  And Helen asked what he’d stolen.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gemma told them with great satisfaction, as she searched for a hammer and a box of nails. ‘I caught him and made him give it all back.’

  They were full of admiration. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘Crikey! Did you hit him? Is that why you’ve got blood on your hands?’

  Gemma had forgotten her torn knuckles. ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ she promised, as she nailed the window shut, ‘when we’ve phoned your father and let him know you’re all right. First things first. We don’t want him to worry, do we? What’s your number?’

  But although she let the phone ring for a very long time, nobody answered it and the girls began to sink: back into anxiety again. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘We’ll try the garden centre. I expect he’s there.’

  ‘We rang there,’ Helen said, miserably. ‘They said he was out.’

  ‘On a ’signment,’ Naomi added.

  ‘We’ll try again,’ Gemma said. ‘He could be back by now.’

  But he wasn’t. All they got was his voice on an answerphone telling them that the garden centre was closed at the moment but would be open ‘tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.’ At which Helen looked more miserable than ever and Naomi bit her lip with anxiety.

  ‘If we can’t find your father for the moment,’ Gemma said, ‘let’s see where your grandfather is. They might be home by now,’ And she dialled Andrew’s number.

  They all felt quite hopeful when it clicked and his voice answered. But it was only another answerphone message saying they couldn’t come to the phone at the moment.

  Gemma left a message, feeling irritated. ‘Just in case you’ve had a call from York, Helen and Naomi are with me and quite safe.’ He’s caused me enough trouble today, she thought. He’s got no business being out at this time of night.

  ‘I think we ought to try your home again,’ she said to the two pale faces waiting beside her. ‘Your dad might be back by now.’

  ‘He won’t be,’ Helen sighed, ‘and she won’t answer.’

  ‘We’ll try,’ Gemma said.

  They tried three times, but the phone just rang and rang and rang.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Helen asked.

  It was pointless phoning any more. ‘I’m going to put some Elastoplast on my fingers,’ Gemma told her cheerfully, ‘and then I’m going to cook supper. Do you like chicken?’

  The thought of food cheered Naomi up a little. ‘If it’s nuggets,’ she said.

  It wasn’t so they had to compromise with beefburgers and chips. But cooking cheered them and in the middle of the meal Helen suddenly remembered that Grandpa had put two phone numbers in her address book and that the second one was his mobile.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Gemma said. ‘If they’re out on one of their jaunts, there’s just a chance he’ll have taken it with him. You go on eating and I’ll try it. Where’s the book?’

  Success at last. Andrew’s voice, answering from a great and tinny distance on a very noisy line: ‘Dr Quennell speaking.’

  ‘Andrew. It’s Gemma. Look, I’ve got Helen and Naomi here. There’s a bit of a problem at home and they’ve come to London.’

  ‘Is Susan with them?’

  ‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘Susan is the problem. She’s locked herself in her bedroom and won’t come out. They travelled down on their own. But they’re quite all right. I’m looking after them.’

  The background noise was increasing. ‘This is a God-awful line,’ he shouted. ‘What’s the matter with her? Is she ill? No, never mind. I can’t hear you. We’re just pulling into Euston. We’ll get a cab and come straight there. Gemma? Did you get that?’

  ‘Just about.’

  The line was crackling and fizzing as if it was in the middle of a bonfire. ‘We’ll be there as soon as we can.’

  ‘There you are,’ she said to the girls. ‘Your grandfather’s on his way.’

  They were both relieved to hear it. ‘But what about Daddy?’ Helen worried, pausing with a chip halfway to her mouth. ‘What will he say when he gets home and finds we’re not there?’

  Rob had spent a happy afternoon in the Alhambra grounds. The rose gardens had been dug over, the pond drained, the fountain removed to the garden centre, and they’d only stopped work because the light was so poor that they couldn’t see what they were doing. He’d praised his team and sent them home and had then spent an hour and a half in the hotel discussing plans with the new manager. They parted after several drinks feeling well pleased with themselves. Now it was back to Poppleton and a well-earned dinner. He was hungry for it all the way home.

  It was a surprise to turn in at the drive and find the house in darkness and the phone ringing dementedly in an empty hall. The damn thing stopped as soon as he picked it up. Typical. But it puzzled him that nobody had been there to answer it. Where were they all?

  He walked into the kitchen, and turned on the lights. There was nothing cooking, which was a disappointment, but there were t
wo used mugs left on the table and two plates with crumbs on them, so the kids must have come home and gone out again. Probably at a party somewhere. They were always going to parties. Sue must have ferried them there and hadn’t got back yet. Having solved the problem, he switched on the radio to provide a bit of cheerful background noise and bounded upstairs to wash and change ready for her return.

  At first, like his daughters before him, he thought the bedroom door was jammed. But one push showed him otherwise and at that point he began to worry. It shouldn’t be locked. Nobody ever locked the doors in this house. So what was going on?

  ‘Susan!’ he called. ‘Are you there?’

  She didn’t answer him until he’d called three times and then her voice was slow and slurred as though she was drugged. ‘Go ‘way.’

  That sounded so alarming it made his heart jump. ‘Open the door, sweetheart,’ he urged. ‘We can’t talk through a closed door.’

  ‘Can’t talk to anyone,’ she slurred. ‘Go ’way, Rob. Please.’

  He insisted. ‘Open the door.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said and now her voice was anguished. ‘I can’t. Please go away.’

  He tried another tack, asking her specific questions, as calmly and patiently as he could – if she was ill, or injured, if she’d had too much to drink, if there’d been a road accident, offering to call the doctor, urging her to open the door and let him see how she was. But she answered no to everything. Finally, he asked about the girls, because that was something she would know about. Were they at a party? Or out with Sheryl? But, to his horror, she didn’t know where they were and didn’t seem to care. Now he had two reasons to be alarmed, and alarm made him angry.