Sugar and Spice

by Ruth Hamilton

  When she became pregnant, she was almost certain that the child had to be Den’s, since she and Geoff had been so careful, yet the part of her that still asked questions accepted that her marriage would be over if the baby came out dark. She left it to fate. During the early months, she continued to enjoy a relationship with Geoff, ending it only when her blood pressure became slightly unstable. He hung around for a while, even coming to see her after the babies had been born, but she eased him out of her life and coped as best she could with what had been termed post-natal depression.

  In one sense, Anna was sorry that the twins were Den’s. He had wanted a boy, and he took little notice of his daughters. Throughout those first weeks, fear took up residence in the new mother’s heart, because Lottie and Emily didn’t seem to get on. They hadn’t liked each other in the womb, though the idea had been tut-tutted whenever she had spoken of it to medics.

  This was when complete terror moved in. It was also when Anna decided that Den should move out.

  Marriage altered us. It isn’t that we’re closer – we’re just easier. This is what was wanted, what we lacked. When a relationship is solid and real, the need to commit can be overwhelming, so we did it. I now own a larger bump, a bigger car and a house that promises to be enormous. He’s just the same as he ever was – he’s there, and you see what you get and get what you see.

  Mrs Bee is here today. Well, she’s here most days, but she’s very much here today. ‘What the bloody hell’s that?’

  I carry on as if everyone has a paddling pool in the middle of the living room. ‘Alec bought it.’ I daren’t tell her why, because most of our reasons are daft.

  ‘What for? They can’t even crawl proper yet.’

  ‘I know. I think they’ll walk before they crawl – I believe I did, as did my sisters. As for this daft article on my floor – Alec was a bit . . . premature.’

  I stare at it. He inflated it last night to see if it had any punctures. Fortunately, I managed to prevent him from filling it, because this is a good carpet. He deliberately chose the most garish, ugly item he could find. It’s covered in pictures of buckets, spades, sandcastles and beach balls. ‘It’ll keep,’ I say calmly. ‘Perhaps he got it for a good price.’

  She hmmphs. Only Mrs Bee can produce a hmmph of such quality. ‘Have you not got enough on with yon builders and Jo’s music?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ At least he’s stopped going on about newfangled birthing pools.

  ‘That’s a blessing, then. Have Susan and Stephen gone?’

  ‘Sort of. They come and stay sometimes.’

  She’s working her way up to it. I can tell when she’s working her way up to something, because her nose gets coloured. I have no idea why, but there it is. At last, here it comes. ‘So what’s this about your sister, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her and Michael Wotsisname. I could tell there was summat on at your wedding – he looked as if he could eat her on a butty.’

  ‘Oh – that.’

  ‘Yes, oh, that. How long have they known each other? And what’s she doing marrying somebody called Wotsisname because nobody can get a grip of his handle?’

  I won’t laugh. I don’t want Mrs Bee to know about my errant mind, though I have to admit that the thought of trying to get a grip on a man’s handle is the sort of thing that—

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did she marry somebody she didn’t know, somebody with a name nobody can say?’

  ‘Neophytou. It isn’t that hard. She’s a scholar in Greek.’

  The arms fold themselves. ‘In bloody Oxford? And him a fish and chip shop typhoon up here?’

  Don’t laugh, Anna, I tell myself. ‘She’s coming to live in Crosby. He can do his chips while she teaches in one of the public schools.’

  ‘He’ll never keep up with her on an intellect – intellectualitive level.’

  ‘Intellectual, Mrs Bee.’ The teacher in me will never die. ‘He’s a very bright man – he just happens to come from a family of fish and chippers. It was love at first sight, and I know how that is. Anyway, he’s studying law as well as cod and mushy peas.’ I sigh. ‘People say these things won’t last, but I’ve served three months of my sentence, and she’s done a couple of weeks.’

  The old woman’s eyes narrow. ‘Are you taking the wee-wee out of me, Anna Fairbanks?’

  ‘Halliwell.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes. Now, it’s my twin time. You may stay and join in, but it’s not compulsory.’ I lift them from the playpen, and Emily walks. She just stands up, lets go of my hand and walks. Lottie, not to be outdone, does the same, though she clings to my hand like a little limpet. Camera. ‘Mrs Bee, hold onto these two, will you?’ Like Kate and Beckie, they walk on the same day, yet they are not like Kate and Beckie. Thank goodness.

  For the rest of my life, I shall treasure that photograph. It shows a very happy old lady whose walking is not as easy as it was, and she’s in the company of a couple who need L-plates. Wonderful. So glad I had film, or this momentous day might have gone unrecorded.

  They don’t sleep all afternoon. They fall over the dog, a rug, and their own feet. I get the feeling that they fear forgetting their new game if they sleep. Alec goes to bits when he arrives home early, tears tripping one another down his cheeks. He didn’t make these little girls, but they are his. They walk and fall, walk and fall until he drags them off for their bath. I don’t know how I ever managed without him.

  Now, I’m waiting for my sister. Because there is one last thing we have to do. It’s important for Kate, and she needs me to be there when she meets the woman to whom Mam ran after the rape. I don’t know whether this is wise, but I have to go along with her. I watch the newly-weds get out of their car, and I need no x-ray vision to see the love between them. Mike is to stay here with Alec. They both volunteered to accompany us, but it didn’t seem right. This is old family business, and we need just each other this evening.

  ‘You’re seven months pregnant,’ says Alec accusingly.

  ‘Now, he tells me. I wondered why I got so fat. And I didn’t get this way on my own, Halliwell. I’m fine. And it’s now or never. Kate took a while to work her way up to this, and we’re going.’

  He shrugs and mutters something about not being wanted, and finding someone else to play in the paddling pool. Alec’s a great one for mentioning private business when in the company of others. But I can’t say anything, because it would make it worse, and anyway, I use the same trick from time to time. I kiss him before going out to sit in Kate and Mike’s car. Yes, I’m nervous, but I need to be strong for her, for Kate. She’s my sister.

  We’re on our way home. Home? ‘Kate, why didn’t you come to the Dixon’s funeral?’

  ‘She was with me.’

  ‘Ah. So you’re still scared of her?’

  Kate nods. ‘You don’t know the half of it. No one knows how awful it really was. But when I need to talk, you’ll be there for me.’ She knows I’ll be there. In spite of the fact that I was never quite bright enough as a child to work out what was truly happening, the woman loves me. I have apologized to her so many times that it’s begun to sound hollow.

  On that first climb to the rim of the bowl in which Bolton sits, we catch a glimpse of the hills across town. This landscape is what I miss, because Merseyside is as flat as a pancake. But no one can have everything. I have the river, the ships and my football team. Oh, and my children and Alec.

  ‘You’re smiling,’ she says.

  ‘I’m happy, Kate. Not about what we have to do in a few minutes, but just . . . happy.’

  She is, too, and she tells me so. ‘He wants a baby,’ she informs me. ‘I’ve told him everything, but he believes in nurture over nature. Such a huge family, the Neophytous. I’m turning Greek Orthodox – it’s only a nod away from Catholicism.’ She pulls into the kerb for a break. ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She pauses for a fe
w seconds, is clearly deep in thought. ‘When we were kids, she threatened to kill me if I made my first Confession and Holy Communion. Because she knew I’d talk to a priest about us, about her and the things she forced me to do.’

  ‘But a priest is bound by laws, Kate.’

  ‘I know. She trusted no one except herself. She was always the same. It was hell, Anna. You were in Purgatory, but my address was hell.’

  ‘I know. I wish I—’

  ‘No.’ She looks into my eyes. ‘I knew it was a long game. And I knew I’d win in the end.’ The engine’s still running, yet she shows no sign of continuing the journey. ‘The police never came to see you, did they, Anna?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that was strange?’

  I shrug. ‘To be honest, I try not to think at all when it comes to the subject of Rebecca.’

  It pours from her, spills like water rushing at Niagara. She has lied to me from the beginning, but she can’t do it any longer. Saying that Rebecca had fled Paris with a man and several millions was a fantasy, a not-quite fairy tale that seemed to be for the best at the time. ‘But you have to believe me, Anna, when I say I wasn’t there when she died.’

  The child lurches in my womb. I think he/she’s experiencing a rush of adrenalin, because the landlady has accidentally flooded the premises with it. My heart feels odd. I’m cold, yet I’m sweating. What am I supposed to believe? ‘Who wrote the letter?’ I ask. ‘That final letter from her to you that was sent from Paris days after her exit?’

  ‘I wrote it,’ she replies.

  Who is this person? Is she so cleverly psychotic that she has fooled me into believing her to be merely depressive, into thinking of Rebecca as evil? ‘At this particular stage in pregnancy, Kate, I could have done better without such news.’ Why did she wait until we were alone, until I was at my most vulnerable and with no Alec to defend me? Is it my turn now? Will she kill me and my baby? Has she studied more than Greek? Has she watched people and learned how to imitate normality? ‘Who are you?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m Katherine, of course. We weren’t identical. Yet the moment her heart ceased to beat, I knew it.’

  I must stay calm. ‘Then tell me everything now.’

  ‘We’re expected. Mrs Latimer will be waiting for us, and she’s very old.’

  ‘If she’s old, she can wait a while longer,’ I reply.

  ‘But you’re pregnant, and—’

  ‘Yes, I’m heavily pregnant, and you have made me feel extremely ill. I may as well hang around for your next trick. Do your worst, whoever you are.’

  So she opens her door and runs away. I sit here wondering what to do, knowing that I am in shock and far too ill to drive. I watch while she dashes through a side street, and I’m sure that I’d never find her, because at the back of Derby Street there are mazes fit to compete with Hampton Court. So I kill the engine and try to get my bearings.

  There’s a phone box. When I try to take change from my bag, fingers go on strike and everything falls to the floor. Bending in a restricted area is not easy with a bump. Think, think. Mam, stand by me while I deal with this. Keys. Get out. Lock the car. Phone. Reverse charges. ‘Alec!’ I scream. ‘You have to come now, both of you.’

  ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

  ‘Everything. Bring Michael. Get Mrs Bee and Jenny for the twins. Come now!’

  ‘Darling, calm down, Come where?’

  ‘Derby Street, Bolton. You know it. It’s where we come for our Indian spices and chapatti flour. I’m parked outside the sari shop. There’s a Co-op nearby.’

  ‘Where’s Kate? Is anyone hurt?’

  ‘No. Alec, shut up and come. Now!’

  For forty minutes, I sit in a locked car and await the arrival of my hero. For the first time in ages, I crave a cigarette. But that’s all right, because I was the same once or twice towards the end with the twins, and I managed not to indulge. There is one thing I can do, though. After picking up enough of my money, I repair to a little off-licence and buy myself a small, ice-cold bottle of Guinness. The child probably needs this as badly as I do.

  Beautiful, black manna from heaven, sour yet sweet, creamy while sharp. It’s so long since I had a drink that the effect is almost immediate. I shall always thank the manufacturers of my chosen nectar, because I’m sure they stopped me delivering my child on the spot. Doctors? They’ve no bloody idea when it comes to a crisis. Sometimes, the wrong answer is the right answer, and there’s never a blinking doctor around anyway when you’re in real life trouble. Like policemen, they’re thin on the ground till we don’t need them, at which point they’re suddenly everywhere.

  I decide to play dumb where my sister’s husband is concerned. When the men arrive, I tell them that Kate panicked and ran off, because she feared hearing what Mrs Latimer had to say about our mother’s rape. Mike relieves me of his car. I climb in next to Alec and tell him what’s happened. Kate’s husband has gone in search of her; I beg Alec to get me out of this town as quickly as he can. The future is something over which none of us can ever take full control, but I sure as hell can deal with the present.

  ‘So,’ he concludes as we drift on to the East Lancashire Road. ‘You don’t know who’s the baddy and who’s the goody?’

  I nod. The cowboy movies were so easy, because bad wore a black hat, while good wore a white one. ‘Kate seemed so . . . so real.’

  ‘She is real,’ he tells me. ‘She’s probably protecting the true murderer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, Anna. I know I’m only a man and haven’t the instincts of womankind, but she seems right to me.’

  I am sick to death of telling people how hard it is to sort wheat from chaff when IQs in the Alps are factors. Psychopaths – sometimes termed sociopaths these days – are good at pretending to be normal. The man who mends your car, the other who drills your teeth, the girl who cuts your hair – any one of those could be insane while appearing to be normal. ‘Alec, you are naïve. You’ve met good people and bad people, but not bad people who appear to be good.’

  ‘What about Maureen?’

  I feel like screaming. I won’t, since I’m a passenger carrying a passenger, and I don’t want the driver to crash, because I love all of us. ‘Maureen did wrong. But she never pretended to be anything other than what she was. Kate, Rebecca – God, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Then I’d better send for the police.’

  One of the many aspects of character that attracted me to Alec in the first place is his calm, his down-to-earth-ness. Sometimes, just sometimes, his view is too clear and uncluttered. ‘Life isn’t black and white, love,’ I tell him. ‘There are shades of grey,’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning she’s still my sister. Meaning she might have had a huge panic attack when I accused her of upsetting a pregnant woman. Meaning she presented herself with a fight or flight situation, and she took the latter course. She’s ill, but that doesn’t make her a murderer.’

  He pulls into our driveway. ‘We go to bed and sleep,’ he commands. ‘We’ll give her a chance to come back and explain herself. But if you have any idea that she might have killed Rebecca, you must tell me, and I’ll get the cops. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  While Alec faces Mrs Bee and Jenny, I answer the phone. ‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.’ Kate is beyond hysteria. ‘Jean-Paul. I can’t do it. Prison. After what she did . . .’

  ‘Quiet!’ I shout. Mrs Bee and Jenny look at me inquisitively as they walk out of the house.

  When the side door is closed, he snatches the phone from me. ‘Listen, lady,’ he says quietly. ‘I don’t care who’s done what or who’s said what, but if you upset my wife or endanger my child again, you’ll be wearing your kneecaps as earrings. What?’ A pause follows. ‘Until you get your head screwed on properly, stay away. When you’ve stopped being cross-threaded, we’ll deal with this. I don’t know who the fu- who the hell Jean-Paul is, but this is no time to be bringi
ng foreigners into it.’ He slams down the receiver and holds out his arms. ‘Come here, Anna.’

  On our baby-making sofa, he lies me down, makes sure my back, knees and ankles are supported, then sits and strokes my face until I sleep. Each time I wake, he’s there, where my waist used to be, and he’s whispering to his baby. ‘It will be all right, Mummy just had a little shock. We’ll take you to the zoo, and I promise that if they already have some like you, and no one wants to save you as a protected species, we’ll bring you home afterwards. Now. After Harold fell off his horse with an arrow in his eye, this here William bloke took over. He was a Frog who invaded us – a bit like Hitler, but with a slightly better accent and without the funny walk.’

  He’s so daft, so adorable, so unfazed by life.

  He won’t leave me for a moment. Working from home means a dining table covered in ledgers, bits of receipts, paper clips and piles of tax forms. Susan is living here on a paid basis until my baby has been born. The freezer is full, as is the order book, so Third Party takes over the kitchen at least twice a week, though we are becoming inventive when it comes to puddings, which is where the freezer is a boon.

  I am left out of everything. Susan is run off her feet by three toddlers, while I am confined to barracks except for twice a day, when Alec takes me and my children for a walk to the village, or to visit horses on the farm. When Alec’s Jo comes home from school, she steps in and relieves poor Susan once the homework has been completed.

  Not a word has been heard in weeks from or about Kate and Mike. Members of the Neophytou family are concerned, though they have been lucky, since they received one message of reassurance from Mike on the night of their disappearance. He and Kate will be back, Mike said, when some urgent business has been dealt with. So we wait while trying not to talk about the fact that we are waiting. Alec, between dealing with paperwork and phone calls, treats me like some Victorian female disaster that’s gone into decline.

  Then comes the call Alec can’t take for me, since the caller refuses to talk to anyone but Anna MacRae. He places me on the stairs, sits behind me and massages my shoulders for the duration. It’s Mrs Latimer, the old woman we were supposed to be visiting when Kate ran away.