‘After what you did to her,’ said Ellie, hoping she’d interpreted correctly, ‘I think you got off mildly. Oh, find a chair and sit down, do. I’ll get you a cuppa if you like. And then you can go.’
‘“Did to her?”’ Thomas was confused.
Vera, who was standing halfway up the stairs, confirmed, ‘Did to me.’ She had her arm around Mikey’s shoulders. The boy was clutching their marauding ginger cat, Midge. Ellie could see that Mikey needed something to hold on to at the moment and only hoped Midge wouldn’t object.
‘You …!’ The newcomer emitted a string of words in a foreign tongue which none of them could speak, but all interpreted correctly.
‘That’ll be enough of that.’ Thomas projected sufficient authority to stop a bus, never mind one foul-mouthed intruder.
The newcomer managed to get upright, almost. The look he shot Vera was pure poison. ‘Whore! I’ll be back for the boy tomorrow!’ He measured the distance to the front door, and sidled towards it, crab fashion.
Thomas hesitated. ‘Are you sure he’s all right?’
Ellie said, ‘If he isn’t, he can sit outside in his car till he is.’
Thomas interpreted the expression on his wife’s face correctly and opened the front door wide. A uniformed chauffeur hastened to his master’s side and helped him, carefully, into a back seat. After a moment, the car drove away.
Only then did Thomas shut the door on the outside world. ‘Now, suppose someone tells me what’s going on.’
Ellie said, ‘He wants to buy the boy.’
‘What?’ Thomas almost laughed but, seeing their faces, decided against doing so.
Vera said, ‘I can’t believe that he …! How dare he!’
Thomas looked from Vera to Ellie and back. ‘Will somebody fill me in?’
Vera took one step down, then stopped to look at Mikey, who hadn’t moved. ‘Mikey, did you understand that that man is … was …? Oh!’ With a burst of angry laughter, she said, ‘I suppose I ought not to have … He’s evil! How dare he come here and …!’
Mikey looked back at her with a face of stone. In times of stress, he forsook speech and was mute, sometimes for days at a time. Now he seemed to be judging his mother – or perhaps was merely withholding judgement?
Vera closed her eyes for a moment. But she was no weakling, and Ellie could see her decide to face the problem head on. ‘All right, Mikey. I haven’t been quite straight with you about—’ Her voice broke. ‘About how you came to be.’ She looked at Ellie and Thomas. ‘Nor with you. But I never thought I’d see him again. As for wanting Mikey … He can’t be serious!’
He’d looked pretty serious to Ellie. She glanced at her watch. It was still stopped at three. ‘I think the time has come to tell us everything.’
Thomas led the way to the sitting room. ‘Council of war.’
Ellie went to her high-backed chair by the fireplace, while Thomas settled on to his La-Z-Boy. Vera sat on the settee and patted the cushion beside her, but Mikey chose not to obey her. Instead, he sat on the floor nearby, with the cat stretched out on his knees. Mikey was definitely withholding judgement. Oh dear.
Vera produced a nervous smile, her hands working at her sweater. Tears were not far away. ‘I couldn’t tell you the truth, nor Mikey. It was too difficult. It still is. I don’t know if I can, even now. Mikey, I told you that I’d had a wild love affair with a foreign student, who’d promised to marry me but who was killed in a car accident. I thought that was better, much better than … Sorry, Mikey. Try not to think too harshly of me. I thought, maybe, one day …’ A gesture of frustration. ‘I didn’t want you to know what kind of man your father was.’
‘I knew all along,’ said Mikey, speaking for the first time. His voice was breaking and could go high or low on him. Now, it was low. ‘What did you expect? Of course I knew. I got it thrown at me at my old school all the time. You can’t keep things like that secret.’
‘What things?’
‘You got drunk at a party and had it off with whoever wanted it. Everyone knew.’
‘No, Mikey: no!’ A cry from the heart. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. Who told you that?’
A shrug. ‘Some boys in my class. They were all talking about it. Somebody’s mother knew someone who’d been at the party when you passed out. They thought it was funny that I didn’t know. They told everyone else in the class, too. I didn’t ask you about it, because you’d made up that silly story about your boyfriend being killed.’
Vera clutched her head. ‘Tell me their names! I’ll kill them!’
Thomas said, ‘Mikey, was that why you got into so much trouble at school?’
Mikey shrugged. ‘There was a lot of bullying at that school. I’m glad to be out of there.’
Vera swiped tears from her eyes. ‘It was only partly the truth. If only you’d said!’
‘How could I? You’d told me a fairy story, and I believed it at first. Then, when I understood you’d lied, I—’
Vera wrung her hands. ‘Don’t think too harshly of me, Mikey.’
‘There’s lots of boys who don’t know who their fathers are. You might have trusted me with the truth but you’d decided not to, so that’s it.’
‘That wasn’t the whole truth, or even half of it. You should have asked.’
‘If you didn’t want to tell me, that’s OK. It’s how it is. There’s lots worse off than me. I can take it,’ said Mikey. And meant it.
Ellie intervened. ‘Tell us how it really was, Vera.’
Vera closed her eyes. ‘It’s so hard … even now.’ She looked at Mikey. She put out her hand to reach him. She patted his shoulder. He made no move to reassure her. She winced, accepting his rebuff. ‘All right. I’ll try. Mikey, listen. There was a birthday party and school leaving “do” combined. A whole crowd of gatecrashers. Someone gave me a drink. I thought it was Diet Coke, but there was something else in it. I passed out. I didn’t wake up till hours later. I realized straight away that I’d been raped, but I didn’t know who … There was such confusion … I got home under my own steam. End of story.’
Thomas said, ‘You went to the police?’
Vera’s mouth formed the shape of a bitter smile. ‘No. I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
TWO
Vera lifted her ponytail, shook her hair free and scooped it back into its clasp. ‘You have to understand how it was in my family. Mikey, you never knew your grandfather and grandmother. I’ve not talked about them much, have I?’
Mikey didn’t look at her. ‘You were ashamed of them because they ran a fish and chip shop.’
Patches of red burned on Vera’s cheeks. ‘I never said that. My father was a self-made man who worked hard all his life. He was proud of the reputation of our shop. He’d wanted a son, but there’d been several miscarriages before I was born, and my mother was in her forties when I arrived. She was never strong, always at the doctor’s. Back trouble. Stomach trouble. Finally, cancer.
‘My father was a solid Labour supporter because that was what his father had been. He didn’t hold with women going to college or, worse, to university. He expected me to work in the shop whenever I wasn’t at school or looking after Mum. As luck would have it, we were in the catchment area for a good local school, and there I learned that bright girls could go on to higher education if they wished.
‘My father disapproved, but I set my heart on going to university. I studied late at night and early in the morning. I got a provisional offer of a place at Leeds University. If I got the grades I expected, I had a place to go. There were terrible rows at home, but I stuck to it that this was what I wanted to do. Looking back, I can see that my father was frightened, worrying how he’d cope if I left him to it, because he needed me in the shop and my mother was getting frail. And yes, I did feel a bit guilty about that, but not very because … I had a boyfriend who encouraged me to dream.’
‘Abdi?’
A grimace. ‘Not Abdi. A very different sort of bo
y. We spent as much time together as we could during that last year at school. We’d walk in the park, eat our sandwiches together at lunchtime. Only to talk, you understand. Nothing else. His parents weren’t happy about it. They didn’t want him marrying the girl from the chippy. He was a doctor’s son, due to study medicine himself. We were both going away to university. We knew it would be years before we could marry, but we said there’d be the holidays and we could write and phone one another.
‘We didn’t have sex. I was a bit shy, being so big and awkward. And, I was scared of my father. Dan and I agreed I’d go on the pill as soon as I left school. We were going to go out for the day into the country and …’ She shook her head. ‘Love’s young dream. As if.’
Mikey squirmed.
Vera said, ‘Sorry, Mikey, but you have to know how it was.’
Thomas said, ‘Your boyfriend’s name was Dan?’
Vera passed her hand across her eyes. ‘Dan McKenzie. His eighteenth birthday fell at the end of term, and we had a party at his house. His parents had gone out for the night. A crowd of rowdies gatecrashed, wanting drink and drugs. Dan confronted them, asked them to leave. They laughed at us. We were no match for them. They laid into us. I mean, physically. Threw us around.
‘And before you ask; no, Abdi wasn’t one of the gatecrashers. He’d been invited by one of his friends who went to our school. Some of us got away through the kitchen into the back garden, which was divided by hedges into different “rooms”. The McKenzies had also bought a piece of someone else’s garden off to one side, and there they’d put in a swimming pool and changing hut. We joined some of our lot in the hut, barred the door as best we could, and tried to work out what to do. Nowadays we’d all have mobile phones and be able to call the police, but very few of us had them in those days, and none of our group had one. We could hear the gang charging about and yelling, but they didn’t find the pool. We were all very shaken. When I’d calmed down, I remembered there was a door in the hedge nearby leading on to an alley, from which you could reach the main road. Two of the boys volunteered to go and see if it was locked, or if we could force our way out through the hedge.
‘Someone passed me a drink. I thought it was Diet Coke. I was thirsty. I drank it … and passed out. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up in the open air. I was lying on my back on the lawn near the hut. I was alone. Everyone else had gone. I remember looking up at the moon. Half a moon. I felt most peculiar. Then I realized the state I was in. No panties, and blood all over my thighs. A lot of blood. When I tried to move, I realized I’d been raped.’
Mikey was stone-faced.
Thomas glanced at him and glanced away. He said, ‘You got help?’
She shook her head. ‘Two of my school friends came running down the garden from the house. I tried to get up, to call out to them. The girl jumped a mile and screamed. She said the police had arrived and there was all hell to pay. She said her father would kill her if she got arrested because they’d been smoking pot in one of the bedrooms. They’d got away by scrambling out of the window on to the flat roof of the kitchen and jumping down into the garden.
‘They could see what had happened to me. The girl asked if I were all right, but the boy was backing away, didn’t want to get involved. He asked if I knew of another way out, and I told them about the gate on to the alley. He ran off, without waiting for us. To give the girl credit, she tried to help me. She was dying to get away, but she helped me into the changing hut so that I could wash myself. She asked who’d raped me, but I didn’t know. She said she’d wait for me if I was quick, but I was too slow. She ran away, too. After a while, I took a towel to wrap around me and staggered out. I felt so weak … but all I could think of was about getting home. I walked. Resting now and then. I’d lost my purse so I hadn’t any money for a taxi. Not even for the night bus.
‘My father had waited up for me. He was furious. He beat me. He said I was filth, had disgraced him, that he’d never be able to hold up his head in the community if it got out that I’d had sex in public at a party. My mother wept. She did suggest I see a doctor, but he wouldn’t have it, because then everyone would have known what a slut I was.’
‘A doctor wouldn’t have told on you,’ said Thomas, ‘and he would have arranged for you to be seen by the police.’
Vera covered her eyes with one hand. ‘I was so ashamed. That was the last thing I wanted, believe me. Or my father. But, what with the beating he gave me and all, I don’t think I was in my right mind for a while. Several days. During that time the news broke that Dan’s father, the doctor, had been killed by an intruder at the party.
‘I crawled to the phone with the intention of ringing Dan, just to say … I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I wanted … I hoped … I was desperate to hear his voice, but I knew we could never go back to what we’d had before. I was no longer fit for purpose. Dan was out. I left a message with his mother and she said she’d give it to him, but he didn’t ring me back. He must have thought I’d cheated on him, that I’d consented to have sex with his friends. I had to accept that he didn’t want to know me any more.’
‘You still didn’t go to the police?’
‘My father said I must keep quiet, that no one would ever want to marry me if the news got out. He said the police would say I was drunk and asking for trouble. He said the best thing to do was to put it behind me and get down to the shop to help out. So I did. I worked at the chippy all through the holidays, evenings as well. I didn’t see any of the old crowd. I read the papers for news of the murder. First they were asking for anybody who’d been at the party to come forward. I suppose some of them did. I didn’t. They took in a known drug-dealer for questioning. My father said that would be it. Case solved. But the police let him go without charging him. The following week they questioned another man … and let him go, too. So far as I know, nobody has ever been charged with the murder.
‘The only thing that kept me sane was looking forward to October when I could get away to university, where nobody knew my story. And then … I discovered I was pregnant. I phoned a girl I knew from school, someone I thought might not judge me too harshly, to ask for news. She was embarrassed, said that I’d gone and done it good and proper, brazenly entertaining so many men in the open like that, and she thought I’d do best to keep my mouth shut and move away. That was the first I’d heard that there was more than one man involved. The idea that when I’d lain there, helpless, several men had used me …!’
Mikey shuddered. He lowered his head to his knees and stayed like that.
Thomas said, ‘She gave you names?’
‘I asked if one of them had been Dan, and she thought that was a hoot. She said it wasn’t. She said she didn’t know who it was for sure and if I were wise, I’d not ask. Forget it, she said. Every time I went out of doors I imagined people were looking at me, knowing what had happened. I tried not to look into men’s faces, in case one of them might have taken part in the rape. I told myself it had to be someone who’d been invited to the party, but that didn’t make sense. I couldn’t imagine any of them doing … that.
‘It became easier after a while as I realized that all the old crowd had scattered to university or taken a gap year, and that I wasn’t likely to meet up with any of them in the street. In the end I had to tell my parents that I was pregnant. My father …’ She closed her eyes for a second. ‘I can’t blame him, really. Mum had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Second time round. He was disgusted. He washed his hands of me. He sold up and moved down to the south coast. He said I was on my own, and that he didn’t want me bothering them again. I did what everyone else does; I went to Social Services, they gave me a bed-sitter and finally allocated me a one-bedroom flat, really run down but at least I could shut the front door on the world. I tried to find work. My A-level results were good, but I couldn’t get a proper job with a baby on the way and no parental support. I took whatever jobs I could get. Cleaning, mostly.’
She laid a hand on Mikey’s shoulder. ‘When you were born I realized whose son you must be. What a shock! I’d never in a thousand years have thought that Abdi was interested in me. He’d been to one or two of our parties in the past but I don’t think I’d ever even had a proper conversation with him. We had nothing in common. To think that he’d been one of the men who’d raped me! For maybe sixty seconds, Mikey, I hated you … and then you opened your eyes and looked up at me. They say babies can’t focus that early, but you did. And I loved you with all my heart.
‘I tried to contact your father, of course. I looked in the phone book and there was his address. Not far away. I delivered a note to the house telling them that I’d had a baby and that he was the father. I didn’t expect much. I thought he might make me some sort of allowance … but that was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I’d given him my address. He came to see me there. He said I was trying to blackmail him, to force him into marriage, that it wouldn’t work, that he didn’t believe me, anyway. He said that if I persisted in trying to damage his reputation, he’d have me killed.’
‘Killed!’ Ellie repeated.
Vera nodded. ‘He’d been spoiled. Too much money. Brought up to think he could do whatever he liked. He told me the family was moving away and warned me not to try approaching him again.’
‘But now he wants to make amends?’
‘No,’ said Vera. ‘I don’t think so, do you? Mikey, tell me you understand how it was.’
The boy didn’t look at her. He slung the cat over his shoulder and got to his feet in one smooth movement. And removed himself.
Vera grimaced, on the point of tears. But she was a brave lass and used to bearing her troubles alone. So she ducked her head at Ellie and Thomas, and followed her son out of the room and up the stairs. Quietly.
Silence.
Thomas went to stand at the window, looking out on to the garden. ‘I’m trying to think where I was twelve years ago. July 2002. A sabbatical? Yes, that’s it. All that summer, I was in a terraced house in Cambridge. Pleasant enough. I was working on that textbook, and my first wife was … That was the year in which she began to fade away. Did Dr McKenzie’s death make the national papers?’
Murder in Time Page 2
