Joe visited and so did Moira, which Kelly knew was more than he deserved.
Then, after he had been at Plumpton for two weeks, on a glorious spring afternoon, Nick turned up. Kelly was overcome. He had believed his son when he’d told him he wanted no more of him. He had believed it because he had come near to destroying the boy’s life once many years previously, and he more than understood that Nick was not prepared even to give him the chance of doing it again.
But Nick’s visit proved to be a pleasant surprise. He was standing looking out over the garden with his back to the room when Kelly walked into the big old conservatory where the residents habitually received their visitors.
Hearing his footsteps perhaps, Nick turned round at once to face his father. The sun glinted on his sandy hair and his face looked tanned. Nick almost always looked tanned. And very handsome, Kelly thought. And Nick was smiling at him. Hope rose inside Kelly like the dawning of a new day. Perhaps he had not lost his son after all. Nick was definitely smiling, albeit a little tentatively.
‘I didn’t mean what I said, Dad,’ he told his father.
‘You had every right to,’ replied Kelly.
‘Yeah.’ Nick stopped smiling and his voice was serious when he spoke again. ‘That’s not what it’s about, though, is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’ responded Kelly. ‘All I’ve ever done is let you down, Nick. You told me that yourself, and you were right.’
Nick nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true too. But you’re my father and I love you. I can’t change that. I wish I could sometimes, but there it is.’
‘I bet you wish you could,’ said Kelly. And he had felt quite swelled with love and pride.
‘Just don’t mess up, Dad, will you? Not this time. Not again.’
‘I won’t,’ Kelly promised him.
‘I’ve got to go abroad, just for a few days, and then I’ll come down again as soon as I can.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Kelly, pleased to be able to concentrate on somebody else’s life for a moment instead of the mess his own was in.
‘Munich,’ responded Nick shortly.
‘Anything interesting?’ Kelly enquired without a lot of hope of much reply. Nick had never given a lot away about his work and Kelly still didn’t fully understand exactly what his business had been since he left the army.
‘Deeply boring,’ replied Nick. ‘Like everything about computers, unless you’re a geek like me.’
Kelly smiled at that. Anyone less like a geek than this fit and handsome son of his, who still looked every inch the soldier he had once been, was difficult to imagine.
A few days later, while he was still living at Plumpton House, Kelly’s case came up at Torquay Magistrates’ Court. Kelly had spent plenty of time in courts at all levels, but he had never stood in the dock before. He found that he did not like it at all.
He was, however, lucky. Joe spoke up for him. The chairman of the magistrates did not seem so vehement about drink driving offences as most of his ilk, and in fact must have been a particularly tolerant man, as even the revelation that drugs had been involved didn’t send him totally apoplectic. Kelly was given a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years. He was extremely lucky. He could easily have gone to jail, and he knew it.
Because of his narrow escape, because of Nick, because of Joe, and yes, because of Moira, Kelly became even more determined to keep his promise to himself, to finish his course at Plumpton, and totally to clean up his act. He was also determined that he would walk away from Angel, and make it up with Moira, if she’d let him. After all, Angel had been the cause of most of what had gone wrong. But Kelly knew that wasn’t entirely fair. It was his own obsession that had contributed so much to landing him in this mess. He had had choices. And he’d known with devastating clarity at every step what he was getting into. With his background he had known more than most. To get involved again with drinking and doing drugs had been the ultimate stupidity. But, once he had started, and with Angel to share those various seductive mind-altering substances with him in such exciting ways, he hadn’t been able to stop. Which, of course, had been more or less the story of his life.
He was going to stop now, though, he really was.
And yet, and yet, Kelly wasn’t able to stop himself calling Angel. From the very day he arrived at Plumpton House, he kept trying her repeatedly, at the same time swearing to himself that he would let go of her. That he wanted just to speak to her one more time.
He called her mobile without any success. He kept phoning Maythorpe Manor, getting only the answering machine as usual. Eventually one night, at around midnight, she answered. She sounded high and he thought he could hear a male voice in the background.
‘I can’t talk to you, John,’ she said. ‘I’m knackered and you’ve just woken me up. Call again in the morning, will you?’
He was quite sure that she was lying, and also that if he called in the morning he would get only a recorded message again. He proved to be right, but kept trying. He told himself that he was in any case only calling to end it.
It was early evening, already dark after a damp, grey day, when Kelly was eventually discharged from Plumpton House, physically more or less mended and very, very sober. But emotionally he was not nearly as together as he had hoped. And so, instead of calling Moira or even Joe to collect him, he did exactly what he had told himself he wouldn’t do. A taxi had been booked to take him first to an AA meeting near his St Marychurch home. But as soon as he climbed aboard Kelly redirected the driver. He asked to be taken straight out to Maidencombe, to Maythorpe Manor.
As the taxi approached the big old house he could see a light on in the bedroom. He could also see shapes behind the curtains. More than one shape? He got out of the taxi outside the gates of Maythorpe and asked the driver to wait for him there in Rock Lane. As if bent on torturing himself, he decided to try to enter the house surreptitiously. Feeling quite nervous he walked to the gates and pumped the security code into the gizmo to one side. The gates swung silently open.
Kelly made his way carefully across the gravelled courtyard, trying to make as little noise as he could as his feet crunched on the little stones, and wondered if his key would still work. But he did not even have to use it. When he tried the front door he found that it was unlocked. Typical, he thought, as he opened it and slipped inside. Angel’s idea of security remained as erratic as ever, it seemed.
He closed the door as quietly as he could behind him and climbed the stairs cautiously. The bedroom door was ajar. He stopped in the doorway, looking in at a scene which he had somehow half expected, but that made no difference. It was still a shock.
Angel was in bed with two young men. She was sitting astride one of them, while the other had entered her from behind. Kelly’s first bizarre thought was that she looked like the filling in a rather outlandish sandwich. He watched in a kind of morbid fascination for a few moments. The bedroom he had spent so much time in smelled like a cross between a brothel and an opium den. There was little doubt that all three people on the bed were doped to the eyeballs. Kelly had no idea who they were, and suspected Angel probably didn’t know them very well either. She had often teased him with stories about having sex with strangers. But she was so high profile Kelly was still surprised that she would stage a mini orgy like this in her own home.
Kelly’s feet felt as if they were nailed to the floorboards. He didn’t want to watch, but neither could he move. Eventually Angel glanced over her shoulder and saw him. She was moving in rhythm with the two young men and she didn’t pause for an instant. Her eyes were glazed and puffy. Her mouth hung open. She pulled her lips into the familiar mocking smile.
‘Why don’t you come and join us, John?’ she invited him, her voice deep and husky.
For once he didn’t think she looked beautiful. In fact he thought she looked quite ugly. And her words somehow brought the life back into his legs. He did not reply. He had no reply. Instead he just turned round and fled. He
took the stairs in leaps and bounds, hurried out of the house and half ran across the courtyard. There he had to pause because the big gates had automatically closed behind him earlier. With trembling fingers he punched in the security number to open them again, getting it right only at the third attempt. He could not stop himself looking back at the bedroom window. The shapes were still moving behind the curtains. He didn’t want to think about what she was doing, what was being done to her, but he couldn’t help it.
The window was almost hypnotic to him. It took a huge effort of will for him to look away and walk out through the gates to his waiting taxi. In the back of the car he felt the tears begin to roll down his face. He tried to wipe them away with the side of his hand. They wouldn’t stop. He hoped the driver wouldn’t notice, but he was beyond caring all that much.
A car Kelly would have recognised had he seen it was parked in the entrance to another big house just a short distance up Rock Lane from Maythorpe. Its lights were switched off, but in any case Kelly was in far too much of a state to notice anything.
He was still crying when he arrived home in St Marychurch. He wanted a drink, but he kept that resolve at least. He did not have one even though he thought there might still be booze in the kitchen cupboard. Instead he found some sleeping pills and took three.
He sought oblivion and he found it after a fashion. But when he woke suddenly several hours later with a headache and a fuzzy mouth, his cheeks were still wet with tears.
Twenty
The telephone was ringing. That was what must have woken him up so abruptly, Kelly realised. He opened his eyes blearily and hoisted himself into a half-sitting position. For just a moment he wasn’t even sure where he was. The phone continued to ring. Eventually he reached for it, rubbing his eyes to wipe the tears away.
‘So you’re there, are you?’ said Moira rather tetchily.
Kelly heard himself mumble a reply.
‘Are you all right?’ Moira’s voice was sharp.
Kelly knew what she was thinking at once. Those sleeping pills had really knocked him out. She was probably afraid that he had already started drinking again.
He struggled to pull himself together and clear his head.
‘Yes, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sleep so I took some pills. One more than I should have done, probably.’
‘Oh.’ Moira did not sound entirely convinced. Kelly couldn’t blame her.
‘I didn’t realise you were leaving Plumpton last night,’ she went on. ‘We didn’t expect you to be released till today. I only found out this morning. You should have called. I’d have picked you up.’
‘I didn’t want to bother you. I just got a cab to take me to an AA meeting and then home,’ Kelly responded, wondering if the day would ever come again when he didn’t seem to be lying to everyone. ‘My last therapy session was late yesterday afternoon and afterwards they said I didn’t have to stay the night unless I wanted to.’
‘What are you going to do today?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ That at least was the truth.
‘Well, I think you should call Joe and talk to him about when you can get back to work. He’s performed miracles keeping your job open for you. He deserves a big thank you.’
‘I know he does,’ said Kelly. ‘And so do you.’
‘Forget it,’ said Moira, and rang off.
Kelly felt that she was probably making a conscious effort not to get too involved again. And he didn’t blame her for that either.
Miserably he dragged himself out of bed and made his way downstairs to the kitchen. He brewed a strong pot of tea and sat at the kitchen table to drink it. As the hot brown liquid hit the back of his throat, somewhere inside the fuzziness of his head his brain began to clear just a little.
He looked around him, taking in the surroundings of his home for the first time. There had been fresh milk in the fridge and a packet of sliced bread lay on the worktop by the cooker. The kitchen was immaculate. In fact the whole house was neat and tidy, and he was pretty damned sure he hadn’t left it that way. Moira, he thought. And it was typical of her. Only she could have been in and cleaned the place so thoroughly. Obliquely he wondered where she’d got a key from. He remembered her almost throwing her own set back at him. Nick had keys, of course, and she might even have borrowed Kelly’s own which had only been handed back to him at Plumpton House the previous day.
Either way, that was another thank you he owed Moira. He also felt guilty. Moira certainly would not approve of the thoughts which were beginning to form in his mind as he poured himself a second mug of tea.
A course of action was starting to frame itself and, although he was unsure that it was the right one, it seemed to him to be the only one. The truth, the whole truth about everything, he was convinced, was all that could exorcise the demon that his obsession with Angel had become. Suddenly he was determined that he would make Angel tell him everything, and that he just had to do that in order to preserve any of his sanity. He wanted to know the absolute truth, not only about the deaths of Scott Silver and Terry James, but also the truth about Angel’s feelings for him. In Kelly’s mind the two were inextricably linked.
Kelly’s stomach lurched queasily. He considered making himself some toast, but couldn’t quite be bothered. The last little vestige of his common sense was hanging on in there grimly, warning him that he might not like the truth very much, and also sending him the message that if he didn’t know what Angel’s feelings for him were after the way she had treated him, and after what he had seen last night, then he really was a seriously sad case.
Kelly managed a small smile. Sad or not, at least he had reached a decision. He had no particular game plan, but he convinced himself that if he confronted Angel in the right way she would tell him the truth for two reasons. First, she had seen him destroy the tape in front of her and believed, almost certainly correctly, that there was no evidence against her. Secondly, and probably most importantly, for the first time since it had all begun he really did want the truth.
Previously when he had confronted Angel he had always been looking primarily for reassurance. He had really only ever wanted things to continue the way they were while he buried his head in the sand. And he suspected that she had always been well aware of that.
This time it was going to be different.
He drained the last of the tea from the pot into his mug and checked the time. He had slept, albeit fitfully, for almost ten hours. It was now nearly 1 p.m. Surely Angel and her young men were out of bed by now, he thought. Anyway, he wasn’t sure that he cared. He was feeling surprisingly bullish. He’d drag her out of bed and make her talk to him, if he had to.
Then he thought again. She was hopeless early in the day, and 1 p.m. was still early for Angel Silver. In any case there was no point in provoking her for all the wrong reasons. He’d wait until the evening. That was also likely to be when she would be at her most lucid, recovered as much as ever from the excesses of the previous night and hopefully not yet totally stoned again.
He passed the day and early evening watching TV and psyching himself up for what he intended to do. When it came to it, however, he started to get nervous about his plan and kept coming up with reasons for putting off leaving the house. Ultimately it was almost 11 p.m. before, cursing the fact that he was off the road and would be for a very long time, he finally called a taxi to go out to Maidencombe. Repeating his process of the previous night, he asked the driver to park and wait outside the perimeter walls, opened the electronic gates and made his own way into the house. He didn’t ring the bell and wait for her to answer it, because, once again, although for different reasons, he wanted to take Angel by surprise. He didn’t want to give her time to erect her defences, something she did so well and with such alacrity.
He found her in the kitchen. She was standing by the worktop watching the kettle boil. From the doorway he saw her reach for a mug and then a spoon, trembling hands protruding from the sleeves of a grubby t
owelling dressing gown which had probably once been white.
Just like the night before she sensed his eyes on her and turned to face him. Her hair was a mess, platinum strands hanging lankly from distinctly dark roots, and her skin looked pale and blotchy. Her eyes were still surrounded by the black smudges of yesterday’s mascara, which blended with the heavy shadows beneath them. It looked like she had been through a long night, which had probably gone on right through the day as well. Kelly thought he had made the right decision not to confront her earlier. He doubted it would have got him anywhere.
There was an ugly bruise on her forehead which hadn’t been there yesterday, and Kelly felt that sudden dart of the familiar compassion and protectiveness which she always brought out in him. Then he looked again. Yes, Angel was still the little girl lost. There was also something pathetic about her. And he realised again that he didn’t find her beautiful any more. Indeed, he wondered how it was that he had never before noticed the ugliness that there was about her.
Her mouth set in a thin hard line when she saw him. ‘Are you going to make a habit of sneaking into my house?’ she asked.
He made no direct response. ‘I didn’t like what I saw last night,’ he said instead. He spoke mildly enough but he knew that she would see his remark as a challenge he had no right to make. That was Angel. And he wasn’t wrong.
‘What makes you think I give a damn about what you think, you sad bastard?’ she rounded on him.
A Moment Of Madness Page 32
