by Rebecca Bryn
She matched his pose, her face close to his. ‘Why? So you can beat the fuck out of him?’
‘Katherine!’ He looked around. The café was silent, a sea of faces blurred around them. He righted his chair and sat down. ‘Alana, he can’t be allowed to get away with this. It isn’t too late to tell the police.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why the hell not? Suppose he did this to another girl.’
‘I don’t think he would… not go out and look for someone to rape, that is. Maybe rape’s too strong a word. It was more jealousy than anything. He took advantage, didn’t take no for an answer… It was partly my fault.’
‘No, means no, Alana. Rape isn’t a woman’s fault.’
‘It was at our engagement party. I had too much to drink. I was flirting.’
‘That’s no excuse. It was someone you knew? Someone I know?’
She’d made Mum promise not to tell anyone the name of Saffy’s father, especially not Dad. Could she trust him not to go after the man, now that two years had passed? The need to tell him won out. ‘It was Mike… Tony’s brother, Mike. Dad, you have to promise you won’t say anything. His mum’s been fighting cancer for three years. It would tear them apart.’
‘Mike?’ His fists clenched.
‘Dad, promise me.’
‘And this is why you broke off the engagement?’
She nodded. ‘I spent weeks in denial… refusing to admit it had happened. Then I discovered I was pregnant. Tony would have known it wasn’t his. He knew the pill didn’t suit me, and he was so careful about contraception. It was me who hoped we’d have a burst condom… he even used spermicidal gel.’
Dad’s face reddened, she shouldn’t have gone into her sex life, but his hand reached for hers across the table. ‘I wish you’d told me all this before. I’d have made Mum see you needed that abortion. Tony need never had known.’
‘I would have known. I couldn’t have lived with the lie.’ She removed her hand from beneath his and took a sip of coffee. One day, Saffy would ask why she had a blank space on her birth certificate. When Saffy was born, and she’d held her for the first time… ‘Part of me loves Saffy, but every time I see her it reminds me what happened, and what it did to me and Tony. It was Mum wanted her.’
He shook his head. ‘Just the thought of what Mike did to you. I could have been there for you.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up, Dad. I couldn’t talk about it.’ The hurt in Tony’s eyes still haunted her. Every touch that wasn’t his reminded her of Mike’s touch. She rolled her shoulders to disguise a shudder. ‘Tony thinks I left him for another man.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
A familiar fire burned in the pit of her stomach. ‘Just now. He’s not interested in me. He’s moved on.’
Dad fiddled with his teaspoon. ‘You don’t think he’d have you back if he knew the truth? It’s obviously what you want. You should trust him. You shouldn’t make this decision for him.’
She sighed. ‘And if Saffy got to know? Mike can count dates, too. I wouldn’t trust him not to blab for spite. How could I explain her conception without her hating Mike for forcing himself on me, and me for getting paralytic?’
‘You’ve told me.’ He studied his coffee. ‘Do you want her to live with a lie? The truth may be painful, but living with lies is worse, and they have a way coming back to haunt you.’
‘I trust you and Mum. No, I have to get used to being alone. I’ll never love anyone but Tony.’
‘You will, one day. I didn’t think I’d ever love again, but I have.’ He patted her hand. ‘We both have to look to the future, now. And you’ll grow to love Saffy, too, if you let her into your heart. Spend more time with her, Alana. You’ll regret it if you don’t. And one day you’re going to have to take some responsibility for her whether you like it or not.’ He smiled that smile and her heart lifted. ‘Anyway, I told you, this isn’t about you. It’s about me having a life… not being controlled…’
She’d forgotten about Mum and doom, wrapped in her own troubles, all about her. He was throwing away the marriage she’d give her left arm for. Had he any idea of the black hole he was creating? ‘Is it because Mum’s older than you?’ She waited for him to deny it, to come up with a reason she could understand, but he remained silent. She sighed and placed the package onto the table. ‘I hope you have a happy birthday, Dad. I doubt Mum ever will again.’
Chapter Two
Alana drove home to the ground-floor flat in a terrace of Edwardian houses. She couldn’t go to Mum’s and act normally, knowing what she did, and she certainly wasn’t going to be there when the shit hit the fan. All she could do now was wait for Mum’s phone call.
Her easel stood in the centre of the room where she’d left it that morning, before her parents’ arguing culminated in the end of life as she knew it. Before meeting Tony again had brought back every tear she’d cried, and every sleepless night she’d spent pacing the floor, while the malignant tumour that was Saffy grew inside her. Only the fact that her child was an innocent victim had stopped her stepping off a pavement in front of a bus.
She took a two-inch hake brush and squeezed fresh white paint from a pot. White was all colours, the colour of light… loneliness… emptiness. She swirled the brush in her jug of water, dabbed it on kitchen roll, and scooped paint from her palette. Thick daubs of distress swished across the painting, obliterating carefully stated light and shade, well-observed tone and form, and accurately-proportioned buildings.
She washed her brush, added ultramarine and mars violet to her palette and created a smouldering doom-filled sky with deft, angry strokes. With a smaller brush she went back into the sky with white, forming and blending racing clouds. She stood back. Something was happening she hadn’t expected: something very different from her normal style. She squeezed out a yellow, not bothering to look which one, and mixed it with the ultramarine. A slash of deep turquoise became sea, a touch of the sky colour added cloud shadows. Cliffs, she needed cliffs: hard, stubborn, angry cliffs.
The phone trilled and she dropped her brush, splattering paint across the carpet. She grabbed the receiver. ‘Mum?’
‘Is that Miss Katherine Harper?’
No-one who knew her called her Katherine, except Dad when he was angry with her. ‘Is this another cold call?’
‘I need to confirm that you are Miss Katherine Harper.’
She wasn’t Katherine, not anymore. She wouldn’t be a victim. ‘Get off my bloody phone. I’m waiting for an important call, you moron.’ She slammed down the receiver, shaking. What the hell was she going to say to Mum when she did ring? She took a deep breath and returned to her painting. Cliffs…
She painted more intensely now, channelling anxiety and anger into jagged shapes and deep shadows. Burnt sienna and raw sienna, the edges of the colours lost and found, merged and separated. Brighter yellows and soft greens on cliff-tops sang against the moody blues and greys of sea and sky. White breakers foamed against rocks. A thin line of pale turquoise hope gleamed distantly on a despairing horizon. She’d never painted the sea before but its energy surged inside her, fulfilling a deep need. It was something she had to do. Something she was born to do.
The phone rang again and a spray of black Indian ink, intended to form deep shadows beneath rough bracken, arced across the wall. Her fingers painted the receiver black, blue and yellow. ‘Mum?’
‘Miss Katherine Harper?’
‘Will you please remove my number from your list and leave me alone. I told you, I’m expecting a call.’
‘This isn’t a cold call… listen to what I have to say, please. Just five minutes of your time and…’
‘You have twenty seconds.’
‘You are Katherine Alana Harper?’
‘Yes, but whatever you’re selling I’m not buying.’
‘I’m not selling anything.’ The voice picked up speed. ‘It really is in your interest to listen…’
‘Fifteen seconds.’
‘I
’m Harry John, an heir finder.’
‘I can find my own air, thank you. There’s plenty of it around.’
‘No, you don’t understand. You should have received a letter.’
‘Eight seconds, Mr John.’
‘I’ve been waiting for your call. I believe you may be entitled to an inheritance…’
‘You think I’m that gullible? Three seconds.’
‘A relative of yours has died. You may be her beneficiary.’
‘I don’t have any relatives, Mr John, long-lost or otherwise, unless you count my parents who are both alive… if they haven’t killed each other by now… and a daughter who isn’t old enough to leave me anything. Time’s up, goodbye.’
‘Her name was Alana…’
She pressed the receiver back to her ear. ‘Alana? Alana who?’
‘That’s all I’m prepared to say until I can verify your relationship to the deceased. I’m on my way to you, now. I can be there in an hour. If I show you my research, I know I can convince you.’
It was a sick hoax to snare the hard-up, had to be... and no one was more hard-up than she was. ‘And what do you get out of this?’
‘I’m being paid to find you. Terms are already agreed with the solicitor handling the will but I need your signature. What have you got to lose, Miss Harper? Five minutes of your time, that’s all I ask. There’s no money to pay up front.’
No money, no risk, surely? ‘I shall still take some convincing, Mr John. You have my address?’
‘14 Trafalgar Street, Leicester.’
‘Okay. Five minutes, but if this is a hoax I shall call the police.’
‘I’m absolutely legit, I assure you. I’ll see you in an hour.’
***
The grey-haired man wearing a rumpled suit, shivering on Alana’s doorstep, didn’t look like the bailiff. ‘Miss Katherine Harper?’
‘Alana… can’t stand Katherine. You must be Mr John?’ His high, uneven brows, large penetrating eyes and narrow jaw reminded her of a cross between a self-portrait Picasso had painted and some of the artist’s cubist renderings, except he was stouter, and his short, receding hair was peppered with silver.
She caught a whiff of tobacco smoke on his clothes. ‘Come in.’ She shoved a pile of papers off a chair and onto the floor. ‘It’s not very comfortable, I’m afraid, but the other one is worse.’ She sat down carefully in the worse one and willed the phone not to ring. Dad obviously hadn’t yet found enough backbone to face Mum. Either that or they really had killed each other. What the hell would she do then?
Mr John smiled a lop-sided smile and opened his briefcase. ‘A Katherine Alana Harper is mentioned in a will held by the solicitors who employed me to find her. ‘Your father’s name is Derek.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I work for a firm of genealogists who specialise in finding heirs.’
‘And you think I’ve inherited something?’
‘I believe so. If you can confirm your mother’s Christian and maiden names?’
‘I’m not happy giving out personal information. I’ve seen the reports… people like you stealing identities.’
The corners of his eyes crinkled into a grin. ‘I shan’t ask you for any proof of identity documents… and I don’t have a camera… All I need is to be a hundred percent certain in my own mind that you are the person I’m looking for. The rest can be done through the solicitor.’
‘And there’s nothing to pay up front?
‘Not a brass farthing. I get a percentage of what you receive. I need you to sign an agreement to that effect.’
‘How big a percentage?’
‘Eighty percent of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing, surely?’
‘Eighty percent of nothing is more than I have at the moment.’ If this was a hoax, where was the catch? ‘My mother was Gweneth Williams.’
Mr John gave her an odd look, if it was odd for him, and smiled again. ‘Then I’m pleased to say you’re about to inherit some money.’
She let herself dare to hope. ‘Okay, where do I sign?’ He handed her a pen and the agreement. She couldn’t see anything dodgy in the small print. Mr John’s twenty percent was for her to pay from the proceeds of the designated estate. She signed Alana Harper, with her usual flourish. In for a brass farthing, in for eighty percent. ‘So, who was this Alana?’
‘Your aunt.’
Her eighty: Mr John’s twenty… All one hundred percent gurgled down the drain. ‘I don’t have an aunt.’
Another lop-sided look. ‘Her name was Siân Alana Ap Dafydd.’
‘Never heard of her. What makes you think I’m her niece?’
His eyebrows wriggled together like a pair of hairy caterpillars. He consulted a sheet of paper. ‘Her name was Williams before she married. She died without living children, but she had a sister, Gweneth Williams, who married a Derek Harper.’
Her heart thudded. ‘Mum’s never mentioned a sister.’
‘Nevertheless, she existed.’
‘When did my aunt die?’
‘About a month ago. It’s taken some time to trace you and, well… those cold calls you’ve been ignoring all week?’
‘Something to my advantage… that was you…’
He laughed. ‘I’m the moron.’
‘Sorry.’ She was curious, now. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Not easily. The passport office records showed your mother’s address. She was as cautious as you when I phoned her to ask about you. Understandable, in the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’
‘I wasn’t at liberty to tell her why I wanted to contact you. Client confidentiality. She confirmed you existed and that was all. It was enough.’ He looked at her sideways again. She found it slightly disconcerting. ‘There was only one other Alana Harper in the UK. It was easy to prove she wasn’t the right one. You are your aunt’s only beneficiary.’
‘And her estate?’
‘I can’t give you an accurate figure, but I understand there’s property in West Wales. Unless your aunt also left huge debts…’
‘It could be thousands… hundreds of thousands?’
‘I couldn’t say. You’ll be hearing from the solicitor in due course.’ He closed his briefcase and stood up. ‘Is the painting for sale?’
She surveyed the unframed boards and canvases ranged around the walls. ‘Which one?’
‘The one on the easel. I’d like to buy it.’
‘But… the paint’s still wet.’
He examined it more closely and then stepped away and looked again, his head on one side. ‘It has a lot of passion… energy. Reminds me of home. I live near the coast… Cardigan way. How much do you want for it?’
It had taken a fraction of the time she usually spent on a painting of that size. She hadn’t thought of it being saleable; she wasn’t even sure it was finished. ‘Framed or unframed?’
‘Framed.’
She did a quick calculation of framing costs, the size of her electricity bill and the extra petrol she’d need comforting a distraught mother. And she’d seen a top the silk scarf would go with perfectly. And the price of good carving limestone had gone up. And she needed a fine vee-chisel. Could she ask three hundred? She owed last month’s rent, and the landlord would go ape when he saw the Indian ink up the wall and the paint on the carpet.
She assessed Mr John the way a lioness assessed a baby antelope. He was expecting to collect his twenty percent. His suit might be rumpled but it was good quality, his slightly portly figure showed he didn’t skip meals, the tobacco smoke was cigar not cigarette, and he had a kind, fatherly smile. And confidence was all; she swallowed and prayed to the god of struggling painters and starving sculptors. ‘A thousand pounds.’
‘Do you need a deposit?’
She’d been missing her market all these years. A deposit? She needed the whole lot. Framing, petrol, food… ‘Twenty percent?’
He laughed and opened his wallet. �
��I have a hundred and twenty on me.’
She tried not to wrench his hand off. ‘That’ll do.’
‘When can I collect it?’
‘Give me a week? No, better make it two, what with Christmas. If you leave your number, I can call you when it’s ready. What type of frame did you have in mind?’
‘I’ll leave that to you. You know what will suit the painting best.’
She did? She did, of course she did, and where to buy cheaply. ‘Thank you, Mr John. I’ll be in touch very soon. And cash would be good.’
***
Doom stopped impending at nine o’clock. Sobs gasped down the phone line. ‘I’ll be right there, Mum.’ Damn Dad, but at least he’d waited until Saffy was in bed. She felt a pang of guilt. Had Saffy hidden under the bedclothes?
She pushed her guilt back behind its blast wall, snatched her keys from the hook and slammed the front door behind her. Minnie, her ancient Mini Cooper, groaned as she accelerated, tyres skidding on newly-frozen slush. She’d forgotten to add tyres to her list of necessities: as long as she kept moving no eagle-eyed copper would see they were as bald as the proverbial coot.
Mum lay on the sofa, her shoulders heaving. Double-damn Dad. How could he do this to her after all these years? She sat on the sofa arm and rubbed Mum’s back with her hand. ‘Mum?’
Her mother dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘Alana… Dad’s…’
‘I know… I know… I saw him earlier. He told me.’
‘What am I going to do, Alana? I don’t know what to do.’
‘It’s all right, Mum. I’m here.’
Mum sat up, red-rimmed eyes pleading. ‘You’ll stay, won’t you? Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be on my own, not tonight.’
‘Of course I will. You’ll get through this, Mum.’ She held Mum in her arms as she sobbed. She could feel her ribs: she hadn’t realised she was so thin. Dad’s warning echoed in her mind: she’d stay tonight but that was all. She had her own life to live. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea, shall I? Have you eaten?’
‘I couldn’t eat a thing. Just the tea. Thank you, Alana. You’re a good girl, a wonderful daughter.’
She stirred in sugar and milk with a guilty hand. If she was a wonderful daughter she’d want to stay. Dad was right… this was Mum dishing up a guilt trip, manipulation… No, he was wrong: this was Mum suffering the worst catastrophe of her life, while she was being self-centred as usual. Dad had calmly scattered destruction, walked away and left them to it. She hated him almost as much as she hated herself for destroying Tony’s love.
