Hermione entered, Lisa pushing the wheelchair. ‘Well?’ asked the matriarch. ‘Has war broken out? Did Saddam’s chaps find his misplaced weapons of mass destruction, or has Bush misinterpreted his satnav and bombed us instead?’
In spite of everything, Lisa found herself smiling. She might have married the wrong man, but she had no regrets about being related to this fierce, humorous woman. ‘It was a tramp,’ she said. ‘And Eileen beat him about the face.’
‘Why?’ asked Hermione, whose philosophy tended to run on the lines of live-and-let-live.
‘He was at the front, then he was at the back,’ replied Eileen. ‘Probably trying to pinch stuff. I waited till he went back to the front, then I hit him in the back with the walking stick. Then in the front as well – on his face.’
Hermione processed the information, separating backs of houses from backs of people – she was used to Eileen’s meanderings. ‘Is he dead?’
‘He ran very fast for a dead man,’ said Stan. ‘I hope I’ll be as lively when my time comes.’
Hermione was studying Lisa. ‘What’s the matter?’
Lisa swallowed. ‘It was him,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me how I know – I just do. He’s been here, near my family, in our garden, almost in our house. He’ll not stop till he finds it.’
It was Eileen’s turn to be confused. ‘Till who finds what?’ she asked, eyebrows almost disappearing into her hairline.
‘Never mind.’ Hermione’s gaze remained fixed on Lisa’s face. ‘I thought he’d be long gone – down south or across the Pennines, at least.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘He’s not predictable, Mother. And, the more I hear about him from Annie, the more I am inclined to feel that he might very well be dangerous. He cares about no one but himself.’
Eileen glanced from one woman to the other. ‘If someone’s making tea, I’d like three sugars. I’ve just had an encountrance with somebody who’s looking for something somewhere. And the somewhere this nobody-somebody is looking is right here, so I need treating for shock.’
They sat round the kitchen table drinking tea. Stanley dipped digestive biscuits into his cup until his wife reminded him that he was in company.
‘Oh, leave the poor man alone,’ advised Hermione. ‘If dunking biscuits is his worst fault, he’s not going far wrong in the world.’
Lisa, near to tears, tried to hide her fear behind a hand. She cupped her chin, slender fingers creeping up towards an eye. Poor Eileen. Poor old Woebee had just had a close encounter with a lying, cheating thief.
‘Does Annie know where he’s living?’ asked Hermione.
‘No.’ Lisa sighed deeply. ‘She says Freda has seen neither hide nor hair since the day we all met. He could be just about anywhere.’
‘But you’d like his anywhere to be somewhere else,’ remarked Eileen.
No one answered her.
Revived by sweet tea, the Irishwoman continued. ‘There are folk here – me and him – who have been associated with this family since time memorial.’
‘Immemorial,’ interjected Hermione.
‘Whatever. We even go out of our way to guard you all against danger, but we still sit here drowning in tea and Annies and Fredas and men with no names. Don’t you think you should tell us what’s happening?’
Hermione breathed deeply. ‘Not at two o’clock in the morning, no. If we carry on, we’ll have Harriet awake, and that will never do.’
Lisa cleared away the dishes and pushed Hermione back to the first stairlift. ‘Go with her,’ she told Eileen. ‘And don’t start asking questions, because she needs her sleep.’
In the kitchen, Stan asked if he could do anything to help.
Lisa smiled at him ruefully. ‘Some days, I feel I am past help. You’d better ask God to come to my aid. I think He’s the only one who can make a difference.’
‘Good night, then.’
The door closed. Lisa allowed the flood to pour. She sobbed because she had been a fool, because she had been a poor mother, because she didn’t deserve help from Hermione, Eileen and Stan. But most of all, she wept because she was afraid of Jimmy Nuttall. He was still in the area, and there was no way of guessing what he might do next.
He sat in the van, shaking with fury as he mopped blood from his cheek. A blinking old Irish witch had done this to him, and he wanted to sort her out. He knew who she was. Lisa had regaled him with tales of Eileen Eckersley, known by younger members of the family as Woebee, because she always said, ‘Woe betide anyone who . . .’ He flinched. God, she packed a fair wallop for a thin, pale ghost.
What now? Home to poor Sal, he supposed. He could always say he’d stopped a robbery at the non-existent house he was supposed to be visiting. No, not yet. He didn’t want to be anywhere at the present time, so he parked in a country lane, took out a torch and looked through the Bolton newspaper. When he reached the small ads, he sat up and took notice. That was a phone number he recognized, though he had never used it.
‘Bloody hell,’ he murmured. Had they given him the main chance on a plate, delivered via the local press? Would he dare? Could he engineer a way of making a killing?
He folded the paper and sat for at least an hour – smoking, sipping pop from a can, reading and rereading the short message. ‘Help wanted’, it began. He was the one who needed the help. But he couldn’t do this thing on his own. There was one person on earth who trusted him completely, and she was his current landlady. Sal. Could she do it? Should she be involved in this mess? How might he persuade her without telling her the whole truth?
Jimmy Nuttall closed his eyes and saw her face. She was smiling at him, adoration illuminating her face and making her almost lovable. Sally Potter would go to any length to secure her man. This was the way forward, then.
Six
Annie proved her worth within a fortnight. She watched Lisa and Simon for a few days, then leapt into action when a young couple approached the counter and asked to look at engagement rings. They were clearly short of money, and Annie knew only too well how that felt. ‘Are you superstitious?’ she asked the girl.
‘Not particularly, no.’ She glanced sideways at her fiancé. ‘He’s not, either.’
‘Good. Stay there, and I’ll be back in a minute.’
She left the shop, retrieved an item from the office, placed it on a little velvet tray and returned with a look of triumph in her eyes. ‘What about that?’ she asked. ‘Second-hand, but who cares? It’s the love that matters, eh? Now, it’s not a huge stone, but it’s nearly clear of carbon. And diamonds are carbon – they were trees, you know. Millions of years ago, that was a bit of wood. Then it went to peat, then coal, then, after ages and ages, it turned into a diamond. So the bit of carbon makes it natural – a tiny fleck of darkness that allows the rest to glitter.’
The female customer picked up the ring. ‘It’s lovely, is that,’ she said.
‘Right.’ Annie picked up a sizer. ‘Try it on.’
‘It’s a bit loose.’
‘No problemo.’ Annie sized the girl’s finger. ‘Now, if you decide to have this ring, not only is it a bargain – look at that price tag – but we’ll also resize it for free, and tell your families to buy sunglasses, because I’ll make that baby shine like the North Star.’
‘We’ll take it,’ said the man. ‘And with the change, we can buy a bit of furniture.’
In the doorway to the office, Lisa stood and smiled. Annie had a gift that was not born of or improved by learning – she was excellent with people. That young couple would trust Milne’s from this day on. If they did well, they’d be back for other items, because they would remember that they had been treated with fairness and sympathy. ‘Well done,’ she said to Annie when they had left. ‘Shall we have a cuppa? Simon, you know where we are if we’re needed.’
In the office, Lisa praised Annie and said she would make a fine jeweller as long as she carried on in the same vein. ‘It’s about trust, and you convinced them. You even convinced me, and
I’m an old hand. Now, sit down and listen.’
Annie sat while the kettle boiled. She did as she had been bidden, her eyes widening with every sentence delivered. ‘But you didn’t actually see him?’
‘No. No one did. Weaver’s Weft is unadopted, and we haven’t bothered with street lights or paving. We like it the way it is – it’s more rural and natural. With a big housing estate just a few hundred yards away, it’s nice to be a bit different from the usual.’
‘Yes.’ Annie tapped her nails on the desk. Since becoming an apprentice, she had started to take care of nails, hair and make-up, and she was, Lisa had decided, quite a pretty young woman. ‘What makes you think it’s him, though?’
Lisa shrugged. ‘Instinct. According to Eileen, he was in camouflage – well – cammy-flow is her word for it. He wore a combat jacket, and his face was blacked up. Baseball cap, too.’
‘He does have a camouflage jacket and a black baseball cap. But so do a lot of folk.’
‘Are you defending him?’
‘Am I heck as like. I’m just trying to make you feel a bit safer, that’s all.’
Lisa felt that she would never know security again until Jimmy Nuttall disappeared into the bowels of some jail, preferably one several hundred miles away from Bolton. ‘It’ll be the gun, Annie.’
‘Aye, it will. If it is him, that’s what it’ll be about. He gets something fixed in his head, and there’s no shifting him. If he used all that energy for something useful, he could do quite well in life. But no. He wants the easy way. Fit an alarm, go back months later and pinch the family silver. Or drive a couple of lunatics to Brum, get a few quid for it, end up holding the bloody gun.’
‘You believe he didn’t shoot the guard.’
Annie pondered. ‘I can’t see him hurting another bloke, not really, not with a gun. But he’d do the driving. And he prefers to work by himself. No, I don’t think he put that man in hospital. He was dead scared, though. When he came downstairs the day after, he turned the news off. Guilty as sin, but not a killer, Lisa. Just a thief and a chancer.’
Lisa nodded in agreement.
‘I didn’t think he’d be your type,’ Annie said. ‘Too rough for you. What the bloody hell did you see in him? Something like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean?’
‘Not really. But Johnny Depp’s a great improvement on Albert Einstein and his test tubes. I married a dry stick. Even his mother can’t stand him. I mean, she loves him, but she prefers to love him from afar. Except on Tuesdays. Tuesdays, she loves him at family breakfast, though she hides it very well, keeps going on about his trains and his silences.’
Both women burst out laughing. ‘We both married wrong ’uns,’ said Annie, giggling, ‘and neither of their mothers is right pleased with their kid. Where did we go wrong? I mean, what’s Catherine Zeta Jones got that we haven’t?’
‘A wrinkly husband,’ replied Lisa. ‘Come on, we’ve stuff to do.’
It was as if they had been working together for years. There was an easiness between them, a lack of embarrassment, no need for the usual getting-to-know-you ritual. Annie had never had time for friends; Lisa’s circle of acquaintances had been ill-chosen – all bridge-players, wine buffs and plastic-surgery addicts. Yet these two women, so different on the surface, were like sisters under the skin.
Annie looked up from her dusting. ‘I’m glad I met you, Lisa,’ she said.
Lisa felt exactly the same. It was an ill wind that brought no good at all with it. Annie was the good, but the ill wind was still blowing over the town.
Ben couldn’t settle to anything. He didn’t need to study, because the exams so far had been a walk in the park, but he wanted to calm down.
The suicide had been plastered all over national presses. Police were reputed to have a team of IT specialists working to discover the instigator of the website. If they succeeded, Ben could well be discovered as a member of the group and as a witness to the terrifying event. He found himself rocking on the edges of chairs, wanted to run, didn’t know where to go. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder closed down most avenues for him, so he made a momentous decision: he was going to get the hell out of this bloody house.
Tuesday’s breakfast was the usual mix of accidental humour and gritty talk from Gran. Dad was excited about his third or fourth Flying Scotsman, and he had a great deal to say about honey from New Zealand. It seemed that bees limited to feeding from just one specific flower produced honey that helped greatly in the healing of stumps after limbs had been severed. While everyone else’s stomach churned, Gus spoke about MRSA and the application of said honey to sites where flesh was being eaten away.
Harrie was giggling. Only someone as gaga as Professor Gustav Compton-Milne could chomp on toast while delivering a monologue on the benefits of maggots, leeches and honey.
Hermione glared at her son. ‘Shut up,’ she ordered for the second time. ‘Some of us prefer not to suffer nausea before, during and after breakfast. Your strong stomach is to be commended, but please consider the rest of us.’
Lisa dug an elbow into her daughter’s ribs. ‘Behave yourself,’ she whispered. It occurred to her that she had never before dug her daughter in the ribs. Suddenly, and at this very late stage, she was becoming interested in her children. Ben looked terrible, she noticed. He was pale and gaunt, was probably reacting to his sister’s intention to move far away to the other end of the back garden. Lisa thought of Annie and her love-them-hate-them attitude to her three children. Annie adored her kids, no matter what they did. She worked just part time in order to look after her charges and to rescue her mother from Tweedledum and Tweedledee, as she had lately nominated the twin boys.
Harrie managed to stop chuckling, though her mouth twitched as she spread manuka and jelly-bush honey on her toast. The jar announced its origin as New Zealand, so her stomach should be healthy, at least.
‘I’ve advertised for help,’ Lisa announced.
Hermione glanced at her. ‘Help? For whom?’
‘For Woebee,’ said Harrie. ‘She isn’t getting any younger, and this is a big house. Woebee needs to dedicate her time just to you.’
Hermione pursed her lips. ‘Because I am now such a cumbersome burden.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, yes, it is getting worse. I suppose we should employ someone for the heavier work. Well done, Lisa.’
‘Are you ill, Ben?’ Lisa asked.
‘Tired,’ he snapped.
‘Is it the exams?’
He shook his head.
Lisa continued. ‘You should be out and about making friends. It isn’t healthy, locking yourself into your own prison.’ She addressed her daughter. ‘And you, madam, should be finishing university by now. We can get someone else to run the shop.’
Harrie nodded. ‘I’ve got a place for September. Manchester. I’m reading history, then I’ll do a PGCE and teach.’
Ben dropped his knife, bent to retrieve it. He was so fed up with everything and everyone . . . He sat up, looked at all the people round the table, then jumped to his feet. ‘You aren’t real,’ he began loudly.
‘Sit down, dear,’ said Hermione.
But the dam was crumbling. ‘I watched a man die recently. On my computer. Live. I watched a live death. I lived his death. And you sit here and . . .’ He ran a hand through his hair.
Pointing to Hermione, he continued, ‘She orders us all to have breakfast together once a week. We do it because she holds the purse strings. Sorry, Gran – I have almost nothing against you, but Tuesday breakfast is a nightmare. Especially with him.’ He pointed to his father.
Gus looked up from his newspaper. ‘What?’
‘Puffer trains and bacteria, Father. With the odd virus thrown in to flavour the mix. You don’t listen. You’ve bored Mum to death for years, and she’s turned into an advertisement for Harley Street—’
‘Rodney Street,’ interspersed Hermione.
Ben shook his head. ‘See? I tell you someone committed suicide, and Gran corrects my geography.
‘You said he died. I didn’t realize he took his own life. I’m sorry,’ Hermione said.
Close to despair, Ben turned on his sister. ‘I apologize for having taken up so much of your time, Harrie. I mean that. But I needed to talk and you went all Al Anon on me. Leave him alone and he’ll come to his senses, eh? I can’t find my senses.’
‘Then you should see someone about that.’ Harrie’s tone was soft.
‘We are damaged,’ he yelled, ‘because of him.’ An accusing finger stretched in the direction of Gus. ‘You are the least real of all. You aren’t a husband, you aren’t a father – you’re just a walking encyclopedia of irrelevances. Our mum did at least keep the family business ticking. You? Too important for us, aren’t you? Did you know that your daughter sees a psychologist? You are to blame for that. Because it’s all about how and who you are, isn’t it?’
Gus tilted his head to one side. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘Me and her,’ came the swift reply. ‘I am supposed to be proud to bear your name, am expected to go into medicine or research – did you know that I can’t bear to be touched? That I have to live alone to make sure everything is germ-free? That I had to be treated in hospital after burning my body with bleach? Do you know anything about anyone at this table? No. Mostly because you don’t want to know, but also because we’ve become the two-dimensional paper puppets you need us to be so that your precious, sacred work will not suffer.’
Only Ben’s laboured breathing and the chime of a clock interrupted the short silence that followed. Lisa looked down at her nails, while Hermione, clearly shocked, wiped her face with a napkin. Harrie kept her eyes fixed on her brother; Gus simply stared into the near-distance, his head nodding slightly as he processed what had been said.
‘Well?’ shouted Ben at last.
Gus steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. ‘I do know what goes on, Benjamin. I have disappointed your mother, you and your sister. My own mother, too, believes that I have been an inadequate father. For these and all my other sins, I beg forgiveness.’ He stood up and left the room.
Parallel Life Page 12
