A Special Relationship

by Douglas Kennedy

  After a moment, the door opened slightly. It was attached to a chain. Behind the chain, I could see a woman with a very lined face and scared eyes. But the voice was as angry as before.

  ‘What do you want at this time of night?’

  I quickly put my foot into the space created between the open door and the door frame, saying, ‘I’m Tony’s wife, Sally Good—’

  ‘Get out of here,’ she said, trying to slam the door.

  ‘I just need five minutes of your time, please.’

  ‘You don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police.’

  She tried slamming the door again.

  ‘Just hear me out …’

  ‘At bloody midnight? No way. Now get going or …’

  ‘He’s taken my child from me.’

  Silence. This obviously gave her pause, and it showed.

  ‘Who’s taken your child from you?’

  ‘Your brother.’

  ‘You have a child with Tony?’

  ‘A son – Jack. He’s about nine months old now. And Tony has …’

  I put my hand to my face. I felt myself starting to get shaky again. I didn’t want to cry in front of this woman.

  ‘He’s what?’ she asked, the voice not so hard now.

  ‘He’s run off with another woman. And they’ve taken my son …’

  I could see a mixture of concern and ambivalence in her eyes.

  ‘I haven’t had anything to do with my brother for nearly twenty years.’

  ‘I understand. And I promise you I won’t take up more than ten minutes of your time. But please – the situation is rather desperate. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here at midnight if …’

  I heard her undoing the chain.

  ‘Ten minutes, no more,’ she said. And she opened the door.

  I stepped on to a patterned, wall-to-wall carpet. It continued down a hallway papered in a brownish floral print. The living room was off this corridor. More Axminster carpet, a three-piece suite in beige vinyl, an elderly television and video recorder; an old mahogany sideboard, on which sat a half-drunk bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and a half litre of inexpensive-looking gin. There were no decorations on the walls – just a different patterned floral wallpaper: sepia-toned and fading. There was a distinctive whiff of damp in the air.

  ‘So what do you want to tell me?’ she asked.

  Like so many times over the past months, I worked my way through the entire story again. Pat Hobbs sat there throughout the telling, impassive, smoking one Silk Cut after another. I knew she was around ten years older than Tony – and though she wasn’t chunky, her deeply ridged face and sad eyes and the elderly floral bathrobe that loosely covered her frame made her seem almost geriatric. Somewhere halfway through the story, she interrupted me, asking, ‘You drink gin?’

  I nodded. She got up and filled two glasses with gin, then added some flat tonic from a bottle on the sideboard. She handed me a glass. I took a sip. The flat tonic was pretty vile. Ditto the metallic taste of the cheap gin. But it was alcohol, and it helped.

  It took about another ten minutes to bring her fully up to date. She smoked another two cigarettes during that time. And finally said, ‘I could have told you my brother was a bastard. A charming bastard, but a bastard nonetheless. So, besides saying sorry for your troubles, what can I do about this?’

  I took another steadying sip of gin, knowing that if I didn’t win her over now, this entire late-night visit would come to naught. Then I said, ‘Remember when we spoke some time ago, and I mentioned that Tony had just left me, and you asked me…’

  I encapsulated the conversation for her, even though I remembered it, word for word.

  ‘How long have you two been married now?’ she asked me.

  ‘Around a year.’

  ‘And he’s already abandoned you? That’s fast work, right enough. Mind you, I’m not surprised. He’s the abandoning sort.’

  ‘You mean, he’s done this before?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I looked at her directly now and asked, ‘What did you mean by “maybe”.’

  She lit up another cigarette. I could see that she was weighing this all up, wondering if she should involve herself at all in my story. I was asking her to betray her brother. And though she mightn’t have spoken with him for twenty years, her brother was still her brother.

  She took a deep drag of her Silk Cut, then exhaled.

  ‘I’ll tell you – on one condition. You never heard this from me. Understand?’

  I nodded. Now it was her turn to tell a story. Two stories in fact, though they were all part of the same central narrative. Then, when she reached the end of her tales, she stood up and went out into the hallway, and returned with an address book, and a scrap of paper and a pen. She found two numbers. She wrote them down. She said, ‘Now you can deal with them. But understand: I’m to be kept out of the picture.’

  I assured her that I’d say nothing about her involvement, then thanked her profusely for helping me out, letting her know that I realized what a difficult thing she had just done.

  ‘It wasn’t difficult at all.’

  She stood up, indicating it was time for me to leave.

  ‘Must get up for work in the morning,’ she said.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Cashier for a building society here in town.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘It’s a job.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough …’

  She waved me off. She didn’t want gratitude.

  ‘All right then,’ I said, picking up my overnight bag. ‘But I still appreciate everything.’

  She gave me a brusque nod, then opened the door. I was going to ask her where I could find the nearest B&B, but thought better of it. I didn’t want to engage her further. Especially as she had already done so much.

  I headed up the street in the direction of town, not particularly worried if all the B&B’s in Seaford were full or shuttered for the night. If I had to sleep on a bench in the station, so be it. The gamble had paid off. A sleepless night was well worth what I had come away with. But halfway down the street, I heard Pat Hobbs’s voice calling, ‘Where are you going now?’

  I turned around. She was standing in the doorway of her house.

  ‘I don’t know. Figure there must be a B&B or a hotel open now.’

  ‘At nearly one am in Seaford? Everyone’s in bed. Come on, I’ve got a spare bedroom.’

  The room was narrow and musty. So too was the bed. There was a small, sad collection of old children’s dolls on a window sill. She didn’t say much to me, except that the bathroom was down the hall and there was a spare towel in the airing cupboard. Then she wished me goodnight.

  I undressed and crawled between the sheets. I fell asleep within minutes.

  Then it was morning and she was tapping on my door, telling me it was eight and she had to be at work in an hour. Pat was dressed for the building society in a navy-blue uniform with a blue blouse and a blue-and-white scarf depicting the corporate logo of the conglomerate that employed her. An old-style brown tea-pot was on a metal warmer. There was a steel toast rack with two slices of white toast awaiting me, as well as a jar of marmalade and a tub of margarine.

  ‘Thought you might like a little breakfast,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Tea all right? I don’t drink coffee.’

  ‘Tea’s fine.’

  I sat down at the table. I reached for a slice of toast and spread it with marmalade. Pat lit up a cigarette.

  ‘Made those calls for you already,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Them two numbers I gave you last night. I called them both already. They’re both willing to see you. What are you up to today?’

  ‘I’m free,’ I said, genuinely pleased and just a little surprised by such a gesture.

  ‘That’s good, because the first person – the one who lives in Crawley – said she’s around this morning.
And I called the rail station – there’s a train from here to Gatwick Airport at 9.03, but you have to change in Brighton. You get to Gatwick at 10.06, and then it’s ten minutes in a cab to her house. The other woman can’t see you today. But she’s free tomorrow morning. However she lives in Bristol. She’s expecting you at eleven, which means you’ll need to be on a train from London around nine. All right?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, except that I’m rather overwhelmed …’

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said, evidently wanting to avoid any more of my effusiveness. ‘Hope it goes well for you, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.’

  We lapsed into silence. I tried to make conversation.

  ‘Lived in Seaford long?’

  ‘Twenty-three years.’

  ‘That’s long. And before that?’

  ‘Amersham. Lived with my parents until they both died. Then felt like a change. Didn’t want to be rambling around their house without them. So I asked the building society to transfer me somewhere different. They offered Seaford. Kind of liked the idea of being near the water. Came here in 1980. Bought this place with my share of the Amersham house. Never moved anywhere since.’

  ‘Were you married or—’

  ‘No,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘Never did that.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette. I had crossed the frontier into the personal, and the conversation was now closed.

  She walked me to the station. When we reached the entrance, I said, ‘Thanks for putting me up again. Hope I wasn’t too much trouble.’

  ‘First time I’ve had anyone to stay in about seven years.’

  I touched her arm. ‘Can I call you, tell you how things worked out?’

  ‘Rather you didn’t,’ she said. And with another curt nod of the head, she quickly said ‘Goodbye’ and headed off.

  While waiting to board the train to Gatwick, I found myself studying a map of East Sussex on the wall of the station. As my eye moved slightly northeast of Seaford, I noticed the town of Litlington – scene of my infamous arrival at Diane Dexter’s gate. Using my index finger, I gauged the distance between the two towns, then held my finger up against the mileage indicator at the bottom of the map. Tony was now spending weekends just three miles from where his sister lived.

  I changed trains at Brighton. At Gatwick I took a cab to a modern house on a modest estate in Crawley. The woman there granted me thirty minutes of her time, told me everything I wanted to hear, and said that, yes, she would agree to an additional interview by one of my legal team. Then I took a cab back to the railway station. While waiting for the train, I called Nigel Clapp, excitedly blurting out everything that had happened in the last twelve hours. He said nothing while I rambled on. And when I finally concluded with the comment ‘Not bad, eh?’, he said, ‘Yes, that is rather good news.’

  Which, from Nigel Clapp, ranked as something approaching high optimism.

  He also said he’d make arrangements to dispatch Rose Keating down to Crawley to take a witness statement.

  Around noon the next day, I called him from Bristol with more good news: I had heard exactly what I wanted to hear from my second Pat Hobbs contact, and she too was ready to make a witness statement. Once again, he was enthusiasm itself: ‘You’ve done very well, Ms Goodchild.’

  Maeve Doherty concurred, ringing me two days later to say how pleased she was with my detective work.

  ‘It is certainly very interesting testimony,’ she said, sounding cautious and guarded. ‘And if carefully positioned in the hearing, it might have an impact. I’m not saying it’s the smoking gun I’d like – but it is, without question, most compelling.’

  Then she asked me if I was free to drop by her chambers for an hour, so we could go through how she was planning to examine me when I gave evidence at the hearing, and what I should expect from Tony’s barrister.

  Though she only needed to see me for sixty minutes, the round-trip journey to Chancery Lane ate up two hours. Time was something of which I was in short supply right now – as I had lost over a full working day on my assorted expeditions to Sussex and Bristol, and as the Film Guide proofs had to be in before the hearing began. Once inside her chambers, I found myself kneading a piece of paper in my hands as we did a run-through of my testimony. She told me that kneading a piece of paper was something I must definitely avoid doing while being questioned, as it made me look hyper and terrified. Then she did a practice run of a potential cross-examination, terrorizing me completely, coldly haranguing me, attacking all my weaknesses, and undermining all my defences.

  ‘Now you have me scared to death,’ I said after she finished.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘Because you actually did very well indeed. The thing to remember is that she will do more than her level best to trip you up, and to make you seem like a complete and utter liar. She will also try to make you angry. The one trick here is: do not take the bait. Keep your answers brief and concise. Avoid eye contact with her. Keep repeating the same thing, again and again. Do not deviate from your story and you’ll be just fine.’

  I doubted that – but, thankfully, the terror of the hearing was briefly superseded by the more immediate terror of not making the deadline. I was actually grateful for the pressure, as it did block out the fear I had. It also forced me to work fourteen-hour days for the last week. Bar the occasional trip to the supermarket for food – and a fast thirty-minute canter along the tow path by the river – I didn’t leave the house ... except, of course, for my weekly visit with Jack. He was crawling now, and making a wide variety of sounds, and liked being tickled, and especially enjoyed a routine I did which involved holding him above me while I lay on the floor, and then going, ‘One, two, three, boom’ and pulling him straight down on top of me. In fact, he thought this hilarious, and in his own monosyllabic way, kept indicating that he wanted me to repeat it, over and over again. Which, of course, I was only too willing to do. Until Clarice walked in and informed me that our hour was up.

  As always, this was the hardest moment. The hand-over. There were days when I clutched Jack to me and fought tears. There were other days when he would look a little disconcerted and perturbed by having to end our fun together, and I fought tears. There were days when he’d fallen asleep or was having a crying jag or just generally feeling out of sorts, and I fought tears. Today was no different. I picked us both up off the floor. I put his head against mine. I kissed him. I said, ‘Next week, big guy’

  Then I handed him to Clarice. She disappeared into the next room. I sat down in one of the moulded plastic chairs and – for the first time since our initial supervised visit – I broke down. Clarice came in. She sat down beside me, and put her arm around me, and allowed me to bury my head in her shoulder as I let go. To her infinite credit, she said nothing. I think she understood the pressure I had been under – both to behave correctly and calmly in her presence, and to withstand the enforced separation of the last months with a necessary equanimity, in order not to be judged a troublemaker. Just as she also understood what I was facing in just three days’ time. And how, if it didn’t go my way …

  So she held me and let me cry. And when I finally subsided, she said, ‘I hope that, by this time next week, these supervised visits will just be a bad memory for you, and you’ll be back with your little boy.’

  Meanwhile, I had a job to finish – and I was determined to have it done before the start of the hearing, in order to allow me a decent night’s sleep before heading to the High Court.

  A few days before the hearing Sandy called me.

  ‘So, Tuesday morning’s the big day, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I wish I was a Catholic. I’d have Mass said for you.’

  ‘Divine intervention isn’t going to help me now.’

  ‘You never know. Anyway, promise you’ll call me Tuesday evening.’

  ‘You’ll definitely be hearing from me.’

  I hung up. And worked that night until
three, then fell into bed, and got up again at seven, and worked straight through (with an hour’s nap somewhere in the middle of the day) until seven next morning. At which time, I sat in a bath, and congratulated myself on finishing this endless proofreading job.

  The manuscript went off by motorcycle courier at nine. I headed off to the public baths in Putney shortly thereafter and spent an hour doing laps in the pool. Then I went off and had my hair done, and took myself to lunch, then crossed the road to the local cinema and sat through some romantic drivel starring Meg Ryan, then collected my one suit from the dry cleaner’s, and was home by five, and received a phone call from Maeve Doherty – telling me that she had just been informed of the judge who would be hearing the case.

  ‘His name is Charles Traynor.’

  ‘Is he a reasonable judge?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘In other words, he’s not reasonable.’

  ‘I would have preferred someone else besides him. Very old school. Very play it by the book. Very traditional …’

  He sounded exactly like the last guy I faced. I asked, ‘Are you saying that he hates women?’

  ‘Now to call him a misogynist might be just a tad extreme. But he does have a rather orthodox viewpoint on family matters.’

  ‘Wonderful. Did you ever argue a case in front of this Traynor guy?’