Leigh pushed her hair back with a soapy arm. ‘It must be amazing to have Louis back again.’
‘It is. I keep pinching myself. I’ll never moan about a sleepless night again. But you know,’ I finished the biscuit slowly, buying some time to compose myself, ‘I just can’t stop thinking about Robbie.’
‘Well, I guess he vindicated himself in the end, didn’t he? I feel crap about the whole thing. More than crap. I should have trusted him more.’ She looked so sad. Eternal regrets.
‘Oh, Leigh.’ I sighed heavily. ‘I think we’re going to have to let it go, you know?’ I licked my finger and collected the crumbs from the biscuit plate. ‘Otherwise we’ll never rest.’
She slapped my hand with the J-cloth. ‘That’s quite tough, from you.’
‘Well, there’s only so much we can blame ourselves for, isn’t there? He made his choices. I suppose he had to deal with what that meant.’ I handed her the plate casually. ‘Silver found out about Dad, you know.’
She wrenched the plug out of the sink like it was a live thing. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ I’d been longing to say his name for days. Silver. It was another small bereavement, losing him from my life. ‘I thought it was about time I faced up to it.’
‘I’ve said that for ages. Years.’
‘I know. But then it’s not every day your dad’s body gets dug up, is it?’
‘No,’ she agreed, peeling her gloves off with a vigorous snap of rubber. ‘And they should have told us before they did it. But, you know,’ she switched the kettle on again, ‘they were only doing their job. Even if they did do it very badly.’
‘I suppose.’ She hadn’t been there, though. She was already married, already safe in her new life. I remembered the absolute mortification, arriving home from my first mock A-level to find my mum a tranquillised soggy heap, the neighbours whispering in the walkways, the headlines in the local rag the next morning: ‘Convict’s Family’s Fresh Shame’. The bullet-headed copper in charge now trampling his way around our new flat, around our supposed new life, shouting about ill-gotten gains, furious the dug-up coffin held nothing but old bones, pulling our home apart again and again–furious at finding nothing. My Uncle Jack—the grass–limping round after dark, before he left for Florida: trying to explain this last betrayal. To get them off his back, he’d told the police my dad had hidden the wedge from that final job until he died, that it had been buried with him for safe-keeping till the time was right to retrieve it; that the undertaker, who’d since passed away himself, had taken a bung to cover up the stash. Of course it was all rubbish. We’d never seen a penny, though Jack, on the other hand—well, his shoes were new and shiny, just like his big new car. A fourteen-year-old Robbie, full of futile rage and hormones, seeking vengeance for his devastating role model—our sorry father—went after our supposed friend (too late). When my brother eventually came home, he was wasted for the first time—but sadly not the last. My mum sobbed inconsolably as the priest blessed my poor dad’s remains as they finally went back into the ground. Secretly I think she’d been hoping Jack might take her away from all this—but now he was gone too.
But none of that hurt me as deeply as what had happened next. With a great shiver, I thought of DC Jones. I’d tried to block him from my memories, but he was always there, lurking in the background. That friendly middle-aged copper who’d fooled me into thinking he cared about my welfare; that he had the best interests of my wounded family in his oily heart. He took me in for questioning, alone; sat too near me on the Panda’s back seat, stinking of Brut; stood behind me in the police station with one possessive hand upon my shoulder. I’d actually felt protected. I thought that I’d imagined his fond fingers nudging my teenage breast, his red hair slicked back with something that smelt quite sickly. It was only when he suggested so subtly that if I ‘helped’ with the inquiry, suggested with a cheeky wink—well, then he could help me, hey, little lady?— I began to realise the hideous error that I’d made.
‘Don’t act the innocent with me, you little bitch,’ he’d hissed, leaving bracelets of bruises round my wrists and a coating of spittle across my face before the WPC came back with cups of tea and told him to back off. Lucky escape, I thought, and went home to forget it.
And then Jones turned up at our flat one night—to apologise, he’d said. My mum was at the pub, but I let him in eventually because he swore he’d come to clear my father’s name. I actually fell for it. I made him tea and he nicked a nip of my mum’s gin; he made a joke about mother’s ruin—I remembered it forever and I could never drink the stuff. And God I was so stupid, so trusting still, even when he kept inching nearer to me on the old settee, I just inched away, until I practically hung right off the end—scared to hurt his feelings, desperate to believe he could exonerate my dad. He felt guilty for his actions, he said—I reminded him of his daughter—and then when he’d lulled me into trusting him again, he’d launched himself at me, on me, and I’d struggled under his heavy weight until I’d nearly given up—and then Robbie ran screaming through the living room and whacked Jones with my mum’s favourite glass elephant, which shattered on his bald spot. That breakage took some explaining when she got home.
DC Jones had gone by then, and my mum never knew he’d ever been. He’d threatened to press charges against Robbie for assault, but thank God he already had a reputation within the force. Later I found out he’d slunk off to deepest Surrey—taking early retirement to play golf there with his chums. The damage to us kids was done, though. Why would we ever trust the police again?
And then I met Silver. I thought of his kindness; of his devotion to the case. Of his warmth and reliability; of the way that, for the first time in my life, I’d come to depend on a man who hadn’t actually let me down. I’d let myself lean on him, and in the end it had felt right to do so. I thought of Silver, and I felt a great sorrow that he’d gone now. I told myself it was because he was like the kind of father mine had never been. I knew that was a lie.
As if on cue, I heard Louis start to cry in the other room. ‘Coming,’ I called through to my mum, to my baby. ‘I’m just coming.’
My mother was weeping again, clutching the confused baby to her bony chest, weeping and weeping over his little swirly head. He blinked at me and smiled. Oh, the oblivion of utter innocence.
‘She’ll be okay,’ whispered Leigh as I left with Louis firmly on my hip, firmly where he belonged. I clasped my sister tight and thanked her, while George gave me a shaky thumbs-up from the conservatory. I prayed that Leigh was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mickey suggested that after Robbie’s funeral we should go away for a while. I didn’t want to fly; my feet were hardly on the ground again, so in the end Mickey booked us a cottage in the Lake District. For some reason I fancied the north, and for once my husband acquiesced. Something in me yearned for the sheer savageness of nature, the anonymous beauty of a place I’d never been.
The week of the funeral, Mickey stayed at home. Pauline and Freddie had apparently split up, and a heartbroken Pauline was more than willing to distract herself with work, so Mickey threw himself into family life for once. We talked about redecorating; he bought me lots of glossy interior magazines and said I could choose any colour scheme I liked. He drove me and the baby up to town and bought me clothes from Harvey Nichols; he spent a fortune, holding a squirming Louis on his knee while I tried on dress after skirt that I didn’t really want. But I knew I shouldn’t protest. This was Mickey’s way of saying that he loved me.
Only once did we talk of Agnes. Her body had been flown back to Norway. One afternoon, Mickey told me he wanted to ring her parents and asked if I would mind? I chose to stay upstairs with Louis while Mickey was on the phone; I didn’t want to hear. Afterwards, he came up to the bedroom where I was building towers for the baby, towers which he promptly and proudly knocked straight down again.
‘Okay?’ I asked. Mickey looked utterly bleak.
‘You c
an imagine. They’re devastated.’
God, all this never-ending grief. The complete desperation that had caused the well of pain; that had brought such a bittersweet ending for me.
‘Mickey,’ I said carefully. He was staring out of the window, his hands thrust deep in his jean pockets.
‘Mmm?’
‘Why did you see Agnes again?’
He looked round, surprised. ‘When?’
‘I don’t know. Whenever you did.’
‘I told you, Jessica, it was only once. She came in to sign some papers.’
I stacked the coloured blocks one above the next, lining each edge up exactly. ‘Is that the honest truth?’
‘Yes it is.’
‘So why didn’t you mention it at the time?’
‘Because,’ he sighed deeply, and ran his hand through his thick hair. ‘Because I knew you wouldn’t like it.’
‘How did you know?’
He gave a gentle shrug. ‘Okay, I guessed.’
‘I’d have liked it much more if I’d actually known about it. If you hadn’t hidden it from me.’
He stooped down and kissed my forehead. ‘Okay. I’m sorry. I know that now.’
We left it at that.
Robbie’s funeral was a few days later. It was the most distressing experience of my life so far, apart from losing Louis, worse even than attending my dad’s burial, when my mum had been so out of it she’d staggered on her heels, precariously near the open grave, and had to be supported before she fell in. In the crematorium, I sobbed over Louis’s head as Robbie’s coffin slid forever between those grim red curtains. I imagined my brother running free now, chasing me across the playground in the park until we both collapsed in giggles, lying on our bellies in the afternoon light, trying to play the best tune on blades of emerald grass, rolling down the hills, squinting joyfully at the sun, making our one bottle of precious Seven-Up last all day. And then I thought of Agnes, of her ruined body, thousands of miles away, being lowered into the cold ground, and I clasped my son even tighter to me and cried harder than I ever had before.
The day before our holiday, I cooked Sunday lunch for everyone. The funeral had been so devastating that, when I’d finally managed to contain my grief, I’d decided I needed to take action. To do something positive now to mark the next bits of our lives—to mark the good bits-Louis’s return, us as a family.
As I sweated over roast chicken in the kitchen, assisted by a hung-over Shirl, Mickey made a huge effort with my mum, and I was grateful for it. He turned off the opera and put on Roy Orbison—though he drew the line at actually singing ‘Pretty Woman’ to her, thank God (Julia Roberts was my mother’s heroine of all time). Mickey sat next to her at the head of the table and never let her glass go empty, gave her the chicken breast (‘the best bit, hey, Carol—for my best mother-in-law’) and even pulled the wishbone with her, let her snap it and win. His sympathy was genuine; I knew he was imagining his own mother back when Ruari drowned; that he was truly sorry for all my mum’s raw and suppurating pain. I watched Mickey charm her easily, complimenting her on the green blouse that ‘matched her eyes’ (red-rimmed and sore, actually, from all the tears and fags, I noticed, finishing my wine rather faster than I’d meant to). I watched Mickey and I remembered why I’d fallen for him in the first place, fallen so hard. And I thought, now we’re tied together forever by our tragedies, by the loss of both our brothers. Across the table George and Gary were arguing about snooker as only they knew how; Leigh was telling my mum about the latest hairdresser that she loved. I watched the girls feeding Louis slivers of carrot and laughing as he pulled funny faces and spat them out again. I looked at them all and thought I’d never imagined anything like this; and then I caught Mickey watching me, his dark eyes veiled. He toasted me with his wine glass. Then I caught Shirl watching Mickey toasting me.
I went to make the custard. A few minutes later, Shirl followed me in with a stack of dirty plates, staggering slightly on her platform heels.
‘So it’s good to be back together, babe?’ she asked, helping herself to the last roast potato in the dish. ‘Mickey seems very loved-up.’
I flushed. ‘God. Does he?’
‘Probably what he needed, a nasty shock.’
‘Shirl!’
‘I don’t mean Louis, stupid. I mean—’ She popped the rest of the potato in her wide mouth contemplatively.
‘What?’
‘Oh, never mind.’
‘What are you on about?’ Standing at the hob, I briskly stirred the custard but it wouldn’t seem to thicken. ‘Why’s this so runny? God, I never can do bloody custard.’ I topped up a glass with the dregs of the wine left on the sideboard and downed it. ‘Fancy some soup à la Jessica with your apple pie?’
‘Yeah, well, last of the domestic goddesses you are not, my girl.’ Shirl peered over my shoulder. ‘So, you’re going to make a go of it, are you? Here.’ She whisked the spoon out of my hand and beat the custard into submission.
‘What do you mean?’
‘With Mickey. You’re back on track?’
‘Why wouldn’t we be?’ I said, very carefully.
‘Oh, no reason.’
‘Spit it out, Shirl, for God’s sake.’
She cast a rather theatrical look over her left shoulder. ‘Oh, it was just that nice policeman. I thought you might be sad to see him go.’
I opened the dishwasher and started to stack the plates very fast. ‘So what if I was?’ My hair swung across my face conveniently.
‘I just thought you might have—you know. Wanted a bit more.’
Sometimes, you know, I wished my best mate wasn’t quite so candid.
‘Shirl,’ I straightened up, ‘Silver is the one bloke in my life who’s ever done what he actually promised. Why would I want to go and fuck that up? And anyway, even if I did like him, which I don’t, and he did like me, which I’m sure he doesn’t—well, Mickey and me—we’re good.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘I don’t think you are.’ I pushed the dishwasher door home with one hip.
‘I am, Jess, really. I see that Mickey appreciates you more now. I see how he looks at you. It’s just—I want you to have some—’ She snatched the pan off the heat in the nick of time. ‘Whoops. Nearly.’
‘Some what?’
‘Some peace in your life. What you deserve. And maybe now you get it anyway with that man out there. Maybe I was wrong all along.’
‘You were.’
‘I’m sure I was. Now, where’s the custard thingy? This is looking jus’ fine.’
‘You growing the apples out here or what?’
God, I jumped. Mickey put an arm around me and squeezed my shoulder.
‘I’ve just been chatting to your folks.’ He smiled at me, then cast his benevolence towards Shirl for once. ‘You’d make a good godmother, don’t you think?’
‘Char, man. The best.’ She poured the custard neatly into the jug.
‘I don’t follow.’ I pulled the apple pie out of the oven. The far edge had burnt a little. I prodded it sadly. ‘Bollocks.’
‘Your ma thinks we should have Louis christened.’
‘I thought you hated the church? You didn’t want to get married in one.’ I started to cut the charred bits off the pie.
‘That was different.’ For the first time today he looked like the Mickey of old. Guarded. A bit cross. ‘I couldn’t. I’d been married before. You know that.’ Like I said-surprisingly Catholic. ‘But in the circumstances I think it might be nice, don’t you? After everything we’ve been through. Good excuse for a party.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘We could maybe—’ Did he look almost bashful? ‘We could maybe renew our vows too. So your family could be there this time.’
‘If God approves.’
Were the fault-lines starting to shift? Mickey raised an eyebrow.
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Shirl cut in. I raised my eyebrow at her now, but she ignored it. ‘Now, this custard ain’t gett
in’ any better for hanging around. Shall we?’
When everyone had gone, and Louis was in bed, I found Mickey sitting in the near dark, nursing a whisky and staring at the Emin print he’d bought me all that time ago.
‘You look sad,’ I said, leaning over the sofa-back beside him. He reached his arm up and stroked my hair.
‘You know the real reason I liked that picture, whatever I thought of the artist. It reminds me of you. My sad little Jess.’ He let go of me and pulled himself up. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
And he took my hand and led me up the stairs and then in the bedroom he silently undressed me, almost like he worshipped me. My final thought before sleep came was, This is going to be okay.
In the night I woke and Mickey was lying next to me, and it took me a moment—and then I realised what was wrong. We would have to leave this house for good, to free ourselves of all the ghosts, forever. It was the only answer, I saw that now, the only feasible way to make a fresh start. I got up and padded round the packed suitcases ready for tomorrow, into Louis’s room, and I held my breath as I looked into his cot, just in case he wasn’t there again, just in case he’d—
But he was there, of course, deeply asleep, legs curled up like a little frog’s in the warm night, breathing softly, in, out, in, out. I reached down and stroked his face very gently so he wouldn’t wake, remembering how I used to hold my breath in terror sometimes, hold one anxious finger before his tiny nose to feel the heat when he was a newborn, when I was still so scared his breath might just stop. My milk hadn’t returned, but it didn’t seem to matter any more; Leigh said I was lucky I didn’t have to wean him from the breast, it was done for me, and I loved my sister more for looking on the bright side. It had brought us closer together, all this, and that was one good thing about those fourteen days of hell.
I lay on the sofa in Louis’s room and I stared at the moon that filled the room with pale white light, and it suddenly all fell into place. I thought about waking Mickey now, and telling him my decision. And then I thought how much I did hate talking, and while I was thinking all these things I fell asleep again.
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