‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ he says, approaching the table.
‘Drink?’ Mel spits, standing up again and pushing past Michael. ‘You’re offering me a bloody drink, as if nothing’s wrong?’ She gets up close to him. ‘Don’t think I don’t know who you are and what you’re up to. In fact, I bet it was you who put the pillows under Kate’s duvet, wasn’t it? After you’d manhandled her out to Billy, knowing I’d gone out.’ Mel feels a rage building inside her, making her want to lash out. She clenches her fists down by her sides.
‘Mel, don’t,’ someone says… then she feels a hand on her arm. She looks round. It’s Michael. ‘Come and sit, Mel. Let the police handle this.’ He glances at Angus, giving him a warning look.
She shrugs out of his way, aware that someone else has just come into the bar area. She doesn’t care if it’s a customer. Doesn’t care if she scares them away, making them think the place is run by a madwoman. It is!
‘I’m sorry, Mel, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Angus says calmly, flashing a concerned look at Michael and Tom.
‘You’re not my fucking brother!’ she yells.
‘Mel, there’s a customer. Keep your voice down,’ Michael says, trying to guide Mel back to the table. Again, she yanks her arm away.
‘You helped Billy kidnap Kate, didn’t you? You’re nothing but a crook, worming your way in here and snooping through my stuff. How pathetic, claiming to be my brother. Is that the best you could come up with?’
Mel paces about, pushing her fingers through her hair in frustration, bumping into a stool and knocking it over.
‘Mel, you’re upset,’ another voice says beside her. This time it’s Tom. He catches her in his arms as she circles round, her hands flapping limply by her sides. ‘Come and sit down. Do you want me to phone the officer for an update?’
Mel stares at Tom, looking up at him as he holds her as if she’s a wild animal, trapped. For a second, she imagines she’s the woman she saw through his window last night, that this is how she felt being embraced by him. Only there are no warm smiles and glints in his eyes now. No romantic gestures. Mel’s heart thunders inside her chest.
‘Yes. No… I don’t know!’ she sobs. ‘All I know is that he’s a fake. There’s no way I’ve got a brother, let alone one who’s just happened to conveniently find me.’ She turns to Angus again, who’s frozen to the spot beside the bar. ‘Tom saw you talking to my ex,’ she shouts at him, jabbing a finger in his direction. ‘I know you’re working for Billy. How did he pay you? Cash, or drugs, or a combination? Or maybe you owed him one from way back. Billy never forgets to call in a favour.’
‘Mel, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I came here in good faith, but I can see this isn’t a good time for you. I understand the news about having a brother must have come as a shock, but…’ He trails off, looking at Michael for support. ‘But I think it’s best if I leave now.’
Tom slides a comforting hand around Mel’s waist. ‘Sit down, Mel,’ he says. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘No,’ she whispers, her voice trembling. ‘Don’t believe anything this man says. He’s a fake and a liar. Billy sent him to get Kate, I know he did!’ She raises her voice again, catching sight of Miss Sarah at her usual table – the customer she’d thought had come in. As ever, she has a book in front of her, though this time she’s not reading it. Her head is half turned towards them, her eyes blinking slowly.
‘If you’re my brother, then prove it,’ Mel continues, edging back onto the banquette. ‘Otherwise I’m calling PC Gordon to tell her you were seen talking to Billy recently. I know you’ve got something to do with Kate’s disappearance.’
‘I’m happy to chat with the police,’ Angus says calmly. ‘It’s true I spoke to a man in the village. He was asking for directions. He was a little… rough around the edges, perhaps, but I thought he was a friend of yours, Melanie. He seemed to know all about you and had come a long way to visit. He told me his phone couldn’t pinpoint your exact location or something, so I gave him directions here. He asked me where he could get a pint and a decent meal.’ Angus shakes his head and raises his eyebrows, folding his arms across his chest. ‘I’m sorry you don’t believe me, and I know you’ve been through a tough time. But I’m telling you the truth.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Mel replies, looking at Tom for reassurance. ‘Billy came sniffing about here before you even came to stay, Angus. Why would he need directions when he already knew?’
Angus shakes his head, looking confused. ‘I have no idea. But look, I understand why you’d doubt me. I probably would too.’ He fishes his phone out of his pocket and taps it several times, scrolling down. ‘I don’t know if this helps at all, but here’s a scan of the original letter I got from a solicitor in Exeter. It’s about the inheritance I received.’
Mel takes his phone and zooms in on the letter, dated several months ago, just like hers. She sees it’s addressed to him, Angus Spencer, in Taunton, and sent from a solicitor in Exeter, reminding her of something Robert Hedge had said.
Michael peers over her shoulder, reading it too.
‘It looks the same as the letter you got, Mel,’ he says quietly in her ear. ‘The one you nearly threw away, insisting it was fake, remember?’
Mel nods. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘It is the same. But that doesn’t mean he’s my brother, though. Does it?’ she adds, doubting herself now. She puts Angus’s phone on the table, not knowing where to look.
‘I know it’s a lot to take in, Melanie,’ Angus goes on, his hands clasped in front of his navy V-neck sweater, ‘but I swear I don’t know your ex, and neither do I have anything to do with Kate going missing.’ He pulls out a little stool at the table and sits down opposite her, a concerned look on his face. ‘You have to believe me.’
Mel opens her mouth to speak, but something stops her in her tracks, silencing her.
A sound. Some kind of noise.
Unintelligible at first.
Everyone is quiet, no one moving, as if for a moment time has stood still.
‘No,’ a voice says from across the room.
Just a single word. So weak and barely audible that Mel wonders if she even heard it. Slowly, she turns to see where it came from.
And in the window, with the evening sunlight streaming in around her, Miss Sarah is standing up beside her table, her book on the floor at her feet and her hands clasped in small, white fists by her sides. Her entire body is shaking and her mouth is open, her jaw quivering. Her eyes bulge within their sockets.
‘No…’ she says again, as if it’s taken everything she has inside her to utter the single, brittle word.
All eyes are on her and everyone is silent. No one able to say a thing.
Forty-Five
‘No. No. No.’
Mel stares wide-eyed at Miss Sarah, hardly able to breathe as the word echoes around the room. No one dares to move.
She stands there, shaking as if she might shatter into a hundred pieces from the effort that one syllable took to utter, the halo of light around her dissipating as the sun vanishes behind a cloud.
Mel finally brings herself to slide off the banquette and go over, treading so carefully and slowly, as if she’s creeping up on a timid wild creature, trying not to scare it away.
‘Miss Sarah?’ she whispers. She doesn’t know if it’s the shock of hearing her own voice or Mel approaching, but the woman drops down onto her chair again. She stares into space, not focused on anything or anyone in particular. Her face is blank, her skin pale and, if it wasn’t for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, she would otherwise appear dead.
‘Miss Sarah,’ Mel repeats, kneeling down on the floor beside her, ‘what did you just say?’
Mel knows full well what she said, but more to the point, she wants to know why she said it.
‘No?’ Mel says. ‘What do you mean? I’m so glad you spoke to us. It’s good to hear your voice.’ She wants to encourage her to say
more but is concerned she’ll make her clam up again. ‘Would you like a drink of water?’ Mel reaches over and pours from the jug on her table, handing her the glass. Miss Sarah takes it but just holds it in her lap with shaking hands, the water trembling inside.
Mel stands up again, looking over at the others. ‘Please, Miss Sarah, if there’s something you want to say, then for God’s sake just—’
‘Don’t,’ comes another voice from behind her.
Mel swings round as Michael approaches her.
‘Don’t be impatient with her, Mel,’ he says, a pained expression on his face. ‘It’s not her fault.’
‘What are you on about, Micky? If she knows something, then she needs to tell me. Why else would she suddenly speak after years of silence?’ She turns back to Miss Sarah. ‘Do you know anything about Kate?’ Mel asks, trying her hardest to keep calm. ‘What did you mean by “no”?’
‘No…’ Miss Sarah manages to whisper again, staring at the book on the floor.
‘Mel, stop,’ Michael insists. ‘This is all my fault. All my doing. Look…’ He sighs. ‘Sit down, will you? There’s something I need to tell you.’
Michael briefly touches Miss Sarah’s arm, as if to reassure her, though Mel has no idea about what or why he seems so protective of her.
‘I just want to know that Kate is safe, but now everyone’s gone weird and… and…’ Mel’s mind is all over the place.
‘Mel, you’re going to be angry with me,’ Michael begins. ‘Probably more angry than you’ve ever been, but I need to confess something. Let me apologise in advance, but…’ He comes up close then, taking her aside and whispering quietly in her ear. ‘I’d say there’s every chance that Angus is your brother, so don’t be hard on him either. It makes perfect sense now.’
‘Well, not to me it doesn’t!’ Mel snaps back, her heart thundering as if it’s about to burst from her chest.
‘Do you remember the DNA test I bought you for Christmas?’ Michael says as Mel goes to sit down again.
Mel crinkles her nose as she thinks. ‘Um… yeah, what of it? I hate to tell you, Micky, but I chucked it out. I was in no mood for that then. Or ever.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Michael says, closing his eyes and taking a breath as he sits down next to Mel.
‘What?’ Mel is aware of Tom and Angus nearby, each of them silent.
‘It didn’t get thrown away. Before I went home from yours that night, I took it out of the bin. You’d already collected the saliva, remember?’
‘Yes, I remember doing that, but I put the test tube in the rubbish when I was in the kitchen getting us more drinks.’
‘I know. I happened to see you do it,’ Michael says. ‘So later, I fished it out and took it home and… and, well, I registered an account online and sent it off to the lab. I’d already paid for it, so thought I might as well. Whatever came back, if anything, I was going to let you decide what you wanted to do with the results.’
‘Michael!’ Mel says, astonished. ‘You had absolutely no right to do that and—’
‘I know, I know…’ He holds his hands up both in defence and shame. ‘I was out of order, I admit. When I got an email a few weeks later saying the results had come back, I decided not to look. It didn’t seem right, given how determined you were not to find out about your past. By then, I was too ashamed to tell you what I’d done, so I thought I’d just let sleeping dogs lie.’
Mel sits there, taking it all in, aware of Miss Sarah sitting perfectly still at her table.
‘And then…’
‘And then what?’ Mel whispers. Her hands are still shaking as she reaches for her phone, obsessively checking the volume again, making sure she hasn’t missed any calls.
‘And then I had an email alert about a message received on the account. From a potential family member.’ Michael clears his throat and looks away again.
‘What? Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I mean… this is serious stuff to be meddling in, Micky. What were you thinking?’ Mel half stands up, then sits down again, shaking her head.
‘So I logged into the account I’d made and, apart from the unread message and dozens of possible connections for third, fourth and fifth cousins dotted all over the place… well, I saw that you had another, much closer connection listed.’
Mel stares at him, her eyes boring into his, scowling.
Michael takes another deep breath. ‘At the top of the list of all these cousins was a parent and child connection. The science was all there, something about measuring the amount of DNA a person shares with another, I forget now. But the parent-child connection listed was someone who was one hundred per cent confirmed as your…’ Michael closes his eyes briefly before taking Mel’s hand. ‘…a hundred per cent confirmed as your mother,’ he says, looking Mel directly in the eye.
‘My mother?’ she says.
Michael nods.
‘Who?’ Mel whispers.
Michael turns, looking at Miss Sarah.
‘What?’ Mel croaks. ‘What are you saying? That Miss Sarah is my… our… mother?’ She looks over at Angus to see if this makes any sense to him. But he just sits there looking confused.
‘It was Sarah who had messaged me via the DNA testing website,’ Michael goes on. ‘She… well, she naturally believed I was you when I replied to her. When she mentioned an inheritance that was due to you, I admit, I thought the same as you at first, that it must be some kind of scam, but then—’
‘Michael Vincent Smith, I do not bloody believe you!’ Mel stands, yanking her hands away from his, not realising he’d even taken hold of them. ‘This is… well, this is fraud or something, I don’t know. How could you?’
‘It all just got out of hand,’ Michael says, tears collecting in his eyes. ‘I understood why you didn’t want to know anything about your parents, and your mother especially, for abandoning you. But then I’d witnessed first-hand the life you’d had with Billy, and I couldn’t let you go back to that. Like you, I knew he wouldn’t be in prison for ever, and I’ve seen him worm his way back into your life before, Mel. I didn’t trust him not to do that again. I couldn’t let that happen to Katie, apart from anything.’
‘No, no, no, this isn’t happening,’ Mel says. ‘Who the hell am I able to trust any more if I can’t trust you, Micky?’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Michael says earnestly. ‘Please, forgive me. I truly meant no harm.’
Mel strides over to the bar, leaning against the freshly painted wood, wondering what all this means for her, for Katie. She glances at Miss Sarah, unable to absorb the news that this woman who refuses to speak is actually her mother. She looks far too young, for a start – barely a decade or more older than she is. She wants to study every inch of her, take her by the collar and shake her, force her to tell her everything, while at the same time hugging her and crying on her shoulder. Nothing makes sense.
‘Angus?’ Mel finally says. ‘What do you know about this?’
Angus shakes his head. ‘I mean… well, nothing. I’m as shocked as you are, obviously. And I want answers, too, of course.’
Mel notices his cheeks colour, his eyes flick away.
‘In the interests of complete honesty, Mel, I did eventually confess to Miss Sarah who I was in our messages,’ Michael continues. ‘I told her that I was your friend and had bought the test as a gift. I explained why you didn’t want anything to do with your birth mother and… well, she completely understood. If it wasn’t for the inheritance, then I wouldn’t have given out your address for the solicitor to contact you. She said she would make sure it was all completely anonymous.’
‘Ohhh, I see,’ Mel says, her voice incredulous. ‘So that’s why you were so damned keen for me to read the letter.’ She shakes her head as the penny drops. ‘So was it Miss Sarah who refused the inheritance? And her mother did leave her the estate?’
‘Darling, I don’t know any more than that. All I wanted was to secure a better life for you and Katie away from that… th
at monster. But now he’s followed you down here anyway and, oh God, this is all such a mess.’ Michael gets up and goes over to hug Mel. Surprisingly, and against her better judgement, she lets him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael whispers into her neck, squeezing her a little harder.
‘But how is any of this going to help find Kate? That’s all I care about right now,’ Mel says, pulling away from him. She goes up to Miss Sarah again. ‘Just tell me why you said “no”?’ she says. ‘If you really are my mother…’ Mel hesitates, feeling giddy and unreal at the same time. ‘If you really are, then Kate is your granddaughter and she could be in danger. I know that you’ve been talking to her, discussing her father. So if you’ve got something to say, if you know where she is, then for God’s sake, please tell me.’
Mel drops to her knees, taking hold of Miss Sarah’s hands. They feel cold and clammy, as though they’ve never touched another human being, or at least not for a very long time.
Miss Sarah looks directly down at Mel, something lighting up deep within her insipid eyes, as if they’re taking on a colour of their own, like the life is coming back into them.
‘Mum,’ Mel says, almost choking on the word, ‘if you truly care for me and your granddaughter, then please, tell me what you know.’
Miss Sarah swallows drily. Then she takes a sip of water. Her lips part and Mel hears her raspy breaths wheezing in and out of lungs that sound barely used.
‘Man…’ she says so quietly that Mel wonders if she even spoke. ‘Man…’ she says again.
‘Man?’ Mel repeats. ‘Is that what you said?’
Miss Sarah nods, squeezing her hands as if to confirm that she’s correct. Then she coughs, turning her head away slightly. ‘Kate,’ she whispers.
Behind her, Mel feels the collective tension, everyone desperate to know what she means, if it will help them find Kate.
‘Do you mean Kate is with a man?’ someone says from behind. Mel turns to see Angus hoping for an answer to his question.
Miss Sarah nods.
‘Christ,’ Mel says, grateful for Angus’s intervention. ‘What man, and where can we find him? Is it Billy?’
Single Mother Page 24
