Five Strangers Page 25

  ‘Mandy? He’s been here again, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Not that again,’ she said wearily, not bothering to look up from the frying pan.

  ‘Alan – I know he’s been here. I can smell him.’

  ‘Brian, we’ve been through this. Mr Jarvis has never stepped foot in this house.’

  ‘Why does the lounge smell of him then?’

  ‘It’s just your imagination. The tea’ll be ready in five minutes. Becky – can you help set the table for me?’

  ‘What did he do to you?’ said Dad, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. ‘Did you do it over the settee? Did he bend you over the sofa and take you from behind?’

  ‘Becky – go to your room. She doesn’t have to listen to this.’

  ‘She can stay here. She can have a lesson about what happens to women when they turn into—’

  ‘Brian, you should hear yourself. You’re pathetic.’

  ‘Don’t you give me that. I know he was here. I can sense him.’ He turned from her and bounded up the stairs. I heard him in their bedroom, pulling out drawers, throwing things on the floor.

  Mum quietly sobbed as she continued to turn the sausages. ‘It’s you I feel sorry for,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind so much for myself. I’ve learned to live with it, with him. But you shouldn’t have to.’

  A loud crash from upstairs shook the ceiling. The frying pan spat out a globule of hot fat onto Mum’s wrist. She took in a sharp breath and rubbed her skin. I heard Dad bound down the stairs. He had something in his hands. The card.

  ‘What do you call this?’

  ‘I don’t know, you tell me, Brian. What is it?’

  ‘You know fucking very well what it is. It’s a Valentine’s card from him – Alan.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘How you have the cheek to stand there and deny it – when I’ve got the evidence in front of me.’

  As he started to read from the card – ‘Mandy, my one and only love. I can’t wait …’ – the words I had written sent a thrill through me.

  ‘Right, tea’s ready,’ said Mum in a bored voice. I suppose it must have been her indifference, her refusal to engage, that pushed him over the edge.

  With a quick movement he grabbed her left hand and forced it behind her back. She winced in pain.

  ‘You’re a fucking liar,’ he shouted. He squashed the card in his fist, brought it up to her face and, with a voice breaking with emotion, finished reading the message, ‘… until the day we can finally be together … All my love, Alan. Kiss. Kiss … Kiss.’

  Tears welled in his eyes, his whole body seemed to shake, and for a moment I thought he might break down. Mum kept repeating his name. She didn’t know what he was talking about or where the card had come from. It had to be a mistake, she said. A hoax. Some kind of cruel trick. The tea was getting spoiled. The sausages were done.

  ‘I knew you never loved me,’ he continued. ‘Not good enough for you, was I? You thought you could do better. Wanted to be a teacher. What did I do – drag you down? Well, if you think I’m going to stand by and let you go off into the night with that ponce opposite …’ He tightened his grip on her arm and thrust it further behind her back.

  ‘Brian, you’re hurting me now. And the sausages, look – they’re burning.’

  ‘I don’t care about the fucking saus—’ Before he finished the sentence he grabbed Mum’s right hand, the one she had been using to push the sausages around the frying pan, and slammed it into the hot fat. Everything happened so fast after that. She screamed, temporarily drowning out the song on the radio, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. She tried to struggle, but Dad held her hand down harder. The smell of burning skin and flesh filled the room. She called for me to help her, but I found that I was paralysed on the spot. By fear. Fascination. Something I could only describe as pleasure.

  ‘Becky!’

  As she started to thrash about she managed to free the hand that Dad had pinned behind her back. It clawed its way across the worktop like a creature from the seabed until it settled on something. A knife. A second later she had it in her grip and, with a force I never expected, brought it up to Dad’s neck.

  There was a desperation in her eyes I’d never seen before, even during the worst beatings. I often wonder what went through her mind just then. Did she think about what she was about to do? Or was it something she didn’t have to think about, something primeval, an overriding survival instinct? She gripped the knife so strongly her fingers turned white and she slashed across his throat, cutting deep into his neck. Blood spurted out over the cooker, onto the kitchen floor. Dad released his hold on Mum and, with an expression of disbelief, reached up to his neck. Mum, still holding the knife, fell down to the floor, the pain from the burns almost too much to bear.

  After a minute she looked over at Dad, his body slumped on the floor in an ever-increasing pool of blood, as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. She focused on the ripped, bloodied fragments of the Valentine’s card on the floor and then turned her head towards me. I don’t know what she was thinking, but she shook her head as if to say – what? That she couldn’t live with what she’d done? That she suspected me of something? That she wished I’d never been born? Then she raised the knife once more and, with eyes locked on mine, slashed her own throat.

  65

  JEN

  Julia Jones apologises for being late – she says another bloody Brexit crisis meeting overran.

  ‘I’m so grateful to you for taking part. I know the Mail isn’t your favourite paper.’

  ‘No, you’re right there, but at least you know where you stand with them,’ she replies. ‘And I’m grateful for their support for the charity. That kind of money will make a real difference.’

  Penelope swoops into the room to greet her and, although she’s written some vile things about the Labour Party during her career, with Julia she’s all charm and smiles. The MP, in turn, is gracious and polite. She asks Penelope if she could use the bathroom – she got stuck in a traffic jam on the high street, she says, and so she decided to jump out of the taxi and run the last bit to the house.

  Penelope announces lunch is served at the kitchen table – nothing fancy, she says, just poached salmon, new potatoes, with roasted vegetables – and asks if anyone would like a drink. Julia, stepping into the room again, is the first to say ‘yes’. She knocks back the fizz and then holds her glass out for another. I tell Penelope I’ll have a drink a little later, once I’ve finished the interview. We climb the steps to the top of the house and in the study we make a little more small talk about politics. She takes another gulp of the champagne and, before I even ask a question, she starts to talk about that day on the Heath.

  ‘And you mentioned that you’ve been having nightmares?’

  ‘Yes, awful. Just terrible. All about Harry, my son who … who died.’ She takes another sip of her drink. ‘I’m with him, in India. We’re trekking on the side of a mountain. He’s laughing. He looks so young, so handsome. Sometimes he turns into a boy before my eyes, and I tell him that he seems to be getting more youthful by the minute. His eyes sparkle, his teeth are so white that when he smiles the light from his mouth almost blinds me. Then a shadow passes across his face. He takes a step back, reaches out to me, asks me to save him, but then the ground gives way underneath him and he falls, falls so far, and disappears. I wake up just when …’

  She bites her lip as she tries to stop herself from crying. ‘I know it’s twenty years now since I lost him, but … Anyway, yes if you’re wondering whether there’s a link between seeing the murder–suicide on the Heath and the resurgence of these kind of painful memories, I’d say the answer is yes. Obviously, the deaths were very different. We witnessed a terrible, shocking murder and then a suicide, while Harry’s death was … an accident.’ There’s something odd about the way she says this last word, as if she’s not sure. ‘And of course, there’s this too.’ She holds up an empty glass. ‘I
’ve told myself that I’m going to cut back once Brexit is over. But will that ever happen?’ She laughs hollowly. ‘Actually, I could do with a top-up.’

  I offer to go and fill her glass, but she refuses. She’s more than happy to do it herself and she says she needs the loo anyway. I take the opportunity to check the tape has worked. I look through my notes and questions, check my phone and reply to a few emails. What’s taking Julia so long? She should be back by now. I look out of the study window and spot Julia in the garden puffing on a cigarette. I didn’t know she smoked. Penelope comes to fill up her glass and the two women start to talk. Shit. Penelope could be quizzing her for hours.

  I look around the study and, after examining the bookshelves, I come to stand by the desk. On it there’s a large pad of blotting paper, framed in brass, an object that strikes me as belonging to another, more antique, age. When was the last time I’d used blotting paper? Was it some time at school? Something to do with chemistry? Yes, it involved dabbing some ink onto blotting paper with water and watching the black or blue separate into different colours. I remember the teacher telling us at the time to take note that things were often not what they always seemed on the surface. ‘The experiment goes to show that appearances can be deceptive,’ she said.

  I run my fingers across the smooth surface of the pad, but there’s something underneath. I lift the frame to find a green cardboard file. I bring it out and place it across the desk. For a moment, I freeze. This isn’t mine, I tell myself. Put it back where you found it and pretend you never looked. But then my curiosity gets the better of me and I open it. At the top of an otherwise blank sheet of A4 paper is the name ‘Rebecca Shaw’. Bex.

  66

  BEX

  I stayed looking at the bodies for hours afterwards. They held a beautiful fascination for me. I traced my fingers above and around the wounds, just letting them hover over the gaping flesh, the reddened lips. I stared into their lifeless eyes, intrigued by the idea that they were for ever blind. I was careful to avoid the ever-increasing pool of blood that gathered around their bodies. I didn’t want to get tainted.

  I felt a deep sense of satisfaction, of a job well done. This was all my work, my doing, my creation. And yet none of it could be traced back to me. The injuries – the burn on Mum’s hand, the wounds on their bodies – would speak for themselves. I picked up the fragments of the Valentine’s Day card and washed them down the loo. I left the knife where it had fallen onto the floor, made sure there was nothing else that could be seen as, what was that word used by detectives on the telly? – incriminating, yes that was it – and then took myself off to bed. I reckoned that Dad’s absence would be noticed first, followed by mine from school. And fair enough, the telephone started to ring, which I ignored, then loud and repeated knocking. Eventually, someone must have broken down the door because I looked up from my bed to see a policewoman staring back at me.

  I was taken away to a nice, clean house, where a couple of women asked me questions. I told them about Mum’s drinking and Dad’s temper. Life at 22 Maplestead Close had been a living hell. That day, the day of the last row, I heard them arguing. I shut myself in my room and put on my music to drown out the noise. Finally I came down and saw the bodies on the floor. I realised I should have dialled 999, but I just froze. I didn’t know what to do. I was sick in the loo upstairs. And I suppose I must have passed out on my bed, where I stayed until the police arrived.

  They had to break the tragic news to me that my mum and dad were both dead. From the initial evidence it looked as though my dad had forced Mum’s hand into the frying pan, after which she retaliated by stabbing him to death. Sadly, it seemed she then took her own life. I was being terribly brave, they said, but they told me I’d have to continue to be brave. There was a great deal I would have to endure. The funerals. The inquest. It was likely that the local newspaper would cover the story.

  The policewomen outlined what would happen next. I would be placed with a nice foster family who would do their very best to look after me. I would be transferred to another school, and I wouldn’t have to go back into education until I was ready. I would see a counsellor, and social workers would continue to visit me at home. My welfare was what was important now, they said. I had to remain strong. Could I do that, they asked. I nodded and said that yes, I could.

  After a year of being fostered, I was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Shaw in a lovely big house in the countryside just outside Colchester. She made her own bread and marmalade, and he was a lecturer in history at the university. Their house, which had a vast garden that backed onto farmland, was full of books – it was like the public library – and I think they were pleased that I spent a lot of time reading. My education wasn’t interrupted by what had happened, if anything my marks improved at my new school.

  The person I was assigned to talk to about the ‘trauma’, a counsellor called Louise Dean, also said that it was obvious I was intelligent. It was easy for me to tell her just what she wanted to hear. Of course, there were certain things I didn’t talk to her about. The real reasons that lay behind my actions. How I hated my dad for his violent temper. How I loathed my mum for trying to get rid of me. How the fear of rejection ate away at me like a cancer. Neither did I tell her about the clues I’d hidden around the house, the occasional spritz of aftershave, and my masterstroke, that Valentine’s card. And why, from that time onwards, Valentine’s Day always held a special place in my heart.

  67

  JEN

  I hear Penelope call from the stairs. She’s on her way up. There’s no time to look through the papers inside the file, but it’s clear that she’s been doing some digging into Bex’s background. I think about hiding the documents back where I’d found them, but I’m so angry with her. I’d put up with Penelope’s meddling in the past, but this is a step too far, even for her. I grab the papers and wait for her at the top of the stairs. I’m in the mood to shout down the stairway so that the others can hear, but I force myself to stay silently fuming until I see her.

  ‘What do you call this?’ I ask, holding the file in the air.

  ‘Oh, I’m pleased you’ve found that,’ she says as she eases herself up onto the final step and to the top landing. ‘It’s something I want to talk to you about. It doesn’t make for pleasant reading, I’m afraid. A chap I used—’

  ‘You put a private detective on Bex? How could you?’

  ‘Thank goodness I did. Now, I can see you’re upset, but—’

  ‘Upset? I think that’s the understatement of the year.’

  ‘Jen, let’s go into the study, where we can talk in private. You probably don’t want all this to come out like this.’

  ‘What?’ I lower my voice. ‘You don’t want Ayesha to know what methods you used to find out about her job. By the way, I didn’t mention what you told me. I didn’t want to stoop to your level.’

  Penelope raises her eyebrows and lifts her hands in the air as if to say, ‘That’s too bad – your loss’. She takes a step closer to me. ‘Jen, at the risk of sounding melodramatic I’m afraid you may be in danger.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘Look – the other day when you were here, it was obvious there was something troubling you, even though you denied it. You told me it was the worry of doing the interviews, and although I know there’s a certain level of stress involved, I knew there was something else going on.’

  ‘What are trying to tell me?’

  ‘You may have a perfectly innocent explanation for what I found, but what are you doing with a map of the Heath, showing the areas covered and, most importantly, not covered by CCTV?’

  The question hits me like a bullet to the stomach.

  ‘You went through my pockets?’

  ‘It was only because I knew you weren’t telling me the truth and—’

  ‘Jesus, Penelope. You’ve really shown your true colours now.’

  ‘I know, I know, it sounds bad – it is bad. But thank goodness
I did. Because there’s something going on you’re not telling me. And my guess is that it’s got something to do with Bex. Listen, some of my best stories have come from nothing more than a hunch. And since you first introduced me to Bex I had an uncomfortable feeling that something wasn’t right. And so I started to do a bit of a background check on her. If you’d only read the file, you’d see that—’

  I push the file towards her so that she has no choice but to take it. The action forces Penelope to take a step back, nearer to the top of the marble stairs. She tries to grasp the file, but the movement unbalances her. A wrong step and she could lose her footing. Although I’m cross with her, I don’t want her to hurt herself.

  ‘Watch out!’ I say and instinctively reach out to stop her from falling.

  As I grab hold of her, she stretches out her right arm and steadies herself on the curve of the bannister. But as she does so she drops a couple of pages from the file, pages which flutter down the stairwell.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Penelope. You had me worried for a second.’

  Penelope ignores the fact that I saved her from a nasty fall. But instead of thanking me, she continues to carp on about Bex.

  ‘How much do you really know about her?’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know what you think Bex has said or done, but I don’t care. She’s been the best of friends to me. And now is not the time to go and start accusing her of—’

  ‘I need to warn you about something. You see—’