Ralph’s Children (29 page)

Kate spotted her parking her aged Morris Oxford outside the cottage, ducked inside, well away from the window, and turned off her CD player.

She’d had another restless night’s sleep, punctuated by hideous nightmares about babies being aborted with kitchen knives.

She did not respond to the bell.

Which rang three times.

‘I know you’re in there,’ Sandi’s voice called.

She sounded even more insistent than the last time.

‘You can’t ignore me forever, Kate.’

Now she sounded belligerent.

‘You’ve already as good as taken away the best friend I ever had.’

Aggressive.

‘I hope you know I can never forgive you for that.’

‘Are you feeling all right?’ Marie asked that evening, after Kate had cooked dinner but hardly touched it.

‘I’m fine,’ Kate said.

‘If you’re unwell, you mustn’t put on a brave face.’

‘I wouldn’t do that to the baby,’ Kate said.

‘You’re allowed to take care of yourself too, you know,’ Marie said. ‘Don’t forget you have to be mother and father to this one.’

‘Thank you for reminding me,’ Kate said.

Marie broached the subject first next morning, as Kate was making tea.

‘I was very tactless last night. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ Kate said. ‘Forget it.’

‘I know you’re not as comfortable as you were, having me here.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Kate said.

‘No,’ Marie said. ‘You probably wouldn’t, being a kind person.’

Kate felt embarrassed. ‘I’m not sure I qualify as kind, much of the time.’

She brought two mugs to the table as Marie wheeled herself into position, then went back to butter toast and slip two more slices into the toaster. Things that weren’t possible for the
disabled woman to do here as she would have in her own adapted home; things she would, undoubtedly, be relieved to be able to do for herself again.

‘I’ve been thinking about something else,’ Marie said after a moment, ‘and I know you don’t like talking about it, but I would like to ask you something.’

‘Go on,’ Kate said.

‘I know that if I were you,’ Marie said, ‘I would never have let the woman who caused my husband’s death—’

‘Please.’ Kate’s stomach began to knot. ‘Don’t.’

‘Hear me out, please.’ Marie saw Kate shake her head, turn away. ‘It’s simply that I was wondering if it might help, just a little, if I was to show you where it
happened.’

Kate had not been up to the Ridgeway Path since Rob had died.

An insane picture grew suddenly in her mind, of the disabled woman rising from her wheelchair to push her over the edge of Lambsmoor Hill.

She turned around to face Marie.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it might.’

They went in the modified Nissan, Marie driving further than cars were officially permitted, bumping along a narrow track until they were part-way up the hill, as close as
possible to the place where it had happened, and then Kate stood by while the other woman worked herself from vehicle to wheelchair.

‘I wish you’d let me help,’ Kate said.

‘I prefer to do it myself,’ said Marie, her breath steaming in the winter air.

‘I know you do.’

Remarkable person in general, no question about it.

Rob had been right.

Not a bad place to die
, Kate thought, standing on the pathway on the curve of the hill in the freezing January wind, the Ridgeway in sight to the south. And Caisleán was just a
handful of miles away, yet the clamour in her mind of those wicked memories was silenced now, their images smashed by the realization of what had happened
here
.

She raised her eyes, looked towards the winter bleak summit of the hill, the sounds and smells of the downs whipping up around her, the beginnings of a sleet shower lashing her cheeks and ears,
stinging her eyes, enveloping her as she waited.

For something. She wasn’t quite certain what.

The baby, their daughter, kicked her vigorously, as if she was trying to bring her mother to her senses, to remind her that she had to live for
her
now.

‘I can’t come with you all the way,’ Marie said. ‘It was different on horseback.’

‘Of course,’ Kate said.

Marie raised her right arm and pointed, indicated the spot.

‘There,’ she said.

Kate climbed the hill and stood there, all alone, near a solitary birch tree, leafless and bending in the wind.

She shut her eyes.

The disabled woman down below did not rise from her chair.

Kate imagined her husband falling from the horse, the crushing of his body.

They had told her it had happened swiftly, and she had chosen to believe that, wanting to think of Rob in the kind of rural place he loved, perhaps fearing for his horse more than for himself;
then simply, painlessly, gone.

And since then, much of the time, she had
chosen
, with an iron will, to think of his absence as little different from the period of their separation. Something survivable.

But now, here on this hill, it was all terribly different.

Suddenly she could
feel
Rob’s death, and knew it had not been painless at all, but fires of agony instead. His ribs pounded by the massive weight, bones being smashed, his poor
lungs exploding, his knowledge that it was all about to end.

Kate
felt
it.

And began to scream.

* * *

T
hey told her, much later, that Marie had dragged her back, somehow, into the car. Which had been, of course, all but impossible, except, they said,
that her upper body strength was extraordinary, that
she
was extraordinary, that she had torn a shoulder muscle and wrenched her back, but had ignored her own pain, taking care of
Kate.

Without Marie Coates, they all said, Kate would have had her baby right there on that cold, windswept hill, and there would have been no hope for her scrap of a daughter.

In the Special Care Baby Unit in Swindon’s Great Western Hospital, Roberta Turner – born in the early hours of the fifteenth of January, and to be known as Bobbi – lay and
wriggled and fed and peed and slept in an incubator, but was, her mother was assured, doing very well.

At thirty-one weeks, Bobbi was frighteningly small, Kate thought, but she watched her incredibly tiny, dark-haired daughter each and every minute she was allowed to, and felt love in ways she
had never known before.

The connection with her child was all there now, almost miraculously, love filling her, spilling over, making her feel both deeply afraid and joyously happy; though for a time after Marie had
brought her to hospital and phoned her parents, they had feared that the belated hurricane of grief that had slammed through Kate up on Lambsmoor Hill might have ushered in a deeper depression,
built up some terrible, new and impenetrable wall around her.

Birth itself had shattered all barriers.

And the infant had taken care of the rest.

Kate’s gratitude to Marie seemed too vast to articulate.

‘I wish you wouldn’t try,’ the older woman told her.

‘I have to,’ Kate said. ‘I need to.’

‘I should never have taken you there,’ Marie said.

‘Yes, you should,’ Kate said. ‘I had to be there, to feel it.’

Her parents had mixed feelings about going to the hill, but felt the same deep gratitude towards the woman who had saved their daughter and grandchild.

‘I can never begin to tell you what I feel,’ Michael said. ‘We owe you so much.’

‘Love is what I feel,’ Bel told Marie warmly. ‘From the bottom of my heart.’

‘I did nothing more than anyone else would have,’ said Marie.

‘I’ll just never understand how you found the strength,’ Michael said.

‘I don’t care how,’ said Bel. ‘They’re both here, and that’s all that matters.’

* * *

S
andi West was dead.

Bel heard the news three days after Kate had left hospital – forced to leave Bobbi behind, hating every minute of separation – from another member of their self-help group.

‘An overdose,’ Bel told Michael and Delia, her shock palpable. ‘A whole week ago, and I didn’t even know.’

Michael was gentle with her, and even Delia, seeing his ex-wife looking suddenly so much older, wanted to reach out to her.

‘I know you’d fallen out,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t make it easier, does it?’

Michael shot her a look.

‘Sorry,’ Delia said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so tactless.’

‘I know you didn’t,’ Bel said. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Had you seen her lately,’ Michael asked, ‘at the group?’

‘Sandi stopped coming again a while ago,’ Bel said.

Because her best friend had abandoned her, she thought, but did not say.

Because she had been criticized in front of the group.

Because Bel had rejected her.

‘I wouldn’t let Sandi in,’ Kate said to Marie, after hearing the news, ‘last time she came.’

She had not told either her mother or Marie what Sandi had said to her on her previous visit, had not intended even to mention that she had come, but now the words just slipped out.

‘You probably had your reasons,’ Marie said, comfortingly.

‘She knew I was here,’ Kate said, ‘but I pretended not to be.’

Guilt tore at her, as it had at Bel.

‘Best thing for you to do right now,’ Marie said, ‘is to go and pick up your mum and take her to see your beautiful little girl.’

Kate knew she was right.

Dried her crocodile tears and went on her way.

* * *

M
artin Blake telephoned on the first of February, three days after Kate had brought Bobbi home.

Chaos and joy and sadness in the cottage, all mingling.

‘I need to see you,’ Blake told Kate.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘I’d rather speak to you in person,’ he said.

He came to the cottage, looked awkward because Marie was there.

‘You can speak freely,’ Kate told him.

No more secrets from the woman who had saved Bobbi’s life.

‘They’re not going to trial,’ Martin said.

His words hung in the air, stark and irrefutable.

‘What’s happened?’ Marie asked the question for Kate.

‘It seems,’ Blake said, ‘that the evidence from Laurie Moon’s car is tainted.’

‘How, in God’s name?’ asked Kate.

‘I don’t know the full story.’ The lawyer looked upset and frustrated. ‘Helen Newton’s spitting feathers – I know she’s going to call you when she can
bear to.’

‘And this is enough to bring down the whole case?’ Marie asked.

‘On top of the growing doubts over Kate’s identifications,’ Blake said.

‘That’s outrageous,’ Marie said. ‘For that other poor family, too.’

Kate sat quite still, a curious flatness descending on her.

‘We always knew it was touch and go,’ she said after a moment. ‘So long after the crime, and not being able to hear them speak or move around.’

‘Still, you recognized them,’ Blake said. ‘No one on our side’s disputing that.’

‘They’re cowards,’ Marie said contemptuously. ‘Not even to try to win the case.’

‘They’re afraid, these days,’ Blake said, ‘of unsafe convictions.’

They were all silent for a moment or two.

‘So does that mean they’re going to be released?’ Kate asked quietly.

She felt almost calm, knew that it was, of course, spurious.

There was a slight flush on Martin Blake’s cheeks.

‘As we speak, except for Wilson,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, Kate.’

Jack, at least, still locked away for years for the crimes he’d been jailed for before she’d identified him.

* * *

She offered Blake lunch, going through the motions again, channelling all her feelings into her baby daughter.

The lawyer refused lunch but stayed for a while, concerned about Kate, taking time to admire Bobbi, marvelling at the tiny perfection of her.

‘I’m very glad they have you,’ he said to Marie, quietly, before he left.

‘For as long as Kate wants me,’ Marie said.

Michael went to see Helen Newton next day at SOMIT.

‘How do we know Booth and Frost won’t come after Kate?’

‘We don’t,’ the DCI admitted.

‘What about protection?’

‘I’m doing all I can,’ Newton told him.

‘Meaning what?’ Michael was sharp. ‘The odd patrol car driving past?’

The detective was sympathetic. ‘I’ll arrange for a security advice visit.’

‘Kate already has an alarm,’ Michael pointed out. ‘She and Rob had it installed after Wilson burgled them for the second time.’

‘I promise you –’ Helen Newton was gentle – ‘we’ll be helping all we can.’

‘And will you be watching
them
?’ Michael paused. ‘Off the record?’

‘Off the record,’ Newton answered, ‘depend on it.’

R
alph telephoned Roger first.

She had dreamed of this, had hardly dared to hope.

Two of her children, free again.

‘How are you?’ Such a prosaic question, but there would be time to talk now, plenty of time.

‘Getting better,’ Roger said.

The voice was still beautiful, but strained.

‘Was it very bad?’ Ralph asked.

‘What do you think?’ Roger said.

Ralph asked if she was alone, hoping that company might explain the coldness.

‘Just me,’ Roger said.

Ralph was getting a bad feeling.

‘When can we meet?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Roger said. ‘We have to be careful.’

‘Of course,’ Ralph agreed. ‘I was hoping, when the dust’s settled a little, maybe we could all manage to meet at the Smithy again.’

‘Not all,’ Roger said.

‘I know,’ Ralph said. ‘But still, it would be so good, when the time’s right.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Roger said, ‘that the time’s ever going to be right for that.’

Ralph phoned Pig’s number.

‘The number you have dialled has not been recognized.’

She tried it again, heard the same robotic voice.

She called Roger again.

An answering machine picked up.

‘This is Karen Frost’s machine. I can’t pick up right now, but I’m available for work, so please leave me a number so I can get back to you.’