A Summer Fling (26 page)

‘You aren’t dirty,’ said Elizabeth. ‘None of this could ever have been your fault.’ She felt guilty for a reason that wasn’t clear. She had tried to trace Bev but her National Insurance number had never been used. After drawing a blank for so long, she could only presume she was dead. She could find no avenues left to explore.

‘I searched for your mother for years and years.’

‘You wouldn’t have found her,’ said Raychel, wrestling with a shake in her voice. ‘She didn’t want to be found. She changed her name to Marilyn Hunt, then Marilyn Lunn. Then she went to prison when we were thirteen. She’s been out for a few years, of course.’

‘Prison? What for?’ said Elizabeth, wiping at the fat tears plopping down her cheeks. ‘What happened to her?’

‘God, where to begin!’ Raychel shook her head. Earlier on that day, she had seen Grace with her eldest daughter in Reception and seeing them embrace had sparked something within her. She had no one to hug her like that. No woman-family to walk along with, arms linked, chatting, laughing, warmth boomeranging from one to the other. She had Ben, of course, but working with the women in her office had awakened something in her. Their budding friendship had given her another source of acceptance, other than his. It began to feel good, to feel
right
, to let people be close to her and know they weren’t judging her or winning her over so they could hurt her.

Elizabeth slumped into a chair, the kettle forgotten, and Raychel took a deep breath and began.

‘My mother said on many occasions that she should have aborted me and she was right. She should never have been allowed to have children. When she wasn’t smacking me because she was drunk and didn’t know what she was doing, or leaving me by myself all night, she was abusing herself – drugs, alcohol, men. My name was Lorraine then and we were always moving, one scruffy place to another. I can’t remember much before we ended up in Newcastle except being alone and watching a lot of telly. Isn’t that strange? It’s as if my early childhood never existed.’

Elizabeth nodded, understanding that sort of loveless childhood. Before her auntie had taken her in.

Raychel went on in an even, emotionless voice.

‘Then she moved in with the perfect soul-mate for her – a match made in hell – a man called Nathan Lunn and he had a little boy my age – David. I remember thinking that I didn’t like him much either, he was nervy and quiet, but then he would be because Nathan Lunn used to thrash him stupid. He was a bastard.’ Raychel’s voice failed her. Elizabeth got her a glass of water.

‘Did he hit you too?’ She had to ask, but she didn’t want to hear the answer.

‘Oh yes. I got it as much as David did when he was in one of his rages. Though David used to try and take the beatings for me. He’d get in the way and divert Lunn’s attention to him – all for me.’

‘Didn’t Bev . . . stop him?’

‘Once. She was usually too out of it or she left him to it because she was scared she’d get the same. But once, I remember when he was whipping me across the legs with a garden cane, my mother said, “You’ll leave marks!” and he stopped. We were too scared to tell anyone and as long as there weren’t any visible signs that we were living with a sadist, no one was any the wiser.

‘I don’t seem to have any time perspective about it all, but David and I became inseparable. We shared a bedroom and we’d talk at night about all the things we were going to do when we were big enough to run away. Then one day the school rang up because they were concerned about some bruises on David’s legs and Nathan Lunn, being the sensible type, went mad and nearly killed him for that. He broke one of David’s ribs and it punctured a lung in the beating he gave him. I ran to the shop up the road to get the police and Lunn came chasing after me and I felt as if I was in a nightmare.’

Elizabeth clutched her throat. She felt as if she were being choked by memories of her own, of being back in the place of a terrified, helpless child, running from a man intent on doing her harm.

‘I didn’t get to the shop; Lunn dragged me back home screaming, but the shopkeeper saw him and, thank God, she rang the police, otherwise he’d have killed us both,’ Raychel carried on. ‘The police took me to hospital, an ambulance came for David; he was in intensive care for weeks. Nathan Lunn ran off, but they caught him soon enough. Mum missed all the action, she was comatose upstairs. Heavily pregnant and totally wrecked on heroin. I don’t know how that little girl survived so long inside her. She was still-born at seven months while Mum was on remand. She tried to use her sad circumstances to get herself a lighter sentence, when really she didn’t give a toss about anybody but herself. And it didn’t wash with the judge anyway.’

Elizabeth was crying, but now her tears were of rage. She thought of her own son and what she would be galvanized to do if she found out that anyone was hurting him.

‘David and I got put into care. Some idiot decided that it would be best for us if we were parted. But we’d always had this pact that if we were ever split, we would meet each other under Big Ben on my sixteenth birthday at midday, just as the clock struck. And when I turned up, he was there waiting for me. He was huge. He’d started beefing himself up so that he could always protect us both. He’s obsessed, even now, with staying big and powerful.

‘David took the name of that big, dependable clock and I became Raychel, because that was the name of the shopkeeper who rang the police. We changed our surname to Love, just because we liked it. We moved around but we never felt really settled anywhere, until Ben got the job here.’

Elizabeth couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Her world had been turned upside-down by these revelations, old loyalties and loves smashed in an instant. She hadn’t imagined any of this, not even in her worst nightmares. And Elizabeth Silkstone still had terrible nightmares.

‘So you see,’ said Raychel, smiling strangely and dry-eyed, ‘I don’t know if you’re my aunt or my sister because you’re both, aren’t you? And Ben is my husband and yet we share a sister.’ She laughed and that laugh slid without warning into hard, gulping tears.

‘My mother traced me last year and wrote to me,’ Raychel began again, wiping her tears away with the heel of her hand. ‘She wanted to meet up, she said she had things to tell me. I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her or anyone connected with her ever again. I would never have children, even if I could. I’d be too terrified of hurting them.’

So many feelings coursed through Elizabeth, she had no hope of separating them and defining them. But she knew what was most troubling this beautiful young woman standing in front of her because she had lived through the same. She had been terrified that the pattern would be repeated in her, that her rotten genes would out. For a long time she had thought that women coming from ‘stock’ like her had no business procreating. Then she had got pregnant and inside her a tigress roared that would protect her child at any cost.

‘My darling girl,’ she said, ‘I would kill anyone who tried to hurt my son like you were hurt. Never think that you would make the same choices as your mother. Good God.’ She felt her head spin and a sick feeling descend on her stomach. The monster that was Raychel’s mother was the same sister she had worried about and cried for all those years. She steadied herself with the back of the chair.

‘Where was Bev living when you got that letter?’

‘She returned to Newcastle when she was released and was calling herself Bev Hunt again. I threw the letter away and I didn’t keep the address.’

‘Thank goodness you have Ben, and he has you,’ said Elizabeth, wanting to cry for Ben too. She thought of him in the gym, ensuring he was always at the fittest and strongest state his body could achieve. A little boy’s fears still present in the big, grown man.

‘We’re happy now,’ said Raychel softly. ‘We do lots of nice, daft things together. Things we missed out on. But he still has nightmares and it breaks my heart. I’ve always felt that we are separate from the rest of the world, as if we don’t fit in and shouldn’t try.’

All these years she had been duty-bound to keep people away from her. She felt so unclean that she had been one step away from carrying a leper’s bell.

‘Letting people close to you can be hard,’ said Elizabeth gently. Once she too had felt not worthy enough to be treated kindly. ‘But never think that you don’t deserve friendship and love because of other people’s mistakes. I understand what you’re going through.’ Elizabeth took the young woman’s face in her hands. ‘Oh Raychel, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came to see me. But I never imagined any of this.’

‘Can I come and see you again?’ said Raychel in a quiet, hopeful voice. She surprised herself by asking. She hadn’t planned to.

Elizabeth pulled the younger woman into a firm embrace. She didn’t say anything, neither did she need to.

They held each other for a long time. They had both found something in each other they didn’t expect. There was no word for it, just a feeling of peace.

On the Thursday evening, Gordon glanced over the top of his newspaper at Grace and said, ‘You look tired,’ with an alien, gentle note to his voice. ‘Has this week been a bit rough?’

‘I’m fine,’ snapped Grace by way of a response. She wasn’t though. She hadn’t been sleeping particularly well, with the events of the past few weeks racing around her head and denying her brain any rest. Paul and Laura no longer rang the house in case Gordon answered and her mobile was set on silent so that Gordon wouldn’t know when they sent a text. Sarah was the only one who rang, but only when she needed a baby-sitter, yet an answerphone always greeted Grace whenever she rang her youngest daughter to see if she was feeling fine in her pregnancy. Sarah hadn’t asked about or mentioned her brother or her sister to Grace, not that Laura and Paul would have expected Sarah to ring them and offer her support. Grace could never work out how she had turned out so much more cold-hearted than her siblings. If anything, she had been more indulged, more cosseted.

‘You should get an early night,’ said Gordon. ‘Go on, off to bed with you.’

Grace sat on the retort that was rising in her throat. It was half past eight, for goodness sake. Why on earth would she want to go to bed at half past eight?

‘I might look tired, but I’m fine,’ said Grace again with a tight smile.

‘What about going part-time?’ he asked, rattling the broadsheet sports page into a readable shape. ‘You should ask.’

‘Maybe later,’ said Grace. ‘I’m enjoying this job and I don’t want to start making demands so early on.’ Work life was the only thing keeping her smile muscle alive and giving her brain some respite from the family situation. Since Laura and Paul and Joe were banished from the house, there were no moments of light relief from Gordon’s suffocating presence. She was beginning to have nightmares about being in a tiny airless caravan with him. There were no doors or windows in it and she couldn’t move without touching him.

‘I’ll make us some hot chocolate,’ said Gordon.

Grace didn’t resist. It was easier to let him do what he wanted. Then again, it always had been. Plus it stopped him rattling on about how tired she looked and got him out of her sight for five minutes.

‘There now, that’s just the thing to relax you,’ he said, delivering a mug to Grace’s hands. She had barely got halfway through it when she started yawning and felt distinctly drowsy. Maybe Gordon was right for once, she conceded, after saying goodnight to him. Maybe she was more tired than she thought.

When Christie came in early the next morning, Grace was already there, sitting at her desk, resting her head in her hands. She had a killer headache, worse than any hangover.

‘Goodness, Grace, are you all right? You looked drip-white!’ said Christie immediately.

Not you as well,
was Grace’s immediate thought. First Gordon telling her she looked tired, now also her work colleagues. She had been asleep by quarter past nine the previous night and barely remembered her head touching the pillow. It had been a solid, dreamless sleep and she woke up at five-thirty with her head booming. She felt as if she had only had half the amount of rest she should have had. Extra strength paracetamol had taken the edge off the pain but they’d worn off now and her headache was worse than ever. She had just swallowed two more and hoped their power would kick in quickly.

‘Here, have my coffee,’ said Christie, parking it in front of her. ‘I haven’t touched it and you take the same as me, don’t you – milk, no sugar?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ said Grace, but Christie wasn’t one to take no for an answer. ‘OK, thank you, Christie. I just had a very heavy sleep. I feel more drained than if I hadn’t had any at all.’

‘Why on earth did you come in if you’re not well?’ said Christie, wagging her finger. ‘Go home and let your husband cosset you!’

‘God forbid!’ said Grace quickly. She would rather try and work through the headache than be at home with him.

‘Home not a good place to be at the moment?’ asked Christie tentatively.

Grace pressed at her head which stopped the throbbing pain temporarily.

‘You could say that,’ said Grace. ‘I think my husband is having a late mid-life crisis.’

‘Is he going out clubbing in leather trousers?’ Christie asked gently.

‘No, quite the opposite. He wants me to retire and live happily ever after in a caravan, knitting socks and sucking on Werther’s Originals.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Christie. ‘Bit early for all that, isn’t it?’ Grace was the sort of vibrant woman she could imagine being still beautiful and wearing high heels in her nineties. She couldn’t visualize her ever wearing Devon Violets perfume or dowdy hats. Funny, she hadn’t pictured Grace with an ‘old-headed’ husband either.

‘It’s a nuisance,’ said Grace. ‘He’s got so much worse of late. I don’t know what’s the matter with him at all.’

‘How long did you say you’d been married?’ asked Christie.

‘Twenty-three years. You’d think in that length of time you’d know someone pretty well, but . . . lately . . . it’s as if he’s a different person. There’s something . . . strange going on in his . . .’