Checkmate (28 page)

I slammed the front door shut so forcefully the glass in it rattled in protest.

'Mum, where are you?'

'In the kitchen, love.'

I strode into the kitchen, my expression kiln-baked. Mum was just popping a home-made white chocolate cheesecake in the fridge. She straightened up and turned to smile at me. Her smile retreated when she saw the look on my face. If fury was fire, I'd've reduced her to ash in a nanosecond.

'What is it? What's wrong?' Mum started towards me.
She stopped abruptly. 'You've heard then? Who told you? Did Nana Jasmine phone you directly?'

'Is it true?' My question came out in a bitter hiss. 'About my dad
–
is it true?'

Mum gasped, then stared at me. I could see her tongue working in her mouth like she was trying to swallow but couldn't. I realized in that instant that Mum knew what I was asking her. Three words, 'Is it true?' and she knew exactly what I was talking about. My anger heated up several more degrees. I walked towards her until we were only centimetres apart, face to face, eye to eye.

'Was my dad a terrorist who was hanged for murder?'

Stall? Laugh? Lie? Deny it? Stay silent? What would she do?

'Answer me,' I ordered.

'I can see from your face that you already think you know the answer,' said Mum.

Which was no answer at all
–
and we both knew it.

'Rose, let me explain—'

'WAS DAD HANGED FOR BEING A TERRORIST?'

Silence. Then Mum nodded.

'Rose, listen—' Mum tried to take me into her arms, to hold me tight against her. I pushed her back, hard. Then before either of us knew what was happening, I slapped her face. The sound ricocheted around the kitchen. Mum's hand flew up to cover her cheek. My hand was stinging. It was hard to say which one of us was more shocked.

I'd hit my mum.

I'd never, ever done anything like that before. Never come close. Never even thought about it. My whole body crumpled into misery before I turned and fled. I raced up the stairs and into my room, hating my hand, hating myself.

But loathing Mum most of all.

Callum McGregor was my dad. A terrorist, a murderer and God only knew what else. Tobey had been right. I sat down in the chair at my window and stared out over the back garden and beyond. Why wasn't I crying? I should be crying. I should be howling.

Callum McGregor was my dad. A murderer and a terrorist was my dad.

'Callie Rose, can I come in?'

I didn't answer. I was never going to answer her again. The door handle turned and Mum came in, uninvited.

'Rose, we need to talk,' Mum began.

'I have nothing to say to you.' I didn't even bother to look at her.

'Rose, I'm sorry. I should've told you long before this but I . . . I was waiting for the right moment.'

I didn't speak.

'The trouble is, the right moment never came,' said Mum.

'D'you know how I found out?' I asked. 'Tobey threw it at me. D'you know what that felt like?'

'I'm sorry, Rosie.'

'Why did you lie? All these years you told me Dad was a gardener and he died in a car accident.'

'I'm sorry, Rosie. I didn't want you to be hurt.'

'Then you failed. I've just learned I'm a murderer's daughter, Mum. How do I handle that?'

'Rose, let's just talk about this. There's a lot I need to explain—'

I spun round on my chair. 'You're too late, Mum. I know now.'

'You don't know everything. Rose, let me—'

'Mum, I need to be by myself. Please.'

Mum wanted to argue, but I turned away from her to stare out of the window again. I heard her start towards the door. And then something else clicked into horrifying place.

'That's why Grandad Kamal hates me, isn't it? Because of who my dad was.' It all made sense now. If Dad was a terrorist when he and Mum were together, that would explain why my grandad didn't want anything more to do with her
–
or me.

'Callie, your grandad hates everyone in this world who doesn't look, think and act exactly the same as him. If you're not his clone, then you're his enemy
–
at least, that's how he sees it.'

But I hardly heard Mum. I understood so much. 'Does Grandad hate me because my dad was a terrorist or does he hate me because he hates Noughts and I'm half-Nought?' I asked.

Mum didn't reply. She didn't have to. I could read the answer on her face.

'Uncle Jude tried to tell me—'

'What?' Mum was back at my side faster than I could blink. 'What d'you mean? You've seen Jude?'

'Yes. I met him a couple of years ago.'

'A couple of—' Mum said, aghast. 'And you didn't tell me?'

I shrugged. 'Meggie knew.'

Mum's mouth fell open, but she quickly regained her composure. 'When was the last time you saw him? Answer me, Callie Rose.'

I shrugged again.

'You're not to see him again,' Mum ordered. 'D'you hear me? He's a very dangerous man, Callie. Stay away from him.'

'But at least he tells the truth,' I told her.

We regarded each other, both of us very still, very quiet.

'Callie Rose, I forbid you to see him again. Do I make myself clear?'

'Yes, Mum. Can I be alone now please?'

'Rose, I'm not leaving here until you know the truth. And that's not what Jude would've told you.'

I got up as Mum was speaking and headed over to my portable music centre, an eleventh birthday present. Pressing the button to switch it on, I turned the volume right up, loud enough to drown out all of Mum's words.

Mum marched over to the music player and switched it off. I immediately switched it back on. Mum pulled the plug out of the socket. I went back to my armchair.

'Rose, listen to me. I know you're angry but you need to listen. Your dad and me

I started singing, quietly at first, but each syllable got louder.

I turned away from Mum to look out of my window again.

'Callie Rose, please . . .' Mum tried to shout over me.

I carried on singing.

Mum wanted to say more, a lot more
–
I could tell. But I carried on looking out of the window and the singing didn't stop so finally Mum had no choice but to leave.

'Uncle Jude, it's me. It's Callie Rose.'

I sat down in my armchair, using my shoulder to keep the phone against my ear as I opened a can of lager.

'Hi, Callie. Are you OK? You sound a bit strange.'

'Uncle Jude, did you know my dad was hanged for being a terrorist?'

I put down my can on the carpet. Callie now had my full attention. The moment I'd been waiting so impatiently for had finally arrived.

'Uncle Jude, are you there?'

'How did you find out?' I asked her.

'If you knew, why didn't you tell me?' Callie shouted down the phone.

'I wanted to tell you so many times but I couldn't. When I learned that Callum had died, I did some digging and found out the truth. But it was your mum's place to tell you the facts, not mine,' I replied. 'When did she finally pluck up the courage to do it?'

'She didn't,' Callie said harshly. 'Someone else told me. I've just spent the day in the library reading everything I could find about Callum McGregor. Did you know he kidnapped my mum? And he . . . and he . . . D'you know what he
did
to her?'

'Look, Callie, this isn't a conversation to have over the phone. Where are you?'

'I'm in the park, Uncle. I can't go home. Not yet. But I don't want any company.'

'Callie, I want to see you,' I began.

But I was talking to the dialling tone. As I put down the phone, a slow, unfamiliar smile burned its way across my face.

'Yes!' I punched the air with satisfaction.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Jude's law number thirteen was the one I'd had to hold onto in my dealings with Callie Rose over the last couple of years:
Staying focused requires more than keen eyesight.

I stood up, grabbing my car keys off the arm of the chair I'd just been sitting in. At long last, I had her. Callie Rose Hadley was all mine.

The rich, heavy scent of the roses all around me was making me feel nauseous. The roses were all vivid colours, blood-orange, blood-red, blood-pink. Their sweet, pungent, almost overpowering smell vied with their vibrant colours. The breeze dancing around them released yet more of their bonbon smell. I sat alone on the park bench, longing for their presence to overload my senses, driving all else out of my mind.

But it didn't work.

I sat on the park bench staring into nothing, staring into my father, the flowers fading from consciousness. My dad was Callum McGregor. Hanged for political terrorism. Hanged for being a rapist and a murderer. Hanged for being a son of a bitch.

So what did that make me?

Where did that leave me?

More memories slipped and clicked into place. All those funny little looks passing between Mum and Nana Meggie. All those quiet little asides between Mum and Nana Jasmine. The reluctance to tell me anything about my dad.

The lies . . .

No wonder Mum couldn't bear to be around me. Every time she looked at me I was a reminder of someone she was desperate to forget. Why did she even have me in the first place. To punish herself? Me? Nana Meggie? All those times she told me I was like my father . . . Was that true? Did I look like him? Act like him? Was I evil on the inside like him? Is that what Mum meant? And all those times she told me how much Dad loved me . . . And how much she and my dad had been in love . . . All lies. I knew how I'd been conceived. Every time I thought of it, I wanted to die. And I thought about it all the time. My life which I'd thought was safe and ordinary was twisted and tainted. Tobey's words had picked me up, spun me higher and higher, then dropped me from such a great height that every part of my body was irrevocably shattered.

Are you watching me now, Dad? Are you down in hell, roaring with vicious laughter at all the letters, all the hopes and dreams I shared with you
–
like you'd ever give a damn? Are you congratulating yourself on the number of lives you've managed to ruin? How I wish you were in front of me right now, so I could tell you just how much I despise you. I want to scream it from the highest place I can find. No matter how much Mum hates me, it doesn't come close to how I feel about you. If you were in front of me now and I had a knife or a gun, I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

Or maybe I would . . .

Not because I wouldn't be able to start. But because once I'd started hurting you, I wouldn't be able to stop.

I hate you, Dad.

Thinking about you is making something deep inside me set hard like cement.

I hate you so much.

'Is anyone sitting here?'

Uncle Jude's voice made me start. How had he got here so fast? Why had he come here at all? I watched as he sat down at the opposite end of the park bench to me.

'We don't have to speak until you're good and ready,' said Uncle Jude.

I turned away from him to stare straight ahead. I had told him not to come. I wasn't going to say a word. So we sat and sat, neither of us breaking the silence. And I was grateful for that. And I was so glad that he hadn't sat next to me or tried to put his arm around me or anything like that. Otherwise, my whole body would've turned into teardrops and fallen to the ground, never to stand up again.

We sat for a long while in silence. I glanced at Uncle Jude once or twice, but he just looked ahead or looked around. At last, I felt I could trust myself to speak.

'Are you going to lie to me too, Uncle Jude?'

'Never,' Uncle replied. 'Callie Rose, d'you . . . hate me because of what my brother did? I'd understand if you did . . .'

Shocked, I turned to him. 'No, Uncle, of course I don't hate you.' That hadn't even occurred to me.

I waited another few minutes for the swelling in my throat to subside.

'What . . . what was my dad like?'

'Where to start?' sighed Uncle Jude. 'What has your mum told you about Callum?'

'Only lies. She said he was a junior gardener who used to work at Nana Jasmine's house,' I replied.

'I see,' said Uncle Jude. And some wary note in his voice sent a frisson of fear snaking down my spine.

'What's the matter?' I asked.

'Callie Rose, d'you really want to know the truth about your dad?'

'Of course.'

'The whole truth, not the stuff you've been told so far. Not lies and not the truth diluted. Are you strong enough to handle it?'

I pressed the pause button in my head so that my mind couldn't work any more, couldn't read between the lines of my uncle's words. Think about what he's asking you, Callie Rose. Are you strong enough . . . ?

'Uncle, I want to know,' I replied at last.

'I want you to know, Callie Rose, that I'll never lie to you. Your mum
–
and even my mum
–
may bend the truth around you until it fits, but I won't. So please don't ask me to be honest if that's not what you really want.'

'What was my dad like?' I asked again.

Uncle Jude nodded slowly. 'OK. Well, for a start, your dad wasn't a gardener. He wouldn't've known one end of a rake from the other.'

'What was he then?' I frowned. 'Before . . . before he was a . . . terrorist.'

'Callum was . . . he was a dreamer. But then he woke up.'

'I don't understand.'

'Did you know that my mum used to work for Jasmine Hadley?'

'Nana Jasmine
–
yes, I know.'

'That's how our two families met. That's how Callum and Persephone met. They grew up together.'

'So that part was true?'

'That part was true.' Uncle Jude nodded. 'Callum went to Sephy's school for a while, but it didn't work. They kicked him out.'

'Why?'

'There was a bombing at the Dundale Centre . . .'

'I read about that,' I began.

'Well, even though our dad had nothing to do with it, he was arrested and charged and found guilty of being a terrorist. Heathcroft High knew our dad was innocent but as far as that school was concerned, Callum was guilty by association. And Heathcroft decided they didn't want the son of an alleged terrorist walking their hallowed halls. So Callum was out.'

'What did my dad do then?'

'There wasn't an awful lot he could do. He was out. No other school would take him. He tried to do other things, but once prospective employers found out who he was, he could never get a job. The Liberation Militia have been fighting for decades for equality between Noughts and Crosses, so Callum joined them.'

'But the
L.M.
are terrorists.' I frowned.

'No, they're not,' Uncle Jude said, adding deliberately, 'No,
we're
not. We're fighting for equality for all.'

'You're in the
L.M.
too?' I hadn't expected that.

'But only on the strategic side, like Callum. Your dad refused to get involved in anything . . . destructive. He wrote articles and letters and talked at
L.M.
rallies – that sort of thing.'

'But I looked it up. He was hanged for political terrorism. The newspaper said he kidnapped and . . . raped my mum. The newspaper said—'

'Callum only did all that when our dad died in prison,' said Uncle Jude. 'I think a part of Callum died too when he heard about our dad. He wanted to get back at all Crosses everywhere – and then he was ordered by the head of the
L.M.
to kidnap your mum. It was supposed to force your grandad Kamal into handing over lots of money for the
L.M.
cause.'

'And even though he and Mum had grown up together, Dad did it,' I said, my throat beginning to swell up again.

'Well, they used to be lovers before the kidnapping.' I saw Uncle Jude choosing his words so carefully. I said nothing, waiting for him to continue. 'I think Callum hated himself for that too and maybe . . . maybe what he did to Sephy was his way of trying to punish both of them.'

Punish both of them? Or punish Mum by making her pregnant with me? I wasn't sure how much more 'truth' I could take.

'You know, I can't help blaming myself,' sighed Uncle Jude. 'If only I'd known what he was ordered to do, but I was working with another
L.M.
cell across the country. I had no idea about the kidnapping or any of it until Callum was captured.'

'It's not your fault, Uncle Jude,' I said.

Uncle Jude sighed again. 'I had no idea Callum was so filled with . . . rage against your mother and all Crosses. I should've taken him under my wing. I should've insisted that he worked with me for the betterment of everyone in our society. I had no idea—'

Uncle Jude's voice broke off, distressed. We both sat in silence for a while. I watched a runner across the park jog on the spot as he talked to another runner who'd approached from the opposite direction. I wondered what they were talking about. Noughts and Crosses? Men and women? Truth and lies? Or their latest trainers? Did any of it matter? It was all so trivial, so pointless.

'Callie, I was given a letter that your dad wrote to your mum just before he died,' Uncle Jude said reluctantly. 'I'm not sure if you should see it . . .'

I turned to Uncle Jude. 'What does it say?'

'It doesn't say nice things . . . but it does tell the truth.'

Uncle was holding a piece of paper in his hand. It was a browny-yellow colour, folded, and looked like it might crumble into dust at any moment. But as Uncle said, it held the truth – and that's what I craved right now. Good or bad, I didn't want anything else.

'D'you want to read it?' asked Uncle. 'I think you're old enough to handle it, but just say if you're not

I held out my hand. Uncle Jude reluctantly passed me the letter. I swallowed hard, then opened it carefully
–
and read:

Sephy,

I'm writing this to you because I want you to know the way things really are. I don't want you to spend the rest of your life believing a lie.

I don't love you. I never did. You were just an assignment to me. A way for all of us in my cell of the Liberation Militia to get money – a lot of money from your dad. And as for the sex – well, you were available and I had nothing better to do.

You should've seen yourself, lapping up every word of that nonsense I spouted about loving you and living for only you and being too scared to say it before. I don't know how I stopped myself from laughing out loud as you bought all that rubbish. As if I could love someone like you – a Cross, and worse than that, the daughter of one of our worst enemies. Having sex with you was just my way of getting back at your dad for being a bastard and your mum for looking down her nose at me all those years. And now you 're pregnant.

Well, I'm ecstatic. Now the whole world will know you're having my child, the child of a blanker. That if nothing else is worth dying for. Whether you come to my hanging or not, I'm going to announce to the world that you're having
my
child. MINE. Even if you do get rid of our child, everyone will still know.

But no one will know how much I despise you. I loathe the very thought of you and now when I think about all the things we did when we were alone in the cabin, I feel physically sick. To think I actually kissed you, licked you, touched you, joined my body with yours. I had to think of my other lovers the entire time to stop myself from pulling away from you in disgust. God knows, I'm disgusted with myself but the object of the exercise was your total humiliation – and at least I can console myself with the knowledge that that's what I've achieved. Did you really in your wildest dreams believe that I could love someone like you? . . .

I carried on reading until the end of the letter. And when I'd finished, the poison in each sentence had turned my body so deathly cold, the swelling in my throat had gone down and my eyes were no longer stinging. I re-read it one more time – the whole thing from top to bottom. And then I stared at the words on the piece of paper, stared without blinking.

My dad . . .

'You can keep it if you like,' said Uncle Jude.

I thought about it, then decided I had to. It was my legacy from my dad. But I couldn't bear to hold it any more with those awful words jutting out like shards of broken glass. I folded it up and placed it deep inside my trouser pocket. I didn't need to keep it open to remember what was in it. I'd remember every word until the day I died.

'I just thought it would be better for you to know the truth,' said Uncle sadly. 'Was I wrong?'

I shook my head.

'I don't think you should tell anyone about the letter.
It'd be better if you didn't mention it at all,' said Uncle Jude. He added reluctantly, 'And I found out something else. When Callum was arrested and sentenced to hang, your grandad Kamal told your mum that he'd spare Callum's life if she had an abortion
–
but she didn't. She had to choose between you and Callum and she chose you. I guess that's why your grandad slammed the door in your face.'

'But why did she have me? Why didn't she . . . just do what Grandad wanted?'

'I don't know. Maybe it was her way of getting back at Kamal?' Uncle Jude suggested. 'Or maybe she just hated Callum so much by then that she wanted to see him hang?'