More Than Love Letters (25 page)

But sorry to go on about me – how’s your dad?

Love,

Margaret xxx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
16/7/05 09:26
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

For goodness’ sake, Margaret, either tell him how you feel, or just jump him. But don’t tantalise me with your tales of unrequited lust. I am still confined to the convent here, don’t forget.

If you ask me, that Mr Rochester of yours at college has a lot to answer for. Where would Jane Eyre have been, after all, had it not been for a convenient house fire? Incapable of getting into the missionary position with that Apollo, St John Rivers. Mark may have been a green and vigorous chestnut tree, jetty brows and all – but, reader, he fucked you up!

Dad is halfway through his course of chemo, and the specialist declares himself pleased with how he’s responding. They’ve also got him some different anti-nausea tablets which seem to help. Last night I took them over a fish supper and he ate half of his chips and nearly a whole portion of haddock. Mum finished off his chips. In fact I suspect that she may have been eating up a lot of his food for him these last few weeks. While he gets thinner, she seems to be doing her best to maintain the household’s overall aggregate weight.

Love and hugs,

Becs xxx

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
18/7/05 17:14
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Oh, Becs, my hands are shaking so badly I can scarcely hit the keys, and I hardly know what to write anyway, where to begin . . . I’ve just come off the phone to Richard – well, to his answering machine, in fact – telling him exactly what I think of him. Someone at school showed me today’s
Town Crier
at break time, and there was this article about Richard, or about Helen, I mean. Here’s the link, so you can see it for yourself. I can’t begin to convey it to you.

It’s just so appalling, such a . . . betrayal, or that’s what it feels like.

Doesn’t he care at all about Helen, or about her friends’ feelings? How can he even contemplate
using
her death like this, treating it as merely a handy opportunity, to make self-serving political points about some bloody Bill that his precious Tim is trying to get through? A Bill which, I might add, from everything I’ve read, seems to have more to do with social control than with patients’ rights or any improvements in patient care. I very much doubt whether he has any great belief in the wretched thing himself, which just seems to make the whole business even more distasteful. Why was I ever so crazy as to trust a career politician in the first place? Especially one whose heart has had nearly two decades of hardening since he was our age and may have had ideals.

He obviously actually
invited
his chums from the press along to the funeral, for God’s sake! I remember now, there was a man there who said hi to Richard, and he said ‘Hello, Geoff’ but didn’t introduce us, and I didn’t think anything of it, but now I know why! Richard has talked about his friend Geoff at the
Crier
, but I didn’t put two and two together, I suppose I wasn’t in any state to do so, and anyway it would never have crossed my mind that he could be so brazen. And there was another man who must have been the photographer (though I didn’t notice a camera – he must have been keeping it hidden). It wasn’t the man who came to take the photographs when Richard visited my class; this one was older and kind of stoopier. But of course, it wouldn’t be the same one, would it, or he might have risked my recognising him! Oh yes, he certainly went to some lengths to make sure I didn’t know what was going on – there’s almost no skulduggery or subterfuge I would put past him just now. Maybe, at least, it shows he still has some traces of shame left – but not nearly enough, not by a very long way! Lord knows, I shouldn’t want to waste any sympathy on Helen’s sodding parents. But I still feel violated by the press being there – on behalf of Helen, and of all of us who were really fond of Helen, and wanted to say our goodbyes. Richard, more than most people at the moment, surely ought to be aware of what damage and hurt the press can cause, trampling roughshod all over people’s private lives and feelings.

But it isn’t the shameless arse-licking that gets me the most, the unprincipled politicking to further his own worthless career on the back of others’ suffering. Nor is it even the callousness, the crass insensitivity of inviting the press to a funeral, to take intrusive pictures of the bereaved. It’s my own stupid naive blindness. Fool that I was, I genuinely believed that he’d come down for the funeral to support me, because he cared about Helen’s death (Helen, whom he’d never even met!), because he cared about me . . . When all the time it was just another twist in his careerist political manoeuvres.

Anyway, I told all this and a lot more besides to his answering machine, as soon as I got home from school. I said some pretty nasty things – but he deserves them all! I really didn’t know what I was saying, half the time, once I’d started, and I only stopped when the tape ran out. I fear much of it may have been rather incoherent. But the message will have been clear enough. One thing is certain: after what he’s done, and what I’ve said about it, there can be no going back.

What I didn’t mention – the thing that is almost too painful to articulate even now – is my outrage that he should be sharing a platform with Helen’s father. Backing his calls for an inquiry, when Richard knows perfectly well that it’s not those poor nurses, nor the hospital management, that are really to blame for Helen’s death, but the man standing there in his neatly pressed suit playing the grief-stricken parent. How can he even go near that man, even speak to him, let alone support his cause in public like this? After the funeral, there was Richard, sharing his whisky and his consolation with all the WITCH crew in Cora’s sitting room, seeming so much one of us, and now it feels as though he has changed sides completely, gone over to the other camp somehow. Of course there was no mention of Witch House in the newspaper. Why would I expect Richard to have mentioned us? It’s just like at the funeral, the way we were all sidelined, inval idated somehow, as if that part of Helen’s life had never existed. All the connections she made, all our efforts to keep her safe, all reduced to nothing. I feel let down, deceived . . . Betrayed, as I said before – it’s the only word for it. All weekend Richard was pretending to be the big liberal with the bleeding-heart conscience, listening oh-so-tenderly while I told him how I felt about Helen, playing the saint who wouldn’t even sleep with me because I was so upset, and all the time he’s in bed with the enemy!

Sorry, Becs, I’m so sorry – none of this is anything to do with you – I just don’t know where to turn.

Margaret xxxx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
18/7/05 19:30
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

Don’t be sorry, Margaret honey. But I really have no idea what to say.

Except, what a bastard. And big, big hugs,

Becs xxxx

 

 

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
18/7/05 21:57
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

So, Michael . . . Well done, mate! Why on earth did I ever listen to you? Damage limitation, you said. Must use all the chances that present themselves, you said. The Mental Health Bill, you said, one of the Rottweiler’s favourite pet projects. Never mind that it was none of my business – that the bloody Bill had nothing to do with my patch, not with culture or media or sport, nor actually with the real reasons for Helen’s death. Start repairing your image at every opportunity (and this is a golden one) you said, or you’ll be out in the wilderness at the next reshuffle. Well, maybe – just maybe – the political wilderness might have been preferable to the comfortless desert in which your damned stupid advice has landed me this time.

Just take a look on the
Town Crier
’s website and see how the story appeared! I’m afraid poor Geoff Howard caught the sharp end of my frustration on the phone this morning, though in fairness I suppose it isn’t really his fault. He didn’t write anything that wasn’t true, he didn’t misquote me. And how was he to know I wouldn’t exactly relish the public association with that man Adamson? Though I still think he could have run the story by me first.

Well, quite naturally Margaret is furious. You can hardly blame her! How could I not have realised the way she would perceive it? I should have spoken to her about it before I talked to Geoff. But of course then I wouldn’t have talked to Geoff at all, would I? And this whole nightmare would never have happened. I’ve been calling and calling all evening. Cora picked up once and said that Margaret didn’t want to speak to me, but after that they stopped answering at all, and they don’t have an answering machine on their land line. Her mobile is switched off, and there’s a limit to the number of times you can say sorry into the electronic emptiness of a person’s voicemail. I’m sure she’s deleting it all without listening to it anyway. I’d go down there, but I know there’s no point; she’d never see me.

Oh God, Mike, I’ve wrecked everything – and for what? Did I really imagine that an article in the Ipswich local rag would ever make it anywhere near the PM’s desk? And it was never going to be a story with national media appeal, even with the summer season of news famine on the horizon. Who cares about the sodding Mental Health Bill anyway?

Aaaaaaggghhh!

Richard.

From:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]
Sent:
18/7/05 22:17
To:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]

 

Seemed like a good idea at the time, Richard. But I am truly sorry, the way it’s worked out – I know how she had got under your skin. Would you accept a few penitent pints in recompense? Tomorrow lunchtime, perhaps? Give me a ring in the morning.

Michael.

From:
Richard Slater
[[email protected]]
Sent:
22/7/05 00:26
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Michael, I’m wretched, I’m wrecked.

Margaret won’t answer my e-mails. The arts budget to your constituency coffee morning takings that she’s deleting them without even opening them. Her mobile is still off, and Cora is fielding phone calls to the house like the most fearsomely dragonish of Victorian chaperons. And there’s so much I want to say to her, so much to try to explain . . .