Motherlove (32 page)

‘Ben, darling, what a lovely surprise. I wasn't expecting you today. Can you come back for tea with me? Or are you too busy with your friends?'

‘Mum.' Ben's voice was croaking. He cleared it. ‘Mum. This isn't just a friend. It's Abigail.'

Heather flinched. Her eyes flashed angry hurt. ‘Ben, please don't tell me you think that makes a difference! I don't care what her name is. Call her what you like. She's not
my
Abigail.'

‘Mum, she is. She's your daughter. Your baby, who was taken here, in the park.'

Kelly took a step forward.

Heather stepped back, staring at her with repulsion. ‘No!'

‘Yes, Mum.'

‘No. How dare you! All these lunatics who keep claiming to be Abigail, I can cope with them, but how could you, Ben? You can't be this cruel to me. This horrible joke. She's not my Abigail.'

‘Mum, I'm not joking. It's real, please.'

Kelly wanted to cry. Heather was looking at her with hatred. This woman, her mother, hated her. Her brother, her lover, hated her.

‘No, she's not Abigail. You're lying!' Heather retreated, as Ben advanced, raising her hands to ward him off. ‘No! This is wicked. This is a lie. You're not to do this. She's not Abigail. Abigail is dead.'

Ben stopped, shell-shocked. The admission that he had wanted to wring from his mother had come at last, just when he knew it could not be true. He looked after his mother as she ran from him, then back at Kelly, aghast. ‘I don't know what to do.'

Kelly swallowed. ‘We shouldn't have met, not this way. It's my fault. Everything's my fault. I'm sorry.'

He paced, helpless.

‘You must go after her.'

‘You'll wait here?'

‘Yes. I'll wait.'

What else could she do but sit there and wait, alone on a park bench? So recently she'd discovered love. Now she understood despair. There was no hope in this, she knew.

Somewhere, in this park, was the lonely ghost of the Abigail she had once been, imprisoned here since the day she had become Kelly, abandoned here, except in the memory of the woman who had refused to let go. Kelly wasn't that ghost. She had become someone else. There was no going back.

She sat watching the ducks, pecking at the rubbish on the water. Eyeing her in passing, just in case she had something for them. But she had nothing to offer them or anyone. She was a fake, an illusion.

vi

Heather

‘Mum!'

Heather Parish could hear him calling, but she walked faster. This cruelty was beyond belief. Her own son; she'd never forgive him.

‘Mum. Please. Listen. It's not a joke. I swear. She is Abigail. It was all a terrible, terrible mistake, crime – I don't know what, but it's true.'

‘No!' She turned to face him as he caught up with her. ‘It's a sick lie. Abigail is dead. You hear me? She's dead.' The words she had fought for years not to say, bearing her denial like martyrdom. ‘I don't care what she says. You're cruel, or you're a fool. I can't believe you'd do this to me. Go away. Leave me alone!'

She walked on, and this time he didn't follow.

Furious, head down, hands twisting in her pockets, she walked on.

‘Mrs Parish.' The voice was soft. Embarrassed. She couldn't equate it with the girl who had been tormenting her these last months, but there she was, following as she reached the gates of the park, haunting her, the same as ever.

Not the same. No hatred now.

‘Go away! For God's sake!'

‘I've got to speak to you. I'm sorry. For what I did before, what I said. I thought I was your daughter, but then I learned the truth. Let me talk. Please. Let me explain.'

‘Explain? Explain what? I know what you are, you're all liars and frauds.'

‘Please. That girl. I saw you with her. I was coming to find you because I wanted to explain, and I saw you all. That girl, and the man – is he your son? Her brother?'

‘No! He is my son, but he is not her brother, because his sister is dead. Now leave me alone, or I'll call the police.'

The girl hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes maybe it would be best if you called them, because they'll be able to confirm my story, and clear your name. Won't you let me explain?'

Heather walked on.

‘She was trying to tell you she was your missing daughter, wasn't she,' the girl continued, keeping pace.

‘Another one like you!'

‘But this time it's true. I knew he was her brother. You can see it. They look so alike.'

‘And you think, just because some girl makes herself look like my Ben, that I'll believe this hogwash? I'm not stupid, even if you are.'

‘I don't believe it because they look alike. That just confirms it. I know the whole story now. I got it wrong at first. I'm involved too. We're all involved, and none of us knew it. Let me explain. Please. So that something can be put right at last.'

Heather stared at her, searching for the smirk, the sly amusement, not finding it. ‘Tell me what you like. I can't stop you, can I?'

vii

Kelly

Ben sank down on the bench beside Kelly, hands thrust deep into his pockets and looked at the ducks. Silent.

Kelly looked at her hands.

‘Confronting her like that; of course it wasn't going to work.' She sighed. ‘Is she still upset?'

‘I don't know. What is she? Crazy? In denial? She doesn't want you to be Abigail. Can you understand that?'

‘Yes.' Kelly shut her eyes. ‘The truth is, I don't want her to be my mother.'

‘She said you were dead. All these years she's insisted you were alive, snatched away, and now she says you're dead. She can't cope with it, can she? I'm her son, why can't I help her? I've spent so long hating her, blaming her and now I've got to admit I was wrong and be there for her. I don't know how. All I can do at the moment is hate myself instead.'

‘Don't. I understand. You can't just switch off the feelings you've felt for years. It doesn't work like that. Roz took me from your mother, and I know she did something terrible, and I should be feeling – I don't know what, but I can't just stop loving her.'

Ben snarled. ‘You love her? The woman who did all this to us?'

‘She's my mum.'

‘No! She's a criminal! She's worse than a murderer! How can you even speak about her without wanting to—' His hands were clenched.

‘Because I can't just wipe out the last twenty-two years any more than you can. Do I excuse what she did? No. She was seventeen, she had no family, and maybe she didn't really grasp what she was doing. Maybe. None of that makes it excusable. But she's still my mum. She's been my mum in every way that matters. She's loved me.'

‘I don't get you. You can sit there and talk about that monster as if she matters more to you than we do.'

‘It isn't that simple!' She could be angry too. ‘Are you finding it simple? It's hard. Roz
is
my mother, she's cared for me all my life and now she's ill and needs someone and her world is falling apart—'

‘Like ours fell apart. Good. Now you know how it felt.'

She couldn't reach him. ‘You really do hate me, don't you?'

Ben said nothing.

‘I thought love would conquer all.'

He was crying. ‘Nothing can conquer this, Kelly.'

She wanted to fight. And then she didn't; there was no fight left in her. She turned and walked away.

‘Where are you going?' he called.

She stopped. ‘Home,' she said, and walked on. He didn't follow.

viii

Heather

Heather Parish closed the door of her maisonette. Calmly, she placed her bag on the side table, took off her jacket and hung it up, then walked into the living room.

She sat down. On the floor. Then curled herself into a foetal ball on her side, arms round her head, blocking out light, sound, everything. She played and replayed the story she had been told as she marched home, that strange insistent girl dogging her footsteps.

The story was absurd.

The story made sense of everything, if only it were true.

She thought back to the park, the other girl, the one with Ben. The one who looked like Ben. She could see her, plain as day, nothing like the Abigail of her imagination, nothing like the child she had pictured in her dreams and nightmares, and yet there was a thundering voice in her head, a roaring in her blood, saying, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!'

Was it possible that after all these years of longing for her, she hadn't instantly recognised her own daughter? The weird girl, Vicky Wendle, had seen it, so why hadn't she?

Because she had been offered so many false promises before that, she had grown immune to them, shutting herself off from the cruelty of a hope that was sure to be torn to shreds.

But another answer needled her. An accusing answer. She hadn't recognised her daughter because she didn't want to. She was Heather Parish, the searcher, the suspect, the pathetic self-deceiver, the contemptible child murderer, the woman who couldn't get on with her life because she had this thing stamped on her. Her quest, with all its horrors and tortures, had become her identity, and now, if it were all over, what was left? Nothing.

The carpet was scratching her cheek, its smell beginning to clog her nostrils. The buckle on her shoe was biting into her flesh. Her blouse was rucked up, pulling uncomfortably.

She sat up, straightened her clothes, heard sparrows twittering outside and blinked at a ray of sunshine. Suppose this earthquake was not an end of her, but a beginning? The trapdoor of the dungeon that she'd been in for twenty-two years was sliding open. It wasn't easy to step out into the light, but there was the door. She had borne so much, more than she had thought possible. She had been burned to the bone by it all and yet she had carried on, so surely she had the courage for this now?

‘Think about it,' the strange Vicky Wendle had said, when they had finally reached Heather's home. ‘I know it's too much to take in at once. You don't know how to cope with it. I've been through it. I know.'

Another wounded soul. Heather could remember the aching anger. Vicky Wendle had been through her own mill. Heather wasn't the only victim here. But Vicky had no anger now. Just a determination to face it and sort it out. They had shaken hands on Heather's doorstep.

‘Of course I'll think it through,' she'd said.

And now she had.

She got to her feet, retrieved her bag, flipped open her phone and rang the only number recorded.

The ringing stopped. Someone was taking the call, but wasn't saying a word. Probably he couldn't.

‘I need to see her again, Ben. This – Abigail. I have to see her, don't I?'

ix

Vicky

The minicab drew up on the curb, one tyre on the pavement. Gillian watched from the living room. Home from Scotland. So Joan wasn't going straight back to Bill Bowyer's then. Come to dump her luggage here first before carting her free whisky samples back to his place. You had to admire the old girl. Never a dull moment. Plenty at her age would be sitting in an old people's home, tucked under blankets, dribbling quietly, but not Joan. It would take more than age, arthritis and a weak bladder to keep her down. A stake through the heart, maybe.

‘Well, what d'you expect with the bleeding Jocks,' Joan was saying, as the front door opened. The cab driver was carrying her bags in for her. ‘You just going to stand there gawping, girl? Pay the bloke.'

Gillian paid him. It wasn't worth fighting over. She looked at the cabby, unsmiling. ‘You'd better leave us now.'

He ambled out, pulling the door shut behind him.

‘What's up with you, girl?' Joan was groping for her cigarettes. ‘Face like a wet floor cloth. Nice welcome I come home to, I must say. What you been doing? Trashing my house again?'

Gillian didn't reply.

‘Well, I'm not dragging them bags up the fucking stairs.' Joan flopped down on the sofa, puffing her cigarette, scrawny legs splayed. ‘Make us some tea.'

Gillian ignored the order. ‘I've been talking to Vicky.'

‘Huh. That sourpuss. What's she had to say for herself? Can't be bothered to come down to say hello to her gran.'

‘You're not her grandmother.'

‘Never thought I was. It was you always wanted to play that game.'

‘Vicky told me what you did.'

‘What I did? I never did anything to her. A clip around the ear occasionally. You going to be all namby-pamby and say I shouldn't have laid a finger on her? I don't hold with that modern crap. You have to discipline children. It was the way I brought you lot up.'