Tarnished (18 page)

‘What does that mean?’ Peg said.

‘Nothing.’ Jean took another mouthful and offered Peg the bag.

‘No thank you. What do you mean, I can think what I like?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Jean said. ‘But—’

‘But what?’

‘Well, if you have to know, you shouldn’t believe everything that brother of mine tells you. Your mum didn’t want to die.’

Now it was Peg’s turn to look horrified. ‘What do you mean? It said in the article . . . 
You
said to the paper . . .’ She pulled her notebook from her bag and held the article out in front of Jean. ‘“His sister, Jeanette Thwaites, 51, who was visiting at the time, said: ‘I overheard Suzanne begging him to end it all for her, and he was crying, saying he couldn’t do it.’”’

‘I hate that name,’ Jean said.

‘What?’ Peg said, putting the printout down on the bed.

‘Jeannette. So prissy.’

‘But you said here, to the paper, and to the police, that Mum wanted to die. And now you’ve just told me the complete opposite.’

‘What was I to do?’ Jean said. ‘He did it. There’s no undoing that. And then he’d have got life for murder if I’d told the truth. And what would that’ve done to Mummy?’

‘Why did he do it then? Why did he kill Mum if she wanted to live?’

‘It was inconvenient for him to have a sick wife. Draining. Poor soul. She was in dreadful agony.’ Like Doll, Jean always inserted a ‘t’ sound into the middle of the word dreadful, which, added here to the trembling emotion of her voice, more than made her point.

Peg looked at her and wondered if this was really the truth. ‘Perhaps she had asked him, though. When you weren’t around?’

‘I knew everything that went on between them two,’ Jean said. ‘He shared everything with me and Mummy. Mummy was so upset about it all that when it all came out what he done, she came to pick me up and on the way home she crashed the car and I ended up in hospital. Don’t you remember the car crash?’

Peg shook her head.

‘That really surprises me, Meggy. It was dreadful. But then I suppose you was only six.’

Peg watched Jean crunch on the Monster Munch. Then, unable to contain herself any longer, she finally came to the question she realised she needed properly answered. ‘Why did he never come back here though, Aunty Jean? After he got out? Why didn’t he come and get me?’

Jean folded her hands across her vast bosom, shook her head and smiled at her. ‘No idea, Meggy. You’ll have to ask him about that, now you’re such good friends.’

Peg felt herself blush. She couldn’t help it. It always happened; she hated this barometer of her internal state being so visible to everyone.

‘Look, darling,’ Jean said, her voice a little softer. ‘You’ve got to stop asking these questions. You were settled with me and Mummy, weren’t you? And happy? It was probably for the best that he never came back. Why can’t you just leave it at that and stop stirring up the mud.’

‘The mud?’

Jean held up her hand. ‘Oh yes. Mud.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jean took Peg’s hand and squeezed it in hers, locking her eyes on her. After a long pause, she finally spoke.

‘Oh Meggy,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d never have to hear this.’

‘Hear what?’ Peg’s chair was low against Jean’s bed with its specialist mattress and reinforced base. The position she was now in, looking up at her aunt, reminded her of being at a school assembly, being forced to kneel and pray.

‘Your dad is not a nice man, Meggy. Not a nice man at all. He’s very troubled. By what happened when we was little. By what he did.’

‘What? What happened?’

‘Keith.’

‘What about Keith?’

‘The baby. He didn’t fall into the dock.’ Jean’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘He was pushed. By your dad.’

‘What?’ Peg drew her hand away from Jean’s soft, hot clasp.

‘It was dreadful,’ Jean went on.

‘But Dad was only a little boy then. He couldn’t have done it on purpose.’

‘He was old enough to know what he was doing. I was
there
, Meggy. I saw the look on his face. He
hated
Keith. Hated the fact he, Raymond, wasn’t Mummy’s baby any more. He put his hands out in front of him and ran forwards, his eyebrows down, and he looked like a little devil, like a beetle, running straight at our baby brother and pushing.’ Jean breathed in deeply and heaved her chest. ‘Pass us a tissue, darling, will you?’

She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, then continued, her voice wavering and hoarse. ‘Keithy was only two. A little sweet thing he was, running around by the docks near our house back in London. We was supposed to be looking after him for Mummy. But Raymond saw his chance and . . . Boof!’ Jean scowled and thrust her hands out with remarkable force.

‘You told me he fell, though,’ Peg said.

‘That’s what everyone thinks. That’s what I told them. Even Mummy. It would’ve KILLED her to know the truth. She must never know, Meggy. Never, you hear me?’ Jean licked her fingers and wiped them round the inside of the Monster Munch bag, picking up the last salty, orange crumbs. ‘Even now it will kill her. That was the first time I saved your father’s neck, but it certainly wasn’t the last. He was always in trouble, always doing bad things.’ She crumpled up the empty packet and handed it to Peg. ‘Could you pop that in the bin, please, dear?’

‘But he was so young. He couldn’t have known what he was doing.’

‘He did. I saw it. He knew
exactly
what he was doing.’ All Jean’s earlier depression about her mother’s collapse seemed to have deserted her. She was truly warming to her theme. ‘Do you really want to know why we never told you about your dad, Meggy?’

Peg nodded silently.

‘He’s
evil
, girl. That’s what he is. And the sooner you forget about him the better.’

Peg clasped her hands together, pressing them into her chest, and looked down at her lap.

‘You were better off not knowing, weren’t you? Oh, Meggy. You see?’

Jean grabbed her hand again and held it with such force that Peg felt her bones creak.

‘If you need to know it, here it is. Your dad was a wild one. Mummy and Daddy couldn’t control him. He was awful to the both of them, a terrible son and a worser brother. He did unimaginable things. Really. Things you don’t want to think about. He’d have been no good at all as a father.

‘There you are. Now you know.

‘If we’d told you back when you was a nipper, how would that have made things for you? It would have been dreadful. How do you tell a little girl her daddy killed her mummy? Eh? Or that he killed his own baby brother?’

Peg shook her head, numb.

‘Now, you say he’s got money. Listen to your old Aunty Jean, darling.’

She pulled at Peg’s hand so that she was forced to lift her head and look her in the eye.

‘We can do without his money. We don’t want nothing else to do with him. Not never. Be the good little Meggy I know and love, and do as I say. Forget all about him. And whatever he’s told you about anything, anything at all, take it with a pinch of salt. He’s worthless.’

She smiled at Peg, something like triumph tinting her look. Then, her energy spent, she laid her head back against the pillows.

A few minutes later, she raised weaker eyes to look at Peg. ‘Now then. How about a nice cup of tea, dear? You look as worn out as I feel. You should go and get forty winks. I don’t know, you youngsters think you can keep going all night without a moment’s sleep. You’ll make yourself ill, Meggy.’

Peg’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw it was Loz. She couldn’t answer in front of Jean, not the way she was feeling, so she flicked it off.

‘That’s not your father, is it?’ Jean said, narrowing her eyes at Peg.

‘No. It’s just my friend. Loz. She can wait.’

‘Loz?’ Jean frowned. ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘It’s short for Lorraine.’

Jean frowned at Peg, letting her eyes linger just long enough to show that her mind was working on something new. ‘Close friend is she?’

‘Yes,’ Peg said, her blasted beacon cheeks firing up again. She put the phone back in her pocket and went through to the kitchenette to make the tea.

As soon as she could escape, Peg shut Jean’s back door behind her and closed her eyes, grateful to be outside in the icy morning.

She tried to return Loz’s call, but she was probably back in work. So she texted her to say that she was going to be staying for a couple of days to sort things out and that if she fancied and if she could get a day off, she could come out and help her.

It was an olive branch of sorts: a hint to Loz that, by deciding to stay, she wasn’t putting in place the first part of a move back to Tankerton that would exclude her or alter their lives in any permanent way.

Then she phoned Marianne, who begrudgingly agreed to allow her to take the entire following week off, due to the exceptional circumstances. Her irritation was a little bewildering – she was forever on at Peg to use up her annual leave because she wasn’t going to have her taking the entire three weeks in a chunk at the end of the financial year. But Peg knew that Marianne wasn’t one to say yes to anything without some sort of fight.

She took one last breath of fresh air, then went inside and made another cup of tea among the chaos of Doll’s kitchen. Perhaps the week ahead of physical labour sorting out the bungalow would distract her from what Jean had told her about her father, and help her to reassess her plan.

She wasn’t so sure she was going to be Jean’s good little Meggy and not contact her father again. If what her aunt had said was true, he was even fairer game for any kind of treachery, and if Peg could channel some funds to Doll, then wasn’t that still the right thing to do? Even more than before, he owed his mother everything.

She opened her red notebook and looked at the photograph of her mother. Then she unfolded the article and, once again, read it through.

TRAGIC WIFE MERCY KILLING

Something didn’t feel quite right about Jean’s story. Peg didn’t think she liked Raymond, but she wasn’t sure he measured up to quite the monster his sister would have her believe. She had learned her lesson about taking what she was told at face value.

She had a very strong sense that she didn’t yet have the full picture.

But, with a sleepless night behind her, she was so tired she couldn’t think straight. She slipped the article back into her notebook, which she tucked under her arm. Then, in a movement so often repeated it had ingrained itself into her bones, she opened the ceiling trapdoor to let down the sliding wooden ladder to the attic.

Balancing her cup of tea in one hand and steadying herself with the other, she climbed up to her musty old bedroom with its damp patches and mould spots where the dormer met the roof. Jumping quickly under the clammy sheets – the heating and insulation up there were minimal – she closed her eyes and started to count her breaths.

Then

I should have remembered, of course: it was a nasty crash and Aunty Jean hurt her leg quite badly. It was never the same again for her after that.

Perhaps it has been eclipsed in my mind because it was the same week my mother died.

The very same week.

Perhaps that’s a good enough excuse.

‘Come on dear.’

Gramps has me by the hand and we’re walking along a really long corridor in the hospital. I’m not all that keen on being there, but he says I’ve got to come along and cheer Nan and Aunty Jean up after the horrible car crash. I’ve got to be bright and happy, he says.

Luckily Nan was all right though, because the driver’s side wasn’t involved. But she’s really upset.

‘She blames herself, ducky,’ Gramps said to me.

Gramps says I shouldn’t be sad about Mummy dying because it’s a blessing seeing as she was so poorly.

I’ve tried not to be sad but I’m not very good at it.

My main concern back then – and this I find incredible – was not to be a burden to my grandfather.

Remember:
my mother had just died
.

Quiet.

Breathe.

Even though she wasn’t hurt, Nan’s been staying in the hospital, sleeping on a little camp bed beside Aunty Jean. It’s not really allowed, but Gramps says if Nan wants something she doesn’t let people say no.

She says Aunty Jean needs her.

So it’s just been me and Gramps at the bungalow. I try not to get in his way, but it’s a bit boring just being with him. He’s always in the shed, mending things or making things.

I’ve got a Caramac in my pocket. Gramps has bought it for me because he says I’m a good girl. I hope I’ll have time to eat it before we get to see Aunty Jean.

But I don’t, because Gramps steers me round a corner and we’re in Aunty Jean’s ward. She’s in a private room. Daddy’s paying for it because it was on account of Aunty Jean looking after him that Nan was driving her back and they had the crash.

I haven’t seen Daddy at all since Easter, and I really miss him. But Gramps says he’s too upset to see anyone at the moment.

As we walk towards the nurse’s desk, Nan hurries out of one of the side-rooms, almost bumping right into us.

‘Oh,’ she says, putting her hand to her chest. ‘Thank goodness you’re here, Frank.’

‘What’s the matter, Dolly?’ Gramps says. ‘What is it, girl?’

‘It’s this place,’ Nan says. ‘They have no idea how to do things proper. It’s filthy and I tell them it’s filthy and they just look at me like I’m mad. And they’re so rough with her; it’s horrible to watch. And they’re nearly all foreign too. Don’t speak a word of English. It’s not like it was in my day. And the doctors don’t know a thing about her special needs. It’s a very different thing, looking after a bigger person.’

She’s standing ever so upright, her arms folded, her shoulders up near her ears, her mouth working.

‘Hello, Nan!’ I say, as happily as I can manage.

‘Oh, hello, dearie,’ Nan says, smiling at me. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit upsy-daisy, but I don’t think we can stand to be in this place one more day.’

‘What are you going to do, Dolly?’ Gramps says.