Tarnished (38 page)

A gull, fed up of waiting for them to move, dive-bombed to the ground, tearing up a ribbon of rotting dogfish flesh. Emboldened, others followed, then fought, their struggle mirroring that of the two women sharing their seabed.

Peg picked up a stick and swiped at the gulls with it, sending them scattering, wheeling and regrouping for another foray.

‘I think you’ve built up some kind of sick fantasy in your head about what this family is all about,’ she said, turning back to Loz.

‘Sick fantasy? We’ve got
facts
. Evidence. Enough to go to the police.’

‘Police?’

‘Now we don’t have to worry about upsetting poor Doll, I’m going to prove to you that I’m right,’ Loz said, folding her arms and sticking her chin out – the tiny embodiment of determination.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll waste their time and you’ll look like an idiot.’

‘Watch this space, Peg. Did you know that Mary Perkins’s mum tried to kill herself three years after her daughter disappeared? And then, what about poor Colin Cairns topping himself? And that schoolgirl’s parents? What about them?’ Loz looked at Peg sternly. ‘They weren’t lucky like you were today.’

‘Call
me
lucky?’

‘Unlike you, she didn’t even have a body to bury. Can you imagine? It’s not just about your own little family, Peg. Don’t be so blind and selfish.’

‘But—’

‘And it’s all down to him,’ Loz yelled over the top of Peg, pointing towards the shore. ‘He’s not only ruined the lives of his victims. He’s also fucked up everyone who loved them. And you, Peg. He’s royally fucked you over
all your life
.’

‘NO,’ Peg said.

She felt like drawing her hand back and hitting Loz smack across the mouth, sending her flying across the rocks and mud. Instead, she flung the stick she was still holding far out to sea, flipping it like a helicopter blade, slicing it through the thick, cold air until it splatted muddily down in the distance. She hurled it with so much force she wrenched her arm.

‘Just go,’ she turned and said to Loz. ‘Go!’

And, turning her back on the woman she loved, she set off again, trudging over the mud, heading for the sideways horizon, where the sands seemed to run out. When she finally stopped, the icy incoming tide now covering her boots, cold water soaking into her tights, she turned and looked over her shoulder.

There wasn’t another soul on the wind-blasted beach.

As if Peg had imagined her entirely, Loz had disappeared.

Thirty-Nine

Peg didn’t get as far as the corner of Kent. The tide seethed in and, before she reached Reculver, she was forced up on to the shingle. She crunched on, increasingly half-heartedly, until the sky darkened and dusk arrived, heralded by sharp needles of ice-cold rain that picked at her red cheeks and stabbed into the churning surface of the sea.

The cold and the walking had dissipated the gin that had fired her blood. But it hadn’t quite forced out her anger. Loz had ruined Doll’s funeral. She had bulldozed through everything, only concerning herself with her own pet theories. It was idiocy, and Peg felt violated on behalf of her own flesh and blood.

She climbed the shingle bank to the concrete promenade and started to head back to Tankerton, the wind behind her now. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t walked quite so far. By the time she turned inland to the grid of streets that led to the bungalow, it was gone five, and as dark as a moonless midnight. She couldn’t feel her sodden, frozen feet and even thrusting her hands deep inside her parka pockets didn’t stop them stinging as if the skin had been peeled from them.

As she approached the bungalow, she saw a big black Lexus parked in the driveway. Behind drawn curtains, a light glimmered in Doll’s lounge.

Raymond was there.

She wondered if he was specifically waiting for her, or if he had some other business to attend to.

Quietly, she opened the front door. The full blast of central heating shocked her frozen blood back into circulation. A telling layer of cigar smoke hung in the hot, dry air. Shrugging off her parka and stripping off her salt-waterlogged boots and socks, she peered through the half-open lounge door.

Raymond sat on his mother’s chair in front of the gas fire, which he had turned full on. In one hand he held the school photograph of Peg, in the other he had one of Loz’s bottles of champagne.

As he lifted it shakily to his mouth to drink, Peg saw that he was crying.

She hesitated in the doorway, unsure whether she should show herself. He might not take kindly to being seen like this, defences down.

She wondered if she should be scared of him. Could this frail piece of flesh and blood weeping on the settee really be the monster of Loz’s imaginings? The evidence against him was pretty compelling – even viewed through her own eyes. But seeing him there, his wet cheeks pink like a little boy’s, his sorrow stripped bare . . . He didn’t look capable of harming a dying dog, let alone a pretty young woman in her prime, or a schoolgirl the same age as his own daughter.

No, Loz could still be discredited in Peg’s mind.

She coughed. An irrational fear stabbed at her as he jumped to his feet in a movement that suggested that, if he had a gun, he would have drawn it.

But when he saw it was her, his face softened.

‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.

He stood and, carefully putting the bottle and photograph down on the occasional table, crossed the room and put his arms round her.

Astounded, Peg could only respond in kind. Because she was that bit taller than him, it felt as if she were comforting him.

It went very one-way like that.

After a couple of minutes, he drew away from her, pulled a starched white handkerchief from his breast pocket, blew his nose and wiped his eyes like a woman tidying her mascara.

‘Want a drink?’ he said.

‘Yes please.’

He went through to the kitchen and came back with another bottle of champagne and two glasses. Peg knew she should really eat something before she drank again, but didn’t feel able to intrude on this moment with something so mundane as needing food.

He popped the top off the champagne, filled the glasses and handed one to Peg.

‘There you go, girl. Get that down you.’ He had regained his composure on the trip to the kitchen, although there was still a catch in his voice.

They sat, he on Doll’s chair, she, nails scraping, on the edge of the settee.

‘You were right, in a way, Margaret. I should have come back earlier,’ Raymond said. ‘I should have seen Mum before she went.’

Peg nodded.

‘But it was too complicated. It was better for everyone if I stayed away.’

‘What do you mean?’

But Raymond just shook his head and looked down into his glass, where the bubbles fizzed and popped like little bullets.

He looked utterly dejected.

Then Peg had a thought. ‘Wait there a minute, Dad.’

She jumped up and went out into the freezing shed, where she found the Raymond box that Doll had kept on top of her wardrobe.

‘She kept all this,’ she said, bringing it back into the warm and placing it in front of him. Kneeling beside him, she pulled out the old school reports, the photographs of him as a boy and his caul, which she opened and put into his trembling hand. ‘This was round you when you were born. She kept it to protect you. She loved you, you know.’

‘I know she did,’ Raymond said, fingering the papery husk. ‘Too much.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was too much, that’s all.’ He put the caul back in its box and replaced the lid, then he closed the Raymond box and pushed it away, brushing the dust from his fingers.

‘It’s a pity Paulie never met her, though,’ Peg said.

‘It’s better for him how it is,’ Raymond said. ‘Better that he never met her.’

Peg frowned. She couldn’t work out what Raymond was saying to her.

He sat, lost in thought, offering no further explanation. Eventually he shifted in his seat and refilled his glass, holding the bottle out to Peg. Then he pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it.

‘I’ve got to go back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It’s Paulie’s birthday day after and I’m throwing this big party. Forty kids, their parents and a full sit-down meal and entertainment. I’ve got that boy band, what they called, the ones with the hair like that –’ he held his hand about a foot above his head – ‘coming as a surprise too. Not even Caroline knows about that.’

‘Lucky boy.’ Peg couldn’t stop the wave of jealousy that passed over her, the now-familiar feeling of
what about me?

‘Well, I like to make it special for him with his birthday being on Christmas Eve and all that. Hey, you could come if you want.’

‘I think I’d better stay here,’ she said, gesturing at the dividing wall between Jean’s and Doll’s. ‘How is she?’

‘Who?’

‘Aunty Jean.’

‘Out blotto,’ he said, nodding at the dividing wall. ‘She was in bits after all that business at the funeral, so I gave her a couple of her pills. That girl Julie what looks after her come back because she was in such a state. She showed me which was the right ones.’

‘Thank you for sorting her out.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, misunderstanding her. ‘I don’t want her to be the burden on you or me that she was on my mother. She’s got no one to blame but herself for how she is. It was possible for her to get away, but she chose not to. Look at me. I managed, didn’t I?’

Peg frowned. This talk of escape echoed what the cousin had said at the wake, and it puzzled her. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘That’s just as well, Margaret, believe me.’

A night seagull wheeled past outside, unseen beyond the nylon net curtains, its staccato caw puncturing the silence in the room.

‘Sorry about all that,’ Peg said eventually. ‘Back in the pub, I mean.’

‘That friend of yours is dangerous,’ Raymond said. ‘Accusing me of God knows what.’

‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about some photos we found,’ Peg said.

‘Mary Perkins.’

‘Yes. And there’s this.’ Peg rummaged in her rucksack for her key ring, to which she had attached the garage key for safekeeping. She handed it to Raymond. ‘Loz has some fanciful notions about what you got up to in there.’

‘Heyworth Court,’ Raymond said, rubbing the label. He leaned forward, carefully arranged Peg’s keys on the coffee table, then sat back and sucked on his cigar. ‘Where’d you find it?’

‘On top of Nan’s wardrobe. Under that box.’

‘Ah.’ Raymond nodded.

‘We even went there to see if we could get in.’

‘Could you?’ He looked up sharply.

‘No.’

He breathed out and Peg waited, like a diver on a high board, for what he was going to say next.

‘All right then,’ Raymond said, leaning his head back against Doll’s old chair headrest and, for the first time since she had arrived, looking Peg straight in the eye. ‘I’ve got a confession to make.’

Peg swallowed.

‘I used to be a naughty boy,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I played around, Margaret. I’m not proud of it, and I certainly keep my nose clean now, but until your mum . . .’ He checked himself and started again. ‘You see. After you was born and until your mum got poorly, I wasn’t a very good husband to her. Well, I was out every night at the club. They were all around me, pure gold. Temptation.’

Peg sat rigid on the settee. She needed to hear his explanation, but that didn’t mean she was going to like it.

‘Ah,’ he said, flicking his cigar into the empty champagne bottle. ‘All them pretty girls. Throwing themselves at me because I was the boss man with the slick car and the fancy suits. And the booze, and the party powders.’

Peg raised an eyebrow.

‘Don’t look at me like that, girl. You lot with your hair and ironmongery all over your faces didn’t invent drugs, you know.’

Peg bridled at this. The closest she had ever been to an illicit substance was the Valium Doll had slipped her from time to time when she was younger, to calm her nerves.

‘What was a man to do?’ Raymond went on. ‘After she had you, your mum, God rest her soul, well she got, how can I put it? Homely. She went straight from fox to mumsy, without passing go.’

‘She had a baby to look after,’ Peg said.

‘That’s right. She couldn’t come out with me any more because of you. And I had to go out because that’s how I make my money. So what was I to do? Besides, I’d got a taste for the girls in the club before I met her. Shit, it was
how
I met her, if you have to know.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you?’

Peg nodded.

‘You’ve been busy, haven’t you?’

‘She was my mum. I wanted to know about her.’

‘What else did you find out?’

He looked at her and, for a moment, she thought she saw fear in his eyes. Something in her wanted to keep it there, as security. She decided not to tell him quite yet exactly what she had found out about the life and death of her mother.

‘Why are you telling me all this, Raymond?’

‘Ah, can’t you call me Dad, girl? It’s what I am to you.’

She avoided his eye. ‘Sex and drugs. You’re telling me things a father shouldn’t tell his daughter.’

‘I’m telling you the
truth
,’ he said. ‘It’s what you was banging on about when you came out to see us, wasn’t it? The truth. That’s what you said you wanted.’

Peg sighed and flopped back against the settee.

He emptied the bottle into his glass, which was standing on the coffee table. He filled it so much that he had to bend forward and slurp the top off before he could pick it up.

Then, wiping the fizz from his lip, he continued. ‘Look. It just happened that one of the birds I had on the go, that Mary Perkins, met with a sticky end. A tragedy. But sadly that kind of thing happens from time to time with the sort of girl who goes out to work just as the normal ones are heading home.’

Peg didn’t believe him. This ‘confession’ was nothing but a disappointment, a fudge. Nothing that she didn’t know already.

‘And what about the garage, then?’ she said, shaking the key at him.