The Girl Who Broke the Rules (28 page)

I will keep you posted on the funding body’s response.

Sally

Dr Sally Wright, Senior Tutor

St John’s College, Cambridge Tel…01223 775 6574

Dept. of Criminology Tel…01223 773 8023

‘Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Total shit-stirring bitch!’ George shouted. ‘Making my life a fucking nightmare for no bloody reason.’ She slammed the phone onto her placemat, unconcerned as to whether Ad was paying attention to her or not. White hot anger back, now, its flames licking unfettered up her throat. ‘Bring me into line, will you? You crabby old bag! Oh, my days, what a frigging cheek. Who the fuck does Sally Wright think she is?’

The screensaver had kicked in, rendering the message just a black, shining reflection of George’s own face. Angry, twitching nostrils and a grimace that could melt magnesium. There was something of her mother, Letitia the Dragon, in her, all right. She prodded the screen to bring the message back up. Scrolled down to discover a PS: which she hadn’t hitherto noticed.

PS: Here is a link to a report in
The Times
. I thought it might have some bearing on your ‘case’.

Only dimly aware that Ad was offering her a pile of steaming noodles on a plate, she followed the link to an article – only hours old – where the headline announced:

MAN BRUTALLY SLAIN: NO WITNESS. NO MOTIVE. NO CLUES.

HAS THE PORT-SIDE POLTERGEIST CLAIMED A THIRD?

Unable to smell the tamarind and garlic aroma of Ad’s cooking, George was utterly absorbed in the four paragraphs of writing that reported that an African man, as yet unidentified, had been found in Ramsgate harbour, in a mysteriously bloodless but gruesome scene. He was described as having been ‘eviscerated’.

Eviscerated.

‘Where have I heard that?’ she muttered. It was not a word used in everyday parlance, and yet she felt certain it had been spoken by someone in the course of her day to day dealings only very recently. She rifled through the flotsam and jetsam of her short term memory. Nothing.

‘George! I’ve been standing here for a good minute, holding your plate like an idiot,’ Ad said.

Finally, she looked up to find him glowering over her. Still wearing his apron. Her old, grubby Margate tea towel over his shoulder. The lenses of his glasses tear-streaked. Brandishing two full plates. Steam rising in fragrant coils from the heaps of food.

Her senses started to return incrementally. Ad was annoyed at her. She could hear Jasper singing in the living room to a pop song on the television. Her stomach was growling loudly.

With the pursed-lipped expression of an underappreciated cook, Ad set his own dinner down and lowered her plate towards her – encroaching on her personal space with this culinary threat. ‘Will you move your phone off the placemat so I can put this down?’ He spoke between gritted teeth. ‘It might be quite nice to eat before it goes stone cold.’

Eviscerated. The Port-side Poltergeist claiming a third. All at once, George realised. Their killer had crossed the North Sea.

‘Eat without me!’ she said, leaping up from the table. Bundling her phone and the spare keys to van den Bergen’s place into her bag. ‘I’ve got to ring van den Bergen. I’ve got to go.’

CHAPTER 54

Berlin, Germany, 1989

‘How do you think I feel, you inane fucking lump? I feel like shit,’ Mama said.

She pulled the covers over her shoulders, shivering. All that was visible above the satin throw was Mama’s head. It was a small head. Like a child’s, without the outlandish hairstyle or makeup. Bald, but for wisps of remaining hair that needed to be clippered off. Her skin, the colour of strong urine. Mama was a canary down the mineshaft of her own health.

Veronica jerked the gold brocade curtains open with a degree of optimism.

‘Come on, Mama,’ she said. ‘You’ve been in the dark too long. It’s not good for you.’ She approached the bed and sat on the edge. Took her mother’s thin hand into hers, knowing she was too weak to eschew the physical contact; knowing it would undoubtedly make Mama almost as uncomfortable as the side effects of the chemotherapy. ‘They say fresh air and sunlight are powerful medicines.’

‘I’ve got fucking leukaemia, not a cold, silly bitch.’

Veronica stared into her mother’s eyes. The clarity had gone. Her irises seemed smudged and muddy. The yellow tinge to the corners spelled liver failure, as did this turmeric hue to her skin – a strange litmus test, demonstrating the extent to which the disease had got a hold of her.

‘I’ll help you get dressed. You’re seeing the oncologist today,’ she said, tugging the covers from her quaking charge.

Even in her loose red satin pyjamas, she could see there was little left to her mother. Always petite, the illness had carved away her meagre flesh to reveal the bony nubs and hollows of a small, near-skeleton. Trying on death for size. Whereas Veronica, who took after her father physically, had grown in inverse proportion like a robust sapling. When she started university in September, she dreaded the prospect of having to stoop in the company of the boys. Still, despite what Mama said about her being a big lump, boys liked long limbs, didn’t they?

‘I don’t want to go to see that know-all prick,’ Mama said, clutching her lower legs. ‘The morphine doesn’t help. I’m in agony. What’s the point? I’m dying, aren’t I?’

Lifting her mother carefully, Veronica plumped the cushions and made her sit. Proffered her a cup of mint tea. ‘Drink, Mama.’

No surprise when her mother batted the china cup out of her hand. A spray of hot liquid scalding Veronica’s hand, as she tried to grab the cup before it fell to the ground.

The wry smile on her mother’s lips told her that Mama was pleased she still had a little control, even if it were only over how much food and drink she put into her failing body.

‘Who’s been in touch?’ she asked, clutching her knees.

‘Nobody,’ Veronica lied. ‘Sorry.’

When they had first received the news that Mama had leukaemia, the incredible floral displays, cards and gifts had started to arrive immediately. Naturally, Mama had made sure everybody knew. The PR company was engaged immediately before treatment had even started. Papa had colluded, too, feeling that if Mama were to stage a production within the theatre of the unwell, it had better be lavish. The gossip columns gorged on the news. Heidi Schwartz hadn’t just been diagnosed with the disease, she had been struck down by it. She was not merely receiving treatment. She was waging her own personal war on cancer. Fundraisers and awareness campaigns and tribute exhibitions in galleries of world cities had ensued. Darling Heidi will not fight alone. There was Heidi in the pages of fashion magazines after her first bout of chemo, looking frail but fabulous, head to toe in Hermès silk. There was Heidi in the celebrity pages of Europe’s newspapers, on the arm of the supermodels of the day, bravely getting out of bed for charity functions, even when there were no five-figure sums of money on offer.

But now? Now that Mama was too sick to make it downstairs, and since Papa had been away again, nipping and tucking Hollywood royalty until their faces had been entirely expunged of any character whatsoever, Veronica was in charge.

‘But Frau Schwartz wants the flowers brought to her room,’ the Turkish housekeeper had said, starting to ascend the grand staircase in their Charlottenburg villa. The arrangement of yellow roses she carried was so large, it almost dwarfed the diminutive, matronly woman.

Veronica had snatched the roses away. ‘No, Hilal,’ she had said. ‘No more flowers. Mama has developed allergies because of the chemotherapy. She’s vulnerable to infection. You are not to take anything up to her, do you understand? I’ll look after her now. Only me. Understand? If you contaminate her room, she could catch something and die and it will be all your fault. Do you want that to happen?’

The housekeeper’s expression, sceptical and almost mocking at first, soon transformed to one of dismay. ‘Oh, no, Fräulein Schwartz. What would you like me to do with the gifts?’

‘Send them to an old people’s home. Anywhere. I don’t care. The cards can go in the bin. Really, even the slightest germ could kill Mama and you’ll be one more
Gastarbeiter
out of a job. You don’t want to go back to Turkey, do you?’

Hilal had shaken her head vociferously.

‘Well, then.’

Over the weeks, she had watched her mama become more and more disillusioned at having been dropped by her illustrious friends. Disillusionment turned to despondency, turned to despair. Nobody could contradict the view of the world that Veronica presented to her mother. Papa was absent, as usual – busy with his various mistresses and business. Now, in the claustrophobic Renaissance glitz of the bedroom, her once vivacious, social butterfly of a mother was solely dependent on her daughter for company and care. It felt like a triumph, of sorts. Particularly since Veronica would travel to London in September to begin her degree. Mama would have nobody at all.

‘Wear the comfortable tracksuit,’ Veronica said, laying a cheap, synthetic outfit on the bed that looked like it had been made for a child.

‘I’m not wearing that,’ Mama said. ‘It’s hideous.’

‘It’s comfortable. You’ll wear it.’

‘You’re punishing me. You’re a big, spotty bitch. If I had the energy—’

‘You’d what?’ Veronica treated her mother to a look of bemusement and pity. ‘You’d hit me? Really? When I’m taking such good care of you?!’

All Mama had left in her arsenal was disgruntled silence. She maintained that silence during the drive through town. Stuck in traffic several lanes deep for a while because of some demonstration or other – the way ahead up towards the Brandenburg Gate blocked almost entirely. The silence was soon broken, then.

‘Gustav, what’s going on here?’ she asked the driver. ‘Why aren’t we moving?’

Gustav did not even turn around. All that was visible of him was his chauffeur’s hat and that horrible, creased, red neck of his. Dandruff on his shoulders. Hard, narrowed eyes observing her through the rear view mirror said driving for Mama was not the best job he had ever had. ‘Seems there are people on The Wall itself, Frau Schwartz. Some kind of a to-do. I know a good cut-through. Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worried. That’s what I fucking pay you for.’ Her voice was shaky. She lolled against Veronica for support.

Veronica, meanwhile, wondered what it was people were protesting about. To the left of the Brandenburg Gate, in the distance, the shining, winking silver orb of the TV tower in East Berlin had a view of everyone and everything, she always imagined. The world at its base. Wisdom in that all-seeing orb. It would know the truth of what was going on way up ahead; why there were police everywhere and people apparently allowed to clamber onto The Wall without being gunned down.

On either side of the car, banners – fashioned from bedsheets and sticks, by the looks, carried up the Strasse des 17 Juni by young people in amongst those droves of ordinary Berliners – talked of togetherness. Reunification. Freedom. The very things Veronica dreamed of for herself, though she was concerned with a reunification of sorts with her parents. The same people from whom she longed for freedom. Equally bound to and repelled by Mama and Papa, whose genes she carried within her and would gladly have stripped from the very fabric of her being had scientists invented such a novel and thorough cleansing technique.

September. She would be free in September. For now, she anticipated that they would arrive at the oncologist’s private practice and be told that Mama only had weeks to live. She and Mama would spend those weeks alone at home, being reunited. Discovering a mother/daughter bond that may never have been there from the start, but which would blossom now, for a gloriously short time.

They arrived at the oncologist’s private practice, whereupon the oncologist reported with some enthusiasm that Veronica was a perfect match as a bone marrow donor for her mother.

‘Fantastic news, isn’t it?’ he told Mama, beaming. ‘The blood sample we took from your daughter last time shows she will be able to donate with a high likelihood of success, Frau Schwartz.’

At her side, looking like a tracksuit-clad coat hanger in a Gucci headscarf, her mother started to weep loudly. ‘Oh, thank you, God! Thank you. Thank you. I’m going to live.’ She turned to Veronica and grabbed at her arm, though the strength of old was no longer in her fingers. ‘You look so much like your father, but you’ve got your mother’s blood in your veins.’

The heat leached out of Veronica’s body as the enormity of what the oncologist suggested registered with her. ‘Will it hurt?’ she asked, clutching the hem of her miniskirt.

‘I’m afraid it’s a very painful procedure,’ the doctor said. ‘But on the bright side, you get to be a hero!’

She glanced at her mother. It was as if all of her own vitality had poured back into this invalid, leaving her feeling drained, and in turn, injecting Mama with some of her old vivacity and spunk. Had she somehow transformed into the Georg Bendemann of Kafka’s
Judgment
? Doomed to be usurped by an ailing parent; the proper course of nature inverted by her mother’s triumph and her own downfall and death? Perhaps. Perhaps.

‘When I’m better, I’ll throw a party to celebrate like Berlin has never seen,’ Mama said, closing her eyes. A solitary tear trickling down her cheek. ‘Then, I’ll throw more in New York and London. If this isn’t worth celebrating, then I don’t know what is!’

At home, Papa was waiting.

‘I don’t want to do it,’ Veronica told him, as he sat stiffly in his study, sipping brandy whilst scanning a medical journal. ‘They said it would be agony, Papa. He said they had another match, in case I didn’t work out.’ She approached her father, hoping to appeal to whatever paternal instinct this distant man might have towards her. Touched the sleeve of his cashmere sweater. Finally, he met her pleading gaze. ‘Please, Papa. I’m only eighteen. I’ve got university to look forward to.’