The Son-in-Law (14 page)

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

‘Was it respectable?’

Her cheeks dimpled. ‘Well . . . let’s just say that the mayor swore to run my father out of town and on more than one occasion dead rats were posted through our letterbox. And now, I think I have the right to ask you the same question; though I can guess where you hail from. It’s still there, in your voice.’

‘You’ve a good ear. Gateshead. Born, bred and buggered off to London half a lifetime ago.’

Much of her hair had broken free from the plait. It was a gypsy’s face, Joseph decided, with a wide mouth and untidy eyebrows. Her smile was open and youthful, revealing slightly crooked teeth. She was animated, and yet in some way she had an engaging tranquillity. He found himself guessing at her past.
Okay, environmental activist with overtones of feminist. Must nip
up and see if there’s a sticker on her kombi. I bet it says ‘Stop the
Bloody Whaling’. Single mother? Maybe, fits the image . . . but
where’s the kid? With its dad? Maybe she’s hiding from a violent
man? Probably. Christ, she’ll run a mile when she finds out who
I am.

‘So,’ he said casually, ‘you got children?’

Rosie let her mouth drop open in a pantomime of shock. ‘Breaching our agreement already? I don’t believe it! Heavens, men are so
nosy
.’

Joseph smiled sheepishly.

‘I’ll answer that one,’ conceded Rosie, ‘but as a penalty you have to answer two of mine.’

‘Two? Okay.’

‘No kids. Not a single one. Now it’s my turn.’

‘Fire away.’

She let her gaze travel over him. ‘I see you’re wearing a wedding ring. How long have you owned that?’

‘Fifteen years,’ Joseph replied. He fiddled briefly with the gold band on his finger. He’d first worn it when Zoe slipped it onto his finger in the church, and there it stayed until it was taken from him and dropped into a named bag.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Rosie was watching his face. ‘That was a stupid question.’

‘Not at all. And the second one?’

‘Far tougher.’ A roguish smile. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

Twelve

Hannah

Every year, the children decorated the Christmas tree, and I filled stockings which we successfully spirited into bedrooms—though we knew that Scarlet and Theo were suspending their disbelief about Father Christmas. Freddie and I did our best, but we were dismally conscious that we hadn’t Zoe’s flair for celebration; and this year the impending court hearing was a sheer, jagged cliff that blocked our light and robbed us of sleep.

On Christmas Eve, the whole family ventured out to the Minster for Carols by Candlelight. It was not what I’d call a success. Theo tipped scalding wax all over his hand while Ben kept up a banal stream-of-consciousness in an echoing stage whisper—‘When can we go home, Hannah? When, when,
when
? This is boring . . . Yeuch, there’s a big blob of chewing gum under this seat.’ Eventually he began to pick his nose. It kept him occupied, so I pretended not to notice.

Scarlet wasn’t bored, though. Quite the contrary. She amused herself by making eyes at one of the older choristers each time he processed past her. He was an ectomorph with fair hair, and he drew a sultry gaze from under her lashes and a wicked grin after he’d passed. Scarlet thinks I don’t notice these things. She forgets that I was thirteen-going-on-fourteen, once upon a time.

We managed to keep smiling all through Christmas, but then we had the New Year celebrations to face. It was no longer a matter of fireworks and Auld Lang Syne for us. It hurt. It hurt terribly every year, while all the world celebrated, because Zoe was born on 31 December. People still say to me, ‘It will be easier next year,’ but it never is. We tried to make it a celebration of her life and do something special—a winter picnic or a boat ride on the Ouse. This time the children asked to be taken ice skating at the temporary rink under Clifford’s Tower. Frederick and I drank mulled wine in the café and watched people zipping and twirling past under frosty lights, within jeering distance of the spot where—not so long ago—public hangings were held.

For a little while we almost forgot that we were grandparents, or that in a few days we would be facing Joseph Scott across a courtroom. We held hands, and remembered our girl.

•

We hadn’t time to catch our breath before the new school term began. Sometimes I felt I was too old for lunchboxes and playground arguments and stationery lists. The term was Ben’s first in the reception class, which had a January intake. That fact alone—our baby Ben, a schoolboy!—was enough to make quivering jellies of his adoring grandparents.

We needn’t have fretted; Ben took to school like an old hand. It was Theo who struggled. On the second morning he failed to come down for breakfast at all, and I found a small lump under his duvet.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, sitting by the lump. ‘Has something happened?’

No answer.

‘Theo, why are you hiding under there?’

‘I just want to stay at home with you,’ he moaned.

‘I won’t be here. I have to go to work this morning.’

‘I want to stay with Gramps. Please? Please, Hannah?’

So we gave him the day off school. That was a first. I have never, ever let a child truant before. Freddie reported that he hung around him like a wet dishcloth. Several times that evening I saw him peering out of the sitting-room window—surreptitiously, as though afraid of being seen. He was doing that when I had a call from his class teacher, an inspiring Irish girl called Nuala Brennan. She was ringing, she explained, because Theo wasn’t himself.

‘I agree,’ I said gratefully, and confessed the true reason for his day off school.

‘That’s interesting, because I feel he’s been disengaged from his friends since last term,’ she said. ‘Sits alone, doesn’t join in.’

‘He’s never been very social though, has he?’

‘He’s also been rising to the bait in the playground. There were a couple of fights just before Christmas, and I’m afraid he pushed another child right over. I was waiting to see whether he’d be better this term, but it hasn’t been a promising start.’

‘Oh dear.’ My anxiety doubled.

‘Yesterday I asked them all to do some creative writing, but ten minutes later Theo was still looking out of the window. He jumped a mile when I tapped on his desk. He hadn’t even opened the work book.’

‘I’ll speak to him.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that at this stage. I’m not calling to complain. I just wondered whether there might be something going on at home?’

‘There is,’ I said, and described Scott’s application. ‘But we haven’t even told Theo.’

There was a short silence. ‘Well, I’m picking that’s behind all this,’ Nuala said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe he’s overheard something, or maybe he’s simply aware of your tension. How about we just support him for a little while? He’s a bright student; he’ll catch up in a jiffy.’

•

The last day before court was hideous. I had a departmental meeting, and I honestly don’t know whether I spoke sense or not. Behind my mask of normality I was obsessing, stressing, going over and over the possible outcomes until my head felt ready to erupt with the pressure. Meanwhile, Frederick tried to bury himself in a project with the local amateur dramatic society. He’d agreed to direct a play by one of their stalwarts, and was reading through it. By seven o’clock he seemed dazed. He marched into the kitchen, staring fixedly ahead, so completely lost in thought that he stumbled into the table.

‘Stupid,’ he growled, angry with himself.

I poured us both a stiff gin, and handed one to him. ‘It’s the thought of him that’s stirring us up.’

‘Hatred and fear,’ proclaimed Frederick, with a self-deprecating curl of his lip. ‘Fear and hatred. They’re brothers, my love. No, not just brothers! They’re twins. Unholy twins.’ He knocked back half the glass as he sank down at the table. ‘This business certainly opens the wounds.’

Ben hurtled in, skidding across the floor and coming to rest with his fluffy head jammed into Freddie’s stomach. ‘Will you tell us one of your stories, Gramps?’

‘Well, young man,’ said Freddie, tweaking his grandson’s ear, ‘I think that’s on the cards. I know a good one about three children who live on the planet Gob.’

‘The planet Gob!’ giggled Ben, putting a small hand across his mouth.

‘It’s a lovely place, Gob. An exclusive holiday destination for the rich and famous of the galaxy of Bogbrush. Where’s your brother?’

Ben stuck his finger up his nose. ‘He’s standing at the sitting-room window, watching people walk up and down the street. He’s being really boring and he told me to go away and then he pushed me into the wall and I hate his bloody guts.’

‘No! Don’t hate his guts, they haven’t done anything to you—
ahem
! A gentleman does not pick his nose. Go and fetch Theo for me. Tell him we’ll have hot chocolate and a story before bed.’

While Frederick weaved his nonsense magic for the boys, I nipped upstairs to change Theo’s sheets. The poor child’s bed had been saturated again. I was turning the mattress when Scarlet wandered in. She was wearing an old blue nightshirt that declared
I’m cute,
with a cartoon of a baby monkey. This childish garment stopped six inches short of her knees, but she no longer looked like a child. Her legs were long and slender in quite an adult way. This seemed a startling juxtaposition, and it occurred to me—not for the first time—that Scarlet was growing up to be a real beauty.

‘Want a hand?’ she asked. Without waiting for a reply, she picked up a plastic mattress protector and unfurled it competently across the bed. We stretched it out, tucking in a side each.

‘Theo nearly stopped doing this,’ she said.

‘I know. It’s a great shame.’

‘He
hates
it. He got invited to a birthday sleepover at Dillon’s house last weekend. He pretended he wasn’t allowed to go, but really he was scared he’d wet the bed.’

‘Oh, no! I could have explained to Dillon’s mother, couldn’t I? She seems a sensible person. Plenty of boys have accidents.’

‘It’s not Dillon’s mother that’s the problem,’ explained Scarlet, forcing Theo’s pillow into a case. ‘It’s the other boys. Can you imagine how embarrassed he’d be?’

I began to wrestle with the duvet. Scarlet stood and watched me with round, fearful eyes. She was hugging the pillow in front of her. ‘It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?’

I felt my mouth go dry. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘It’ll be all right, though?’

‘I’m sure it will.’

She punched the pillow. ‘I’ll tell the judge. He’ll have to listen to me.’

‘You know you aren’t allowed to come. You don’t want to run into your father, do you?’

She didn’t answer the question. ‘Dick Turpin’s buried just outside.’

I blinked. ‘What
are
you talking about?’

‘Dick Turpin, the highwayman. He’s buried around the back of the county court building. Didn’t you know that? He and his horse have a grave there. After he was hanged, people kept digging him up—I suppose because they hated him so much. In the end they put his body in this stuff that made it dissolve, and buried him in that graveyard. Mind you, the truth is he never had a horse called Black Bess, and he was really ugly, and he was actually a total psychopath. He was finally arrested for shooting a chicken.’

‘Good heavens. How d’you know all this? Do they teach you these savoury facts at school?’

She shrugged. Her expression was studiedly blank, a sure sign that she was hiding something. It only took me a couple of seconds to work it out. Of course. Joseph Scott had a flair for the human side of history, peopling his lessons with the most vibrant and notorious characters. In conversation around the lunch table he’d been far more interested in what made Wellington tick than in the minutiae of his battles. It was one of the things Frederick used to like so much about the man; they both found humanity in the driest of topics. Of course Scott would have regaled ten-year-old Scarlet with the real tale of Dick Turpin.

‘I won’t see him,’ she said abruptly. ‘Whatever the judge says, I won’t go. Full stop. End of story.’

I sat down on Theo’s bed and patted it. She joined me stiffly, leaving a space between us. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Gramps and I will keep you safe.’

‘Think you can?’

‘Of course! You just let us do the worrying.’

She brushed the heel of her hand across her eyes. ‘Other kids think adults are in control of things. Even
adults
think they are in control of things. But I know for a fact that they aren’t. No matter how hard they try, adults can’t keep us safe. They can’t even keep
themselves
safe.’

I had no argument. After all, Scarlet knew. The myth of her parents’ invulnerability and goodness had been crushed at the age of ten. She knew that adults were neither perfect, nor omnipotent, nor immortal.

She bent over her knees, hands clasped. I sat beside her, feeling helpless. I wasn’t a tactile person, as Frederick was. I was not a natural earth-granny; I had no instinctive urge to hold and hug children. Perhaps that was a fault in me. I sometimes tortured myself with the thought that Zoe’s problems were caused by my being so painfully undemonstrative. My grandchildren taught me to cuddle—especially Ben, the baby who I raised—but still I preferred to let them process their thoughts without my smothering.

‘I just wish it hadn’t happened,’ said Scarlet flatly. ‘I wish I still had my family like it was. I wish I could wake up and find it was all a dream, and Mum is still alive.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Oh, my little one. Me too.’

•

We had friends for dinner, the night the world stopped turning. I remember it all with cinematic clarity. I remember every face, every word, everything we ate. It was June, but too cool to sit outside. There were eight of us squeezed around the kitchen table: Jane, her man of the moment, and a quartet of eccentric theatre friends.

I’d taken a tutorial that day, in which we’d discussed Schrödinger’s cat.

‘Ah,’ said Jane’s latest squeeze. He was a gynaecologist, and also a know-all. ‘Now. This is the one that’s both dead
and
alive in the box, until it’s observed. I’ve always found the concept intriguing.’