Veil of Darkness (34 page)

‘You can’t get near it for the heat.’

People are beating it off with their arms, even though they stand yards away, and everybody turns red with the glow, or black with the mounting embers.

‘It’s gonna get the car—stand back.’

Kirsty, like any normal mother, gathers up her children and dashes towards the reception building that is joined to the Gilcrests’ bungalow. She doesn’t pause to find Avril, Avril notices, watching her go. She doesn’t stop to think about Avril, and Kirsty’s supposed to be her friend.

The flames start licking the green Ford Sierra, the pride of Father’s life. All those Sunday mornings spent cleaning his car while Avril wandered back from Sunday school, the only girl in the street made to go, even in summer when beaches and picnics and barbecues in the garden beckoned. He would smile at her over his foamy bucket, stand back and regard his work with pride as trickles of water ran down the road and into the nearest gutter.

Mother would be inside, cooking the all-weather joint. The joint that would do them for the rest of the week, if she eked it out carefully enough.

Father’s Sierra goes with a boom and a series of weak splutters. The boot opens and briefly exposes Mother’s neat and careful packing. The two back doors crack and fall off, and there is Fluffy’s empty bed. Then the proper fire takes over and threatens to spread to the rest of the site.

A sensible cry of ‘keep clear’ goes up, and nobody has to be told twice.

‘They never stood a hope in hell,’ says one of the winter residents grimly.

‘They wouldn’t have known a thing,’ says another, as if that makes dying OK, which it does—what more in life can anyone hope for than a quick and painless death?

‘I doubt we’ll ever know the cause,’ the fireman tells Avril afterwards as they sit in the cafe sipping tea brewed by Mrs Gilcrest’s girl. Avril has covered her silk nightdress with an old towelling dressing gown she hasn’t yet got round to throwing out. ‘Some of these vans are so damn flimsy they burn like paper, leave nothing but ashes. But I’ve seen this before, the gas going up, someone only has to forget—’

‘But my mother never forgot,’ says Avril, wanting to take some blame.

The charcoal-faced fireman shakes his noble head. All firemen are noble to Avril, like ambulance drivers, airline pilots and vets. ‘Well, someone forgot last night. Perhaps it was your father. Was he sometimes absent-minded?’

‘He could be,’ Avril muses sadly, ‘at times, but with Mother behind him he never had much chance. Could it be someone who knows Graham? There are people around like that; they were hanging around the court. They send anonymous letters, make abusive phone calls, push filth through people’s letter boxes that’s what Mother was dreading happening. Perhaps some lunatic was out for revenge.’

The fireman, doubtful, compresses his lips. ‘That’s not very likely…’

‘Yes, but—’

‘You’ve been to hell and back just lately.’ The fireman puts a strong arm around her shoulders. ‘Mrs Gilcrest told us. What with all that trouble with your brother, and now this. You poor kid. I doubt if you can take much more.’

So Avril collapses completely against his manly chest. She is too confused to do much else.

‘They were going home this morning,’ she weeps. ‘This was their last night at the Happy Stay. If only they’d gone yesterday, or when they were meant to go last month.’

‘That’s fate for you,’ says the fireman grimly.

‘I didn’t touch that caravan, Kirsty, you know that, you saw me.’

Other than this half admission their talk is innocent, like neighbours commiserating over a fence.

‘I know, I know. Was it real? And now I really don’t know… to lose both your parents like that, and then there was Ed, and all this with Graham.’

‘And Fluffy is still missing.’

‘I know.’ Kirsty shivers. ‘It’s awful, all this grief, on you.’

There is the strain of careful avoidance. They tiptoe round one another politely.

‘Perhaps we should never have come here,’ says Avril, ‘perhaps there’s a curse on the place.’

‘Perhaps there is,’ says Kirsty, tucking up the children, hoping for a couple of hours of sleep before they get up to face the new day.

Dawn breaks as they sit at the table trying not to notice the steam coming up from the ground and the black, charred gap ten doors along. The remains of the Bluebird have been scraped away. The nearest caravans, though still standing, are streaked with black fire damage, so the whole area, never a picture, now resembles some wartime bomb site, and one can imagine red poppies growing here one day in a happier future. Twisting through the cracks with the brambles.

I never made my peace with her,’ says Avril mournfully.

‘She wasn’t a peaceful person, Avril,’ Kirsty gently reminds her friend.

‘And poor Father. So helpless.’ Avril brings a hand to cover the gasp in her mouth. ‘I wonder if Fluffy knew, if she had some sixth sense?’

‘Animals often do.’

‘I wonder if we’ll ever find her?’

‘She’s been gone a long time now,’ says Kirsty.

It is time to prepare for a change.

It is no longer necessary for Avril or Kirsty to exist in a shabby mobile home. It isn’t seemly for Avril to have to be reminded constantly of the tragedy ten doors along, and the children have been badly disturbed by the whole gruesome business.

But Kirsty’s children have settled down happily in the small local school, and she is reluctant to move them out of the catchment area. She doubts she will ever want to go to live in London, like Bernie, whatever the success of
Magdalene
, however much money she makes.

‘But don’t let me influence you, Avril. You must do what you want to do, especially now. You have no family to speak of, no roots, no commitments.’

‘I’d never have gone back to Huyton anyway.’

Avril feels ashamed because she has nowhere to go. Neither has she made any admirable plans, unlike Kirsty, who wants to better herself. Perhaps, when the final payment is made and she knows exactly how much she’s worth, Avril might decide to run a small business: a boutique, a travel agency, a mobile disco. Something glamorous like that, something that would fit with her new, upmarket image, but until then she dreads being left to live alone.

‘You can stay with me till you make up your mind. But I’m going to rent to start with, until I’m sure where I want to be,’ says Kirsty. ‘They’re so cheap at this time of year. I’ve got it all in my head,’ she laughs, ‘a lovely big farmhouse with open fires and a stream in the garden.’

‘I could help you with the children,’ says Avril, hating to seem clingy. ‘And if Trevor should come calling again, two of us would be better than one. Together we could outwit him.’

‘If only we could find somewhere by Christmas.’

‘A proper Christmas,’ Avril dreams on. ‘A huge tree with needles. Tasteless decorations. No Queen’s speech. Stay in bed all day if we like, just eating chocolate.’

‘Christmas is going to be hell for you.’

‘I know,’ Avril remembers all those years—church on Christmas morning and being dragged away from her presents. And then off to Granny’s cold house, doing the endless sprouts, and the dragged-out formal mealtimes, silence after lunch for the Queen, Grandpa calling from his bed, Father and Mother at each other’s throats, one Babycham allowed, that’s all, and everyone watching her drink it in case she has a habit, like Graham’s.

Thinking of Graham in his cell, hopefully, squeezed in with three or four others. They get turkey and Christmas pudding, she knows, but Avril imagines what it’s like cold, stringy and reheated from frozen. Peas hard and brown and gravy gone sticky. No presents for Graham—Granny and Grandpa won’t send him any, they only gave handkerchiefs with AS on the corners, and that was to Avril, who had done nothing wrong.

Hah. No booze for Graham this year.

Hah. No rampages with the lads.

Hah. No raucous football match and home with frost on his scarf, while Avril stayed in watching telly, being told not to be greedy every time she looked at the dates.

But is Kirsty speaking in tongues? Is Kirsty still possessed? Has she forgotten that malignant demonry on the night of the fire? Is she trying to pretend nothing happened, nothing was said? Kirsty is self-sufficient now and puffed up with new self-confidence. Kirsty doesn’t want Avril hanging around her new little family. Look how she tore off with the kids when she felt their lives were in danger, never a thought for Avril, who feels hurt and outraged by that, and it was Avril’s parents going up in smoke. It was Avril’s parents who couldn’t be identified because they were so badly charred.

No sooner has Avril’s anger burned out when something else comes along to stir it up, some other resentment to corrode her system, as if there is no end to it all. Perhaps she should spend Christmas day in retreat, follow Magdalene’s example: eat simply, celebrate calmly, wallow in sorrow and repentance before a couple of plain white candles, and only go out after dark, dressed to kill.

R
ORY COBURN HAS WORKED
very hard to get where he is today and he needs to maintain his outstanding success in order to pay off three former wives. He has no intention of marrying again. His bachelor existence, with Bentley to look after him, suits him and his career well. Fraternizing with the great and the good, attending important social events, being seen networking with the powerful—this essential side to his work took its toll on his marriages, but he is happier now than he has been in years.

He has the respect of his colleagues.

He has the love and loyalty of his authors.

He has made enemies along the way, but that is inevitable.

Yes, a contented man with a highly successful business behind him.

That was until the phone call.

That incredible, horrendous phone call, which made him shrivel up on his bed and wrap himself up tight in the sheets like a reluctant chrysalis.

He gets out of bed, eventually, still shaking, and drives his Model T Ford at speed over to the mews flat. Bernie is pacing the drawing room, flounced in a Hollywood-style negligée that frills to the floor in diminishing blues, pulling hard on a cigarette.

‘You didn’t write it,’ says Rory, still trying to take in the enormity of Bernie’s confession. ‘You couldn’t have written it, could you?’ He slaps his forehead with his hand. ‘Jesus Christ, I knew it, I knew it!’

‘Have a drink, Rory,’ says Bernie. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

‘It comes pretty damn near,’ says Rory, imagining the publicity, the shame and the scandal, all his credibility down the drain in one little gurgling whirlpool. How many authors would he lose? All of them most probably. Nobody wants to be associated with an agent who is a fool and a prat. And, oh God, how they pushed her, how they exploited this girl, particularly the fact that she’s young and Irish and beautiful, the personality thing overtook the book. If she’d been old and covered with warts the book would have had to stand alone, and it would have done, magnificently.
Magdalene
never needed the hype that Coburn and Watts sought to give it in order to make more money, attract more punters, impress the media and the publishers, both UK and foreign. They picked up the baton and ran with it.

The world is more fascinated by this waiflike author than with the blasted novel itself. And it all happened so swiftly and naturally, as if some sorcery was in the air.

With a shaking hand Rory pours a stiff brandy. He is not his old suave self tonight. Bentley is up to his old tricks again and Rory can’t take much more.

This ‘author’ might be startlingly beautiful, fun-loving and childlike, but other than that she is one-dimensional. Spend more than one hour in her company and you yawn and seek diversions. Semi-literate, uncultured and disgracefully educated, Bernie displays an astonishing disinterest in anything that doesn’t directly infringe upon her life, and she is an unlikely candidate for change.

‘Tell me this is an attention ploy.’

‘Why would I want your attention, Rory?’

‘If you didn’t write
Magdalene
, who did?’

‘God knows. All Kirsty did was rewrite it.’

‘
Kirsty
?’ His face burns. This goes from bad to worse. He will not be conned a second time. He settles down in a large leather armchair and regards Bernadette through narrowed eyes. ‘Kirsty? Your friend, the chambermaid at the hotel? You are telling me that this girl rewrote a novel that already existed?’

Bernadette slows down her pacing and stops before the false-flame fire (top of the range): it crackles and burns with a magical reality. She seems to be drinking gin, or water. Energized by whatever it is, her green eyes, which habitually sparkle, are as excited as emeralds tonight, her cheeks have two pink patches in the centre of each and her lips are slightly parted in the way that makes Rory think of orgasm. What the hell is she about? Where is this weirdo coming from?

‘Yes. Kirsty Hoskins. She found the old book in the hotel library. She’s a battered wife with two kids who came to work in Cornwall the same day as I did. She’s still there now, living in squalor in some caravan park.’

‘Kirsty and Avril’—the names are familiar—‘your “partners”. Those women you split the money with.’

‘Well, now you know the reasons for that.’

‘So where does Avril come in? What part is she supposed to have played in this ridiculous scam?’

‘Avril typed it and corrected the spelling mistakes.’

‘Aha, an intellectual obviously. And where does Avril work, might I ask? As a lavatory attendant, a laundry maid?’

‘Avril worked in the office.’

Rory lays his empty glass on the shiny arm of his chair. Bentley was missing from the house when he went up to bed earlier tonight. Rory had pressed redial on the phone only to hear the familiar and numbingly painful reply of the Boys’ Own Agency hotline. He splays one hand on each arm, spreading his fingers to relax them. But his finely drawn features sharpen. ‘And why have you suddenly decided to come out with the truth?’

‘Because I couldn’t do it.’ For the first time Bernadette shows some emotion, her voice shakes slightly. ‘The strain, the telly and then this tour. And Clementine thinks something’s up, she’s not stupid, and with nobody to speak to I felt so helpless and alone.’