Checkmate (35 page)

The march was a glorious, chaotic fiasco. A delicious shambles. A riot. It all worked perfectly. We in the
L.M.
called in an anonymous warning to say a number of our operatives had infiltrated the group of marchers and had deadly weapons and a couple of explosive devices ready to go off at the appropriate moment. And the police had gone for it. They didn't try to covertly survey the crowd for known
L.M.
members. They didn't try to separate the marchers into groups that could be scanned and searched. They had tried that the last time there'd been an anti-discrimination march and we'd really been present that time and had made them pay. So this time they panicked. How they panicked. It made worldwide news.

And Callie Rose was in the middle of it all.

I was so proud when I caught sight of her on the TV. She looked afraid and, more importantly, angry in the brief glimpse I caught of her. Very angry. And the next time we get together, I'll let her know just who's responsible for the police charging in like that. Not just this current government, but the man who gave the police such authority when he was in power. The man who wanted to give the police carte blanche to do what they wanted to 'immigrants' and 'undesirables'. The one, the only, Kamal Hadley.

On the news they announced that two people had died in the earlier riots. One of them was a retired steelworker called Paul Butler who apparently died of a heart attack after being Tasered. The newsreader made it sound like he was announcing the arrival of the next train. Paul didn't deserve what happened to him. No one deserved to be treated like that. I didn't know the other guy but he was someone's husband, someone's son. We didn't do anything wrong. All we did was stop a little traffic. Was that worth the deaths of two people? The police had no right to behave as they did. The government had no right. We didn't do anything wrong.

I watched the news, feeling my heart get harder, my soul grow colder.

They had no right.

Is this how my dad felt when his dad was arrested for the Dundale Shopping Centre bombing, for something he didn't do? Is this how it burned inside when Dad was booted out of school through no fault of his own? Is this what he experienced when he realized that no matter what he did, he'd never be good enough, smart enough –
Cross
enough? For the first time since I learned who my dad really was, I felt I understood him – just a little better. I still loathed him, but I was beginning to understand him, something I never expected in a million years.

How ironic.

The silver hatchback had been tailing me from the time I turned into my road. At least, that's when I became aware of it. Who was it this time? Some half-arsed government official trailing me and Meggie in the wake of the riots a fortnight ago? Did they really believe either of us had anything to do with it? I thought all that trailing and surveillance nonsense had finished years ago. They should know by now that neither Meggie nor I have anything whatsoever to do with the
L.M.
I walked slowly, the bag of shopping in each hand threatening to cut my fingers off. What should I do? Keep walking? Stop and let the driver know that I knew I was being followed? If only I'd been in my car. Then I could've driven off and lost them in the town traffic. But I was walking and the shopping bags were getting heavier with each step.

If I went home, I'd lead the person following me straight to my front door. But they already knew where I lived if they were waiting for me in my street.

What to do?

I'd go home. It had to be safer there than out on the street. I had to force myself to carry on walking at the same pace so as not to raise any suspicions.

'Walk normally, Sephy. Everything's fine,' I told myself.

As I approached my front door, I transferred the bag in my right hand to my left and fished into my cavernous coat pocket for my keys. I touched each, feeling for the one that would open the front door. I kept my hand in my pocket until the last possible moment. My hand was shaking as I inserted the key, but luckily I didn't drop it. The next instant, I was in the house like a rat up a drainpipe, slamming the door shut behind me. The shopping hit the floor a fraction of a moment later as I dashed into the living room. Peering through the net curtains, I saw I wasn't being paranoid. The silver car that'd been following me pulled up in front of my house. A Cross woman sat behind the wheel. As she turned to scrutinize the house, I sprang back from the window.

Had she seen me?

What was I thinking of? Of course she'd seen me. She'd been following me for goodness' sake.

Don't panic, Persephone.

The days of people following you home to hurl abuse at you are all but over. There was still the occasional word or two, the more frequent stare, but nothing on the scale of the abuse I'd suffered when Callie Rose was younger. At least, not in this part of the country.

The woman in the car sat staring up at the house. How much longer was she going to watch me? Hell, if she'd come to vilify me, she'd find I could give as good as I got – and then some more. Enough was already too much. Flinging open the front door, I marched down the garden path. The woman inside the car looked nervous but she didn't drive away as I'd expected her to. I tapped smartly on the window. The woman pressed a button and the window purred its way downwards.

'Can I help you?' I asked with belligerence.

'You're Persephone Hadley?' asked the woman.

'Who wants to know?' I asked, peering in through the open car window.

'My name is Celine Labinjah.'

The name meant nothing to me and it probably showed in my expression. I stepped back as the woman switched off her engine. She got out of her car and came around to stand before me, a brown envelope in her hand.

'My dad was Jack Labinjah.'

She said it like that would clear up the whole mystery. It didn't.

'My dad was a prison officer at Hewmett Prison. Callum McGregor gave my dad a letter to pass on to you before he died,' said Celine.

My body turned hollow and my heart dropped down to my heels. Jack Labinjah. I remembered him now. I remembered everything about him
–
his deep voice, his trim moustache, his sad, brown eyes as he handed me Callum's hateful, hurtful letter. The letter that had exploded every naive, fairy-tale notion I'd held about love. Until I learned how hard it was to love someone else if you couldn't love yourself.

Suspicion turned to unease as I regarded Celine. 'What d'you want?'

'My father died five months ago,' said Celine. 'Before he died he made me promise to find you and give you something.'

All words of sympathy or condolences for the death of her father were swept from my head. 'Give me what?'

'This envelope with your name on it,' said Celine.

'No thank you,' I said, already turning away. The last time Jack Labinjah had delivered something to my door, he'd devastated my life. I wanted nothing else from him. As I made my way back inside, Celine came running up behind me. I hoped to make it inside my house before she reached me but it didn't happen.

'Look, I don't like this any more than you do,' Celine said. She tried to shove the envelope in her hand towards me. I childishly placed my hands behind my back.

'I'm not leaving here until you take it. I promised my dad,' she said again.

'What is it?'

'I don't know much about it,' Celine said with impatience. 'Dad told me that some guy called Callum McGregor wrote a letter to his girlfriend. You?'

I didn't answer.

'Anyway, Dad said that the guy, Callum, scrunched up his first letter, threw it away and then rewrote it. He asked Dad to deliver his second one, but after Callum died, Dad retrieved his first letter and kept it.'

'Why?'

'Dad promised to deliver the second letter but he knew the first one was the real one.'

'I don't understand. How did he know that?'

'This guy Callum told him so. Apparently, Callum said the first letter he wrote to you was . . . selfish? He made Dad promise to deliver the second letter he wrote.'

'So why bother delivering this first letter at all?' I asked bitterly. 'I don't want it and obviously . . . Callum didn't want me to have it either.'

'Dad said he wouldn't rest in peace until you got it. And he made me promise to deliver it. That's all I know.'

When I didn't move, Celine used her free hand to take my right hand and thrust the envelope into it.

'It's going straight in the bin,' I told her.

'That's your prerogative. I've done what Dad asked me to do,' said Celine.

I watched her get back into her car and drive away. I re-entered the house, the envelope making the palm of my hand sweat. I walked into the kitchen, ready to put the damn thing in the bin.

But I couldn't.

I just couldn't.

My heart leaped forward like a skimmed stone as I stared down at the envelope. My stomach began to churn and turn and burn inside. I tore open the envelope and fished out the contents – despising myself for my weakness. I should burn the thing, tear it up unread. Why put myself through more pain from that man?

I remembered a time, just after Sonny left for good but before Nathan, when I sat in my bedroom late one night and forced myself to remember Callum and me. I revisited every memory
–
good or bad. Some made me laugh out loud, a few made me cry, most made me smile. But with each memory, I became more and more convinced that Callum cared about me the way I cared about him. Each memory made the pain of Callum's letter shrink just that bit more. And when that hateful letter was stolen, yes, I was terrified that it might turn up, raking up the past along with it, but deep down I was glad it was gone. When the days turned to weeks and weeks slipped into months, I relaxed in the knowledge that the letter had almost certainly gone for good. And with the letter no longer in the way to cloud my judgement, it was easier to see the truth.

Callum loved me.

I was as sure of that now as I was when I was a teenager, watching him die before my eyes. I didn't need or want another letter from Callum telling me that what I considered true memories were nothing more than the wistful, wishful imaginings of a teenage girl trapped in a woman's body.

I held two sheets of once-crumpled but now semi-smooth paper, yellow with age. The paper felt almost like a relief map beneath my fingers, full of subtle ridges and defined lines. My heart lurched painfully as I recognized the bold, defiant upright strokes that were Callum's handwriting. I'd already played this scene and it wasn't so great the first time that I wanted to repeat the experience. But Callum's words took me by the hand and led me on, however reluctantly. I told myself I had nothing to fear. This letter couldn't possibly hurt me any more than Callum's first one.

Couldn't possibly.

So why was fear, heavy as a paperweight, sitting in the pit of my stomach?

Calling myself all kinds of a bloody fool, I half sat, half
slumped down onto a kitchen chair and began to read.

I sat statue still. Had Celine Labinjah, the guard's daughter, left a minute ago? An hour? A day? Every thought and feeling I possessed had been torn out of me. I sat, waiting to feel something, almost desperate for the pain to start. But there was nothing. Why had he done it? Why hadn't Callum just sent me the letter I had in my hand? Why the other one, dripping with poison from each and every word?

Why, Callum? Why?

Did you really believe that a letter full of hatred would help me move on? Is that it? Did you really think that telling me you hated me would help me get on with my life? Did you? Then you didn't know me at all. But then how could you? We were children together and teenagers trying and failing to stay together. The world only had two colours for us – black and white. There were no shades of grey. There were no shades. We had romance and drama and dreams and wishful thinking. What we never had was time – time to grow up and grow old together.

All those things you called out to me as you stood on the scaffold, that terrible black hood covering your face . . .

'I love you too, Sephy . . .'

And I believed you.

And then I didn't. Your deadly letter saw to that. All the years spent wondering whether your final words were supposed to negate that letter or vice versa? Or was it just when that last moment came, you needed to tell me the truth?

'I love you too, Sephy . . .'

I stopped believing. I convinced myself I'd heard what my heart wanted me to hear. Another lie. That evil letter . . . How could you profess to love me and still have written something like that? Was it your attempt at one last honourable deed? To atone? To feel better about yourself, about us? How could you have got me so wrong? When I got that toxic letter, it was as if you had ripped out my soul before turning your back on me like everyone else.

The rest of the world I could've coped with. I didn't care about the rest of the world. But you? I cared about you. I
loved
you. And when I thought you loved me, no one could touch me. I had your love and our daughter – and that's all I wanted or needed. Until I received your letter.

When I thought I'd lost you, had never had you, I lost myself. I closed down and hid away from everything, even my own daughter. She had to almost die to bring me crashing back to life. And it was all for nothing. For a letter you didn't mean. Your misguided attempt to be noble. You loved me, Callum. You really loved me and yet you couldn't tell me so.

You were in the
L.M.
for too long, Callum. Did you really believe that your hatred rather than your love would set me free? Did you really believe I could have any kind of life hating your memory instead of loving all thoughts of the brief time we had together?

You got me so wrong, Callum. But I did the same. I should've believed in what my heart said, not what my eyes read. I tried. God knows I tried. But for far too long my memories were like trying to pin down fog. And your letter was real. I could feel it, the smooth, cool texture of the paper beneath my fingers, the tingle of the creases beneath my fingertips where the letter had been folded. I could see it, black ink on white paper, your bold, upright handwriting. I could smell it, the merest hint of you, as long as I smelled with my imagination. I could hear your thoughts as you wrote it, or at least, I thought I could. I thought I could hear the laughter and scorn inside you as you wrote. I should've had more faith. But faith is so easy to hold onto when you don't need it. And so hard to find when you do. I failed in that as I failed in so many things.

Where do I go from here?

Oh, Callum, you fool. I loved you so very much, just as you loved me. But look at the mess we both made of our lives.

Oh, Callum . . .