Everything She Forgot (31 page)

“I don't know,” said Margaret. “I've been remembering things
since the crash—bits here and there, nothing significant, but enough to . . .”

She freed her hands from Ben's.

“It was such a long time ago,” said her father. “Maybe let it rest.”

Two tears flashed over Margaret's cheeks. She spoke very quietly. “I remember . . . that you're not my father.”

John was silent, but seemed to shrink further into himself.

Margaret's eyes filled with tears again. “I don't mean to be cruel, but I remember that . . . I remember that you're not . . .”

“Margaret?” said Ben, his brows furrowing.

He almost never called her by her full name.

Her cheeks were burning. She got up from the table, wiped her face, turned to the bureau, and picked up her car keys.

“Hang on, where are you going?” said Ben, following her into the hall, where she picked up her coat and pushed her feet into her boots.

The children appeared in the hall, their eyes wide; Eliot's mouth was smeared with chocolate.

“I'll be back soon,” said Margaret, half smiling at Ben as she left. She put on her coat, on the doorstep, and got into her car. It was cold and wet, frost glistening like dropped diamonds on the black pavements.

Ben pleaded with her through the closed car door, but she pulled out of the drive. As she merged on to the M11, she felt waves of frustration building up inside her. She knew it was madness and that Ben would be beside himself, but she just needed to be away and, inexplicable as it was, she wanted to see Maxwell.

At this time of night on Boxing Day, the traffic was light. It took her only thirty minutes to get to Whitechapel. She drove
carefully, calmly, not listening to music or the radio, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

For weeks, a chasm had been opening within her, and it felt as if, now, she was looking down clearly into it. She was realigning everything in her life: her husband, her father, her children, her work. She was putting everything in perspective; seeing it for what it truly was—seeing herself clearly for the first time.

The hospital parking lot was crowded, but she finally found a space, then walked, hands in her parka and head down, into the hospital, mechanically following the path to Maxwell's ward, unsure why she was here, but knowing that she needed to be.

The door to the ICU was locked and she buzzed to be let in. It was warm and she shook off her coat. The stench of disinfectant and bleach was overpowering, as if to disguise the smell of the sick people.

The door clicked open. It was Harvey, the charge nurse, and Margaret's face lit up.

“Margaret, he's gone . . .”

She put a hand over her mouth and Harvey's face blurred before her.

The breath was stolen from her again. She wasn't sure if she could cope with Maxwell's death. She didn't even know him, but the loss would be unbearable. She felt Harvey's hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, calm down. Are you all right? He's been moved, is all. They took him out of his coma, and he came round. I was going to call you. He's in Ward 21. He's not saying much yet, but we have high hopes.”

“So I can go and see him?”

“Sure. Do you know where to go?”

“I . . . I . . . sure,” said Margaret, thanking him and making her way back to the lift. She was trembling all over, and the muscles of her back were sore. Alone in the lift she stretched to try to loosen up.

Ward 21 was large and busy. Visitors were whispering to relatives and the windows had been rimmed in tinsel. Margaret looked left and right as she walked along the corridor, searching for Maxwell. A nurse with a large smile stopped her.

“You all right? You lost?”

“I was looking for Maxwell Brown.”

“Come w'me.”

In the last bay on the right, the nurse stopped and pointed at the faraway bed. “That's your man. It was touch and go with him for a while and he's not out of the woods yet, but we think he's pulled through. He's yet to say a word to us, so let's see if you can make a difference.”

The nurse squeezed Margaret's arm and left her.

Margaret stood for a moment, staring at the pale face on the far side of the ward. She walked slowly forward. From this distance, with his eyes closed, he was featureless. He was now wearing a pajama top, his hands outside the bedclothes, no longer connected to a respirator and heart monitor.

At his bedside, she stared at him. His pajama jacket was open, exposing his shiny burned chest. His eyes were closed as they had been on each of her visits, but she could tell, even from his sleeping state, that consciousness had returned to him. He seemed changed. He turned toward her, and his eyes moved around under his eyelids, as if he were dreaming.

The other patients in the ward were older. An old woman was asleep in her chair, her head back and her mouth open.
Another was spitting into a cardboard bowl, and clearing her throat repeatedly. A television, fixed high up above the windows, was showing a game show, but with the sound turned down low.

Margaret took a deep breath, and just as she exhaled, Maxwell's waxy eyelids opened. His eyes were beautiful: an impossible blue. They struggled to focus for a second and then fixed on Margaret.

She smiled at him, tears filling her eyes.

His lashless lids widened.

“Hello,” Margaret began, suddenly lost for words. “You don't know me, but I've been visiting you. You were in a coma. There was a pileup on the motorway and you saved my life. I'm pleased to meet you, finally.”

Margaret sat down at his bedside and looked up into his face. The burns no longer fazed her and she almost did not see them. His blue eyes moved over her hair and her face and down to her hands. She smiled awkwardly, aware that she was being studied, observed. She put her hand on the edge of his bed.

“I . . . I wanted to thank you, that was all. If you need anything, you must let me know.”

The man lifted his left hand and Margaret watched it, wondering if he wanted water, but instead he took hold of her wrist and squeezed it, hard. His face flushed and the white tentacles stood out paler and more pronounced.

“Please, stop,” Margaret said, not yet loud enough for anyone else to hear. “You're hurting me.”

CHAPTER 30

I
T WAS A TEN-HOUR DRIVE TO
P
ENZANCE.
R
ICH
ARD HAD LEFT
Glasgow in the middle of the night.

Peter had wanted to send someone else, but Richard had argued that they didn't know
exactly
where George was headed. Family knew family and although Richard wasn't close to George, he felt he would have a fair idea of his movements. The plan was to get to Penzance and try to find brother George and then the Watts' money.

Peter also wanted George to be dealt with, and this preyed on Richard's mind as he crossed the border and joined the M6 after Carlisle. He was sure that he could find his brother, but he was not sure that he wanted to.

Richard had killed before, but he wasn't sure he would be able to kill his own brother. Killing family was entirely different from killing other people. Blood was blood, despite everything else. Richard had fantasized about killing his father, and he was sure that every one of them—every single McLaughlin, not to mention all the poor folks in the East End—had shared that fantasy. Yet even when his father smashed a wine bottle across his face, Richard had been unable to wound him
back. Even Peter had not had the courage to commit that great crime, or even get close.

George wasn't just family. George was no Brendan McLaughlin. He was the baby and, useless as he was, Richard knew that George had a heart of gold. He had stepped out of line, but violent retribution just seemed wrong. Big George with his baby blues. He was taller than all of them but gentle as their mother had been. Yet Peter had been adamant.

In the past few years, Peter had become as unrelenting and as cold as their father. Before his last trial, Peter had been cut by a rival gang leader. He had tried to give Peter a Glasgow smile, slicing from the corner of his mouth to his ear, but Peter had fought him off. Peter had the strength of a mule and, lying on his back in an East End side street, he had lifted the man wielding the knife right up into the air. Slashing from a distance, the man had been unable to be so accurate and had nicked Peter's jugular vein instead, covering himself in a fountain of McLaughlin blood, before he ran away from what he believed had been an accidental murder.

Yet Peter had lived, and still wore the gnarled white and red scar that blossomed from his neck like spring buds as a mark of his infallibility. “No one takes down Peter McLaughlin,” he would now boom with regularity. “I can lose half my blood and still come back and take my revenge. No one can take me down.”

Richard had eaten nothing since the day before. The thought of catching up with George and doing Peter's bidding sickened him, but he also knew that if he didn't, then the Watt brothers were sure to take revenge on the McLaughlins. It was find George or be killed; kill or be killed. As he drove, Richard tried to think of ways that he could let George escape while persuading Peter that the deed had been done.

R
ichard was fourteen and George nearly eight. They were playing football in the street with boys Richard's age and older. Richard's mother had told him to take George with him out to play, but George wasn't as good at football as the older boys and Richard resented having to babysit him. George had been accidentally kicked twice when going in for a tackle and cried and now stood on the sidelines, his knees blue from the cold, his nose running and washing a thin, clean trail to his upper lip.

Richard was good at football. He ran fast, his hard-soled boots slipping on the tarmac, firing goal after goal between the makeshift posts, which were marked by two sweaters on the road.

A kitten approached George, who crouched down to pet it. It was blue-gray with pale blue eyes, and George took a green wooden yo-yo from his pocket and trailed it along the pavement. The little cat bounced in pursuit, reaching out to catch it with one paw and then the other. George picked the kitten up and sat on the sidelines stroking it until its purrs made its whole body vibrate.

It was teatime, and one by one the boys playing football were called inside by their mothers, who leaned out of tenement windows shouting their names. Only when the others were gone, taking the ball with them, did George and Richard make their way back home. George carried the cat in his arms.

“You can't take that in. It might belong to someone.”

“It doesn't. It's an orphan.”

“A stray, you mean.”

George nodded; he licked the drips from his runny nose with the point of his tongue.

“Well, either way you won't be allowed.”

“It can kill the mice.”

“They end up dead anyway.”

“I want to keep him. I'll keep him hidden.”

“As if you could. Cats smell. They get into everything. You'll only get into trouble.”

“I just want something to love that'll love me back.” George went on holding the kitten in his arms like a baby.

Richard said nothing as they opened the door and climbed upstairs, Richard trailing his fingers against the blue-and-white-tiled wall. It was Tuesday and the stairs had been scrubbed with bleach. George tried to hide the kitten under his sweater but it clawed at the wool, pulling it out of shape.

As soon as they entered the lobby, the brothers saw that their father was home. He was not expected this early on a weekday, but his coat was hanging in the hall, and his hobnail boots were unlaced and sitting on a sheet of newspaper, waiting to be polished. They could hear their mother in the kitchen, emitting small sighs as she chopped vegetables, and then, from the sitting room, came the heavy stink of their father's thin cigars.

When Brendan was home, it was as if he took up more than his share of air. Richard stood in the hall, feeling the pain in his lungs. He had been playing football and then climbed three sets of stairs and now he made an effort not to breathe too hard, as he pushed his brother into their bedroom.

George sniffed and set the cat down on the bed, where it arched its back and stared at them both.

“You'll never be able to hide it. You best take it outside again.”

“No. I'm going to keep it here.”

“What'll you feed it?”

“I'll save bits from my dinner. I can give it my milk.”

“Well, I'm telling you now, you'll get found out.”

“Why? Will you tell?”

Richard looked at George, his lips pressed together. The truth was that if it was Peter's cat, Richard would have told quickly, but then Peter would only have wanted to torment it.

Dinner was silent, punctuated only by the sound of Brendan demanding things from their mother: more potatoes, hot tea, a sharper knife. When their father rose from the table to go to the bathroom, Richard and George made their way back to the bedroom. They had each secreted some food in a napkin: a piece of a beef and half a sausage from the stew, a boiled potato and a sliver of apple.

As soon as they entered the room, the cat pounced on to the bed, tail up and eyes wide.

“I don't think cats eat this stuff,” said Richard. “They like fish and milk.”

“There's some salmon in the cupboard.”

“As if you'd be able to get that.”

Nevertheless, when they opened up the napkins, the cat began to mew, pacing back and forth on the bed, looking at the napkin, which George held in his hands.

“Whssssh,” said Richard, tapping the cat's head, over the sound of the toilet flushing.

“Don't hurt him.”

“
He'll
hear.”

George let the napkin sit on the bed and the cat sniffed and pawed at it, then sat down on its haunches, looking at it. George held out a piece of meat, but it turned its face away, then continued to meow, sitting up on the bed.

“What's going on?”

The boys turned to find their father at the door, hands on his hips. Richard stood with his back to the bed, but George
turned and scooped the cat into his arms, which Richard considered nothing short of stupidity.

“No animals in this house.”

“But . . .” George began, and the rage came to Brendan's eyes, bloodshot whites showing behind his watery transparent blue. “It's my pet,” he managed, brushing against Richard's arm, as if for support.

Richard said nothing.

“Your pet, is it?”

Brendan reached out and took the cat from George's hands, taking it by the scruff of the neck between finger and thumb. He swung his arm like a cricketer and threw the cat against the wall.

It fell to the floor, gray and limp as the string mop their mother used on the close stairs.

Brendan turned to smile at them both. “Now get that dead cat out of here.”

R
ichard's eyes were hot from staring at the road and his limbs were cramping after the long drive. He had stopped twice, briefly to eat and drink coffee, but he had been staring at motorways for over nine hours and his whole body felt fatigued.

As he drove into Cornwall it was lunchtime and his empty stomach contracted. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, but Cornwall was a relief after the monotony of the road. As the gray flank of the English Channel came into view, he remembered how crushed George had been after the kitten died. He had been white-faced before their father, but had not shed a tear until bedtime, when Richard had heard him crying in the darkness, whispering: “I only wanted something to love.”

Something to love.
Richard slowed down as he drove past cottages with terra-cotta roofs and whitewashed stone walls. He pulled up and rolled down the window, taking a long breath of the sea air and listening to the peal of seagulls, as he considered where to go first in search of George. He took the map out of the glove compartment and glanced at it and the road signs around him.

Outside the newsagent's, a man was standing, spreading a map out over the bonnet of his car. There was a breeze, which lifted the scant hairs from the man's head, and also the corners of the map. The man fidgeted, smoothing the hair over his scalp only to lose control of the map, which flapped in his face.

Despite himself, Richard smiled at the man's struggle, because even from this distance he could tell the man was annoyed and his movements were funny, trying his best to control the large, unruly map with his short arms.

Finally, the man began to fold the map. In the wind, this also took some time as he made an effort to refold it along the original creases. Watching was a rare meditation for Richard: it took him out of himself.

It was only when the short man tossed the map into the car and straightened his shirt and tie that Richard realized he had seen him somewhere before. As the man climbed into his old Ford, Richard recognized the journalist Tam Driscoll had been whispering to. Richard had been on the desk when he came to pay his bill, insisting on a receipt with his twitching eyes and mouth.

As the old Ford pulled away, Richard tossed his own map onto the floor and began to follow.