Faith (23 page)

‘If I’d been there I would have dug deeper,’ Julia said eagerly.

‘I’m sure Stuart knew that and it was part of the reason why he wanted to meet me alone,’ David laughed. ‘But he sent his love to you and the kids. We’ll see him again pretty soon. He’s staying at a hotel near Baker Street.’

‘You should have asked him to come and stay with us,’ she said a little indignantly.

David smiled, for he knew Julia enjoyed having guests to stay. Their home was a big Victorian house, and they’d lavished a lot of love and care on it. She often said she wished they had less busy lives so they could entertain more.

‘I wonder what she’s like,’ she mused, snuggling up beside David.

‘Older than him. But I’ve kind of got the idea what she used to be like. Remember when we had that holiday in Providencia?’

‘How could I forget? That was where Abi got started.’ Julia grinned, thinking back to the white sand and hot sun of the Columbian island.

David smiled at the memory too. They hadn’t been married very long and Julia’s parents had been very concerned when she didn’t return to England after the holiday. She got herself a job as health and safety officer with the company and stayed. In fact Abi, their daughter, was actually born in Columbia.

Stuart had been with them in Providencia too. He met Jane there, a willowy brunette with legs that went on for ever. They seemed to be perfect for each other, and for once Stuart looked as if he believed this romance might be for life. But the night Jane returned to England, David had walked along the beach with Stuart in the moonlight. He remembered sensing his friend was sad, and he tried to cheer him up by suggesting he could cover for him so Stuart could shoot off home to be with Jane.

To his surprise Stuart looked almost affronted. ‘I don’t really want to be with her, I was just fooled into thinking I did for a while because she reminded me of an old flame,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Jane was quite special. Fun, easy to be with and great in bed too. But I can’t take it any further. Jane deserves to be loved for herself, not as a substitute for someone else I still hanker after.’

‘So I guess Laura was the girl Stuart hankered after,’ David explained.

‘But Jane was lovely,’ Julia mused. ‘A perfect figure, lovely hair and skin. She was so lively and funny too, and clearly swept off her feet by Stuart. How tragic is that! To have your heart broken by a man because you reminded him of someone else.’

‘I agreed I’d help,’ David said hesitantly, afraid Julia would think that was a bad idea.

‘I’m glad of that,’ she said, surprising him. ‘Let’s just hope she deserves having two such lovely men trying to spring her.’

Stuart found it surprisingly easy to track down Laura’s sister. He had gone to the newspaper’s archives the day after seeing Lena and David, and chatted up a young woman in the archives, posing as a childhood friend of Meggie’s. She dug out the story, and finding it was written by a reporter she knew well, she said she would ring Stuart with any information after she’d spoken to him.

Stuart had not seen the newspaper interview with June Wilmslow before, and he took a photocopy of it away with him to study it. He sincerely hoped that Laura didn’t know of its existence either, for her mother had portrayed herself as a woman who had been cruelly done by. Her age was stated as being sixty-eight, but in the photograph she looked far older, and it said she was living in severely reduced circumstances and suffering from emphysema. She claimed that her late husband had taken her and her children to live in his lovely home, and given them everything, but Laura never accepted him and resented that he expected she should do her share of the chores and didn’t allow her out raking the streets. She said Laura had always been trouble and she finally ran away because Vincent admonished her for stealing.

She went on to say that Laura came home again when she heard Vincent was dead because she wanted a share of his money. ‘She didn’t care about me and her brother and sisters, or what we were going to do if Vince’s sons got it all,’ June was quoted as saying. ‘She turned my Meggie and Ivy against me, and later, when I ended up in a couple of rooms, she couldn’t care less. She married a rich man just for his money. Money was all she cared about.’

She then went on to say she wasn’t surprised to hear Laura had lied to everyone about her real family, because she’d liked to make out she was better than anyone else even when she was small.

Stuart was shocked by the article. He found it hard to believe any mother would say such damning things about one of her children, even if they were true. But knowing that Sunday tabloids bent facts to create sensation, he decided to keep an open mind until he’d had it all confirmed or denied by Meggie.

He was fully prepared that the girl in the archives might come back saying that the reporter had no record of where Meggie lived, or even of June’s address. Even if he did have the information it was quite likely he’d say it was unethical to pass on an address, and that Stuart could write into the newspaper and ask that they forward his letter on to Meggie.

Yet to his surprise and delight the girl came back to him the following morning and gave him an address in Catford. ‘Mick said he doubted she would still be there,’ she said. ‘But maybe someone there will know where she’s moved to.’

Stuart decided to go straight over to Catford. Meggie would probably be at work, but he could at least ask around to discover whether she was still living there, and he was sure that by looking at the house from outside he’d get an idea of what she was like as a person.

Back in the seventies he’d worked in several of Jackie’s properties in Catford and neighbouring Lewisham. She used to search out and buy large dilapidated Victorian houses, gut them and convert them into self-contained flats which she then sold on. He had an image in his mind of Meggie living in a couple of rooms in one of the dreary terraces he knew abounded in that area; in fact he visualized her living in conditions only marginally better than her mother’s.

Yet when he got off the train at Catford Bridge, he found that Bargery Road was away from the area he knew, and part of a development built in Edwardian times for the respectable middle classes, with a mixture of semi-detached and terraced houses. Unlike neighbouring Lewisham, which had suffered a slide down the respectability slope through the post-war housing shortage when so many houses began to be let out for multiple occupation, this part of Catford appeared to have retained its refinement.

There were many trees in Bargery Road and the houses were attractive, with bay windows, and pointed eaves, and most had retained stained-glass door lights, tiled porches and other original features. A few were a little run down, but the majority were either substantial family homes, or flat conversions that were well maintained and looked as if they would be expensive to buy.

Stuart checked the address twice before he was sure he’d found the right house, for number 40 was one of the nicest houses in the road. Unlike many of the others where the front garden had been paved for off-street parking, this had a very pretty garden with trees, a tiny manicured lawn and beautiful flower beds. The front door was painted a glossy dark green with a highly polished brass lion’s-head knocker and letterbox.

Opening the wrought-iron gate, Stuart walked up a red brick path to the front door. He noted that there were voile blinds at all the sash windows, partially pulled down to show off the bottom edge trimmed with lace.

The bell rang in the distance, and a dog barked with it, rushing to the front door.

‘Get back in here, Lucy,’ he heard a woman call out, and the sound of a door closing as if she’d shut the dog in.

Stuart smoothed down his jacket and prepared himself to be rebuffed. He knew by the paintwork and the general care of the house that it had been this way for several years, and therefore Meggie might have only rented a room here for a while.

The moment the door was opened he knew immediately that the woman was Laura’s sister, for the similarity was striking. She was a fraction taller than Laura, perhaps five feet eight, and her hair was dark brown, cut in a sleek shoulder-length bob, but she was slender, with identical wide brown eyes and a generous, well-shaped mouth.

‘You are Meggie, aren’t you?’ he blurted out. He had rehearsed what he was going to say if the door was answered, but seeing Meggie in front of him had thrown him completely. ‘I’m Stuart Macgregor, an old friend of Laura’s.’

Her expression, which had been open, suddenly tightened. ‘Go away,’ she said and moved to shut the door.

‘Meggie, I am not a journalist,’ he said quickly, assuming that was her fear. ‘I have a letter in my pocket from Laura which authorizes me to speak to people on her behalf. Please let me show it to you.’

The door didn’t close any further, but she was still using it as a shield.

‘I’m trying to help her get an appeal,’ he went on. ‘I just want to talk to you to discover how you feel about her and her murder conviction. It’s okay if you aren’t on her side, I don’t want to try and talk you round. I just want to know the truth about her.’

‘Let me see the letter first,’ she said, her voice cracking a little as if she was frightened.

Stuart took it out of his pocket and handed it to her.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said after reading it. ‘I don’t think I can be any help to you, I didn’t know the woman who was killed, or any of Laura’s friends.’

The house was as neat inside as out: pale blue carpet in the hall and on the stairs, blue striped wallpaper up to a glossy white dado rail, and above the rail another blue and white paper.

As he followed Meggie towards the kitchen at the back of the house he felt he had walked into a Laura Ashley catalogue. He caught a glimpse of the sitting room: large cream buttoned-back Chesterfields, an original fireplace with a beautiful tiled surround. Everything was soft and feminine – even the white dog that bounded out of the kitchen looked like a fluffy soft toy.

‘What a pretty house,’ Stuart said, bending to stroke the dog. ‘And you are a very pretty pooch too! What breed are you?’

He knew instinctively there was no man living there, and in all probability few men, if any, ever came into the house as it had an ordered, almost anti-male feel about it. Yet Meggie didn’t look the type to be a man hater – she might be wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, but her sandals were dainty, strappy ones, her toe nails painted pink, and she was wearing makeup. She wasn’t as beautiful as Laura, her face was flatter and her nose bigger, but she had a sexy look about her. She might be in her forties but her figure was perfect, a washboard stomach and pert breasts. He had often observed that women who didn’t like men usually hid their bodies under baggy, drab clothes.

‘A Bichon cross poodle,’ Meggie said. ‘She’s usually quite nervous with men, but she seems to like you. Do sit down.’

As Stuart sat down on one of the pine kitchen chairs, the dog jumped up on to his lap and tried to lick his face. Meggie smiled. ‘That’s a first! She never wants to get on anyone’s lap but mine. But push her down if you don’t like it.’

‘I love dogs,’ Stuart said truthfully. ‘I often prefer them to people. There isn’t a downside to them, is there? Not unless you count having to take them out for walks even when it’s raining.’

‘Lucy won’t go out in the rain,’ Meggie said, and came closer to him to stroke the dog’s ears. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee? And will you start by explaining how you found me, and what makes you want to try and help Laura?’

Stuart said he’d like some coffee and then launched into his explanation about how he used to work for Jackie and only heard about her death recently, his belief that Laura was innocent and how long he’d known her.

‘You’re
that
Stuart!’ Meggie said incredulously. ‘I didn’t connect at first, but then I never knew his surname.’

‘What does “that Stuart” mean?’ he smiled. ‘Did she tell you terrible tales about me?’

‘No, quite the reverse,’ Meggie said and gave him a shy smile. ‘You were one of her all-time greatest regrets. I’m surprised you want to help her, she always said she did the dirty on you.’

‘I got over that,’ he said, and then went on to tell Meggie how he got her address. ‘I got the impression from that brief quote from you in the newspaper that you didn’t entirely go along with your mother’s views,’ he ended up.

‘I certainly didn’t. Mum would do or say anything for a few quid,’ Meggie said, her expression one of utter distaste. ‘I haven’t spoken to her since she gave that interview. I tried very hard to block it because it just wasn’t true, but as you saw, I didn’t succeed. They didn’t even report exactly what I had said, which was that if our mother had been a better one, Laura would never have reinvented herself.’

‘I am at a distinct disadvantage,’ Stuart explained. ‘You see, it was only very recently that Laura admitted to me the truth about her childhood. Up till then I knew nothing of you, Ivy and Freddy. I realize now what a wrench it was for her to leave you, and why she felt it necessary to keep up the fiction she’d created for herself, but there are still things I don’t quite understand.’

‘So you believed her “fiction”?’

Stuart nodded.

Meggie chuckled. ‘She managed it then. I used to tease her by saying she’d slip up one day.’

‘You knew about it?’ Stuart exclaimed.

‘Of course I did. I didn’t like it at first, it felt like she was ashamed of me too. But eventually I saw advantages for myself – we’re all pretty self-centred when we’re young, aren’t we?’

Stuart was confused. ‘Are you saying that you were in touch with Laura all along?’

‘If by all along you mean right up till she was arrested for the murder, yes. But not the first few years after she left the house at Barnes. I was just a kid then, she disappeared and Mum didn’t have a clue where she was. She came back not long after Vincent died. Do you know about him?’

‘I know what he did to her, she wrote the whole thing down for me to read,’ Stuart said. ‘But I didn’t know she’d had any further contact with any of you after she left the house in Barnes. I hope that on my next visit she’ll tell me about the period between then and when I met her in ’72. You see, Meggie, that period of Laura’s life is just a blank to me. Okay, I got tiny glimpses of it through Jackie once I was working for her, like them working at the holiday camp and doing promotions together. But it was only a couple of days ago that I discovered Greg Brannigan put her through hell. Laura only ever told me that she left him because he had another woman.’