Motherlove (24 page)

‘Vicky!' she said, flustered. ‘Finished up there? I'll make some tea.'

‘You okay?' Polite, guarded.

Was she concerned for Gillian? It was Vicky who mattered, not Gillian, and not this Kelly Sheldon person. ‘I'm all right. But how about you?'

‘Me? I'm okay. Why?'

‘If you had a problem, you could talk to me, couldn't you?'

‘What?' Vicky's face twisted. ‘Talk?'

‘If anything happened, if you were upset—'

‘We don't talk. Like you not telling me I was adopted for twenty-two years.'

It was never-ending. Every day. Like some scab she had to pick.

‘Anyway.' Vicky opened the bureau drawer, searching for an envelope. ‘I've got a letter to post.'

‘No, don't take it yet. It can wait a moment. Sit down. I want to us to talk now.' That touch of firmness that might have made her a good teacher. The mother daughter ties were still there. The girl sighed and sat down, folding her arms.

Gillian pulled out one of the old albums. Not to open, just as a prop. She perched on the sofa and stroked the closed book. ‘I've been looking at our old family photographs.'

‘Family.'

Gillian ignored the jibe. ‘Looking at pictures of my little girl. You were a happy child, Vicky…'

A bitter smile.

Gillian went on. ‘I know we had upsets and sulks and tears, sometimes with good reason.' Mostly the days when Joan was around. ‘But you were happy. You knew how to smile.'

No smile now, just a closed book.

‘And then you weren't happy. You were doing your A levels and you stopped being happy.'

‘You wanted me to work, didn't you? You made that clear often enough.'

‘I nagged you, I know. I wanted you to do well and I pushed too hard. I'm sorry. But that doesn't explain it.' She drew breath. ‘Was it a boy, maybe?'

Vicky's lip curled.

‘Did you fall for someone and he didn't want you? Was that it? And you never told me?'

‘For Christ's sake, no, I didn't fall for anyone.'

‘You can tell me, Vicky. You could have told me then. I know it would have been – not easy, bringing a friend here, with Gran—'

Vicky laughed. A harsh burst of outrage. ‘Joan!'

‘I know she'd have said something – Was that it? Did she say something cruel? Did she make you feel no one would want you?'

‘Listen, will you? It isn't a question of whether some silly boy or some slimy man wants me, it's whether I want them, all right? I've had enough of that, and that bitch Joan can play her games with someone else!'

Gillian turned cold inside. Joan. ‘Vicky, what games did Joan play? What did she do that made you so miserable?'

‘I am not miserable!'

‘You're not happy.'

‘Happy? How do you want me to show I'm happy? You'd feel better if I dropped my studies and went out whoring each night, is that it? That's what happiness is?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Oh really? Because I thought that was exactly what everyone wanted. Well, don't worry, I've tried it. Joan saw to that. And…' She stopped.

‘What? For God's sake, Vicky, what are you talking about?'

‘You really don't know, do you?'

‘No!' Appalled, Gillian braced herself for what was coming.

Vicky, trying to be disdainful, was going to talk, it seemed she couldn't help herself anymore.

‘That time, just after my seventeenth birthday, when Granny Wendle was ill?'

‘Yes, I remember. Terry and I went…' She and Terry had gone to see his mother who was dying in Romford. Stayed over a couple of days until she'd passed away. They hadn't taken Vicky. She had her studies and she was old enough now. It wasn't like leaving a baby with Joan. A seventeen-year-old girl would be safe enough, surely?

How could she have been so stupid?

‘What happened?'

‘What do you think? Joan thought it was time I had some fun and she'd better arrange it. She called Dana round and Gemma and Jade.'

Joan's willing lieutenants, Sandra's youngest daughter Dana, and her granddaughters by Sharon. Hard bitten, hard biting girls, as unlike Vicky as it was possible to be.

‘She told them to take me out,' Vicky continued. ‘Show me “a good time”. That's what she kept calling it. Gemma and Jade made me put on all this stupid make-up and some of their clothes, and I could see Joan and Dana laughing in the mirror. Except that I couldn't see much because they took my glasses away. I thought, “Okay, put up with it, go out for one night and maybe they'll shut up and leave me alone.” So when they'd got me all tarted up, they took me out. Joan was on the doorstep, winking at them, saying, “You make sure she has a good time, eh. Poor kid doesn't know nothing. You show her what it's all about.”'

Gillian covered her face with her hands.

‘They took me to a pub, kept trying to get me to drink but I didn't want to. I expect they put something in my Coke though. They were laughing as if they had, so I didn't drink that either.'

Vicky had started her account in an almost conversational tone, treating the episode with contempt. But she couldn't keep it up. The underlying hysteria was welling up, and she spoke now in staccato bursts, on the verge of hyperventilating. This was it, Gillian knew. It would all come out. Nothing could stop it now.

‘They produced this boy. They kept telling me he liked me. Pushing me at him. He was laughing, in on the joke with them, pulling faces at me. Making obscene gestures. It was disgusting. I ran. Locked myself in the toilet. Jade came to get me out and I said I was going home, so she said, “Yes, all right, we'll all go home with you.” But he came too. Craig.'

‘Craig Adams?' breathed Gillian. She knew him, him and his leering mates, the estate's future pimps, if they weren't already.

Vicky shook the question off. ‘When we got home, Joan pretended she couldn't see anything was wrong. Said she could tell everyone was having a great time. I tried to go to my room, but they wouldn't let me in. Kept saying how mean I was. To poor Craig. They pushed me into Joan's room with him and held the door shut. Joan watched telly. They locked me in with him so he could show me what was what.'

Gillian could feel her knees buckling. That drumming in her ears again. She was dreaming this. She must be dreaming. ‘He raped you.'

‘Oh no. We were having a good time.'

‘He raped you!'

‘No!' Vicky leapt to her feet. ‘No! He didn't have a gun or a knife. I decided to go along with it. It wasn't rape.'

‘It was! It was rape.'

‘No, I am not a rape victim!' Vicky pressed her hands to her chest, flinching from the word.

‘And Joan knew?'

‘Of course she knew. It was her little birthday treat. Make a woman of me.' Tears now, burning on Vicky's cheeks. Gillian could see them through the blur of her own.

‘Oh God, oh God.' She couldn't stop shaking. She wanted to vomit. ‘You didn't tell me.' She reached out, but Vicky turned her back.

The girl had been raped and hadn't said a word and Gillian had noticed nothing. She thought back, trying to recall. Her mother-in-law's funeral. Vicky had been silent, moody, but Gillian had been preoccupied, stressed with the arrangements and upset about the death of old Nora. She had put Vicky's sullenness down to teenage stroppiness and maybe the trauma of the first funeral she'd attended. But it hadn't been that at all. It had been the worst thing a mother could contemplate, barring the actual death of a child, and Gillian had done nothing. She had snapped at the girl.

And now, how was she to make up for it? She had wanted to put things right, but not this. Nothing could mend this.

She swallowed hard, took a deep shuddering breath and crossed to her daughter. ‘Vicky. I didn't know, I didn't know.' Again she put her arms out to hug her.

‘No!' Vicky fought her off, shoving hard. ‘Don't touch me! Don't touch me.' She was rigid, her hands claws.

‘Oh Vicky, I'm so sorry. Forgive me, I should have realised, but I was just so selfish! Oh God, and I was so determined – I was going to be such a perfect mother, give you such a perfect life and all I did was ruin things for you. When I read about you being found, that day, it was like a wonderful flower bursting open in front of me and all I've done was trample it down.'

‘Must be me, mustn't it,' snarled Vicky. ‘Mothers take one look at me and want to kill me.'

‘What?'

‘The first one did! My birth mother. At least she didn't drag it out for years.'

‘Oh Vicky, no one thought she wanted you dead. She left you, so carefully, where you would be found.'

‘No. No that's not right. What do you mean, no one thought? You… She… No, she left me for dead!'

‘I promise you, she didn't. I still have the cuttings, when you were found, when I first thought – hoped… She'd wrapped you up, and when I read it, I thought, I'll wrap you up cosily, too, I'll make everything lovely for you, just as she must have wanted to, but all the time—'

‘No! There was nothing about me being found. It was just about her, that woman, trying to kill me.'

‘Kill you? No, no, you've got it wrong, Vicky. I'll show you. I've got it, 20
th
March, 1990. I thought it was the beginning of a whole new world.'

‘20
th
? No. No. I've seen her! I've read the story. It was the 23
rd
!'

Vicky backed away. Gillian couldn't get her head round what her daughter was saying. Vicky had been abused, horribly, and telling the truth seemed to have unleashed total chaos in her mind.

‘I saw the woman,' Vicky insisted, in a whisper. ‘She claimed her baby was snatched, but no one believed her, because she made it up. I believed her story. I found her. Here, in Salley Meadows. I told her I was her daughter, and you know what? She slammed the door in my face. She thought I was lying, because she knew I should be dead. She gave birth to me, she tried to kill me and now she won't speak to me.'

Gillian steadied herself on the back of the sofa, trying to pin down one small fact in this whirlwind. ‘I think your birth mother is in Wales.'

‘What!'

Gillian groped among the sofa cushions and produced the rolled-up newspaper.

‘I think this must be about her.' Shaking, she held it out.

Vicky took it as if it would burn, unrolled it and stared at the front page.

Bright, attractive Kelly Sheldon, 22, is in Lyford on a mission…

‘I think it must be her,' said Gillian, faintly. She couldn't stand it any longer. She groped her way to the kitchen sink and threw up. Shivering, she ran the cold tap, soaked her face. She had no idea how to handle this. She ought to know what to do, driven by maternal instinct, but she was no mother. She was a selfish cow who had wanted a child. This was no house to bring a child into. She'd known it, always, even back then. You don't bring a child within a mile of Joan. If she had had a true mother's love for Vicky, she would have let another family take her.

She straightened, still shivering, and groped her way back to the living room.

No Vicky. The
Herald
lay on the floor, its first page ripped off. The front door was standing open.

Of course Vicky had to get out. They all did. Get out, away from here.

Gillian walked. The air was warm, cloying, not fresh. Traffic fumes hung in it. She couldn't breathe. Past the electricity substation, surrounded by broken wire. A nasty place.

It had been a nasty place forty odd years ago when she had lost her virginity in the long grass behind it. Learnt what it was all about, according to Joan. Arranged by Joan. Gillian's disgust and misery, and Joan's evil cackle. ‘Had a good time, girl? Always knew there was a slut in you.'

Why hadn't she seen it as rape back then? Why had she just endured, because it was one of those things? If she'd seen it straight, seen her mother for what she was, she'd never have left Vicky to suffer the same.

She stumbled on. St Mark's church. She hadn't realised she was coming here. Hadn't been in the place for fifteen years. She'd been regular to start with, with her new baby, guiltily giving thanks, but in the end, Philip Coley's soul-battering enthusiasm had been too much for her. And then he had gone and the congregation had withered, and there was no more sense of guilt to nag her.

By luck the door was open; she could hear voices in the vestry, some meeting going on. Usually, these days, the place was kept locked. There were no treasures to steal, but anything that wasn't fastened down would be ripped up or sprayed.

She walked up the central aisle. Plastic chairs and the smell not of sanctity but of polish and disinfectant. She stopped before the crucifix with its pink writhing Christ. A crown of iron thorns. Vivid glistening painted blood. Let the thorns bite deeper, she thought, staring up at the dead image. Let them hurt you like you hurt me. Why did you let it happen to my little girl? I hate you.