Sweetie (25 page)

‘I won’t bother with an answer to that just yet, Lizzie, there’s something we need to discuss urgently.’

Grace took a deep breath then and admitted, ‘You were right, it is him. It’s George.’

Potty and Sue turned to look at her in surprise.

Lizzie just smiled thinly.

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ she said quietly.

‘When I’m wrong, I say it. Put my hand up and admit it. Don’t fit me up, Lizzie. You were wrong 247

about Steven, but I didn’t speak up strongly enough.

This time, I know. Did you see him there yesterday, sitting at the back?’

The other women shook their heads.

‘Well, I did. And I’m telling you, he did it.’

‘This is all a bit of a turnaround, if you don’t mind me saying so?’ Potty coloured slightly as she spoke.

The last person she wanted to offend was Grace, but she had been shaken by the violence of the attack on Steven and was scared at the thought of yet another mistaken reprisal.

‘I was walking out of the church with John and I saw George sitting in the last pew at the back of the church. He had this awful leer on his face . . . a look I’ve seen before, believe me. I don’t know, I can’t really explain, but I felt it in my body then . . . it shot right through me. I felt sick and shaky, and I just
knew
.’

Grace lowered herself into a chair with a sigh.

The other women all nodded at her. They didn’t need convincing about the power of intuition, as women they relied on it, but what exactly made Grace so sure? She still had no real evidence, nothing concrete.

‘I think you might be letting your imagination run away with you, Grace.’ Potty looked away from her as she said it, nervous of Grace’s reaction.

‘What do ya mean, you’ve seen it before? Seen what?’ said Lizzie astutely.

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Grace looked down at the floor, wringing the folds of her skirt between her hands.

‘Looking at the facts,’ said Lizzie, as if to distance herself from Grace’s display of emotion, ‘we know that whoever done this is a heavy bloke. Both Lucy and Maria say he was a big fucker, nearly crushed them. He’s a drinker and a smoker and has that smell of industrial cleaner about him. Both girls said he whiffed of that polish they use on the floors at school.’ She held a finger up to itemise each fact as she reeled them off. ‘Plus George is a single bloke, and for the thirty odd years I’ve known him he’s never had a woman. And . . .’ she paused for emphasis ‘. . . he never turned up for crib on Monday night, the night he got hold of our Maria. I only found that out by chance when I was chatting to Harry. He was moaning that he didn’t have enough players to make up a team, and I said, why not? And he said, because bloody George didn’t turn up. Never misses a game usually.’

‘Doesn’t mean he did it, though,’ said Potty, ‘I mean, it could have just been because he had to lock up after the concert.’ For the first time she looked visibly afraid, like it was all becoming a bit too real.

Talking about someone’s possible guilt and giving them a beating was exciting, but close to the actual event her nerves were beginning to fail her.

‘What do you think, Sue?’ Grace asked softly.

Sue put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes.

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She looked shattered. ‘I don’t know what to think any more, to be honest, but my Terry did say that George had told him he’d been in the betting office when Kelly Gobber reckons he was out here. Mind you, she also said she’d seen Harry, but he was in the betting office all day so I don’t know who to believe.’

‘It’s not Harry,’ said Grace quietly, ‘it’s George.

You must listen, I know I’m right. Please let me finish what I have to say.’

She raised her head from staring at the floor and looked past all of them, travelling far away in her mind, back into the past – and describing it all for them.

‘I was dressed in my school uniform, I’d just got back from the last day of the spring term. Uncle Gary’s car was there so I was pleased someone was in, otherwise I’d have had to go and find my dad down one of the pubs. I hated the thought of that. All the smoke and beer and men shouting. Mum was out shopping with Gill for her new stuff for school. You know Gill, she always hated hand-me-downs!’ Grace forced a smile, but her eyes were dark with memories.

‘I trusted him, but he was different that day. He grabbed me and kissed me. My books fell to the floor, and my school pencil box broke and all the pens and pencils spilled out over the floor as it dropped from my bag. I tried to push him away, to make him stop, but he was too strong, too big . . . and he was Uncle Gary.

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‘He raped me that day, and he continued to rape me on a regular basis for the next three years. It only stopped when he was killed, when he crashed his car, pissed out of his head, and I was so
glad
. I never told anyone, not even Gill, although she seems to have known something was going on. But it would have killed Mum to hear it.’

A silence fell over the kitchen then. Lizzie looked at the floor, deep in thought, while Sue and Potty sat speechless.

Grace continued, ‘Don’t you see what I’m trying to say? Ever since that happened to me, I’ve felt I can tell when someone’s dodgy. I sense a difference in a man when he looks at me that way . . . the way George looked at me from the pew in that church yesterday.

These men have a way of getting inside your head.

Just one look and they can cause a sickness deep inside that makes you feel faint, ill, frightened . . . and the worst part is that no one will believe you, that much I do know.

‘We’ve got to act, and act fast. Men like that don’t just go away. I don’t know what would have happened if Gary had lived, maybe I’d have killed him myself, but that’s over with. Now George is here taunting me instead. Worse still, he’s getting away with it! No one thinks it could possibly be someone like him. But we do, and I think it’s time we did something. Before it’s too late. Before he gets his filthy hands on someone else’s kid.’

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‘Hear, hear!’ agreed Lizzie. The two women caught each other’s eye briefly and in that moment all their previous disagreements and hostility were forgotten. They were united. ‘You’re a brave and special girl, Gracie. I’m only sorry I didn’t understand that before. No one else needs to know your secret, do they, girls?’

Sue and Potty mumbled their agreement, still in shock that someone so beautiful had experienced something so ugly.

Grace looked at Lizzie with new respect. She had as good as ordered the other two not to talk about this to Gill or Iris, respecting the decision Grace had made all those years ago. Besides, they had more urgent things to consider.

‘My John is a bit all over the place at the moment but I know he’d be willing to pay George a visit, and I know Paul Foster wants to help,’ Grace said, looking at the other women and waiting for their reaction.

‘My Terry will be in there like a shot if I give him the green light, but I’m frightened he’ll go too far and kill the nonce, the state he’s in at the moment. But after what you’ve said, who gives a flying fuck? Last night when I went up I found him sitting on Wayne’s bed, crying like a baby. He thinks it’s all his fault, like he’s let his family down by not protecting them. I keep telling him not to be stupid, that nobody could have prevented what happened to Wayne, but he 252

wouldn’t have it. Funny, isn’t it? You see a bloke crying and it kind of makes you step back and pull yourself together.’

Sue lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Grace’s mind went back to the night before and her thoughts about John. Women had their kids and each other, but blokes, well, they had nothing to fall back on really.

‘I’m not sure Michael would be much help,’ said Potty in an apologetic tone. She was right. He’d be a hindrance. Too drunk, too gobby, too sloppy by half.

Grace felt a sudden wave of pity for her friend, being married to a useless lump like that. How lucky she was to have John.

Sue pulled TJ on to her lap and cuddled him hard, holding on as if he were a life preserver. Thank God she’s got those other kids to keep her going, thought Grace.

‘What we need is a bit more proof to convince the men,’ said Lizzie. ‘I suggest we keep our noses to the ground, sniff around, get some more hard facts. We need to be sure about his movements, check them all out with Harry and the barmaid at the Royal Oak.

Then, if we can convince the men, we’ll get it done properly this time.’

At that moment Gillian arrived, walking down the passageway into the kitchen carrying a loaf and a couple of pints of milk she’d picked up for Sue. The other women all nodded hello.

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‘Well, I’m ready if you are?’ said Grace, looking round at all their faces.

‘Ready for what?’ asked her sister.

‘Never mind that for a minute. Grab a cup of tea,’

said Lizzie.

As they all sat at the table, Grace held her cup high. ‘To Justice!’ she said, and then everyone said in unison, ‘To Justice!’

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Chapter Sixteen

Everybody lay low for the next week. It had been decided that nothing was going to happen in a great hurry, not until they’d had a chance to watch George closely and make detailed plans, but happen it would.

This wasn’t going to be a quick wallop to some loud -

mouth for saying something nasty, this was going to be a well-executed punishment which befitted his depraved crimes. Justice would then be served, the East End way.

Everyone was sick of the lack of progress by the police, who still had no one in the frame, and the tight-knit community was tired of having to function as best they could, knowing that a killer was still at large in their midst. Women took to keeping the children indoors, even though the long summer days were baking hot. No child was even allowed down to the sweet shop on their own, they had to be with an adult at all times. The streets and parks in the neighbourhood, usually thronged with children, were eerily quiet. People were angry at being forced to live this way, but powerless to do anything about it.

*

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Grace’s admission about her own suffering at the hands of Uncle Gary had united the women as never before, lit the touchpaper of their determination.

Having confessed her secret shame to the others, she knew that she would have to come clean to her sister, and found this the most difficult disclosure of all.

Afterwards she knew she would never forget the look on her sister’s face when she heard the truth.

Gillian rushed to hold Grace, to say how sorry she was, and Grace felt the years of silence between them fall away. Gillian had a clearer view of her sister now, and almost hated herself for what she had previously believed about Gary and Grace’s relationship. As a young girl she’d sensed something going on between her favourite uncle and her big sister – sensed that Grace was special to him in some way. The jealousy and spite she had harboured towards her sister then made her cringe with shame now. What a fool she had been to ever think that way! Gillian, feisty as ever, immediately wanted vengeance for Grace. She wanted Gary named and shamed, and the love she had hidden from her sister all these years poured out in her craving for retribution.

Grace, now more calm and contented in herself, was determined that Iris should never know the truth, despite Gillian’s urging her to come clean. For days she went on at Grace to tell their mother, and wouldn’t let it drop. She grew more furious and upset, and as the days went by more guilty that it had 256

happened to Grace and not to her. ‘Mum’s gotta know, Gracie!’ she thundered.

‘But what good would that do? She idolises the memory of the bloody man, there’s no point,’ Grace reasoned.

‘Why should she idolise a fucking animal who raped her own daughter? It’s all wrong, Grace.’

‘Maybe, but telling her the truth won’t achieve anything. Mum is getting older now, Gill, she clings to her memories of the past. She’s had enough to contend with lately, she would feel a complete failure as a mother if we told her about Gary. I love her too much to let that happen. No, let sleeping dogs lie, Gill. Besides, it’s the here and now we gotta deal with. And we have to do it before that George gets his filthy hands on another kid.’

Gillian didn’t disagree with that. The day after Grace had dropped her bombshell she had literally bumped into George as she walked round the corner to go to the newsagent’s. She had been squabbling with her boys about how much money they could each have.

‘I mean it, tenpence each and not a penny more. I’ll be broke at this rate and all your bloody teeth will drop out of your head . . . I can’t keep this up for the whole summer holidays!’

The boys had surged into the shop with Gillian close behind them just as the caretaker was coming out with a newspaper tucked under his arm and a 257

small white paper bag held in the other. Gillian nearly jumped out of her skin. Fear shot through her like ten thousand volts as she collided with the man and his stale smell reached her nostrils, an odour of grease and fags and something curiously sweet and sickly . . . She didn’t know George really, only well enough to say good morning to, but seeing him that day, terror caught her by the throat and all her fighting talk counted for nothing.

Gillian didn’t scare easily but she felt sick at the sight of George Rush, knowing what he’d done to those children. He smiled and said hello, just like normal, and for a moment she wondered if they had the wrong man again. He didn’t
look
guilty . . . but then who ever did? Uncle Gary had managed to hoodwink the whole family!

Later, when she recounted the incident to Potty down at the launderette, her friend nodded her head vigorously in agreement.

‘I know, he’s bloody terrifying. I saw him walking down Bonner Road the other day when I was coming out of work, and I had to cross the street to avoid him. Lucy had come to meet me from work and I had to pretend I hadn’t seen him ’cause I didn’t want her to think anything was up, but I’m telling you, I was shitting it!

‘Lucy obviously didn’t realise it was George who had attacked her because she went sauntering past him without a care in the world. I was hoping in a 258