The Cruellest Game (32 page)

‘At the funeral, remember? Sue Shaw. I knew that he’d written about her in his diary, but I still thought it was probably innocent. How wrong can you be? Both the men in my life were
keeping big secrets from me, it seems.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Robert.

‘Save it,’ I replied. ‘I just want to hear the rest of the story.’

Robert sighed.

‘When I met you it really was the way I told you before, Marion,’ he said. ‘And the bit about the lottery win was true too. The terrible news about my daughter and winning all
that money came more or less together. It was enough to drive any man half mad, surely?’

He looked at me pleadingly. I did not respond. He sighed again.

‘That day in Exeter, I was just walking around, thinking, trying to work out what to do,’ he said. ‘What I wanted was to give all the money to Brenda and then just leave. But I
don’t think I’d ever have been able to bring myself to carry that through. Then along you came. Suddenly I saw this way of having the life I wanted, with you, and still looking after
Brenda and Laura. Because Laura had developed the disease so young we knew it was going to be particularly severe, and we also knew that she would end up in care eventually, although Brenda and I
decided straight away to keep her at home as long as we could. Well, Brenda did really. She was the one who had to do the caring. I admired her for that if for nothing else . . . she would have
made a good nurse, Brenda. She seemed to have a natural talent for it . . .’

Yes, I thought. Didn’t she though? I’d experienced that the night of Robbie’s death, when, rather chillingly I now thought, Brenda had provided such proficient help and
support. Or so it had seemed. I’d believed she actually had been a nurse. And I’d really believed she was my friend. That was why I’d wanted to see her after I was released from
jail. Thinking about it made me feel physically sick.

‘And where is Laura now?’ I asked. ‘I mean, is she still alive? It sounds as if she is from the newspaper report.’ I gestured at the
Express & Echo
on the
table.

Robert nodded. ‘Just about, that’s all you can say. She’s in a specialist care home, the other side of Exeter. She went there when she was sixteen. And, well, we always felt
guilty, felt it was because we put her there that she deteriorated fast, even faster than we’d expected.’

‘Do you see her?’ I asked.

‘I used to. Not any more. She can barely function, and she doesn’t know us at all now. I just can’t.’

He paused.

‘Brenda does, though.’ Another pause. ‘I mean, did.’

‘But you had a second child, for God’s sake.’ I tapped the newspaper again. ‘You and your wife . . .’ I put emphasis on the ‘w’ word. ‘. . .
conceived another child even though you both knew she was a Huntington’s carrier. And even though you claim that I was the love of your life, you were patently still having sex with the woman
who was really your wife. And, knowing you, rather a lot of it.’

Robert winced again. ‘It just seemed to happen,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t the way it was with you. I mean, how could it be? Sex with you has always been so special. But
with Brenda, well, it was kind of automatic really, what we’d always done—’

‘Spare me,’ I interrupted more forcefully. ‘I really don’t want to hear the gruesome details of your sex life with another woman.’

He nodded apologetically again.

‘But never mind that, and never mind the wicked double life you were leading, wicked to both of us. What about the risks? You and Brenda conceived another child even though you knew he or
she would probably develop this awful disease. That’s really thoughtless and cruel. I can’t believe it.’

This time Robert shook his head.

‘I thought Brenda had been sterilized. After we found out about Laura we agreed that’s what she’d do. And she told me she’d had the op one time while I was away
working.’ He glanced at me. I decided not to interrupt again, not to point out that he may have been working, or he may, of course, have been with his other wife. With me.

‘But she hadn’t had it. She’d been taking the pill. Apart from anything else nobody could possibly have coped with a second child with poor Laura at home the way she was.
However, as soon as we accepted that Laura had to go into professional care Brenda stopped taking the pill. I never really understood why. She said she just wanted another child who was normal. But
there was little chance of that. When she told me she was pregnant I was horrified. Not only because of what she had done, and the kind of life we might be bringing into the world, but because of
you too, of course, and our life.’

‘It’s not definite, though, is it?’ I asked. ‘It’s not a hundred per cent that the disease is inherited, surely. Mightn’t your other daughter be
OK?’

‘That’s what Brenda said. She said there was a fifty per cent chance that Janey would be OK. And it was a chance she’d just had to take.’

‘Well, presumably that’s still the case. Where is she now, by the way? This eleven-year-old child you never bothered to mention to me.’

‘She’s with a neighbour. And no, it’s not the case actually. Janey will get Huntington’s. It’s just a matter of when. It might not be until she’s into her
forties – that’s the most common time – or she might get the juvenile variety like her sister. But one thing is certain, she will get it.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

He wiped a hand across his eyes, wearily.

‘When Janey was born I made Brenda have all the tests. She didn’t when we’d found out about Laura. In any case predictive tests for Huntington’s were pretty new then
– they were only developed in 1993 – and Brenda said she wasn’t convinced of their accuracy. That we could end up being worried sick for nothing. But after Janey I insisted. She
didn’t want to, not even then. She said there was no point. That we knew the risks. But I made her, and this time I went to the hospital with her, for the tests and the results. I just had to
know exactly what we were facing. The disease is caused by the mutation of the gene called Huntington’s. Everyone has two copies. So more often than not a child has a fifty per cent chance of
inheriting it. Just like Brenda told me. The only thing is, it turned out that both Brenda’s Huntington genes were mutated. That made it a hundred per cent certain that any child she had
would develop the disease.’

I thought about what he was saying. ‘But Brenda didn’t know?’

He shook his head. ‘Not until she had the tests, no. I do believe that. You would have to be quite mad to bring a child into the world knowing for sure it was going to get that disease.
And she wasn’t that. Not then, anyway.’

‘What do you mean? Not then?’

‘I’d recently been beginning to notice things about Brenda, things other people probably wouldn’t, that made me think she was now developing Huntington’s. And that her
mind was beginning to be affected. Her behaviour was erratic. She could be shaky too, physically, although perhaps again not noticeable to anybody else. Not yet.’

I remembered her shaking and, more specifically, the smashed wine glass and the difficulty she’d had that day on the beach attaching the lead to her dog’s collar.

‘I suppose I saw things,’ I said. ‘But only occasionally.’

He nodded. ‘That’s how it is to begin with.’

I stared at him. I really hadn’t expected this.

‘Did she know?’ I asked. ‘Did she know she was getting it?’

‘She knew she was going to get it, of course,’ he said. ‘After the tests showed the double mutation she knew it was inevitable. And she’d reached the optimum age. But
sometimes the disease doesn’t develop until people are in old age. Sometimes people die before they get it. I did feel guilty about that side of making her have the tests, that she then knew
there was no chance at all of her avoiding the damned thing. But she seemed to cope with it extraordinarily well, really. Brenda was very good at going into denial, I think. Very good
indeed.’

Wasn’t she just? I thought, reflecting on all the times we had spent together. Brenda knowing full well who I was and my relationship with her husband. Me totally unaware of who she really
was.

What had she been hoping to achieve? And had she achieved it with Robbie’s death? It was my belief that she had.

I’d thought I had guessed most of Robert’s story. But I hadn’t dreamed of anything like this. For a fleeting second I felt a wave of sympathy towards the man I’d once so
loved. I quickly cast it aside.

He had deceived me to a devastating degree. He deserved no sympathy at all. Not from me or from anyone.

‘You could have told me,’ I said. ‘You should have told me. We could have worked something out together. That’s what people do.’

He shook his head quite violently.

‘No. Don’t you see? I wanted another life. I needed another life. I loved my daughters but couldn’t cope with them being all there was for me. I couldn’t cope with just
watching Laura deteriorate and then waiting for little Janey to develop this terrible illness. Just watching and waiting. I was afraid I would end up as mad as them. And I suppose in a way I
did.’

‘But you brought it on yourself,’ I said. ‘I mean, what did you think, for God’s sake, when you came back the night Robbie died and there was Brenda, your wife, in our
kitchen? What did you think, Robert?’

‘I didn’t know what to think. But it was obvious that you didn’t know who she was, and all I wanted was to keep things that way for as long as I could. That’s why I had
to leave you the next day. I had to go and see Brenda. To find out what was going on. To try, somehow, to square things with her. Don’t you see?’

‘Oh, I see all manner of things now, Robert. All manner of things. But what did you say to each other? What did she tell you, and what load of rubbish did you tell her?’

‘I told her more or less the truth,’ he said. I almost smiled at the use of the phrase ‘more or less’. I feared that was probably the best he would ever be able to do
with the truth.

‘She told me about meeting you on Exmouth beach by chance, seeing Robbie, and being struck at once by how like me he was. Then how she talked to you and found out about your husband Robert
and so on. She said she pretended to be someone else simply so that she could get close to you, see how you lived, find out more about our life together.’

‘And did she tell you how she felt when she found out about me?’

‘She said she was devastated, of course. But she decided not to confront me at least until she’d found out more. And she still didn’t want to risk losing me altogether, it
seemed.’

‘But can’t you imagine the effect it must have had on her seeing the near-perfect life we had together?’ I asked. ‘Imagine comparing the life you had with me, here at
Highrise, with her life, her hellish life surely, looking after a dying daughter, knowing both she and her second child would go the same awful way, and living in that dreadful house I assume you
shared . . .’

I stopped abruptly.

He shook his head very slightly as if trying to clear it. ‘You went to the house? To Riverview Avenue?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said, and I told him about my aborted visit to the home of the woman I knew as Bella Clooney.

Robert did a kind of double take. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘You only told me she was called Bella. I’m sure of it. If you’d ever mentioned that the surname of the woman
you met on the beach was Clooney, I don’t know, but I may just have wondered—’

‘What are you talking about?’ I interrupted, irritated that he seemed to be going off at some sort of a tangent.

‘Brenda was crazy about George Clooney. Obsessed almost. She had DVDs of all his movies, the complete boxed set of
ER
, and she played them all the time—’

‘Can we get back to what we were talking about, please?’ I interrupted again.

He nodded. Then did another double take. ‘My God, what would have happened if you had knocked on the door, I wonder, gone into the house . . .’

His voice tailed off.

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘It was the day after I was released by the police. And you were there then, with Brenda, weren’t you? I presume you went to her after I kicked you out.
You might have answered the door to me. Wouldn’t that have been interesting?’

He looked startled. ‘Yes. I didn’t think of that. Yes, I suppose I was staying there then.’

‘And, even if you hadn’t been in the house, I could easily have noticed signs of your presence, seen photos of you about the place,’ I continued. ‘Or did you do your best
to prevent there being any of you with her too?’

He looked down at his hands.

‘You’d certainly have seen more pictures of George Clooney,’ he muttered.

I ignored that.

‘I didn’t have to wait long to see Brenda’s picture in the paper, though, did I?’ I went on. ‘To see her name in print.’

He made no comment.

‘So, getting back to your story, how did you attempt to “square things with her” as you put it?’ I asked.

‘Well, I just promised her I wouldn’t change anything, I wouldn’t leave her, I would always look after her and the girls, as long as . . .’

He broke off.

‘As long as what?’

‘As long as she let my life with you continue. As long as she never attempted to tell you the truth. We could all carry on just as we had done. All she had to do was accept it and not tell
anyone. Particularly not you.’

‘And you thought she was prepared to go along with that?’

‘She told me she would. She told me she’d been more afraid of my leaving her, abandoning her, as she put it, than anything else. She was angry, of course. But she said she realized
she had been partly responsible for everything because she hadn’t been honest with me from the start about the Huntington’s. So she said yes, she would go along with it.’

I studied him carefully.

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ I asked.

‘Get what?’ he replied.

‘Don’t you see? Bella or Brenda has been responsible for everything. Breaking in here so mysteriously in the middle of the night, with keys I assume she somehow stole or copied from
you; wrecking the place; snatching little Luke Macintyre specifically for the purpose, I don’t doubt, of trying to incriminate me. I’m sure she was responsible for Robbie’s death
too. Quite sure of it. It was her revenge, on you, on all three of us in this family. And she’d been planning it, or something like it, for months . . . all that time I thought she was my new
best friend, she was . . .’ I paused, searching for the right word. ‘She was grooming us, me and Robbie. And she was guilty of incitement to suicide at the very least. She had to
be.’