The Lost Child (32 page)

She and Jean had been the best of friends, closer than sisters really. When Jean had visited on the 15 July 1983 Rosemary had been at a loss to stem the grief her cousin had felt at the loss of her child. Jean’s loss had seemed like a cavernous, unfathomable thing, compounded by the fact that her husband had left her for another man. Rosemary had never been a woman familiar with the subtleties of solace and had floundered in the face of Jean’s unhappiness. When Derry had stumbled through the door with the child in his arms, it seemed like the perfect solution.

Rosemary had never liked Shirley Miller, she was a Davies before her marriage and a Davies had never liked a Tyler. They had attended school together and their families had maintained a feud that had rivalled that of anything Shakespeare had imagined. A feud so old that no one could remember what had started it. It had been the feud that had driven Jean’s family from the village, so it seemed fitting that Jean should take something back from the Davies’s. Resentments ran deep in the countryside and hatchets were rarely buried, unless in the back of someone’s head.

Jean had taken the child with her that day, and Rosemary had promised to never breathe a word of it. She had kept the promise and nurtured the lie. But the price was the loss of her relationship with Jean and the women had not spoken since. Rosemary had felt her loss more keenly than anyone would ever know.

When Elaine had left Jean’s ashes on her doorstep Rosemary had taken some, just a teaspoonful, a token really. She kept them in an old Oxo tin, on top of the dresser where Jean could keep her company and no one would be any the wiser. Old friends, nursing their privations and keeping their secrets in silence.

*

After Derry’s funeral Elaine had been like a demon in the house. Dan could do little but stand back and watch as she scrubbed, and vacuumed and scrubbed some more. By the time she had finished he doubted that a speck of dust had survived the onslaught. Unbeknownst to either of them she had cleaned away every trace of Jean, even the finest hidden particle had been bleached to buggery and beyond.

She still wasn’t talking. It was as if the events at Hallow’s Court had robbed her of the ability to vocalise. Dan could sense an anger in her so great that he suspected that she dare not give it voice, even if she wanted to. He had fallen into the habit of just letting her get on with it, any challenge or protestation only seemed to make her worse. She would turn away from him and make the gulf between them even greater. Even Brodie couldn’t break through.

But Brodie was wrapped up in her own grief. Shirley’s suicide had hit her doubly hard after Derry’s death. With everything else that had happened she was hard pressed to get dressed and make it downstairs, let alone play a role in rehabilitating Elaine. It was a nightmare, and one that Dan sincerely hoped they would all wake up from very soon. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take, but knew that he would never leave them.

Elaine rammed the vacuum back into the under-stairs cupboard and slammed the door.

Dan watched as she stalked from the house and into the garage. Wondering what on earth she was planning to do out there, he followed.

He stood aside and watched as she dragged the bags and boxes he had retrieved from her house into the back garden. At first he thought she might have decided to go through them and seek the solace that could be gained from a nostalgic look at her past. Instead, she piled everything up in the middle of his lawn.

When she emerged from the garage lugging a jerry can full of the petrol, which he normally used to fuel the lawnmower, he started to panic.

‘Elaine stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.’

She shot him a furious glance as she slopped petrol onto the heap, even throwing on the can itself once it was empty.

‘Elaine, please. You’re going to regret it. Don’t…’

His words fell on ears deafened by determination. She took a windproof lighter from her pocket, also purloined from the garage, and struck it. She looked him straight in the eyes as she threw it onto the pyre, then she walked away.

He stood agog as the flames leaped, reaching the petrol can and sending it up like a rocket as the fumes inside exploded with the heat. It landed somewhere to the rear of the house, in a field thank God, where the only damage it caused was to frighten the retired donkey who resided there. The thing set off, running like it held first place in the Grand National. Dan winced, hoping the poor creature wasn’t going to drop dead of a heart attack, and turned his attention back to the fire.

Elaine’s life melted and popped in a slurry of molten black plastic and smouldering cardboard. In the midst of the fire Dan could hear glass and china shattering in the cherry red heat. He thought about trying to put it out, but it seemed pointless, nothing could be salvaged, the destruction would be total.

He turned to find Elaine, unsure of how he should react to her wanton destruction. She had gone back into the house.

In the kitchen she had helped herself to his whisky and was pouring out a second, liberal measure.

‘Elaine…’ he trailed off, so far out of his depth with this that even a life raft couldn’t save him.

She slugged down her drink, wincing at the bitterness and the heat, ‘Don’t call me that, it’s not my name. If you love me as much as you say you do you will never call me that again.’

Dan stood, open-mouthed. It was the first time she had spoken more than a perfunctory word or two in weeks. He reached for the whisky bottle and took a swig.

She was shaking now, so much so that she could hardly put her glass on the table without knocking it straight back off again.

Dan took her hand and tried to steady it as the shaking turned into shuddering. She started to take huge gulps of air, which mutated into sobbing. Then she sank to the floor in a tear-sodden heap. The dam she had built to contain the reservoir of her feelings had broken and Dan had nothing with which to stem the flood.

*

She cried like that for nearly an hour. Sometimes the tears receded only to gush out again as a fresh wave of distress washed over her.

Brodie had wandered in at one point, shuffling in on the quiet feet of her onesie. She had looked at them with eyes far too familiar with the grief and unhappiness that was pouring out. She hadn’t said a word, just loitered in the kitchen for a moment. Too tired from the constant effort of drowning, not waving.

Dan’s own eyes watered at times. Though whether it was from emotional contagion or a reaction to the acrid smoke that billowed in through the open door he wasn’t sure.

Everything was gone, every trace of Elaine and every trace of Jean. Even the clothes she was wearing belonged to him. She looked both ridiculous and vulnerable in the huge T-shirt and shorts she had stolen from his laundry pile after the funeral.

She raised her head from his chest to speak, her breath was sour with old whisky and dehydration, ‘Would you take me shopping?’

He stroked her hair, ‘Sure, what do you want to buy?’

She looked down at the clothes she was wearing, ‘A new wardrobe, a new life and some grass seed. I think I just ruined your lawn.’

He was tempted to laugh, but it twisted and died in his throat. He felt like he had lost her. The woman he knew was in the garden, tangled in the dying embers of the fire. Soon to be extinguished completely by the summer rain that had started to fall.

When the three of them returned from their shopping spree Dan could finally admit to a whole new understanding of the term ‘retail therapy’. Even Brodie seemed to have cheered up from the acquisition of a few new items of apparel. The only thing that had truly suffered from the experience was Elaine’s credit card, which must have been wilting from overuse. Even Dan had enjoyed it, though loitering self-consciously in women’s clothes shops wouldn’t have been his favourite way to spend an afternoon, he had loved the spark of life that the activity had engendered in his two favourite people.

The kitchen table looked like the aftermath of a high-end jumble sale as Elaine and Brodie reviewed their haul. Dan nursed his coffee and smiled at them, nurturing a flicker of hope for the future. When the clothes had been put away, the torn labels put in the bin and Brodie had made a fresh pot of coffee, Elaine spoke. ‘We need to talk.’

‘About what?’ Brodie asked.

‘Everything.’

Brodie and Dan exchanged glances that were loaded with trepidation.

‘When you were both at the supermarket yesterday, Tony called round. It was Fern’s court hearing yesterday morning. She’s been charged with blackmail and perverting the course of justice.’

‘Good.’ Brodie said. Dan said nothing.

‘I’ve arranged to go and see her.’

‘What the hell for?’ Brodie demanded. ‘I would’ve thought you would never want to see her again after what she did.’

Elaine sighed and squeezed her brow between thumb and fingers. ‘I don’t particularly, but she’s the only one who can tell me what really happened that day. I need to see her, I need to know because we all need to put this to bed and move on.’

‘Well, I’m coming with you.’ Brodie said.

‘No, not this time. I’d like to do this on my own.’

Brodie opened her mouth to argue, but one look from Dan and a slow shake of his head stayed her. ‘I still don’t think it’s a good idea’, she muttered under her breath.

‘I don’t think she’s asking us Brodie, I think she’s telling us.’ He’d resorted to calling her ‘she’ after the ban on the use of Elaine. He felt like he was talking about the cat’s mother and kept expecting a clip around the ear for saying it, just like his own mother would have dished out.

Brodie looked as if she was about to sulk, but seemed to think better of it. Dan was strangely heartened to see it. Brodie sulking because she couldn’t get her own way was a sign of normality, and the first marker that things were slowly getting better. He had his own doubts about the wisdom of Elaine’s decision, but under the regime of her fledgling assertiveness, he was learning not to argue. ‘I suppose you will want to borrow my car?’ he said. She had refused to drive her own and despite the fact that he had offered to have it thoroughly valeted, still insisted that too much of Jean still lingered. It was currently sitting at the yard, awaiting sale.

‘If you wouldn’t mind?’

‘If you accept that it is a measure of my complete faith in you and see it as a gesture of absolute and unconditional love, then no, I don’t mind. However if you dent it, I will throw you out onto the street and disown you.’

He was pleased to see the flicker of a smile twitch at the corners of her mouth. ‘I won’t dent it, don’t worry.’

It was probably the nearest he was going to get to a statement of undying love from her, but for the time being it was enough.

*

Elaine drew some strange looks from other drivers as she made her way down the M5. She was probably the only person on the planet who would voluntarily drive an Aston Martin under the proscribed speed limit. Taking unnecessary risks with Dan’s pride and joy was not an option. She was still struggling to accept that he loved her more than the car, but taking care of it was her way of showing him that she was trying. One day soon she would tell him what it had been like growing up with Jean. How claustrophobic it had been, and how hard it was to identify with a sense of self and know how to be. Being the most precious object in another person’s world was not all it was cracked up to be, she hoped he would understand that she loved him too but didn’t want to be consumed by his feelings as she had been by Jean’s. At this stage of things she found herself chronically averse to the concept of love.

All thoughts of that were pushed aside as she approached the junction where she needed to turn off. Fern had agreed to meet her on the neutral territory of a country pub, and only a few minutes of driving remained before they were due to meet for probably the last time.

Brodie had been astonished to learn that the doyens of the justice system hadn’t clapped Fern in irons and thrown her into an oubliette. Elaine had carefully explained that being exponentially greedy and amoral weren’t, in legal terms, capital crimes. Morally the jury was out. Brodie had declared ‘that dude who said the law is an ass was dead right’. Elaine was inclined to agree, but she didn’t want to save the world, just herself, Dan and Brodie.

Fern was waiting for her at a picnic table in the pub’s garden, the ubiquitous cigarette hanging from her fingers. Elaine bought herself a drink and sat down opposite, surprised to find that she didn’t feel nervous at all. Fern looked worn, and ten years older than her forty-four years. ‘I suppose you want to tell me what a scumbag I am, and how I ought to be ashamed of myself. Well, join the queue love, you won’t be the first.’ Fern said.

‘No, I haven’t come to say that, neither have I come to let you off the hook, or to forgive you. You’ll have to work all that out for yourself Fern. I came because I want to know what happened to me and why?’

Fern snorted. ‘Yeah, cos it’s still all about you isn’t it. No one ever bothers to ask about me, do they?’

Elaine swallowed in a bid to ingest some stoicism. ‘I’m asking now. Tell me how it was for you.’

Fern stared at her, and seemed to think about it. She stubbed out her cigarette, took a swig of her drink and lit another. ‘OK, so you want a family history lesson. Where to start? Shall I start with my mum dying when I was seven, or shall I start with your mum getting herself up the duff so my dad would marry her? Or shall I start with the fact that after my mum died the only thing my dad ever loved was the bottle? I could tell you what it was like for me and Tony, but you don’t want to know about that do you?’ she said, bitterness dripping from her tongue like acid rain drips from broken guttering.

‘You seem to forget that he was my father too.’

Fern laughed and leaned forward. ‘Really? Well, that fact might be debatable, but thank your lucky stars you didn’t have to know him. He fucked off and left us when you were six months old, don’t ask me where he went because I don’t know and I don’t care. But I did care that I got stuck with Shirley, and I did care that I got stuck with you, the frigging golden child. Everything was always about you and it still is. That’s why I left you to it that day. I could have done something, and perhaps I should have, but I didn’t and when you went missing I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t see why I should get into trouble over you. As far as I was concerned it was good riddance, Alex Fuckface-Wanker had done me a favour. Do you honestly not remember what he did?’