The Other Child (10 page)

She just could not have endured another moment in her grandmother's company. And so it was clear that she could not return to Fiona's flat right now, especially as she would not even find a drop of something nice and strong there. She needed something to take the edge off her anger and sadness.

She had said goodbye to Colin (a strange, difficult-to-read guy, she had thought), and he had assured her that he would get Fiona a taxi. She knew Gwen was in good hands, with Jennifer. She got into her car and roared off. In Burniston she saw a well-lit pub up ahead. She slowed down, turned into the car park and got out. There were almost only men in the Three Jolly Sailors. Their surprised or lewd gazes followed the unknown woman as she strode over to the bar and sat on one of the leather-covered bar stools. In rural Yorkshire women did not go to the pub on their own, but Leslie did not care two hoots. She ordered a double whisky, then another, then another, and thinking back now she thought there might well have been another one too. She remembered the smell of disinfectant wafting from the toilets, and the friendly old barkeeper who at some point had put a plate of chips covered in grilled cheese in front of her.

‘You should eat something too,' he had said, but the sight of the soggy chips and melted cheese almost made her sick. A man tried to strike up a conversation with her, but she replied with such venom that he hurriedly backed off. When she walked back to the car park around midnight, swaying slightly, she knew she should on no account be driving, but she did not care about that either. She made it back home to her grandmother's place without the police stopping her or any other incident occurring.

Back home … right now that was the showy, giant white block of flats in which her grandmother lived. Prince of Wales Terrace, South Cliff, one of the best addresses in Scarborough, with a view of the whole of South Bay. And yet Leslie had never felt at home there. And nor did she this night.

The tablets had dissolved. Leslie drank her water in little sips. She did not want a hangover, which would only make everything worse.

What would it make worse? She looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. It was terrible how Fiona's complete lack of consideration had ruined Gwen's evening, and she only hoped that Dave Tanner had not disappeared for ever. But was that the only, really the only reason why she felt so terrible now?

It's because she's so cold, so bitterly cold, she thought, meaning Fiona, and because I really just want to get out of here, tonight if possible, and because I'm afraid to go back to my own flat.

The flat was so empty since Stephen had left. The flat in which everything reminded her of him. The flat in which her life had broken down two years ago – love, happiness, the feeling of being together, of being secure, plans for the future.

She saw Stephen's slightly reddened face in front of her. She heard his quiet voice, ‘I have to tell you something, Leslie …'

And she had thought: Don't tell me, just don't tell me! For a split second she had sensed that it could only be something that would change her whole life. She had felt it and wanted to stop it, but it could not be stopped, and until this day she had sat in the ruins of that evening and still could not believe it.

She drank the glass of water. You're drunk, Leslie, she told herself, and that's why you're so sentimental. Stephen didn't go. You threw him out. It was the right thing to do. Anything else would have been a slow death. You've been living alone in the flat for two years now, and coping, so you'll be fine going back tomorrow. Not tonight. In the state you're in, you'd smash into a bridge.

She came out of the bathroom and tiptoed past Fiona's bedroom. Once she had dosed the door of her own room behind her, she breathed out with relief. The room was turning a little, and she had some difficulty in focusing on individual objects.

The final whisky had definitely been one too many, she thought sleepily, and maybe I should have had those chips.

Somehow she managed to get her clothes off, dropping them on the floor carelessly. She slipped into her pyjamas and under the covers. The sheets felt cold. She pulled her knees up, like an embryo.

Dr Leslie Cramer, a thirty-nine-year-old divorced radiologist, lay three sheets to the wind in an ice-cold bed in Scarborough with no one to give her warmth. No one.

She started to cry. Then she remembered her empty flat in London and cried even more. She pulled her sheet up over her face, as she had as a child. So that no one could hear her crying.

2

He hated scenes like the one tonight. He hated it when feelings boiled over, when emotions went haywire, when women cried, when his daughter locked herself in her room, when people went in all directions, and when on top of everything he had the impression that people were looking at him accusingly, because they had obviously expected him to do something to contain the chaos. It was an expectation he could not live up to, but perhaps he had never lived up to expectations, and that might be the real problem with his life.

Chad Becket was eighty-three years old.

He was unlikely to change now.

It was five o'clock Sunday morning, but that was not an unusual time for Chad to get up. When it had still been a working farm, his father had often got the whole family out of bed at four, and Chad was no longer able to change the rhythm by which his whole life had run. Nor did he want to. He liked the hours before daybreak, when the world was quiet and sleepy and seemed to belong to him alone. He had often used the time to wander down to the beach in the half-light, sometimes in the thick fog that pressed inland from the sea. On those days he had been forced to go down the steep cliff almost blind, but it had never been a problem. He knew every stone, every branch. He had always felt safe.

Now he could no longer risk it. For the last three years his bad hip had made every step painful. He still refused to go to the doctor – he was not against doctors per se, he just did not believe that anyone could help him with it. At least, not without an operation, and the thought of hospital filled him with dread. He had a feeling that if he ended up in one, he would never return to his farm, and as he had the firm intention of dying in his bed, he was not going to leave his own patch of land now, not on the final stretch.

He preferred to grit his teeth.

The day was going to be sunny and bright again. That meant that his hip would not play up too much. The wet days were bad, when the clammy cold crept into his bones. The house was hard to heat and the rooms were always damp in the winter. His mother used to heat bricks for hours in the range in the kitchen, before putting them in the beds in the evening. At least that way you could warm up, seeing as the sheets were normally damp too. But his mother had been dead for ages, and Gwen had never known that trick. He himself thought, as did so many others too, that for his pleasure alone it was not worth reviving the habit. He found the damp linen unpleasant in the evening, but you would fall asleep in the end, and then you did not notice any more.

He listened carefully. Everyone seemed to be sleeping. Not a sound came from Gwen's room, nor any sign of life from the Brankleys or their dogs. Just as well. After a night like last night they would only get on his nerves.

He shuffled into the kitchen to make himself a coffee but did a double take when he saw the mess in the room. As Jennifer had been taking care of Gwen all evening and then later gone out with her dogs, it must have been Colin who had cleared the table. He had obviously seen his job as done once he had put the dishes, glasses and food in the kitchen. The crockery was piled high on the table, sideboards and in the sink. No one had covered the leftover soup, the roast or the vegetables stuck to the pans. It did not smell good.

Chad decided to do without a coffee for now.

He slowly moved over into the little room beside the living room, which served as a kind of study. Not that the farm required an actual functioning study or office, but they had the computer here. In spite of Chad's refusal to move with the times, it had found its way into the house in the end at Gwen's insistence. Files from years past, when the Beckett farm had still made modest profits, lined the wooden shelves along the walls. A few catalogues lay on the desk. Fashion, as Chad saw it, the stuff that Gwen ordered now and again. He lowered himself with a groan into the office chair and booted up the computer.

Unbelievable that he had learnt to use the thing! He had fought against it for long enough, but in the end Fiona had convinced him to set up an email address. In fact, she had set one up for him, and a password. ‘Gwen often uses the computer. She doesn't have to read your mail, now, does she?' Fiona had said. He had replied, ‘What mail? Don't even get normal post. Who's goin' to send me news by computer?'

‘Me,' replied Fiona, and then she had explained slowly and patiently how it worked: how to open his mailbox, how to enter the password
(Fiona
, of course), how to open each email, and how to reply. Since then they had corresponded via this strange medium that Chad was just as suspicious of as before, although he could not help being fascinated by it. It was nice to get a letter from Fiona now and then. And then to answer with a few meagre words. Not that he had dared to explore this
modern madness
, as he referred to computer technology, in any more depth. It would never have occurred to him to surf the internet. In any case, he would not have known how, nor did he want to know.

Fiona had been pretty nervous yesterday. Probably that was why she had not stopped until she caused a scandal. The attack on Dave Tanner had allowed her to let off steam, although Chad was convinced that her aversion to Gwen's fiancé was genuine enough, and that she harboured serious reservations about him. She might well be right in what she suggested about his motives, but Chad could not get worked up about it. It was Gwen's life. She was over thirty. If she got hitched now, it was none too early, and maybe she would be happy with Tanner. Chad did not think that love should be the only reason for people to marry. Perhaps Tanner was trying to change his life, so what? At the end of the day, it would do the Beckett farm good. Perhaps he and Gwen would have children, and Gwen would blossom in her new role as a mother. She was a very lonely person. Chad took the pragmatic view on things: better to have Tanner than no one. He could not really understand why Fiona was so worked up about this.

After she had completely ruined the evening, she had sat here on a folding chair next to the desk and lit one cigarette after another. He had known her since her childhood. He knew her better than anyone else in the world, and he had known something was worrying her. After she had moaned a good deal more about Gwen's marriage plans, she had finally come out with it.

‘Chad, I've been getting strange calls lately,' she had said quietly and hastily. ‘You know … anonymous calls.'

He did not know. He had never received such calls. ‘Anonymous calls? What kind? Threatenin'?'

‘No. No. I mean, the caller doesn't say anything. He – or she – just breathes.'

‘Is it …?'

She shook her head. ‘No. Not
that
kind of breathing. Not dirty, I'd say. It's very controlled breathing. I think the other person is just listening to me getting bothered, and then hangs up after a while.'

‘An' how d'you get bothered?'

‘I ask who's there. What he wants. I tell him – or her – that staying silent doesn't get us anywhere. That I want to know what it's all about. But I never get a reply.'

‘Maybe you should do summat like 'im. Not speak. Just hang up when you hear 'im breathin'.'

She had nodded. ‘I should never have reacted. I've probably done exactly what he expected. Still …' She had lit her next cigarette. Chad asked himself, not for the first time, how someone could smoke so unrestrainedly for decades and still be in such rude health.

‘I can't get away from wondering who the caller is,' she said after a few nervous drags on her cigarette. ‘If you do that, you have a reason. Why have they targeted me?'

He had shrugged his shoulders. ‘Chance maybe. Found a name in t' phone book and called up. Probably got lots of victims. Maybe 'e do it all day, one after another, and 'e do it a lot with you because you get so bothered.'

‘That's sick!'

‘Aye, suppose so. But it might be ‘armless. Just a hopelessly uptight person somewhere on end of line, someone who don't dare go out and would never dare talk t' a stranger. Feels powerful when 'e makes the calls, nowt more than that.'

She chewed her lower lip. ‘And you don't think that it has … something to do with the stuff back then?'

He knew at once what she meant. ‘No. Why d'you think that? That's ages ago.'

‘Yes, but … that doesn't mean it's over, does it?'

‘Who'd phone up ‘bout that now?'

She did not reply, but he knew her well enough to know that she was thinking of someone in particular. He could guess which name was knocking around in her head.

‘Don't think so,' he said. ‘Why now? After all these years … Aye,
why now?'

‘I don't think she ever stopped hating me.'

‘Is she still alive?'

‘I think so. Up in Robin Hood's Bay …'

‘Don't upset yourself,' he warned her.

‘Don't be ridiculous,' she replied as gruffly and sharply as she could, but the hand holding her cigarette had shaken a little.

Then she came out with what she really wanted to ask. ‘I want you to delete the emails. All the ones I wrote to you. The ones I wrote
about that thing.'

‘Delete? Why?'

‘I think it would be safer.'

‘No one can read them.'

‘But Gwen uses the same computer.'

‘Thought that's why I got that thing, that password. Not any good, is it? Rubbish it is, all this computer technology … Anyroad, don't think Gwen would nose around in me things. She's not that interested in me.'