The Paradise Trees (32 page)

He was silent for a moment, and Alicia could feel tension in his body still. She stepped back and looked at him.

‘What is it? There’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘Nothing about Jenny,’ he said quickly. ‘Oh Alicia, I went up to the lab to see if I could find anything out about your father’s blood test, the one I took this morning.
It came to the lab here. Alicia, it looks like he
was
given an overdose of his sleeping pills.’

Alicia cringed. ‘Doug? Frank, did Doug Patton kill my father?’

He hugged her tightly. ‘It seems likely. I suppose he was trying to keep you otherwise occupied while he took Jenny. I’m sorry, Alicia, I didn’t want to tell you until
tomorrow.’

She pressed her lips together for a moment before speaking. ‘No. It’s better to know things like that straightaway,’ she told him. ‘Then there’s no secrets.
Jenny’s going to be home again tomorrow, and we’re damn well going to start the rest of our lives.’

‘Together,’ he said, reaching out and lifting one of Jenny’s hands from the trolley. ‘You, me and Jenny. Together.’

Alicia sighed. It sounded like everything she had ever wanted. They were going to get through this. She almost managed a smile and leaned her head against his neck. He was warm and he smelled
of... coming home.

‘Of course, together,’ she said.

Alicia

The road sign for Merton swooped by, and Alicia felt her shoulders relax. They were nearly home. She’d almost forgotten what a long drive north it was from Bedford. It
had been great to spend New Year with their old friends, of course, but being there had assured Alicia that Lower Banford really was home now.

‘Are we nearly there?’

Jenny’s voice from the back seat was bored, and Alicia grimaced. Shades of last summer. This was almost exactly the spot where she’d told Jen that Margaret had a dog called Conker.
And Jen had started looking forward to a wonderful summer that had never happened.

‘Ten more minutes,’ said Frank, steering left off the motorway. ‘Got Conker’s present ready for him?’

Jenny rummaged in her rucksack and produced a garish pink and yellow rubber bone with a slot for edible treats.

‘I’ll fill it with his biscuits before I give it to him. Does Kenneth know we’re nearly home?’

‘Text him and tell him,’ said Alicia, handing over Jenny’s precious mobile.

‘Woohoo!’ Jenny sank down into the back seat and Alicia turned her face towards the window, blinking hard. The relief when Jenny reacted like a normal eight-year-old still caught in
her throat every time. The child who had danced so happily into the woods that July morning was only now beginning to reappear. Even though Jenny hadn’t been physically injured by her ordeal
at Doug Patton’s hands, the mental scars were taking longer to heal. Maybe they never would heal completely. Jen could remember going to Doug’s flat that Saturday morning, and that he
had promised to show her some kittens. She thought he had given her something to drink, but she wasn’t sure about that, and the next thing she could remember was waking up in hospital the
next morning and eating beans on toast for breakfast. She did sense, however, that something bad had happened to her, something she didn’t understand, and the fact that she couldn’t
remember what it was distressed her greatly.

Even now, six months later, she hadn’t remembered much more, and the psychologist she still saw regularly thought it might stay that way.

Frank stopped at the traffic lights in front of Merton Infirmary and Alicia stared at the A&E department. Not only did they not know what, exactly, Doug had subjected Jenny to while she had
been unconscious, they had never found out why, either. There didn’t seem to be anything about his past that would explain behaviour like that; his sister had no idea and there was no-one
else to ask. He had been taken to a prison with a psychiatric wing and he was still there, refusing to speak about what he had done. Alicia didn’t want to hear what psychosis had prompted him
to act the way he had, and she didn’t really want to know what was going to happen to him either. The important thing was that he was out of their lives forever.

And life as a proper family was working out well, she thought, grinning as Jenny’s mobile rang and was promptly answered. How good of Kenneth to call back when he got the text. Jenny had a
brief but upbeat conversation about Conker and the holidays before saying goodbye and relaxing into the back seat again.

‘Kenneth’s going to bring Conker to meet us at home,’ she announced.

‘He’ll have to be quick, then. ETA three minutes,’ said Frank. Alicia glanced up Woodside Lane as they passed. A young family lived in her father’s house now. She and
Jenny had moved in with Frank as soon as they’d come home from hospital the day after Jenny’s abduction. And for the first time she’d had a proper home, filled with love in Lower
Banford. Frank looked across and grinned as they passed Mrs Mullen’s, and Alicia felt warm all over.

As soon as the car stopped in the driveway Jenny was out, hugging Conker, who had been lodging at the pet shop while they’d been away. Max and Moritz the cats came to wind themselves round
Alicia’s ankles and she stooped to scratch soft heads. She’d had quite a job dissuading Kenneth from giving Jen all four of his kittens after her rescue. How wrong she’d been
about him. What she’d considered strangeness had simply been nerves. It wasn’t easy being in his situation. Homosexuality and HIV didn’t really go with life in a quaint and
conservative Yorkshire village. But he was making it work. He had guts, did Kenneth, and Frank had been right. Kenneth was often the first person they called on to babysit.

So on the face of it her life had returned to normal. Or not quite. Some shadows would stay forever. The important thing was to find happiness in today, and now she knew how fragile happiness
was. The next event was to be their wedding at the beginning of March, a small affair to go with their small families. There was to be just Margaret, David and Sheila with baby Meret, Sonja and
Cathal and their families, and a few close friends, including Kenneth as best man and Jenny as bridesmaid, of course, complete with a traditional pink frilly dress even though the bride would be
wearing a non-frilly sage green dress and coat. It would be a mixed-up higgledy-piggledy kind of wedding and it would suit them all perfectly.

Alicia watched as Frank and Kenneth settled down on the sofa with bottles of beer, and Jenny pulled on wellies and her old jacket and ran out to the garden with Conker.

So what now? Time would tell. And they had all the time in the world again.

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