The Son-In-Law (10 page)

I took his face between my hands and kissed him. ‘Rubbish! You’re the best-looking, most distinguished man in Yorkshire and nobody can fathom why on earth you put up with me.’

‘I’m ancient, compared to you. Soon I’ll be dribbling in my bathchair, ringing a little bell and calling querulously for you to come and change my catheter.’

‘You certainly won’t. I’ll have wheeled you off Beachy Head by then.’

He struck a dramatic pose. ‘O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven.’

‘You’re not King Lear,’ I said firmly. ‘You’re Frederick Wilde, the sanest person I’ve ever met.’

And with those words, I forced the incident to the back of my mind. After all, what’s a lost tea caddy between soulmates?

•

Jane Whistler was one of those friends you find by a lucky chance.

It was an end-of-year award ceremony at Zoe’s secondary school. In the finest tradition of such occasions, the evening seemed especially designed to make the parents suffer. We were squashed like battery hens into intolerably uncomfortable seating, clutching programs which promised hours of exquisite dullness. The blonde mother next to me swore under her breath.

She had the sexy kind of haircut that costs a fortune and looks as though you’ve just got out of bed. She and I exchanged weary smiles.

‘My idea of hell,’ I whispered.

She looked agonised. ‘I think I have a school phobia.’

There were endless prizes to be dished out, interspersed with the inevitable self-congratulatory speeches from staff. Zoe was fourteen at the time, and she picked up cups for drama and debating as the temperature in the hall soared higher and higher. When the chair of the governors waddled over to take his place at the podium, the blonde mother lost her composure altogether.

‘God almighty!’ she hissed. ‘Take a look at his notes. That’s a bloody novel. Shall we make a run for it?’

‘This year has been a remarkable one for our school,’ the chair began in a ponderous monotone. ‘Before I move on to the achievements and vision of the board, I would like to begin by expressing my profound thanks to . . .’

We pushed our way along the seats—
sorry, sorry
—and forced the fire doors at the back. Seconds later we’d fallen out onto the netball court, giggling. My co-conspirator lit a cigarette.

‘I think we were spotted,’ I said uneasily. ‘You realise we’ve just ruined our daughters’ chances of becoming prefects?’

‘Not mine.’

‘Why not?’

‘Never was any chance. Verity came within a whisker of expulsion this term.’

‘Hang on, this rings a bell . . . Verity’s the Goth? Lip piercing?’

‘That’s the one. Luckily, they haven’t spotted the skull tattoo yet.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Drink?’

We’d reached the nearest pub before we introduced ourselves.

‘Jane Whistler,’ said my new friend, handing me a gin and tonic. Once I heard the name, the penny dropped. Whistler, White and Young, solicitors. I’d seen Jane in the local paper, saying clever things about high-profile clients. She told me she was divorced, with a feckless ex-husband of whom she seemed surprisingly fond.

‘What’s yours like?’ she asked.

I mentioned Frederick’s name, and her eyebrows rose. ‘No! I saw
She Stoops to Conquer
at the Playhouse last week. No, really—it was inspired.’

Eventually we hurried to collect our daughters, promising to meet for coffee. We were both working full-time, though, and raising teenagers. Coffee never happened. I forgot about Jane until the day I knocked over a cyclist. I’d been distracted by Zoe, who was screaming at me from the passenger seat, and didn’t even notice the poor man. He was unhurt, but Big Brother—in the form of two coppers in a panda car across the road—took a dim view. I was furious when the summons arrived in the post.

‘Careless driving! You’d think there were more dangerous villains at large,’ I snorted.

Freddie was spreading marmalade on his toast. ‘A criminal in the family! Grounds for divorce. What do you think, Zoe?’

Zoe was having a good week. The storm that had made her shriek in the car had blown itself out. ‘I think you shouldn’t tease poor Mum,’ she scolded. ‘It’s no joking matter. I mean, what if the papers got hold of the story?
Professor in motoring outrage
. Her reputation would be in tatters.’

‘You could call it research,’ suggested Freddie. ‘Mass times velocity equals a cross cyclist plus a summons.’

‘Shut up, both of you,’ I said. ‘I can see I’ll get no support here. I’m going to talk to Jane Whistler.’

Zoe looked impressed. ‘That Verity is such a rebel. They’d love to expel her, but she’s too clever. Makes them look good in the league table.’

‘Never mind the clever daughter. The mother’s a clever solicitor, which is what I need right now.’

Jane was in her element in the magistrate’s court. They moved her to the top of the list since she was so frightfully busy and important. I walked out with a fine and three points on my licence, which was exactly what she’d predicted.

The years passed. I became a grandmother; Verity tired of rebelling and signed up as a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières. Jane gave up smoking with the help of a hypnotist. She supported us through the tornado of Zoe’s illness, learning the Mental Health Act like the back of her hand. So when Joseph Scott came out of prison and demanded to see his children, of course we turned to her. When we walked into Whistler, White and Young at ten o’clock sharp, she was waiting for us.

‘Hannah,’ she cried, embracing me warmly. I’d lost the fight with gravity and no longer had a waist to speak of, but her figure was youthful. She’d refused to accept greying hair either, and her ash blonde was perfectly credible. For Jane Whistler, sixty-something really was the new fifty.

‘I see the first appointment is on the seventh of January,’ she said, once we were in her office. ‘We’ve only been given a half-hour slot, but perhaps we’ll make some progress.’

‘What sort of progress?’ asked Frederick.

‘It’s listed before Judge Cornwell. I know Oliver Cornwell—he’s sharp, but he has a reputation for shooting from the hip. It can be infuriating. In this case, though, it might work in our favour. I’m hoping he’ll tell Scott to back off.’

‘Scott will be there?’ I asked, horrified. I hadn’t even considered the possibility.

‘Yes. The first appointment is generally used for the parties to meet a family court adviser—a sort of social worker. He or she then works with the families to try and reach an agreement. They’re extremely powerful.’

‘We don’t have to sit round a table, do we?’ I asked. ‘We don’t have to negotiate? Because I won’t.’

‘The last time we saw Joseph was when he was sentenced,’ Freddie explained to Jane. ‘It will be difficult to face him again. Very difficult indeed.’

‘I can still see him in the dock at Leeds Crown Court,’ I raged. ‘Looking sensitive and . . . romantic, for heaven’s sake! Like a tragic hero. The terrible things his barrister said, Jane. The
filth
she threw at Zoe.’

‘Nobody will have believed it.’ Jane was handing out coffee from a tray.

‘Oh, but they did! You must have read the newspapers? She had the judge thinking Joseph was a saint to put up with such a harpy.’

The hearing had made me sick—literally, physically sick, as soon as Scott was taken away to the cells. He’d slaughtered my beautiful girl, and then blackened her name for all the world to hear. I barged into the ladies’, retching and ranting while a kind but ineffectual woman from Victim Support made comforting noises.

Jane took off her jacket, draping it over the back of her chair. I sensed she was giving herself time to think. ‘These are extraordinary circumstances. I’ve appeared in thousands of Children Act disputes over the years. This is the first I’ve ever been in where the father has actually . . . well.’

‘Where the father has actually killed the mother,’ I said, helping her out. ‘It’s all right, Jane, you can say it. This isn’t the time for euphemisms. And please remember—
please
make sure the judge understands—he didn’t only kill her. He did it while his children screamed and begged him not to hit her again. She was actually holding Ben! It was a mercy he wasn’t hurt.’ I put down my cup. ‘You say this judge may intervene?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘If he doesn’t, or if Scott chooses to ignore him, he’ll have no choice but to list the case for a full hearing.’

Freddie shook his head. ‘It seems hard, Jane, after the struggles we’ve had. We were grieving ourselves. Scarlet was . . . it was as though she’d gone to another planet, and for a long time she couldn’t come back. Theo was biting other kids at school. Perhaps the saddest to watch was little Ben. He kept waiting, hoping, looking for his mum.’ He reached out to take my hand. ‘We’ve pulled out every stop to give them a childhood.’

Jane came around her desk and perched on the edge. ‘Let’s see what happens at the first appointment, shall we? All we can do is get our ducks in a row and be ready to fight it out.’

‘I don’t know whether he’s doing this just to torture us,’ I fumed, ‘or whether he’s looking for some kind of redemption. If it’s redemption he’s after, he can go and feed starving orphans in Somalia, or join the Sally Army, or jump off a cliff.’

Jane began to take statements from us. It was a long meeting, and Frederick looked pale by the time she showed us out. He seemed bowed under the weight of this new worry. I watched covertly as he pulled his cap out of his pocket and carefully smoothed it onto his head. He was my brilliant, beloved man, and his heart had been broken.

Hatred rose into my mouth. It tasted metallic. I halted beside Jane, who was holding the street door open for us.

‘Make Joseph Scott go away,’ I muttered. ‘I don’t care how you do it. We need him out of our lives.’

Nine

Joseph

Jack Frost had paid a visit in the pre-dawn hours; a forest of crystal ferns decorated the insides of the caravan’s windows.

He took a shower in the toy bathroom, which was when he discovered he’d left his razor in Akash’s flat. His towel was frozen solid; it was like trying to dry himself with a surfboard. He dressed in clean jeans, two jerseys and his thickest socks, pulled on a woollen beanie and carried his kitbag towards Abigail’s laundry block. The moors lay still as ice, and his breath frosted in plumes. The sun wasn’t far away: shafts of brilliance shot from behind the horizon, and the grass was tinged with silvery translucence. He could see no sign of life from the campervan families at the top end of the site, but Jessy was sniffing myopically along the beck. When he whistled, she padded up the hill to join him.

‘Hello, old girl,’ he murmured, tipping most of the contents of his bag into a giant washing machine. ‘Looking for rabbits, eh? Good lass.’

The sun was rising when he emerged. Stepping out into its light, he heard the metallic rasp of a van door sliding shut. It sounded smooth and careful; whoever was up and about was trying not to draw attention to themselves. Glancing towards the sound, he saw a woman leave a white VW kombi and head towards the shower block. He recognised the flowing skirt and wild curls. Anxious to avoid conversation, he strode away in the opposite direction.

Jessy trailed him back to the caravan, plodding close beside his legs. He invited her in, and she stood watching as he switched on the heater and made himself a cup of instant coffee.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You and me, Jessy. What shall us two daredevils get up to now?’

The old dog regarded him for a time, her brow furrowed. She seemed faintly disapproving. Then she gave a weary sigh and lay down with her nose along her paws.

‘Yeah, I’m pretty knackered too,’ agreed Joseph, reaching to stroke her ears. ‘Had a fuckin’ awful night.’

Still, he felt the need of some action; the restoration of a vestige of order in his life. He lifted one of the squabs that ran around the living area. They doubled as beds, and underneath were storage lockers. He began to sort through them, constantly distracted by the discovery of childhood treasures. Here was the dog-eared set of Monopoly that he and Marie used to play on wet days; and—ah!
Twister.
Great game—he’d been far better at that than Marie, which used to annoy the hell out of her. Scarlet and Theo had played with this very set too. He lifted out a shoebox full of jumbled packs of cards. At the bottom of one of the lockers lay a stash of his mother’s magazines. She used to read the horoscopes. They gave her hope.

He sank onto a seat, leafing through a thirty-year-old copy of
Woman’s Own.
There was a brown ring on the front cover, and he smiled. His mother’s coffee mug. On page ten a crossword had been completed in her firm, square capitals. He imagined Irene sitting heavily on the caravan steps with a cigarette in one hand, racing through the clues. She used to keep up with all Joseph’s schoolwork, and if she couldn’t answer a question she took him to the library and they researched together. He’d often thought she could have been a match for Hannah Wilde, given the same advantages. Instead, she’d fallen pregnant with Marie and done what was expected of her: married a crashing bore.

Joseph ran his fingertips over the blue letters, feeling the indentations made by her pen. They brought bittersweet comfort; an echo of Irene’s presence, as though the years were telescoping inwards. His mother had never rejected him. She’d come to all the court appearances and faced the blank-eyed lenses of the press. Time after time, she’d taken a train to Leeds and queued up to visit him. He saw her there three days before she died, and had thought she looked terribly tired. He missed her.

Placing the magazine on the table, he turned to the nearest bookcase. On top lay a jumble of thrillers by Dick Francis—his mother again. The next shelf held books that he remembered reading to Scarlet and Theo when they were last there: Roald Dahl and
Horrible Histories
. Stashed among these he spotted a thin, faded hardback. He lifted it out and held it up to a shaft of pale sunshine. Its cover was cinnamon and gold, slightly torn: an antique copy of Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet
. He knew it almost by heart.