The Stepmother (24 page)

Then she did actually see that CBT guy, when her cleaning got compulsive again. I thought she was going to be all right.

I didn’t like Matthew all that much when he came along; I thought he was smug – but harmless. I thought she was in with a good chance of a good life. I thought he really loved her, that he saw the goodness reflected back at him.

I thought we were past this now.

I think of his harsh words to her – the words written here in this diary.

And you know what else? It pains me to say it – but she kind of
was
a blank, my Jeanie. I’ve seen it written down – and I hate the man who said it – I knew there was a reason not to like him.

But there’s a part of me – and I bloody well hate to admit it, I really, really do – that understands
why
he said it.

She wasn’t always like that, not as a younger child. No; then she was vibrant, if always a little shy and retiring.

It happened later. And I blame our mother. Well, both our parents really – though my dad fucked off when we were so young, I barely think of him. I wholeheartedly and squarely lay the blame at our parents’ door. But then why wouldn’t I?

Don’t have kids if you can’t cope, I say.

Around two I fall asleep on the sofa in the living room, curled up uncomfortably, knees almost at my chin. But I am good at sleeping anywhere; it’s a long-won habit. I sleep for a bit.

I
’m woken
by the next-door neighbour knocking gently at the front door. She is a spry-looking older lady with gun-grey hair and shiny red glasses, and it’s her who rang 999.

‘Ruth Jenkins. Next door. I’m so sorry about Jeanie…’

‘Thanks.’ I try to shut the door.

‘You must be her sister; I can see it round the eyes. Can I offer you some coffee?’ she says. ‘I’ve just made a pot.’

I’m about to tell her to get lost, but then I think,
Be nice, Marlena, you owe her.
If it wasn’t for her, after all…

‘Thanks,’ I say again, but if she’s come for information or emotion, she’s come to the wrong place.

There is no room for grief here. There is only room for answers.

The woman brings the coffee round on a tray and tells me to leave it on her garden table when I’m done, no rush, and she doesn’t ask any questions.

I drink the coffee, trying to clear my head. I clean my teeth in the kitchen sink, and then, palms sweating, I ring the hospital.

My fingers are crossed behind my back like I always used to cross them when I was a scared little kid.

No change, they say. She’s in a medically induced coma; it’s safer for now. The worry is – the worry is – she may be brain dead.

I try to ring Frank; I leave him a message to call me back, but I don’t say anything else.

I find myself wishing very briefly that I had someone else to call, someone waiting for me at home, someone who cared, someone to whom I could say, ‘I’m really fucking terrified – what will I do if she dies?’

My mind turns to Levi – to his big grin, his teeth very white against his dark skin, his warm muscular arms, the terrible QPR tattoo on his left hip. And then I think away again. We were getting too close – so I finished it last month.

I don’t need anyone. Because if I had anyone, they could do this thing that Jeanie’s threatening to do. They could leave me too.

I smoke my last cigarette and check the news on my phone – nothing about Matthew. I Google him. Nothing new.

I sit and think for a minute or two, then I text my mate Jez in the ITN newsroom.

Half an hour later I get a call from a Welsh-sounding girl called Sal.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Can you get to him? Talk to him?’

‘I can try, babe.’ Sal is cheerful and efficient sounding. ‘What you paying?’

‘What do you want?’

She sets out reasonable terms, and I agree.

‘I need answers – quickly,’ I say. ‘And, Sal…’

‘Yeah?’

‘I need all the help I can get please. Social workers and police, I guess, are the way forward.’

‘Sure thing,’ she says quietly, and I reckon Jez must have told her why. ‘I’ve got my contacts. No worries, babe. I’ll do my best.’

When I hang up, I go back through the cottage, and I open every drawer, every cupboard. I go through everything, through Jeanie’s bag, through her phone.

At some point I realise I’m muttering and cursing, sweating as I rush round the tiny house.

I take the phone, and I take the diary, and I put them in my own bag.

I knock on the cottage next door and ask that Ruth contact me on my mobile if anyone
at all
comes to the house. I give her my card.

‘I really do hope she’s all right,’ Ruth says, and she seems quite upset. ‘She seemed like a nice lady…’ And then she stops, thinking better of whatever it was she was going to say.

‘Yeah, I really hope so too.’
Don’t cry, Marlena
. ‘Can I ask – how come you noticed she was gone?’

‘I had a sort of – hunch maybe? I don’t know. I saw her on Sunday. She seemed – disoriented. She was walking out on the back fields, and she looked…’

She is embarrassed.

‘Go on please,’ I say.

‘I don’t know. I just got the idea something wasn’t right. She seemed very – shaky. And I’m afraid – I heard her crying a few times in the night.’

Oh God
.

‘You can hear everything when the windows are open, we’re all so near.’ She looked apologetic. ‘And when her door kept banging in the early hours, I thought – I’d better go in…’

‘Thank God,’ I say.

‘I just wish…’ She trails off. ‘Well. I wish I could have helped her more.’

She offers me a lift to the station, but I don’t want to talk any more, so I thank her again, as sincerely as possible, and say goodbye.

I walk down to the town square and call a cab. The air here is so fresh and so clean; I can see why Jeanie liked it. She could have been happy here, I can see that. I feel like it might have been the right place.

The cab drops me at the Royal Derby Hospital, and I sit with Jeanie for an hour before I catch the train. There’s no change, though I’m sure I feel a flicker of her hand in mine at one point, when I rest my forehead on her fingers.

When I leave, teary and fraught, I head back down south. I research Berkhamsted, the town I will finally visit later. Apparently this pleasant ‘commuter town’ was once the home of Graham Greene. It has a Waitrose, of course – but Jeanie’s no longer there.

And how ashamed am I that it’s taken this disaster for me to go? How ashamed am I?

I’ve got no bloody clue what to do next – that’s the truth. I’m so heartsick I don’t know what to do with myself full stop. And I haven’t managed to get hold of Frankie yet.

The image of Jeanie under that sheet spins round my head, so pale, that plastic thing shoved in her mouth, and all those stupid bloody machines, green lights and beeps. It’s unbearable. What will I do – if…

All the way from Derby on the train, my mind jangles like church bells rung by a group of pissed vicars.

As we’re pulling into St Pancras, the stringer Sal texts to say she’s made contact with her source at Hertfordshire County Council Social Services and started to dig around. She’s not seen Matthew yet; she thinks he’s still in custody.

She’s managed to speak to the investigating officer, who says he can’t disclose anything yet – but she knows the allegations have come from someone very close to King.

I get a cab home.

M
y neighbour catches
me as I’m about to shut my front door.

‘Package for you,’ he says, ridiculous in tight Lycra, on his way to jog through the pollution.

It’s a badly wrapped book of some description; my name on the address label – but it’s misspelt.

In the flat I light a fag, put the espresso machine on and open it. There’s a note: three words.

I realise it’s a diary.

It’s Jeanie’s missing diary.

I flick through it.

Then I shove some clean knickers in my bag, swig my coffee back and I leave again. I walk to the local Avis branch, and I hire a car.

D
riving out of London again
, exhausted but my brain humming, I think about Jeanie’s words; what she wrote about Kaye arriving to get Scarlett. It’s hard to get a grasp of the woman’s real intentions from my sister’s writing. I don’t know how much of Jeanie’s own disquiet was informing what she wrote. I need to speak to the woman myself.

It’ s not hard to find Kaye King’s address. (Don’t ask me how I do it. I can’t divulge all my tricks and sources – but I can find an address quicker than you can say ‘hot dinner’.)

Kaye King – sounds like some type of poxy singer, some floaty type like Karen Carpenter, doesn’t it?

But when I actually meet Kaye, she couldn’t be further from that imagining.

Her apartment is in a modern block of expensive flats, set behind gates in landscaped gardens. It’s all most out of keeping with the rest of this twee, mock-Tudor town, and the big gates are firmly closed.

I park on the street and walk through the pedestrian gate to locked glass doors. There is her name, all pink and swirly beside number 201:
Mrs Kaye King
it reads.

I press the intercom buzzer over and over – but no one answers.

I’m wondering what to do – wait or go – when a shiny white Range Rover pulls in through the gates, opening electronically.

There’s a teenage boy in the passenger seat beside the woman driving. He is different from her blondeness: dark haired, round faced – the apologetic pudding Jeanie described. He sees me, and he says something as she pulls up, so that she looks at me, frowning.

‘Hi.’ I stand by her car door. ‘Are you Kaye?’

‘What?’ she mouths through the window, shaking her head as if she can’t understand me. The boy looks petrified.

‘I’m Marlena Randall; I’m Jeanie’s sister.’ I speak loudly and clearly, as if I’m talking to someone very stupid or very deaf. ‘Have you heard what’s happened? I’d like to speak to you please.’

‘Yes, I got your message. I am sorry.’ She lowers the window slightly, the engine still running. ‘How is she?’

‘Not good. I’m just – I’m wondering what went on…’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is your daughter here?’

‘She’s staying with a friend. She has to be – protected. Because of what’s – happened.’

‘What’s happened?’ I know what she means; I just want her to say it.

The woman casts a quick look at her son. ‘I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation for now, Miss Randall.’ She puts huge emphasis on the ‘Miss’; coming from her mouth, it sounds like a dirty word. ‘Little pitchers, you know.’

The boy is at least fifteen, if not older, staring at his phone, not looking at me. Hardly a little pitcher – and he must be sensing the animosity surely?

Still, I don’t want to alienate Kaye immediately.

‘Yeah, granted,’ I say. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk privately? Just for a minute…’

‘Not really.’ Kaye’s face hardens. ‘We’re going through a really tough time ourselves you know.’

‘Yes, I heard. I’m sorry to hear that. But my sister’s on life support, and I want to know what the f—’ My turn to glance at the boy still mesmerised by Candy Crush. ‘What the hell was going on, you know, to push my sister into what she’s done?’

As Kaye contemplates me, her perfect manicure tapping the wheel, I’m distracted by a young man jogging towards us.

Kaye sees him too, opens the window further and calls to him, ‘I’ll see you inside.’

He stops, clearly somewhat confused by Mein Führer’s command, poor bloke.

‘Yassine,’ she snaps. ‘We’ll be up in a minute.’

‘Marlena Randall.’ I walk towards him and extend my hand. ‘You met my sister Jeanie, I believe.’

He nods, taking my hand in his warm sweaty one. ‘She’s nice. I’m really sorry. How’s she doing?’

‘Not too good at the moment.’ I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘She’s unconscious actually – and I’m trying to find out why.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he repeats. ‘I am sorry she would want to take her own life.’

‘Can I give you my number please?’ I delve into my back pocket. ‘If you think of anything…’

‘Anything?’

‘Anything at all. I’m trying to understand what drove her to this.’ I offer him the card. ‘Please. I’m pretty desperate.’

He takes it. A little reluctantly perhaps, but he does at least take it.

Kaye, on the other hand, is not going to get out of her car now, so I give up. I don’t want to make a scene here.

Not yet anyway.

A
s I sit
in my hire car on the corner, smoking my fifth fag this hour and thinking,
What is it I’m hoping to achieve by all this?,
something attracts my attention.

I see a girl on the uppermost balcony, in pyjamas and fluffy boots, leaning on the rail, looking down at me. I’m pretty sure it’s Scarlett. When she sees me looking back, she retreats quickly.

What is this family hiding? What did they push Jeanie to?

And
who
sent me the diary?

T
he next morning
I get up really early and finish reading Jeanie’s thoughts.

There’s a little note on some of the pages, not that many, that says SK. Scarlett King? It makes no sense.

I find some of Jeanie’s self-doubt lacerating. Why did I not see sooner that she was in real trouble? Why didn’t she say?

After I’ve called the hospital and they’ve repeated, ‘No change still,’ I drive back to Berkhamsted, and I break into Matthew King’s house.

Well okay, I don’t break in exactly. I let myself in with Jeanie’s keys. I set the alarm off – but I’m good with alarms – I learnt at the knee of a master as I was being dragged up – and I manage to disable it quite quickly. Quickly enough, I hope, that it won’t alert anyone.

I
t’s
cold and empty in this house; this house is cold and empty. There’s no heart. Jeanie probably brought it heart – but she’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed in the Royal Derby.