Till We Meet Again (7 page)

As Beth was led by a prison officer to the interview room, she felt decidedly shaky and unsure of herself. Nothing she’d planned to say before she got that phone call from Steven was appropriate now. She didn’t know whether to launch straight into what she knew or wait to see if Susan was intending to tell her.

But as the door opened to the interview room and she caught sight of Susan sitting at the desk waiting for her, Beth felt as if the years had been stripped away. She was far more identifiable as Suzie now, for her hair was newly washed. Maybe it didn’t shine and bounce the way it used to, there was no full fringe either, but it was Suzie’s hair. Even the redness of her face seemed to have subsided. She was wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt over the same navy slacks she’d been wearing when she was arrested, and she appeared slimmer than at their previous meeting.

‘How’s it going?’ Beth asked awkwardly, hovering in the doorway, even more unsure now of how to proceed.

Susan shrugged. ‘Not that bad,’ she said.

‘Are you ready to talk now?’ Beth asked as the door closed behind her, leaving them alone.

‘No,’ Susan said, looking defiantly the other way and folding her arms across her chest.

Beth saw no point in playing cat and mouse any longer.

‘Okay, Suzie,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you straight off, because I know you did me. But you weren’t someone I ever expected to turn up as a client.’

Susan’s mouth dropped open, shut and fell open again like a fish. ‘I didn’t –’ she began, and faltered. ‘I couldn’t –’

‘God moves in mysterious ways, so they say,’ Beth said archly, wishing she could stop trembling. ‘Not that I’m much of a believer in God these days. But fate, call it what you will, seems to have stepped in.’

‘If they’d told me your name before they called you I would have asked them to get someone else,’ Susan said in a croaky voice. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when you arrived.’

‘Well, I did turn up, so you’d better stop all this nonsense of refusing to talk,’ Beth said firmly. ‘You see, I know about Annabel now, I’ve seen your photographs of her. I know she died of meningitis and that Doctor Wetherall was your GP.’

Susan’s eyes widened and the red flush came back to her face, her expression so much like ones engraved on Beth’s heart. Suzie had always blushed furiously when shocked or nervous.

‘I’m so very sorry about Annabel,’ Beth went on, moving a little closer to her. Part of her felt she should hug her old friend, show some of the emotion she felt inside her. But Beth didn’t know how to be spontaneous any more, and her lawyer’s mind said she must keep her distance. ‘Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a woman, and it does throw a very different light on what you did,’ she added.

She thought for a moment that Susan still wasn’t going to talk. Her face tightened, she was twisting her index finger with her other hand, and her eyes were fixed on her lap.

‘Do you remember what you shouted to me when I was on the train going home that last summer?’ Beth asked after a minute or two.

She could see the scene so clearly, Suzie in a pink dress, running alongside the train as Beth leaned out the window to wave and blow kisses.

‘It was “Till we meet again,” ’ Beth said and heard her own voice waver with emotion. ‘That’s what you shouted. I could never have imagined meeting up like this, then.’

Susan still didn’t speak. Beth wasn’t even sure if she’d really heard what she said.

‘Look, Suzie,’ she began again, ‘I’m sorry we lost touch. But we were young and we both had so many other things going on. Please talk to me. If not as a solicitor, then just as an old friend.’

There was a moment or two of silence, and Beth could almost read Susan’s thought processes in the agonized expression on her face. She was probably relieved she’d been found out, she wanted to trust her old friend, yet she was very much aware Beth was a solicitor and therefore on the other side. Was it best to stay silent, or tell her everything?

‘That bastard sent me away from the surgery twice,’ she burst out suddenly, her eyes sparking fire. ‘The second time Annabel had a rash, she was like a floppy doll, but he said it was nothing more than a touch of flu and to give her Calpol. I argued with him, I showed him how the rash didn’t disappear if you put a glass on it, but he said I was a neurotic mother and to stop wasting his time.’

Beth sat down, very relieved that the tide appeared to have turned. ‘So you took her to the Children’s Hospital yourself?’ she asked.

‘Yes, and she died not long after I got her there.’

‘I’m so sorry, Suzie,’ Beth said, and even though she had always believed she was incapable of being really moved by any tragedy, she found this time she was. ‘Did you report him?’

‘Yes, but a fat lot of good it did me,’ Susan spat back, her pale eyes flashing like pieces of flint struck together. ‘They all stick together, don’t they? Cover up for one another. I was just a single mother, they didn’t care about what they’d done to me.’

‘And Mrs Parks, the receptionist – what did she do to you?’

‘She wouldn’t even give me an emergency appointment, much less let me have a home visit,’ Susan said, her voice rasping with hatred. ‘I rang three times altogether, and each time she said to put Annabel to bed and give her plenty of fluids. She spoke as if I was a halfwit. A mother knows when her child is seriously ill.’

‘Were these phone calls before or after the visits to Doctor Wetherall?’

‘Two before the first visit, then I went to the surgery anyway because I was so frantic. She didn’t like that at all, and kept me waiting ages before I finally got to see the doctor. The next morning when Annabel was much worse, I rang again, insisting on a home visit immediately. She was really snotty with me, she said a home visit wasn’t necessary, but that if I brought Annabel in she’d squeeze me in somewhere.’

‘So you took Annabel to the surgery twice as an emergency?’ Beth needed to clarify that. ‘What did Doctor Wetherall say the first time?’

‘That it was just a bad cold, or maybe flu,’ Susan said. ‘He was so dismissive, he hardly even examined her.’

‘And the second time?’

‘Anyone could see how ill she was then.’ Susan’s voice rose in agitation. ‘I told you already, she was all limp like a doll, she had the rash. I said I thought it was meningitis, he said mothers always imagined that and he told me to take her home.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I went back out to reception, and I begged that woman to call an ambulance, but she said if the doctor thought Annabel needed hospital he would have arranged it. I was holding Annabel in my arms, for God’s sake! She was a four-year-old, not a baby, barely conscious, any fool could see there was something badly wrong.’

Beth’s heart contracted at her obvious pain.

‘And that’s when you took her to hospital?’

Susan nodded. ‘I didn’t have any money on me for a taxi. I had to carry her home again and ask a neighbour to take me.’

‘Why didn’t you take her to the hospital straight after the doctor sent you away the first time?’ Beth asked.

‘If only I had.’ Susan sighed and slumped down in her chair. ‘I suppose I thought he had to be right, and I was over-reacting. I’d always trusted doctors.’

‘Where did you learn to fire a gun like that?’ Beth asked after a momentary pause.

Susan lifted her head a fraction and she half smiled. ‘I could do it when I knew you,’ she said. ‘Dad started teaching me with a shotgun when I was about eight. I was really good at it.’

‘How come you never told me?’ Beth asked curiously. ‘I’d have been dead impressed.’

Susan shrugged. ‘A lot of people used to think it was weird. Martin, that’s my brother, said it was a freaky thing for a girl to do. I suppose what with having a crazy granny, I expected you’d think I was loopy too.’

Beth had forgotten until then that Suzie had often made what seemed at the time little jokes about her granny being barmy. Back then, Beth thought it just meant eccentric behaviour. Now, looking back as an adult, she suddenly realized the old lady was probably suffering from dementia, with all the horrors that entailed.

‘So where did the gun come from?’ she asked, intending to come back to the grandmother later.

‘It was Daddy’s.’

‘Is he still alive?’ Beth asked.

‘No, he and Mummy both died ten years ago, first Mummy and then him, six weeks later.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Beth said. ‘But tell me, Suzie –’

‘Don’t call me that,’ the other woman interrupted the question irritably. ‘I hate it, it’s a stupid little-girl name, not one for a grown-woman. I’m Susan.’

Beth raised an eyebrow questioningly. ‘Well, Susan, I can see why you felt murderous towards both the doctor and his receptionist. I think any woman would. But why did you wait four years to get your revenge?’

Beth knew this would be an important issue in Susan’s trial. If she had shot the doctor within weeks of her child’s death she would have gained everyone’s sympathy – the public’s, the jury’s and even the judge’s.

‘Revenge?’ Susan looked at her questioningly.

‘Yes. That’s what it was. Wasn’t it?’

Susan grimaced. ‘I didn’t see it that way. I just knew I had to do it to set myself free.’

‘Explain?’

‘No, I won’t,’ Susan said.

‘But I can’t help you unless you tell me everything,’ Beth said.

Susan suddenly smiled and it made her look very much younger. ‘You don’t get it, do you? I
am
free now. I’ve done it and for the first time in four years I’ve got something to feel glad about. I don’t care if I have to stay in prison for the rest of my life. There’s nothing outside for me.’

Beth sighed deeply. ‘Okay, I understand why you wanted to do it. But didn’t it cross your mind that you’d be leaving the doctor’s four children without a father, the receptionist’s two without a mother?’

‘I thought of killing one child from each family,’ Susan said, her face darkening. ‘I wanted them to know the agony of seeing your own child in a coffin. But I watched them, day after day, and I knew those two bastards cared about no one but themselves, not even their own kids. So it was them I went for.’

Beth wasn’t easily shocked but the force of Susan’s statement took her aback completely. She wondered how on earth she was going to be able to put together a defence for her.

‘Tell me about the years before Annabel was born,’ she asked.

Susan looked at her coldly. ‘Why? Do you hope you might hear something which will make you feel sorry for me?’

‘Not at all. I just want to know. I want to help you.’

‘I don’t want your help, nor your bloody sympathy,’ Susan snapped back. ‘I deserve to be in here. It’s the right place for me because I can’t hurt anyone else ever again. Forget little Suzie Wright, the kid who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, she doesn’t exist any more, she disappeared years ago.’

Beth faltered. It was obvious the Suzie she knew had disappeared, but there had to be a good reason for her to vanish. ‘I’d like to help Susan Fellows,’ she retorted. ‘I think she might need a friend, if nothing else.’

Susan gave a hollow laugh. ‘I’ve got friends in here now. We’re all ground-down, chewed-up and spat-out people here. I feel right at home.’

Beth was alarmed at that bitter remark. There was so much more she wanted to know, had to know, if only to get a broad picture of why her gentle childhood friend had turned out like this. But Beth was in shock too, her pulse was racing, she couldn’t be entirely professional, or just take the role of friend. And as her time was nearly up, she thought it best to leave things as they stood for the time being.

‘I have to go now anyway,’ she said, getting up. ‘But I’m not giving up on you, Susan,’ she said, looking down at her.

Susan just shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ she said sullenly. ‘But don’t expect me to change my plea, or give you any sob stuff. I did this with my eyes wide open, I’m not mad. I want a life sentence, like I said, I deserve it. Have I made myself clear?’

Beth nodded. ‘All too clear,’ she said softly, and for the first time in her career as a solicitor she felt like crying for her client. ‘But just remember, Susan, it was you who inspired me to want to be a lawyer in the first place. I’m going to do the best I can for you, whether you want it or not’

Icy rain splattered on Beth’s face as she was let out of the prison gates and walked to her car. Her whole body was trembling as if she was going down with flu. She got into her car and started the engine, but for a brief moment she couldn’t put it into gear and drive away, because she was eleven again and riding up through Luddington village on Aunt Rose’s bike to meet Suzie.

At the start of the second August it was raining hard, and she was afraid a year apart had been too long and Suzie wouldn’t want to come out and play after all. She was wearing a plastic raincoat which rustled as she pedalled – the hood had blown off and her hair was dripping wet. But as she went round the slight bend by All Saints church, Suzie came hurtling out from the trees surrounding her house, waving her arms and yelling.

‘You’ve come!’ she screamed jubilantly. ‘You’ve come!’

Beth remembered how she flung the bike down as Suzie embraced her, and she was glad it was so wet so her friend wouldn’t see she was crying. She’d waited all year for this, yet she hadn’t known until that moment that Suzie had been longing for it just as much.

‘Aunt Rose said only ducks go out in rain like this,’ Beth said, as Suzie led her to the shelter of the trees.

‘Mummy said I needed my head examined thinking you’d come.’ Suzie grinned, and got a handkerchief out of her coat pocket to dry Beth’s face. ‘What do grown-ups know? I knew you’d come.’

‘It’s a bit too wet to do anything,’ Beth said, looking up at the sullen sky.

‘Not too wet to talk.’ Suzie giggled. ‘Let’s go in the church porch, it’ll be dry there. I’ve got us a picnic’.

They sat on the hard narrow bench in the porch for what must have been at least two hours, talking and talking as the rain streamed down outside. Beth couldn’t remember now much of what they talked about, only the joy of being together again, the taste of the fish paste sandwiches and the bottle of lemonade they shared.