Till We Meet Again (8 page)

‘This rain isn’t going to last,’ Suzie said confidently. ‘Daddy said it would blow itself out by tonight. Shall we meet in Stratford tomorrow? I want to get some notebooks and stuff from Woolworth’s for our secret club.’

Beth found herself smiling as the seriousness of the rules they made up for their club that afternoon came back to her. They had to invent a code to write in, so no one else would read their messages to each other. They made solemn promises never to divulge to anyone what they did at club meetings. They made up a password, and there was a kind of pledge which they had to recite together as they crooked their little fingers together.

‘Friends forever, whatever the weather,’ Beth murmured as it popped back into her mind.

‘Better to die than to betray. That is my pledge to you today.’

As far as Beth remembered, the club fizzled out very quickly. They did buy notebooks in Woolworth’s the next day, and invented their secret code, but they rarely wrote to each other in it as it proved so laborious. They built a club-house, a den in the woods, and Suzie smuggled out old plates, cutlery, even a kettle and an old rug from her house to make it cosy. In fact, now that Beth was thinking back on it, she realized Suzie was a real homemaker – right through their friendship it was always she who thought of practicalities, of what they were going to eat and what clothes they should wear. A little mother even then.

Chapter five

‘I have to tell someone or burst,’ Beth blurted out suddenly after two gin and tonics with Roy.

It was Friday evening, five days since she’d visited Susan, and for all of them she’d been in a state of nervous confusion. Part of her ached to confide in someone about her dilemma, but the other part insisted it was something she had to tackle alone. Then this morning a letter had arrived from Susan, dismissing Beth as her solicitor.

It had been a sensible, forthright letter, in which she said she was touched that Beth wanted to defend her, but she didn’t think it was a good idea in light of their childhood connection. She asked if Beth would recommend someone else.

On one level it was a welcome relief. Every way Beth looked at the case she saw problems. She felt trapped by her own sense of involvement, and by poignant memories which kept surfacing.

Yet at the same time she felt she must do right by Susan. It seemed to her that the twist of fate that had brought both of them to Bristol to meet up under such extraordinary circumstances couldn’t be walked away from.

So when Roy had rung her this afternoon and asked her out for a drink after work she was only too pleased to agree – anything was better than spending another evening alone with her anxieties.

They had met in Auntie’s bar, which was just a couple of minutes’ walk from her office, and maybe it was the gin on an empty stomach, or just Roy’s friendly, interested manner, that made her feel compelled to share her troubles with him.

‘Better to tell me, the soul of discretion, than anyone else,’ he said with a grin. ‘You’re expecting a baby? You intend to run off with a hunchbacked milkman?’

‘No,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Neither of those, but it’s almost as unlikely. You see, it’s turned out Susan Fellows and I were friends as children.’

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, turning towards her, brown eyes wide with surprise. ‘That’s incredible. I think I’d be fit to burst too, with that on my mind.’

Beth explained how it all came about. And that Susan wanted a new solicitor before she made a full statement to the police about the shooting.

Roy was a good listener. ‘I think it might be for the best,’ he said thoughtfully as she finished. ‘I’m sure there will be parts of her life she wouldn’t want to admit to you. And it would be hard for you to be objective if you feel personal involvement. You don’t strike me as someone who likes that.’

Beth was a little surprised that he’d sensed that about her already, after all they hardly knew each other. Yet it pleased her – it showed he was an intuitive man and one she could be honest with.

‘I don’t,’ she agreed. ‘To be honest, I haven’t ever lost a moment’s sleep over any client before. Yet even though I ought to be relieved, I can’t seem to let go. I’m burning to know everything that’s happened to her in the last thirty years since we drifted apart. I don’t like to think of her being alone and friendless.’

She went on to tell him briefly of Susan’s insistence that she was going to plead guilty and how she had said she was surrounded now by people who were just like her. ‘But she can’t know what prison is really like when you are on a life sentence,’ Beth said passionately. ‘My guess is that she’s had a whole string of sadness and disappointment, even before Annabel’s death. If this little girl was, as I suspect, the only good thing in Susan’s life, it’s no wonder she flipped. I really believe this is a true case of diminished responsibility, and if so she needs help, not to lose her freedom forever.’

‘Maybe that doesn’t bother her because she has no conception of what freedom means,’ Roy said.

Beth looked at him curiously. There was an odd note to his voice which she couldn’t quite read. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Just a feeling. You said her teenage years were dominated by her senile grandmother, then her mother having a stroke. It’s possible she spent her entire youth being a carer.’

‘She did say both her parents died within six weeks of one another, ten years ago,’ Beth said, looking at Roy aghast. ‘Bloody hell! Surely she wasn’t looking after them since she was sixteen?’

‘It’s quite possible.’ Roy nodded. ‘That would kind of add up with what I learned when I went round to where she lived when Annabel was born. I spoke to her old next-door neighbour.’

‘What was her reaction to what Susan had done?’

‘It hadn’t even crossed her mind that her former neighbour and the woman involved in the Dowry Square murders were one and the same. She was incredulous. That in itself is evidence that the woman we arrested was quite different from the one she used to be.’

‘I can vouch for that,’ Beth agreed wholeheartedly. ‘I still can’t equate the timid, gentle girl I knew with a gun-toting wino.’

‘The neighbour didn’t want to believe me. She said Susan was the old-fashioned kind, she baked her own bread, made jam and cakes and sat knitting and sewing in the evenings. It seems she moved there early on in her pregnancy, but no one really got to know her until after the baby was born.’

‘How much does she know about Susan’s past?’

‘Nothing,’ Roy said. ‘But then this woman was only too keen to tell me Susan was the kind who was more interested in others than talking about herself. She made cakes for the old age pensioners, she got their shopping. That sounds to me like someone who has spent their life taking care of others.’

Beth nodded agreement. ‘So what happened when Annabel died?’

‘It seemed everyone in that street shared her grief. Annabel was by all accounts a little star who used to wave to people through the window, she had played with many of the other small children. The neighbours immediately offered help and consolation, they all went to Annabel’s funeral, but Susan withdrew into herself. She stayed indoors with the curtains closed. But as the neighbour said, that was quite understandable, and they thought if they gave her time she’d come out of it. Then about six months later they found she’d moved out. No one saw her leave, she didn’t say goodbye to anyone. The first they knew of it was when a van arrived to collect her furniture.’

Beth had already discovered from the landlord at Belle Vue that Susan had only lived there for two years.

‘So where do you think she was for the eighteen-month period before she went to Belle Vue?’ she asked Roy.

‘That we don’t know. She was claiming benefits when Annabel was alive, but cancelled them when she moved out of Ambra Vale in Clifton Wood. Maybe she was living with a man who was taking care of her, it could have been Annabel’s father. There isn’t even any record of her seeing any doctor in Bristol, and that’s unusual after losing a child.’

‘I don’t suppose she had any faith in them any longer, not after the way Doctor Wetherall treated her,’ Beth mused. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about what she went through mentally, to end up hanging around that surgery, plotting to kill the people she blamed for her loss.’

‘There isn’t a lot of help about for anyone when a child dies,’ Roy said tersely. ‘Your friends don’t know how to behave towards you. I don’t think counselling does much good either. It’s something you have to come to terms with all by yourself.’

Beth thought that perhaps she was stirring up painful memories for Roy, and felt she’d better try to steer the conversation in another direction.

‘What would you do about Susan if you were me?’ she asked.

‘Give her case to someone you trust, then just write to her and offer your friendship,’ he said simply.

Beth thought about that for a moment. Steven Smythe was every bit as able a solicitor as her, and he’d probably be quite happy to let her continue to go and see Susan once in a while. That could work out quite well.

Over a third drink, they began talking about property prices. Beth had noticed they’d begun to rise quite steeply again since she’d bought her flat. Roy said he was very glad he’d bought his cottage during the recession a few years earlier, because it would be well out of his price range now.

‘You live in a cottage?’ Beth said with some surprise. She’d imagined him living in a modern place.

‘It’s a far cry from the idyllic roses-round-the-door kind of cottage,’ he said ruefully. ‘I bought it very cheap in an auction because it was practically falling down. At the time I thought a big project was just what I needed. I’m not so sure now.’

Beth guessed he meant to take his mind off his son dying and his marriage breaking up.

‘More work than you imagined?’ she asked.

‘Not half. Almost every job is dependent on something else. Like I couldn’t just get the roof mended, some of the beams had to be replaced first. I got that done, then I thought I’d make a start on new window-frames, but the floor-boards were rotten and some of them caved in, that’s when I found the small lake down in the foundations. The water pipes were leaking.’

‘How old is it?’ she asked, mentally picturing him up to his neck in muddy foundations.

‘About a hundred and fifty years old,’ he said. ‘Built as a farm labourer’s cottage, two up, two down, but no one had lived in it for some fifteen years. It was almost hidden with brambles and bushes. I must have been mad to buy it.’

‘I bet it’s got something good about it,’ she said, amused by his sardonic attitude.

‘The view is great,’ he agreed. ‘Fields all round, when I’m out clearing the ground on a warm sunny day, I think it’s heaven. But when I get home on a cold wet evening, and I can’t get the fire going, I’d gladly give up and get myself a flat in the city.’

‘I’d love to see it,’ she said impulsively and instantly wished she hadn’t been so forward.

‘Then we’ll pick a nice day,’ he said, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘And when I’ve had a few days off so I can tidy up a bit.’

They talked for a while about their ideas of an ideal home. Beth said she’d like a Georgian house with spacious rooms, large windows and a garden laid out to lawn and trees. ‘With a housekeeper and a gardener, so I don’t have to look after it myself,’ she added laughingly.

Roy said his ideal was what he’d already got, only with everything finished. ‘The kitchen all fitted out with a dishwasher and washing machine,’ he said dreamily. ‘No more bags of plaster, lengths of cable and pipes. A gleaming bathroom. Furniture and nice curtains.’

‘What kind of home did you live in as a child?’ she asked.

Roy grimaced. ‘A council house in Southmead.’

Beth was surprised that he came from the same big, rough housing estate north of Bristol as many of her clients. She had thought by the way he spoke and acted that he came from a middle-class background.

‘Joining the police was a way out,’ he said, as if guessing what she was thinking. ‘Some of my mates joined the Forces, a few emigrated to Australia, the ones who stayed mostly got into trouble. That’s how it is there, you get out, or get sucked right in.’

‘Are your parents still living there?’ she asked.

‘Dad died some years ago. Mum’s got a little flat in Keynsham now, near my sisters. They are both married, with three children between them. I’m not far from them either, the cottage is in Queen Charlton. Do you know it?’

‘Oh yes,’ Beth exclaimed, remembering the tiny hamlet south of Bristol she’d come across once when she took a wrong turning on her way back from Bath. It was right in the country, but only about five miles from Bristol. ‘It’s so pretty. You were lucky to find anything affordable there.’

‘That’s what persuaded me,’ Roy said. ‘But what about your folks? Where are they?’

‘Sussex, but my mother’s dead now, my father’s in a nursing home. My brother and sister are still in that area.’

‘So what made you come to Bristol then?’ He frowned as if he thought that was odd.

‘To get away from them,’ she said lightly.

‘You surprise me.’ He turned in his seat and looked right at her, making her blush. ‘You’ve got the kind of confidence which usually comes from strong family ties.’

‘I haven’t lived at home since I was eighteen,’ she said. ‘The confidence comes from looking after myself.’

‘Is that why you want the Georgian house with a housekeeper and gardener, rather than a partner?’

Beth bristled. ‘Don’t start psychoanalysing me, for God’s sake.’

‘I wasn’t, I’m just interested,’ he said. ‘My father was a miserable old sod. He gave all of us a hell of a life. That gives me some understanding of families, and what they can do to one another.’

Beth never told anyone what her father was like, she hid it away as she did most things she felt bad about. But for once she was tempted to spill it all out.

‘I don’t like my father either,’ was all she could bring herself to say. ‘He’s an overbearing snob. I suppose it’s because of him that I never wanted marriage.’

‘My father had the reverse effect.’ Roy grinned. ‘I think I was determined to prove I had it in me to be the perfect husband. I was only twenty-one when I met Meg, and I couldn’t wait to marry her.’

‘And were you happy?’

Roy appeared to be considering that for a few moments. ‘Happy in as much that we had a better life together than with our families,’ he said eventually. ‘Looking back, we had very little in common. I had my work, she kept house, but that was the way it was for most couples in those days. We’d been married for nine years when Mark was born, by then we’d just about given up hope of children. He became the pivot of our marriage, and so when he died it just collapsed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Do you still see Meg?’

He shook his head. ‘She got married again. I hope she’s happier now.’

‘And you? Are you happier?’ she asked. Even as she asked that question, Beth wondered at the departure from her usual chilliness. In her work she had to question people all the time, but she never normally felt curious about anyone in her private life. Roy was intriguing her, though, for he was an attractive mix of toughness and sensitivity. She guessed he was in the habit of hiding the latter – with his background and job he would consider it a liability. She didn’t think he was in the habit of dropping his guard, any more than she was.

‘Mostly.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘Marriage wasn’t much fun, it was just a dreary kind of plod most of the time. I’ve had far more excitement since I was single. I find I like being on my own. Though I can’t say I’ll relish it when I’m old.’