Veil of Darkness (13 page)

‘It was your idea, you did the work, you should get more,’ says Avril unsteadily, unused to alcohol.

‘What d’you think I should wear?’ asks Bernie, too het up to fret about such details. ‘What sort of person should I be? We don’t want them to think I’m pig-ignorant.’

‘But you are pig-ignorant,’ worries Kirsty. ‘And the less you say the better.’

‘Then I’ll dazzle them with my personality.’

‘The only reason you don’t sound stupid,’ says Avril, ‘is because you’ve been around,’ and she searches for the right words, ‘life. Well, men, sex, that’s what I mean.’

‘What?
You think I’m a
whore
? You’re right, I’ve had more men than you’ve had hot dinners.’

‘And if you really did write a book it would be in a black cover on the top shelf of the motorway services.’

But there is a serious point here. Bernie is not your stereotype author. To start with she is a slag, or was (innocently promiscuous is how she sees it); secondly she is only nineteen and never took English at GCSE. With her IQ in such doubt, all the school would put her down for was RE, Drama and Art.

‘But there’s one thing I do have,’ she says to cheer her downcast conspirators, ‘and that’s a rich imagination. That was written once in my report. If I get the chance I’ll work on that.’

‘Just be yourself,’ says Kirsty. ‘Don’t show off or try to be clever, you couldn’t keep it up anyway. Let’s hope your looks will pull you through.’

The dress rehearsal arrives unexpectedly when Bernie is doing her shift that evening.

‘Off to London then?’ asks the odious Mr Derek with a nod and a wink, still hoping he might be in with a chance. ‘Off to the big smoke. Must be something important.’

‘I’ve written a novel,’ says Bernie, still on top of the world and bursting with confidence now that she knows her lost lover is back in the picture.

Mr Derek’s smile is contemptuous. ‘Oh yeah, and I’m the Queen Mother.’

‘Hey? Now why would you think like that?’ asks Bernie, peeved. ‘Why wouldn’t I write a novel?’

‘You’re not serious,’ says Mr Derek, irritating beyond endurance with that superior, amused expression.

‘Fine, if you don’t believe me,’ says Bernie, stiffening, ‘but what’s more I’ve found an agent who thinks she might be able to sell it.’ And won’t Dominic be surprised and impressed when he discovers his little colleen has more about her than he imagined? Won’t his mammy and daddy feel bad when they hear they snubbed a famous author? This is the gloss on the gingerbread. Because famous is what Bernadette Kavanagh has always been determined to be. She now has the platform she’s always desired. Thousands never get the chance, and all she has to do is throw herself off.

‘Well, what d’you think?’ asks Kirsty, finding Bernie immersed in the manuscript, her mess of magazines abandoned on the floor, covered with ash and snagged pairs of tights. She has been reading for an hour now, a unique situation for Bernie, whose normal concentration span is five minutes.

Bernie looks up, shocked, and still half immersed in the story.

‘I can’t put it down.’

‘There, we told you, it’s gripping.’

‘But there’s much more to it than that.’

‘Of course there is. That’s the whole point.’

‘This Magdalene,’ starts Bernie doubtfully, and her face takes on a clouded look, ‘there’s something abnormal…’

‘She’s a winner,’ Kirsty enthuses. ‘She’s unscrupulous. We could all be as strong as that if we tried. It’s just that we’ve all been conditioned to accept our limitations.’

‘I hope we’d never be like her.’ Bernie looks down at the thick wad of paper, and then back to Kirsty, bewildered. ‘She’s evil. It’s scary. It makes me go cold when I’m reading,
can’t you feel it
?’

‘That’s because of the strength of my writing,’ says Kirsty with a triumphant smile.

‘No.’ Bernie shakes her head once again, dark curls tumbling around her face. ‘No, it’s not that. There’s a word Mammy sometimes uses for things she can’t understand, like heathens and werewolves and paedophiles. She calls them accursed,’ murmurs Bernie, starting to shake uncontrollably, ‘and there’s something about your Magdalene that is definitely accursed.’

W
HILE TREVOR HOSKINS MIGHT
look like a man, talk like a man, walk like a man, as the days turn into weeks and his wife and kids remain out of reach, inside he feels like a cougar. Sniffing. Stalking. Snarling.

He has visited all the obvious places, spied on the neighbours, opened her post. Driven by pride and raging vengeance he has bagged and burned her remaining clothes, torn up the photograph al
bums, binned her goddamned trinkets and savaged the hidden books he found.

All this left him exhausted.

But the woman is thick as a bloody plank. There’s bound to be clues left somewhere around.

‘She used the phone, didn’t she, Margot, she used the payphone at lunch times. I always thought that was odd.’

Other than busybody Margot Banks, most of her workmates were discreet.

‘And she never said who she was ringing?’ Margot Banks shook her head and took another fag from his packet.

‘Some of them thought it was some bloke. They used to rag her something awful about it.’

Trevor went cold all over. How would Kirsty get a bloke with her miserable face and tired expression? She made it clear sex with him was disgusting. No, no, Trevor cannot tolerate the thought of another man. ‘But you never thought it was a bloke?’

‘Nah.’ Margot took a deep drag and blew it out into a shaft of sunshine. ‘Not Kirsty. She was far too shy, no confidence. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

‘But you never saw her with anyone? Out here? In the carpark after work?’

‘Hang on a minute, there was a time, a couple of times now I think of it, when she was picked up by some woman in a car. I never gave it a second thought, well, you don’t, do you?’

Trevor, tired of Margot’s big rouged face and the thrill she got out of his discomfort, said, ‘So there was nothing else?’

‘She had lots of dental appointments. I always wondered how the hell she could afford it. Craig and I never go any more, well, not unless we’re in agony.’

So, she was up to no good behind his back in spite of his careful checking. Women are all the same. Wouldn’t you sodding well know it? He checked the dentist, of course, but the receptionist said they hadn’t heard from Mrs Stott for some time and wasn’t he, Trevor, due for a check-up? Unknowingly he came quite warm when he rang the Samaritans, for that was the kind of pathetic, whingeing thing he suspected Kirsty would do—moan about him for hours on end, not knowing when she was well off. OK, he lost his temper at times, but she drove him to it with her constant moaning. And he hadn’t touched the kiddies, had he?

‘She’s disappeared and I’m concerned about her,’ he said, cursing to himself on the other end of the phone. The tossers.

‘I’m afraid we operate in total confidence and never reveal our clients’ names to anyone,’ said the snooty voice.

‘But I’m her husband and she’s taken my kids.’

‘We would be very happy to talk to you, Mr Hoskins, if you felt we could be of some help. My name is Angela—’

‘Piss off,’ said Trevor as he slammed the phone down.

Kirsty has no friends that he knows of, no relatives save a brother she hasn’t been in touch with for years, and the kids’ friends don’t come home. She has never been into that school bit, car-boot sales, swimming-pool duty, hobnobbing with other parents, off to sports days and PTA meetings. There was no chance for Kirsty to go out at nights; after a busy day’s work it was Trevor who needed to go down the pub, and she had to babysit.

Perhaps she’s in one of those hostels? Or convinced someone she’s badly done to… everyone’s at it these days. There’s plenty around who will listen to women, but how about the men? Who has Trev got to listen to him? And he almost weeps at the unfairness of it, he is so sorry for himself.

Well, look. He comes home from work to an empty house, no food on the table, nothing but old ham that’s gone green round the edges in the fridge. He’s having to live on fish and chips or takeaway curries. He watches the telly on his own—there’s not much sodding fun in that. Mostly he dozes off in his chair and wakes up cold and shivery, only to have to make his own cocoa and plod up the stairs like a sad bastard, where he lies recumbent and open-eyed, cracking his knuckles.

Twice he has been late to work ’cos there’s no-one around to get him up and he is too tired to hear the bleeding alarm. And far from being admired and respected, he knows they are talking about him now, gossiping like old fishwives. ‘She’s upped and left him’, ‘sodded off’, ‘not much of a man if he can’t keep his own wife’…

Sometimes he gets so bleeding angry at home alone with the silence that he kicks at the sofa like a child in a rage, sinks more Southern Comfort than he can handle, so his breathing goes strange and he wonders if he’s unconscious, and shouts to himself with the telly up so the neighbours won’t hear his thunderous outrage.

A man right at the end of his tether. The only thing that brings him peace is the thought of what he will do when he finds her.

‘I’m not worried,’ says Maddy in her letter, ‘because it’s only a cold which is lingering, but I think I ought to register the children with my own doctor, just to be on the safe side, in case they should catch the normal childhood bugs and need medical treatment. So if you give me the name and address of your doctor I’ll organize it. We ought to have done it before, of course, but there’s so much in your head in the heat of these moments.’

One hasty phone call to Maddy and a happy chat with Jake and Gemma reassures Kirsty that all is well.

She has returned the books she borrowed from the hotel quiet lounge, all apart from
Magdalene
, of course, which she took to the boiler room and burned. In great trepidation she stood and watched the pages curl, the cover slowly disintegrate. She watched through the little glass door until the book turned to ashes in the fiery furnace.

What is going to be tricky, if all should go well, if
Magdalene
finds a publisher, is the prospect of a second book. Browsing through the quiet lounge of the Burleston Hotel, the chance of picking up another choice gem must be nil. If only Ellen Kirkwood had been more prolific, but then, if she’d written more, her work would probably be better known.

As it is, all three women are praying that nobody is going to remember a novel they read in 1913. That no friends or relatives kept a copy carefully dusted and preserved in pride of place on their bookshelves. That no ancient reviewer associates their book with something he might have dug up in the cuttings department of his library. Perhaps they should have changed the title—she rolls her eyes despairingly—but everything has happened so quickly.

Everyone in the hotel is talking about Bernie’s book. Bernie, a natural exhibitionist, makes sure everyone knows and Kirsty dreads that the colonel himself might be roused from his vegetative state to declare
Magdalene
as one of his favourites. After all, the book was in Colonel Parker’s collection, although the other titles do suggest they were probably bought as part of a job lot.

Mrs Stokes is all condemning. She has watched Bernie flirting shamelessly with all and sundry, but is unaware this is learned behaviour and that no-one shapes up to Dominic. ‘If that girl manages to get a book published then pigs will start to fly,’ she says indignantly through pursed lips. ‘Silly fool. Trying to show off. More likely the trollop has gone off to London to see some man.’

‘She’s jealous,’ says Avril knowingly, understanding how the old woman feels. Although she has to admire Bernie’s nerve. Avril would not have the guts to assume the title of author and go off alone to face the music.

But Kirsty’s peers are greatly impressed. ‘Bernie has kissed the blarney stone,’ says Lorna Hodge, who does the top landing, folding the edge of a new toilet roll into a neat triangle. ‘And she’s got the looks to carry it off.’

‘She might be only nineteen,’ Marie with the varicose veins agrees, ‘but these days lasses younger than that know a damn sight more than their own mothers.’

‘That boyfriend of hers let her down badly.’

‘Oh, didn’t you know? He’s turned up again like a bad penny. A local hero, no less, bit of a lad from all you hear.’

Kirsty spends the big day, Friday, in alternate states of fear and excitement, her hands clammy, her heart racing, waiting for Bernie’s return from London.

Bernie is childishly indiscreet. If only she was more circumspect. How long will it take before she forgets and lets the truth slip out? Kirsty would have no alternative but to put a stop to
Magdalene
if her name ever came up, although a couple of thousand pounds among three is a sum not to be sneezed at, the chance of a car for her and the kids, some decent second-hand winter clothes, a few homely touches to that stark mobile home which would make all the difference.

She has underestimated Trevor before and she is not about to do so again.

Bernie comes home smiling broadly.

‘I felt so special, I’ve never felt that special before.’

And they all understand what she means.

But everything sounds too good to be true. Is this another example of Bernie getting carried away, letting fantasy get the better of her, or can the glowing reports of her lunch with Candice Love be anywhere near the truth?

She certainly sounds convincing enough, and she went to London looking stunning in a nymphlike full-length summer dress, blue with white daisies.

Innocence personified.

‘The train was late. I was hysterical. We had lunch at a bistro called Le Fromage Frais. She was really kind, but frightening, you know. Nothing normal like any of us. I could smoke, and when I ran out she asked the waiter and he brought me a packet of Gauloise.’

Come on, come on, stop waffling. Kirsty’s urge is to shake her, but she doubts that would calm Bernie down. Quite dazed with happiness, her green eyes shine with anticipation, but anticipation of what?

‘Shut up! For God’s sake shut up!’ shouts Kirsty. ‘
Did she believe you
?’