Kitabı oku: «Fallen Women», sayfa 2

Chapter 2

M25, M11, A10: Kate’s parents’ house was in Denham, a small Norfolk market town a few miles inland from King’s Lynn, set on a rise of land high above the black rolling Fens. She could make it home in around two and a half hours, always assuming there were no major hold ups.

Once she was away from familiar streets, Kate stretched and settled herself in for the long haul home. The night seemed unnaturally dark outside the tunnel of lights. It was hard not to yawn. Hard not to let her mind wander. Resisting the temptation to rub her eyes, Kate tried to relax her grip on the steering wheel and settled into the drive.

Less than an hour up the road and already her neck ached with tension and tiredness and an odd nagging fear. Taillights like demon eyes headed away from her into the dark. Kate loathed driving on motorways, nervous of getting so caught up and so tangled in the system that she’d never be able to find her way out again. Which was one of the reasons she told herself, pulling up hard behind some moron with a death wish, why she didn’t get home as often as she would like, why she hadn’t been to see her mum in, in – in – was it months or was it closer to a year? Surely it couldn’t be that long?

Kate pulled a face, trying to add up the time. Work had been crazy, which had been good, they could certainly use the money. The boys had both had flu at Christmas so they hadn’t gone home then, they stayed in front of the TV, sniffing, sleeping and drinking Lemsips, but Kate and her mum had talked a lot on the phone. New Year’s Eve, Kate and Joe had gone to a party in a flat overlooking the Thames with some of the guys Kate freelanced for while Chrissie had kept an eye on the boys. But they always rang each other once a week, most weeks, Kate’s conscience protested. And besides Mum liked her independence; Kate always felt that Maggie – her mum – was busy making a new life for herself. That was it. Her own life. She’d raised her kids and moved on, got herself a part-time job, always sounded really chirpy on the phone. They loved each other but that was no reason to live in each other’s pockets, no reason at all.

Kate squared she shoulders as her argument steadily backed itself up. Re-run over and over again in her head it still sounded like a series of pathetically weak excuses.

The traffic in front slowed to a bad-tempered unpredictable crawl and Kate forgot just how long it was since she had been to see Maggie and concentrated instead on trying to stay focused and not let sleep seduce her.

It wasn’t that her mum ever complained, but Liz did. Frequently. Liz, who was married to Peter who did something incomprehensible in the City and who always did as he was told. Good old Liz, with her three perfect little girls, lived in Norwich, about an hour’s drive away from Denham.

Kate peeled a mint out of the packet on the dashboard. The accusatory voice in her head, the one that berated her for not caring, not ringing or visiting often enough, was hardly the best travelling companion she could have wished for. It sounded an awful lot like her sister on a bad day.

Kate crunched the mint into gravel, tuned in to Radio 4, and let it haul her through the long dark miles while the voice in her head carried on moaning about the play, the book, the news and the price of fish.

Just over two hours later Kate indicated and pulled off the A10 and into Denham. Driving up towards Church Hill, slowing the car to a crawl, she looked out for the landmarks, etched deep on the retina of an older eye. The family house was up in the good end of town, up the long slow rise from the town centre, near the high school and the church. It was a big rambling Edwardian semi, faced with dark Norfolk carrstone and an over-abundance of Virginia creeper.

Kate vaguely remembered her parents struggling to make the move up there – it was a big step up in the world for them, marking some promotion that now, Kate realised, had changed their lives for ever, taking her dad off the shop floor and into management. She remembered the huge battered sofas in the big sitting room covered with Indian throws, and her dad out in the conservatory, rubbing down a table that her mother had found in an auction, remembered the whole make do and mend ethic of people trying to do better for themselves.

Glancing up at the handsome old house, Kate wondered whether Liz was right, whether the time had come to talk about selling up and getting something smaller. It was crazy keeping such a big house for just one person, particularly a person who couldn’t manage. She shivered; had it come to that already? Surely it hadn’t come to that yet?

Pulling into the drive, Kate struggled with the perpetual sense of déjà vu that inevitably preceded her arrival. Was she late? Would they still be waiting up for her? Had she forgotten to do or pick up something important? The sensation was fleeting but always left a peculiar bittersweet aftertaste.

Her car crunched over the gravel. Beyond the arc of the headlights the house was in total darkness. It wasn’t that late, a little before midnight. Here and there in the borders the magnolias glowed creamy white in the moonlight. Kate parked up under the laburnums. Which were poisonous. How many times had Dad told Liz and Kate that? The whole tree, every leaf, every single bud, every last flower just waiting to strike you down dead.

Giving the laburnum a wide berth she locked the car and stretched, feeling the blood creeping back through her body. The night was warm and heavy with the perfume of honeysuckle and night scented stock. Kate drank it all in. On the surface it seemed that nothing had changed; the spare key was there, tucked under the stone cat by the conservatory door where it had been ever since she could remember.

Inside the air was cool and still and smelt of home.

Tick-tick-tick, the hall clock welcomed Kate in. She shut the door and finally felt the tension in her stomach easing. Home. Dropping her bag onto the chest by the hallstand, every sense was suffused by wave after wave of compassion and nostalgia. It seemed like a very long time since Kate had been there. Certainly a long time since she’d caught the house this unguarded, undefended by the bright voices of her mother or her sister and the kids. Pulling off her coat, Kate walked across the lobby and switched on the kitchen light.

‘Who the fuck is that?’ barked a male voice.

Stunned, Kate froze and looked up as the landing light snapped on. Peering over the handrail was a figure, a half-naked man, and behind him, leaning heavily against the doorframe and blinking down into the semi-darkness was her mother, Maggie.

‘I’ve rung the police,’ snapped Maggie, in a tough no-nonsense don’t mess with me kind of voice. ‘They’re already on their way. Stay exactly where you are and don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Mum?’

There was a peculiar little silence, and then Maggie said, ‘Kate, is that you? What the hell are you doing here?’

Which wasn’t exactly the sort of welcome Kate had expected.

‘Liz rang. She said you’d had an accident – she said …’ The words curled up and died in Kate’s throat. Her little sister, Liz, for whom every headache was a brain tumour, every chest pain a heart attack. It suddenly occurred to Kate that maybe it would have been a good idea to have rung the hospital and check on exactly how Maggie was and where she was before hurtling up to Norfolk.

Not that that explained everything.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Kate could see the man on the landing more clearly. He was naked except for a small pair of very white pants. They were tight high-cut cotton pants that did very little to cover his nakedness – rather they enhanced it. Behind him Maggie was wearing a plaster cast to the knee, a dark silky chemise and not a lot else.

Her mother.

Kate took a deep breath and made every effort to rekindle her explanation. ‘Liz said you’d fallen down and broken your ankle and that you were all on your own and had got stitches and – and that she couldn’t stay here with you because of the girls. And …’ Those weren’t necessarily the things Kate really wanted to say, so she stopped. ‘What exactly is going on, Mum, and who the hell is that?’

Maggie didn’t miss a beat.

‘Kate, I’d like you to meet Guy, Guy, this is my eldest daughter, Kate.’

Guy nodded. ‘Hi, I’ve heard a lot about you,’ he said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world, and as he spoke pulled a bath sheet off the banister and wrapped it tight around his waist. He had no hips to speak of; a belly like the underside of a turtle, broad shoulders, what could surely only be a sun bed tan, but no hips. Kate felt that the towel was more to cover her embarrassment than his.

‘I’ll go and put the kettle on, Mags-baby, go and get yourself back into bed. Would you like some tea, Kate?’

‘Er, yes, please,’ she mumbled.

He had to pass Kate on the stairs. He loped. He smelt of something trendy and couldn’t be more than thirty-five if he was a day. And he had been in bed with her mother. Her mother. Kate was very tempted to slap him.

‘Come on up,’ said Maggie, without a shred of the self consciousness or the shame Kate felt she surely ought to be feeling. ‘Why didn’t you ring to let me know you were coming?’

Making every effort to compose herself, Kate said, ‘Because Liz told me that you were still in hospital. Did you really ring the police?’

Maggie laughed. ‘No, no, of course not. You were making such a lot of noise that Guy thought if you were a burglar you were probably thick and might be taken in if we bluffed it out.’ She eased herself back into the bedroom, wincing with every step, and then lowered herself down very gently onto the side of her big feather bed. ‘There’s no way I could have stayed in hospital, it would have driven me crazy, and Guy was here, so they let me come home.’ As she spoke Maggie set about rolling a cigarette.

‘I thought you told me you’d given up.’

Maggie looked up at her. ‘Give me a break, Kate.’

Caught in the lamplight Kate could see that Liz hadn’t been exaggerating about the damage; one side of Maggie’s face was shiny, taut and navy blue with great claret and gold highlights, a row of stitches adding a macabre Frankensteinesque codicil to the fine skin above her eyebrow.

For the briefest of instants Kate caught a glimpse of the woman her mother really was. Maggie Sutherland was small framed and attractive in a handsome rather than pretty way; she had good bones and her hair, styled into a shaggy chin length coupe savage and coloured to a warm glossy chestnut, was thick and wavy and framed a strong jaw line. It was a face shaped by time rather than worn down by it. She watched Kate watching her, ran her tongue along the sticky edge of the cigarette paper and at the same time lifted one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

‘Well?’ she said, picking up the lighter from beside the bed.

‘You shouldn’t smoke.’

‘I don’t, at least not very much these days. And?’

‘What happened – and who is that?’ Kate indicated the stairwell with a flick of the head, unsure what she wanted to ask first, unsure whether she really wanted to hear the answers.

‘Oh, come on, Kate,’ said Maggie, through a rolling boil of cigarette smoke. ‘What do you call them when you’re over fifteen? His name is Guy Morrison and he’s my lover, my companion, and yes, before you ask, he is living here. He’s letting his place while we see if this works out. Kind of a trial run.’

Kate felt her jaw dropping but was powerless to stop it.

‘So that’s who Guy is.’ Maggie stopped talking and concentrated on flinching as she lifted her leg, trying to find a comfortable spot on the bed.

Kate felt her colour rising. ‘Liz told me that you were seeing someone, but I thought – well, you know I was thinking more whist drives, grey hair and driving gloves. Days out in the country with a picnic and a corgi – but he’s, he’s –’

Kate was squirming now. What exactly was it she was trying to say and why was she trying to say it? That Guy was way too sexy? Too young, far, far too good-looking. God, she would have been pleased these days if someone like Guy gave her a second glance, let alone clambered into her bed. Kate glanced back over her shoulder thinking about the way Guy had looked on the stairs; she’d have to make love with the light off and perpetually hold her stomach in. Kate tried to shift the image, while making a sterling effort to nip that particular train of thought in the bud.

Side-stepping what Guy might or might not be, Maggie continued, ‘You and I don’t see much of each other, Kate. We’ve both got busy lives – it’s not always easy to explain things over the phone.’ In contrast to her earlier conversation with Liz it was a statement with not the barest hint of accusation in it. ‘And anyway I assumed you knew. Liz met Guy when she was here at Christmas.’

Oh, Liz would have met him, thought Kate ruefully. How was it Liz knew all about her mother’s fancy man and why hadn’t she rung and told Kate? How could she have kept something like that to herself; Maggie was living with the man for God’s sake.

But her mum was still talking and still looking at her. ‘Who really knows how serious these things are going to be and, Kate,’ she said, taking a long pull on the roll-up, ‘when we get right down to it it isn’t really any of your business who I’m sleeping with, is it?’

Kate flinched and then blushed. ‘But you fell over,’ she said, in a tone that implied that somehow the two events were quite obviously linked.

‘Which was my own fault, which was why I didn’t ring. Guy and I went out to lunch – it was Taz’s birthday – I don’t think you’ve met Taz. She works in the bookshop with me? Anyway, there’s a great new brasserie opened in the high street. They do the most fantastic food and cocktails and we all got there about twelve and didn’t leave until three and I –’

‘Came back here, pissed as a whippet, tripped over her handbag and fell down the steps round the back. Don’t be taken in by all this poor me stuff,’ Guy said warmly. ‘Besides nursing those bruises she’s also got a stonking great hangover. Do you take sugar?’

Kate hadn’t heard him coming back up the stairs. She looked up into his big brown eyes and wished she hadn’t. Guy was truly gorgeous. Worse still, he loved her mother.

He grinned. ‘Actually you look as if you could do with something a bit stronger. I know it must be a bit of a shock but she’s going to be fine. Do you fancy a drop of brandy, there’s some in the kitchen?’

‘No, thank you. Tea, no sugar, will be fine,’ Kate managed in a clipped tone, realising that she sounded uncannily like Liz.

‘Okay.’ He vanished back downstairs and Kate turned her attention back to her mother.

‘Embarrassing, isn’t it?’ laughed Maggie

She could say that again, thought Kate, except Kate was almost certain that she and Maggie weren’t talking about the same thing.

‘I lay there for God knows how long. Guy had gone back to work. When I finally managed to get my act together I rang him on my mobile.’

‘Liz didn’t say anything about you being drunk.’

Maggie snorted. ‘Good God, you think Guy told her?’

Kate looked Maggie up and down, sitting there in her chemise, hair all mussed up, smoking a roll-up, and suddenly – amongst all the other emotions – was really proud of her.

‘Liz told me she thought it was a very good idea your mum taking me in,’ said Guy, returning with a tray. He sounded mischievous rather than cruel. ‘Someone to keep an eye on her, it put Liz’s mind at rest knowing that your mum wouldn’t be on her own at nights.’

This time Maggie giggled.

It was not the kind of giggle you would naturally associate with your mother.

‘It’s a damned good thing it happened today and not next week,’ Guy was saying. ‘I was supposed to be going to Germany first thing Monday morning.’

‘And you still will be. Stop worrying, I’ll be perfectly all right, I’ve already told you,’ Maggie said. ‘I can manage.’ She couldn’t, it was quite obvious, but that didn’t stop her sounding certain.

Guy looked at her. ‘Sometimes I think that Liz is right, you are such a stubborn cow. I’m going to cancel and that’s final.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s only for a few days. I can sleep downstairs if you help me make the bed up in the sitting room. It’ll be fine. I can use the loo downstairs and the shower.’

Kate took the mug Guy offered her and tried not to concentrate on their bickering or ogle Guy’s exquisite body as he clambered back into bed, very gently lifting Maggie’s foot as he did so that she could settle back amongst a great heap of pillows. It occurred to Kate that he had probably carried her upstairs too. Damn him.

Guy pulled the duvet up around them both. He had a tattoo, a dark blue Celtic knot that wrapped itself around his suntanned biceps. Kate looked away because her mouth had started to water and because she knew she was staring.

This was not the natural order of things. Watching them in bed together, Kate had the same kind of feeling in her belly as she had had when she’d found a pile of girlie magazines under Danny’s mattress. It had come as a shock to realise her son might be sexually active; to discover her mother was was totally beyond comprehension.

Maggie was still talking. ‘There are clean sheets in the airing cupboard, sweetheart. You can have your old room. Sorry that I’m not more talkative, but I’ve had a lot of painkillers tonight and I feel really spacey.’

Really spacey? Really spacey? What sort of expression was that for your mother to use?

‘It’s all right, you really ought to try and get some sleep,’ Kate said briskly, gathering her things and her thoughts together. ‘I was planning to stay overnight and then come and collect you tomorrow from the hospital. Maybe hang around if you needed help –’ the words were coming out a touch too jauntily. ‘But I can see that you’re in very good hands. No need for me to stay.’

‘Do you want me to help you sort the bed out?’ asked Guy. ‘I’ve put your bag in your room.’ He made as if to get up again.

‘No, no. I’ll be fine, really I – thanks,’ she said waving him back down. ‘I’ll take my tea into the bedroom. Been a long drive –’ Kate yawned theatrically. ‘It was Liz. You know what she’s like. I wouldn’t have come if she hadn’t … I mean, and there’s Guy, I didn’t know about – well, I just thought …’ the words jammed up in her throat.

Maggie smiled. ‘I’m really glad you did come, Kate.’ Spacey or not, her voice was soft and full of love. ‘Can you stay a day or two? It would be so good to catch up. It seems like ages since we’ve talked, I want to hear all your news. How are the boys? How’s work going? And Joe? I’ve missed you, sweet pea.’

Kate looked from one face to the other and felt tears prickling up all hot and raw behind her eyes, which was all the more disturbing because it was the last thing she had expected. And then she nodded, ‘Maybe, probably, possibly.’ As she got to the door Kate realised she’d promised to ring Chrissie. The question was what the hell was she going to say to her?