Next of Kin

by TL Dyer

  She huffs a sharp laugh. ‘You should try having girls. Oh, maybe you have. Have you?’

  ‘No, it’s just me and Jake.’

  ‘Sensible.’ She nods with a jaded approval. I notice the thin gold chain around her neck just above her collar and its pendant lying against her chest – Mum in gold script set within a heart. It’s not easy to picture her as a mother. I wonder how she fits that role. If she’s anything like Eliza.

  ‘Do you see much of your parents?’ I ask, glancing up from the cup when she takes a moment to answer.

  ‘Not if I can help it.’ Her gaze is somewhere down the far end of the arcade behind me, tongue digging into her teeth. ‘Haven’t seen my mother since she fucked off to Ireland. And Dad…’ She sighs through her nose, bringing her attention back my way. ‘Dad’s persistent. But so am I.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Lauren. You still don’t get along?’

  She snorts a brief, bitter laugh and folds her arms, the movement pulling at her shirt so the lapel hides the necklace. Her lips twist into a cruel smile and, like that, I see a glimpse of the old Lauren. That bottled intolerance that builds momentum the more it’s shaken. Except any teenager can carry that off, but she’s twenty-eight now, a mother. Hasn’t motherhood softened that side of her? Made her understand her parents in a different way, recognise that holding them to an expectation of perfection wasn’t realistic?

  ‘It’s a shame. Especially now there are grandchildren,’ I add, and look away, careful not to provoke her anger. Or, more crucially, her suspicion.

  ‘Yeah, well. Some families are better off apart.’

  I should know this is just Lauren, the spoilt princess, the ball of fury, the attention-seeker. And in truth, it’s nothing I haven’t heard from her before. But it’s different now, all this, my position in the middle of it, my part in this family I had secretly fantasised about once, but the reality of which is a lot less pleasurable than my innocence conjured. And because of that, something about her words cuts through me. They poke at a fissure in my memories of Ty Bryn that I’ve been trying to pretend isn’t there. One that questions whether it’s not Lauren’s expectations of perfection that were unrealistic, but mine.

  ‘Why did Craig leave, Lauren?’ I ask, leaning towards her so only she can hear me over the bustle of shoppers in the arcade. ‘I mean, why did he really leave?’

  A hardness crosses her eyes that I’m afraid for a moment means I’ve lost her, this conversation over before she can give me the answers I came for. She rests her elbows on the table and meets me halfway, and I think she’s either going to tear into me or tell me the truth. I don’t know which and I’m not sure I’m ready for either.

  ‘Why do you think he left?’ she says, not taking her eyes from me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I stutter.

  ‘Because of her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Eliza. Mum.’ She articulates this latter word as if that’s all it is, just a word. And an ironic one at that.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ I say. The twins’ mother was nothing but gentle and loving, always ready with a smile of affection, a touch and a kind word. In what way could she possibly have been responsible for Craig’s moving out?

  ‘No, you wouldn’t follow. Nobody did. We put on a good show.’

  ‘Show?’ I repeat, perplexed, fearing she’ll get up and go inside at any minute, leaving me out here with only half the story and still none the wiser about what I came here for. But there was always that other side to Lauren, too, and I see it again now in the theatrical way she sighs and puffs the hair from her eyes. She thinks this attention I’m giving is all for her and she’s revelling in it.

  ‘Mind, took me leaving to fucking see it.’

  She leans back and reaches into her apron for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She offers the pack to me, but I shake my head and she lights one up.

  ‘Martin says they’ve proper messed me up. He says I should get help.’ She takes a drag from the cigarette, then waves her fingers in the air to brush the idea away. ‘But what the fuck does he know? Thinks I’m gonna turn the kids against him or freak out on him or something, I dunno. He’s not so fucking solid himself.’ She points to my left hand resting on the tabletop. ‘No wedding ring, I see. Good for you. Take it from me, you’re better off that way.’

  When she returns the cigarette to her lips, I consider how it doesn’t bode well for a long and happy marriage that already she’s thinking the grass is greener on the other side. What had Shaun said her nickname was? Raleigh Six-Speed? If that was the case, if her flirting that I’d witnessed on the nights we’d go out really was a precursor to what came after, then all I feel is sad. What was she seeking from the boys, the men, she slept with? What was she missing? What was Craig missing that he turned to drugs and the wrong people to replace? More unsettling, how could I not have noticed that hole in their lives when I’d been the one who was closest to them?

  ‘Do yourself a favour, stay free and single,’ Lauren says, waving the cigarette at me. ‘I’d say young, free and single, but not a lot we can do about time, is there?’

  ‘Your parents were always so good together,’ I say, trying to tease out what she hasn’t said yet. ‘I often think about that night they went out. Some company thing of your father’s. Your mum wore that beautiful green dress, do you remember? And your dad—’

  ‘Yeah, I remember.’ She cuts me off with a brief, withered laugh. ‘Especially what happened after.’

  ‘You mean the ornament? The one Craig glued back together? They never found out about that, though, did they?’

  She blows a stream of smoke above our heads, glancing at me as she stubs the half-smoked cigarette out in the glass ashtray on the table. ‘I remember that Eliza didn’t get out of bed for two days.’

  It’s not so much her use of her mother’s Christian name that strikes me, more what she’s describing. I have no recollection of it. But I’d been rough myself after her dad’s scotch, it’s likely I didn’t go back to the house for a few days after.

  ‘You mean she was hungover?’

  Lauren draws in a deep breath and lets it out on a long sigh. ‘Sacha, Sacha, Sacha. You really didn’t have a clue, did you? Dad told us to leave her alone. He said she had a migraine.’

  She raises one eyebrow. But that tells me nothing.

  ‘Okay, so she had a migraine.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I know migraines can be brutal, but this one made a right mess of her.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘I mean it gave her a black eye and a split lip and the loss of hearing in her left ear that never fully returned.’

  I’m good at reading people. I’ve seen enough faces to know a truth from a lie, and I thought I could tell the difference with Lauren once, but now I’m at a loss. Because she said nothing like this back then.

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ I ask, gripping my one hand over the other, the skin cool under my own touch.

  Lauren slouches in the seat and tilts her head, a small smile skewing her lips. ‘Did you know I used to call you Little Miss Perfect when you weren’t around? Mostly to wind my brother up, it drove him crazy. But it was true, that’s what I thought of you. Because you had this perfect fucking family.’

  ‘I had the perfect family?’

  Her head comes upright, the smile fades, and suddenly I’m seeing just how wide the gap between us back then really was, how little we knew about each other. ‘It was the scotch, Sach. It wasn’t even the ornament I broke, it was the fucking scotch. He went looking for it as soon as they were home. We’d already gone to bed, so he either didn’t trust us or he could smell it or something. Doesn’t matter. He knew. So that was it. He went to town on her.’

  ‘On her? I don’t understand.’

  ‘She was our mother, wasn’t she? She was meant to teach us how to behave, and here we were acting like delinquents. I think those were the actual words he used.’
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br />   She checks her watch with a nonchalance that suggests she hasn’t just detonated every memory I ever had of the Isaac family. Of Darren. Of Craig. And already I’m seeing what I failed to see then. I’m seeing Craig in his room, the duvet over his head, his headphones on and music turned up so he wouldn’t have to hear his father beat his mother because of something he himself had done.

  ‘That’s why Craig left?’ I ask, needing to be sure before this conversation gets cut short. ‘Because of what happened that night?’

  ‘I already said why he left.’ She pulls the tray over the table towards her. ‘I should get back inside. Nice catch-up though. I suppose.’

  ‘Wait. Just one second.’ I reach my hand out as though I mean to physically prevent her going, but stop short of touching her. She tips her chin for me to go ahead. ‘You said your mother was to blame. But I still don’t understand. Why do you blame her and not him?’

  She runs her tongue over her teeth, this discussion or the thought of her mother leaving an unpleasant taste in her mouth. ‘Because the bitch was weak, Sacha. You saw what she was like, afraid of her own shadow half the time. She should have done something, fought back, grown a fucking spine, I don’t know. She never did. She just…’ The corner of her mouth curls in disgust. ‘She just took it, never stood up to him. What kind of woman does that?’

  One who’s trapped. One who fears the consequences of walking away or speaking out. One who’s become conditioned to a life she can’t see a way of changing, can’t break the mould. One who’s at her lowest ebb and the mountain ahead so unscalable the easier thing to do is comply. I’ve seen it so many times in the job I can almost feel its grip on me.

  ‘This wasn’t the only time,’ I say, a statement more than a question, and I don’t need to wait for Lauren’s response for the veil I had shrouded her mother in to drop and everything to become so crystal clear it chills every drop of blood in my body to the core. ‘Except she did do something eventually, Lauren. She’s left him now. Perhaps she was waiting until you and Craig didn’t need a family home anymore.’

  Her smile is thin, as if she sympathises with my ignorance. The words that follow, though, are low and biting. ‘She should have left because we needed one. It’s no sodding use to us now, is it?’

  ‘And was he… Did your dad ever—’

  ‘God no, he never laid a finger on us. Well, no, actually, that’s not true. He did once, but that wasn’t his fault. Craig was acting the idiot, tried to get in between them while Dad was in full flight. I suppose it worked, he took the battering instead. Never happened again, though. It really upset Dad. He cried about it afterwards and everything. But the point is, she could have put him straight any time and he’d have listened to her. He doted on her. You saw him, fucking pandering to her. She could have helped him with his issues, or just done something, I don’t know, taken us away from there or took herself away so we didn’t have to listen to that shit all the time. But she didn’t. And that’s unforgiveable. Crap, here come the fogies. I’ll have to go.’

  She gets to her feet and I do the same, reaching for my purse in my jacket pocket.

  ‘This one’s on me,’ she says, hooking the tray on her hip. ‘Just don’t make it a habit, the wages are terrible.’

  I feel like I should say the polite thing – it was nice seeing you, or I’ll see you around – but after what she’s told me I’m struggling to think of anything that wouldn’t sound like I was lying.

  ‘How old was he?’ I ask instead. ‘Craig, I mean, when…’ When his father hurt him. ‘When he tried to help your mother?’

  ‘God, I dunno. Before you knew us. Junior school. Maybe ten. So he never told you then? That’s a surprise. I thought he told you everything.’

  ‘And he felt the same way as you? He blamed your mum too?’

  ‘My brother,’ she says, with a weary blink and a heavy sigh, shifting the tray further up her hip as though it’s a restless child. ‘Well, you knew what he was like. He didn’t just blame her, he blamed the entire fucking world.’

  I have more questions. Like, what did she mean when she said her father had issues, and how could her mother have set him straight, what could she have done. But a handful of women catch up to us and surround her and she follows them inside with only an eye roll for a goodbye.

  As I return to the car park, legs shaking beneath me, more questions reveal themselves clearer than the rest. Why didn’t I see any of this back then, and why didn’t Craig tell me? What could I even have done if he had? But of greater urgency, though, is what the hell do I do now? Because there’s no way on this earth I can let my son anywhere near Darren Isaacs. Never mind leave him in Ty Bryn alone with him.

  Chapter 31

  ‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice.’

  ‘Not at all, Sacha, it’s lovely to see you. Have a seat. I’ll rustle us up something hot and sweet.’

  While Jennifer Sutton closes the door to her office, I go to the window to take in the view. It could be argued the term office is a misnomer. The first-floor rooms in the Victorian-style house owned by the solicitor and her team are more like an apartment, and some time in the past living accommodation would have been their primary purpose. Jen’s office would have been the sitting room, her partner and receptionist are in the bedrooms, while down the hall is a galley kitchen and next to that the shower room and toilet. Late nights in the office take on a different meaning when you have all the mod-cons you could wish for. A small sofa pushed up against the wall beneath a framed copy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night completes the picture; a place to lay your head for a few hours when there’s no point going home.

  The building’s location at the top end of Stow Hill, on the edge of Newport’s city centre and within walking distance of the law courts, affords it an impressive vista over the roofs and treetops of the city below. Not the prettiest of pictures by anyone’s account, and less so on a damp, grey day like today, when raindrops fleck the window and distort the image, but something about it fascinates me all the same. The brutal rawness of it, its honesty. Or maybe its predictability. A scene that never changes.

  Jen returns with two cups of tea and a plate of custard creams that she apologises over (‘Some tea leaf’s taken the Wagon Wheels, I could have sworn there was another packet there’). I sit in the chair across the desk from her and we chat for a while, about the weather, about the family, work. Jen’s been our family solicitor for years, but before that she was a classmate of Shaun’s and a good friend of his back in the day before everyone grew up and went their separate ways. She often credits what happened to Shaun, his wrongful conviction and prison sentence, as the reason she chose the law route at all. It’s something we both share in common.

  It was Jen who shepherded us through the paperwork after Mam died, and again when I bought the house I’d been renting until it came up for sale shortly after Mam’s death (what I like to call her gift from beyond the grave). Which means she knows our family better than anyone. That could have made her the worst person for me to come to with this. But I also trust her, and I tell her as much when I explain my reason for being here and why I’ll only give her as much detail as she needs in order to advise me. She sets her empty teacup aside and leans her forearms on the small pile of paper folders on her desk.

  ‘Strictly confidential, Sacha. No further than these four walls. As ever,’ she says, her large brown eyes magnified behind black-framed, narrow lenses, giving me her full attention. She has a neat and pretty face that can get away with the short, sharp haircut she favours, and could pass for much younger than the thirty years she’s approaching. Of all of us, Jen’s the one who’s changed the least, both in terms of looks and otherwise. She still teases Shaun in the same way she always did, knowing just where his tipping point into torment is, and never crossing it. Apart from Dad, she was the only one to visit him in prison. I wonder what she’d think if she knew what he’d done to Darren Isaacs, and what Darren had implied about that night wi
th Cavendish. Whether she’d be shocked, or whether she knows my brother better than I do. But that’s irrelevant today. He’s not why I’m here.

  Without naming names, I tell Jen what I’ve done. How I kept my son’s father out of his life, and now that I’ve brought him back in, I wish I hadn’t. I explain that I’ve learned some things about him that don’t sit comfortably with me, dangerous things, but that keeping him from our lives is going to be near impossible, bar emigrating. I say this with a brief smile, but she doesn’t return it. She knows I’m not joking. I’ve considered everything in the previous twenty-four hours since my conversation with Lauren, my head a whirlwind as it tried and failed to reconfigure the past and my recollections of Ty Bryn. If I thought emigrating would be the answer, a new life for me and Jake in another country, I’d book the flights. But it’s a crazy idea. It’s crazy because it’s a knee-jerk reaction. And not one I think will solve anything.

  ‘Alright, let’s start from the beginning so I’ve got the complete picture,’ Jen says, when I finish talking. She pulls a notepad and pen into the centre of the desk and reclines in her chair. ‘What were your reasons for not telling the father that Jake was his way back when you found out you were pregnant?’

  I look to my hands in my lap, twist the gold band on the index finger of my right hand, the one I’d slipped on this morning. Mam’s wedding ring.

  ‘Lots of reasons. The main one was his marriage.’ I cough to clear my throat, glance up at Jen, but her expression hasn’t changed as she jots this down on her notepad. She nods for me to go on. ‘His family, my family, I didn’t want to upset either. And it would have done, he’s older than me.’

  ‘And this would have been… Shaun was home by then, right?’

  ‘Yes, but not long home. He wasn’t in a good place. Then there was Mam…’

  She gets this down on the notepad, then looks up. ‘So you’re young, vulnerable, confused, shocked to find out you’re pregnant. You’re concerned about disrupting two families. Yours was already under tremendous strain. All understandable reasons for keeping something to yourself, even if not strictly ethical. How did you think the father would feel if you told him? Back then, how did you think he’d react?’