by Graham West
“But doesn’t this change everything? I mean, those voices—they’re not just in her head. She can’t have imagined them.”
Dr. Grace nodded, scribbling something else on her notepad. “There are those who believe that we carry the weight of our ancestors on our shoulders, passed down through generations and locked into our subconscious. It has been known for a child to draw or paint images or scenes—a house or a face—from their ancestry. We cannot really know how this happens, but we have to accept that it does.”
“But it means that Jenny isn’t losing her mind, surely?”
“Losing her mind? That’s a rather unfortunate term. No, Mr. Adams, Jenny is with us because the voices—or the dreams—are causing abnormal behaviour. We need to reach a point where she is no longer influenced by those voices. Jenny needs to be free of them.”
“So it doesn’t matter to you if Amelia exists or not?”
Dr. Grace shrugged. “I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t alter the goal, that’s all.” She smiled warmly. “But I think it might be a good idea to allow Jenny home…maybe for a weekend?”
I wanted to hug her. She was quite simply the most wonderful woman on the planet. “That would be…well…fantastic.”
She laughed. “Good. You’re obviously comfortable with the prospect.”
“Comfortable? That doesn’t begin to—”
“Mr. Adams, I’m delighted that you still feel the same affinity with Jenny, but I would advise caution. I’m not sure how she will react to the news that you are not her biological father. We might need to help her work through this.” The doctor eyed me with suspicion. I seemed to be dealing with this with unnatural ease, and it was making her feel uncomfortable. It made me feel uncomfortable, because I still felt I was watching someone else’s life unravel, not mine.
I could feel the clouds forming. I was who I was…the son of a good and righteous man with a mother who remained faithful to her son and husband. I had sweet memories to which I clung. But Jenny was about to discover that she had lived in ignorance of a truth that would shatter her world and taint every memory she had.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At first, she just stared. Not at me. Not at any one or anything. I sat by her bed and waited, like a talent show finalist waiting through an eternal silence while the producers left them dangling for the entertainment of the public. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. There was nothing else to say.
Jenny didn’t answer. A tear trickled down her cheek.
“I just want you to know…I love you. You are my daughter. In my heart, nothing changes.”
Silence.
“Jenny?”
She turned, staring through me. “You can go now.”
Her eyes were lifeless. “I can’t leave you.”
There was a polite tapping on the door. Dr. Grace poked her head in. “Everything all right?”
Jenny looked up, unsmiling. “He’s just going.”
Dr. Grace frowned as I stood. Jenny slumped back onto her pillow, turned on her side and covered her head.
“You really want your father to go?” she asked softly.
Silence.
“Jenny?”
My daughter pulled the sheet from her head and glared at us with something that resembled hatred. “Well, my father isn’t here. Isn’t that what you’ve just told me? My father is dead!”
“But that isn’t—”
“Please! Leave me alone. I just can’t be arsed with you…or anyone!”
“But Jenny—”
She and pulled the covers back over her head. “Just go! Please!”
Dr. Grace looked at me and nodded towards the door.
I remember walking down the corridor with her hand on my arm. I remember sitting in her office with a hot cup of tea because, for some reason, I couldn’t face coffee. I remember the guilt enveloping me like a swirling black mist, and in that moment, I realised that if Jenny could not accept me as her father, I had no daughter.
***
I picked Josie up at The Keys after she called and insisted on taking me out for a meal in town. “I thought you might need to talk,” she said. “So you drive and I’ll pay.”
It sounded good to me—better to have a belly full of pasta then a head full of demons. We settled on a small back street Italian restaurant that served the best pasta for miles, according to Josie, who was married to the world’s greatest authority on Italian food. A young man with greased-back Elvis hair led us to our table in the far corner and lit the candle as we took our seats.
Josie had said little throughout the half-hour drive. It was easier to talk over dinner, when eye contact was just as important as the words on our lips. “This is all about you tonight, Rob,” she said, glancing up from the menu. “You’ve got to tell me how you feel. I mean, how you really feel.”
The truth was, I wasn’t sure how I felt. Jenny was just a kid in shock, and I knew that time would heal.
“This whole thing with Amelia could bring you together,” Josie said. “And as heartless as this may sound, her biological father is dead. She’s not going to be looking to form any kind of relationship. You don’t have any competition. It’s just you and her.”
Jo was right. Everything had changed, yet, at the same time, nothing had changed.
“This whole Amelia thing is an adventure, and you’re both in it together. It will stop you both over-thinking the whole biology-versus-nurture shit. She’s your girl, and you both know it. Don’t push it, just be there.”
I ate everything on my plate while Josie polished off the last of the wine and she smiled as I looked longingly at the bottle in the ice bucket. “I know, hun,” she said, reading my mind. “But I don’t think alcohol would be such a good idea tonight.”
I nodded. Wine was always good on the lips, particularly with pasta, but it had a habit of lifting me to great heights and then dropping me quite suddenly into a pit of gloom. Even when life was good, with the help of alcohol I’d somehow manage to find the cloud behind the silver lining.
I climbed behind the wheel of my car, greeted by the scent of Jo’s perfume. I breathed in deeply and glanced over at her. She turned and smiled. I kissed her gently on the lips, wanting more but knowing that the tenderness that existed between us would always be there. I could wait.
She smiled. “You okay?”
Josie was good for me. I wanted to tell her but couldn’t find the words. Facing Jenny wasn’t going to be easy, but if she needed time then that was fine. Time was something we both had.
We chatted lightly on the way home. It was all about the good times. New Year’s Eve at The Keys and the characters that had frequented the place over the years. Smiler Sam, who had a grin so wide he looked like a Muppet. Then there was Tricky Dicky, who regaled his many friends with tales of sexual conquests. His ability to attract scores of young attractive women baffled almost every one of the regulars until they found out he was a closet gay.
Josie laughed when she recalled Donkey Tom, whose party trick involved revealing his male appendage to anyone interested. “We could have made money out of that guy,” she said. “If he hadn’t nearly closed us down!” That was another story, even though it hadn’t been so funny at the time.
I glanced at Jo, who had fallen silent and was staring into my rear-view mirror. “Turn right,” she snapped suddenly. “Here!”
“What? Why?”
“Just turn!”
I floored the brake pedal, spinning the wheel and sending the car screeching into the corner. “Shit! Why did you do that?” I said, regaining control of the wheel.
Josie was still staring into the mirror. “Just drive. I’ll tell you in a minute.”
“Are you on the run, babe?” I joked as a black cat ran across our path.
Josie looked serious. “Pull in,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Here!”
I swung over to the kerb behind a parked truck. “What’s going on?” I said as Josie continued to stare into
my mirror.
“Just wait. A car will pass us in a minute. Just keep looking ahead—don’t turn.”
A red Fiat moved slowly alongside before continuing down the road and turning off at the next junction. “That car has been following us,” she said. “I noticed it pulling out from a parking space when we left the restaurant. They kept close all the way…” She paused. “Who the hell would be following you, hun?”
My heart was still thumping after my rally-car turn. I couldn’t think. It had to be a case of mistaken identity.
“Let’s hope you haven’t got a look-a-like who’s on someone’s hit list,” she said with a girlish giggle. “You need to keep your eyes peeled. Beware of the red Fiat!”
***
After lying awake for several hours, wondering who would want to be trailing me around in the early hours of the morning, I fell into a restless sleep in which I found myself standing at the window watching Hanna and Elizabeth standing behind the ice cream van. They were waving, laughing and unaware that I was screaming, “Run! Please run! You’re both going to die! Please…run!” But I couldn’t change the past—not even in my dreams. The sound of screeching tyres filled the room, reverberating, tormenting. They are going to die! Look! Look! Look!
I woke just before Pascoe and Taylor ploughed into the back of Mr. Whirl’s pink-and-white ice cream van. My body was covered in sweat and my heart was thumping hard. I took several deep breaths and took a gulp of water from the bottle on the bedside table. It was light. Small mercies. I was okay to shower, dress and make myself a coffee while catching up with the news. Normal people who were leading normal lives would be doing the same thing. See? Everything is okay.
But it wasn’t. The boy who had killed my wife and little girl was Jenny’s brother. How was she going to live with that? How was I going to live with that? Pascoe was family. The whole idea of planning my speech at the hospital was little more than foolishness. I was old enough to know that conversations took their own course and there was always the possibility than Jenny would still not want to see me.
I called Sebastian just to hear his voice—the source of calm in the centre of a storm. The old man listened as I related the events of the past few days.
“So there is a link,” he said, obviously shaken. “It must have come as a terrible shock.”
I felt myself choking back the tears as I tried to reply.
Tint stopped me. “It will be okay—she belongs in your heart, and you belong in hers.”
His words carried the weight of a man gifted with wisdom. It wasn’t so much the content of his counsel, it was the delivery. Not so much about the bullet, more about the weapon from which it was fired. I could imagine the old man could convince me that he was the son of God if he’d been given enough time.
***
The hospital corridor leading to my daughter’s room was thankfully long, and by the time I arrived there, I’d decided on a breezy entrance. Jenny was listening to music on her iPod, wired up and in another world. She looked up as I stood tentatively in the doorway and smiled. The relief was palpable. She pulled the wires from her ears.
“Hi,” she said softly.
I nodded and walked towards the bed, unsure as to whether I should even attempt a kiss. Jenny reached out her hand, and I took it.
Tears formed in my daughter’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad—I just can’t get my head around this.” A tear escaped and trickled down her cheek. “To find out you aren’t who you think you are—that’s bad enough—but the Pascoes! Oh my god!” she hissed.
“Nothing’s changed in here,” I said, patting my chest. Sebastian’s words sprang up in my head. “I can’t think of you as anyone other than my daughter. You always have been and you always will—”
Jenny reached up and threw her arm around my neck and began to weep.
We held each other, welded together in a love that I knew, in that moment, no one could break. She kissed me several times on the cheek before sinking back into the comfort of her pillow.
We talked, yet I don’t remember anything beyond an embrace that told me nothing life could throw up was going to defeat us. We were a team.
On my way home, something made me take a left turn down Hey Park Road, heading towards Victoria Pascoe’s house. Maybe I just wanted to tell her that there was no ill feeling. Maybe I just wanted her to know that things were good, but when I arrived, there was no one at home.
I turned to find a young woman with a baby in her arms, standing in the gateway. “You lookin’ for Mrs. Pascoe?” she asked.
I nodded.
She looked at me. “You ain’t heard, then?”
“Heard what?” I asked, already fearing that the woman didn’t have good news.
“She hung herself this morning—jus’ like her husband did. Terrible, it was. You just don’t expect it to happen in your street!”
I froze, rooted to the spot.
The woman looked glumly at her baby. “Don’t know how parents can do that to their kids, to be honest. It’s not fair—that Darren one is already off the rails. Can you imagine…”
I found myself muttering something of an apology as I pushed past her and climbed behind the wheel of my car. Darren Pascoe would be called away from whatever he was doing. They would have sat him down, wearing their masks of concern, to inform the teenager that he was never going to see his mother again. Another young man was heading for the social scrap heap—drugs, crime, more drugs. My daughter’s half brother. Family.
The drive home was something of a blur. My mind focused on an image of Victoria Pascoe’s lifeless body being carried away. It would probably make the local papers and, somewhere along the line, Darren would be mentioned. A snippet of news in a moment of time. Did you read about that woman hanging herself? Her husband committed suicide a while back. Feel sorry for that kid.
That would be it; the conversation would turn to the weather or the next holiday. The world would continue to turn, but not for Darren. He would have probably heard by now, and I wondered how a kid managed to deal with shit like that. I called Josie.
“You know something, Jo?” I said, still trying to digest the news myself, “For a split second, I actually felt sorry for that Pascoe kid.”
I’d wanted to believe Victoria when she’d told me that Darren had never intended any harm. He was just a screwed-up kid who wanted to vent his anger. I wished he had put a brick through my window. I wish he had swerved clear just as Elizabeth had stepped into the road. But our lives changed forever. I remembered the day Jenny came home wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘shit happens’. “You can take that off now!” I’d snapped as she walked through the door. Maybe I should have let her keep it, because whatever anyone thought of the sentiment, it was the truth. Shit did happen.
***
I drove up to Tabwell the following day determined to find the Stanwicks’ home. The library was the obvious place to start, and the woman at the desk greeted me with an officious smile.
“Can I help you?”
I nodded and explained that I was looking for some local history—“The location of The Stanwicks’ home. They lived there in the late eighteen hundreds.”
The woman’s grinned, looking rather pleased with herself. “I think I can save you the trouble,” she said. The place you’re looking for is The Crest Hill Rest Home.”
She must have seen the look of surprise on my face and seemed more than happy to chat.
“It’s quite well known locally—believed to be haunted—and has changed hands several times. The Morton family bought it from the Stanwicks and then I think it became a hotel…then a rest home. The ownership changed hands about five years ago. The Farridays run it now. Do you want the address?” She jotted it down on a slip of paper for me, and I thanked her and left.
I drove along the tree-lined road imagining the horses and the carriages of a bygone age. There was still enough of the past about the place to make it easy to imagine life in the eighteent
h century, and as I pulled up outside the gated rest home, I could almost see Reverend Allington striding up the driveway with evil in his heart.
I sat looking at the large mansion house with its freshly painted cream walls and manicured lawns. The Farridays certainly looked after the place, and I imagined not much had changed in the general appearance since the days when Amelia Root resided in its attic. The thought chilled me. It was as if I’d stumbled into Jenny’s nightmare.
Even Josie sounded suitably impressed when I called her from my mobile. “Jesus! That must feel really weird,” she said, almost in a whisper. “How do you feel?”
“It’s surreal,” I said, glancing up at the house. “And a bit scary, if I’m honest.”
Josie laughed. “Hey, I’m scared, too—and I’m sitting here with a bar full of drunken women trying to get a mouthful of the male stripper. I’ll have to go, hun, before we go totally pornographic!”
I told Jo I’d call her tomorrow and fired up the engine. I can’t remember the drive home, my mind focused only on the Stanwicks’ home and the girl they kept imprisoned there. She deserved a grave, an epitaph in remembrance of her life, however short and wretched it had been.
***
I called the rest home the following day and made an appointment. Mr. Farriday took the call, and I told him that we were looking for a suitable place for my elderly mother, claiming Crest Hill had been recommended by a good friend. Farriday told me that Saturday would be fine, which meant that Jenny could accompany me. At some point, we would have to come clean, because I didn’t imagine that many people asked to see the attic when viewing the home, but Farriday sounded like an easy going, pleasant character who might at least make an effort to help.
Jenny looked tearful when I called in at the hospital. I told her about Crest Hill Rest Home, and she managed a weary smile but she needed time.
Dr. Grace accompanied me back down the corridor. “Being told that you are not her biological father will have hit her hard,” she told me. “She’ll have good and bad days—good and bad moments, actually. She will be feeling betrayed by your affairs—both yours and her mother’s. She’s old enough to be affected by the knowledge that she’s not a product of a loving relationship—more of an illicit alliance born from your relationship with another woman.”