Redemption Road

by Lisa Ballantyne

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ben asked again, noticing that the small tower of plates shook in her hand as she carried them to the kitchen. He followed her.

  ‘Stop asking me that.’

  He looked dejected.

  ‘Just tell me what I can do.’

  She breathed out, allowing her shoulders to relax. ‘I’m thirsty. Could you pour me a lemonade?’

  She lined up the crème brûlée dishes and sprinkled brown sugar on top, then turned on the chef’s torch. She watched the blue eye of the flame for a moment and then turned it on the sugar, watching it blacken and bubble. The roar of the torch flame reached deep inside her memory. She thought about what she had read in her mother’s diary earlier.

  ‘Think that’s them about done, sweetheart, don’t you?’ said Ben, looming over her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take that burnt one. You didn’t like him, did you? He got a right roasting.’

  Margaret smiled despite herself and followed him through.

  After pudding, the children asked to be excused, while the adults sat over the cheese and wine.

  Ben was doing impressions of a politician he had interviewed recently, and telling John about the House of Commons bar. Margaret had hardly eaten anything, and realised she didn’t want her wine. She was feeling quite unwell. She found herself checking her watch and thinking about hospital visiting times. She wanted to see Maxwell, and the betrayal implied in that desire flooded her with guilt. It was Christmas and she was with her family, and yet all she wanted was to be with a man she hardly knew.

  Under the table, she felt Ben’s fingers find her thigh.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ said her father, raising his eyebrows as he struggled to cut a piece of Brie.

  Margaret shrugged.

  ‘You feeling any better now that you’re off work? Christmas is over and done with and you’ll get a few days to put your feet up.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll help,’ said Margaret, rubbing her face.

  There was silence for a few moments – the chink of her father’s cheese knife against the plate.

  Margaret swallowed. Her heart rate was increasing again. She wanted to know and she didn’t care any more about upsetting anyone.

  ‘You know that stuff I took from the attic?’ she said to her father.

  He was still smiling happily at her – relaxed after the wine and the company. She could barely breathe, but she continued. ‘It was the box of things Mum collected from that time…’ she said, looking across the table at her father. The smile began to fade on John’s lips. He nodded once. He seemed to know immediately what she meant. ‘I’ve been going through it slowly. It’s hard but… I found Mum’s diary.’

  John’s pale eyes narrowed. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed away his plate. ‘The only time she ever kept a diary. The doctor told her to… suggested I did as well, but I could never see the point of it.’

  She met her father’s sad eyes. She saw how vulnerable he was. He had always been thin, a consequence of working too hard and a disinterest in food, but the past few years he had got thinner, making him seem diminished.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It was just a diary for that one year – 1986 – the year that I came back.’ She felt so much love for him and did not want to confront him.

  ‘Came back from where?’ said Ben.

  Margaret continued as if she had not heard her husband. ‘It was hard to read. Mum wrote that you blamed yourself.’

  John shifted in his seat and rolled the stem of his wine glass between his fingers. ‘Of course I did,’ he said, chin down but looking across the table at Margaret.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, any father would blame himself when his young daughter is… taken. We thought you were dead, and we were supposed to… protect you.’

  They were interrupted suddenly as Eliot burst into the room asking if they could open one of their selection boxes. Ben had turned very pale, but he answered Eliot quickly and the child left the room.

  ‘What happened to me?’ Her voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, yet her words made the candle flicker in the middle of the table. Shadows of the flame oscillated, magnified, on the pale walls.

  ‘We never knew,’ said her father, his voice brisk, businesslike; the way he had sounded when she was a child and the plant called him at home. ‘Your mother was intent on dredging it up, finding out. For a while it seemed that was all she thought about. I thought it was better to let you forget, and you seemed to do that well… When you started to speak again, you were back to your old self. You were so happy.’ John’s eyes misted with tears. ‘You forgot and we all tried to do the same.’

  ‘What is all this?’ said Ben, looking at Margaret before turning to John.

  John cleared his throat loudly. ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  Margaret was looking straight at her father. ‘What was I to say? Even now I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Mags?’ Ben whispered, hunched down over the table, his eyes imploring.

  Margaret cleared her throat, sat up straight and clasped her hands. ‘When I was little, I was abducted,’ she said simply, looking unblinkingly at her husband. She bit the inside of her lip, watching his face for a response.

  He put a hand over his mouth while the other reached out to touch her.

  ‘Why now?’ her father whispered. ‘Why are you thinking of it again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ve been remembering things since the crash – bits here and there, nothing significant, but enough to…’

  She freed her hands from Ben’s.

  ‘It was such a long time ago,’ said her father. ‘Maybe let it rest.’

  Two tears flashed over Margaret’s cheeks. She spoke very quietly. ‘I remember… that you’re not my father.’

  John was silent, but seemed to shrink further into himself. Margaret’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘I don’t mean to be cruel, but I remember that… I remember that you’re not…’

  ‘Margaret?’ said Ben, his brows furrowing.

  He almost never called her by her full name.

  Her cheeks were burning. She got up from the table, wiped her face, turned to the dresser and picked up her car keys.

  ‘Hang on, where are you going?’ said Ben, following her into the hall where she picked up her coat and pushed her feet into her boots.

  The children appeared in the hall, their eyes wide; Eliot’s mouth was smeared with chocolate.

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ said Margaret, half smiling at Ben as she left.

  She put on her coat, on the doorstep, and got into her car. It was cold and wet, frost glistening like dropped diamonds on the black pavements.

  Ben pleaded with her through the closed car door, but she pulled out of the drive. As she merged on to the M11, she felt waves of frustration building up inside her. She knew it was madness and that Ben would be beside himself, but she just needed to be away and, inexplicable as it was, she wanted to see Maxwell.

  At this time of night on Boxing Day, the traffic was light. It took her only thirty minutes to get to Whitechapel. She drove carefully, calmly, not listening to music or the radio, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

  For weeks, a chasm had been opening within her, and it felt as if, now, she was looking down clearly into it. She was realigning everything in her life: her husband, her father, her children, her work. She was putting everything in perspective; seeing it for what it truly was – seeing herself clearly for the first time.

  The hospital car park was crowded but she finally found a space, then walked, hands in her parka and head down, into the hospital, mechanically following the path to Maxwell’s ward, unsure why she was here, but knowing that she needed to be.

  The door to the ICU was locked and she buzzed to be let in. It was warm and she shook off her coat. The stench of disinfectant and bleach was overpowering, as if to disguise the smell of the sick people.

  The door clicked o
pen. It was Harvey, the charge nurse, and Margaret’s face lit up.

  ‘Margaret, he’s gone…’

  She put a hand over her mouth and Harvey’s face blurred before her.

  The breath was stolen from her again. She wasn’t sure if she could cope with Maxwell’s death. She didn’t even know him, but the loss would be unbearable. She felt Harvey’s hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Hey, calm down. Are you all right? He’s been moved, is all. They took him out of his coma, and he came round. I was going to call you. He’s in Ward 21. He’s not saying much yet, but we have high hopes.’

  ‘So I can go and see him?’

  ‘Sure. Do you know where to go?’

  ‘I… I… sure,’ said Margaret, thanking him and making her way back to the lift. She was trembling all over and the muscles of her back were sore. Alone in the lift she stretched to try to loosen up.

  Ward 21 was large and busy. Visitors were whispering to relatives and the windows of the ward had been rimmed in tinsel. Margaret looked left and right as she walked along the corridor, searching for Maxwell. A nurse with a large smile stopped her.

  ‘You all right? You lost?’

  ‘I was looking for Maxwell Brown.’

  ‘Come w’me.’

  In the last bay on the right, the nurse stopped and pointed at the faraway bed. ‘That’s your man. It was touch and go with him for a while and he’s not out of the woods yet, but we think he’s pulled through. He’s yet to say a word to us, so let’s see if you can make a difference.’

  The nurse squeezed Margaret’s arm and left her.

  Margaret stood for a moment, staring at the pale face on the far side of the ward. She walked slowly forward. From this distance, with his eyes closed, he was featureless. He was now wearing a pyjama top, his hands outside the bedclothes, no longer connected to respirators and heart monitors.

  At his bedside, she stared at him. His pyjama jacket was open, exposing his shiny burned chest. His eyes were closed as they had been on each of her visits, but she could tell, even from his sleeping state, that consciousness had returned to him. He seemed changed. He turned towards her, and his eyes moved around under his eyelids, as if he were dreaming.

  The other patients in the ward were older. An old woman was asleep in her chair, her head back and her mouth open. Another was spitting into a cardboard bowl, and clearing her throat repeatedly. A television, fixed high up above the windows, was showing a game show, but with the sound turned down low.

  Margaret took a deep breath, and just as she exhaled, Maxwell’s waxy eyelids opened. His eyes were beautiful: an impossible blue. They struggled to focus for a second and then fixed on Margaret.

  She smiled at him, tears filling her eyes.

  His lashless lids widened.

  ‘Hello,’ Margaret began, suddenly lost for words. ‘You don’t know me, but I’ve been visiting you. You were in a coma. There was a pile-up on the motorway and you saved my life. I’m pleased to meet you, finally.’

  Margaret sat down at his bedside and looked up into his face. The burns no longer fazed her and she almost did not see them. His blue eyes moved over her hair and her face and down to her hands. She smiled awkwardly, aware that she was being studied, observed. She put her hand on the edge of his bed.

  ‘I… I wanted to thank you, that was all. If you need anything, you must let me know.’

  The man lifted his left hand and Margaret watched it, wondering if he wanted water, but instead he took hold of her wrist and squeezed it, hard. His face flushed and the white tentacles stood out paler and more pronounced.

  ‘Please, stop,’ Margaret said, not yet loud enough for anyone else to hear. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  30

  Richard McLaughlin

  Thursday 10 October, 1985

  It was a ten-hour drive to Penzance. Richard had left Glasgow in the middle of the night.

  Peter had wanted to send someone else, but Richard had argued that they didn’t know exactly where George was headed. Family knew family and although Richard wasn’t close to George, he felt he would have a fair idea of his movements. The plan was to get to Penzance and try to find brother George and then the Watts’ money.

  Peter also wanted George to be dealt with, and this preyed on Richard’s mind as he crossed the border and joined the M6 after Carlisle. He was sure that he could find his brother, but he was not sure that he wanted to.

  Richard had killed before, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to kill his own brother. Killing family was entirely different to killing other people. Blood was blood, despite everything else. Richard had fantasised about killing his father, and he was sure that every one of them – every single McLaughlin, not to mention all the poor folks in the East End – had shared that fantasy. Yet even when his father smashed a wine bottle across his face, Richard had been unable to wound him back. Even Peter had not had the courage to commit that great crime, or even get close.

  George wasn’t just family. George was no Brendan McLaughlin. He was the baby and, useless as he was, Richard knew that George had a heart of gold. He had stepped out of line, but violent retribution just seemed wrong. Big George with his baby blues. He was six foot three – taller than all of them – but gentle as their mother had been. Yet Peter had been adamant.

  In the past few years, Peter had become as unrelenting and as cold as their father. Before his last trial, Peter had been cut by a rival gang leader. He had tried to give Peter a Glasgow smile, slicing from the corner of his mouth to his ear, but Peter had fought him off. Peter had the strength of a mule and, lying on his back in an East End side street, he had lifted the man wielding the knife right up into the air. Slashing from a distance, the man had been unable to be so accurate and had nicked Peter’s jugular vein instead, covering himself in a fountain of McLaughlin blood, before he ran away from what he believed had been an accidental murder.

  Yet Peter had lived, and still wore the gnarled white and red scar that blossomed from his neck like spring buds, as a mark of his infallibility. ‘No one takes down Peter McLaughlin,’ he would now boom with regularity. ‘I can lose half my blood and still come back and take my revenge. No one can take me down.’

  Richard had eaten nothing since the day before. The thought of catching up with George and doing Peter’s bidding sickened him, but he also knew that if he didn’t, then the Watt brothers were sure to take revenge on the McLaughlins. It was find George or be killed; kill or be killed. As he drove, Richard tried to think of ways that he could let George escape while persuading Peter that the deed had been done.

  Richard was fourteen and George nearly eight. They were playing football in the street with boys Richard’s age and older. Richard’s mother had told him to take George with him out to play, but George wasn’t as good at football as the older boys and Richard resented having to babysit him. George had been accidentally kicked twice when going in for a tackle and cried and now stood on the sidelines, his knees blue from the cold, his nose running and washing a thin, clean trail to his upper lip.

  Richard was good at football. He ran fast, his hard-soled boots slipping on the tarmac, firing goal after goal between the makeshift posts, which were marked by two sweaters on the road.

  A kitten approached George, who crouched down to pet it. It was blue-grey with pale blue eyes, and George took a green wooden yo-yo from his pocket and trailed it along the pavement. The little cat bounced in pursuit, reaching out to catch it with one paw and then the other. George picked the kitten up and sat on the sidelines stroking it until its purrs made its whole body vibrate.