The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  She stopped for a moment and then carried on, more quietly. ‘At the same time he cares for me. So then I feel bad again, and ask if I’m just imagining things. Maybe I just need time to get used to having someone in my life. Maybe he’s quite normal and I’m being hysterical because I’m so odd that I …’ She did not finish her sentence.

  Jennifer had a hunch. ‘Is that what he says? That you are hysterical and odd? And that he’s acting quite normally?’

  ‘That’s what he suggests, yes.’

  Jennifer tried to choose her words carefully. ‘Ena, I barely know you. Nor do I know your boyfriend. So I shouldn’t pass judgement, and frankly, I do feel like I’m being drawn out of my depth. But what you said … well, my feeling is that he’s extremely domineering. He might mean well enough, but he doesn’t pay enough attention to what you want, and to what kind of a person you are. Maybe you don’t have to end the relationship immediately. But get some distance. Ask for a time-out. See what you feel if you don’t see him for a few weeks. That will also give him the chance to think about it. To change his behaviour. Maybe he doesn’t realise he’s suffocating you.’

  Ena looked doubtful. ‘He won’t agree to that.’

  ‘He’ll have to accept it,’ said Jennifer.

  Ena nodded, sunk in her thoughts. Then she suddenly turned to Jennifer and there was a determination in her eyes that Jennifer had not seen before. ‘Jennifer – could you do a big favour for me?’

  ‘If I can …’

  ‘There’s something else. Something which is worrying me more than the rest. That’s why I have to talk to Gwen. I have to talk to someone, otherwise I’ll go mad.’

  ‘Ena, I—’

  ‘I don’t have anyone. I need someone’s objective opinion, else it’ll all be too much for me. I can’t calm down.’

  Worried at the force of her words, Jennifer asked, ‘Is it to do with Stan?’

  ‘Yes. But not our relationship.’

  ‘I don’t think I understand …’

  Ena reached into her handbag, which was hanging off the back of the chair, and fished a set of keys from the side pocket. ‘Here. The keys to his flat. I can come and go as I wish. He’s not home now. Would you go there with me?’

  Jennifer felt very uneasy. She had not had any real contact to either Ena Witty or Stan Gibson. She did not know them. She had a very bad feeling about going into a stranger’s house behind his back.

  ‘Can’t you talk about it with me here in the café?’

  ‘No, I have to show you something.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘Please. It won’t take long. Ten minutes. Can you spare the time?’

  It was half past one. The next bus to Staintondale went at a quarter past four. Jennifer knew that she would still need to hang around for ages, not knowing what to do. By doing Ena Witty the favour she asked for, at least she would fill the time in a useful way.

  ‘I’ve got time,’ she said after a pause. ‘But I … OK, I’ll come with you. I’m not going to stay in the flat longer than ten minutes though.’

  Ena’s relief was palpable. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. Stan lives just round the corner. Just by St Nicholas Cliff.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ said Jennifer and got her purse out. ‘Are you sure that he doesn’t come home around lunchtime? If he did, it could be embarrassing.’

  ‘He’s at a site in Hull today. He won’t come. Anyway, Stan said that his house is my house. You’re a long-time friend of Gwen’s. He wouldn’t mind me bringing you in.’

  They paid and stepped out into the street. It had now started to rain. The fog was thinning, but the sun was not about to shine through just yet.

  ‘We have to go down Bar Street,’ said Ena.

  Why am I always the person people turn to when they need help? Jennifer asked herself. And why can’t I shake off the role, although it has already cost me my job, my self-confidence and my independence?

  She followed Ena down the road.

  9

  ‘To my place or yours?’ asked Dave.

  They had climbed the steep steps from the harbour to the town itself, and now they stood up there in the pouring rain. It seemed to be getting heavier with each passing minute.

  Leslie hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know how you feel,’ continued Dave, ‘but I find it pretty unpleasant out here. And I don’t fancy sitting in some overcrowded cafe that smells of wet coats, where you can’t hear yourself think.’

  She looked into his eyes. He had beautiful, intelligent eyes. They had a liveliness she had never found in Stephen. He was not in control of his life, and yet he did not have the look of an eternal loser. You could see he faced life with too much energy for that. Dave Tanner was a man who attracted her, as she suddenly realised in shock.

  In the next moment her shock disappeared and what took its place was the recognition – just as unexpected and yet strangely elating – that Dave was the answer to the question she had been asking over and over for the last two years: the question of what next, of life after Stephen. What did life hold for a woman on the verge of her fourth decade, who was divorced, and who in spite of her successful career was privately afraid of a lonely future? She was afraid she would return to a dark flat every evening and eat breakfast alone every Sunday morning. Then watch television on her own every Saturday evening, drinking more than was healthy in the long-term. And do that for the next thirty, forty years?

  Suddenly she thought: of course there’s a future! Of course I’ll have another relationship! Not now, with Fiona barely dead. Not with Dave. He’s Gwen’s fiancé. But there are other men. And I’ll be able to open up to them.

  It was as if Stephen’s infidelity had put her under a glass jar. Because it was transparent, she could see the world. But as it was hermetically sealed, she could not take part in anything or let anything touch her. She had done her job, she had had the energy and self-control to get on with her life, but inside she had been cold, distant from people, and alone. She had been unable to recognise other people’s feelings or to accept them.

  Something was changing. Here she stood in the rain in Scarborough and was capable of finding a man attractive. She responded to him. She had cried in his arms.

  Only a week ago she would have dismissed such a possibility.

  Dr Leslie Cramer had thrown herself into the arms of a man she barely knew and bawled out her feelings about how cold and lost her childhood and youth had been. She was so annoyed with herself that she almost laughed, a helpless rather than happy laugh, but she stopped herself in time. Laughter did not fit the moment.

  ‘I was thinking of having a cup of tea,’ said Dave. ‘Talking, maybe listening to music. Just that.’

  What was the harm in it?

  ‘My flat, well – Fiona’s to be precise – is not a good idea, unless you want to meet my ex.’

  ‘Not particularly,’ admitted Dave.

  ‘So – to your place.’ Leslie did not want to think what Gwen would say if she knew about this date at Dave’s. She did not have the feeling she was playing with fire. She felt both she and Dave Tanner were too bound up in this confused and disturbing situation, and shocked at the crime which had entered their lives without warning. Neither had a clear idea of how things were to pan out in their lives.

  Yet Gwen did not need to know about their meeting. And what happens in his room is in my hands, decided Leslie.

  They walked there on foot in harmonious silence. They were both so wet by now that the walk did not make any difference.

  Friargate looked sad and empty when they got there. Rainwater ran down the windowpanes, splashed from gutters and drained away in the tiny front gardens. Blaring music came from one of the houses. In front of the Market Hall a few youths had gathered. IPods on, they drank beer, kicked around empty cans and looked half-frozen. They shouted out obscenities at Dave and Leslie and then cracked up laughing, showing how drunk they already were.

&nbs
p; When they came past Mrs Willerton’s house, a man got out of a car on the other side of the road. Leslie had not noticed the car at first. The man quickly turned up his coat collar and rushed over to them in the rain. His face looked familiar to Leslie, but she could not place him at first. He stopped in front of them and blocked their path. He held out his ID.

  ‘Sergeant Reek,’ he introduced himself. ‘Mr Tanner?’

  ‘Hello, Sergeant,’ said Dave in a friendly way.

  Reek put the ID back in his coat’s inner pocket.

  ‘Mr Tanner, I have to ask you to accompany me to the station. Detective Inspector Almond has some questions to ask you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. Right now.’

  ‘As you can see, Sergeant, I’ve got a visitor and—’

  ‘Right now,’ replied Reek forcefully.

  Dave brushed a few wet strands of hair from his forehead. He did not look uneasy, instead annoyed. ‘Does that mean you are arresting me?’

  ‘Mr Tanner, it’s just a few questions that we urgently need you to answer. Considerable doubts have arisen about your statement concerning Saturday night. It would be in your interest to clear them up as soon as possible.’ Reek’s tone left little doubt that in spite of his politeness Dave had no other choice but to do as he had been asked.

  Dave looked down at his clothes. ‘Can I just put on some dry things? I’m soaked through, and I don’t really want to catch a cold at the station, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’ll come up with you,’ said Reek.

  Dave turned to Leslie. ‘I’m very sorry. As you can see, there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘What could they have against you, Dave?’

  He shrugged. ‘No idea. It’ll probably be easy to clear up. But I want you to know, Leslie, that whatever they accuse me of, I didn’t murder your grandmother. Nor Amy Mills. I don’t run around at night killing women. Don’t doubt me, please.’

  She nodded, but he seemed to feel her uncertainty, because he raised his hand and touched her face briefly with a gesture which was both helpless and tender. ‘Please,’ he said again.

  ‘I don’t doubt you,’ she said obediently, and asked herself why she wanted so much to make the situation easier for him.

  ‘Mr Tanner,’ chimed in Reek impatiently, who was getting more and more wet in the rain.

  ‘Just coming,’ said Dave. The two men went to Mrs Willerton’s house. Leslie stood in the rain and watched them go in. She watched the scene which seemed so strangely unreal to her, saw how Dave found his key, opened the door, how he and Sergeant Reek stepped inside and the door closed behind them.

  Dave Tanner did not look round one last time.

  10

  ‘Strange that Jennifer isn’t home yet,’ said Colin.

  He stood in the study doorway. Gwen was sitting at the desk and had turned the computer on. She was moving the mouse around, concentrating on something.

  She looked up. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s almost two. The weather’s terrible. What’s keeping her so long?’

  ‘She’s sitting in a café and waiting for the rain to ease off so she can reach the bus stop with more or less dry feet,’ said Gwen, with a pragmatism which she certainly possessed, but which other people did not often see in her. ‘Also, if she missed the one o’clock bus, then she has to wait until a quarter to four for the next one. We’re really out in the sticks here, Colin.’

  ‘Hmm,’ went Colin.

  Cal and Wotan were standing behind him. Wotan whined quietly.

  ‘The dogs miss her.’

  ‘She’ll be back soon,’ said Gwen distractedly.

  Colin stepped into the room. ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘He’s having a lie-down. He doesn’t feel well. I think he’s taking Fiona’s death hard.’

  ‘Well …’ said Colin.

  Gwen and he looked at each other across the desk.

  ‘You said earlier … Dave Tanner knows the whole story?’ Colin asked quietly. Chad could come down the stairs at any moment.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you give it to him to read?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he react?’

  ‘He hasn’t said anything about it yet.’

  ‘The bad opinion he held of Fiona is hardly going to have improved after he read it.’

  ‘Probably not,’ agreed Gwen. She looked very tired, Colin noticed. Tired and down.

  The twenty-four hours she had spent with her fiancé had not been exactly spine-tingling, he thought.

  Seeing how frustrated she was, he would have liked to leave her in peace, but he had a burning question.

  ‘Don’t you think that this whole story, about your father and Fiona, should be handed over to the police?’ he asked cautiously.

  She looked at him. She was neither shocked nor worked up, just sad. ‘Then my father would know that I’ve read Fiona’s emails to him. And that I printed them out and gave them to you and Jennifer. And Dave. He would never forgive me.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t care who else knows the story. Chad seems pretty wrapped up in his mourning for Fiona. I don’t think that anything apart from that is going to upset him much.’

  ‘Still. I don’t want him to find out, so the police can’t find out either.’ Gwen sounded more decided than normal. Colin knew how close to her father she was. She would have found a lingering row with him difficult to bear. Nor did she want to dirty his reputation by opening up his past to the police and then possibly the public at large. The same was true regarding Fiona. Her memory would be brought into disrepute and she had been like a mother to Gwen for many years. It would have broken Gwen’s heart to see these two people at the mercy of the full force of public opinion, when they could no longer defend themselves – Fiona because she was dead, and Chad because he was so self-absorbed.

  ‘Gwen …’ said Colin slowly, but she interrupted him in a tone which for her was surprisingly sharp:

  ‘There’s something else the police should know, Colin. Something which seems more important to me than these old stories.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jennifer,’ she said.

  He did not understand. ‘Jennifer?’

  Gwen did not look him in the eye. ‘I’ve been thinking this over these last few days. That Saturday night. You know we were asked, Colin, what we did and where we were at the time of the crime.’

  ‘I know. What’s the problem?’

  She seemed to be struggling with herself. Later Colin thought that she would never have said what she said next if she had not felt her back was up against the wall. She had to stop him from insisting she gave Fiona’s story to the police. She did it with the only option she had: she focused his attention on another person. Yet strangely, he did not doubt for a minute that what she said was true.

  ‘Just after we heard about Fiona’s death, Jennifer came to me. She said I could get in trouble, because I might have had a motive to kill her – after all, she had practically driven my fiancé away from the farm. She said things could get tricky for me.’

  ‘Tricky … with the police?’

  ‘Yes. And she was right. There were really only two people that evening who had a real reason to be angry with Fiona: Dave Tanner – and me.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘She offered to give me an alibi.’

  ‘What?’ asked Colin, dumbfounded.

  ‘She said I should say I’d been out at the bay with her and the dogs. She would confirm it. I was … so confused and afraid that I agreed.’

  He was appalled. ‘So, really, you weren’t …?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t down in the bay with her. We sat in my room for a long time, and she consoled me, but then … she went off on her own. I stayed here. All night long. There are no witnesses for that.’

  He shook his head. ‘Gwen, do you know what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m just telling you,’ Gwen replied. ‘I wouldn’t tell anyone else,
but … I think about it all the time, that … Jennifer was walking around outside at the time it happened. Even at the time, I had the thought that it could have been the other way round, you know.’

  ‘The other way round?’ he asked reluctantly. He was taken aback.

  How could Jennifer have been so stupid?

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t so much wanting to give me an alibi. Maybe she needed one. I don’t mean that she … I don’t for a second think she could have murdered Fiona. Why should she? But it’s strange, isn’t it, Colin? Why did she lie to the police? Why did she take the risk? Why did she want to be sure she was covered?’

  11

  The big houses on St Nicholas Cliff all looked a little shabby, including the Grand Hotel whose façade seemed to have suffered particularly from the wind and salt of the last few years. The house Stan Gibson lived in was at the top end and seemed very rundown. On the ground floor there was a shop for women’s clothing, which to judge from the displays was aimed at middle-aged women of slender means. The flats above it had small windows. Even from the outside, you could see that they did not close well or let much light into the rooms.

  All in all, thought Jennifer, it’s not exactly a building I would like to live in.

  Feeling uneasy, she followed Ena up the dim stairwell. Steep, creaking stairs. A terrible flowery wallpaper. A musty smell.

  ‘It will get better,’ said Ena. ‘He has a really nice flat.’

  Jennifer had a hard time imagining it.

  On the third floor Ena stopped at a door and unlocked it. ‘He renovated it himself. The landlord agreed. I think he’s done a good job.’ She let Jennifer in.

  Stan had indeed made the best that could be made out of it, as Jennifer had to admit. She supposed that the flat had once consisted of many small rooms. Stan had knocked out the dividing walls and made a single large room. It looked cosy, and the remaining columns were nicely joined with wooden shelving. The kitchen was part of the room. Its stainless steel and black granite shone. There was also a generously sized corner sofa facing a nice brick fireplace. The Scandinavian furniture looked inexpensive but bright and friendly. A white-painted door led to the bedroom, and beyond that there was a bathroom too.