It is past three in the morning before she finally drifts off to sleep but the fact that the alcohol is wearing off is little consolation. She is pretty sure she said something stupid to Paul, something that will have alerted him to her suspicions, and the consequences of that could be serious. She moves a little closer to the comforting warmth of Patrick’s back, rising and falling steadily beside her, and tries not to think about the morning and what it will hold.
She wakes to the sound of Patrick trying to keep the children quiet.
“Shh,” she hears. “Mummy isn’t feeling very well today.”
“Why?” says Ricky. Patrick tells him that it was probably something she ate.
Her heart goes out to him. He doesn’t say that Mummy drank far too much wine and made a complete exhibition of herself, but protects her instead. Turns her into a victim of bad catering rather than a stupid woman who couldn’t control herself enough to behave with some dignity. Oh, what a mess, she thinks, keeping her eyes resolutely closed. Maybe if she can stay like this right up to the moment the room has to be vacated, she will be able to slip away to the car and she will not have to face anyone. Maybe Patrick will take the children on a round of goodbyes and thank-yous and nobody will notice that she is not there.
Of course that does not happen. She has no choice but to get up eventually, but she feels terrible and is sick again. She hasn’t had a hangover like this for years, and either it is a particularly bad one or she has forgotten how horrible they feel, as she can’t imagine ever doing this to herself again. She asks Patrick to take the children down to breakfast, ignoring his advice that what she needs is a good fry-up. The thought of that is bad enough, but the idea of sitting in the restaurant with dozens of people, many of whom probably passed her sad and ridiculous figure as they left to go to their rooms, is more than she can bear.
Instead, she does the packing. She moves around the room slowly, as if she is walking in some strange viscous liquid that does not allow any sudden movements. She gathers up the children’s clothes and folds them, puts them neatly in their bag, then hangs Patrick’s suit on its hanger. She is about to start on her things when there is a tap on the door. She sits on the bed. Who can this be? But then she thinks it is probably room-service. Patrick will have ordered a coffee for her. He is being very kind, considering this is all her own fault. She opens the door.
“Hi,” says Paul. “I saw Patrick downstairs and he said it was OK to come up. I think we need to talk.”
Laura feels a rush of panic. She wants to slam the door and hide. Or if not that, to go back to her packing and pretend this is not happening. She just wants to get out of here, but what can she do? He is standing there, obviously expecting to come into the room.
“Um, er. Shall we go down and get a coffee then? I haven’t had anything yet.”
She doesn’t want to be alone in the room with him. She knows it is silly, but she is afraid. Suppose he didn’t really see Patrick but found out their room number and sneaked up? Suppose the smile is a cover for other, more dangerous emotions?
“I think it would be better in private,” he says. His face is just the right side of friendly. She must stop this. She must stop letting her imagination get the better of her. She steps aside and he comes into the room, but there is nowhere to sit apart from the beds. Clothes and suitcases occupy the two chairs and she finds herself scanning the room in case there is something he shouldn’t see. Are her pants still on the floor? Is her bra draped over a chair?
In the end, they perch on the two narrow beds that have been put out for the children. They are opposite each other and their knees could touch if Laura wasn’t perched right at the end of the bed. All the same, he could easily lean across and grab her, put his hands around her throat …
“About last night,” he says.
Laura feels herself flushing and the words come tumbling out.
“Look, I’m really sorry. I had way too much to drink. I don’t even remember what I said, but Kelly tells me I was rude to you. I hope it didn’t spoil your evening. Can you apologise to Amy for me, and to anyone else who was … you know ...”
Paul raises his hand and Laura flinches, but he is only trying to stem the flow of words.
“No, don’t worry about that. You weren’t rude, you were … let’s say you were emotional. The thing is, I had a long chat with Kelly earlier on and she told me about what Judy had been writing. And then, when you … when I realised what you might be thinking, I decided it was time to tell the truth about Linda.”
Paul’s hand goes to his jacket pocket and Laura’s heart somersaults. Has he got a knife in there? Is he going to confess everything and then kill her? She starts to rise, starts to say something about needing the loo, but he has a blue envelope in his hand not a knife.
“It won’t take that long,” he says and hands it to her. There is one word on the envelope: Judy. Inside, there are several sheets of what her mother used to call writing paper, folded in half. They are pale blue, to match the envelope, and they are what people used in the days before emails, before you could contact somebody, almost anybody, in the blink of an eye. The handwriting is hard to read in places and veers between neatness and scrawl, but once she has started, Laura does not stop until she has read the final word.
***
To my lovely, funny, beautiful Judy.
I hope you never have to read this but if you are reading it now, something has happened to me and I can’t tell you this myself. I will, one day, if I can and then I will tear this into a hundred pieces. I know it’s cheating and I may tear it up anyway, tomorrow when I’m sober, but tonight I have to tell you and this is the only safe way I can do it. Because I can’t risk losing you! What would I do if I told you and you didn’t understand? At the very best you might leave me and I can’t risk that, but at the worst you might feel you had to tell someone else. And that would set off a whole chain of events that would lead where I’m not prepared to go. It’s not the right path for me. You and I are meant to be together. I have told you so many times. What will be will be, and I’m sure I would know if telling you face to face was what I should do. So let’s hope this letter stays unopened.
But none of that means it will be easy. I have thought so many times about what I would say, but I’m drunk now and I can’t find the words. It’s been building up in me all night and I’ve had to force my hand off the telephone. I wanted to dial your number and let it all come rushing out. Then you and me could be complete. I hate it so much that there is this between us. It’s even worse that you don’t know there is anything wrong. I like to think you’re happy and I am too, some of the time, but it’s like there is always this cloud on the horizon. Always a little chilly breeze on the sunniest day. Always something stopping me relaxing completely.
You still don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You don’t even know that I knew her, that friend of yours, Linda. We’ve talked about her, haven’t we? I’ve reassured you that there is no point in going to the police, no point in telling them about a possible pregnancy. You think I’ve been protecting you, but if only that was all it was. No, my sweet, innocent girl, I haven’t been protecting you, I’ve been protecting myself.
So now it’s out. I knew Linda. Oh yes, more than knew her. I was with her for the whole of that spring and summer before I met you, but I never loved her like I love you. We were lovers, that is true, but it was not love like I have with you. I was bewitched by her and I couldn’t resist, but we didn’t connect at the heart. Not like we do, my lovely girl.
I can see you now, reading this. Your heart is beating fast and you are thinking ‘What is this all about?’ Well, it’s about Linda’s baby. My baby, I suppose. I have no reason to think she was lying about that, but it wasn’t going to happen. How could it? If she had the baby she would have had to say who the father was and then there would be talk about getting married and all that goes with it but I knew she wasn’t the one. I thought she knew it too, that we
were too young and not really made for each other, let alone a baby. So I sorted it out. I borrowed the money from my dad, told him I’d got gambling debts, threw myself on his mercy. Then I found a clinic that would do it, at astronomical cost, made the appointment and then, at the last minute, she decided she couldn’t go through with it.
You can imagine how I felt. Well, probably you can’t. I didn’t know what to do. It was all rushing away from me and I saw my life disappearing down the plughole. Linda and me stuck in some dingy flat bringing up a child neither of us wanted and God knows what my parents would have done. I had to do something, so I asked her to meet me. We had this place we used to go, up at the quarry. We used to go up there if I was back from London. She thought it was romantic, all the secrecy, but it wasn’t about that. I was ashamed of her, I realise that now, and now I am ashamed of myself.
Anyway, I was going to talk her round. I swear, Judy, on everything we have, on my life and yours, that’s all I was going to do. I was going to tell her how awful it would be if she went ahead with it, what a sad, kitchen-sink life she would have – we would have. It would be like those films, a constant struggle, a dull, monochrome life. I didn’t know how emotional she’d get. I’d brought flowers for her and chocolates. I was going to take her up to London to see a film, maybe even have a meal, show her what her life could be like, but she wouldn’t listen. She was like a thing possessed, pawing at me, pleading with me, and when I said no, we are not going to have a baby and be like everyone else, my life is worth more than that, she went mad. She was hitting me, screaming at me, calling me every kind of bastard. I had my hands up, defending myself, and I was going backwards, trying to get away from this wild thing she’d become, and we were getting closer to the edge. I looked round and I was only inches away and she was still pummelling me on my chest, so I reached out and held her arms. I was going to hold her still and move us away from the edge – give us a bit more space - but she pulled away from me. Wrenched herself away and staggered. I tried to grab her, honestly I did, but it was too late. She fell backwards, her arms flailing around and then she was gone.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. Not with me, but with other kids? There were holes in the fence and people used to go there to swim in the summer, but that was over the other side, where the drop was smaller. It was dangerous enough there, but we used to go right round the other side where hardly anyone ever went. ‘Our place,’ she used to call it, and it’s been her place ever since, as she dropped into the water like a stone. Hundreds of feet down. There were bushes and branches overhanging at the bottom and I think she must have drifted under them as I never saw her body. I went to look, over and over, every time I came back, but it was like she had vanished from the earth.
So now you’re thinking ‘Why didn’t he tell someone?’ All that time, and her mother driving herself mad with grief and worry, and I just carried on regardless. How could I? Well, I’ve asked myself that question enough times, I can tell you. But you know how I live my life. I knew that the truth would come out if it was supposed to. One day, I might wake up and it would seem like an ordinary day but it wouldn’t be. It would be the day that it happened. I would say something, or someone else would find out somehow. We didn’t use her proper name at the clinic and she had her hair all tied up in a scarf, sunglasses on all the time, but someone would see the paper and work it out. And do you know what? She used your name! I didn’t even know you then, but when I told her to think of a different name she said, “Bakewell. I’ll be Linda Bakewell. That’s a good name.” You can imagine how I felt when I found out that you two knew each other and everything that went on.
It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it never will. Maybe there is no chain of events that leads in that direction. I’m getting to the stage where I almost think I should make it happen, but if I do, that will only be because I had to, you know that. Nothing I did could have stopped Linda falling over that cliff and disappearing into the water and nothing either of us do can bring her back. I was telling the truth when I said that, just not the whole truth. But I’ve said it now and it’s done. What will be will be.
I love you, never forget that.
Vic
***
Paul breaks the silence.
“Does that answer any of your questions?”
Laura wishes she were not feeling so muzzy. It would be hard enough to take in what she has read without the handicap of a thumping headache and nausea.
“So it was Vic? Vic killed Linda?”
“Yes, apparently, although it doesn’t seem to have been deliberate, if you believe what he wrote.”
“What do you think? You met him, didn’t you? Did he seem capable of murder?” asks Laura. It doesn’t seem possible, but the letter is there in her hand.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t stand the bloke. Thought he was a complete fake. He filled my sister’s head full of all sorts of airy-fairy nonsense and she was like his little disciple. But that doesn’t make him a murderer, does it?”
Still Laura doesn’t understand. How could her mother remember Vic as the love of her life knowing what she did? Surely she would have had some doubts.
“But Mum. She still loved him? She was prepared to keep the secret for him all those years? There’s nothing about this in ...”
“No, no. You don’t understand,” says Paul. He takes the letter from Laura’s hand. “Judy never saw this. I found it inside a book. Vic’s parents had been clearing out his stuff and they brought round a box of things they thought belonged to her. But nobody dared give it to her. She was so fragile for so long, my parents wanted to protect her. So they put the box in my room instead and then when I came back one time, I helped myself. I was like that in those days, I’m afraid – not a very nice person. There were a few albums I fancied, and some books, and I figured Judy wouldn’t want them now. This was tucked inside one of them. I found it when I read it. I can still remember it now. It was The Diceman. Luke Rhinehart. Ironic really, given that it’s about random consequences.”
“And you never showed it to her, even when she was better?”
“No. My parents were adamant. They said it could trigger a complete breakdown. They made me promise never to tell her and I told them I’d destroyed it. I did think about it when she went to uni, but there never seemed to be a good time and then we drifted apart. I tried to get in touch later, a few times, but she didn’t want to know. I could never work out why. Then I was abroad for a long time until I settled up here and there didn’t seem to be any point. It was Amy who wanted the family to get together.”
Suddenly, Laura sees what has happened. She tells Paul about the appointment card. She tells him about the note addressed to ‘Polly.’ Mum must have found it and come to the same conclusion Laura did; assumed that Polly was Paul. She protected him all those years, but she couldn’t bring herself to see him.
“Oh God,” says Paul. Laura thinks he might cry. “Of course she might think that. I did go out with Linda a couple of times, it’s true, but I dumped her when I found out she wasn’t as easy as everyone said.” He pauses, looks at Laura, but she is too wrapped up in her mother’s story to worry about his morality all those years ago. She says nothing, so he continues.” It was a small town. People hung around together, but she would never have thought it could be anything to do with Vic, even if she did know they knew each other. He was perfect in her eyes, almost godlike. But yes, that’s it! Vic had an unusual middle name – I remember seeing it at the funeral – it was more like a surname. Pollett? Or Pollard? Something like that. I bet that was where Polly came from. They were quite a posh family, you know. The kind who might have family names they wanted to preserve.”
So, bit by bit, they piece it all together. They can only surmise, but maybe the appointment card was tucked into another book or in the sleeve of an album. Paul says that his room was always in total chaos and it would have been easy for it to get lost in the mess. In any case, he thinks Judy must have
found it there and assumed Linda had sent it to him. Maybe she was looking for her things or maybe she was simply snooping around as siblings do. Then of course she would have jumped to the obvious conclusion.
Laura is stunned. Poor Mum! To keep such a terrible secret all those years when it wasn’t even true. And now it is too late. She will never know her brother was innocent any more than she will know her true love was guilty.
Then the door opens and the children burst in, followed by Patrick. They can’t wait to tell her about the buffet breakfast, about how many sausages Ricky ate and how there were chocolate muffins but Patrick wouldn’t let them have one. Paul is edging towards the door. He still has the letter but Laura wonders if she should take it. Should she try to tell Mum the truth? And what about Hilda and the police? Surely this is evidence?
She follows Paul to the door. He is saying goodbye to Patrick and the children, hoping the journey back will be easy and thanking everyone for coming. No-one would ever guess what they have been discussing. As he leaves, she puts her hand on his arm.
“Do you think we should …?” she begins, but Paul shakes his head.
“No,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket as if to stop the letter leaping out into Laura’s hand. “I think we should just leave things as they are. Nothing to be gained now, is there?”
And then he is gone. Striding off down the carpeted corridor and disappearing around the corner to where the lifts are. Laura thinks he is probably a nice man. The sort of brother her mother could be proud of, even if he was a little off the rails when he was young. How sad that they lost touch for all those years and for no good reason. She thinks it would be nice to see him again, to get to know him better. She wonders if that will ever happen.
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