by Martina Cole
‘In the letter he said that he got to the squat with Patrick, and Marie was out of it on the floor. Stoned out of her skull as usual. It was then that the argument started and Patrick lost it. Marshall said in the letter that he picked up a baseball bat to stop Bethany attacking Patrick. Marshall killed her with the first blow. Caroline lost it then, and that’s when Patrick Connor and he both went berserk. Marshall was on mescaline, see. He was as out of it as his sister. He’d been using for a while. He said in the letter that afterwards they wiped the weapons and then placed them in Marie’s hands to put her prints all over them. She was covered in blood anyway; it was all over the ceiling, everywhere. Marshall was terrified by what he had done, and what his mother would do if it ever came out, and that’s when he decided to shoot himself.’
Kevin started to cry again.
‘And I never done anything about it! I let my daughter rot because my wife was so devastated by her loss, I dare not give her any more grief over her son. So what does that make me, eh? But I hated her for what I’d done; I hated her from that day on. And she knew I did. She fucking well knew!’
He was sobbing and Susan and Lucy stared at him with their mouths open and their eyes wide.
Lucy broke the spell.
‘Oh, Dad.’
He put his arms around her and said loudly, ‘I am so sorry, Marie. I was caught up in her fucking madness, you see. I am so fucking sorry for what I did to you. Forgive me, Marie. Please, forgive me.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Marie felt as if she had had the weight of the world taken off her shoulders. Even though she was more than aware that she had seriously hurt Patrick, that meant nothing compared to what she had thought she had done. The knowledge that Mikey had done the real killing for her made her feel strangely humble. He was bad, and she had known it, but he had tried to help her and she was grateful for that.
He had been a villain, but then he had never pretended to be anything else. He had given her peace by his actions and she would always remember that.
She looked around the room that had become her home and felt strangely nostalgic for it. She knew that was because she had been convinced she was going back to prison so even this little place felt like a haven. But she knew she had to leave now and go out into the world proper. It would be a big step for her but she would do it, for her son and for her grand-daughter and ultimately for herself.
She would immerse herself in her remaining family and try and make amends for the years she had lost.
Time passed, slowly but surely time passed, and with each passing year of her life imprisoned as a murderer she had felt stronger and more able to cope with what she had done. She remembered lying in her cell, knowing the door was bolted on her and the light was turned off. Durham had been so cold. Even in the summer it had been chilly. Cookham Wood had seemed like a five-star hotel after that place. But no matter where she was she would think of her children, try and imagine them at the age they would be. Scramble for memories of them: their smells, skin textures, any little fact to hold on to. To cherish as a reminder of her time with them, wasted in her stupidity.
Unlike the other women she had no photos to keep them fresh in her mind. No pictures were sent in, no childish letters to look forward to. She had had nothing. Not from her kids or anyone else for that matter. Even her father had abandoned her. She had done her time alone, both physically and mentally. Now it was time to try and make a different life for herself. She had been given another chance and must not waste it this time.
The hardest part was going to be burying her daughter but she knew she had to do it and do it with dignity. People would come not so much to mourn as to catch a glimpse of the famous murderess. She knew that. Faces from the past would seek her out under the pretext of paying their respects to her dead daughter.
But it was her son she would be strong for. For Jason.
She had an interview with a social worker on the coming Monday. Amanda had arranged it for her and Marie was going to find out about access to her grand-daughter. Amanda seemed to think she was entitled to see Anastasia.
Marie wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t the normal grey-haired granny they were used to dealing with. But she was going to try; she had to do that much for Tiffany, and for Jason who wanted to have contact with his sister’s child.
As Sally said, she had to stop dwelling on the past, especially the recent past. She had to mourn a child and a lover. She would do that as best she could, hopefully with dignity and forbearance. After all, she had mourned her children for many years; they had been all but dead to her for so long.
But every time she thought of what she had wanted to do to Patrick, had tried to do to him, she felt her resolve start to waver. She was still capable of inflicting mortal damage on people who hurt her and had to make sure she kept herself away from any potentially explosive situations. Unlike other people she had to take a back seat because she could not trust herself when hurt or upset. The knowledge still made her feel like a freak of some kind.
She glanced at the mobile phone on the night table and noted that it was still turned off. She decided she didn’t want to hear from Maisie again. She would throw the bloody thing away. She didn’t like them anyway. They were intrusive and made you accessible twenty-four hours a day. Didn’t people feel they wanted any peace any more, on call twenty-four seven? She found it almost Orwellian. No one seemed to have any privacy. CCTV cameras everywhere you went and even TV programmes dedicated to watching complete strangers make arses of themselves. It was a different world from the one she had left all those years before. Although they had had TV and computers in prison their viewing had been controlled and so it had not really made any impact. Now even little children were computer literate. Knew about soap operas and adult problems. It was amazing how much everything had changed.
Even this Archer scandal, which had inadvertently knocked Mikey off the front pages, was all a scam. He wouldn’t do any real time, not like she had done and countless others were still doing. She had come out to a pretend world, filled with pretend people. She had to learn to survive in it if she was going to have any real chance in life. And she was determined to have a life of sorts. Even if it was always to be tinged with sadness and regret, she was going to live her life to the best of her ability, not just for her but for Tiffany as well as Caroline and Bethany. Otherwise it had been a waste of time. All the hurt and the pain would have been for nothing.
She glanced at the little travelling clock that had ticked away beside her all through her years in prison and saw it was time to go to Jason’s house to discuss the funeral arrangements.
She glanced at herself in the mirror and saw a woman in a shabby suit. She had good skin and a trim figure and the saddest eyes in the world. But she was alive, she had a son and a grand-daughter, and at last she was looking to the future. Tentatively maybe, but at least she now felt she had something to look forward to.
So many people couldn’t even say that, could they?
Count your blessings was going to be her new philosophy. She was also keeping her old prison mantra, which was tried and tested: It’s not what happens to you but how you deal with it.
She had forgotten that one – and look where it nearly got her.
She closed the door of her room gently and made her way to her son’s house. Inside, her heart was singing at the thought of being in his company once more. If she hadn’t had Jason she didn’t know what she would have done.
Alan was in his flat packing a case. He was clumsy, the large amount of Scotch he had drunk affecting his co-ordination. He had been drinking for twenty-four hours solid and it was taking its toll. He was trying to shut the case when the door went.
He opened it with a flourish and saw Steve Camble standing there.
‘All right, Alan?’
He nodded.
‘Can I come in?’
The man’s voice was friendly enough and Alan stepped back to let him into the flat.
<
br /> ‘What you going to do, Steve?’
The other man shrugged.
‘It’s nothing personal, Al, you know that. But you done a wrong ’un. You know it can’t be left like that.’
Alan walked unsteadily into the lounge.
‘Was it Teddington?’
Steve nodded.
‘He’s as slippery as a fucking greased eel. He’d sell his granny for a fiver and he got considerably more for you, I should imagine.’
Alan laughed.
‘I should fucking hope so!’
Steve was depressed. He liked Alan, always had. But he had a job to do and that was that.
‘Kneel down, Al.’
Alan looked into the man’s face. He had drunk with him on numerous occasions. Gone to barbecues at his house with his family, and now Steve was going to kill him. Friendship was worth nothing in their world once you transgressed the rules. He was a grass and he was finished.
‘There’s twenty grand in the bedroom . . .’
Camble held up his hand for silence.
‘Don’t, Alan. You can’t buy your way out of this.’
‘I don’t want to, Steve. You’re doing me a favour really. The insurance will pay out for the wife and kids, and they won’t get hassled by people looking for me. I meant, take it and give it to my old woman.’
‘’Course I will, Al. Like I say, this is nothing personal.’
Alan knelt down. He knew Camble would do as he asked, he was a straight-up geezer. As he waited for the inevitable he concentrated on a photo of his three little girls and the knowledge he would never see them again was hard.
But he knew this was for the best, especially for his children. Gone he was old news and they would not try and get to him through his kids.
But he was sorry he had wasted so much of his life on chasing the dollar, on betting on the horses and drinking and drugging in scummy clubs with scummy people. He could have been a millionaire now, twice over, legally. And he could have taken his kids away on holiday and done the things regular people do.
Instead he was going to die on a sunny day when he was still fit and well. There were people dying all over the world through illness, starvation, whatever. He was dying through his own greed and stupidity. It was laughable really, except he didn’t think he had a laugh left in him.
The gunshot was loud and unexpected. He dropped forward on to the carpet with a surprised expression on his face.
Steve Camble picked up the money and placed it in a Tesco carrier bag. Then he left the flat and went to his car. He was whistling as he drove away. Alan Jarvis was already history.
Karen Black was in her cell. She was crying, really crying, and one of her cell mates snapped, ‘Put a fucking sock in it, will you? You’re getting on my tits!’
Karen sniffed loudly, trying to stem the flow, but it was impossible. She glanced down at the letter again and the tears started once more. She could not believe what she was reading.
Her mother had in effect cut her off from the family. Wanted nothing more to do with her. Said they all felt the same. They would not visit her or write to her, and she was requesting that Karen stopped writing to them. They had no interest in her any more.
She screwed the letter up into a ball.
Her solicitor had said she should get her head around a long sentence. The prosecution was refusing to let her plead to a lesser charge. She was up for attempted murder, and the state her victim was in would be seen in the courtroom because Louise Carter was going to give evidence. No jury in the land would find her anything but guilty.
Her argument that she’d thought there was no one in the house when she torched it would go nowhere. As her brief had pointed out, why had she blocked off the exits if she’d thought the place was empty? She had to have known there was someone in there whatever she said. She was better holding up her hand and taking it on the chin.
But Karen was frightened. She didn’t want to be in prison for years without anything on the outside to keep her going, and yet that was what was going to happen. It was ironic really, because she knew it was exactly what had happened to Marie Carter. Karen would have to walk in her shoes now and she wasn’t sure she had the guts to see it through.
She was crying again, her face awash with tears.
Juliana, her cell mate, jumped off her bunk and punched Karen in the head with all the force she could muster. The blow was heavy and loud.
‘Shut the fuck up!’
Juliana was screaming now, fed up with the noise. She had just been informed that her two children were going into long-term foster care because their father had disappeared off the face of the earth, and she really wasn’t in the mood for this miserable bitch at the moment.
Karen knew that this environment was all she could hope for in the years ahead. She had thought she was violent until she had come in here. Her head was smarting from the blow and she felt an urge to scream at the sheer terror building up inside her.
She couldn’t do the time. She knew already she couldn’t do jail time. But all her options had been taken away from her. She had no say in what happened to her any more.
Like Marie Carter before her she was doomed to serve a sentence without anyone giving her even the time of day or any letters from home to cheer her up. Her Petey was dead, and in effect, so was she. It was like being one of the living dead. Going through the motions of breathing, of living, but for what reason?
She started to cry again and Juliana rolled her eyes to the ceiling and shouted, ‘Grow up, woman! You were big enough and ugly enough to get yourself in here. So be a woman and take it on the chin, for fuck’s sakes. And stop that whining, I’m trying to think!’
Karen just buried her face in the pillow and cried her heart out. Self-pity is a destructive force as she would find out over the next few years.
Louise Carter was alone in her hospital room. She was in bed because she felt tired even though it was only early afternoon.
A sympathetic nurse had told her it was the pain. Louise had felt like laughing when the girl said that to her. Telling her about pain! These people didn’t know the meaning of the word!
She had experienced pain all her life, and extreme pain from the moment she had seen her dead son. His face gone, his lovely handsome face destroyed by the gunshot. And all because of her. Marie.
She closed her eyes to try and shut out the mental picture of Marshall without his face and her husband looking at her with that accusing stare he could summon up when it suited him.
She knew the neighbours had laughed at her behind her back because she’d bragged about her son’s achievements. But it was just jealousy, nothing more and nothing less. He was cut out for better than hanging around the streets like their children. Marshall was going to be someone, and as honours were heaped on him she would bask in the reflected glory. That had always been her dream.
The pain was burning in her hands once more, but still she flexed them. She was terrified of losing her hand movement. It was her biggest fear.
She didn’t care about the facial scarring, she would wear those marks with pride and had refused any offer of skin grafts. At her age she didn’t care what she looked like. But she wanted her hands mobile so she could arrange the flowers on her son’s grave. She had made the priest promise that he would take care of it until she was better, and being a priest he had to do what he said because he was a man of God. She hadn’t bothered to ask her lazy bitch of a daughter.
Lucy had no interest in anything other than getting a man. All man mad, the lot of them. Like Marie she was, deep inside. A right pair of them she had given birth to. Louise closed her eyes once more as the pain shot up her arms. But still she carried on flexing her fingers.
She heard the door open and kept her eyes closed. The nurse might think she was asleep and go away and leave her alone. She was sick of the lot of it: saline drips, painkillers, ice baths, the whole kit and caboodle. She wanted to go home. Except she didn’t have one any mo
re.
The presence was still in the room and Louise opened one eye.
‘Oh. It’s you.’
Her voice was bored-sounding.
Lucy stood at the end of the bed and did not say a word. The two women eyed one another.
‘Well?’ The single word was spoken with disdain and it set Lucy off.
‘I’ve been to see Dad.’
Louise’s flexing was getting faster, a sure sign she was agitated.
‘He’s in Rampton. The mental hospital.’
‘So I heard. What do you want, Lucy?’
‘I just wanted to see you. Dad’s been talking about you a lot.’
There was something about Lucy’s voice that was wrong. The usual whine was gone from it.
‘Really? How thrilling. We’ve been married long enough, I should imagine he would talk about me. Fuck all else going on in his life, boring bugger that he is.’
Lucy grinned.
‘He can’t stop talking about you and Marshall.’
She was looking straight into her mother’s eyes now and they connected like they had never connected before. Lucy saw her mother afraid for the first time ever. It was almost tangible it was so acute. She breathed in, convinced she would be able to smell it. But all she could smell was the stench of sickness, aqueous cream and the odour peculiar to all hospitals - disinfectant and urine.
She wondered at the fact that she could feel no pity for this broken woman in the bed, but Louise’s hatefulness had stopped anyone pitying her. In fact, she seemed even stronger since the accident. Was stronger in some respects because she bore battle scars to prove her righteousness. She was quite convinced she’d acted for the best. How she could have allowed Marie to go away for all that time without saying a word was the most amazing thing Lucy had ever heard. But it was all for Marshall as usual, her son, the light of her life. He had to be protected no matter what.
‘I’m living somewhere else now.’
Louise was glad of the change of subject and it showed.
‘Really, where?’
Lucy’s voice was matter-of-fact as she explained, ‘I’m living with Dad’s girlfriend Susan. She’s a really nice woman, Mum. You wouldn’t like her, though. Not really your cup of tea. But then, that’s probably why Dad and me like her so much. And Marie. Marie really likes her. Even more than I do, I think. She’s the opposite of you, Mum, a really nice woman.’