by GJ Minett
That much was true, Ellen acknowledged. Bringing up a child alone and trying to hold down a job would have been hard enough for Barbara, without the added pressure of constantly looking over her shoulder to see if anyone had picked up her trail. At least this way she’d had all the support she could ask for and at the same time Mary and Sam had the chance to become surrogate parents. Better for everyone, she agreed – herself included.
‘So all the time she and I were at each other’s throats because I couldn’t get her to tell me anything about my father she thought she was protecting me?’
‘Convinced of it. She’d built this brick wall around you and wasn’t about to let anything breach it.’
‘I always thought it was because she was ashamed.’
‘Ashamed?’ Sam almost choked on his steak and kidney pie.
‘Like it was some grubby encounter in a back alley with a total stranger or something and she couldn’t tell me without losing face.’
Sam put down his knife and fork and leant forward as if to lend emphasis to what he was about to say.
‘I’ll tell you how ashamed she was,’ he said. ‘Apart from you, Peter Vaughan was the single most important thing that ever happened in her entire life. If it hadn’t been for her paranoia, as you call it, she’d have liked nothing better than to sit down and talk all evening to you about him. God knows she did it often enough with Mary and me once you were off to sleep. She became a different person when she talked about him. Twenty years younger – you wouldn’t have recognised her.’
‘But what about after the diary?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Once she’d read the diary and knew who he was. She must have felt differently then.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’d lied to her. He wasn’t who he was pretending to be.’
Sam smiled. ‘As far as she was concerned, he was Peter Vaughan, someone who came wandering in out of the blue one day. His life before he arrived in Ashbury was nothing to do with her. Besides, she read enough in his diary to know how he felt, both about her and having to keep things from her. She was sure he was building himself up to tell her before long.’
‘Like she was going to tell me, I suppose.’
‘She was always going to tell you, Ellen.’
‘But somehow she never quite got round to it, did she?’
Sam tipped the rest of the chips from the bowl onto his plate, spearing several of them with his fork. He paused in the act of raising it to his mouth, pointing it at her.
‘How about I ask you a question for once?’ he asked, thrusting them into his mouth.
‘OK.’
‘Are you going to tell Megan and Harry?’
‘About my father? Of course.’
‘You going to tell them who he was?’
‘I’m not going to hide the truth from them.’
‘And which truth is that, girl? You going to stick with a few shadowy details about their grandfather or tell them they’ve got a new half-uncle they’re not allowed to talk about?’
‘Where are you going with this, Sam? I told you, I’ll sit down with Jack and we’ll decide together exactly what we’ll tell them and how.’
‘And when?’
‘And when.’ She made herself sound a little more convinced than she actually felt.
‘Well, good luck with that,’ said Sam, holding up his glass to toast her. ‘And good luck with Jack too. A story that huge? I was married to the secret sister of John Michael Adams? Hope he never feels the need to boost that glittering writing career of his and cash in. But hey, you know Jack. I’m sure you can trust him.’
Ellen put her fork down and thrust her salad away from her. She’d had enough for now.
It wasn’t until they were waiting to cross the road in front of the hospital that she brought the subject back to the diary Peter Vaughan had been keeping. It hadn’t occurred to her before to ask what had happened to it.
‘Oh, she’s still got it. It’ll be tucked away somewhere with all the other papers.’
‘She didn’t destroy it?’
‘Destroy Peter’s diary? Are you kidding? She kept this shirt of his in her bottom drawer for twenty years until it pretty much fell apart. Now the diary’s all she’s got. She’d give up several vital organs before she’d let that go.’
‘Have you ever read it?’ she asked, holding up one hand to thank a considerate driver who’d allowed them to cross.
‘Just the once. Flicked through it more than read it, to be honest. Felt a bit like prying, if you know what I mean.’
‘So how far back did it go?’
‘Not that far.’ He paused for a moment to fuss with one of his laces although Ellen suspected it was really to catch his breath. She wondered if maybe she’d been walking a little too quickly for him. He was such a force of nature it was easy to forget he was in his mid-seventies. ‘He must have started it soon after he got to Ashbury, I guess. It didn’t go back as far as all that business with his boy, if that’s what you mean.’
He held the door open and stepped to one side to allow a woman on crutches to enter the hospital before him. She smiled and thanked him. Such a nice man. Ellen could almost hear her thinking it.
‘You mentioned other papers – what are they?’
‘Oh, just things she’s collected over the years. Articles she cut out of newspapers, that sort of thing. And the books she bought . . . you know.’
‘What books?’ Ellen tried hard but couldn’t remember ever having seen her mother with a book in her hands. The Barbara she knew existed on a diet of soaps and reality TV.
‘Oh, anything about the boy, really. Biographies. Welfare reports. Psychological studies. Right little library she’s got tucked away somewhere – probably in the attic at home.’
‘But why was she so fascinated by him?’
‘Peter’s boy,’ said Sam, stepping into the lift and leaving Ellen to press the button for the correct floor. ‘There’s no one she can talk to about his father. I think she sees him as some way of connecting with the Peter she never got to know, if that makes sense.’
‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Ellen. She caught him by the arm as they stepped out into the corridor – she didn’t want to get back to Mary until she’d milked the conversation for every last drop of information. ‘You’re talking as if she seriously expected to find him. How was she going to do that when just about every reporter worthy of the name had failed?’
‘I don’t think logic came into it,’ said Sam. ‘She just got swept along by it.’
‘And did she talk to you about what she’d learnt?’
‘All the time. Although you’d be better off asking Mary for details. A lot of it just bounced off me, if I’m honest.’
‘Why’s that? You didn’t approve?’
‘Not really. I mean, losing someone the way she did is tough, OK. It’s not going to be easy to get over something like that. But . . . I don’t know. It just seemed a bit obsessive to me. There was no balance in her. She used to get so worked up every time there was a new rumour about where the boy might be and she hated the way he was portrayed in the media – hated it. She felt only one side of the argument was being put forward. It was like she couldn’t bring herself to accept that he could possibly be as bad as they were making out. Not Peter’s boy.’
Less than twenty-four hours previously Ellen had been sitting in Eudora’s conservatory and thinking the exact same thing. She remembered now the maternal instincts that had kicked in when she looked at the photo of John Michael Adams and the doubts she’d experienced surrounding the way he’d been labelled for life for one moment of madness. How strange was it to learn that her mother had beaten her to the very same conclusion?
‘I’ll be honest with you, I thought she’d been brainwashed by all these do-gooders she’d been listening to,’ Sam continued. ‘There was this one guy, a professor. Pretty famous he was at the time – did some big series on TV.’
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‘Carl Holmbach.’
‘Yeah, that was him. How the . . .? Anyway, back in the sixties and seventies he was always on TV or in the newspapers, claiming the boy never received fair treatment at the hands of the media. Produced this book too, laying out the reasons why he felt society had been too quick to label the boy. Barbara bought it and read it from cover to cover in just about one sitting. She was so impressed she wrote to him – said she wanted to meet him. He wasn’t remotely interested so she wrote again and said she wanted to talk to him about Peter Vaughan and you can imagine how quick he was to get back to her after that. Only a handful of people had ever known about that name, apparently.’
‘But why did she want to meet him?’ asked Ellen. ‘I thought she spent her whole life trying to keep me safe. Surely that was putting everything at risk?’
‘Exactly what I said at the time but she was convinced she could trust him. He was on her side, one of the good guys. She just wanted to talk to someone who’d known Peter, I guess. Chance to swap notes.’
‘So did she tell this professor anything about me?’
Sam shook his head. ‘She might have been obsessed but she wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t go that far. I suppose she might have done if they’d met more than just the once but it never became an issue, as it turned out. He died soon after – probably for the best, when you think about it. She was already getting sucked in too far for my liking. But I know it hit her hard when she heard about it. It was like the last link had been severed somehow.’
‘And since then? Has she been trying anything else?’
‘She did for a while. Then the illness kicked in and . . .’
Sam let his voice trail away. He turned to face Ellen and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. Then he pushed open the door and walked in to rejoin Mary.
Only later did Ellen manage to pin down the thought that had been eluding her.
‘I suppose it’s you I ought to thank,’ she said. ‘The goody bags?’
Sam and Mary looked blankly at her.
‘The little box of presents every two or three weeks. It was your idea, right?’
‘What box of presents?’ asked Sam.
November 1966: John Michael
He’s squatting down near the duck pond when he sees the three distant shadows enter the park. It’s only a couple of hours since Mr Dukakis was asking him to draw the blinds so that everyone could see the blackboard but the light’s fading fast now and it’s hard to make out their faces from this far away. Even so, he suspects he knows who they are . . . two of them, at any rate.
Most days he’d be home by now but this morning his dad handed him a couple of large shopping bags and a list of groceries for him to pick up from Macey’s, which meant the moment school finished he had to set off in the opposite direction from usual. He could have stuck to the roads on the way back but the short cut through the park saves at least ten minutes and when you’re carrying that much shopping and you’ve already got a duffel bag on your back, you pick the shortest route possible, so the park it was.
Stopping near the duck pond wasn’t part of the plan but he needs a break. His arms ache and the handles of the bags are digging into his fingers, especially on his bad hand. He remembers when they took the damaged little finger away along with the tip of the one next to it. The doctor came and saw him after the operation, patted him on the head and said he’d be fine, wouldn’t even notice it was gone. He hadn’t believed it then and he certainly didn’t now. She was right when she told him to be careful with the doctors. She knew they’d be useless. Don’t say a word, Johnny . . . our little secret.
And he hadn’t. Not a word, unless you count his dad, and even then it was only because he wouldn’t let it drop. He didn’t believe it was an accident. Somehow he seemed to know what she’d done so there wasn’t much point in denying it after a while. Even so he wishes he hadn’t told him. All he can remember of the last few days before she went is the two of them arguing about it and it seems unfair somehow. His dad wasn’t even there when it happened. If he wants to blame someone, it shouldn’t be her. She wasn’t the one taking money from someone else’s purse. He had to be taught a lesson – it was for his own good. If he can accept this, he doesn’t understand why his dad can’t. And anyway, it’s fine now. Doesn’t even hurt any more. Unless he has to carry heavy bags.
The figures are still on the path at the top of the mound so he doesn’t think they’ve noticed him yet. He wonders whether it might be better if he stays where he is now, crouched down below their eye level. Any movement might attract their attention, but they’ll be coming up to a fork in the path in a moment and if they turn right they’ll come down nearer to the pond, in which case they’re bound to see him. He’ll look silly, squatting down like that – they’ll know he was trying to avoid them and that’ll be worse for him in the long run. He decides he’ll be better off picking up the bags and walking away from them, even if it does mean adding a lot more on to the journey. With any luck it’ll be a while before they spot him and once he gets to the other side of the pond, there’s the copse with the waste ground beyond it. If he gets that far without being seen, he’ll be fine.
He knows it’s Carol Bingham and Julie. The third person is much taller and he’s not sure who that is but it’s the two girls he’s anxious to avoid. He’s still embarrassed about yesterday and they’ve made it worse by telling everyone at school, which he was desperately hoping they wouldn’t do. So now everyone in his class knows he asked Julie Kasprowicz if she’d like to go to the pictures with him, which means they’ve spent the whole day teasing him about it. It wouldn’t be so bad but he still can’t see what he’s done that’s so wrong. He knows she’s older than he is but there’s no law says third years can’t go out with first years if they like. And he asked properly, just the way she’d brought him up to. A girl likes to be wooed, Johnny. Likes to feel special. He’d told her he’d pay for her ticket, even picked her some flowers on the way to school and asked her if she’d do him the honour and all they did was laugh. He really doesn’t understand.
He picks up the bags and scuttles around the far side of the pond, heading for the copse. He looks back over his shoulder and sees that he’s made the right decision because the three figures have turned right as he thought they would – they’d have been bound to see him if he’d stayed squatting where he was. The bags are hurting him already. His damaged hand is practically begging him to stop again and let it have a rest but he can’t stay here, not out in the open. Maybe once he’s made it to the copse, he can put the bags down for a minute or two.
Then he hears a voice ring out and he knows Carol’s seen him. She’s calling out ‘Romeo’ and yelling at him to stop and he wonders if he’d be better off doing as she says because he doesn’t want to make her angry and give her an excuse to pick on him but the copse is hardly any distance away now and they’re still a long way behind him. Maybe if he can get that far, they won’t bother to chase ’cos they’ll know there are plenty of places he can hide. Surely they’ll have better things to do than waste their time searching for him in there, especially now it’s starting to get dark. It’s enough to make him forget the pain in his hand for a minute as he picks up the pace and heads for the trees.
If he can get to the footpath leading from the wasteland beyond the copse back to the housing estate, he’ll be safe. He has no idea what they’re planning to do but whatever it is he’s fairly sure they won’t try anything there – too many grown-ups around. Only problem is, the pain in his hand is back and he knows he’ll never make it that far without stopping at least once and letting the bags rest on the floor. No way.
He risks a quick glance over his shoulder and although he can hear their shouts and laughter getting closer they’re not in sight just yet. Trusting his instincts, he turns left off the path and wades through waist-high weeds and nettles which clutch at his clothes and sting his unprotected legs. Once he’s through the worst of
it, swinging the bags to help clear the way, he finds a piece of level ground behind a cluster of trees that offers the right sort of protection. Then he squats down again on his haunches, confident no one will be able to see him. He lowers the bags to the ground and waits, concentrating hard to control his breathing.
He knows he’s made the right decision when Carol comes haring past seconds later, closely followed by a much older boy. This must be her boyfriend. He’s never seen him before but he’s heard about him. Everyone at school is talking about the fact that Carol’s going out with a boy who’s seventeen and got a Vespa. They say he’s a Mod, although he’s not sure what that is exactly and doesn’t like to ask in case it makes him look stupid. By pretending he does know, he’s at least managed to work out that when you grow up you have to choose which you’re going to be, a Mod or a Rocker. Stuart Biggs told him that Rockers have to wear leather clothes all the time, even when it’s hot, and that if you want to join their club you have to let all the other members pee all over your jacket and then you have to wear it for a month without washing it. He thinks he’ll be a Mod when he’s older.
They race past him and deeper into the woods and he’s expecting Julie to come past too but there’s no sign of her. He wonders if she’s given up on the idea of chasing him or maybe didn’t want to do it in the first place. It was probably all Carol’s idea, knowing her. He gives it another minute or two, long enough to be sure that she and her boyfriend have reached the housing estate, then decides it’s time to make a move. If they double back of course, he’ll have to hope he sees them first and has somewhere decent to hide but he doesn’t think they will. Surely they’ve got other plans for the evening that don’t include making his life a misery.
Peering cautiously out from behind one of the trees, he decides the coast is clear and starts to battle his way back through the weeds and nettles. It’s only as he reaches the path that a quiet voice says ‘Hello’, almost in his right ear, so close it scares the life out of him. Julie has been sitting there on the path all along, hidden from view by the weeds, and is clambering to her feet. It’s as if she knew where he was and has been waiting for him.