Tell the Truth

by Amanda Brittany

  She gulped down her brandy, finishing it.

  ‘Is everything OK, Angela?’ I ventured.

  Her eyes widened. ‘Of course, sweetie, why?’

  ‘You know you can tell me anything. I’m always dumping my troubles on you.’

  She stared at me for a long moment, and I leaned forward and placed my hand on her arm. ‘I know there’s something. You told me you were an administrator at the hospital, but you were a surgeon, weren’t you? Why would you lie?’

  Her eyes widened further. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter – the point is, it’s obvious something is haunting you. Perhaps sharing it with a friend will help.’

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked ahead of her, seeming lost in another place.

  ‘You can tell me,’ I said.

  She turned to look at me. ‘I’m fine. Maybe you should go, Rachel. I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

  ‘OK, yes, sorry. I didn’t mean to push you,’ I said, rising. ‘But if you need me, I’m right next door.’ I padded across the room towards my shoes.

  ‘It’s the guilt,’ she said, slamming her glass down on the table, and suddenly sobbing into her hands. ‘It’s all-consuming.’

  ‘Oh, Angela.’ I turned and raced to sit by her side. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ I said, rubbing her back.

  ‘Nothing helps, Rachel.’ She grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on the coffee table, and mopped her cheeks.

  ‘Well, I’m here for you,’ I said. ‘Talk to me, please.’

  She grabbed my hand. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK. If you’re sure.’

  It was a few moments before she began again. ‘I guess it all started unravelling when my husband left me for someone else. I can’t blame him. I was never there. I even let him take our son, Adam.’

  My mind drifted to the photograph of the boy I’d seen in her purse.

  ‘He was six at the time, and I put my career first.’ She moved her finger along her lower eyelid to catch a straying tear. I waited for her to go on. ‘As time went by,’ she continued, ‘I knew I’d made a mistake letting my husband take him. I wanted Adam back. But I’d started drinking by then to cope with the pressure of my job, and Adam didn’t want to spend time with me – always wanting to call his dad. Asking how long it would be before he picked him up.’ She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand, and sniffed. ‘In the end, he stopped coming,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought I was losing the plot at the time. It turns out I was.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘And then, just over a year ago, I made an unforgiveable mistake.’ She caught me in a gaze. ‘They couldn’t prove it was my fault, but they all knew I’d been drinking. Staff banded together, told management they could often smell drink on my breath. That they knew I operated when I’d had a drink.’

  ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer and was beginning to wish I hadn’t opened the box marked ‘private. ‘Please say you didn’t operate when you’d had a drink.’

  ‘I can’t, Rachel.’ Her face contorted with grief. ‘I wish to God I could.’

  I let out a gasp. ‘Oh God, how could you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t you think I ask myself that every day? I suppose I thought the occasional snort of gin or brandy wouldn’t hurt. I know now I should have resigned.’

  ‘And the mistake?’ My heart thudded against my ribs. Do I really want to know?

  ‘A little girl – Stacey – a straightforward procedure … but …’

  ‘She died?’ Oh God, please say she didn’t die.

  Angela shook her head, tears shimmering in her eyes. ‘She’s brain-damaged, Rachel. She was only four at the time.’

  I covered my mouth with my hand.

  ‘After that I tried to see the child, desperately needing the family’s forgiveness, but they wouldn’t let me near her – I was an absolute wreck.’ She dabbed her face with the tissues. ‘Then I moved in next to you, and tried hard to move on. I was drinking far less, and loved looking after Grace, having you as a friend; I even tried to meet someone who might love me despite my past. But, even though a nagging voice told me not to, I contacted the child’s family again a couple of months ago. I just wanted to know how Stacey was.’

  I glanced at the slippers Grace had worn – had they been for Stacey?

  I looked back at Angela, who was still drinking. She must have looked after Grace while intoxicated, and I couldn’t help a flood of despair that she would operate on a child with alcohol in her blood. And even now she was making no attempt to stop. It must have shown on my face.

  ‘I knew you would hate me,’ she said.

  I rose. ‘I don’t hate you, Angela. I just …’

  ‘Can’t believe I would do such a thing.’

  ‘Something like that.’ I paused for a moment. I didn’t know the woman in front of me at all. ‘Was the man at your door Stacey’s father?’

  She nodded. ‘He doesn’t want me near his daughter, and who can blame him?’

  A tear rolled down her cheek, as she got up to fill her glass. ‘I’m on tablets; I’m even going to the clinic where you used to work. But at the end of the day, what I did was unforgiveable.’

  ‘And yet here you are still drinking.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. I’ve tried to give up. It’s an addiction, fed by guilt.’

  I so wanted to help her, say she wasn’t at fault, comfort her – but I couldn’t bring myself to. Instead, as she perched on the edge of the sofa, sobbing and dragging her fingers through her hair, I said, ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ and closed the door behind me.

  I raced from her house, my eyes coated with tears. At the end of my path I stopped suddenly, a feeling of being watched washing over me. I turned and scanned the road – the parked cars, the people, the houses – hating that I felt so vulnerable.

  After I’d thrown the gnome in the bin, I spotted another friend request on Facebook. My stomach heaved, and my heart pounded. The picture was recent, taken in the grounds of the care home, and a familiar face smiled from the screen. Mum.

  Laura Hogan: CONFIRM/DELETE REQUEST

  There was, as there always seemed to be, just one status update:

  There was an old woman who swallowed a fly

  I don’t know why she swallowed a fly

  Perhaps she’ll die.

  Chapter 43

  March 2018

  The police officer behind the front desk – a tall chap with frizzy fair hair and a sharp nose – was approachable. He took down my details, and I explained how Inspector Smyth of the Hertfordshire Constabulary suggested I come.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘Someone will be with you shortly, Miss Hogan.’

  I perched on the edge of the chair. Waiting. Practising what I wanted to say in my head, fiddling with my fingers. Taking my phone out of my bag. Turning it over and over in my hands. Putting it back.

  I’ve received strange friend requests on Facebook, and two of those people are dead. In fact, Henry Derby called me before he died.

  I took the journal from my bag, flicked through the pages, barely taking in the words.

  And someone’s been following me – watching me. They ran me off the road when I was in Ireland.

  I shoved the journal back in my bag, catching sight of the plastic bag with the cigarette butt inside that I’d found at Mum’s house. Why had I brought it with me? Why had I picked it up in the first place? Would they be able to find DNA on it to match a criminal?

  There are two Mr Snookums. A gnome. A strange painting. Odd calls.

  And something terrible happened at Evermore Farmhouse.

  I know it did. I know it did.

  It’s all connected. It’s all connected.

  Anxiety consumed me, and a tremble spread through my body. The waiting area seemed to shrink, closing me in. The cop was busy talking on the phone. He smiled my way, his features blurring. Jeez, I’m losing it big
time.

  I looked at the door to the offices. Police officers had come through it since I’d been sitting there, but none looked my way.

  They think I’m wasting their time.

  They think I’m crazy.

  I knew by the up-scaling of my heartbeat, and the way words jumped about my head making no sense at all, that I would come across delusional at best.

  I rose, trying to control my erratic breathing, and pounded my way to the door, stealing a glance over my shoulder just once. The police officer now had his back to me.

  Outside, I took a long deep breath. I needed clarity in the chaos and confusion. Something I could find an answer to.

  I found a bench and sat with my head in my hands for ten minutes, before deciding to call Jude Henshaw. A DNA test would at least resolve that mystery. And if he turns out to be my father, he may support me through this awful time.

  He sounded happy to hear from me, and I wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like if he was my father. I’d never had a paternal figure in my life, and often, especially around the age of eight or nine, I’d imagined him turning up, and my mum falling into his arms, and saying she loved him. And he would say he’d never stopped loving her. He would ruffle my hair, and hug me so close I would almost burst. And then he would bring an Ipswich Town Football Club signed football from behind his broad back, and suggest we go outside and have a kick about – somehow, in my fantasy, he’d known I was a tomboy.

  ‘Love you, kiddo,’ he would say.

  ‘Love you more, Dad.’

  And then he would vanish – never there at all, and, once more, it would be Mum and me against the world.

  ***

  I met Jude at 11 a.m. at King’s Cross Station. He’d booked an appointment, and insisted on paying.

  ‘Dresden Clinic has fitted us in,’ he explained as we forced our way through the London crowds. ‘They’ve said we’ll get the results quite quickly. I don’t know about you,’ he went on with a smile that reached his grey eyes. ‘But I’m positive it will be a match.’

  Why did he want me to be his daughter so much? Guilt? The fact he’d never had children? Loneliness? I smiled back, unsure what to say or how to feel.

  From there our conversation was limited to films we’d both seen, music we liked, and I was relieved when he stopped at the foot of six white steps leading to a Georgian building, with a gold sign on the wall.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said, throwing me a warm smile.

  Inside was elegant and minimalistic, and we sat in a small, brightly lit room. I took out my Kindle, reluctant to talk, but we were called within minutes. It didn’t take long for a woman to take a swab from inside my mouth – a tiny sample that would tell me if Jude Henshaw was my father; a swab that could change our lives.

  Outside again, we stood at the foot of the white steps, and Jude pulled out an e-cigarette and began puffing on it, the aroma of strawberries reaching my nostrils. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ he asked. ‘Something to eat?’

  I shook my head. I was beginning to like him, and the thought of getting to know him better, only to be told he wasn’t my father, wasn’t an option.

  ‘Let’s wait for the results first, shall we?’ I said, turning to walk away.

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ His voice was low and sad, but I kept walking, heading towards the tube.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ I said, but I didn’t look back.

  Could he be my father? I was annoyed that my pulse fluttered at the thought, as though I was the child I once was. But I knew it would be a mistake to let him in too soon.

  The train thundered along the Northern Line, the carriage crowded with nameless people. My head felt heavy and woozy, but I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to wander around London – a stranger in a city full of strangers. I needed to lose myself.

  Lawrence had called the night before, saying he would keep Grace for another day, adding I sounded weepy and fragile. He was right, of course, but I had so wanted her back, to hold her in my arms and never let go. I missed her so much. But he’d convinced me it was better that way. ‘Just until you get your act together, Rach,’ he’d added.

  As I left the underground at Angel, I pulled out my phone and called Zoe, hoping she might meet me for lunch, but it went straight to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. Instead I made my way along Upper Street, where she’d told me her salon was. I wanted to surprise her, and felt sure she wouldn’t mind if I popped in unannounced. I trudged the length of the busy street, but when I reached the number she’d given me a while back, it was a café.

  I spun on the spot, as though I expected the salon to be there once I’d turned full circle on the pavement. Maybe I’d jotted it down wrong. Feeling bewildered, I ventured into the caféand grabbed a coffee, before heading for a table in the corner. I tried Zoe’s number once more. Again, it went to voicemail.

  ‘Hey, it’s me,’ I said. ‘I’m in Café Nero. I may be being a bit of a doughnut, but I can’t find your salon. You did say 75 Upper Street, didn’t you? Anyway, if you’re free for lunch, I’m your gal. Call me!’ I ended the call, and sipped my drink, lost in thought as sirens wailed and shoppers scurried by. Yes, London was the perfect place to get lost.

  Later, as I made my way back along Upper Street towards the underground, I remembered Marcus McCutcheon telling me his daughter had a shop in Islington. I stopped and scanned the row of shops opposite, but I couldn’t see anywhere called ‘Yolanda’s Heaven’. I carried on walking, keeping alert in case I saw it.

  It was a few minutes later I spotted it on the other side of the road. ‘Yes!’ I muttered, as though I’d found lost treasure. I pressed the button on the first set of traffic lights I came to, curious to meet Yolanda McCutcheon.

  Chapter 44

  March 2018

  I peered through the shop window, and over the display of 1940s hats and bags, and a mannequin in a black and white Sixties-style dress, to see two women chatting at the counter. One was around twenty, the other, closer to forty, had honey-blonde hair held back from her face with a floral slide. They were wearing flared at the waist polka-dot dresses, under pale pink cardigans.

  I opened the door and entered to find the air musty but perfumed – ageing furniture blended with potpourri making my nostrils twitch. I pushed my way through rails of vintage clothes and racks of shoes, and the women looked up and smiled as I reached the counter.

  I opened my mouth to speak. Would Yolanda remember me? My mum? The children at Evermore Farmhouse?

  ‘Is everything all right?’ the younger woman said, and I realised I’d frozen up.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I’m looking for Yolanda.’

  ‘Well, you’ve found her,’ the older woman said, her underlying Irish accent drowned by upper-class English. ‘How can I help?’

  A customer approached, asking about an oval mirror on the wall, and the younger woman moved away to help.

  ‘My name is Rachel Hogan,’ I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. There was no doubting she recognised the name. ‘I remember you,’ she said, and her mouth twitched with … what was that? Amusement?

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Not well, but you were a strange little thing when you were a kid.’

  I’m not going to lie, she completely threw me. I felt my cheeks glow. Was I slightly offended? ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I remember you completely wrecking one of your mum’s paintings. Blobbed black paint all over her hard work.’

  I recalled my mother saying the same thing when I’d visited, but I’d dashed her words away, blaming her confusion.

  ‘Well, I’m quite normal now,’ I said, straightening my back, as though standing upright would convince her.

  She smiled. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  I began fiddling with some marbles on the counter in a net bag, trying to gather my thoughts. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, an urge to apologise on my grandparents’ behalf taking over, ‘about your mother.’
/>   She lowered her head. ‘Thank you, but you were hardly responsible. I shouldn’t think you were even born when it happened.’ A tendril of hair escaped her clip, and she tucked it behind her ear.

  ‘No, no, I wasn’t. But it was my grandparents’ fault.’

  ‘Agreed. But I came to terms with my mother’s death a long time ago. Yes, I still have moments when I wonder what life would have been like with her by my side, and what she would think of me now.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ I said, somehow tearing a hole in the net bag. The marbles tumbled out, rolling in different directions, some clattering to the floor. I fell to my knees and scrambled to catch them. She didn’t help.

  ‘I taught myself when I was a teenager how to accept death,’ she said, looking down at me. ‘My mother wouldn’t have wanted me to lose my life too, pining over her loss. I know that because everyone tells me she was an unselfish woman.’

  I rose, fists clutching the marbles.

  ‘My one regret is I can’t remember her.’

  She seemed so rational, positive, and I hoped I would come to terms with my mother’s death as she had.

  ‘I met your father a few weeks ago,’ I said, putting the marbles down on the counter.

  ‘Ah, now he’s a different story, I’m afraid.’ She shook her head, another strand of hair falling loose. ‘He’s never got over her death. Always struggled with the fact there was nobody alive to atone for her death.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I worry about him, but with him in Ireland, and me here, I rarely get to see him. How did he seem?’

  I thought of the invasion of gnomes. ‘OK, I think,’ I said. ‘He was heading out to lunch with a friend.’ There was a child’s giggle from out the back of the shop, and Yolanda glanced over her shoulder. ‘He’s watching Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed. Always makes him laugh.’

  ‘Your son?’

  She nodded. ‘His grandfather is missing out on his young years. I just wish he would see that life goes on – not the one you’d necessarily planned, but life all the same.’ She looked towards an approaching customer cradling a pair of pastel-blue shoes with dainty heels.