Dead Secret

by Deveney Catherine

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Things seem different in the morning. Less threatening. They always do when the darkness is replaced with light, and as the morning sunshine streams through my bedroom windows, the strange uneasiness I felt receiving those texts in the night fades slightly. Da always accused me of being a bit foolhardy and I prove him right by suppressing any instinctive sense of danger. Lochglas is a small place and I am an outsider asking questions about a dark spot in its history. My phone calls… my questions in the Spar… it’s probably all public knowledge by now. I’ve left my number in lots of places already. It intrigues me that all these years after my mother was murdered, someone still cares enough to text abuse to me, but there was no specific threat in the texts, just an instruction to go home and leave things alone. Small places don’t like outsiders. Incomers. In a couple of days I will be gone and it is unlikely I will ever be back.

  I am tired, though, and a bit hungover, and barely hear the landlady as she chats at breakfast. She suggests a nice walk along the river, a visit to what she calls the Islands. I am only half taking in what she says. Tourists like it along there, she says. I nod politely, ask a question or two, but I know I won’t be walking there this morning. I will be driving to Lochglas, to the house two doors down from the Post Office.

  Outside the house, I sit in the car for a few minutes, trying to compose myself. The experience with Terry Simons has unnerved me. I am scared of this woman too. Scared that she, too, could destroy the last vestiges of my faith in Da. You think you want to know things until you get to know them. If I hadn’t come on this journey, if I hadn’t wanted to know, I’d have a very different picture of Da and Mother right now. But I know too much now not to try to find out the rest. I can’t un-know.

  My aunt’s house is a small whitewashed cottage with a grey slate roof and a bright green painted door with a glass panel. I can see a shape moving towards me through the glass when I ring the bell. The pressure builds in my chest as the shape looms closer. A woman in her mid fifties answers. Short, cropped dark hair. Beige trousers, lemon shirt. Small pearl earrings. She doesn’t look anything like the pictures of mother, but then I don’t know how mother would have looked in her mid fifties.

  “Kirstin?” I say.

  I, on the other hand, look so like the pictures of my mother that I think she might guess right away, but she looks at me without recognition. Funny how some people see resemblances straight off and other just don’t get it.

  “Hello,” she says, looking enquiringly at me.

  My heat beats loudly, steadily. “Look, I’m really sorry to call on you unannounced,” I begin in a rush, “and I hope you don’t mind me disturbing you, but my name is Rebecca Connaghan. I think we might be related…?” If I was disappointed in her initial reaction, she makes up for it now. She blanches and gives a little gasp, an awkward, inward inhalation, and says, “oh” at the same time, so the word comes out strangled and muffled. Her hand grasps for the door.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve startled you.”

  “No, you’re all right,” she says, but she is shaken. “Come in.”

  She leads me into a quiet sitting room overlooking the road. Passers-by walk inches from her window and she has Venetian blinds fitted, the light coming in waves through the slats. The room has a neat, old-fashioned feel with lace antimacassars on the arms and the backs of chairs, and a vase of pink chrysanthemums sitting on the table near the window.

  “Take a seat,” she motions and we sit down in awkward silence.

  Kirstin seems genuinely sad when I tell her about Da. She is a thin, precise woman, rather anxious. Her skin is pale, almost bloodless, except for a few tiny broken veins in her cheeks, fine as red thread.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Why,” I ask, “did the two of you not keep in touch?”

  She says nothing for a minute.

  “How much do you know?” she asks finally.

  I tell her about the house and the library cuttings and she listens intently.

  “You know about Cory then?”

  “Yeah. I know about Cory.”

  She hesitates.

  “Do you want tea? Coffee?”

  “No, I’m fine thanks.”

  I wait for her to speak but she doesn’t. I suppose it is hard for her. I have, after all, literally turned up on her doorstep. Apart from Peggy and Charlie, she is the only relative I have ever met and my eyes are fixed on her face with a sense of curiosity. Trying to see Mother. Trying to see me, maybe. Her skin is so pale. She’s dyeing her hair the wrong colour, I think, the thought popping into my head from nowhere. Her hair is too dark. She should be honey, not black. Funny how, even in the face of the serious, the banal never quite backs off.

  “Was there some kind of… I don’t know… feud between Da and you?” I ask eventually.

  She shakes her head. “When it happened, when Kath disappeared, your father and I supported each other at first. But I didn’t know about Cory. Joe never told me; Kath never told me. And when that came out…” Her voice trailed away.

  “What?”

  She looks uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if Joe had lost control with Kath or not.”

  “You mean murdered her.”

  “You have to understand what that time was like,” she says, a little defensively. “It was the most awful, awful time of our lives. The day she disappeared I got a call from Doreen, the lassie that ran the play group. Kath hadn’t turned up to pick you up. I had Sarah and I was worried right away. Kath was always running, always late, but not by an hour. Not when she was picking you up. And the hour turned to two and the two to three and then to a day… two days… a week. We were all just trying to hold it together. We weren’t sleeping. We weren’t eating. If her body had been found we might have been able to come to terms with it, but while she was missing it was just like living in limbo. We couldn’t function. Well, I couldn’t.”

  Kirstin reaches into a handbag, takes out a packet of cigarettes, offers me one. I shake my head.

  “Every time the phone rang, I jumped. I kept thinking it was Kath. And every time I cried because it wasn’t. I was crying myself to sleep at night and crying when I woke up. My husband Donald was having to force me out of bed in the morning. I’d stand in the shower and howl and he’d have to come back and turn off the water to make me get out.”

  “And Da…?”

  “Joe was on the brink of breakdown. It was only having to look after you and Sarah that kept him sane. His sister came up from Glasgow to help him…”

  “Peggy?”

  “Yes, Peggy.” Kirstin flicks a lighter and the flame shoots up. Her hand shakes slightly as she lights the cigarette. “But he kept in close contact with me. And as the days turned into weeks and Kath was still missing, he knew some people were beginning to suspect him.” She hesitates, throwing the lighter onto a small table beside her chair. “All the talk gets to you. After a while, even I began to suspect him. Joe loved her; he loved her so much. We all knew that.”

  I think she was saying love was more powerful than hate. That it made you do more destructive things. She takes a tissue out of the box beside her and blows her nose.

  “There was an article in the paper one day and the headline was, ‘The Husband or the Lover?’”

  “I saw it in the library.”

  She nods. “Joe came round that morning with the paper. Peggy had taken you to play group but he had Sarah with him, asleep in a carry cot. He was upset and shaking. Really, really agitated. He threw the paper down on my kitchen table and said what were people going to think? I knew he needed some support but I just couldn’t give it to him. All I could think when I looked at him was, did you do it? Did you kill my sister?”

  She takes a drag of her cigarette and neither of us speaks for a minute, our own thoughts floating out into the silence with Kirstin’s cigarette smoke. Out in the st
reet, there is movement. Through the Venetian blinds I can see a couple. I watch them pass by the low sitting-room window; no heads, just two waists, two pairs of jeans-clad legs, two sets of sturdy shoes.

  “Did Da know what you were thinking?” I ask.

  She nods. “After a minute or two ranting, he suddenly realised I wasn’t saying anything. I’ll never forget the look he gave me… A kind of… angry… a cold, cold look. And then he said, so quietly it frightened me, ‘Some people think I murdered Kath, Kirstin. What do you think?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I said absolutely nothing. Joe stared at me and then he just shook his head and said, ‘I see.’ I remember he put his hands on the table and bowed his head, as if thinking what to do next. I began to panic then. It was silly. But I just… I began to think… you know… what if he had killed Kath.”

  She is talking almost as if she can still taste that moment in her mouth. I wasn’t even there but all I can taste is Da’s betrayal.

  “Donald wasn’t in. I was on my own and I really began to sweat. I’d known Joe for years but suddenly I felt as if I was locked in my kitchen with a stranger. What if he turned on me? What if he thought he had to get rid of me too? I was terrified and when he looked up I think he could see the fear. He knew what I was thinking. I said to him, ‘Maybe you’d better just go now, Joe.’ He didn’t answer for a minute and then he said, ‘Yeah, maybe I better had.’ And he picked up Sarah and walked out without another word. When I heard the front door click shut I ran out and turned the lock after him.”

  She takes another puff of the cigarette, stubs out the rest in an ashtray though it is only half smoked. There is pity in her eyes when she looks at me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says gently. “This is your dad I am talking about.”

  “What happened when you next saw him?” I ask quietly. I feel hurt for Da listening to this. There is a tightness, a soreness in my chest. But how can I blame her for wondering what I’d wondered myself?

  “I didn’t,” she says, and for a second I don’t understand. “I never saw him again,” she explains. “He took you and Sarah and he left late that night and he never came back. He packed some cases and simply left the house as it was. When I realised he was gone, I went to the police. I thought it proved he did it and certainly that was the story Cory was putting about. But the police said he’d left a forwarding address with them, that they knew where he was.”

  “But everyone thought it was Da, that he’d run away?”

  “For a while. I let it be known that the police knew where Joe was, that he hadn’t simply run off.” She looks at me. “I didn’t hate him,” she says and her eyes appeal for understanding. “But I knew both those men. Joe Connaghan, James Cory. I knew both and I would have said neither of them was capable of murder. You know? And that shakes your judgement. Either way, you got it wrong. In the end you just don’t know what to think, who to trust.”

  She picks up another cigarette, lights it. “I still think about her, still miss her. You never get over it.” Her voice breaks completely for the first time. She reaches for another tissue. “Sure you don’t want tea?”

  I hesitate. She needs something to focus on.

  “Just if you’re having one.”

  She nods.

  “Come on through.”

  “What was my mother like?” I ask as she leads me through to the kitchen.

  Kirstin fills the kettle without taking off the lid, the water gushing in and spraying off the spout, spattering small water marks onto her pale lemon short-sleeved shirt.

  “She was flighty and funny and capable of great kindness. But she was also selfish and immature and…” She flicks the switch on the kettle and sits down at the table. “And she was just my sister,” she says, as if nothing else need be said. “I started out my life with a big sister and then suddenly I just didn’t have one any more. When my parents died there was no one to share that with, to grieve with. For large parts of my life since she died, I have felt very alone. Of course there’s Donald, and my daughter Jen but… it’s hard to explain. It’s just a loneliness.”

  “You were close then?”

  “That’s the strange thing. Not really. Not close the way she was to some of her friends. She didn’t tell me about what was going on in her life, about Cory, but there was a tie there that couldn’t be broken. We grew up together. In those days we fought and we argued and we fell out, but we also laughed and told each other secrets and backed one another up when Mum and Dad were trying to keep too tight a rein on us.”

  “Blood ties,” I say.

  “Yes, I suppose so. We were different characters. But we always knew we were sisters if we needed someone.” Kirstin gets up from the table and takes two mugs from the cupboard.

  “Is Sarah up here with you?”

  “She doesn’t know I am here.”

  “Are the two of you close?”

  “Yes and no,” I say noncommittally. “Like you and Mum, probably.”

  “Nothing round here was big enough for Kath whereas I… I was quite content, you know? Kath was the one who got caught smoking and sneaking out when she was meant to be doing homework. She was the one who went off with people she wasn’t meant to be with, to places she wasn’t meant to be going to. Boring Bertha she called me.” Her laugh turns into a hard, chesty cough. She hands me a mug.

  “Is that why she went for Cory?”

  Kirstin nods. “Probably.”

  “But didn’t she realise that she was just a fling to him, that he wasn’t the kind of man who was going to always be around?”

  “But Kath wasn’t the kind of woman who was always going to be around either. Anyway, she made that fatal mistake women always make. She thought she was different. She thought she could change him.” She takes a sip from her mug.

  “You don’t know Cory, but he was a big man round these parts. He was successful. He had money and position and power. Whereas Joe…” She smiles. “Don’t get me wrong. Joe was a good-looking man when he was young. Kath wouldn’t have fallen for him otherwise. She thought he was older and sophisticated and a catch. But he wasn’t… he wasn’t… a wordly man. No, not a worldly man,” she repeats thoughtfully. “And as Kath got older he didn’t seem sophisticated any more. Just… Just safe and dull…” She breaks off and looked at me with a pang. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about your dad like this.”

  I shake my head. “I’d rather know. Look, I have to ask you this. Do most people round here still think he did it?”

  “Some said your father; some said Cory. Everyone had a theory. Nobody could prove any of them. Not even the police. But it’s a long time ago… people forget. There are so many young ones and incomers in the village who don’t know anything about what happened here.”

  I hear a key in the lock of the front door.

  “That’ll be Donald,” she says, and she moves swiftly out into the hall. I hear their voices murmuring. Donald comes into the kitchen, his jeans and workman’s boots covered in dry mud and dust.

  “This is Rebecca,” says Kirstin.

  I stand up. He looks curiously at me, nods.

  “I’ll not shake hands,” he says, holding up blackened, work-soiled hands. He looks at Kirstin. “I’ll just go and have a bath and change.” I hear his heavy footsteps disappearing upstairs.

  I look out of her kitchen window at the sweep of the hill and the bay of the loch nestling below. Lochglas. The grey loch. It is so utterly tranquil. How could such ugliness have germinated here, grown and taken shape in the face of this beauty?

  “Where do you think her body is?” I ask Kirstin suddenly, and she looks taken aback.

  “You’ve heard the story about the car park?”

  I nod.

  “I suppose it’s possible. But I’ve always wondered if Kath’s buried out in the loch.”

  What she really means is, she always wondered if Da did it. If Cory did it, she was in the car park. If Da di
d it, she was in the loch. The grey loch.

  “I hate the thought of it,” she continues, “because Kath was frightened of water. She couldn’t swim and I can’t bear it, the thought of her lying there, trapped in seaweed, bloated and puffy with the water. I’ve never told anyone this but… but every morning for the last twenty years I have looked out on the loch…” Her voice begins to waver uncontrollably and I want to reach out to her, but I don’t feel I know her well enough to touch her. “And I’ve said, ‘Morning Kath.’ Just in case she’s there, like, you know? Morning Kath. It makes me feel better.”

  She sips from her mug, trying to regain control.

  “What about now, Kirstin? Right now, who do you think did it?” It is almost an appeal.

  “Me?” She exhales deeply, blowing her cheeks out and avoiding my eye, looking into the depths of her mug.

  “I don’t know,” she says slowly. “That’s as honest as I can be.”

  “I’m sorry that it’s going to end like this,” I say. “I’m sorry we can’t know one another. But I can’t ever tell Sarah… I just can’t tell her.”

  Kirstin nods.

  “I understand. I know that sometimes you have to cut people out of your life.” She reaches out suddenly for my hand, following her instinct in the way I didn’t, a surprise gesture that both touches and embarrasses me. “I’m sorry I had to do that to Joe… to your dad. I liked Joe when Kath first got together with him. And I know what she was like. Kath was difficult. There was no doubt about that. But there was nothing she did that could have deserved… nothing. And I’m not saying Joe did it. I’m just saying that I couldn’t bear to see him and wonder. For as long as I had even the tiniest doubt, I couldn’t look at him. And he knew that. I know that’s wrong if he was innocent. But I couldn’t… I’m sorry if I hurt him. I’m not saying it was fair. But it wasn’t fair what happened to Kath. And she was my sister… You understand? She was my sister.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sisters. Sister Sarah. Blood is thicker than water. But as it turned out, our blood was diluted, and where did that leave us, Sarah and me? Half-sisters. Nearly sisters. Has that been the root of the distance that has grown between us over the years? Somewhere deep inside us, have we always known?