Ralph’s Children

by Hilary Norman

  ‘I still can’t quite imagine Delia and I ever being friends,’ she had told Michael a couple of weeks ago, ‘but she does seem to make you happy, so I’m going to promise to try and do better around her.’

  ‘That’s all I can ask for,’ her father had said.

  It was hard, though, for Kate to forget that Delia had been sufficiently sceptical of her account of events to suggest that she see a therapist.

  ‘I’m not saying I mightn’t need some therapy,’ Kate had said after that to Rob, ‘and maybe I’ll think about it when I’m good and ready. But I don’t think Delia likes the fact that I’m still occupying centre stage in Dad’s life.’

  ‘He’s not really spending much more time with you than before,’ Rob said.

  ‘But I think perhaps I spend more time in his mind,’ Kate had told him. ‘Delia knows she probably can’t do much about that, but I don’t think she’d mind shrinking my credibility a bit more.’

  ‘I’d better not hint at paranoia then,’ Rob said.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Kate had said. ‘Maybe I do need therapy.’

  But Rob had just smiled and kissed her, and she’d left it.

  She found it harder to leave things alone where Sandi West was concerned.

  ‘She’s still so shocked by what happened,’ Bel told Kate in mid-January.

  ‘I wish,’ Kate said, ‘you wouldn’t talk to Sandi about me.’

  ‘And I wish you’d understand that even if she can be tactless, she’s not your enemy,’ Bel replied. ‘You know what a very good friend she’s been to me.’

  ‘And you to her,’ said Kate.

  ‘I still have trouble understanding what’s wrong with that,’ Bel said reasonably.

  So reasonably, in fact, that Kate began to feel that perhaps her mother’s friendship with Sandi was another area she should try reassessing while putting her character in order.

  ‘Very admirable,’ Rob said to her later, when she told him.

  ‘Why so wry?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Because however much you may try, for Bel’s sake, I can’t imagine you’re ever going to change your mind about someone you dislike as much as Sandi.’

  ‘But you’ve said in the past that I ought to make more effort,’ Kate said. ‘Are you saying you were wrong?’

  ‘I think what I’m saying,’ Rob said, ‘is that, for the most part, I’ve learned to trust your instincts.’

  That warmed her in a way that few compliments ever had.

  And then the phone rang, and it was Martin Blake, telling her that DCI Helen Newton had requested that she come back to Oxford.

  A real turning point, at last.

  Blake was already at the SOMIT offices, waiting for her.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he told her quietly. ‘It seems they’ve made a little progress, and they’re doing us the courtesy of keeping us informed.’

  They were shown, moments later, into one of the interview rooms.

  Getting too familiar, Kate thought, looking around.

  DCI Newton and DS Poulter both present.

  Usual suspects, Kate thought.

  ‘We’re telling you this in confidence,’ Helen Newton said.

  ‘Of course,’ Blake said.

  ‘We identified Simon,’ the DCI said, ‘ten days ago.’

  Kate’s pulse rate increased.

  ‘Her real name was Carol Marsh.’ Newton looked directly at Kate. ‘She was a teacher’s aide at an Oxford primary school.’

  ‘Twenty-four years old,’ added Poulter.

  ‘Bit of a loner, so far as we can make out.’ Helen Newton referred to notes. ‘No partner or notable social life, according to the neighbours. Marsh’s teenage mother battered herself to try to get rid of her, then committed suicide after Carol was born. Father unknown, so the little girl was raised in a children’s home.’ The DCI looked up. ‘The home’s records state that she was prone to bouts of depression.’

  ‘Poor little cow,’ Ben Poulter said.

  Which might, Kate thought, have described the mother or Carol Marsh.

  Simon.

  The image of her hanging from the hook in Caisleán flew into her mind, and she pushed it away.

  ‘Did she, by chance,’ Blake asked, ‘work at the same school as Alan Mitcham?’

  ‘Summertown Primary,’ Newton answered. ‘Yes, she did.’

  Which was the reason, presumably, for Simon not having been part of the attack on Mitcham; he might have recognized her as a colleague.

  Relief hit Kate first, for several sweet seconds, then renewed anger.

  ‘So now you believe me,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t recall telling you that we didn’t believe you, Mrs Turner,’ Newton said.

  ‘But you’ve known all this for ten days.’

  ‘Not all of it,’ Newton said.

  Frustrated, Kate glanced sideways at Martin Blake, who gave a gentle shrug.

  ‘Before I share one more thing with you,’ the DCI went on, ‘I must impress on you both again that this information is strictly confidential.’

  ‘You already told us that,’ Kate said, still crisply, though her anger was fading.

  ‘We appreciate everything you feel you can share with us,’ said Blake.

  Kate flashed him another look, which he returned with a smile.

  ‘I rather think,’ Helen Newton said, ‘that you will appreciate this.’

  She nodded at the detective sergeant.

  ‘Marsh’s flat in Cowley wasn’t much to write home about,’ Poulter took over. ‘Sparsely furnished and a bit sad, really.’ He paused. ‘Being in the teaching game, though, there were quite a lot of books, as you’d expect.’

  Kate felt skin creep at the base of her spine.

  ‘What you might not expect, however –’ Newton’s eyes were fixed on Kate’s face – ‘was that there were five editions of one novel.’

  ‘Lord of the Flies?’ Martin Blake asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Newton confirmed.

  Kate remained silent for a long moment, then said: ‘You start to wonder, after a while, if perhaps you imagined it all.’ She paused. ‘If maybe you are a little mad.’

  Helen Newton smiled at her.

  ‘Not even a little, Mrs Turner,’ she said.

  * * *

  Surprise of a different kind two days later.

  ‘Sandi and I have fallen out,’ Bel told Kate on the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Bel said. ‘Of course you’re not sorry.’

  ‘She’s your friend. You’ve been very close.’ Kate felt her cheeks warm with guilt. ‘So, yes, I think I really am sorry.’

  Her mother made a wry sound.

  ‘What happened?’ Kate asked. ‘If you don’t mind telling me.’

  ‘Sandi said one spiteful thing too many about you,’ Bel said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s not complicated,’ her mother said. ‘And I think it’s better this way. Which has nothing whatever to do with the fact that you disliked Sandi so much.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Kate said.

  It was still troubling her later when Rob came home from school.

  ‘God knows Mum’s hardly overrun by friends,’ she told him. ‘I feel guilty.’

  ‘I can’t see why you should,’ he said. ‘Bel broke up with Sandi for a perfectly good reason.’

  ‘Me,’ said Kate.

  ‘Her choice, though. Nothing you said.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You’ve never been able to stand Sandi. If Bel had taken any notice of that, she’d have ditched the friendship long ago.’

  ‘You said “broke up” before,’ Kate said. ‘Makes them sound like lovers.’

  Which thought made her feel even sadder for Bel.

  ‘Is your mother all right?’ her father asked Kate the following week.

  ‘A bit low, I think,’ she said. ‘About Sandi.’

  They’d already talk
ed once about that issue.

  ‘I hope she’s OK,’ Michael said. ‘She seems – I don’t know – a bit distant.’

  ‘You’re divorced, Dad,’ Kate said. ‘You’re meant to be distant.’

  ‘I still worry about her,’ Michael said.

  ‘Me too,’ Kate said.

  ‘I don’t think she’s been drinking,’ Michael said. ‘Would you say?’

  ‘I’d say not,’ Kate consoled him. ‘But I’ll keep an eye on her, if that’s what you’re asking me to do.’

  ‘I suppose I am.’ He paused. ‘Any further developments in the case?’

  ‘If there have been,’ Kate said, ‘no one’s telling me.’

  ‘It’ll come,’ Michael said.

  There were times when Kate found herself wishing that it would never come, that the police would never find the rest of the gang, so that maybe eventually the memories would just fade and she might be able to move forward, be fully herself again.

  Rob and her father, she knew, would never be happy until the killers had been locked up for the duration.

  ‘Whoever the fuck they are,’ Michael had said, quite violently, one day.

  To Kate, of course, they were and would remain two men and a woman – faceless, but distinctive – named Jack, Roger and Pig.

  Easier not knowing their identities.

  ‘I don’t think I want them humanized,’ Kate said to Rob.

  ‘Like Carol Marsh,’ he said, understanding.

  ‘Before I knew about her,’ Kate said, ‘she was just Simon, dead terrorist.’

  ‘Easier to hate,’ Rob said.

  ‘Maybe even to forget,’ she said. ‘One day.’

  ‘Are you still having nightmares?’ Bel asked her on the first Tuesday of February over a little late lunch at Caffè Nero in Henley.

  They had been doing more mother-and-daughter things since it happened – and even more since Sandi had moved out of Bel’s life – which meant that there were two things, Kate supposed, that had come out of the horror for which she could be grateful: her ever-improving relationships with both Rob and her mother.

  ‘Not every night,’ she answered now.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Bel said, ‘if you’d consider . . .’

  Kate looked at her, had thought since they’d sat down that her mother had something on her mind, decided now that she was not going to like whatever was coming next.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘My self-help group,’ Bel said. ‘There’s a meeting this Thursday. I haven’t been for a while, and I know that ordinarily it’s not your kind of thing . . .’

  ‘No, Mum,’ Kate said quickly. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I think you’d be surprised,’ Bel said, ‘by what a mixed bunch they are.’

  Kate thought of Sandi, then of her mother at her worst, and cringed at the very idea of a roomful of kindred spirits.

  ‘It sounds,’ she said, ‘like hell.’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask –’ clearly Bel had prepared for this conversation and for her refusal – ‘if I didn’t feel I so badly need to go.’

  ‘So why haven’t you gone?’ Kate paused. ‘Is it because of Sandi?’

  ‘She’s not going any more,’ Bel said, ‘so it’s nothing to do with her. But I do seem to be just a bit nervous of going back on my own.’

  ‘I can’t believe you agreed,’ Rob said. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea for you?’

  ‘I’m not going for me,’ Kate said. ‘Strictly to give Mum moral support.’

  Rob looked dubious.

  ‘And I did promise Dad I was going to keep an eye out for her.’

  ‘And you think there’s no hidden agenda?’ Rob asked.

  ‘So long as Sandi isn’t there,’ Kate said, ‘I can’t imagine one.’

  ‘I’m just picturing you in a room full of well-meaning therapy pushers.’ Rob shook his head. ‘I hope Bel doesn’t think they could be what you need.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said. ‘Though I was thinking I might possibly get a column out of it.’

  ‘Would that be OK with Bel?’

  Simon’s taunt about cruelty to mothers flashed suddenly back at Kate.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She realized how tired she felt.

  ‘You OK?’ Rob was gentle.

  ‘Not really.’

  He was silent for a moment, and then he said: ‘You don’t need to change yourself, you know. You’re fine just the way you are, the way you’ve always been.’

  ‘So fine you couldn’t bear living with me any more,’ Kate said softly.

  ‘That was the pair of us,’ Rob said, ‘both being fools.’

  Kate sighed. ‘I don’t think doing this one small thing for my mother’s going to constitute a major character reform.’

  ‘And it might even be therapeutic, I suppose,’ Rob pondered. ‘So long as you don’t take them too seriously.’

  ‘Feel like joining us?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Poking needles into eyes comes to mind,’ he said.

  Ralph

  Ralph could hardly recall a time when she had still thought of Simon by her real name.

  Like the other three, Carol Marsh had been of no particular significance to her in her official capacity at Challow Hall. They had been just four more luckless kids with little hope for their futures. She’d encountered them periodically, a part of the mass, had known them better on paper than in reality.

  Until the evening at the Smithy, when she had become entranced by them.

  After that, Carol Marsh had ceased almost entirely to exist for Ralph.

  Simon until the day she died.

  She wondered how long the police had known Simon’s identity before releasing her name. How much time they had spent digging around in Carol’s life, presumably hoping to dislodge the others?

  Jack had been the first to phone her after the name had hit the news.

  Ralph had known she should rebuke him for breaking their no-contact rule, should forbid him from doing it again for all their sakes, but she had been so overwhelmingly glad to hear his voice that she’d said it more mildly than was wise.

  ‘We mustn’t do this, Jack.’

  ‘I reckon we’ll know,’ he had said, ‘if they find out about any of us.’

  ‘They may be cleverer than that,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Not all that bright,’ Jack said, ‘in my experience.’

  ‘That’s your experience,’ Ralph had said, ‘as a burglar.’

  She had not used the word ‘killer’, nor had either of them mentioned the game or any of the other’s names. Just in case someone was listening – Pig’s talents had made them too alert to the possibilities of phone tapping.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ Ralph had asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘I thought you said we’re not to get in touch,’ Jack said.

  ‘And I meant it,’ Ralph said. ‘But I know you.’

  ‘I did take a drive just the other day, over to Swindon, saw him coming out of his place,’ Jack admitted. ‘He didn’t see me, but he looked pretty bad, I thought. Can’t say I was surprised.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll stay away from the funeral?’

  It had been on her mind constantly, a gnawing worry.

  ‘I bloody well hope so,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t think he’s that much of an idiot.’

  Ralph had said she hoped not, too, and then she’d told Jack how good it had been to hear his voice, but that he mustn’t do it again.

  ‘Only in a real emergency,’ she had said.

  Giving them both the get-out they had wanted.

  * * *

  She had known all along that none of them would be able to stop completely.

  Not just because they were addicted, both to the group and the game. Not even just because they all loved each other.

  It was what they had all known, deep down, since Simon had died.

  That this game simply was not yet over.

  Kate

  ‘I’m only coming this onc
e,’ Kate reminded her mother on the phone at lunchtime on Thursday, ‘to support you, right?’

  ‘I know,’ Bel said, ‘and I’m properly grateful.’

  ‘Just so long as they know I’m not going to talk about myself.’

  ‘I’ve told the organizer,’ Bel said, ‘but why don’t you see how you feel about it when you’re there?’

  Kate knew there and then that she should have backed out.

  The meeting was in a sitting room in a Victorian terraced house in East Reading, the room filled with a variety of unmatched chairs and stools, and an equally motley group of about twenty men and women, most of them helping themselves to polystyrene cups of strong tea from an old, sturdy urn and custard creams from two large paper plates before sitting down and beginning, one at a time, to unburden themselves.

  All perfectly tolerable, Kate found, to her surprise, and actually more interesting than depressing because it was plain, from the start, that these people were relieved to be there, that perhaps this might be their first chance to unload since the last meeting.

  Until twenty minutes into the meeting, when the door opened.

  ‘Apologies,’ Sandi West said, entering the room.

  Kate shot an accusing look at Bel, saw that her mother’s cheeks were flushed.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Bel whispered. ‘Do you want to leave?’

  Kate shook her head, irritated, but unwilling to give Sandi that satisfaction.

  Her mother’s former friend was leaning more heavily on her walking stick than Kate recalled from past encounters, looking decidedly weary, her pale face quite haggard and her eyes reacting to Bel’s discomfort with unmistakable sadness.

  Kate felt a pang of pity, then a twinge or two of shame.

  All of which disappeared when, within moments of having wedged herself on to an already fully laden sofa, Sandi got back to her feet with a groan – definitely over-egging, Kate decided – and addressed a question to her.

  ‘Are you starting to recover, do you feel, Kate,’ Sandi asked, ‘after your terrible experience?’

  Kate felt her face grow warm, but maintained her composure.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sandi,’ she said. ‘Though I really don’t want to speak about it.’