Herring Girl

by Debbie Taylor

  Come to think of it, that would make sense all round. Get him out of the way before the film comes out. Let Nessa deal with all the Annie crap for a change. Then if the worst comes to the worst, and the bairn really can’t settle in his boy’s body, then at least she’d be able to help him with his clothes and make-up and that. Be a role model.

  ‘Ha!’ Paul laughs aloud briefly. Let her bloke put that in his pipe and smoke it!

  Later, slipping into the bed beside the lad and easing the extra pillows out from under his head, Paul pauses a moment and looks down at him. His mouth’s open and he’s snoring a bit, and his breath smells of onion from that extra topping; and his cheeks are pink and creased, from being bundled up in all them pillows, and there’s sweat on his upper lip. He could be six, worn out from footie practice, back when Paul used to dunk him in the Jacuzzi, then wrap him in a bath sheet and chuck him in the bed while he watched Match of the Day.

  Bless him, the bairn always tried to stay awake, but within minutes his little head would be nodding. And he’d sleep though it all: Paul swearing and whooping, punching the duvet, knocking back the Stella. That was before the accident, of course, when things were more normal. Before it all went a bit pear-shaped.

  ‌Chapter Fifty-Three

  2007

  It’s just gone nine and Ben’s on his way to the salon. He’s not actually asked Dad if it’s OK to see Laura, but he’s never told him he can’t either, so he reckons that counts as permission, in a way. Plus, after giving Dad the silent treatment last week and standing up to him for a change, Ben feels it’s time he started doing what he wants a bit more.

  She’s dead chuffed to see him, which he’s relieved about, because it’s been ages and he was wondering if maybe she’d got someone else to sweep up and do the cossies and that. But they slot back into it straight away and it’s like old times – her tea and his hot choc, plate of bourbons in the caff with the sign turned to ‘closed’ – before heading upstairs to the salon to see what needs doing.

  When he tells her about Dad being hypnotized again she nearly falls off her chair. ‘What on earth did that Ian Campbell say to change his mind? I never thought we’d see Big Paul within three miles of that couch.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Ben. Actually, he’d assumed it was because he was giving Dad a hard time, but now he comes to think of it, it wasn’t until Ian came round and necked all the Chinky chow that Dad started to come round.

  ‘Go on then,’ says Laura. ‘Don’t leave me all agog. What happened in the session?’

  So he tells her about how Jimmy had been leading this secret life as a gay and that’s how he came to be on the beach that night and saw Tom hoying something heavy into a coble.

  And Laura just sits there, with her mouth literally hanging open – just like people say, but Ben’s never seen it before – with her bourbon stuck in the air half way into it. ‘So it was Tom that killed Annie,’ she says. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘We think he killed Sam too,’ Ben says. And explains what Jimmy saw on the boat the night Sam went overboard.

  ‘Stone me sideways and leave me out for the crows!’ goes Laura. ‘I don’t know, leave you lot alone for a few days and all hell breaks loose. What else have I missed by ironing frocks and waxing toes and serving up a few pots of Earl Grey?’

  ‘Right, you remember, that old biddy who looked after Lord Jim, that Miss Turnbull?’

  ‘Don’t tell me, she’s turned out to be a raving lezzer on the quiet.’

  Ben giggles, because that is just so out of order. ‘No – she was me! I mean I was her – between being Annie and being me now. And I found her diaries, which was how we found out about Jimmy and Tom.’

  Laura’s finished her bourbon, but now it’s her tea cup that’s frozen in the air. She puts it back in the saucer and stares at him. ‘Jesus and Mary Magdalena. So you were old Miss T., eh? Well there’s a turn up and no flies. I knew her really well, did you realize? At one time I was in and out of that flat like a fiddler’s elbow.’

  ‘I know! How weird is that? There’s loads of stuff about you in the diaries, about how you helped out with Lord Jim and that, when he was in that wheelchair, and how he encouraged you to come out as a trannie.’

  ‘Ay, one in a million that Lord Jim – though I’m not sure Miss T. saw it that way.’

  ‘Plus it turns out that Miss Turnbull used to babysit for Mary when she was little.’

  ‘So Mary was “the lass” she were always on about. Well, well. Funny I never met her – well, not so funny really, when you come to think about it. I mean, Miss T. would never have let her near the place with Lord Jim just upstairs. She was forever on about how he was going to “turn” me, like I was a jug of milk or something.’

  Ben sits up straight. ‘Are you sure the doc was never there? Only she’s really stressed out about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the diaries. Ian says if Mary read the diaries when she was little, then she could have read the bit about Tom being on the beach that night.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, Ian thinks the doc might have put that whole story into all our heads by hypnosis. But she couldn’t have seen the diaries, could she? You were there the whole time when Lord Jim came out of hospital and you never saw her.’

  ‘Never clapped eyes on the lass. Plus it was October by the time he died, so she’d have gone back to that boarding school long since.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell Ian!’ Ben’s excited: this is just the sort of evidence the doc needs. ‘You’ve got to go on telly and testify that the doc never saw them diaries.’

  ‘Hang on a bit, that doesn’t mean she never saw them. After Jim died, Miss T. could have brought her to the flat any time.’

  Ben slumps in his chair. ‘So she could have seen them later.’

  ‘You’re really worried about this aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s that Ian bloke. I don’t know why, but I don’t trust him. I keep thinking he’s going to do the dirty on the doc. I mean, you should have seen him with the diaries at old Skip’s place. Ordering everyone about, like he didn’t care what happened to anyone as long as he got his film done.’

  Laura nods, like she knows what he means, which makes Ben even more worried for the doc.

  ‘You know the other thing Mary’s stressed out about?’ asks Laura. ‘She thinks that Tom might be one of her fishermen. You know, one of her past lives. How would that look on the telly, eh?’ She pours more tea and clicks in a couple of sweeteners. ‘Which means she’s between a rock and a hard place, isn’t she? Either she’s making it all up and her career’s down the khazi, or she’s the reincarnation of a lad who murdered her favourite client.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Ben. Then he remembers something. ‘Wasn’t your fisherman called Tom too?’

  Laura nods. ‘According to Mary half the bloomin’ population of Shields back then was called Tom.’

  ‘So it could have been either of you.’

  ‘Quite right, or some other poor dorcas altogether. But it’s been rather preying on my mind. In fact if you hadn’t dinged my dinger this morning, I’d be sat in that library right now with Pete checking out the Births, Marriages and Deaths again.’

  Pete’s sorting old photos when they get there: a load of pictures of cranes from that old Swan Hunter shipyard that closed down. ‘Well, if it isn’t the BBC research team,’ he says, closing a tattered folder and shoving it into a crammed filing cabinet. ‘Is that Ian Campbell coming along later? Only I’ve got that info he asked for, all printed out and collated, all them searches you and the doctor’s been doing.’

  ‘Fantabulosa,’ goes Laura winking at Ben. ‘We might need to vada that little lot later, if that’s OK. But we’ve got something else to investigate first, haven’t we Ben? On that BMD website.’

  Pete sits down at a nearby computer and boots up. ‘We’re interested in a lad called Thomas Hall,’ says Laura. ‘He was born around 1880 and we need to find out when
he died. His address should be in them other searches you did with Mary, though I suppose he might have shifted a few times since then.’

  ‘He’s one of the lads on that boat, right? The Osprey, wasn’t it? Hang on a sec,’ he says, and gets up to leaf through a heap of photocopies on his desk. ‘You never know. If he inherited the house from his da, he could have stayed put till he died.’ He clicks through a series of windows, then: ‘Bingo! There he is: Thomas John Hall, born 1880, died 1948. Will that do you?’ He beams around at them. ‘Right, was there anything else?’

  Ben waits for Laura to say something, but she’s staring at the screen in a sort of a daze. He gives her a bit of a nudge. ‘What’s the name of that woman Mary was always talking about?’ he asks. But before she can answer, he remembers: ‘Peggy, that’s it.’

  ‘You’ll be talking about Margaret Simpson, I expect,’ says Pete. ‘The doctor was in here a week or so back looking up her dates for some reason. Let me check – it’ll be in here somewhere.’ He sorts though the photocopies again and pulls out a single sheet. ‘OK, here we are: Margaret Simpson, born 1925, died 1956. How’s that for service?’

  Ben does the sum in his head. ‘That means Peggy was born twenty-three years before Tom died,’ he says. ‘So Tom couldn’t have been Mary’s fisherman after all!’ He turns to Laura, but she’s gone pale under her tan and her mouth’s gone sort of quivery and thin. Then he twigs. ‘When were you born?’ he asks.

  ‘Thirtieth of November 1948.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean that Tom was your Tom.’

  ‘No, but it looks pretty likely, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe he’s my nana. You’re about the same age, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’ve been expecting this from the start.’ Laura sighs. ‘And just think how you’d feel if it was your nana murdered you in a previous life?’

  Ben stares at her as the information sinks in. And he’s remembering what it felt like that time at Annie’s house, when Tom came to visit, and she was totally sad and numb from seeing Sam washed up on that minging beach – but Tom tried it on anyway. How gross and macho was that?

  ‘I think I’d rather it was her than you,’ he says in a small voice.

  ‘Right,’ says Pete, pushing his chair back. ‘If there’s nothing else, I reckon I’ll leave you to it – whatever “it” is. Though if you ask me, I think the lot of yous are all off your rockers.’

  ‌Chapter Fifty-Four

  2007

  It’s nine o’clock in the morning and Mary’s striding along the sea wall to the Grand Hotel to confront Ian. She did consider phoning first to tell him she’s coming, but she doesn’t want him evading her again. As soon as she’d mentioned she wanted to talk to him yesterday, he’d become unaccountably distracted by an urgent ‘crisis with the film crew’ and whizzed off on his bicycle.

  The sun’s hot already and the sea’s glittering and reassuringly flat. With her gloves off and her hair freshly washed, she feels both militant and slightly agitated at the idea of being alone with him in his hotel room. The combination is rather exhilarating, albeit somewhat tiring.

  At reception the woman gives out his room number without hesitation – ‘top floor, turn right when you come out of the lift’ – as though Mary is the latest of many overwrought women to have requested it, which, she reflects grimly, she probably is.

  She listens briefly outside before knocking. He’s on the phone to someone, talking loudly, and the television’s on – and is that the radio, too, burbling away in the background?

  He flings open the door with his mobile gizmo still clamped to his ear. ‘Good grief!’ he exclaims when he sees her. Then, into the phone: ‘Viv? Look, we’ll finish this later, OK? Something’s come up.’ He presses a tiny button and drops it into his pocket. ‘Come in, come in. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘You tell me,’ she says tartly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I have been on the receiving end of several pieces of disquieting information in the last few days, about your research activities for this documentary – not to mention poor old Mr Skipper turning up unannounced expecting you to be filming a session with me. And you haven’t had the decency to contact me once. And if I hadn’t come here myself, you still wouldn’t have contacted me, am I right?’

  He opens his mouth to object, but she’s into her stride now. ‘What’s more, when I tried to talk to you yesterday, you scuttled off before I could say anything. Now I’d like you to switch off that infernal mobile contraption, and all the other bits of distracting media equipment in this room, and tell me what’s going on.’

  He grins at her. ‘You look gorgeous when you’re angry, do you know that?’

  ‘And don’t think you can get around me with absurd compliments.’

  ‘You do, though. Your hair’s coming loose and there’s freckles on your nose. And that scarf’s always suited you – I assume it’s the same one? The one I bought you on that camping trip in Totnes?’

  ‘Ian,’ she says severely. ‘I want some answers.’

  ‘Have you had breakfast yet?’ He’s still grinning. It’s utterly infuriating.

  ‘Stop trying to deflect me. This is serious.’

  ‘So is breakfast,’ he says. ‘I was just nipping down to catch the last service. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘Surprisingly, I find I don’t feel very much like eating at the moment.’

  ‘Mind if I get them to send something up then?’

  She sighs with impatience. ‘You are impossible.’

  Picking up the hotel phone, Ian reels off a list of instructions about varieties of coffee and fruit, types of egg dishes and various bakery goods with French names. Through an arch Mary can see an enormous unmade bed: white sheets tangled, pillows askew. The coverlet’s in a heap at the foot of the bed. An array of those ridiculous ‘bed cushions’ has been slung into a corner. What she’d assumed was the radio burbling away turns out to be a second enormous flat-screen television in the bedroom, tuned to a different channel to the matching one blaring in the lounge.

  ‘Right, where were we?’ he asks.

  ‘You were trying to variously charm, undermine and distract me from my quest, which is to find out exactly what you’ve been doing behind my back.’

  ‘Are you planning to sit down ever?’

  Mary looks around. There’s a three-piece suite in this room, and a small circular table over by the window, with two upright chairs either side, as well as a full-sized desk against the far wall embellished with his usual slew of black wires and obscure black electronic attachments. Propped against it, astonishingly, is his bicycle – how on earth did he persuade them to allow that?

  She opts for one of the upright chairs by the table and sits down primly with her hands in her lap, while he roams the suite obediently, retrieving handsets and switching off the televisions.

  When he’s finished, and sitting opposite her, she says: ‘We’ll start with Karleen, shall we? I expressly asked you not to contact her – but you went ahead anyway. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?’

  ‘She called you, I assume.’ He seems unabashed.

  ‘She’s one of my dearest friends, Ian – of course she called me! And she told me something very interesting about who else is involved in this series of yours. Are you aware that Hester Griffin is one of my fiercest critics?’

  ‘I was going to tell you, but I wanted to get everything straight in my own mind first.’ At least he has the grace to look slightly sheepish.

  ‘So how long has Hester been involved? According to Karleen the whole series was her idea.’

  ‘No, that’s total bollocks. Typical Hester blowing her own trumpet. She heard I was nosing around, doing some preliminary research into paranormal phenomena, so she called me up and suggested a meeting. I think she was angling for a presenting gig actually, and when she saw that was out of the question she presumably thought the next best thing was appearing as chief prosecutor in the case against r
eincarnation.’

  ‘So it was her idea to do the programme about me.’

  ‘No, I’d already decided I was going to get in touch. But having her on board helped tip the balance with the suits. You have to admit she’s a bit of a looker. Ideal telly fodder.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Mary comments drily.

  ‘Come on, Mary. You must have known I’d consult her.’

  ‘Yes, but I expected you to consult me first! What if she’d contacted me out of the blue and I hadn’t known about her involvement? Imagine how humiliating that would have been.’

  ‘I was just trying to protect—’

  ‘I don’t need protecting, Ian. I’ve been facing this kind of criticism for the last twenty-five years. The only thing that’s different about now is that I’ve just written a book that I would very much like to have published.’

  ‘Now who’s not telling the truth? I saw your face when you realized your Miss T. was the author of those diaries. You were really rattled, admit it.’

  ‘Of course I was rattled! Because this time I’m not going to be grappling with Hester in some obscure academic journal, am I? This time it’s going to be on prime-time television. Is it surprising I’m getting somewhat hot under the collar?’

  Realizing that her hands have closed into fists, Mary opens them slowly and takes a deep breath. ‘I am only too aware that the theory of reincarnation seems utterly outlandish in this day and age; and that the idea of groups of souls reincarnating together seems even more preposterous – even to me. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t wonder what on earth I’m doing, delving into people’s past lives, when I don’t come up with a hundred alternative explanations for the phenomena I’m seeing.’

  ‘But?’

  She shrugs helplessly. ‘But the alternative explanations are so elaborate and involve such bizarre feats of memory and perception – not to mention coincidence – that in the end they just seem even more preposterous.’