On my day in court, which is several weeks later than expected, the judge congratulates me on our civilized arrangements. Huh? She hasn’t seen me with my bird’s nest hair, wasn’t there when I told Den to eff off back to Lincolnshire. She doesn’t know I’m Alec’s very willing and pregnant lover. But I had to come to court, because of my babies. They’re six months old now, very amusing and almost as good as gold, and I am taking full custody with open access for their father. Not that he’ll be interested, but I sometimes make an effort to be fair. Juliet is elsewhere and has sent one of her clerks. My divorce is so simple and well constructed that she isn’t needed. Den hasn’t turned up yet. He’s good at missing unimportant occasions like this one.
Alec is also here, because he will be seeking full guardianship of Jo, and will be asking for access to Sarah. Even our court dates have dovetailed, and I take that as a good sign, although I’m not sure about who sends signs and whether the sender has my best interests at heart.
We are divorced. Final decrees will follow in a few weeks, and we are free at last. Outside in the street, Alec lifts me up and swings me round as if I am a child. Then he drags me into the nearest hostelry, because we don’t want to bump into Den and Dolores – we’ve had enough of the pair of them.
The place is buzzing with lawyers. Briefs are handed – possibly for the first time – to silks by solicitors. Over a whisky, a barrister will discover who he is supposed to defend and against which charge. I’m fairly sure this shouldn’t be happening outside chambers, but it is, so who am I to try to change the system?
‘Champagne?’ Alec asks.
‘No, thanks,’ I reply.
‘Have you gone teetotal, or what?’ he demands to know. ‘I can’t remember the last time you had a glass of wine.’
That’s the other thing that happens when I carry a child. I can’t drink alcohol or tea. No idea why, but there it is. ‘I’m not teetotal,’ I say. ‘I’m or what. And, when I’m or what, I can’t drink, though I did enjoy the occasional glass of Guinness when I got to about seven months with the girls. They must have needed the iron.’
He opens his mouth and breathes in an enormous amount of air. Alec’s face is so easy to read that I can just sit here and watch emotions colliding in the eyes. I see joy, fear, more joy. And I see tears welling from a heart as big as Africa. He’s still in shock. ‘Anna,’ he says several times.
‘Yes? That’s my name.’
‘But . . .’ He swallows. ‘We’ve been . . .’ He leans closer. ‘We’ve been having sex.’
I laugh. ‘That’s how babies are made, sweetheart. You see, the man and the woman get together—’
‘I love you.’
‘You’d better. Because in about six and a half months, our baby will be making its debut. Now, don’t go all excited on me.’
‘But I shouldn’t have – we shouldn’t have—’
‘And don’t talk daft. Any child of yours and mine can withstand a battering. It’s very well cosseted, lying in a bed of fluid inside a bag tough enough to carry a ton of shopping. We won’t lose a baby by making love. Now, get me a St Clements and we’ll say no more about it.’
He seems to have been poleaxed to his chair. One of his tears goes on its travels, and he dashes it away, since we are in a public place. At home – our home – he would have allowed it to find its own way south. ‘Oh, God,’ he whispers.
‘No, the name’s still Anna. You know, darling, it’s so easy to work with all our nearest and dearests’ names – they’re unforgettable. Alec and Anna, Den and Dolores, Susan and Stephen, Maureen and Marie – so wonderfully alphabetical.’
‘How long have you known?’
‘I learned my alphabet at my mother’s knee.’
‘Don’t be obtuse. How long?’
‘A few weeks.’
‘Then why . . .?’
‘In case it came to nothing, I kept it to myself. I love you so much, I couldn’t have borne your pain.’
‘But you will bear my child.’
‘Of course.’
I have heard people say that it’s terrible to see a grown man cry. It is no such thing. There’s no point in trying to hide so profuse a flow, so he just allows it to happen and waits for it to stop. You see, that’s my Alec. Stuff happens, and he waits for it to stop. I know he’s embarrassed, yet in another sense, he is way past embarrassment. We both are. A man in shirt sleeves and a waistcoat passes a whisky to me. ‘See if he’ll drink that,’ he says in a clipped, legal voice. ‘Divorce can be a dreadful business.’ The man puts on his jacket and picks up a briefcase. ‘Don’t worry, old chap,’ he advises Alec. ‘It’ll all be for the best, you’ll see.’
‘I don’t know what I did to deserve you.’ The words stumble past tears.
‘You’re good in bed. In fact, you’re excellent.’
There’s a rainbow now, sun shining through raindrop tears. He has a wonderful smile – I’m always saying that. ‘Am I really good?’ he asks.
‘You know you are.’
He’s stopped weeping. ‘Well, that’s brilliant. But only with you. Only ever with you.’
I tell him that his book on tantric sex must have worked wonders for him. ‘It did,’ he answers. ‘Because my silliness put you in charge that first time. I was terrified and inadequate. You’re one quality woman, and I wasn’t good enough.’ He reaches for my hand. ‘If I have never told you what you did for my self-confidence, I am sorry. You’ve allowed me to become me. It was . . . difficult. I loved her, but it was the love of one young animal for another. I changed, she remained the same. She hurt me and I curled like an autumn leaf. You were the bringer of springtime.’
Oh, bugger. Now it’s my turn to cry.
He passes me a handkerchief. ‘Stop showing me up,’ he says. How well he knows me. The truth is, we don’t give a fig what anyone thinks, which is just as well, because Den and Dolores are here – brilliantly tardy, of course.
‘Are you all right?’ My ex offers a brief imitation of concern.
I dab at my eyes. ‘Fine,’ I tell him. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Den shrugs. ‘Too late. I hear we’re divorced now.’
Alec stands and shakes Den’s hand. ‘Thank you for removing the thorn from my side, old fellow. Oh, the baby’s mine. We’re getting married very soon.’
The soggy lip hangs again. ‘What? All this time you’ve been—Hell’s bells.’
Dolores turns and pushes her way out of the crowded bar. Alec and Den are squaring up to each other, but I know nothing will happen. If something did happen, Den wouldn’t cope. He hasn’t coped since his mother died. He stares at me, and I see only hatred in eyes I once thought beautiful, so dark that the pupils don’t show. He leaves.
‘That’s that,’ Alec pronounces.
‘You enjoyed telling him.’
‘I’m proud, Anna. He knows what he’s lost, and he’s learning what he’s gained. Dolly may be daft, but she’s controlling. He’ll be lucky to get supper tonight, because she’ll be mithering him for a wedding ring. Sex is something she trades in – for clothes, shoes and so forth. But marriage scares him.’
I agree. ‘He should have married his mother. She liked him.’
Now, we’re both laughing. So that’s better, isn’t it?
Nothing lasts.
We’ve told everyone who needs to know, and most females are knitting. Even Jo’s having a go at a matinee jacket. All our bedrooms are filled, so Maureen and Marie stay in St Helens. Sometimes, they sleep in our living room, but, for the most part, they go home after doing their Third Party jobs. The two smaller bedrooms here contain my twins and Susan’s Stephen. Jo shares with my twins, and we need a bigger house. Alec and I have the master, and Susan sleeps in the second. There’s no more room at the inn.
When the next baby comes, Susan will need to move out. If she doesn’t want to go to Eccleston, she can have the caravan. Because if Charlie and Marie have Alec’s main bedroom, Maureen and Susan will need to share a ro
om, while Stephen can have the smallest. I am sick of all this mental juggling. I’m looking at the architect’s plans for three further bedrooms and another bathroom. They’ve been passed by the authorities, and work is due to start any day now. The bedrooms will have to be propped up by something underneath, so we’re having yet another reception room and a large study. At the present time, I have Charlie in the caravan and—
And the doorbell’s ringing.
I open the door, and my hand flies of its own accord to my throat. ‘Katherine.’ I can’t move. No. Nothing lasts. I feel as if somebody has nailed both my feet to the floor. She’s beautifully dressed and gorgeous, and I don’t want her in my house, near my babies, near my life. They must both go away and stay away for ever, because I cannot be near what they are.
‘May I come in?’ She kisses me on both cheeks and I remember Judas at the Last Supper. Alec’s at work. My girls are asleep, while Susan has gone out with Stephen for some bits of shopping. I am alone with one of my enemies for the first time in years. She is disconcertingly beautiful. Now thirty-six, she looks like a fresh-faced teenager. ‘How are you?’ I ask. I don’t know why I enquired, because I have managed for so long not to care.
She stands in the doorway to the living room. A small movement in her forehead displays minor agitation. ‘Tell me they’re not like we were.’
I am confused. ‘What?’
‘Your twins. They’re not like Rebecca and me?’
‘No. Not at all.’ I remember my fears. I don’t want this woman to bring them back to me.
She sits and stretches those amazing legs to one side. ‘You never noticed, did you? You never saw that it was all Rebecca and that I was terrified of her. Yet I remain so scared of being as sick as she is, I aborted my second baby last month, because I’m afraid.’
This isn’t easy. The thing to remember about sociopaths is that they are often super-intelligent, yet unaware of their own condition. They are believable, even likeable. They function well and hold down great jobs – this one lectures in Latin and Greek at Oxford. Greek. I remember the Greek. ‘Dad found the tin with your codes in,’ I tell her. ‘They were in the woods. And I took them to Mother Gertrude. It all shocked her, but the repeated “KILL ANNA” meant that she had to translate that bit for me so that I could watch my back.’
‘Quite.’ Not a flicker on the face, just beauty without lines, an empty shell. She’s a painting. ‘I had to dance to my sister’s tune, or my name would have joined yours in the tin. I was not allowed to show fear, happiness or anything between those two extremes. Even now, I often act as if she’s watching me in case I show weakness.’
She is opening her blouse. Between her breasts, a capital K is entwined with an R. ‘She did this with a needle, a small knife and Indian ink. She has the same on her chest. Rebecca wrote my essays, because she said mine were foolish. Perhaps I betrayed the fact that underneath it all, I had feelings. The fights – I was defending myself. In the end, I stopped competing – it was easier. You have to start believing me, Anna, because she is mad.’
I don’t know what to think, what to feel. She folds back the flap of her designer bag and hands me a brown envelope. ‘That’s from Harley Street – read it if you like. He says you can phone him and talk to him. I haven’t got the illness. Rebecca has. She’s extremely unwell unless she takes three million tablets a day. There’s a list of what’s wrong with me in there.’ She waves a hand at the envelope. ‘There is a lot wrong, and it’s all because of Beckie. But I daren’t have a child in case it turns out like her. What if I carry the gene?’
‘What if I do?’ I ask.
She asks me what my blood group is, and I tell her it’s A positive. Then she drops the bombshell. ‘Anna, don’t get upset. Dad was O rhesus negative, the universal donor. He had a card from when he was in the army. If he hadn’t been such a soak, he could have kept people alive through surgery until the hospital got their own group sent up from the blood bank. I believe that you have Mother’s blood group, because they were definitely together when you were conceived – the war hadn’t started, and he hadn’t gone for re-training.’
I am shaking. ‘What do you mean? Tell me, Kate. Tell me now!’
Her face is not as still, not as perfect as it was when she arrived just minutes ago. And she’s talking, talking, talking. About private detectives and people who lived in Broom Street and the night our mother was raped because Dad was away on combat exercise. And a rare blood group, and having to be careful, having to give her own blood in case she ever needs it. On and on and on . . . Then I’m gone. I descend gratefully onto the sofa on which Alec and I made this baby, and I hear no more.
I am calm. I am calm. I am in Ormskirk Hospital, and my baby is fine, and Alec is here. Kate is not here. They’ve done a load of tests and I’ve been shifted about like a wooden thing – sit, stand, give me your arm, you’re going to feel a little scratch, have you seen any blood when you’ve been to the bathroom – blah, blah, blah.
And all I can think is that Susan and Marie were sent to me by my mother, that it was all meant to happen the way it did, because Susan and Marie, like my mother, were raped. The one woman who knew about Mam is still alive in an old folks’ home in Bolton. Perhaps I’ll visit, perhaps I won’t. For the first time, I am truly glad that my poor father is dead. I can see him now watching Kate and Beckie from his front window, a look of puzzlement in his eyes. They aren’t yours, Dad.
I wonder whether my mother wanted to die. It would have been hard for her to raise the twins, harder still for her to keep the truth from me and my father. Yet she couldn’t have told him right away, because he was going to war, and she wanted him to live. He would probably have gone AWOL anyway, so that he might find the villain and kill him. He, too, carried the slow-burning but don’t-be-there-when-it-happens MacRae temper.
As for the rest of the story – the snow came, and the doctor came too late, and she died. Fate. Is that the answer to all of it?
My darling Alec keeps talking to me, but I’m not hearing much. I think they gave me some sort of tranquilliser, maybe phenobarbitone. They can use that on pregnant women. I think it’s really for epilepsy, but it quietens the screaming nerves. The architect’s coming. I think Susan will be in. There’s bread in the chest freezer in the garage. Building starts soon. I hope someone makes sure Charlie’s all right, because he’ll never recover. Alcoholism is for life. There’s no cure, only abstinence.
Emily’s teething again. Susan knows where the stuff is.
‘Anna!’ He is squeezing my hand.
‘Yes? Get me out of here.’
‘But you’ve had a shock, and—’
‘Now, Alec. I mean it. She’ll destroy us. She broke my bike.’
A doctor arrives. The points on his shirt collar have curled upwards. He has no Alec at home to iron for him. He’s smiling at me. I can’t see anything to smile about, but to each his own. ‘You may go home,’ he says.
‘I was going anyway,’ I advise him. There are things to be done, and only I can do them. Sitting up isn’t easy, because I’m a bit dizzy, but never mind. I may even ask Mrs Bee for her gun once my head clears. Kate must go. If I have to pepper her plump, pretty little backside with shot, I bloody well shall.
Must have slept all the way here. He’s carrying me over the threshold and placing me on our baby-making sofa. The architect’s here. Nice man. He takes one look at me and volunteers to leave, but I tell Alec to deal with it. Plans to be submitted, house to be extended. Sleep.
Jo’s holding my hand when I wake. She’s trying to smile through unshed tears. I am lucky. So many people love me. When I open my eyes for a second time, Susan has taken over the vigil. Such a strange day. Pheno-wotsit has made me limp and dizzy and I can’t keep up. Then it’s Alec, eyes boring into my head, shirt open at the throat, not an accountant today. So very tired.
I am in bed, and I don’t know how I got here. Yes, I do. He is behind me, his body hard against mine. We are li
ke spoons in a drawer, and he isn’t asleep. I can tell from his breathing that he is awake. And he knows I’m no longer in the land of Nod, because this man and I have been familiar with each other since long before we met – we remembered us from the future. It’s a circle, you see. We climb aboard and try to find our place, but some of us are lucky, and the one we happen to cling to is the right person. The rest have to settle for what’s there – I did that with Den. Those who meet the wrong folk are the people who lose their balance and fall off the circle, God help them. We’re back to God. Again.
‘What did they give me?’ I ask.
‘Nothing, darling. I think you’re allergic to your sister. You went into shock. But they didn’t give you any drugs.’
‘And our baby’s all right?’
‘Fine. But, my love, I really think you should hear Kate out when you feel up to it.’
‘Hmmph.’
‘What?’
‘Has she tried to get you into bed yet? Even at the age of thirteen, they pinched my boyfriends. Then I found Rebecca having sex with Peter – I liked him a lot.’
‘But you didn’t find Kate.’
I think about that. ‘I never found her, but that doesn’t prove she wasn’t at it. They were nightmares. They plied Dad with drink – leave it, Alec.’
‘All right, stay calm. Mrs Bee came in to see you, and she was crying like a child. She’s on to her second cot blanket, and you’ll have to buck up.’ He pauses. ‘So they’re your half-sisters?’
I turn and face him. ‘Probably. The nutcase who . . . who attacked my mother is likely to have been their dad. Susan is part of my bit of the circle. She landed in the same area as I did.’
‘What?’
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