Stone Cold Red Hot

by Cath Staincliffe

  “Shall I bring them back here?”

  “Great. I’ll come round as soon as I get back. I’ll let the school know you’re coming.”

  So, I was extremely rattled by the time I rang the Shuttles doorbell. She answered.

  “Mrs Shuttle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sal Kilkenny, we spoke on the phone some time ago. I’m trying to trace Jennifer Pickering.”

  Her expression changed; polite reserve hardening into appalled disbelief.

  “I told you,” she said, “I’ve nothing to say to you. How dare you come here...”

  I cut her off. “That’s why I came. You’re the only per son who has refused to talk to me. That makes me curious.”

  “Get out of here,” she said her voice quiet. At that point the door from the back garden swung open and a man appeared carrying a garden-vac. Mrs Shuttle froze, eyes like a rabbit in the road.

  “Perhaps I should talk to your husband instead?” I smiled and made as if to turn.

  “No,” she hissed. “Come in.”

  “I’ll do the front now, Marjorie,” Mr Shuttle announced. “Will you plug me in.” He came up with the cable, smiled expectantly at me.

  “Hello,” I said brightly.

  “Do come in,” Marjorie blurted out, taking the cable from him, “this is Mrs Kenny, from Italian night class.”

  “Ah, buongiorno,” he enunciated.

  I nodded, grinning inanely and escaped into the house.

  Marjorie Shuttle’s efforts to hide who I was and what I was doing from her husband spoke volumes about her connection to the Pickerings. Whatever it was it was still secret. I waited until she’d plugged in the lead and called out to her husband and then went with her into their living room, at the back of the house. I sat down without being asked. Sod the niceties. I wasn’t going to try and eke out dribs and drabs of information from Mrs Shuttle with carefully worded questions. She had something to hide and I was going to make her tell me about it. I’d start by making her think I already knew most of it.

  “The business with the Pickerings. I’d like to hear your side of it.” As if I’d heard the other.

  There was a fractional pause, she licked her lips. The drone of the vac reached us but was muffled by the distance. I looked towards the door, cocked my ear focusing on the sound then looked back to her, raised my eyebrows. Not very subtle, a nudge really, tell me or I ask him. She let out a long breath and stared at the carpet.

  “I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” she prevaricated. “We haven’t seen the Pickerings for over twenty years.”

  “Mrs Shuttle, I’ve come a long way today, I’m tired. I realise this may not be easy for you but just tell me about it in your own words. Save us both some time.”

  “This won’t go any further?”

  “Of course not.”

  “If Gordon ever found out...”

  “I’m not about to tell him but the longer I’m here the more risk there is that he’ll suspect something - or interrupt us and I’d have to see you again then.”

  She gave a big sigh and shifted her position, looked down at the rug and spoke. “We were having an affair, Frank and I.”

  Bloody ‘ell!

  I nodded, go on.

  “He’d been very kind, very thoughtful. Helping in the garden and...well, Gordon, my husband, was away a lot, he was a rep, covered the whole of the North, right up to Scotland. I was lonely, I was very young,” she raised her eyes to me. “But I hadn’t thought of him in that way. Then one day, he found me crying, you see,” she studied the floor again, “I was so unhappy and he comforted me. One thing led to another. It got out of control. I don’t know how. It was very physical, very powerful. It was an awful shock for both of us. We promised it would never happen again, we tried to stop.”

  She smiled grimly. “It didn’t make either of us happy, just the opposite, really. It was awful. We both knew it was wrong, that we might hurt other people. And Frank being so respected in the church and all that. But there was this attraction, a sexual thing. Like a compulsion, an addiction. We needed each other. We’d stop and try and get on with our lives but all I could think about was Frank. I never sought him out, though,” she added hastily. “Days would go by, weeks sometimes and then he’d come back. Desperate. I couldn’t refuse him, I wanted him. No-one had ever made me feel that way - physically, I mean. He said the same. I don’t think he and Barbara had much of a marriage by then. Even when my mind was telling me it was wrong, my body was obsessed with him. And it would start all over again. The sex, then the guilt and the promises.”

  “How long did this go on?”

  “About a year. Then Jennifer found out, I don’t know how,” she pre-empted me. “Frank came round, he said Barbara knew, that Jennifer had found out.”

  “And after that?”

  “They cut me dead. I couldn’t blame them. But it was terrible. I was so lonely and I couldn’t talk to Gordon about any of it.”

  “Who cut you dead?”

  “Frank and Barbara.”

  “And Jennifer?”

  “She’d gone to university I got very depressed, more depressed. I told Gordon we had to move, that I didn’t like the house. It didn’t matter to him, we could move further north, better for his job. We put it on the market, it took forever to find the right buyers,” she shuddered. She sat before me ashen-faced, hunched over, still plagued by the wretched emotions dredged up recalling that miserable affair. The whine outside stopped and suddenly the room was full of silence.

  “Frank got ill,” I said.

  “He wasn’t the only one,” she retorted bitterly. She hid her face with her hands for a moment, then reappeared. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair. Yes, it was his heart, they said. You can see why I didn’t want to discuss any of this, it’s nothing but bad memories for me.” She tilted her head to listen. Wondering where her husband was now. “You better go,” she said nervously. “Please.”

  I thanked her for her time and prepared to leave.

  “So Jennifer is missing?” she asked. Re-gaining the ground of polite conversation even as she willed me to be gone.

  “Yes, she’s been estranged from the family and now her brother Roger wants to find her.”

  She nodded.

  And how on earth, I thought, do I tell him about you?

  I barely noticed the traffic on the drive back to Manchester, though now and again some prat would pull out in front of me at the last minute forcing me to brake or veer into the outside lane. Then I’d curse and huff and puff and wait for my skin to settle back round my body. But for most of the journey my mind was buzzing with activity spinning scenes from the new facts I’d uncovered.

  I was convinced that I was much nearer to solving one part of the riddle. I now had two possible explanations for Jennifer calling her father a hypocrite. Either because she had discovered her own illegitimate status and his reaction to her pregnancy was unjust, or because of his adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. She’d caught him breaking all the rules, betraying his family, breaking the commandment. That was when she’d rung Lisa.

  How had Jennifer found out? Perhaps she’d called round one day, some errand for her mother, to borrow something or deliver a wrongly delivered letter. Only to find that her father was there, when he should be at the office or at church. The atmosphere at the Shuttles, the fleeting guilt of his greeting enough to alert the bright, young woman to the truth of the situation. But if that was how it happened Mrs Shuttle would have remembered, it’d be blazoned into her memory. OK. Same situation but Jennifer heard voices, her father’s as well, or sounds of love-making as she reached the house. Peered through the letter-box to see. Heard her father’s name called in passion, saw his briefcase in the hall, witnessed an embrace, there they were kissing, groping, screwing. The hypocrite.

  Had Jennifer had told her mother? I’d no reason to think of Jennifer as vindictive but families don’t always bring out the bes
t in people. Had she tackled her father? Or had she let it stew for a while, fermenting inside, pressure building until in the midst of an argument she’d blown her top and pointed the finger?

  And how would her father have reacted? She was jeopardising everything: his marriage, his integrity, his status in the church and in business. I felt a lurch of anxiety and adrenalin prickled along my forearms. Had he tried to shut her up, stop her telling her mother? Had Jennifer flung the fact of her own pregnancy at him? You forgave her, so forgive me. Had she told him about Maxwell Jones? He’s black but I’m not ashamed of it, I’m not prejudiced like you. Had she threatened to unmask him in the rush of her anger? Had he prevented her?

  I tried to clear my mind, to think logically but the scene that I had conjured up kept creeping back in focus. It seemed preposterous but if he had killed Jennifer, if she had never left home, then her troll would be left in the window, she would miss Caroline’s party, there’d be no goodbyes, no presents for her brother’s birthdays, no admission to Keele, no word to anyone. Ever.

  I had a whole heap of stuff to tell Roger. Not just a skeleton in the cupboard, more like a whole chorus-line of them, clattering out one after the other. Starting with; Jennifer is your half-sister, you’ve got different fathers, your mother had Jennifer out of wedlock, Jennifer was already three years old when your parents got married. Moving onto the news that your father had an affair with Mrs Shuttle, next door. Do you remember her? And Jennifer found out. On top of all that there’s no record of Jennifer having a baby, no registered death, no marriage, no sign of her whatsoever. And to cap it all there’s a very simple, ludicrous, nightmarish explanation for your sister’s disappearance. It fits with all the facts but there isn’t a shred of proof. All speculation. But before I breathe a word of that to you there’s a couple of return visits I intend to make.

  Chapter sixteen

  I came into Manchester in the height of the rush-hour but I was heading in the right direction. The log jam on the other side of the central reservation stretched nose to tail for miles.

  I drove straight to the Dobson’s to find Maddie and Tom having tea with the family. Eight of them in all crammed round the big table.

  “Why did you forget?” Maddie scowled, “It was horrible.”

  “I didn’t,” my anger at Ray re-kindled, “Ray was supposed to collect you, I was working late.”

  “Would you like some?” Jackie asked me. “It’s only pizza and salad.”

  I hesitated.

  “Go on,” said her husband Grant. “I’ll get another chair.”

  I was soon ensconced, listening to the chatter of the Dobson girls as they recounted incidents from school and updated Vicky on some of the scandals she’d missed during her trek round the festivals. I felt a tickle of worry about Ray. What if he’d been in an accident, unable to get to school through no fault of his own. Maybe I was judging him unfairly. I was keen to get home once we’d finished eating. As we were leaving I paid Vicky. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been here, you’re a life-saver.”

  She grinned.

  The kids clambered into the hire car, suitably impressed and making all sorts of favourable noises.

  Mummy,” asked Maddie, “can I have a nose stud?”

  “Yeurgh, like a punk,” said Tom.

  “No, you can’t, not till you’re grown up.”

  “But that’s ages.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to wait.”

  “Please, can I?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Children don’t have nose studs.”

  “They have earrings.”

  “Some do.”

  “Well, if they can have them in their ears why can’t I have one in my nose.”

  I grappled for a reply. “It’s not allowed at school.” Cop out.

  “You could write a note.”

  “No.”

  “I could take it out for school.”

  I resorted to threats. “It hurts, Maddie, they have to punch a hole in your nose with a special gun and it really stings.”

  “Oh,” a small voice. Maddie is feeble when it comes to pain.

  I felt mean. “So it’d be best to wait until you’re grown up. Meanwhile we could see if we could find some stick on studs you could wear at the weekend.”

  “Yes, Mummy, yes.”

  The house was dark. No sign of Ray. We’d been in a few minutes when he arrived back. I was washing the breakfast pots. He sauntered in. My relief was quickly replaced with mounting irritation. I felt my back stiffen. He glanced at the hob, peered in the fridge. Looking for his tea.

  “You eaten? Nothing left?”

  “We ate at the Dobsons.”

  “Oh, you didn’t say.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  He heard the edge to my voice, shifted his stance, chin up a little, defiant.

  “You were supposed to collect Maddie and Tom. I was half-way across the country and I got a phone call from school. No-one had turned up.”

  “Hang on a minute. Who says I was collecting them?”

  “I asked you last night.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I didn’t make a note of the time. When I got in.”

  He shook his head.

  “Ray, I did. And you said yes.”

  He carried on shaking his head, his curls bouncing as he did.

  “I’m not making it up,” I insisted.

  “Well, they’re here now,” he snapped, “it’s not the end of the world, is it?”

  “I was worried. It was pure chance that I could get hold of someone to go and pick them up. What if I hadn’t been able to? What would have happened then?”

  “The school would hardly turf them out on the street,” he retorted.

  “It wasn’t much fun for Maddie and Tom, either. I think you should apologise to them.” If not to me, I added silently.

  “God! It’s hardly a regular occurrence. And I don’t think you asked me. What exactly did you say?” His dark eyes were hard with defiance.

  I couldn’t bear this wriggling round the truth. Why couldn’t he just accept the blame gracefully?

  “I did,” I said.

  “OK,” he shouted, “even if you did and if I forgot - which I didn’t - it’s hardly a hanging offence is it?”

  “If you hadn’t been so wrapped up in Laura you might have paid a bit more attention to what was going on in the rest of the world.”

  “Fuckin’ ‘ell.” Wide-eyed and outraged.

  “I’m sorry, but I need to be able to rely on you, the kids need to. These days they hardly see you. When you are here, you...”

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” he stalked off.

  “And I had to pay ten pounds for the babysitter.”

  He stormed back in, slammed a ten pound note down on the table and left.

  I sat down slowly, stunned at how heavy things had become. Was it me? If he’d only taken responsibility and apologised things would have been fine but all that casting aspersions on whether I’d asked him...How the hell would I be able to ask him about plans for the future with Laura, now? Oh no! I was meeting Diane later. We’d arranged to have a drink at one of the new cafe bars in Didsbury. Diane had talked me into it. We ought to try somewhere new, she’d said, I had my reservations. But had Ray remembered? For a stupid moment I considered getting Vicky Dobson to babysit to avoid asking Ray but that would cost money. It was pathetic, too. I would get the kids ready for bed, have a bath myself and then tackle him.

  Maddie and Tom were in their playroom. Tom was smashing farm animals into each other and yelling various threats at them, Maddie was absorbed in a Polly Pocket toy. All our attempts to raise them free from gender stereotypes had come to this. The room was strewn with books, games, dressing-up clothes, pens and play-food. It looked like someone had trashed the place.

  “Time to clear up.”

  Tom groaned, Maddie ignored me.r />
  “Maddie, come on, I’ll help and it’ll soon be done.”

  She slammed Polly’s palace down and flung back her head with a sigh.

  “Let’s see how quickly we can do it? I’ll count.” The old trick worked with Tom who began to hurl toys into the plastic boxes along the wall but Maddie was having none of it. She moved in slow-motion. I felt a flash of irritation but directed it into lugging armfuls of clothes into the dressing-up hamper. I’d had enough rows for one day. Still, I couldn’t resist a snippy comment when we were done. “We’d have done it even quicker if Maddie had helped. If you’re that tired, Maddie, you’d better have an early night.”

  “Aw, Mum.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Tom.

  “Shut-up,” she flounced out.

  “Bath-time now,” I called after her.

  They always come out of the bath happier than when they go in. That’s the main reason for doing it. After all they don’t get a chance to get that dirty at school and they hadn’t been playing out. I got them settled and allowed them to listen to one short tape, citing Maddie’s tiredness again. She grinned at me.

  My turn. Once in the bath, with added bath salts, I slid down until only my head was out of the water. I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift. I put a face cloth over my eyes and floated for a while. The tension in my muscles from the driving and the aggro began to loosen. When my wrinkles had wrinkles and the water was cooling I got out. Like the children I emerged feeling better; oh, a host of worries still hovered over work and the argy-bargy with Ray but I didn’t feel so battered by them.

  I got ready. Ray was on the phone. As I came downstairs he went quiet. Talking about me? Telling Laura about my unjust accusations? Would she remember that I’d. asked him? Would she say so? I didn’t know her well enough to judge. In the kitchen Digger raised his head, spotted me and lowered it again. Ray showed no sign of getting off the phone so I wrote a note in felt tip on the back of a letter from school advising us of another head-lice outbreak.

  Am going out now. I wondered whether to add Remember? but decided OK? would be more tactful. I went into the hall and held the message up in front of him. He put his hand over the mouthpiece, scanned the paper and nodded curtly. I pinned the note back on the board in the kitchen to remind me to check the kids’ hair the next day.