This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret?

by Jane Sanderson

  ‘There’s a climb first, then a dip,’ he said, and as he spoke the trains were hauling up the tracks so that Annie could see the drab rooftops of Blackpool laid out below, the moving figures of miniature people walking securely on solid ground. She longed to be among them. The noise and upward grind of the train was relentless and she knew, from the angle of the rise, that they must surely be about to crest the summit; but still the first plunge, when it came, was an ambush. They hurtled pell-mell downwards, then up, then down again.

  ‘Double dip!’ Alf shouted. ‘Woo hoo!’ His arms were aloft; everyone’s were, except for Annie’s. She gripped the rail with utter dedication and gasped at the astonishing rush of cold night air, the effrontery of it, the ruthless heave and plunge. Alf was shouting something but she couldn’t make out the words now, and she wouldn’t risk turning her head to look at him. But as the carriage careered around the track and the blur of the Blackpool night streamed through her peripheral vision, the sensations that at first had seemed so intolerable began subtly to shift into something closer to … well, not enjoyment, certainly not that; rather, a kind of liberation, as though her objections and inhibitions were being whipped away, one at a time, by the forces of time and space and speed. When the wooden trains finally slid into dock at the end of the ride and the passengers began to clamber out, Annie said, ‘I’ll give that another go,’ and stayed exactly where she was.

  Alf gawped at her.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘We’re staying on?’

  ‘Well I am,’ she said. ‘You can get off and wait if it’s too much for you.’

  Alf roared with laughter. ‘Annie Doyle,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘What?’ she said again.

  ‘You’re a dark horse, you are.’

  ‘Well, I think I liked it, and I just need to check.’

  ‘Right you are. Arms up on the drops though,’ he said. ‘It’s more fun like that.’

  ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘You can have too much of a good thing. I shall hold on to the rail like last time.’

  Later, in the stillness of her Blackpool bedroom, Annie lay as flat as she could make herself, pressing her spine down onto the blue candlewick bedspread. Three turns on the Grand National two hours ago, and she could still hear the rattle of wheels on wood inside her head. She smiled at the memory. Alf had handed her out of the train – talked her off it, actually: refused to let her stay on for a fourth ride – and she’d felt loose limbed and light-headed, but more than that, she’d felt exultant. She was surprised no one burst into applause when she alighted: surprised no one pinned a medal on her chest. She hadn’t been able to explain to Alf what transformation had taken place during that first cacophonous rush around the tracks, but had only said it was the wind on her face, the sensation of flying. ‘I felt like I’d never moved that fast before,’ she’d said to him as they wove through the crowds, back to their lodgings.

  ‘You should trade in that Nissan for a Harley-Davidson,’ he’d said.

  ‘It was so … so … new,’ she said. ‘So different from anything I’ve ever done before. Makes me wonder what else I’ve missed.’

  But she’d needed a rest, a lie down. Her legs felt like jelly and as the euphoria ebbed, fatigue flowed.

  ‘I’ll knock in an hour,’ Alf had said, and he’d seen her settled on the bed with a cup of tea beside her before he left the room, closing the door softly, as you might on an invalid, or a sleeping child. She hadn’t slept though, only dozed, and now she was fully awake, listening to the roller coaster in her head and hearing, also, a deep rumble in her stomach which reminded her that she hadn’t eaten a thing since the Eccles cake.

  She sat up, her legs straight out in front of her, her back against the old wooden headboard of her single bed. When she’d first seen this bedroom earlier today she’d been charmed by its old-fashioned 1970s trappings: the teak starburst clock, the pink shag-pile carpet, the macramé wall hanging. Now though, she began to understand why they seemed familiar, because together they called to mind Coventry, that little house in Sydney Road, the spare room with its single bed, colonised by Vince. The candlewick cover had been yellow in there: canary yellow to cheer things up, as if a splash of colour could have made any difference at all.

  So she didn’t wait for the tap-tap-tap of Alf at the door. Instead she swung herself off the bed, splashed her face with cold water at the vanity basin and ran a comb through her hair. Then she surprised him by knocking on his door and suggesting egg and chips on the Promenade.

  32

  They left Blackpool early the next morning: early enough to see the sunrise and too early for breakfast at the boarding house, which anyway hadn’t been an appealing proposition.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alf said, as the Defender rumbled through empty streets. ‘It wasn’t the Ritz, was it?’

  Annie said, ‘Actually I slept very well. Mind you, I can sleep on a washing line if I’m tired enough. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘there’s no point being in the lap of luxury in a town as tacky as Blackpool.’

  Alf laughed and said, ‘Blimey, nobody could accuse you of not speaking your mind.’

  There was a pause before she said, ‘They could, you know. I never used to speak my mind, didn’t do it for years, really.’

  ‘Right. So when did you start?’

  ‘Just now,’ she said, and he laughed, but she only gave him a half smile then turned a serious face to the passenger window and watched Blackpool thinning out by small degrees until soon they were on the wide blandness of the motorway and could have been anywhere.

  She thought she might have a cold coming; her eyes felt hot, her eyelids heavy, and when she swallowed, her throat protested. Alf turned on the radio and Annie sat silently beside him, turning inwards, missing Finn, picturing him waking up in a strange house, and herself getting back to a home that would no longer contain him.

  She thought about the Pleasure Beach, and now, in this mood of increasingly despondent self-pity, she began to cast the episode in a thoroughly different light: a silly diversion, a ploy by Alf to make her forget poor, dear Finn. Then she thought that if it weren’t for Alf Dinmoor, she’d be waking up in Beech Street this morning to be greeted by her dog’s ready smile and his constant, amiable affection, and before long she’d managed to make herself downright cross with Alf, who had no idea that he’d landed in the soup without even trying. She knew it was unreasonable, irrational, but even so, she sat there beside him, her emotions in a knot, blaming him for the way she felt. The motorway ground on beneath the wheels of the Land Rover and when a vast blue sign flagged up the number of miles to the next service station he said, ‘I don’t know about you but I could eat a horse.’ She stayed quiet.

  ‘Annie?’ he said. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, although she was.

  ‘There’s a Welcome Break in sixteen miles,’ he said. ‘You’ll feel better with some tea and toast inside you.’

  ‘Tea and toast can’t cure everything,’ she said.

  ‘No, but it’s a start.’ He was being determinedly kind, refusing to take offence. He was perhaps the kindest man Annie had ever known, and her eyes filled with tears as she tussled with her own, stubborn and complicated heart.

  After a pause he smiled at her with unmistakable fondness and turned off the radio, and she felt a flutter of alarm. It was raining hard and the sturdy vehicle felt as intimate as a cocoon: the warmth, the hypnotic splash of the wipers, the soft sheen of the worn leather seats, the proximity to her hand of his own on the gear stick.

  ‘Can I just say, Annie …’ He paused, as if he was waiting to be denied permission, but she just waited, her heart skittering. She hoped he wasn’t about to declare undying love. He wasn’t.

  ‘I do understand, y’know, about Finn,’ he said. ‘I do know it’s hard for you, leaving him behind like this. I’ve not been talking much about it because I thought, well … I suppose I thought least said, soonest mended. But
I hope I haven’t come across as unfeeling.’

  She dipped her eyes and shook her head and said, ‘No, you haven’t,’ but that was all the reward he got for his graciousness because she couldn’t manage anything more. She felt hot and increasingly miserable, and when she lifted a hand to her temple it burned against her cold fingers.

  ‘I think I’m ill,’ she said in a murmur, and when Alf said, ‘Say again?’ she didn’t answer but only stayed quiet, lulled by the sounds of the road – tyres on tarmac, rain on the roof – until eventually she drifted into a kind of slumber, a half-sleep, drifting and feverish. Disparate images ran through her mind, pictures from the far and the recent past flickering behind her closed lids like a cine film with no regard for chronology. Herself in her mother’s wedding dress; Finn in a field with a bloodied muzzle; Vince in winkle pickers at the Locarno; baby Andrew plump and lovable on her kitchen floor; Vince growling at her from his hospital bed; her father leaving the house for work in pinstripes and a bowler hat; Michael scowling in concentration as he counted the paving slabs on the way to school; Martha Hancock smiling in a sun dress at Whitley Bay, and then again, on the seat of a bus in Coventry, and yet again, in the narrow hallway of Sydney Road. On and on the images spun and Annie watched them loom and fade with a strange, sleepy detachment until outside the car someone in another lane blasted their horn and she snapped open her eyes and sat up. Ahead, the low-slung contours of a silver sports car were streaking away from them.

  ‘Blithering idiot,’ Alf said, and then glanced at Annie. ‘Sorry, were you asleep?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’ She felt dazed.

  ‘Two miles to a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Just then, when you might or might not have been asleep?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Jumbled thoughts.’

  ‘When I’m behind the wheel of my car I always get nostalgic,’ Alf said. ‘On a long journey, like. My thoughts always run backwards, not forwards.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said. Her throat was beginning to hurt now whether she swallowed or not and inside her head a dull heat seemed to throb in time with the windscreen wipers, one-two, one-two, one-two. She imagined the virus barrelling through her system, growing in size and strength like a snowball rolling down a hill.

  ‘Tell me one thing about your past, and I’ll tell you one thing about mine.’

  She stared at him, appalled, and he shot her a jaunty grin.

  ‘You start,’ he said. His eyes were back on the road again now, and he’d begun to indicate, ready to leave the motorway. She thought about the things she might say, and how utterly shocked he would be to hear them. ‘Come on,’ Alf said. ‘One salient fact about Annie Doyle’s past.’

  Back and forth like a metronome went the wipers and now it was as if they were urging her on to recklessness. Annie considered the night she’d plunged down the riverbank with Martha Hancock; should she tell Alf Dinmoor all about that? The fear, the fury, the desperation, the smell of rotting vegetation, the shock of the water, the extraordinary endurance of guilt and relief and shame.

  ‘You just think I’m a harmless old lady,’ she said, and he laughed.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said.

  ‘You have no idea.’

  They were on the slip road now, and the noise of the motorway was already receding. He glanced at her uncertainly, vaguely alarmed at her dark tone, but the wet road required his concentration and there was a roundabout ahead.

  ‘You think you’ve got my number,’ she said.

  ‘Ah now, hang on …’

  ‘But really, nobody actually knows me.’ Her eyes burned, her head pounded, and she listened in some surprise to her own voice and the things it seemed to want to say. ‘I mean, the real me.’

  He risked a laugh, but she wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Everyone thinks I’m harmless and a bit silly but I could shock you with what I’ve done.’

  ‘Well, if we’re talking about past misdemeanours, I’ve one or two skeletons in my closet, too.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. Her voice was spiked with urgency suddenly, as if what she was saying was of the utmost importance, and indeed, it did seem that way to Annie; it was imperative that he listened.

  ‘If you knew me,’ she said, ‘I mean really knew me, you more than likely wouldn’t want me in your car.’

  ‘Annie, Annie.’ He was indicating left now, pulling into the lane that would lead them into the service station. ‘I’ve seen it all, and I can promise you there’s nothing you’ve done that I’d judge you for.’

  ‘There you go,’ she said, ‘you think I’m just a harmless old biddy. Nobody ever thinks I’ll do anything.’ She was right back at the river’s edge looking into Martha’s sceptical grey eyes, and Alf was silent. He patrolled the car park for a while, looking for a space, then reversed into a bay and cut the engine.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘more than likely you’re lightheaded wi’ hunger, but if there’s summat you need to confess, tell a priest, because it’s not my business. God knows, we both have a past behind us and I certainly wouldn’t want anybody poking their nose into mine. All I know is, I like you, so can’t we just be friends?’

  She pursed her mouth and silently hoped they could. But she wasn’t sure.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’m starving. My belly thinks my throat’s been cut.’

  He was out of the car now, shutting the door, and then he walked round to her side to hand her down from the car’s lofty seat. He peered at her and said, ‘Are you all right? You look clammy.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel quite myself.’

  Alf pressed a palm on her forehead and his cool hand felt so comforting she wished he’d leave it there but instead he said, ‘Aye aye, you’re running a temperature. Come on, let’s get you inside,’ and off he set. At first she just stood and watched him, then after a few moments she followed. The smell of grilled meat, charred and salty, wafted on the wind from a burger van in the car park. Feed a cold, she thought, or starve it? Feed a fever, starve a cold, which was it? She couldn’t think straight. Alf waited for her to catch him up but before she could ask him he picked up where he’d left off.

  ‘In my line of work,’ he said as they fell into step, ‘I met some right villains. Talk about nasty secrets, dear me.’

  ‘Mapmaking?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Your line of work. You said were a mapmaker.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘no, Byron Bay and all that? No, that was just a hobby, a bit of amateur cartography. Expensive business, mind you, gave it up years ago.’

  ‘So what was your line of work then?’ She felt a little disillusioned, reassessing him in her head, letting go of the mapmaker, preparing to meet the mechanic, the banker, the salesman of double glazing.

  ‘Copper,’ he said, and she didn’t immediately grasp his meaning so he clarified. ‘Policeman. Detective inspector, to be accurate.’ She was silent, staring, so he shrugged and grinned. ‘CID. So I’ve met plenty of crooks in my time, believe you me, and every one of ’em could give you a run for your money, whatever it is you say you’ve done.’

  ‘Where?’ Annie stopped short. Her head swam and she reached out and placed a shaking hand on a concrete post, privately thanking God it was there. Alf looked worried.

  ‘Beg pardon?’ he said.

  ‘Where? Which police? What part of the country?’

  There was a ferocity to her line of questioning that he didn’t quite understand. He hesitated, then said, ‘Manchester at first, a stint in Warwickshire in the late seventies, South Yorkshire till retirement. Itinerant detective, me.’

  He was trying to keep things light, but it wasn’t easy and Annie just kept on staring. He waited and she studied him: considered the possibility that here she was, found out at last, her dark deception uncovered. In her present state of mind it didn’t seem o
utlandish that all this might have been planned and the past two days had only been the lengthy preamble to an elaborate sting. And yet the moment when he must surely charge her, arrest her, crush her with the full force of the law came and went and still he was merely offering her a pleasant, unguarded smile. He didn’t know a thing.

  ‘You all right?’ Alf said. ‘You’re white as a sheet.’

  Annie looked at him and his face was all concern, and she wondered whether it might actually be a blessing to shed her burden of guilt to this kind man: to offer up her liberty in exchange for a different kind of freedom. She didn’t know, but standing there in front of Alf she was tempted. The past seemed all of a sudden to be pressing down on the carapace of her conscience, finding its fault lines.

  ‘In 1969 …’ she said, experimentally, then stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t 1969, it was 1970.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The very worst thing I ever did.’

  ‘Water under the bridge,’ Alf said.

  She winced. She’d stopped walking now, and he watched her with folded arms and a vexed expression.

  ‘Where were you in 1979?’ she asked, changing tack. He laughed.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Tell me. Where were you?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ he asked.

  ‘Just what I say.’

  ‘Well, all right, let me see.’

  ‘Coventry,’ Annie said. She’d seen him before, she realised: those clever blue eyes, that unwavering determination in the line of his mouth.