Parallel Life

by Ruth Hamilton

  Daisy twinkled. ‘Bye-bye,’ she said sweetly. ‘Can I have ten pence for being good?’

  Lisa laughed.

  Annie shook her head. ‘See? She’s going to be one of them there dictators when she grows up. Like Tony Blair.’

  When they had left, Lisa felt lonely. She thought about her circle of bridge-and-Botox pals, folk she had happened upon in her fruitless search for everlasting youth. They weren’t real. Annie was real – terrifyingly so. Annie was prepared to do just about anything to keep her little family together. She would work hard, remain humorous in the face of any kind of threat, would never throw in the towel. I think I have a friend, Lisa told herself after releasing Simon for his lunch break. And I am going to keep her.

  It was like being in prison. Even with new furniture and clean windows, Sally Potter’s cottage was dark. He hadn’t stayed in all the time. Firstly, he had needed to get out for sanity’s sake; on another occasion, he had bought clothes and something to read. He’d kept himself out of town so far, as he didn’t want Annie or anyone who knew her spotting his vehicle in the area, but he took a chance, drove to Chorley and got himself a Bedford van.

  Anger still bubbled when he thought about Lisa. She hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in her gob; she had acquired her attitude from her mother-in-law and from a few certificates in gemmology or some such highly important subject connected to chips of diamond and bits of gold. He had been the love of her life, yet she had turned on him. He wondered who would be the next on her list, because she wasn’t likely to cleave unto that dry old stick with his trains and his microbes.

  Sally was getting on his nerves. She kept poring through acres of catalogue pages in her search for sexy clothing that would actually fit her larger than average frame. She wasn’t exactly obese, but she sometimes looked like a heavyweight wrestler in drag – large arms, bootlace straps over the shoulders and a faint moustache on the upper lip if she hadn’t done whatever she did to remove facial hair.

  He leaned back in a new cream leather chair. If he pressed a button, the back tilted and a footrest appeared from beneath the seat. But he couldn’t be bothered. She was out scrubbing other people’s floors, while he was stuck in with terrestrial channels, a crackly radio and today’s Daily Mail. This was no life for a man of ambition. He needed to be out and about, putting bets on, scoping out the odd detached house in one of the better areas, sinking a pint in a town-centre pub.

  It was time to venture forth again, he thought. With a baseball cap and some dark sunglasses, he would be unrecognizable and relatively safe. But if he stayed in this dump any longer, he might well become a candidate for the funny farm. She would be back soon, cooing and clucking and cooking his dinner. Stir craziness was not for him; he donned his disguise, left the house and set off over the moor towards Bolton’s ring road.

  In the town, he bought cigarettes, a Bolton Evening News, a couple of shirts and some shaving cream from the market. It was after he had left the news kiosk that he spotted Annie. She was talking to a woman in the doorway of a shop, and that shop was Milne’s Jewellers. So. The scene in the bungalow hadn’t been enough for them. They continued to meet, that was as plain as a pikestaff. As he was the only factor they had in common, they had to be talking about him. What was there to talk about? They had the gun from a robbery he had never committed, so he was already stymied. What the hell was going on? Could they do any more to him?

  He rushed back to his newly-acquired Bedford, lit a cigarette and waited for his hands to become steadier. Perhaps they were going to give the gun to the police. Surely not – that old bird had said quite clearly that as long as he didn’t mention Lisa’s part in concealing loot, they would hang on to the gun. What else, then? Mrs Compton-Milne was not the type to break a promise. He had met her sort before, so did Annie still have the gun? Or was it in Lisa’s shop?

  He drove back to Sal’s house, slamming the door after letting himself in. She wasn’t back yet. At the tiny kitchen table, he made a list of possibilities. The gun could be at either of the Milne shops, or it might be in that rambling great house on the outskirts of town. There was a chance that Annie still had it, but he doubted that. Lisa’s house. Weaver’s something-or-other. It didn’t matter. The lane, too, was Weaver’s whatever, and he knew exactly where the Compton-Milnes lived. There was a small wood at the back of the house; there was also a great deal of land. He couldn’t dig that lot up, not without a JCB. But he could get into the house. Even if she had changed the alarm, there was nothing he couldn’t handle. They didn’t own a dog. The old girl lived in the roof. The lad had a house within the house, but it was unlikely that the kids had been dragged into the gun business.

  I’ll have a quick shufti tonight, he promised himself. Without the gun, they had nothing. The police might still be looking for him, but as long as he wasn’t connected to the Birmingham shooting he was reasonably safe. It all boiled down to a gun left in a car all those years ago. No. It was really his own stupidity, because he should have disposed of it. Furthermore, he should never have let Annie find out where he kept his hidden cash. Hindsight was always 20/20, wasn’t it?

  He heard Sal’s bike creaking its way round to the back of the house. Jumping up, he shoved the list into his pocket and rushed to fill the kettle. ‘Nice cup of tea in a minute, love,’ he said. ‘Oh, and I’ll be out tonight,’ he added as casually as he could manage.

  ‘Where?’ Sally asked.

  ‘It’s one of the houses I fitted with an alarm. It’s gone faulty, and they’ve had burglars two nights on the trot. The cops will be there in case the robbers come back, and I said I’d go. Not to mend it, because they want to catch the buggers, but just to be there and see why it’s not working.’

  ‘Right. When will you be back?’ She had soft eyes. They were almost bovine: gentle, unquestioning, accepting. Yes, she was like some pet calf that expected – and got – affection from its owner.

  ‘Early hours. It could even be morning. But you’ll be all right,’ he assured her.

  The sad brown eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t like being on me own,’ she said, bottom lip quivering. ‘That was why I let meself go, Jimmy. See, it’s very isolated round here for a woman by herself.’

  ‘I know that, love.’

  ‘I need you, Jimmy.’

  He knew that, also. Although his conscience had seldom troubled him in the past, he suddenly felt guilty. She’d been dealt a bad hand, had poor Sal. And here she was with the ace of spades cleverly disguised as her king of hearts. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  He escaped upstairs for a wash and a shave, and found his camouflage jacket and some black shoe polish. This was going to be a massive task, and he needed not to be visible. Wire cutters and other tools were in the van, so he was ready for the off.

  Sitting in the van, he thought about his twin boys, Billy and Craig, who were both little rascals, both up to their ears in trouble at school. He missed the boys, missed Daisy, missed Annie, kept missing his way. I wish I was a good man, he thought. But I have to get that bloody gun back, fair means or foul. I have to.

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’ Eileen Eckersley stood her ground, arms clasped across a flat, unforgiving chest. ‘That was a bad one. You’ll be sore in the night. What if you need the bathroom?’ She shook her head. ‘No, that was a really bad one.’

  Hermione cleared her throat. ‘They’ve all been bad ones. I’ve tried to have good ones, tried to fall upwards instead of downwards, but the chap who discovered gravity forbids it. I fall. I fall down. It happens.’

  Eileen tutted. ‘Two and a half hours in hospital. Two and a half hours just to see there was nothing broken.’

  ‘Oh, well, I am sorry. I’d have arranged for a fractured femur if I’d known that was what you wanted. In fact, I might have gone for a broken back if I’d realized you felt so strongly.’

  ‘That isn’t what I mean, and well you know it.
How-and-ever, I am staying the night. You can shout from here to Limerick, and I’ll still be here. Have your tantrums, but sit still while you’re having them. I am off to make a cup of tea.’

  Hermione grinned to herself ruefully, then grimaced when her legs began hurting again. It wasn’t getting any easier. It had started all those years ago with blurred vision and a knee that didn’t always bear her weight, but, lately, things were becoming intolerable. It was the beginning of June, and she’d had a headache since New Year.

  ‘I remember when my left leg started running away with me,’ she said to the open kitchen door.

  ‘So do I. They thought you were shoplifting, didn’t they?’

  ‘They did, indeed. But what could I do? My left leg made decisions of its own, and the rest of me was forced to follow. And, were I to shoplift, it would be something a bit better than three pairs of cotton knickers.’

  Eileen reappeared. ‘No more remissions, eh?’

  The older woman nodded. ‘Just bad to worse from now on. And these painkillers don’t do a thing beyond interfering with my digestion. All I ask is the occasional good day.’

  ‘I know.’

  The aspect that really annoyed Hermione was her deficient immune system. Other people got colds; she got pneumonia, antibiotics, steroids and lectures on smoking. Swallowing was difficult. She didn’t want to end up with her head clamped to the wheelchair and a pipe into her stomach. Never to taste food again? What was the point of staying alive if and when that happened? She had her stash of tablets in case she decided she’d had enough, but what if she became too disabled to get them and to swallow them?

  ‘Biscuit?’ called Eileen from the kitchen.

  ‘No, thanks.’ It was a baby cup today, a plastic thing with a spout to guard against spillage. Eileen would never help her if it came to suicide. She was a good Catholic, and she believed in the sanctity of life, whatever the situation. Lisa might. But Lisa would have to answer to the law, and that would never do.

  ‘There you go.’ The tea was placed on a tray attached to the wheelchair.

  ‘No,’ snapped Hermione. ‘Get me out of this contraption and into a chair. And I am a bone china woman. I want a cup and a saucer.’

  ‘Oh, please – you’re still shaking from the fall.’

  Hermione glared. ‘Walker, chair, cup – NOW!’

  When the transfer of woman to easy chair and tea to china had been achieved, the old woman was breathless. Determined as ever, she slowed her breathing and lifted the cup to her lips. The tea was tepid, and she drank it in just a few seconds. ‘There,’ she gloated. ‘I can do it. And I shall do it. We are not defeated, Eileen. Not yet, anyway.’

  The carer had to dash a tear from her face when she ran briefly back across to her own house. She prepared a supper for her husband and explained to him that she would be away for the night. ‘She’s getting frail, so she is. Not in the brain department – oh no – she’s twenty-five in her head. But her poor old body is breaking down, Stanley.’

  ‘Comes to all of us, love.’

  Eileen stood by the table, a fork in her hand and tears on her cheeks. ‘She’s one of those things like the Blarney Stone – you think it’ll be there for ever. But the water drips and the stone wears away. It’s the tiredness that annoys her. And the nearly choking when she eats.’

  Stanley Eckersley looked at his wife and felt his heart breaking. The Compton-Milnes had been her life, because she had been denied children of her own. She loved Hermione, loved all of them, but her devotion to the elder Mrs Compton-Milne was total. ‘I think you were right, Eileen, what you told me the other day. You know – the day when she went out with Lisa. Something particular happened, and it’s upset her. Her MS is always worse if something gets her goat.’

  His wife nodded and wiped away her tears with the skirt of her apron. ‘It was bad. She said she’d met a very amusing lady called Freda, but there was more to it than that. A lot more.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t let you go with them.’

  ‘No. It’s all tied up with Lisa, of course. There’s always something afoot with that madam – another boyfriend or some such foolishness. Her husband pays her no heed, so she looks elsewhere for comfort.’ Eileen sniffed. ‘One man in a person’s life is trouble enough.’

  Stanley grinned. ‘Aye, you’ve said that more than once.’

  ‘You know I don’t mean it.’

  ‘Aye, true enough.’

  ‘I’d never have put up with you all this long while if I meant half I said.’

  He stood up and put his arms around her. ‘Go on, lass. I can sort meself out and wash a few pots. She needs you.’

  Stanley ate his meal and cleaned everything up. The Compton-Milnes had been good to the Eckersleys. If Eileen had to stay across the way for a while, it was no matter. Hermione deserved the best. And his Eileen was the best.

  It was an enormous task, thought Jimmy Nuttall after parking the van. Having travelled on foot down Weaver’s Weft, he found himself facing a house that must once have been four or five weavers’ cottages. The needle in a haystack metaphor didn’t apply – this would be like searching Blackpool beach for one particular grain of sand. It was hopeless. He could check his own house, but he could not bring himself to believe that Annie had been allowed to take the gun back home.

  He stood behind a hedge and lit an Embassy. It wouldn’t be in his mother’s bungalow, either. And it certainly hadn’t found its way into any of the shops’ safes. After extinguishing his cigarette, he crept down the side of Weaver’s Warp, saw the woods, looked at the recently erected bungalow. This was no place for a gun, either; not with builders milling around and digging holes for sewer pipes. It might be further into the copse, but again, where to start? It was hopeless. ‘But I bet the old girl has it,’ he whispered. ‘She’s the sort to put herself in charge. Lives in the roof.’ He turned and looked back at the house. ‘It’s in there,’ he muttered. ‘She’ll be sitting on it, because she doesn’t want Lisa dragged in.’

  He could probably get inside, but he wasn’t completely sure of the layout. The alarm he had installed for Lisa covered the ground and first floors only, so he had never been up into the dress circle. He remembered the second lot of stairs, but had no idea when it came to the apartment – which was the bedroom? Was there a safe? Where was the kitchen? Getting caught in the act would not be a good idea, as he was already a suspect in local burglaries, and an invasion of Weaver’s Warp could well make the old girl change her mind and give the gun to police. It was a bloody mess.

  There had to be a way of getting the gun back. Deep in thought, he turned away from the house and began the walk back to his van. It was in that moment that the ghost appeared. Dressed in white, it wielded a stick that was very real, while the words it spat emerged in a thick, Irish brogue. ‘Get yourself on your way before I kill you. There’s nothing here for the likes of you. We don’t feed tramps.’

  He stumbled in a rut on the unadopted lane, righted himself, then felt the weight of her weapon across his back. Turning, he growled at her, roaring like a tiger in a cage. She didn’t budge an inch. Thanking God for the boot polish on his face, he raised a hand to grab the stick, but she was too quick for him. It whipped across his face, cutting into flesh, tearing as she dragged it away with a downward movement. ‘Get yourself lost,’ she screamed.

  A light came on in a bedroom of a cottage opposite the big house. The sash window shot open. ‘Eileen? Is that you? Are you all right?’

  ‘There,’ she snarled. ‘My husband and my son will be here in half a second, so run. They have a gun.’

  Gun? Was the gun in the cottage, then? Yet another bloody address to wonder about. His face was wet – he knew that he was bleeding. There was no ammo with the gun. Had they bought some? Jimmy ran as fast as his legs would carry him, turning right into the main road, jumping into the van, driving off with gears grinding and tyres screeching.

  In the lane, Eileen fell to her knees. She suddenly re
alized in a small way how Hermione suffered, because a failure in the leg department was terribly frightening. It must be purely horrible to suffer like this all the time. She had stood up to the intruder, yet now, when he had gone, her nerves had gone into overdrive.

  Stanley found her in a heap, slippered feet peeping out below the hem of a white nightdress. There was just a quarter moon, so the light was frugal. How had she seen the man in the dark? He posed that very question.

  ‘He lit a cigarette,’ she explained. ‘I was on the landing listening to Hermione’s breathing. She stops sometimes, you see, especially after one of her falls. And I saw through the hedge just a flicker of light. God alone knows what he was up to. He’d skin as black as a pot, but he was a white man, I’m sure, because the black had patches showing through. Like a soldier, you know?’

  ‘Camouflage.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. I frightened him, and I hit him twice because I didn’t want us all smothercated in our beds by some burgling traveller.’ With her husband’s help, Eileen rose on unsteady feet and allowed herself to be led down the side of the house and into the family kitchen.

  Lisa was there, face creamed, eye mask pushed up into her hair. ‘What the devil’s going on, Stan?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said grimly. ‘My wife’s just half-killed an intruder. He was out there in the bushes, and she saw him strike a match. So she tackled him.’

  Lisa sank into a kitchen chair. ‘You could have got yourself killed,’ she chided gently. ‘Why didn’t you wake us?’

  Eileen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just took Mr Gus’s walking stick and clouted the tramp.’

  Stanley raised said stick. It was bloodstained. ‘She clouted him, all right. He ran like he had a snake clamped to his arse.’ He blushed. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Lisa.

  The stairlift buzzed. ‘Oh, hell. She’s on her way down.’ Lisa filled the kettle and set it to boil. ‘See? Even after a bad fall, she’s got to be at the front of the queue if there’s a performance on. My mother-in-law misses nothing.’ She went to meet the miscreant. They heard her almost tender lecture. ‘You should be in bed. There’s nothing for you to worry about – have you seen the time? It’s nearly two o’clock.’