He comes to the side of the bed and sits down. ‘It’s just a flying visit,’ he says. ‘I just wanted a quick look at you.’ He takes hold of the hand that is reaching for the phone and feels my pulse. ‘Mm,’ he says, looking intently into my face, ‘that’s going hell for leather. I think I should give you a sedative.’
So that’s how he’s going to do it. He’s going to inject me with something.
‘It’s all right,’ I squeak. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine. Let’s have a look at the bumps.’ He gets closer, taking my head between his hands. I seem to be having trouble remembering how to breathe and I wonder if he can feel the vibrations of my thudding heart. ‘Doesn’t look too bad,’ he says, and then he smiles. ‘I’m awfully glad you had my hat on. It may just have saved your life.’ Then he gets up. ‘You’re sure you don’t want something to calm you down?’
I shake my head. I don’t trust my voice.
‘Well, take it easy,’ he says. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock.’ And he’s gone. I hear him open the front door and close it behind him; I listen to his footsteps on the path; I hear his car start up and drive away. I lie back, limp and helpless, and let weak, invalid tears of relief trickle down my face.
Relief and shame. Shame rushes in on me in a hot wave. What the hell possessed me to cast Colin as a sinister killer? Colin, who saw the girls through nappy rash and colic, earaches and tonsillitis, chicken pox and measles? Colin, who is married to my best friend, who stood at the end of my bed wearing a tweed jacket identical to all the others he has worn for the past twenty years? I’m appalled at myself, and horrified at the thought that Colin, that kind, funny, gentle man, must have read my fear of him in my eyes. How am I ever going to face him again?
I’m right about the rest of it, though. All right, Colin doesn’t belong on my suspects list, but I’m right about the core of it, I’m certain, and when David turns up I pour it all out to him. Actually, he has some trouble getting in. Ironically, where Colin had no trouble effecting an entrance, David the cop is stalled at the front door by my mother who, terrier-like, is guarding the entrance. I hear their altercation in fragments:
‘… asked me to call,’ says David.
‘… can’t be disturbed,’ says my mother.
‘… sounded quite urgent,’ says David.
‘… needs to rest,’ says my mother.
‘… just for a few minutes,’ says David.
‘… has to follow medical advice,’ says my mother.
Terrified that he’ll allow himself to be sent away, I have to haul myself out of bed yet again, to stand at the top of the stairs in my nightie and tell my mother, forcefully, to lay off. She makes an elaborate pantomime of washing her hands of me and shuffles off to her room; I go back to bed and when David comes in bearing a little bunch of freesias, I launch in.
‘The DVDs,’ I say. ‘If someone was prepared to half-kill me to get my copy back, there’s got to be something really incriminating on it – and that doesn’t mean a crap musical. It’s got to be criminal, and that means it’s got to be porn. More than that, I think – David, I think it’s child porn – it’s paedophile stuff.’
David starts to break in. ‘Don’t stop me,’ I say, ‘or I shall lose my courage. It was this that made me realise.’ I point to an item in the paper about the arrest of members of a French paedophile ring. ‘I told you there was a puzzle about Marina Carson – about her attainment scores going down while she was away in Switzerland. My friend who’s a child psychiatrist says emotional trauma while she was away could have done that – but that her attainment should have picked up when she got back unless the trauma is ongoing. I think she was abused while they were away. I think she was made to pose for porn DVDs and I think it carried on after they got back. The DVDs all have different numbers on the back – I’ve seen four, five and six – so they must be different – a series. Obviously, it can’t just be Marina on them – there must be other children as well – but I think she’d finally had enough and someone was afraid she was going to blow the whistle, and so they killed her.’
David sits down in the chair by the window and puts his head in his hands. Then he looks up. ‘I don’t need to point out, do I, that this is pure guesswork?’ he asks. ‘And the autopsy on Marina found no evidence of sexual abuse.’ I open my mouth to protest. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘if we take a look at one of those DVDs we’ll know if you’re right, won’t we?’
I stare at him. I felt so sure my intuition was right and I so wanted him to take me seriously, but now he’s sitting here not telling me I’m talking rubbish and, perversely, I don’t want him to. I want him to tell me that I’m talking utter nonsense and he can prove it, that by a horribly unlucky chance Marina interrupted a burglary, that no-one has been abused – not Marina, not any other child, that Marlbury is just the safe, dull little town it makes itself out to be and all is hunky-dory.
We’re silent, avoiding each other’s eye. The pictures in my head are dark and inchoate, but he must really know, mustn’t he?
‘I can only guess at what we’re talking about here,’ I say. ‘But you must have seen this sort of stuff, presumably, in the line of duty?’ He nods. ‘So what is it like?’
He looks away. ‘It’s vile,’ he says, ‘in a way I can’t begin to describe.’
‘I realise that,’ I say, more brusquely than I intend, ‘but what I mean is, couldn’t she have been made to do things that wouldn’t have hurt her physically- that wouldn’t show up in an autopsy? You know what I mean. I don’t have to spell it out, do I? Maybe -’ this comes as a new thought, ‘- they made her be an abuser.’
We sit and look at each other. ‘It’s possible,’ he says. He gets up and goes over to the window, watching the snow falling. ‘Paedophile images are disseminated online,’ he says. ‘I’ve never come across them being sold on DVD.
I would like to say, ‘Yes, of course, it was a silly idea, forget it’, and then I could pack it up and not have to think about it any more and spend the afternoon reading Little Women, my book of refuge when all else fails. Instead, I say reluctantly, ‘But it would be quite clever, wouldn’t it? If you access porn on line, the police can always find it on your hard disc; a DVD is much easier to hide or destroy. The problem would be distribution, if you were going to sell actual discs, but Edmund and those two at the Aphra Behn may have found a way to do it.’
‘So in your scenario, it’s just the three of them, is it? And Edmund would be the link with Switzerland? A boy of what – fifteen – when they came back?’
‘He’s very adult for his age. Unnervingly, actually. His parents could be in it too, I suppose. But if Glenys was involved, then why would Marina have been so protective of her? She obviously saw her as vulnerable. In fact, supposing Driver and Cunningham got Marina to do what they wanted and keep quiet by threatening harm to Glenys. Perhaps they were deliberately working on Glenys’s nerves – making her jumpy – and making Marina feel that she had to keep her safe.’
‘They could have made the DVDs at the theatre, but more likely they’d have done it at Charter Hall. We found a sort of studio – nothing sinister in it, just a few cameras and some lighting. Hector Carson said it was Edmund’s. His passion, he said.’
‘So if they were filming there, they’d have needed to keep Glenys scared – make sure she didn’t come exploring and find out what they were doing.’
David has stood up and is standing with his back to me, watching the snow falling.
‘Adults and children,’ he says, without turning round.
‘Sorry?’
He turns. ‘The neighbours saw adults and children being ferried up and down the river in the Carsons’ boat. We assumed they were running an illicit business, but not this kind.’
‘So you think I’m right?’
‘I think there are grounds for investigating. Cunningham and Driver could have got hold of the children. Child actors are often models as well, aren’t they? Cunningha
m and Driver will have access to all the child modelling agencies, and we know some of them are a front for paedophiles. They’d ferry them up to Charter Hall, put the fear of God into them to keep them quiet and send them home with a nice pay packet. As far as the parents were concerned, it would have been just a modelling assignment.’
Swallowing the bile I feel rising in my throat, I say, ‘So all you’ve got to do is search their offices – there’ll be lists – maybe mailing lists of clients – ‘ I stop as I see the look on his face. ‘Well, I expect you know what to do,’ I finish lamely.
‘I expect I do,’ he says.
‘Sorry. But there is just one more thing.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got a picture in my head. Something Eve said when we were first talking about Marina. She said Hector spent most of his time with Glenys when she was in the clinic and there was a housekeeper and her husband to keep an eye on the children. I don’t know why, but I pictured something sinister: a big, dark house, frightened children, a mean-faced couple, something Dickensian. Maybe that’s where it started, in the house. You could try and find the couple. You could ask –‘
‘Gina. This may be an inspiration on your part and it may not. I’m taking it seriously. Just leave it with me.’
‘All right. Fine. I’ll leave it to you.’
‘Good. I think you should sleep now. You don’t look well.’
‘I’m all right.’
I listen to him going down the stairs and I can’t let him go without saying one more thing. ‘David,’ I call. ‘You really have to get hold of one of those DVDs.’
‘No, really?’ he calls. ‘I didn’t think I’d bother.’
And he slams the front door behind him.
23
FRIDAY 19th NOVEMBER
Most provident in peril
‘I HAVE to go to this meeting. I’m forty-seven years old. I make my own decisions.’
I am yelling at my mother and my daughter, who have joined forces to keep me chained to my bed. ‘It’s an examiners’ meeting,’ I say in a tone that is battling to be reasonable. ‘We have things to discuss. Arrangements for orals, for one thing. They were a disaster last time. I have to be there. I have things to say.’ I catch a glance between the two of them. ‘And don’t look at each other like that!’ I yell. ‘There is a world out there where my opinions are actually valued – in contrast to here, where everything I say is automatically dismissed as nonsense.’
My mother pounces. ‘Well, now you are talking nonsense, Virginia,’ she says. ‘If you want to convince us that you are actually feeling better, you’d be wise not to talk such wild rubbish.’
How does she do it? How does she manage even now to turn me into a raging adolescent? ‘I’m not discussing this any more,’ I say as coolly as I can manage. ‘I have a meeting to go to.’ I stamp upstairs, my head ringing.
I don’t, in fact, feel at all well. I slept badly, tormented by dreams. The outhouse studio at Charter Hall turned into a horror movie, with mirrors, trap doors and dungeons, and the child I had to save, but never could because I was a helpless, crawling creature, was not Marina, of course, but Freda – Freda sometimes with her own face and sometimes with Annie’s. And the person I blamed was not the abuser, who was nowhere to be found. No, the person I raged at, voiceless and struggling for breath, the person who should have been protecting the child but was looking the other way, was my mother. I woke once, struggling for breath, and was puzzled to find that my face was wet with tears.
Well, it doesn’t take an oneirologist to interpret all this and I’m not proud of what it says about the state of my subconscious, so I’d sooner get out and shake off the miasma that my night-time horrors have left behind. Besides, I can walk about today without danger of falling over and though I feel a bit shaky and sick, a nasty dream is hardly good grounds for crying off a meeting.
The meeting actually is important; it’s about the Cambridge exams and I owe it to my students to be there. It’s happening out at Dungate, on the coast, where there’s a profusion of language schools occupying, for the most part, abandoned hotels. The Cambridge exams happen here in one of the better-preserved hotels, which offers its “conference room” for the occasion, and fills it with wobbly folding tables and chairs (one of the issues I want to talk about). I’m not going into college this morning; I’m simply going to take the train out to Dungate, go to The Wellington School of English to talk and eat sandwiches with my fellow English teachers, and then return to Marlbury. It’s hardly a taxing day, and the alternative is to stay at home wondering how David’s investigation is going and whether he’ll let me know if he finds anything and whether, in truth, I want to know if he does.
There are problems about my going out anywhere, though: I have bruises all over my face and my warm outdoor clothes have all been taken away for forensic examination. I can’t do much to conceal the bruises, which are now an angry purple and seem only to glow more vividly under a film of foundation. I try wearing a silk scarf over my head and tying it under my chin, which does something for the bruises but makes me look like the queen at a point-to-point, so I decide I’d rather look like a victim of domestic violence and take it off. Instead I bundle my hair, which is filthy but can’t be washed because of my head wounds, into a velvet hat, which I bought to wear to a wedding a couple of years ago, and, since my winter coat has been taken into custody, I dig out from the spare room cupboard a fake fur coat, which dates from the 1980’s when they were all the rage. Fun furs they were called, though I’m not sure in what exactly the fun resided. Were we supposed to have fun in them – more, say, that in cashmere? Was the fur itself having fun at our expense, the acrilan having a laugh at those of us foolish enough to think it was genuine animal? Or was it the little furry creatures who had been saved from being turned into coats who were having the fun? Whatever the case, I wrap myself in its fun-imbued warmth, add a pair of après-ski boots, a relic of a long-ago school ski trip, and thus quaintly accoutred I depart, in a taxi, for the station.
Dungate was a popular resort up till the 1960’s, and its sea front is thickly lined with substantial Victorian villas. A relatively short train ride from London, it thrived as a watering place with its pier and pleasure gardens and little theatre, but since the advent of package deals to foreign parts with guaranteed extra sun, it has suffered a sad decline. The villas have become care homes, hostels, half-way houses and private language schools. The pier is haunted by wraiths: sad foreign students, homesick and chilled to the heart by the brisk east wind, mingle with down and outs who once, as children, had a happy holiday here and have washed up on this coast in a muddle of alcoholic nostalgia.
It is breathtakingly cold here this morning and The Wellington School of English seems to be economising on its heating bills. The sandwiches are from Marks and Spencer’s, but I’m still feeling sick and can’t enjoy them. My colleagues are all too polite to ask me who socked me on the jaw but it may be a tacit sympathy vote that allows me to get my way over the thorny questions of wobbly desks and waiting areas for oral exams. Our students have enough to contend with without having to write at desks which wobble about and threaten to collapse. It’s particularly hard for those students – Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Greek, Arab – who are writing in a new script, and they regularly get docked marks for poor handwriting. A letter must be sent to the exam board, I urge, demanding decent desks. As for the orals, students waiting for their turn sit outside the exam room and can hear everything examiner and student say through the thin partition wall. This can be a blessing in enabling them to prepare or a curse in sending them into a spiral of panic.
‘Either way, it’s NOT RIGHT,’ I trumpet, and I go on, with increasing stridency, to insist that the hotel must be tackled and told to provide a proper waiting room.
Trivial issues, you may think, and I suspect my colleagues think so too, but for some reason, this morning, they seem matters of critical importance to me. The others gaze at me i
n puzzlement and I see myself in their eyes, not just the usual scruffy, pushy Gina, but a woman turned slightly alarming by her stridency, her battered face and her evident closeness to tears.
I leave the meeting in plenty of time to catch the 2.53 train, since the ice is frozen solid on the pavements here and the slithering stumble to the station isn’t to be undertaken in a hurry. The train is dirty and chilly, as they always are on this line, and it stops constantly, but I sit on it passively, noting, as I always do, the succession of unmistakeably Saxon place names along the way: Washam and Culham, Little Felling and Church Ritton, Elmcote and Eastcote, Ladyfield and Shepton Halt. I hear Shepton Halt several times before it occurs to me that it would be possible for me to get off the train when we get there, go round to Charter Hall to pick up one of their DVDs and be back in Marlbury on the next train.
I’m worried that David won’t give priority to getting hold of a DVD, that he’ll start asking questions and putting the wind up those slime-balls at the theatre, and they’ll dump the DVDs in the river or somewhere before we can get hold of one. I should have faith in him, I know, and I do, really, but I can’t bear the thought that they might get away. Also, I would like to get a look at this studio David talked about. I want to see it because I think I can deal better with the images which danced in my head all night if I’ve got a real life image to keep them at bay. As we approach Shepton Halt, I remember something I saw in yesterday’s local paper: there was a picture of Glenys Summers and the announcement that she would be switching on Marlbury’s Christmas lights today. What time? I can’t remember and I need to know. I can’t risk bumping into her again. I call my mother.
All the Daughters Page 21