by Issy Brooke
“Yes. It was. It is.” She glanced at her watch. She was late.
“I am so sorry…”
“No, don’t start that. Ah, here we go.” Penny swerved violently into a tiny gap by the side of the road, and killed the engine. When they got out, they saw that she had buried one front wheel in the soft verge, and the car was lying at a rather jaunty angle, but it hardly mattered. They turned and began a brisk half-walk, half-run, back towards the slipe.
The bonfire had been lit and the flames were rising high into the sky. They could hear music being played over a PA system, but the first fireworks had not yet been set off.
There was a fun holiday atmosphere. People milled around. The kids were clutching sparklers and the adults held warm mulled wine they’d bought from a collection of food and drink vans that clustered in the car parking area. There were brightly-dressed volunteers holding buckets, representing a few local charities, and they wandered around to collect donations.
Much of the event had been paid for by a collection of local businesses, with the remainder of the money being raised by charging the food and drinks vans for their pitches. By the looks of things, they were doing a roaring trade.
She stared around, hoping to see Drew, but there was no sign of him.
Penny sent a quick text to Destiny, asking for her whereabouts.
“By the main safety stand,” she replied.
Penny grabbed Ariadne’s arm. “That way. Come on.” They pushed through the knots of people to a gazebo that was flying a high flag. While they went, Penny attempted to send an apologetic text to Drew. “Running late. Will be there soon. Sorry.”
When they reached the gazebo, they saw that the organisers had placed a few volunteer first aid people under it, and designated it as the lost child station.
Destiny was standing there, holding her phone, and scanning the scene. Her face lit up when she saw her mother and her aunt.
“Hey, over here!” She waved.
They dashed over and huddled in close. “Okay, tell me what’s happening,” Penny said.
“I didn’t have to call Inspector Travis. He was here anyway, but he’s not in uniform.”
“That’s weird,” Penny said. “He lives in Lincoln. Why would he be here?”
“Maybe he’s hoping to woo Francine back,” Ariadne offered.
“No. I reckon he’s more likely to be here undercover,” Penny said.
Ariadne grimaced. “And what about your suspects?”
“Everyone is here,” Destiny said. “And I spoke to Francine but she said that she had to go ahead with or without you. You know, she’s dressed entirely in black. She said she had a balaclava in her bag, but she wouldn’t tell me why.”
“There’s no reason why except that it makes her feel like an undercover agent,” Penny said.
“Oh. I wish I had one. Mum, can I have a balaclava for Christmas?”
“No.”
“Stop it, the pair of you. Did Francine say what she was going to do when she said she was going to ‘go ahead’?”
“No. She wouldn’t tell me. But she’s worked her way towards the stage where they are going to do the fireworks countdown. Look.”
It wasn’t so much a stage as a low temporary platform. There was a man in a dark coat fiddling with a microphone on a stand, and another man who apparently had wires coming out of his head walking backwards, spooling out another wire from a reel in his hand.
The people gathered around weren’t paying much attention to the scene yet. But there was Francine, poised, her eyes fixed on the stage.
Penny knew what Francine was about to do.
“She can’t steal the limelight from me now!” she said.
“She doesn’t know you’re here,” Destiny said.
“She will soon.” Penny squared her shoulders and began to head towards her old friend.
* * * *
Francine looked around just as Penny got to her side. She grabbed Penny and dragged her close, and whispered into her ear.
“They are all here! We need to act!”
“Travis is here; have you spoken to him?” Penny asked.
“I nodded at him. I don’t think he’d really want to talk to me, yet.”
“Of course. Have you seen Drew?”
“Yeah,” Francine said. “I told him you were delayed.”
“Thank you. What did he say?”
“Not much. He just rolled his eyes.”
Penny felt deflated. She reminded herself that she had another priority now. Back in Francine’s presence, she was all fired up once more, and ready for a grand denouncement. Her earlier rational sense was easily eroded by Francine’s infectious enthusiasm.
“What do you think?” Penny said. “Shall I just jump up on the stage and go for it?”
“The rest of us need to get into position first,” Francine said. “Is Ariadne here?”
“Yes, and Destiny.”
The man on the stage finished adjusting the microphone stand. He waved at the other man, who retreated to a pile of speakers that had been arranged at the far end.
“One-two, one-two. Ben, are you getting that? One-two.”
The other man waved back.
The man at the microphone tapped it, and then walked off to where the speakers were stacked up. Penny glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes before the scheduled start of the fireworks display. Soon, some local dignitary or business leader would be up there, opening the proceedings.
“Now!” said Francine, and shoved Penny towards the stage.
Penny leaped onto the low platform and lunged for the microphone. It whined as she pulled it towards her. She paused to scan the crowd.
Kevin was standing with a hotdog in his hands, off to the left, on his own. She felt a pang of pity for him, and waved to him.
In the centre, Charlotte was standing with William on his scooter, and both were staring with curiosity at her.
The same expression of surprise was on the faces of the rest of the crowd; all except for Inspector Travis, that is.
His was the face of doom.
There were other familiar faces in the crowd and their presence seemed to give Penny strength. She spotted Drew at last, with his arms folded, and he was looking only half-surprised. There was Sheila from the Post Office, and her quiet husband. The others from the rambling club were there, scattered around, mingled with the local shopkeepers that she knew. She recognised people from the craft group, and others that lived on her own street and elsewhere.
My town, she thought. And she had a duty to it.
But it was going to be a sad, and painful, duty.
She pointed at William and Charlotte. Ariadne and Francine began to move towards them, and suddenly William noticed that they were being caught in a pincher movement. He flung up his arm and shouted something.
Ariadne went to one side of him, and Francine the other. Get him away, get him away from this, somehow, Penny thought desperately.
Ariadne whispered something in William’s ear, but he pushed her away and glared at Penny, up on the platform. He shouted loud enough for them all to catch what he said.
“Is this it? Let’s hear what you’ve got then!”
Charlotte’s face was tight and mask-like.
Penny had suspected they would not be able to isolate the two of them, but it had been worth a try. The men at the side of the stage began to move towards her. She pulled the microphone out of the stand and held it an inch or so from her mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, aiming her words at William. “Inspector Travis, you might want to come forward.”
“Like I can make a speedy getaway in this thing!” William howled.
“Not for you,” she said sadly. “Charlotte Goodfellow, you killed Julie Rose. I am really sorry. You didn’t know she was your mother, did you?”
A gasp rippled round the crowd.
“Of course I didn’t, and no, I never killed nobody anyway!” Charlotte screamed.
“But we are all prisoners of our past,” Penny said, and nodded to Kevin, who looked startled before he smiled slightly. “And sometimes we think more about our past mistakes than anyone else does.” At this, Ariadne looked up at her.
William grabbed hold of Charlotte’s hand and pulled her close to him, with his other hand raised up to ward people off. “No, not my Charlotte. So yeah, she made mistakes in the past but that’s all done with.”
“Yes,” Penny said. “It was all over for everyone else. But not in her head, I think. Charlotte, you always felt like you let your father down, didn’t you?”
Some nasty person shouted, “He ain’t her father!” but Penny hissed and the sound was amplified into a crackle around the area.
Charlotte was pressed against the side of the scooter, clinging to William. “I did let him down,” she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
The silence that rolled across the crowd was almost tangible.
“I did let him down,” she repeated. “I wasn’t there for him when he needed me. I was in trouble, running around with a bad crowd, living on the street and in hostels. I got an apprenticeship, through my social workers, with that locksmith company that employs ex-offenders and drop-outs like me. I was going to do okay. But dad had had that stroke when I’d been away, and I know it was my fault, see. My fault!”
Ariadne moved closer to Charlotte, and Penny knew that her sister wanted to reach out to the vulnerable-looking young woman.
William was furious. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault! It was just fate. And Julie was so good to me – I miss her –”
“No, dad.”
Penny held her breath. William looked up at Charlotte. “I do miss her.”
“No, dad!” Charlotte spoke more loudly.
There was a painful silence.
Penny said, at last, “You’re here now, for your dad, aren’t you, Charlotte? You came back for him at last. And you didn’t need Julie any longer.”
“Yes. No. No, that’s not quite it.”
“Charlotte,” William said, “what have you done?” He spoke a little quieter now, not wanting to believe what he was hearing.
Charlotte shook her head and repeated, “No, you’re wrong. That’s not quite it.” She thinned her lips, and stared up at Penny defiantly. Inspector Travis and Destiny had come up behind William and Charlotte, but stopped a few feet away.
Everyone was looking at Penny. She had to come up with proof. What did Charlotte mean when she said “that’s not quite it?”
So, what was it?
Penny looked at them and felt so sorry for the tableau of family unity that she knew she was destroying. And it was so nice to see William out and enjoying community events–
Oh.
Oh.
“Julie did so much for you, William, didn’t she? And you were very grateful for that.”
“Yeah!” he shouted. “My poor Julie.”
“But she did everything for you. Even as you went through rehabilitation after your stroke. She moved in with you, right?”
“I moved in with her,” he said.
“Okay,” Penny said. “And you needed her, and I suppose she liked that, didn’t she? Everyone likes to be needed. Don’t they, Charlotte?”
Charlotte refused to answer.
“And Julie welcomed you back, too, Charlotte. She knew who you were, of course. She knew you were her daughter. She could see the bond between you and William, and she didn’t want to break that but she wanted to be part of things, still. She wanted to make everything better, for everyone. But she was scatty, and somehow disorganised.”
Ariadne was nodding.
“And that made her over-compensate. She cleaned, obsessively. Nothing was ever clean enough for her, was it, Charlotte?”
Charlotte shrugged slightly.
“That was just her way!” William called out. “There are worse things in the world to be!”
“Of course, I know,” Penny went on. “She was controlling but in a rather inefficient way. Poor Julie. She just wanted to help, in the only way she knew how – by completely taking over.”
“I needed it,” William said. “I needed her to take over and see to things.”
“And now? Even now? Now you’re here, enjoying the fireworks. You were out, at the history event. How many times in the past year have you been allowed out, William?”
“She never stopped me.”
“She never gave you any reason to leave the house. It was all done for you.”
William looked confused, and he frowned as he thought about it. “But …”
“And when Charlotte came back, Charlotte wanted to change all that. She could see how overbearing and stifling Julie was being.”
“She wouldn’t listen!” Charlotte blurted out. “She got me on a course that I didn’t want to do. She bought me new clothes but I didn’t like them. She just did everything for me, and she was doing it for dad, and I couldn’t stand it. I booked us tickets to go to see a show in Lincoln so she bought us the dvd instead so we didn’t have to leave the house and mess around in the traffic and all that. She wouldn’t listen! She didn’t love us as we were. She wanted to make us into different people. She wanted to love what she thought we ought to be.”
Penny let that sink in to the listening crowd for a heartbeat, and then she said, flatly, “So you killed her.”
Charlotte burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. “It was an accident.”
“You took the chemicals from Kevin’s van and put them down the toilet, knowing that Julie would soon be putting a different chemical down there – as she did, every day.”
“It’s not my fault we both cleaned the loo on the same day,” Charlotte protested.
“And you locked the bathroom door.”
“I did not!”
Penny sighed. “You had trained as a locksmith, hadn’t you? You locked the window and threw the key outside, making it look like it had slipped out. And then you fiddled with the door so that it would jam shut, or lock, or whatever.”
Charlotte was sobbing. “I did it for dad. I did it so he could be free, you know?”
“No,” Penny said, but she felt sad as she spoke. “You were selfish. You were doing it for your own past, to try and make up for what you saw as your own mistakes.”
“No, no!” Charlotte let her hands drop down and she threw her head back defiantly.
Travis came up to Charlotte’s side but as he reached for her, she leaped to one side. No one had expected the slim woman to suddenly make a break for it, and she slipped through his grasp.
Destiny was ready. She had been watching Charlotte carefully. She launched herself at Charlotte and grabbed her around the waist, and they both fell to the floor with a thump, legs flailing in a passable and effective rugby tackle.
Her bid to escape was as much of a confession as anyone needed. Within an instant, Travis was pulling out his phone with one hand and putting the other on the back of Charlotte as she lay in the mud. Destiny continued to pin her down. Drew rushed over and knelt on the other side of Charlotte.
The man who had set the microphone up grabbed it from Penny’s hands. “Enough!” he said, the word echoing around the field.
Indeed, it was enough.
With a heavy heart, Penny stepped down from the platform. She went towards William, who was still flanked by Francine and Ariadne.
He had tears in his eyes. As Penny approached, his face hardened.
“How could you?” he said.
“I am so, so sorry,” she replied.
“I’m going home.”
“Can we help? Shall I come with you?” Francine asked kindly.
William turned the key on his scooter and almost snorted. “No,” he said. “As you have aptly pointed out, I can do far more for myself than I used to think.”
Travis glanced up as the scooter trundled away, but he was still engaged in the phone conversation for back-up, and could not stop William from leaving.
Penny knew that William wasn’t going to leave town. He needed some time alone to come to terms with everything, though.
Kevin raced over.
“I never doubted you!” he cried out, beaming. “Not for a minute!”
“Now is not the time to be celebrating,” she said quietly.
He stopped and let his smile die as they both looked at where Travis was now helping Charlotte to her feet. The burly police officer gripped Charlotte’s stick-thin wrists and she had no fight left in her. Her shoulders sagged.
When she looked up at Penny, her face was pure hatred, and Penny stepped back in alarm.
Then the air was filled with blue flashing lights, and above that, the first fireworks were let off into the dark sky, and the crowd’s attention was drawn away to watch the celebration of another kind of treason.
Chapter Nineteen
Penny and Drew were already seated at a broad, dark wood table in the gastro-pub to the south of Upper Glenfield, when Francine walked in. She was layered in rich crimson cashmere, and looked like one of those glamorous women on television Christmas advertisements – the sort that laughed gaily as they somehow whipped up a roast dinner for twelve with one hand while wrapping oddly-shaped presents with the other, and all the while keeping their lipstick topped up. Those women never left smears on wine glasses.
Drew jumped up to buy Francine a drink, and while he was at the bar, Francine asked where Ariadne was.
“She cancelled this morning,” Penny said. “She had a late booking for more dog-walking this afternoon, and then there was an after-school meeting concerning Destiny. She knew she was going to be too tired. So, it’s just us three. I hope that’s okay.”
“Not at all! It’s lovely to see you both,” Francine said.
Penny knew she shouldn’t feel awkward about it. After all, it was only a few weeks previously that she had been the third wheel at Francine’s own dinner party with Inspector Travis.
Francine dropped her jacket on the back of the chair and took a seat. Drew returned with a tall glass of lemonade for her, and pecked her politely on the cheek before sitting down.
“Speaking of Destiny,” Francine said, “what’s happening with her school issues?”