The Redeemed

by M. R. Hall

  'If I were to say no?'

  Father Starr looked into her eyes, then dipped his head and slipped from the room as quietly as he had arrived.

  Jenny pulled up on her ex-husband's spotless driveway and parked her scruffy Golf next to a brand-new Mercedes Coupe. It was the house she had lived in for the best part of fifteen years, but crossing the immaculate paving she felt like a ragged trespasser. David demanded the same spotlessness in his garden as he did in his operating theatre. Since Jenny had left, she had noticed this tendency becoming even more acute. No imperfection was permitted. A weed between the manicured shrubs was as unthinkable as a casual slip of the scalpel: a matter of life and death.

  It was his young girlfriend, Debbie, who answered the door. Not yet thirty, she was pretty, pink-cheeked and blonde, and now happily pregnant.

  'Oh hi, Jenny,' Debbie said sweetly. 'Come in.' She called up the stairs: 'Ross, it's your mum.'

  Jenny followed her into the large, open-plan kitchen, which shone in a way it had never done when it had belonged to her.

  'Can I get you anything?'

  'No thanks,' Jenny said. Drinks were too risky when she was this nervous. She'd fumble it and make a mess on Debbie's gleaming floor. 'Is David around?'

  'He's late back. It was a long list today. He's getting things clear for the weekend.'

  'Are you doing something special?'

  'It's my birthday. He's booked a couple of nights away. Don't ask me where, it's a surprise.'

  'Great,' Jenny said, remembering several such trips, David booking the big suite and expecting non-stop sex while her idea had been to catch up on some sleep. She glanced at Debbie's pert little pregnancy bump. 'How are you feeling? It can't be long now.'

  'You know, I hardly notice it, except when it kicks.' She patted her stomach. 'According to the scan it's going to be big, though. David says Ross was a big baby.'

  'Yes,' Jenny said. 'But a word of advice - it's better to have the cut before it comes out than risk what happened to me.'

  Debbie winced.

  'Two hours stitching up. Probably why I didn't do it again.'

  Ross's footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Jenny said, 'Good luck. I'm sure you'll be fine.'

  The sinful pleasure of seeing Debbie's smile replaced by a look of horror stayed with her all the way to the restaurant. Hopefully it would put a damper on her weekend too.

  Ross chose the little French bistro in Clifton they used to visit when David still indulged Jenny in her occasional attempts to reconnect with her brief bohemian youth. She was glad it had good associations for Ross and hadn't been tainted by his father's scathing remarks about the streaky cutlery and bad wine. She guessed he almost felt part of the university crowd that gathered here. She had to remind herself constantly that he was very nearly eighteen, a young adult, old enough to fight in a war. He had changed again in the month since they'd spent an evening together. The mid-teen gawkiness was almost gone, along with the semi-permanent sneer and ever-ready put-downs. She recognized aspects of his father in him: hints of fastidiousness in the careful way he held his cutlery, a sense that his intellect was asserting control over his emotions. And as the evening wore on, he started to ask her questions, which was another new departure. He enquired after her recent cases, whether she had plans for a holiday, and whether she seeing much of Steve. Jenny was touched.

  'So you're not actually together, then?' Ross said.

  'We're good friends—'

  It could have been David looking sceptically back at her.

  'What?' she asked.

  'I thought you liked him. He likes you.'

  'When did he say that?'

  'He didn't have to. It's obvious.'

  Jenny sensed she wasn't getting the whole truth. 'Have you been speaking to him?'

  Ross shrugged. 'He's called me a couple of times, that's all, to see how you are.'

  'What's wrong with calling me?'

  'He says he's been trying to . . . He worries about you, you know.'

  'Oh, does he?'

  'In a good way. Why wouldn't he? We all do.' 'All?

  'I didn't mean . . . sorry. That came out wrong.'

  'Who exactly sits on this committee of the concerned?'

  'It's only Dad. He thinks you're working too hard, that's all.'

  'Really? When exactly has he been making these pronouncements - around the dinner table with Debbie there?'

  Ross squirmed in his seat. 'Look, I didn't mean to start something.'

  'No, I want to know,' Jenny insisted. 'I'm your mother. If you're worried about me, ask me. I might be able to reassure you.'

  Ross looked at her guiltily. She hated herself for hurting him, but she couldn't bear not to know what David was saying about her.

  'He thinks you seem a bit—'

  'What?'

  'Shaky. He thinks you could do with a rest.'

  'From a man who works fourteen-hour days, that's a bit rich.'

  There was a spark of anger in Ross's eyes. 'Just because you're divorced doesn't mean he's stopped caring about you. He's worried you're going to push yourself too hard and go under again.'

  'If being appointed coroner is his idea of going under, I can't imagine what he thinks success would be. You know, Ross, perhaps your father is just a little bit jealous of me. I won't deny he's a great surgeon, well respected and all that, but it's uncanny how he always seems to notice when I've had my name in the paper.' She poured more mineral water into her glass, wishing it were wine. 'Shall we change the subject?'

  'Is it something that happened to you?'

  'What?'

  'Dad says it sounds like post-traumatic stress disorder. Apparently sometimes it can be some tiny thing that sets up a reaction in the brain, like being frightened by a dog. Something can trigger it years later.'

  'He's a psychiatrist as well as a heart surgeon now, is he?'

  'Was there something?'

  'Ross, please. We've talked about this before. I've been through a tough time and now I'm getting better.' She forced a smile.

  'Mum, you've started not looking at people when you're talking to them. Your hands shake. You don't get better by taking more pills. Someone's got to be honest enough to tell you that.'

  Neither of them spoke as she drove him home. It was meant to have been a relaxing evening but instead it had ended with Jenny feeling betrayed. David had primed Ross to confront her and suggested the bistro as the place most likely to take the sting out of her own son telling her she was a basket case. She pulled up on the road outside her sterile former home, fighting a losing battle against anger she could no longer contain.

  'How dare your father do this to me?'

  Ross sat silently in the passenger seat.

  'You know what his problem is? He feels guilty. He wants me off his conscience so he can pretend everything's wonderful in his bourgeois bloody life. Well, it isn't. He's making a fool of himself with that girl. She's young enough to be his daughter, for Christ's sake.'

  'Mum, that's not fair.'

  'I know. I should be a bloody saint who never gets angry, never criticizes anyone, never shows any emotion.'

  'There's no danger of that.'

  Ross slammed out of the car and ran towards the house. Jenny wound down the window and called after him, but her apology came too late. He was already through the door. Lost to her.

  She shed angry tears as she gunned home along empty roads, throwing the Golf around the steep corners on the valley road, grinding through the gears and stamping on the brakes. Her anger with David spilled over into fury at the world at large. Everyone wanted something from her, she was surrounded by people passing judgement. It was as if, resenting her authority, they had to do all in their power to diminish her. Even her father had managed to lash out from his senility to land a sickening blow.

  No more. She was Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner, a woman who had every right to demand respect.

  She pulled onto th
e old cart track at the side of the house as the last of the late evening light bled away. She couldn't care less if her insecure ex-husband disapproved of the way she lived or had convinced himself she was a breakdown waiting to happen. That was his problem. When Debbie was cooing over a baby he'd be desperate for an intelligent woman to talk to. There'd be no more dirty weekends for a long time, just a lot of dirty nappies. There was some justice in the world.

  The creak of the gate's rusty hinge echoed off the front of the cottage. The air was dead still and humid, not a hint of breeze to stir the leaves. She stopped halfway up the path and groped in her handbag for her keys. Where the hell were they? She delved beneath the jumble of make-up, pills, purses and assorted hair brushes. She checked the zip compartments. Nothing. She shook the bag to hear the rattle that would tell her they were in there, but somehow she lost her grip and dropped it, scattering the contents over the ground.

  Damn! Damn! Stooping down to snatch them up something caught her eye: flashes of colour on the flagstones. In the dim light she made out a pattern of pink and yellow chalk lines: hopscotch squares and numbers drawn in a childish hand.

  Her head spun and her heart exploded. She grabbed her car keys and ran.

  Chapter 8

  Jenny sped along the three miles of winding lanes, careered down the narrow dirt track through the woods and juddered to a halt in Steve's yard. The stone farmhouse, still rented out to the weekenders from London, stood in darkness. Steve's ancient Land Rover was parked outside the barn in which he'd improvised a flat in the upper storey, but there was no light at the window. She groped for the torch she kept in the glove box. It glowed dully for a second, then died. Jenny flung it over her shoulder. Too frightened to leave the safety of her car to stumble across the yard and pick her way through the blackness of the barn, she leaned on the horn.

  No response.

  She pressed it again, its ugly sound splitting the night.

  Wake up! Wake up!

  Maybe he had someone else up there with him? One of the admiring girls from the office he occasionally mentioned. The bastard. She fired up the engine, rammed into reverse and sped round in a backwards semi-circle. Shoving the stick into first, she shot forward, kicking up dirt and gravel, tore through the gate and slewed around the tight left bend. Two bright green eyes stared into the headlights from the centre of the track. It was Alfie, Steve's sheepdog, with Steve right behind him. She stamped on the brakes. Steve and Alfie dived into the neck-high cow parsley on the verge as she slid past and skidded to a stop.

  Untroubled by his brush with death, Alfie rested his head on her lap as she sat on the corner of the dusty old sofa, gazing at her with needy eyes. The boarded-out barn loft was more of a den than a flat. There was a bed, a draughtsman's drawing board, a few items of ancient furniture and a makeshift kitchen. A solar panel rigged up on the roof provided an occasional trickle of tepid water to the sink. It smelled of straw, dog and tobacco smoke.

  Steve brought her some camomile tea and sat next to her. At least his cups were clean.

  'How are you feeling?' he said.

  'I don't know,' Jenny whispered.

  'Are you going to tell me what's going on?'

  Alfie nuzzled her, demanding a stroke. She put a hand on his soft head and scratched gently behind his ears. He closed his eyes in bliss.

  'I'm not sure I can explain. You'll think I'm stupid.'

  'Try me.'

  Jenny struggled against a feeling of unreality. She felt foolish, humiliated.

  Steve put a hand on her knee. 'What's frightened you, Jenny? It's not work this time, is it?'

  She shook her head. 'How can you tell?'

  He shrugged. 'I guess I must know you.'

  'Those people you saw waiting outside my house the other day, what did they look like?'

  'The guy was a bit older than me, the girl was very little. Blonde hair, two little pigtails at the back.'

  'I know this is going to sound strange —’

  'Go on.'

  'The man . . .' Jenny faltered, scarcely believing she was asking the question. 'Did he look to you like he belonged in the past?'

  'What do you mean? I only saw him for a moment.'

  'What about the girl? What was she wearing?'

  'Something pale blue, as far as I remember. A sort of knitted cardigan thing. Why? Who are they? Hey, careful—'

  He grabbed the cup from Jenny's shaking hand, slopping tea onto the floor.

  'Come on,' Steve said. 'Let's have it.'

  'You won't think I'm crazy? I need to trust you.'

  'You know you can. I keep telling you.'

  She nodded, and edged a little closer to the precipice. Once over she knew there was no going back. She stepped out.

  'You know my psychiatrist is convinced I've got some buried memory, some trauma —’

  'Uh huh.' He took her hand and stroked it, gently urging her on.

  'I'd been having dreams about this little girl. In one of our sessions a name came up, Katy. Just the name. No memory, but it was connected to my childhood. I was about five or six. He kept pestering me to research my past, family records, anything that might stir up memories. I don't have much of that sort of stuff. I couldn't find anything except a few old pictures. My mother's dead, I've no brothers or sisters. The only person left is my father. Physically he's OK, mentally he's completely shot.'

  'I remember. You went to see him.'

  Jenny drew in a long breath. It was too late to stop now.

  'I was showing him some old pictures. I had no idea whether he recognized them or not, and I slipped in the name, Katy, and asked him if he remembered who she was . . .'

  Jenny's fingers tightened around Steve's hand.

  'What did he say?'

  She screwed up her eyes. 'What does it matter? He's got Alzheimer's.'

  'Tell me what he said,' Steve demanded, a sudden and unexpected hardness in his voice that shocked her. 'Please, Jenny,' he said, more softly.

  'He said she was my Uncle Jim and Aunty Penny's little girl. Jim was his older brother. I said, they didn't have a daughter. He said, "You remember, Smiler -", that's what he used to call me.' Jenny swallowed. ' "You remember, Smiler. You killed her." That was it. That's all he said. Then he was gone again.'

  Jenny looked at Steve for his reaction and saw that he was trying hard not to appear shocked.

  'I don't expect you to say anything. I don't even know what to think myself.'

  'Do you remember this girl?'

  'No, only their son, Chris. He must be ten years younger than me. We lived in the same part of town but didn't see much of each other.'

  'There's an easy way to find out. I can look it up on the internet right now.'

  'You think he might be telling the truth?'

  'No. I just thought—'

  'Go on. Do it.'

  'Really, I didn't mean to—'

  'Do it.'

  Steve stood up from the sofa and fetched a laptop from a battered canvas briefcase.

  'Don't you want to know what happened tonight - before you get all wrapped up in your computer?' Jenny asked.

  'Of course.' He set the laptop aside as it booted up.

  'I know you and Ross and my ex-husband and God knows who else think I'm mad, but I don't hallucinate. I don't see things. Imagine them, yes, but not actually see them.'

  'What was it?'

  'On the front path. There were chalk marks. Pink and yellow chalk. Hopscotch squares like we used to mark out as kids. Someone had drawn them today. And you know when you see something and it takes you back? I was standing in the street outside my house when I was a child. I could see the little buckled shoes on my feet, the white socks, everything.'

  Steve looked puzzled. 'You think someone's trying to tell you something?'

  'The girl you saw outside my house . . . what if it was her? The man could have been my uncle . . .'

  'Right. You're telling me I've been seeing ghosts?'

  'My g
randmother used to. She'd hear a knock at the window when anyone in the family was about to die. We used to joke about it, but she was never wrong.'

  'She sounds quite a character.'

  He picked up the laptop and brought up a selection of websites that would trace your family history for a fee. Five pounds bought him access to the government register of births, deaths and marriages. Jenny gave him the details of her aunt and uncle. He typed in their names and hit the key that would bring up details of their offspring.

  'What is it?' Jenny said.

  He was staring intently at the screen. 'It looks as if they did have two children.'

  He angled the laptop so she could read with him. The first entry read: Katherine Anne Chilcott. Date of birth: 16 June 1967. The second recorded Christopher's birth in 1976.

  For the second time that evening the world spun around her.

  'Do you want me to click on her name?' Steve said.

  Jenny nodded and looked away.

  'Died 19 October 1972.'

  Jenny lay curled up in bed in one of Steve's T-shirts with Alfie lying on the floor next to her while Steve drove back to her house to fetch her handbag, some clothes and sleeping pills. It was no longer anxiety she felt, but the leadenness that closely follows the shock of bereavement; and the dread of having to face a dark and buried past she had almost convinced herself was a fiction. Exhaustion dragged her from consciousness and she sank into a dreamless sleep.

  She woke, disorientated, to the touch of Steve's hand on her shoulder. Blinking against the sharp sunlight beating through the undraped skylight, she tried to remember where she was.

  'It's all right. It's still early. You can go back to sleep,' Steve said.

  The previous night's events came back at her in a rush. She groaned and pulled the sheet over her head.

  'Hey. You're OK. I got your bag. And there was nothing on the path. I walked up and down it ten times with a torch. Not a mark. You imagined it.'