by Laura Powell
My darling George, I don’t understand why you reacted like that. It was an act of love to pave the way for us. You’ll see that one day.
‘I don’t understand,’ says Gallagher, looking up. ‘What’s this supposed to be?’
Paxon trembles and drums his forehead with his knuckles, while Gallagher reads on.
Don’t you know how cruel it was to make me watch you with them? It never ended – you sat in the same church pew as them, you laughed outside the factory with them, you even flirted with them in the shops when I was yards away from you. I’ll tell you how cruel it was, George. It was so cruel that I cut a line across my back with the same knife I used. I did it to distract myself from the pain you caused me, but I couldn’t because yours was a hundred times worse.
It has taken some time but I forgive you now. Of course I know that girls like those can be charming and wily, and that’s your weakness as a man. I’ve faith in you though, the way Isaac had faith in God. That’s why I did it for you (for us), and now there’s nothing to prevent the four of us living happily together. I have a little farm in mind in Bodmin. We need never speak to, or even look at, any other human in the world again. We are all we need. Once we’re settled there, you’ll see how selfless those sacrifices were. Say the word, my darling, and we’ll go.
♥D♥
Gallagher looks down. Paxon is in a heap on the concrete. He holds a clump of his own grey hair in his right hand. Blood trickles down his scalp, running to his ear and smearing his cheek.
‘It’s the memorial today,’ he snivels. ‘All of them mourning those poor girls – and her. Mourning her at the same time as them… after what she did. That twisted, vile, disgusting woman. Not even a woman, a she-devil.’
‘Dolores wrote that? Dolores Broadbent?’
Paxon nods slowly.
‘She… Her?’
Paxon lowers his eyes, still nodding.
‘You’re lying,’ says Gallagher, but he looks again at the handwriting. He recognises it from the supper menus at Hotel Eden.
‘Leave me alone now.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me the full story. And where Betty is.’
Paxon hugs his knees to his chest with his bony arms. His teeth chatter and his forehead drops to his knees. More blood trickles out.
‘It’s called Middlebury. Just go.’
‘What’s called Middlebury? I want answers.’
‘I loved her so, so much,’ he chokes.
‘Who? Dolores?’ says Gallagher, aghast.
‘No, my Patty. Patricia Hollinghurst… I was going to leave my wife, my son, my factory, everything to be with her. And now she’s gone.’
Gallagher crouches. He speaks softly, the way he does when he must extract information from the newly bereaved for articles; he feels nothing for them either.
‘I need to know everything, George. Now look at me.’ He waits. ‘Look at me.’ Paxon obeys. ‘Start from the beginning and tell me exactly what happened.’
Paxon shudders.
‘We got close in the spring, Dolores and I. It only lasted a few weeks. I don’t know what came over me. I ended it but she just… she hunted me.’
‘Hunted? Don’t be ridiculous, she’s a woman.’
‘She was ALWAYS there; waiting outside the factory with picnic lunches for us, saving a seat in church for me, even sitting in my car. Christ, I found her in a hedge in my back garden once. I should have been firm from the start but she’s so… Oh, my poor Patty.’
‘Slowly, come on.’
‘I broke it off with Dolores but she threatened to tell my wife and son so I had to… how do they put it?’
‘Keep her sweet?’
‘If you like,’ but he winces. ‘Then she got it into her head that the four of us – George and Betty, she and I – would all live together like some big happy bloody family.’ His head jerks up. ‘You’re not going to write any of this in the paper, are you?’
Gallagher shakes his head but he frowns too.
‘So you led her on?’ he says.
‘Only because she wasn’t right in the head. I didn’t want to. I shouldn’t have…’
Paxon rubs his bleeding scalp. His knuckles redden and his hair clots in bloody clumps. Gallagher glares at him and curls his nose.
‘I thought that if I took her out for little drives and night walks on the beach, that sort of thing, she’d forget her silly fantasies and leave me alone eventually. I hoped that she’d meet someone else,’ says Paxon. ‘It was easier to keep her close than have her stalk me. I told Patty about it. My marriage was over anyway. I was training George to take over the factory and I’d have left my wife enough money to get by. I thought it was the most painless way. I just wanted to be happy with Patty. Is that so wrong?’
He swallows hard and focuses on something in the distance. Gallagher glances around but the factory is still empty.
‘What?’ he says, harder.
‘She was by the pond looking for Betty. At least that’s what she said.’
‘Dolores?’
‘Yes, and she saw Patty and I together. I loved her so much. So, so bloody much. My wife’s a decent woman but Patty…’
‘You loved her so much you were seeing those other girls too?’
‘But I wasn’t.’
‘It says so in that letter.’
‘Dolores was a lunatic. I didn’t even know the girls she killed, except Maureen. I employed two of their fathers and another was related to my flour supplier apparently. I’d seen them, maybe chatted to them, but I didn’t even remember their names. No, that was Dolores. She latched onto the idea that I was seeing all of them and she wouldn’t let it go… So when she saw me with Patty…’
‘Surely you could have stopped her.’
‘But she appeared from nowhere. She was screaming and Patty was crying and Dolores was grabbing hold of me and trying to kiss me. I told her that I loved Patricia. I had no idea what she’d done to the others at that point.’
Gallagher flops onto the floor beside him and sucks in his breath.
‘She ran away screaming like a raving banshee when I said that,’ says Paxon. ‘Patty was so upset. I wanted to walk her home but she just kept telling me to leave her there, that she wanted to be alone.’ He shakes his head. ‘When I left her, she was upset obviously, but she was alive, I swear. I thought we’d all gone our separate ways but the next morning… They found Patty… I knew… And I saw Dolores… She carried on as though nothing had happened.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was a coincidence.’
‘Because she’s a woman?’ he snorts. ‘I asked her outright in the end. She was so tanked up, she started singing. Singing! Singing that she’d killed them all for me.’
‘You met her again, even though you knew?’ sneers Gallagher.
‘Yes. No. Yes… It wasn’t like that. I told her I’d take her out for a drive but I drove her to the police station at Spoole and told her that she had to confess. But she said that she’d tell everyone it was me – who would believe it was a woman? She promised that she’d rip apart my family and my business.’
Gallagher looks disgusted.
‘You were scared of her?’
‘You don’t understand, she was unhinged,’ cries Paxon. ‘I said to her, what about Nigel Forbes – he didn’t deserve all of that – but she just laughed like a maniac. Do you know what she said?’
Gallagher runs cold.
‘She told me that Nigel fell out of love with her too. And this is what he got. She said he deserved his comeuppance. Then she said that I loved her really, and that I’d just forgotten it for a little while. She said she forgave me.’
Gallagher runs his finger over the sharp corner of the letter.
‘Does your wife know about any of this?’
Paxon shakes his head.
‘Your son?’
‘No one.’
Gallagher takes a deep breath. He folds up the letter, slots it back inside the envelope an
d tucks it in his inside pocket.
‘You said Dolores choked?’
‘In her sleep. They said it was an accident.’ Paxon shakes his head. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more.’
‘Betty doesn’t know about any of this either?’
‘No one does, I told you.’
‘And this Middlebury place?’
‘It’s an asylum about thirty miles west of here, halfway to Land’s End, a big red building on its own.’
Gallagher jumps to his feet and makes for the office door.
‘I don’t know how you live with yourself,’ he hisses. ‘Or how you’ve lived with this for so long.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Paxon calls after him.
‘An innocent man is about to be given a life sentence. What do you think I’m going to do?’
He marches out of the office, past the sleeping machinery and the raging furnace, back to his car. He is unlocking the driver’s door when, somewhere within the factory, Paxon lets out a long cry.
Gallagher sits on the front seat and thumps his fist against the steering wheel until it stings, as he turns it all over in his mind. He must take Dolores’s letter straight to Napier and make sure that Forbes is released. He could drive to Middlebury afterwards. He might be able to force them to discharge Betty into his care. After that, he could take her home to London with him. He could nurse her, bathe her, cradle her to sleep; love her. Yes, he must keep his promise to protect her, whatever the consequences for him.
He opens her letter and reads it again, then her mother’s letter. He reads them both a second time but he still can’t start the ignition. Something is stopping him from driving to find Inspector Napier. Suddenly he sees it:
He sees Betty. She is hollow and frail and she is wrapped up in his monogrammed bathrobe in the guest bathroom of his Kensington house. Her hair is wet and freshly washed. She is about to pat it dry but the robe is too long, the towel is too big and she trips over them. Her hair still dripping, she gives up, pulls on her old grubby summer dress and walks downstairs to the dining room for supper with him, but she can’t quite reach the carver chair. She tries again to scramble onto the seat but it is too high, almost cartoonish in its proportions. He offers to lift her but she refuses and, at that moment, there is a burst of light. Camera bulbs flash and pop in the front garden and an army of photographers and reporters jostle for space at the dining-room window.
‘Dolores’s daughter,’ shouts one.
‘The Cleaver’s spawn,’ yells another.
Reggie stands at the front of the pack, his nose squashed against the glass. His teeth are pointy and saliva drips from his mouth. He slurps it back in, still leering at her.
‘Give us a comment,’ he shouts, as Gallagher leaps across the room to draw the curtains. ‘Just one, Betty love. You’re your mother’s daughter, aren’t you? She’d have loved her picture in the paper.’
The doorbell rings and Betty huddles under the giant dining table, her palms pressed over her tiny ears. It rings a second time, but before Gallagher can comfort her or bolt the door, someone boots it down. It rips off its hinges and slams onto the hall tiles, cracking them. The door lies flat like a lowered drawbridge and a dozen feet trip trap across it. Six policemen appear in the doorway and squeeze into the dining room at once.
Gallagher stands in front of the dining table and widens his arms to keep them at bay but they flatten him too. They reach under the table and grab Betty. She lets out a knotty scream. Her toothpick arms, all veiny and white, reach out for him. He reaches out for her but the policemen have her tight. They charge out of the dining room carrying her between them, one limb each. He is still scraped across the dining-room carpet, not quite able to pick himself up, when there is another burst of camera light through the curtains. An engine growls to life and a police siren wails. He hears one last girlish scream and then she is gone.
Gallagher rubs his bruised fist and stares at the steering wheel.
‘They must never know,’ he mutters to himself. ‘She must never know.’
He has ripped up her life once; he must never let that happen again. Maybe Middlebury will be a new beginning for her. When she is free again, she can start afresh. He could persuade Father to intervene and ensure that they release her soon, and he could send a little money for when she is out; she need never know it came from him.
A hazy photograph of Forbes the butcher creeps into his mind. Wasn’t he widowed? He was a Tommy, Gallagher recalls, but he pushes away the thought. He can’t think of Forbes now; his loyalty must be with Betty. He owes her. He loves her. And for that, she must never know the truth about her mother.
Gallagher jumps out of his car and hurries back into the factory, a letter in each hand.
‘Paxon,’ he calls. ‘Paxon! I’ve decided what we’ll do.’
The only sound, as he paces back towards the office, is the crackle of the furnace. Through the frosted window he sees the black silhouette of Paxon. His chin rests on his chest and his toes are pointed like a ballet dancer. His body rocks slightly and he is suspended high above his desk. He could be flying were it not for the brown silk tie knotted from the rafters and looped around his neck. An upturned chair lies beneath his feet.
Gallagher coughs. He coughs again. He coughs unstoppably until his eyes water and his chest is raw and his lungs are ready to jump out of his throat. When the coughs stop, he is left with a surge of guilty relief. He dries his eyes. He paces around Paxon’s office, careful to avoid looking at his dead eyes, as he rifles through the papers on the desk. He searches the drawers next and looks inside the filing cabinet and bin for further traces of Dolores’s guilt, but finds nothing. Good. He still clutches the two letters in his sore right fist.
The eyes follow him out of the office. He tiptoes back along the corridor to the factory forecourt and stops in front of the furnace. Slowly, carefully, he opens his fingers and drops the letters into the flames, watching until they shrink to black ash. Calm, so calm, Gallagher walks back to his car.
By the time he reaches Middlebury, the sun has sunk and risen again and the sky is indigo. The building stands solidly in front of the sea, strangled by ivy and surrounded by barbed wire. He parks under a lone sycamore tree, naked with winter, and retrieves his binoculars from the glove compartment. He waits.
There is little to look at. To the front of the building is a strip of bleached sand and steely sea. Surrounding it from every other angle is dead scrubland, where the yellow grass has parched or diseased. He turns off the engine and is glad of the sea’s company; it laps and weeps and keeps the ghost of Forbes at bay for now. He winds down his window so the sea is louder and the smells of salt and earth drift in. An hour passes and Forbes creeps back to him. He hates his company already.
Gallagher still waits. He waits for two days, drinking his hip flask dry. He thinks that when he sees her, he might run down to the sand and reassure her that she is not alone; he is protecting her. But how could he look at her and not tell her the truth about her mother? He can’t risk her finding out; it would crush her. Then Forbes floats back to him.
Forbes is still with him when the sky darkens. Neither of them sleeps. When it is light again, Gallagher raises his binoculars to his eyes and watches as pairs of stick figures trickle out of the building and walk on the sand. There is always a guard in the pair; the guard always wears white. Sometimes the non-guard cries or sits on the sand or paces in fast, tight circles, but the guard always stands still. Betty and her guard still don’t come.
On the third day, she appears. He dives out of the car and notches up his binoculars, though he knows her at once by her thick waves of brown hair that brush the small of her back. Her arms aren’t bound like the others but her head is bowed. She wears something blue that he can’t quite make out. He is desperate to call her name but he chews on his tongue instead; he promised himself that he would only check on her from afar.
Betty and her guard slope to the beach. Galla
gher drops his binoculars and shields a hand above his eyes, half willing her to turn around; surely she would recognise his car. She doesn’t turn though. Her head lifts when her feet touch the sand, and she doesn’t cry or sit or pace. Instead, she glides to the shore and stops so close to it, her feet are probably licked by the cold tongue of ocean.
The guard stretches his arms above his head and Betty tilts up her face to the sky. Gallagher can’t make out her expression and he wonders for a moment whether she is in pain, but then she wades into the shallows until her ankles are covered and, her head still facing the sky, she kicks up a great fountain of ocean and shouts.
‘I love you Mother,’ he hears, or thinks he hears.
Epilogue
Fifty-two years later
Jerry stokes the dustbin fire with a rake and watches as the last of the old bank statements curl up and blacken. The back garden smells of autumn.
Mary had sprinkled a handful of dry leaves onto the bonfire before she left, and stared as the flames crackled and hissed. Neither of them had spoken but his arm had snaked around her waist, hers around his. Then Cath had tooted the horn, Mary had smacked him on the lips with a kiss and dashed out to Cath’s car, shouting that she’d buy him steak for supper.
It was peculiar; getting to know the new Mary. She had just stopped ageing one day – that day two years ago. Time had reversed on its heel and each week, even as he drove her to and from hospital appointments, she became younger, more exuberant, freer somehow. A miracle recovery was what Doctor Sanders had called it after her first round of radiotherapy. An understatement, he had thought at the time.
He smiles at the thought, pokes the bonfire ash and tosses on a second handful of leaves, then he ambles back into the house for a second lager. The top snaps off, the foam fizzes over and he is dabbing the froth from his fingers with a tea towel when the doorbell rings. He opens it with a silly grin. Mary must have forgotten her purse; so forgetful these days.
‘Oh,’ he says in spite of himself when he looks out.
‘Hello,’ says the man, a stranger with a grave expression. He sticks out a pudgy hand that Jerry considers, then shakes. ‘Sorry to drop in unannounced. It’s Mr Sugden?’