The House Party

by Mary Grand

  Sami turned to face her. They stood, like High Noon, waiting to see who would be the first to draw their gun.

  Beth was breathing fast, close to tears. From the corner of her eye she saw Layla come out of her room. Sami took the opportunity to escape downstairs.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were back. How did it go?’ Beth asked Layla.

  Layla shrugged, looked at the floor.

  ‘It’s the St Patrick’s day meal this evening.’

  ‘Oh crap.’ Layla responded by going back into her room, and slammed the door.

  ‘Don’t be so rude,’ Beth shouted at the door. ‘I wish someone in this house would talk to me like I’m a human being.’

  There was, of course, no answer. Beth went back into her room, changed into the new dress she’d been saving in her wardrobe, brushed her hair, applied some makeup, and added her favourite earrings.

  Sami came in, and glanced at her. ‘You’re not going to be warm enough in that,’ was his only comment. Beth scowled, grabbed a cardigan and dragged it on.

  They walked down the street in silence, Adam and Layla lagging behind.

  For the second night running Beth walked into the restaurant. Gemma had done well, having decorated the room with green bunting and shamrocks and put on a special menu that was obviously proving popular.

  Only Alex was there when they arrived, with a glass of red wine in front of him. Beth went to sit next to him, realising that Gemma had given them the same circular table as the year before. Alex hadn’t been there, of course. In fact, he was sitting where Kathleen had. Tonight, the evening sun shone a reddish beam on to the table, the colour of Kathleen’s hair, and it felt, in a way, that Kathleen was there with them. Sami said he’d go and get drinks. Adam and Layla sat as far away from their parents as they could.

  ‘You already know Adam—’ said Beth.

  ‘Of course. He’s a great help at the pharmacy.’

  Beth grinned. ‘Good, and this is my daughter, Layla.’

  ‘I hear you’re very musical,’ said Alex.

  ‘I do like other things as well,’ said Layla pointedly. ‘How are you finding living on the island? Must be so boring after London.’

  ‘No. I enjoy cycling, and going to the beach.’

  ‘You should go to some of the West Wight beaches, look for fossils,’ said Layla. ‘Me and Mum used to do it all the time.’

  Beth was relieved to see her daughter chatting pleasantly. She noticed a book on the table next to Alex. ‘Brought some light reading with you?’

  He smiled. ‘Imogen and I are swapping books again. I went to the library after work today and borrowed some Tennyson poems.’

  ‘Good. It’s a great library. I took the kids a lot when they were little.’

  Sami returned with a tray of drinks, and put them down without speaking. Beth wasn’t sure if Alex noticed the tension but, if he did, he politely ignored it.

  Imogen, William and Elsa finally arrived, with the rushed air of busy people. Beth was surprised to see Conor come in as well. He made a beeline for Layla. As it was a set menu, they all settled down to eat their steak and Guinness pie, and Irish apple cake. Beth chatted to Alex and found it calming to talk books and walks. Sami stayed quiet, only occasionally talking to Imogen or William.

  At the end of the meal William went to the bar and returned with a bottle of Irish whisky, and small glasses. He poured everyone except Sami a glass, including the teens.

  ‘Let us raise our glasses in memory of our beloved friend, work colleague, and mother, Kathleen.’

  Beth raised her glass and then sipped the drink. She wasn’t used to spirits, but her Gran had been a whisky lover and she knew she liked the taste.

  ‘Have another,’ said William leaning in front of Sami. ‘You look like you need it tonight.’

  She ignored the scowl from Sami and held out her glass. It went down easily and, on top of the glasses of wine she’d already had, she began to feel light-headed, numb. Beth didn’t care: it was a relief to be free of the nagging pain and unhappiness she had been feeling.

  There was a lull in the conversation when Conor said, ‘Anyone see in the paper about the silver car then?’ There were awkward murmurs, but everyone occupied themselves with their drinks or food. ‘It means the police think someone could have been out there with Mum, could have killed her. You can’t all ignore that. You all say how much you loved Mum, so if some bastard went out and killed her, you must care about it.’ His voice was hard, menacing. He turned to Beth. ‘Layla said you told Sami you were worried. Did you?’

  ‘Conor, leave this,’ said William.

  ‘But you did say that?’ Conor repeated to Beth.

  Everyone turned to her. Beth could feel her face burning. She could deny it all, side with her friends rather than this volatile young man, and maybe a few weeks ago she would have done. But things had changed. Beth looked at Conor, and for the first time she realised he had his mother’s eyes, the same deep grey pools, and behind the bluster she saw just how unhappy he was. She also knew that, for all the mixed emotion she felt towards Kathleen at that moment, she had to speak out.

  ‘Conor’s right to ask questions,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘The police are. It’s not just the car. They don’t know where her mobile is or the headphones; they should have been with her. Also, why were the hens out? They know that’s not right. We all know how much Kathleen loved them. She’d never have let them out when the fence was down. The police are clearly not certain Kathleen’s death was an accident.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ said William. ‘This is just covering the bases. I spoke to them. They think it was an accident.’

  ‘That is what they say to us, but I don’t think it’s what they really think. This car proves it.’

  ‘This is police business. It’s nothing to do with us,’ said Sami, firmly reaching out and tugging gently on Beth’s arm.

  ‘Get off me,’ she shouted. ‘Stop telling me what to do. What are you covering up?’

  William coughed. ‘I think, Beth, it would be better to leave all this now.’

  Beth looked at their faces, one by one, met their eyes. What she saw shocked her. It wasn’t simply that they wanted her to shut up. She saw hostility and fear, and her heart ached. Part of her desperately wanted to appease them all, apologise, back track. But that beam of light, now dispersed into a gentler glow over the table, reminded her of Kathleen, and she couldn’t deny her.

  ‘Why do you all want me to be quiet? What are you frightened of? Is it because Kathleen was speaking the truth when she said one of you was threatening to ruin her?’

  ‘What do you mean, threatening her?’ shouted Conor. ‘What did Mum say to you? Who was it?’

  The restaurant fell silent, as people stopped talking out of embarrassment and curiosity. Only the noise of crockery, and the distant laughter from the bar filled the vacuum.

  Beth steadied herself, but suddenly felt cold, sober. ‘I’m sorry, Conor, but your mother told me she’d made a mistake, that someone was using it to stop her from exposing what they’d done.’

  ‘What they’d done?’ Conor demanded.

  ‘Your mother knew something this person had done, something terrible.’

  ‘But who was it?’ shouted Conor.

  Beth looked around the table. Everyone was looking at her now. ‘Kathleen said it was someone who was there that night. She also said she was going to own up to everything, expose this person. She was very scared. They were desperate for her to keep quiet. The next day she died.’

  Conor slammed down his glass. ‘You’re saying someone here killed my Mum?’

  Sami intervened. ‘No one is saying that.’

  Beth suddenly felt dizzy and sick. She couldn’t speak. Imogen turned to Conor, and spoke in measured ‘teacher’ tones. ‘Your mother was a special person, but she was prone to be a bit dramatic. She exaggerated things; that was all.’ Imogen then looked over at her. ‘Beth, it’s been hard for us all. You two
were close, but you need to stop going over and over things. Leave things be now.’

  Beth looked over, bleary eyed, at Imogen. ‘I wish I could. I’m so tired. I don’t want you all to hate me, but I have to fight for her. I owe it to her. I can’t give up.’ Beth covered her face with her hands and started to sob helplessly.

  Sami stood up. ‘Time to call it a night, I think. This evening’s meal is on me.’ There were shouts of protest, but he held his hand up. ‘No, seriously. I want to do this.’

  There were mumbled thanks but everyone seemed eager to leave. Sami went to the bar and then the four of them walked back up the road.

  ‘Dad, you’d better hold onto Mum,’ said Layla. ‘She’s pretty pissed. I’ve never seen her like this.’

  When they went to bed, Beth lay on her back, her head spinning.

  ‘Beth, this has to stop. You actually said one of our friends had been threatening Kathleen. Good God, you practically accused them of murder. I say “our friends” but as I was one of the people there on the Sunday maybe you even include me. Remember, Beth, relationships that have taken years to build can be destroyed overnight. You need to be very careful.’

  Sami switched off the light and Beth turned over. Tears ran onto her pillow. What he said frightened her: he was right. She knew that once a group of people all look back at you, united with the same contempt, you are well on your way to being an outsider. Beth cuddled her pillow. What was she going to do? She’d known it would be hard, but she had never thought this fight would be a choice between Kathleen and the life she knew.

  13

  At three in the morning, hot, her head thick, but no longer dizzy, Beth went downstairs, poured a large glass of water and sat sipping it. Ollie came running over to her.

  ‘At least I’ve still got you, Ollie,’ she said, ‘but the others, what am I going to do? All that stuff last night was awful but the worst thing of all is all the stress about Sami. Was he having a having a fling, an affair? I don’t bloody well care what anyone calls it, but I need to know if he chose someone else over me, even if it was only once. I need to know if he slept with Kathleen.’

  On the work surface in the kitchen she saw Sami’s phone charging. Picking it up, she saw one saved voicemail, dated the Tuesday night before Kathleen died, the night Sami looked after her in hospital. Beth looked around. She felt a pang of guilt, then thought, sod it, she would be one of those women who checked her husband’s phone. She held the phone to her ear, and listened to the message. It was Kathleen, her beautiful Irish voice. Beth blinked. She’d started to forget what Kathleen’s voice sounded like already but now it was as if she was in the room with her. She was giving Sami an address.

  Beth replayed the message. The address was strange: not a hospital she’d ever heard of. In fact, it sounded more like a private address. Her instinct was to turn off the phone, pretend she knew nothing. But, of course, she couldn’t. Feeling very sober now, she turned on her laptop, started to type the address into Google and immediately a map highlighting the address came up.

  She clicked on the red marker and the map zoomed in, with a picture of the building at that address on the right-hand side. Beth felt very sick: that wasn’t a hotel, or a house. Beth copied and pasted the name and Googled it, went to their website.

  The place Beth was looking at was a private clinic which offered several gynaecological services, but primarily it was a clinic which offered abortions. This was the kind of clinic you booked to go to in advance. If Kathleen had been miscarrying, she would have been taken to the local NHS hospital, not to some private clinic. No, if she’d gone here, she’d have booked in and the only thing Beth could see that she would have gone for was for an abortion.

  Beth’s hand started to shake. She checked the address: this was definitely the place.

  She sat down, stunned. Kathleen had never seemed far from her Catholic roots. It would have been an incredibly difficult decision for her. Had Sami made her do it?

  Beth didn’t dare move out of her chair in the kitchen. She had no idea how long she sat there, staring at the phone, until Sami came in.

  ‘I wondered where you were,’ he said, his eyes scanning her face all the time, looking for clues as to what was wrong.

  Beth picked up his phone, her hand shaking, switched it to speakerphone and played him the voicemail. Kathleen’s presence filled the kitchen.

  When it finished Beth tried to steady her voice. ‘I looked up the address. Kathleen wasn’t in a local hospital for a panic attack. She’d booked this clinic, and I know why.’

  Sami held the back of the chair, manoeuvred himself round to sit down, put his head in his hands.

  ‘Kathleen had an abortion, didn’t she? It was planned, and she asked you to be with her.’ Beth was taking deep breaths. She was close to throwing up.

  ‘It’s a clinic for all kinds of gynae problems.’ Sami’s voice was shaking, weak.

  ‘Are you telling me Kathleen did not have an abortion?’

  Sami took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why was she there then? And don’t you dare say you can’t tell me.’

  He reached over to touch her hand, but she pulled away. ‘Get off. Tell me what happened.’

  He gnawed at his lip. Beth waited. ‘I am breaking my word, but I will tell you. You can’t tell anyone this.’

  Sami looked at her questioningly, but her face stayed frozen.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Kathleen rang me at King’s College, early Tuesday evening. She was crying, hysterical. She told me she was at a clinic and frightened of what was happening to her. She pleaded with me to go and, of course, I went there. When I got there she was in bed, and then she told me she had been pregnant.’

  ‘Had been?’

  ‘That day at the academy she had been unwell. She was bleeding very badly. She had been to this clinic before with Patrick and she rang them. The consultant she’d seen before agreed to admit her and operate.’

  ‘Why didn’t she go to a normal hospital?’

  ‘She knew the consultant there, trusted him. She knew she could trust them not to contact Patrick.’

  ‘Why was she so worried about Patrick knowing?’

  Sami scratched his forehead, but she didn’t reach out to stop him. ‘The thing is, the baby couldn’t have been Patrick’s.’

  Beth clutched her arms around her body; the room was swimming. Sami kept talking, but voices kept shouting at her not to listen, to make it all go away. If she didn’t hear it, it couldn’t be true. The cold touch of Sami’s hand, however, forced her to focus.

  ‘Listen to me, Beth. The chances of Patrick fathering children after the chemotherapy a few years ago were remote.’

  ‘Kathleen never told me anything about this—’

  ‘Patrick was ashamed. It was silly, but that was the way he felt. I was one of the few people who knew. He trusted me not to tell anyone, but he wouldn’t use our pharmacy or have a doctor at our practice. I did know that last year they went to the clinic that Kathleen was admitted to, talking to the consultant about fertility issues.’

  ‘Kathleen got pregnant, didn’t want an abortion, was she hoping Patrick would stick by her or was she planning to leave him?’ Beth looked at Sami through half shut eyes.

  ‘Kathleen was not planning to leave Patrick. She planned to tell him that it was a miracle, that they had beaten the impossible odds.’

  ‘She really thought he would believe that?’

  ‘There was a one in a hundred million chance or something. She thought he’d want it to be true so badly that he would believe her.’

  ‘But in fact, she had an affair – and you knew.’

  Sami rubbed his lip with his finger.

  Beth held her breath and then took the plunge. ‘Who was the father?’

  She waited; there was no explosion. Instead in a calm, measured voice, Sami said, ‘I’m not sure. I assumed it was someone on her course, although she didn’t tell me. All she said
was that she’d slept with someone once before Christmas, done a pregnancy test in January and found she was pregnant.’

  ‘Did she tell the father she was pregnant?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t say much about him at all. Before she lost the baby, she had been planning to let Patrick believe it had been a miracle. And then, of course, that Tuesday she had the miscarriage. By the time I got to her at the hospital she was distraught. Despite all the problems she’d really wanted the baby. She was grieving and consumed by guilt at the same time.’

  ‘Poor Kathleen.’ Beth hesitated. ‘You say she was distraught? You told me she was emotional when she was talking to me, and yet you dismissed the idea that she could have taken her own life. Surely this makes that at least a possibility. I knew Kathleen; she’d have been heartbroken.’

  Sami shook his head. ‘No. If I’d thought that was likely, I’d have felt obliged to talk to the police about it. No. She was upset but she admitted to me that it made the decisions she was making simpler. I think she felt a bit guilty because of that sense of relief. Remember, I worked with her on the Thursday and Friday. I checked up on her, but she told me that apart from feeling very tired and sore, she was OK. Of course, then we had the whole inspection thing. We were all on edge, but no one was suicidal. All Kathleen said to me was that she’d been confused but she could see a way forward now.’

  ‘By that I assume she meant that she was going to tell Patrick the truth.’

  ‘I urged her to. I felt it was important she did.’

  ‘You wanted her to tell Patrick everything – even who she’d slept with?’

  ‘Yes. Patrick would want to know. I was sure it was a one night fling with someone from her course, like I said. In fact, I wondered if that was why she was leaving her course. It was her way of breaking all ties. The relationship was not a threat to her marriage any more. I was sure, in time, Patrick would forgive her.’

  ‘What about the father of the baby? How was he feeling about it all?’

  ‘I have no idea. As I said, she didn’t tell me anything about him.’