Chapter 20 #2
“Is it a side hustle?” I ask them, thinking maybe they’ve all bought shares in a racehorse and their main businesses aren’t relevant.
Hoping their main businesses aren’t relevant, more like.
Because there’s only one way I can connect an estate agent, a nursing home, and a house-clearance specialist. They’re all involved, separately mind, at a very particular period in a person’s life.
And if they’re not separate, if they’re “associated” like John just said, then this shiftiness, this threat I’m feeling, begins to make some kind of sense.
I wish I could pretend it doesn’t, but I’ve just been saying it to myself, haven’t I?
Peggy left too quickly and the house got sold too quietly and the furniture all got shovelled away like a dirty secret.
All that hangs together, if the nursing home and the estate agent were working as a team.
Only the furniture hardly matters, does it?
“You swore on their lives, John,” I say.
“What are you mixed up in that would make you lie on your children’s lives?
What are they paying you to cover for them? ”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “It’s just an expression.”
“John, please,” I say, almost wailing. “What’s happened to you? Don’t you know how bad it is? Don’t you get—?”
“I’m a businessman,” John says.
“But what have they got on you?” I say. “Why have you agreed to this? She was an old lady who had every right to stay in her house as long as she wanted to. She had room for a carer to move in. It was no one else’s shout what she . . .”
“Really not very bright at all,” says Farmer George, leering at me.
“I’ve got to go,” I say to my brother. “I can’t even look at you. I don’t believe this is happening.”
“Sanctimonious bitch,” says Nicotine Ned, whatever John said his name is, not cringing now.
I turn to see if my brother is genuinely going to let these two men talk to me like that, right here in his house.
He’s not even looking my way. His attention has strayed back to his cards and to rolling the end of his cigar around the edge of the ashtray to trim the burning tip.
He speaks to me without meeting my eyes.
“Keep what you think you know is happening to yourself, Lindsay. Because I’m telling you, you haven’t got a clue. ”
I reel out into the yard and of course, of course, of course, it’s happening. There’s only ever one answer for when something’s too good to be true and John still here, living right here, happy and normal and over it all, was far too good to be true.
Calling it the caravan didn’t work for either of us.
Neither of us really got over the reason we needed so many secret ways back into Lord’s Yard. All kids sneak out sometimes, don’t they? Most kids have to make that phone call once in their lives saying, “Mum? Dad? Please come and get me.” John and I were different.
We believed what she told us, see? That if we ran away from home again, if we were found out on the road when we shouldn’t be, we’d be taken to an orphanage and left there.
After that, whenever she put us outside the gate, slammed it shut and locked it up, we had no choice but to break back in again.
We were never punished when we turned up again, hours later, after the danger was past. She hugged us hard enough to break us in two and said nothing.
So we told ourselves it was a game. Did we believe ourselves?
We had to. John walked me through it until it made sense to me, even at four years old.
“We know why she shuts us out, Lindsay,” he’d say.
I’d nod my head. “But we can’t know, can we?
” Shake. “So we don’t know, do we?” A bigger shake.
“Though we do.” I’d stare at him and he’d stare at me and then he’d grin and say “Pirates!” Or “Spacemen!” Or, if it had been really bad for me, sometimes “Oz!” Because I was the star of the show in Oz and he was three fools.
And we grew up, John and me. Soon enough he didn’t know at all. At least, he took off to the park or a pal’s house when we were put out in the cold or the dark and sometimes in the rain. He left me. Because he couldn’t know so he didn’t. I carried on alone, waiting for that to happen to me too.
I drive back through Menstrie at fifteen miles an hour, no one smoking outside the Phil Inn, no one queueing up for a carry-out.
So, I think, John grew up just like me. I was Chloe’s perfect little friend and Kai’s perfect little wife and he’s the perfect one to clear up the messes of those two men, isn’t he?
Chloe!
I try again, but again there’s no answer.
I wish I could talk to David but, even if he hadn’t lied to me about Aileen, he’s at the hospital with his son. I’ll need to tell him sometime that he helped me buy a house that should never have been for sale, but not tonight.
I wish I could go to Bunny too, both for his wisdom and because he’s another elderly person living alone in a house that busybodies would call too big for him, so he’s definitely got skin in this game. But it’s after eleven o’clock.
I’ll go home, lock up as tight as I can, read a chapter of Sleeping Murder, until I fall asleep with my phone in my hand, and decide what to do in the light of day.
Only when I get back to Saint Helen’s, David’s car is parked in the drive and he’s sitting in it waiting for me.
“How’s Sean?” I say when he opens the driver’s door and swings his legs round to face me. He looks dog tired, his hands hanging down between his thighs and his shoulders slumped.
“You’re a very nice woman,” he says. “Do you know that? He’s fine. He’s in a lump of plaster tonight till they can knock him out and reset it straight tomorrow, then he’ll be in a resin cast in any colour he chooses.”
“Edwin?”
“Yeah, I heard he took a while to rally. He’s upset about that.”
“He was great by the time we got to the hospital,” I say. “He should be proud. Where is he?”
“At his mum’s,” he says, rubbing his nose. “All things considered, she’s pretty angry with me.”
“She needs to get in the queue,” I say. “Why the hell was your phone off, for starters?”
He rewards me with the world’s smallest laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “There goes Dad of the Year.” I don’t so much as crack a smile. “How are you doing?” he asks instead.
“Listening,” I say. I go over and sit down on the step to the front door. The stone is warm, and I can smell the grass I cut earlier. We regard each other over seven feet of gravel.
“The boys’ mum isn’t my ex-wife,” he tells me. “But you know that now.”
“I hadn’t got that far,” I say. “And I don’t really understand what you mean.”
“No wonder,” he says. “I’m still fudging. I’m ashamed. And so I should be.”
“Go on.”
“Right,” he says. “Right then. Um, it’s been lovely, Lindsay. I like you a lot and that’s playing it down. I’m sorry you’re probably not going to want to see me again after I tell you this.”
“Just spit it out!” I say. “There’s more than your shit going on tonight.” I hate to hear how much I sound like John when I’m this tired and this pissed off. That same rough Clack accent.
“Of course, the boys’ mum is my ex-wife,” he says. “Just not my most recent one. I divorced Aileen after quite a short marriage, with no children involved.”
I sit back and rest my elbows on the top step but it’s hard and it hurts them so I crunch forward instead.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, and I notice the startled look he tries to hide.
“I mean there must be more to it than that. You pretended before we even met. Aileen handed them over to you that day at the garden centre.”
“Oh,” he says. “Well, yes, of course there’s more to it. It was my weekend and their mum is pretty merciless about things like that, but I was slammed at work, so Aileen took them on the Friday night and spoiled them with movies and pizza. She misses them.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say. “You palmed your kids off on your other ex-wife because you were busy? Like you asked me to stop ‘going out’ because you’re busy?”
“Yeah,” he says. He looks so miserable I want to hug him. He can’t possibly know what a massive relief all this is. There’s still one bit of it that bothers me though.
“So, you’ve been married twice and both your wives were called Aileen?” I say.
“What? No,” he says. “Their mum’s called Eileen. Shit! Did you call her Aileen?”
“I don’t think she noticed,” I said. “Seeing as how the rest of the message was that her kid was in A&E. But yes, I did. So she’s Eileen Prentiss?
And wife number two is Aileen Murdoch?” I am having to work hard not to let a beaming smile spread over my face now.
I want to be angry with him but it’s so human and messy and normal.
“But I haven’t been married twice,” he says. He takes a deep breath and holds up three fingers as he lets it creak out again. The sheepish look is definitely half flirty now, though. He’s no more managing to pretend to be sorry than I’m managing to pretend to be angry.
“You’ve been married three times?” I say. “How the hell old are you?” I’ve been wanting to find that out since the start, so this is very unscrupulous. “What order did they happen in? And what was the first one called? Ellen?”
“Elaine,” he says. “She was first, but it only lasted a year.”
“You are shitting me,” I say.
“Not about the year,” he says. “Fourteen months. But her name was Vesna, not Elaine, and she needed residency.”
“Isn’t that kind of illegal? For a lawyer?”
“I was a student. And Yugoslavia was collapsing.” For a moment he seems lost in memories.
Then, as I watch the rest of his life come crashing in on him, I remember mine too.
The ugly scheme that got Peggy out of this house.
The state my brother must be in to let himself be a part of it. And then there’s the selfish bit too.
“Look, do you want to come in?” I say. “Have a nightcap? I need to talk to you.”
The hope in his eyes as he lifts them to look at me finishes me off completely. “Of course you do,” he says. “Ask me anything. Kick me up the arse for trying to hide my worst bits from you. I deserve it.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “I need to forget about that just now. Although, consider an arse kicking booked in for your future when I’ve got time to concentrate on it, definitely. No, it’s something else.”
“The shit going on tonight that’s not mine?”
“Well, it’s sort of yours,” I say. “Some of it. You need to look over the purchase of this house again, because I’m scared I don’t own it.”
“Eh?”
“I think I’ve just busted a really sleazy little game that my brother’s mixed up in for some reason.”
“When was this?” He looks astonished.
“Fifteen minutes ago,” I tell him. “I’ve had quite a night, not even including Sean. Can I tell you about it? And then I really need to go to sleep. If I can order up no nightmares, that’d be great too.”