A Poisoned Mind (12 page)

‘No. What’re you on now?’

‘It’s a bit of a wild card,’ she said sweetly, burying her
fury that Robert had ignored her request, ‘so I won’t bother you with my thinking till I know more.’

‘Give me a clue, Trish.’

‘Third-party intervention is a defence against Rylands v. Fletcher,’ she began, but he interrupted.

‘Antony wasn’t going to go for it.’

‘I know.’ She let herself smile properly and saw an answering warmth make him look really human. ‘But it wasn’t his first case as a silk. He could afford to ignore wild cards. I can’t afford to ignore anything at all.’

Not even the tiniest marketing opportunity, she added to herself, glimpsing one in the distance. If GlobWasMan were going public, they’d probably have plenty of work for a silk who’d done well for another big chemical-waste company. Maybe she should send for the Pathfinder prospectus after all.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Fred said.

As he shouldered his way out of the door, she levered the plastic lid off her coffee. He’d taken enough time to reduce it to a drinkable temperature, so she gulped it down, and felt her mind sparking more quickly as the caffeine tickled up her brain cells. She reread her outline for the morning’s questions.

Soon every step in her argument was clear in her mind, as easy to see as a tower made of brightly coloured nursery building blocks. She’d be all right now. She collected her wig and gown and went to roust Robert out of his room.

 

George’s car looked like itself again when Trish paused to check on her way home. In daylight there might be a faint
shadow where the graffiti had been, but in the yellow brightness of the streetlamp there was nothing. The garage had done a good job.

Today there were none of the usual savoury smells wafting out of the front door and she paused with her key in her hand, suddenly worried. He always cooked something when he was here. And he’d promised to be around for David and Jay.

‘George?’ she said before she’d even got the door fully open.

‘What is it?’ His voice sounded reassuringly normal. ‘Trish? You OK?’

He was lying on one of the black sofas, with a chunk of printout on his chest. His briefcase stood open beside him on the floor, next to a heavy tumbler that looked as though it had had whisky in it.

‘I’m fine. Have you eaten? Shall I do something about supper?’

He looked at his watch. ‘Good lord! It’s nine o’clock. I had no idea. We’d better just have bread, cheese and salad. Sorry. I’ll get going.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll deal with it. Has David had anything? Where is he?’

‘Working on his computer. He had the usual disgustingly fatty toasted sandwich when he got in, so he won’t be starving.’

‘No Jay tonight?’

‘The head got your note about his wound and – with some difficulty, I gather – organised for his social worker to collect him and take him home for a mediation session with Darren.’

I suppose that’s something, Trish thought. But I can’t imagine the skinhead we met on Sunday is going to be easy to change.

George deposited his heavy document on the floor and levered himself to a sitting position.

‘Don’t move,’ she said. ‘You look as though you’ve still got work to do. It’s my turn to cook.’

‘Sure? You’re right: I do need to finish this before tomorrow.’

‘I’m sure. I’ll sort out something to eat and bring you a plateful here. d’you want more whisky?’

‘Not yet. Thanks.’

He’d already retrieved his inch-thick printout and was reading again. She left him in peace and put her head round David’s door to take his order for supper.

He looked almost as engrossed as George. She hoped he was dealing with his schoolwork on the computer, but she was afraid it was a game, or worse. Soon she’d have to talk to him about his teachers’ anxiety over the way his friendship with Jay was affecting him, but she was too tired now to be sure of getting it right. She couldn’t risk the delicate structure of trust and confidence she’d spent so long building between them.

‘Hi, David,’ she said. ‘You hungry?’

He hit a key on the keyboard, shouting ‘Yessssss!’, then turned. His face was flushed and his black eyes shone.

‘I’m always hungry.’

‘Sandwich of some sort, or omelette?’

‘If it’s one of those thick ones with onions and stuff, omelette.’

No mention of ‘please’, she noticed and wondered whether that, too, was the result of Jay’s influence. David
was staring at her as though she’d suddenly come out in bumps. Then he understood.

‘Pwease,
Twish,’ he said in a babyish voice loaded with such mockery she turned away without a comment.

Three minutes later she was working in the kitchen and wondering whether George’s retreat behind the wall of work had anything to do with the questions she’d asked him about his brother, Henry.

She kept making connections with what he’d said about Jay, admiring the way he refused to be a victim. There’d been something about lots of people like him fantasising about violence in silence …

Were ‘lots of people’ a code for George himself?

 

Angie knew Fran and Greg were arguing and she was afraid it was about her. Their voices were never hushed like this unless they were embarrassed.

She sat in their spare room, looking at the two letters in her hand. Polly’s would be a treat she’d keep until she went to bed. The other was the problem. She hadn’t seen her son’s writing for many years, but she’d have known it anywhere.

I can’t take any more, she thought. If this is another attack I’ll crack up completely.

Perhaps she should throw it away without reading it.

But what if it wasn’t aggressive? What if offered support at last, or even a vaguely friendly overture?

She let her mind play around with the worst Adam could have written. That way, she’d have a kind of armour. But she found herself getting angry all over again as she argued with the imaginary figure she’d conjured up.

Groping among her long-buried memories, reaching for
something – anything – to make herself feel kinder, she recreated the picture of him as a tumbling, roly-poly, blond-haired boychild in red-and-white striped shorts stretched tight over his nappy. They’d played football, the two of them. At least, he’d kicked with one fat little leg as he stood unsteadily on the other, and she’d reached out for the ball to give it back for a repeat performance.

At last it seemed safe to slide one finger under the flap and rip open the envelope. The paper, or maybe it was the glue, was stiffer than she’d expected and she wrenched the finger hard enough to hurt.

‘I’m getting soft,’ she muttered, thinking of all the lambs she’d helped to birth and the hay bales she’d hauled around with these same hands. Or was it just that in those days she’d expected hands to hurt?

How would he start the letter after all these years? With some kind of endearment? Using her name?

Next door the angry whispering stopped and there was a loud clatter of pans. It would be time to eat soon and pretend to be serene and confident. She opened the letter and looked down. There was no salutation at all. It began abruptly:

How stiff and formal was that? ‘I should be delighted’ was the kind of politeness you’d offer a total stranger.

And she didn’t want him in court. Not while she had to concentrate on the evil machinations of Trish Maguire, whose first parade of gentleness and compassion had clearly been no more than a kind of softening-up process to disguise the traps she was planning to set.

‘Angie? Supper!’ Fran’s voice sounded a little strained.

Angie refolded the letter and put it in her handbag. She would deal with it later, when she felt stronger.

Sodding beans! she thought as she walked into the kitchen and saw the steaming platefuls on the table. I’ll explode.

The first forkful reminded her it wasn’t the taste of these stews – or even their wind-inducing properties – that made her want to spit them out but the worthiness, the hint of sanctimony. Moments later a more charitable idea occurred to her: beans or squash cooked up in a dozen different ways were probably all they could afford. And they were housing and feeding her out of their limited income.

‘There’s still a bit of money left in my account,’ she said. ‘I’ll write you a cheque for it all tomorrow. You shouldn’t have to—’

Fran left her chair, moving with a lightness amazing in someone so solidly built, and put an arm around Angie’s shoulders.

‘We’re glad to do it. And you need to keep whatever cash you’ve got, love, for life after the case.’

Angie couldn’t speak for guilt and dependence, and for the longing to be free of both. She let her neck fold and laid her head against Fran’s arm.

‘Did the letter upset you, Angie?’

‘What letter?’ Her head returned to its usual position with a snap.

‘The one from Brighton. Seeing the postmark, I … I hoped it might be from Adam.’

‘It was, Fran. Chilly, but polite. Even supportive, in a way.’

‘Fantastic!’ Greg’s smile made his beard jiggle as his cheek muscles bunched up.

Angie didn’t respond. She thought there was something faked about his pleasure. She wondered what he and Fran had been arguing about.

‘When’s he coming?’ Fran asked, pouring more filthy apple wine into Angie’s glass.

‘Not until I say I need him,’ she said through lips stiffened as though with cold. ‘And I don’t think I can deal with him right now. It’s too—’

Fran was looking at her with a concern that still seemed genuine. Angie let herself believe in it and told the truth.

‘It’s too important. If I say the wrong thing because I’m concentrating on the trial, I could lose him for ever.’

There was a long pause. Fran chewed her beans. Angie watched, fascinated by her powerful jaw and her perfect skin. Their peculiar diet was clearly healthy.

‘What happened, Angie?’

‘To make him go away, you mean?’

Fran nodded and the fall of reddish-gold hair slithered over her shoulder.

‘He didn’t like the farm.’ Angie’s eyes misted. ‘And I suppose he grew out of wanting to be with John and me.’

‘But—’ said Greg, while Fran made an unsubtle hushing gesture before he could finish his protest or ask any more questions.

Angie wouldn’t have answered. She’d never told anyone the whole story of what had happened to make Adam disappear, and she certainly wasn’t going to offer it up to Greg.

He got up to fill himself a glass of water at the sink and let it overflow, soaking the cuffs of his jersey. The peculiarly nasty, almost meaty, smell of wet wool was so familiar from the ever-present washing that had hung from pulleys over the Aga at home that she was lost. Greg’s voice faded as she thought of the night her life had gone so horribly wrong.

 

There were gumboots warming at the side of the Aga. Schlep waited obediently for the word that would allow him to bend his nose to his food.

Adam was there, standing in the doorway, waiting too. At last John gave the word and Schlep bounded forward to eat with all the hunger of a working dog fed only once a day.

‘You like doing that, don’t you?’ Adam said in a voice colder than the flagged floor.

John raised his head. His eyes looked small in sockets swollen with wind and rain and rubbing. The lines that ran from the side of his nose to the bottom of his chin on either side of his mouth could have been drawn with thick black marker. His wrists were balanced on the table’s edge with his bent hands pointing to the ceiling so that the blood could retreat and ease the pain and swelling in his fingers.

‘What did you say?’ There was no real expression in a voice hoarse with tiredness, but the menace was clear.

‘You enjoy making Schlep wait to eat,’ Adam said, talking with the glassy precision of someone addressing a foreigner. ‘You’re a psycho control freak. Here we all are,
Ma and me and Schlep, two paces behind you, making your world work, and still having to wait on your pleasure for anything
we
might need.’

‘Adam! Don’t be stupid.’

‘It’s true, Ma. Look at yourself. You were a high-flyer and he’s turned you into an ugly worn-out drudge. Ruined your life. Well, he’s not fucking ruining mine.’

‘Adam,’ Angie called out again, as he left the room. ‘Adam, wait.’

‘Leave him,’ John said, not moving. His hands still stood up from the table’s edge like misshapen trees guarding a gateway. ‘He’ll get over it and apologise. Or he won’t. But it’s his problem to deal with. He’s too old to have you running after him to offer comfort.’

She looked down the length of the well-scrubbed table and wondered if you could ever mend a broken life. Somehow she must try. ‘It was you I wanted comfort for. Not him.’

The left side of his mouth twisted a little. ‘Oh, Angie, where would I be without you?’

 

‘Angie! Angie! Are you all right?’ Fran’s voice was urgent enough to make her focus. ‘You look all faint, love. You’d better put your head between your knees.’

Instead Angie looked up at Fran and hated herself for taking so much kindness without giving anything in return. She didn’t have much to give, but honesty would be a start.

‘Adam and John had a row one evening,’ she said. ’Adam had attacked him for … Oh, nothing. It was pointless. Worse: cruel. So next morning, when Adam asked for a lift to the station, I told him I was too busy to take him. I hoped
he’d apologise to John and life would become bearable again for all of us.