All Bones and Lies (27 page)

A pity his mother hadn't thought to close the larder window before embarking on her pestilent chicken supper. Smuts had flown in with the smoke and left dark splatters over everything. Should he toss all the food out, or could he simply wipe down jars and packets? Tugging things out one by one, he caught sight of something tiny and still and black behind the semolina. Talk about shoemakers' children being the worst shod. Could this all-too-large speck be the corpse of a cockroach in his own mother's pantry?

So hard to see. The smoke-filmed lightbulb dangling overhead was practically no help at all. He'd get that wiped off first. He tested his weight on the breadbin into which he'd just slid Mr Herbert's pre-dated certificate, ready for any battles to come (‘Not with the rest of the paperwork? Good heavens! Let me send you a certified copy of the original') then, guessing the breadbin's lid wouldn't bear his weight without denting, went off for a chair he could climb on.

Now that his eyes were level with the highest shelf, he could see everything she kept up here. Perhaps, he thought, suddenly reminded of his detritus in the woodshed, she was versed in her own form of medical wizardry. There was that stuff she used to make him gargle with when he had mouth boils. A sticky-lidded jar of glycerine of thymol. Some ancient Friar's Balsam. One or two linseed poultices. A package of grubby-looking thermo-gene wool. And an old nasal douche bag.

And, behind that, a long thick envelope. Presumably private. And recent, too, or it would surely share that yellowed look of the instructions for the poultices and the label on the glycerine. He stretched out his fingers to prise it from its little hiding place behind the medicines. And it was a hiding place, he was sure of that. She, being shorter, would think the envelope pretty well invisible, tucked behind there. It wasn't sealed, though it had clearly been so once. Had she come back, time and again, to read and reread the contents, until the self-adhesive strip along the envelope gave up the ghost? He checked his fingers for tell-tale Friar's Balsam, then, coolly, and pushing all qualms aside, fished out her secret.

Her new will.

Of spite unparalleled. Blinking, he tackled it a second time. And then, in disbelief, the covering letter in all its unsheathed malevolence.

Knowing just how much trouble comes about when twins are not treated with scrupulous fairness
. . .

(What was the self-righteous old bat on about? She had let Dilys be top dog since the Year Dot.)

. . .
and since, with my death, my son and daughter will only have one another left . . . would hate to come between them . . . matter of principle, given our estrangement, not to leave anything at all to my daughter . . . sadly leaves me with no alternative . . . nothing for Colin either . . .

Giddy with shock, he sank on the chair. Old people were
amazing.
First, the embittered Widow Besterton, spiting her friends and acquaintances by leaving her not inconsiderable Chaffer fortune to strangers on the strength of two ill-written signatures on a blank page. And now his mother, heaving everything into some charity skip – which was it, for God's sake? Bloody Help the Aged? – on the strength of a principle in which she'd never before shown a smidgen of interest.

Still, credit where it was due. It can't have been easy. Not the business of giving away his inheritance – that would have been a breeze. But it must have been hard for someone who so delighted in taking sides to treat the two of them fairly. (Though, there again, there'd be the splendid consolation of thinking she'd more than likely introduced a canker that would spoil what little sense of kinship remained.)

Not bad – even for someone who had spent the larger
part of her life making malice an art form. Small wonder she'd had so little time for jobs or hobbies. She'd put her heart and energies into this business of growing grievances and fomenting ill-will. In these two areas, at least, you had to hand it to her. She had taken pains. Indeed, you had to admire her. Such was her level of commitment to her vocation that, like some martyred saint of old, she was prepared to turn even her very own death and funeral to account, as proof she wouldn't miss a trick.

So look at him now. Off the hook, and
free
. That ghastly miasma of guilt that hung around him like bad breath – all gone, gone,
gone.
And he would never even have to tell her why. In those sharp tortoise eyes, the same old dark contempt would burn. He wouldn't care. He had stopped feeling grimed with guilt the moment he'd grasped the gist of the letter. No longer would he have to squirm when she went on about the cruelties life had dealt to her. He would remind himself that some people go through life gathering roses, and others thorns. Instead of peevishly tolerating one another through what might come, he could, like Tammy, sit bewitched. She'd look at him as if he were the usual old smell on the landing. And he'd be able to look levelly back, and stroll off whistling with her will in mind. Admiring her, even. And feeling close to lucky. After all, how many other people had a parent so committed they would devote, not just their whole life but their death as well, to dealing their offspring one last astonishing, hurtful black card?

Talk about black. His hands were filthy as her heart. It would be nice to get the place cleaned up a bit before his
guests came. For, yes. Now that he knew that he could face his mother down, he could go back for Mel and Tam. Herding the little flock of gruesome medicaments back into place in front of the envelope, he picked up the cloth and started wiping off particles from the fire. What better place to start his new life than here in Holly House, grave of the old? He could nip up and find some sheets and stack them on top of the boiler. By the time Tam was sleepy again they would be aired enough. And that back room in which his father seemed to spend the night so often in the months before the accident was cosy and warm – and out of the way. Mother would barely even notice a small child pattering around. Best to choose somewhere sensible, after all, since it was clearly going to be a matter of weeks – not till Mel started slipping away on trips back to the circus: that, from the driven level of the practising, was clearly going to start almost at once. But till the money came through, and he'd had time to look for a nice house close to an excellent school – and, of course, near to the station so Mel wouldn't ever have to bother with taxis. And pretty soon, of course, he'd have to face the fact that—

On with the cleaning, Colin. First things first.

The hospital escalators faced one another crosswise between the mirrored walls in which Tammy was complacently admiring her smart new pigtails and her brand-new frock.

‘Col! Colin!'

Val had shot past.

Hastily, he started to walk backwards down the rising
steps, with Tam still on his shoulders. Val took the same tack, dragging the blonde woman standing at her side up backwards in step. ‘Off to see Mum,' explained Colin across the twin handrails that had become his only point of reference in a dizzying universe. Was this the sort of exercise Clarrie and her keep-fit friends did for hours at step class? If so, they must be mad. The back of his thighs were aflame, and Tam felt like a boulder.

Val was insistent. ‘Wait at the top. I need a word.' As he sailed on and up, he heard her adding, ‘It's professional.' But, frankly, she could have been planning to sting him for a tenner and he'd still have fallen in with her, rather than face the physical strain any longer. ‘You're a giant great lump,' he told Tam almost crossly, lifting her off at the top and dumping her down firmly.

‘And you're a big farty mole!'

She fell into hysterical giggles at her own wit, and he stood panting till Val and her colleague had sailed up to join them.

‘Not here,' said Val. ‘Private. Come round the corner.'

Not that private, Colin thought somewhat sourly, as the other woman followed. But he said nothing, merely giving her the briefest of nods as Val whipped out her notebook.

‘Now, Col. About your mother . . .'

‘Still in Ward Four,' he told her, jerking a thumb upwards. ‘Passing the lonely hours sharpening her fangs.'

Tam squeezed his fingers in that flutter of delicious terror he'd come to recognize. Val sighed. ‘I mean, what's going to happen when we sign her out today? Where is she going?'

He couldn't help asking hopefully, ‘Why? Will she be on
your
list?'

‘Of a fashion. Just till she's a little less shaky.'

‘She'll be all right,' said Colin. ‘She'll have us looking after her for a while.' He leaned down, testing the water with his beloved. ‘Isn't that right, Tam?'

‘Tam?'

Val's colleague stepped back to take a better look at the neat pigtails and the spanking clean frock. ‘This can't be Tammy Gould!' She switched on her professional voice. ‘Well, well! Remember me?'

‘No.' Tammy scowled.

‘Oh yes, you do,' the woman told her calmly. ‘I'm Hermione, and I come to visit.'

‘Say hello,' Colin ordered, more out of prudence than any desire to mend fences between Tam and her mother's despised social worker.

‘No,' Tam said, making a face. ‘And you can't come to see us any more.'

Hermione ignored the rude tone. ‘That's right. You're all burned down, aren't you?' She turned to Colin. ‘Is that why they're moving to your house?'

‘Not my house,' fended Colin cheerfully. ‘Never my house.'

‘See? You can't come,' Tammy informed her firmly.

Val looked up, grinning, from the discharge form on which she'd been filling in sections. ‘And you won't need to, either, Hermione, if I know this man. He is obsessed with fitting safety rails to balconies, and tacking down wires, and not eating stuff past its date stamp.' She ripped her completed form off the pad. ‘Well, that's your mum
ticked off. I think it's a brilliant idea, having someone to live with her. And this young lady here will obviously bring a bit of light and life into the house.'

Light and life?

His wish for his mother! How many ways did magic have to work its mysteries? And he could tell, just from the conspiratorially merry way Val and Hermione were exchanging glances, that what he wanted for himself was on its way as well. Neither of these two would step in to veto his glorious, burgeoning plan. After all, as even Mel had grumpily admitted, people of his sort spread safety nets all over. What better way of making sure everyone got what they needed than leave it to him?

He was still standing, lost in astonishment, when Hermione turned back to Tam. ‘So you won't be too pleased to have me visit you at Colin's mother's?'

But Tam had changed her mind. Winsomely tipping her head to one side, she said sweetly to Hermione, ‘Oh, yes. You can come. And Norah will give you some of her special
soup
.'

And knowing disquietingly well just what sort of special soup his small charge probably had in mind, Colin took her by the hand and hastily ushered her onwards and upwards.

His mother sat bolt upright on the bed, ramming the hat that sat on her head like a shiny black slug through with a hairpin.

‘I see you've brought Little Miss Smartypants along with you.'

‘She insisted on coming. I think she must like you.'

Even to him in his new mood, this came out sounding rather rude. But his mother just snorted. ‘You really have made her top billing, haven't you? I expect, when she asks, you'll be giving her the eyes out of your head to play marbles.'

Already Tam was sitting starry-eyed. What was it about children, that one could thrive on acid that had eaten away at the soul of another?

‘Actually, she's coming back with us to Holly House.'

‘Really?' His mother gave Tam a very beady look indeed. ‘Well, just so long as she behaves. Otherwise she'll go in the broth pot.'

‘Mustn't tell lies,' Tam told her gravely.

‘Don't talk back to Old Bones.'

Hastily, Colin distracted the two of them by asking his mother, ‘So how are you feeling now, anyway?'

‘Like a wobbly foal. But ready to come home.'

And he, he realized, was ready to take her. After all, what was so wrong with doing right by her? He wouldn't be doing it just for his mother. It was for him, too. He'd face his deepest fear – the fear that, one day, she'd be at his mercy and he could pay her back for all the wrongs that he and Dilys still believed she'd done to them.

And he would not. He would be good to her. There she sat, dressed up and ready to go, halfway between what she was and what she thought she was, just like everyone else on this crummy, flawed planet.

And he'd do right by her. Survive. And live to tell the tale.

As good a son as anyone could hope for.

‘Let's go home.'

THE END

All Bones and Lies
is Anne Fine's fifth novel. Her first was the critically acclaimed
The Killjoy. Taking the Devil's Advice
and
Telling Liddy
have both been adapted for radio. She is also a distinguished writer for young people, and has won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Whitbread Children's Award twice, the
Guardian
Children's Literature Award and a Smarties Prize. An adaptation of her novel
Goggle-Eyes
has been shown by the BBC, and Twentieth-Century Fox filmed her novel
Madame Doubtfire
as
Mrs Doubtfire
, starring Robin Williams. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages and she has recently been appointed Children's Laureate. Anne Fine has two grown-up daughters and lives in County Durham.

Also by Anne Fine

THE KILLJOY

TAKING THE DEVIL'S ADVICE

IN COLD DOMAIN

TELLING LIDDY

and published by Black Swan