The Son-in-Law (22 page)

Finally, they put her back together—I imagined them stuffing in her organs like pyjamas into a case—and sewed her up. Only then were we allowed to have her back.

Thankfully, Marie Scott offered to lend a hand with the children, bless her. She quietly came to stay, and kept them upstairs on the morning of the funeral. I could hear the baby crying as though his tiny heart would burst. He’d been looking for his mother all week. Sometimes he could be distracted for a few minutes, but the respite was short-lived. Every time he heard a female voice he’d crawl out with a happy yell, looking for her. As soon as he realised it wasn’t Zoe, the little chap would simply sit down on the floor, his face would crumple, and he’d wail inconsolably. Nobody else would do. Nobody could comfort him.

Freddie held the pen suspended, mouthing the words he wanted to say to his daughter. A small card for a million words. His lips were moving. He forced the pen down and managed to write

Precious, beloved

before the pen wobbled, smudged and spoiled the pristine whiteness. He was weeping openly now. His shoulders shuddered, his breath tore from his body. Comfortable, competent women bustled in our kitchen, hired caterers taking care of practicalities. They witnessed my dry-eyed paralysis and Freddie’s brokenness. They saw how he suffered while I did nothing to comfort him. One of them couldn’t stand it; she dropped to one knee and put her arms around him, and I was so grateful for her humanity.

I took up the pen and the card and leaned them on the draining board.

You were our all,
I wrote
.

You were our light.

You were our life.

Mum and Dad.

The front doorbell rang. The undertaker waited there, controlled and capable in his dark suit, with a long black car parked behind him. Zoe had arrived. Marie brought the children downstairs, slipping tactfully away while we went out to meet our daughter. Ben howled as though he knew what this was—though surely he was too young to understand. Theo gripped my hand. Scarlet walked right up to the coffin where it lay in the back of the hearse, and rested her cheek on it. Beside her, Freddie wept quietly. Then the five of us were gently ushered into another car, to follow Zoe on her last journey.

Joseph Scott did it, with his flying fist. Joseph Scott made the world stop turning. How could I forgive and forget?

‘Try to give them
permission
to see their father,’ said Lester Hardy.

‘Permission?’ I snapped. ‘You know perfectly well we don’t give permission. The choice has been taken away from us. So let’s leave the touchy-feely language for your more gullible victims, shall we?’

Frederick rubbed my forearm with anxious affection. ‘Hannah, Hannah,’ he murmured. ‘Shh.’

‘I mean give them tacit permission,’ explained Lester, unabashed. ‘It’s a matter of subtle signals.’

‘And must we also permit them to like him—love him?’ asked Frederick.

Lester met his eye. ‘That would be wonderful. He is their only remaining parent.’

Easy for him to say.

‘Have you any idea what you are asking?’ I demanded bitterly. ‘Lester—think about it! Only a saint or a fool would forgive that man. Which do you think we are?’

‘Neither,’ said Lester. ‘But I know that you love your grandchildren. That’s why I know you’ll help them through this.’

It was his trump card. We couldn’t fault the logic, and anyway we had no choice at all. Frederick and I were obliged to parcel up our grandchildren and deliver them to the only man we had ever hated.

•

Scarlet

The devil was singing. He was bringing death. I tried and tried to scream, filling my lungs and forcing out the sound. Then I was awake, lying in the dark, and my heart was galloping. It was a long, long time before it slowed down.

I was going to see my dad.

Sometimes all our living, all our thoughts, and all the time in the world feel like sand in an hourglass. We swirl around, but eventually we have to fall through the narrow part in the middle. Looking back on it, I know the moment Dad killed Mum was like that. It was always going to happen. Everything that happened before it was heading for that chute. I feel as though that moment is always there, still happening forever and ever, making a current that still tugs at me. It changes everything, and it will always change everything. What happened that day is very heavy. It’s so heavy and important that it makes a sort of gravity of its own. Hannah once tried to explain that black holes do that.

Meeting my father again was the same. It was bound to happen eventually. I didn’t know it would happen in the playroom at Mr Hardy’s office, I didn’t know it would happen when I was thirteen years old, but I always knew I would meet him again. Over the past three years I’d tried to pretend that he didn’t exist. Actually, I’d tried to pretend that he had
never
existed, which was much harder. If anyone asked me, I’d tell them that I had no father. But in a corner of my mind I knew that one day he would be back. Even though I swam around in my hourglass and tried to become a girl with no father, the current was tugging at me. I was always going to end up falling down the chute at the bottom. So in a way, I didn’t have any choice about it—but not because of the judge, or Mr Hardy. It happened because it had to.

At some time in the night, I heard Hannah talking to Gramps in their room. Her voice sounded fast and loud. I heard him reply, just a few peaceful words. I think I might have dropped off around then. I felt as though I’d been asleep about five seconds before Hannah came in to wake me, and I sat up with that Oh-My-God feeling you get when you’ve got an exam. Or your mum’s funeral.

I wanted to be looking my very best when I told my dad to piss off. I had a shower and brushed on blusher and mascara—but not so much that Hannah would notice. She makes narky comments about me wearing makeup. I wore my skinny jeans, crocheted beret and the bright blue jacket I’d persuaded Gramps to buy when we took a trip to Stratford to see
Hamlet
. It was a fantastic production but, to be honest, I thought Hamlet needed a good kick up the backside. I know what it’s like to have a parent murdered, and there’s no excuse for making everyone’s life a total misery. He caused another eight people to die, including himself. And Ophelia behaved like a total drip, though I hope I get to play her one day. I’m good at madness. We were met by some old luvvie mates of Gramps’—invited backstage to meet the cast—and we stayed in a hotel with an ensuite and no squabbling brothers to spoil it all. The next day we went shopping; hence the blue jacket.

I’d asked to see Dad on my own, first. Mr Hardy agreed, so Gramps took me to his office first thing in the morning. In the old days they used to execute people at dawn. I asked Gramps why, and he thought perhaps it was so the poor things wouldn’t have time to think about it all day. Mind you, I don’t imagine people slept the night before they got executed, any more than I slept the night before they took me to see my dad.

Mr Hardy’s office building was made of square sandstone blocks. It had been built into a row of old ones and was obviously trying to look like one of them. As we walked up to the front doors I glanced up at the windows. I was sure my father was looking out at us. I felt his grey eyes on me, bloodshot with those dark eyebrows and round glasses. I pictured him in the long black coat, and then I pictured him in the green-blue sweater he used to love, the one that Mum gave him for Christmas.

We clattered up some smooth concrete stairs to the second floor, through glass doors and into a carpeted lobby. The heels of my ankle boots sank into the carpet. There was a woman behind a desk but before she spoke, Mr Hardy came bustling up to meet us.

‘Ah! Hello, Scarlet,’ he said. ‘Nice jacket. Very chic. Dad’s already here.’

I felt Gramps rest his hand on my elbow. ‘All right, Scarletta?’ he asked. I nodded, but he kept looking at me. ‘Are you sure?’

I managed a feeble smile.

‘Right.’ Gramps straightened his flat cap on his head. ‘Right.’

Mr Hardy opened the door for him, which was a hint. ‘Thank you, Frederick. You’ll bring the boys at ten, unless you hear from us?’

I made a thumbs-up signal to Gramps. He squeezed my arm. Then he was gone, and the glass doors sighed shut behind him.

‘Ready?’ Mr Hardy asked me.

‘Nnnnyes.’ I pulled my beret further to the back of my head. I felt weird, as though I was dreaming. Nothing was real. Any minute now I’d be face to face with my dad. We crossed the lobby and walked down a corridor. Then Mr Hardy began to turn the brass handle of a door.

‘Hang on,’ I whispered.

He stopped. ‘D’you need more time?’

‘Will you stay?’

His hand was still gripping that handle. ‘Yes, but I’ll be very much in the background.’

‘Promise you’ll stay?’

‘Promise. Now are you ready?’

I seemed to have lost my voice altogether, so I nodded.

‘Well done.’ He winked, as though we were conspirators. Then he turned that handle, opened that door, and stood back to let me in.

•

Joseph

He was going to see Scarlet. She was probably on her way here, now, to this building; to this room.

He was going to see Scarlet, and he was terrified.

Lester had asked him to arrive early, to avoid any unscheduled confrontation with the Wildes. Joseph arrived earlier still, knotted with nerves after a night without sleep. He’d refused coffee but accepted a pep talk from Lester.
She’ll be angry, allow her to be
angry . . . she’s not the little girl you remember. Try not to dwell
on the lost years. Try to think about the ones you have ahead.

‘What do I do?’ Joseph had asked. ‘Can I even hug her? What do I talk about? I don’t know anything she’s been doing for the past three and a half years.’

‘Give her space,’ Lester replied. ‘Let her have her say. She has a mind of her own.’

‘Yep, that’s Scarlet,’ Joseph had agreed with a touch of pride. ‘Her mother’s daughter.’

So Joseph waited, alone in a silent room with vinyl furniture and crayon scribbles on the paintwork. It smelled of disinfectant. He sat, stood, sat again. The air was slightly too cold for comfort. Someone walked along the corridor outside. He tensed. A door opening, a swell of adult voices. Laughter. A telephone ringing.

He picked a green cast-iron tractor out of a toy box, turning it around in his fingers. Theo used to have one just like it, but this had only three wheels and the funnel was snapped. Perhaps some child had lost his temper and thrown it at the wall. There were dents in the wall. Tractor-sized.

The minutes tiptoed by.

It happened suddenly, in the end. He heard the door handle jolt before it began to turn. He stared at it.

Whispers. The first he recognised as Lester’s. Then somebody else; a higher voice that made Joseph’s breath catch. When the door swung open he was standing rigidly on the nylon carpet, clutching the tractor in one hand. Lester walked in, gravely meeting Joseph’s eye. Then he stepped back for someone else.

She appeared in one resolute movement. Her second step brought her face to face with Joseph. She stood squarely and looked him in the eye, red-gold hair showing under a royal blue beret. She looked somehow more real than he’d imagined over the past years, more real than she’d seemed in the dusk by the Minster. She wasn’t wraith-like at all; she was intensely human. And she’d changed so very much; his skinny pixie was gone.

‘Scarlet,’ he said. ‘You’re . . . beautiful.’ He hadn’t intended these to be his first words; they weren’t the ones he had rehearsed. The thought simply burst out of him.

Lightness flashed from her mouth to her eyes. Then she seemed to collect herself; she looked away from him: at the wall, at the ceiling. ‘Just tell me why you killed my mother. Then I’ll go.’

Behind her, Lester Hardy quietly closed the door. He moved to a small table by the window, picked up a biro and appeared to immerse himself in reading notes.

Joseph fiddled with the toy tractor. He made the wheels run over the palm of one hand. ‘Things had been . . .’

‘You aren’t going to blame Mum, are you? God. That’s pathetic.’

‘No.’

‘Sounds like you are.’

‘No. I lost my temper. I never . . . I was an idiot. I was an idiot.’

‘Pathetic,’ Scarlet said again, but without emphasis. She seemed uncertain of what to do next, twining her wrists around one another and shifting her weight from left foot to right. ‘Us three kids just want you to piss off.’

‘I wrote to you after I saw you in York,’ said Joseph, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. He’d already shown it to Lester, who’d turned a blind eye to this evidence that Joseph had breached his licence conditions. ‘I had no way of getting it to you. Here. You could sit down while you read it.’

Scarlet folded her arms, lips pressed together.

‘Please?’ Joseph was holding out the thin sheet. It shivered in his hand.

With a snort, she snatched it up and plonked herself unceremoniously into a small vinyl armchair. She suddenly looked much younger, jumbled inelegantly with one leg tucked under her.

Joseph watched apprehensively as she unfolded the note. ‘I’ve rewritten it twenty times,’ he said. ‘Wrote it again this morning. It still doesn’t say what I want it to say.’

She frowned at the page, narrowing her eyes. The more he recalled the words he’d written, the more hopelessly inadequate he knew them to be.

Scarlet,

I want to say sorry. I want to say sorry for everything.
I want to say that I have never stopped despising myself for
what happened, and I never will. I took your mother from
you and you must hate me for that. It was complicated, what
was going on. She was very unwell and did some things that
hurt me very much. I know that sounds as though I am trying
to make excuses, but I’m really not. I deserved to get sent to
prison. All the same, I don’t believe that I am a bad person
through and through. I think I can still be your father, even
though I can never undo the terrible harm I did.