The Stepmother (11 page)

L
et me tell you a story
, now I’ve got your attention.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time there were two little girls born to a young mother who named them not for the rose trees in the Grimms’ tale,
Snow White and Rose Red
, but for the beautiful film stars she would rather have been herself.

The mother was already sad, because she realised she hadn’t married a king but a total tosser with a roving eye and a gambling habit – but she quite liked her two daughters. They made her smile, and the older one was very good at taking care of the younger on the days the mother couldn’t get out of bed.

Only when the king disappeared with Lynnette from the Cordor estate, the mother was so distraught that she couldn’t stop crying, and soon after she became well and truly hooked on pot and then on mother’s little helpers.

Easily done. Valium was all the rage in the late 1970s...

When even the dodgy doctor on the high street refused to fill yet another prescription, she asked her Uncle Rog for help. He lit another fag and sniffed:
Go down the Breakspears in Brockley – you’ll get anything there.

Unfortunately that day the dealer in the pub wasn’t the usual bloke but a new one: a handsome, stress-wise type, pretty eyes and sneering mouth. ‘I can do Valium today, love, and if I ever can’t, think about a hit of smack instead? Does the same sort of thing, don’t it?’ Then he gave her a kiss. ‘You’re very pretty, ain’t you?’

And so it was that the mother fell for a man worse even than the horror dad of her two girls.

She kept off the heroin for a while – she wasn’t daft. But when the pills began to not quite do their job, well…

And so the older girl – the quieter, gentler one – kept looking after the younger, who was a right little livewire, and somehow they stumbled through their childhood together – until they met the bear. But that’s another story, for another day.

B
it clearer
?

And make of that what you will, but just know this: if you grow up at the knee of a woman so out of it she can’t remember to feed you every morning or take you to school; if you know that she kind of can’t help it herself, but she’s failing as a parent, except you’re too young to actually manufacture that thought properly, so you just think, ‘Oh that’s our Mum, she’s spaced again,’ and you still love her anyway, though you couldn’t define love if you were asked to; if you still hope she’ll love you, despite the fact she’s so off her head most of the time that she wouldn’t know what love was if it jumped out and punched her on the nose – a broken nose, broken more than once from fighting with fellas or falling on her face – well if you go through that for a bit, it will affect you. Yeah, it will.

We are a product of what we grow up in. Not necessarily always our genes, it turns out – but a lot about our nurture.

Oh yeah, I see your face now. You’re thinking, what the hell – how are they both walking and talking, let alone breathing, if they came through this?

Are you judging me? Well judge away, mate.

We were lucky. We had our nan. In the end she came and got us. Before the social got involved she took us away, and she did the rest of the parenting. We saw our mum occasionally, when she was clean, which got more rare until eventually she died. There was the terrible methamphetamine phase when Nan went on holiday with Sheila from bingo for a bit of a rest. We spent much of that week hiding in the cupboard beneath the stairs.

After that we saw our mum a few times a year – and our nan, and Great Aunt Margaret, made sure we were washed and fed, loved and schooled.

So. We survived. Just about.

But it made us what we are today.

I survived, largely cos of Jeanie. Because before Nan stepped in, Jeanie made sure we got food and got to school on the worst days, the days when our mum was comatose or had cried into her pillow all night till she couldn’t see straight.

Now they’d call it ‘bipolar’ I guess or clinical depression or some such. There were reasons for her behaviour; she hadn’t had a good time either. There were doubtless reasons she turned to the drugs and drink. But no, I don’t want to go into all of that now.

Our dad? He was just a reprobate and a charming one at that. He took after my granddad, my nan’s late husband – a sailor in the Merchant Navy and never at home till he died early.

Our dad literally had a woman in every tower block this side of the Thames, and that side too, along with many a scheme to get rich quick. In the end he offed and didn’t get rich at all, as far as I know.

No. No idea – could be alive and kicking, could be six feet under. Do I care? Not really.

You don’t miss what you never had.

Do you?

So. Don’t look at us like that. We didn’t do so badly, I don’t think – but we didn’t do relationships well, either of us. We didn’t get it.

We couldn’t get it.

The only thing we did get that was positive, thank God, was a little ambition. Our nan drummed it into us. ‘Don’t rely on a man.’ Well there were none around to rely on anyway.

And we knew we wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.

And look at how that turned out for both of us in the end.

T
o return to the present
, Jeanie
did
sound like shit on the phone that evening, after the whole Luke-in-hospital incident.

Sorry if that offends your sensibilities, but it’s not what you expect when your big sister’s apparently married the man of her dreams.

Except – as more than one bloody shrink’s told me – I have zero expectations of love for myself, so why would I have more for Jeanie?

Not that she doesn’t deserve love. Christ, if anyone does, if anyone deserves being adored, it’s Jeanie. But as usual she put herself last and everyone else first.

That’s just how she is… and now look what’s bloody happened.

I
didn’t sleep well
at all last night.

After I saw the birds, I pulled down all the blinds and tried both Matthew – whose phone went to voicemail – and then Frankie. He was still only near Birmingham, he said, waiting for a connection at the bus depot.

‘Call the police if you’re worried?’ he said, but I decided that would be ridiculous, so I went to bed instead.

My dreams were filled with skeletons and bird beaks and tiny beady eyes, and at some point Matthew crept into bed, terrifying me even more when I opened my eyes and found him beside me.

I curled into him desperately. At least I wasn’t alone in the house any more, though my dreams were still chequered.

In the sleety morning, all snow gone, I told him about the dead birds, but by the time he went to look, they’d gone.

‘The foxes must have taken them,’ I said, confused. But where were the cloches? ‘They were definitely right there last night – like they’d been laid out. A baby and a mother.’

‘There’s hardly any foxes here at this time of year.’

That was rubbish, and we both knew it.

‘I heard them, Matthew. Last night, I heard them. The foxes.’

‘Well it’s still not the right time of year for chicks. You must have imagined it,’ he said. ‘Probably tired – and maybe a bit drunk?’

‘I didn’t even have a drink last night,’ I protested, and he looked at me oddly.

‘
Really?
’ He pointed at the recycling bin. A bottle of Sauvignon Blanc stuck out – my favourite – and an empty half-measure of Southern Comfort.

‘Not mine,’ I insisted. ‘Honestly, I swear, Matt.’

‘If you say so,’ he said, with a half sigh.

It was obvious he didn’t believe me.

When he left for work, I rang Marlena again. Frankie had a shift at the bistro, and I needed to see someone who actually knew me well.

‘I’d – I’d really like to see you,’ I said to my sister’s voicemail. ‘I should have said last night – I miss you.’

Need
would have been a better verb.

Was I losing my marbles again?

M
arlena calls back
to say she’s on her way to Luton for a ‘recce’ and she could meet somewhere nearby for coffee.

We meet at a service station not far away, on the M25. She’s in the coffee shop, scribbling on a notepad, transcribing something from her phone.

We don’t kiss each other; we never do.

‘Hey,’ she says, not looking up properly. ‘Won’t be a sec. Grab me another black coffee would you? And a chocolate muffin. I haven’t got long.’

I do as I’m told. It’s easier, generally, I’ve found with her.

Sitting opposite Marlena, I wait for her to finish writing. She looks good; she always does. Her glossy black curls are bundled messily on top of her head; she wears a big fake fur, a leather mini skirt and high-tops that she manages to pull off, despite being thirty-six.

She finishes whatever it is she’s been scrawling. ‘So what’s up?’ My sister looks at me and grins.

‘Nothing really.’ I toy with my cappuccino froth.

‘That’s quite blatantly a lie.’ Her nicotine-stained fingers are itching to light a fag. ‘You look tired.’

‘How’s the no smoking going?’

She scowls at me like she did when I told her to brush her teeth aged five. ‘It’s not, as I’m sure you well know. Don’t rub it in!’

‘Sorry.’ I try to stifle a yawn. She looks at me again, enquiry in her dark eyes, and I shrug. ‘I’m not sleeping well.’

‘I thought you were over all that?’

A
s I suspected
, Jeanie didn’t look like someone who’d just got married and was basking in her honeymoon period. Sure, she had a massive rock on her ring finger and a new navy coat that looked expensive – Hobbs or Reiss or somewhere sensible like that – but she looked really tired, big shadows under her warm brown eyes. When she said she wasn’t sleeping, alarm bells sounded faintly.

Were we going down this route again?

‘I’m okay.’ She managed a half smile. ‘Really. It’s just…’ She trailed off.

‘What?’ Surreptitiously I checked the time on my phone. The bloke I was meeting was meant to be here in twenty minutes. I couldn’t miss the opportunity. If I could talk to the mullah of this group, he might have info on Nasreen’s disappearance; they might have one tiny clue at least – God knows we needed it. The lead in Germany had turned out to be nothing; there was no evidence of the girl on any flight to Turkey at the moment, despite the CCTV to Heathrow – so
how
the hell had she got to Syria – unless she’d had a fake passport?

If
she had got to Syria – that was what I was starting to think.

‘Oh I don’t know.’ Jeanie pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and then she looked at me nervously. I always knew when she was nervous. ‘I do feel a
bit
like I’m imagining things, but…’

‘Spit it out.’ I felt frustrated, partly because of my lack of time. ‘Imagining what?’

‘It’s – someone knows, Mar. And it’s as if they might be making things – well kind of hard for me.’

‘Knows what?’ I shook my head. ‘Don’t get it.’

‘Everything. They know everything – and they’ve said so. And last night – there were dead birds outside. Only when I told Matthew this morning, they were gone.’

‘Dead birds?’ I felt myself frown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There was a mother and a chick laid out, like someone had – I don’t know. Made some kind of picture. I saw it, I know I did – but then it was gone.’

I saw her eyes fill with tears and I thought,
Oh shit, please don’t cry, Jean
. I’m not good with tears; never have been. Make me feel – kind of angry inside.

Helpless
, the shrink said.
They make you feel impotent, Marlena, so you get angry.

‘Sorry,’ Jeanie said, wiping them on the back of her hand. She knows me so well, my big sis.

Frankly I was a bit worried by all this, but I wasn’t sure how to play it.

‘So let me get this straight.’ I fiddled with the wooden stirrer thing, desperate for a fag. ‘You
still
haven’t told Matthew everything?’

‘Most of it, I have. And I’m going to – I was going to the other night – but then his son got rushed into hospital and…’

‘Shit.’

‘He’s okay – he’s fine now. But someone wrote to me, Mar. They sent me a card.’

‘What kind of card?’

My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ravi:

‘Oh God, Jean, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to go in a sec – I can’t miss this bloke, it’s pretty fucking crucial…’

I felt bad – but this might be life and death.

‘No worries.’ Jeanie gave a bright smile. ‘I probably
am
just imagining things. It’s been a big change, I suppose. Just need to get used to things. The house and things – it’s so big, it’s kind of – weird.’

Why did she say that?
No worries
. Why didn’t she just say,
Stay the fuck here and listen to me
?

‘I will come up soon, I promise
,
’ I said. ‘To stay in your nice big house. In a weekend or two. Tell him everything. Then it’ll all be okay. And enjoy the house! I would.’

‘Yes, I will try. I’m sure you’re right.’

‘I’m always right, aren’t I, Jean?’ I pulled a silly face as I picked my coffee up. ‘How’s Frank? Tell him to come and see me.’

I
’m always right
?

Jesus wept, Marlena. You fucking stupid cow.

I
feel a bit better now
! It was good to see Marlena, even if it was brief – and Matthew was all normal when he got home. He ordered us a Thai curry for supper and told me about King’s Lynn and the mad cousins. And I slept much better last night.

F
rankie brings
Jenna home for lunch. A curvy little brunette with a big smile and gappy teeth, I warm to her immediately. He was an early starter, my lovely Frank, always keen on the girls – and that’s fine with me. I don’t really get all that jealous mother stuff. It’s beyond me.

As long as they are kind. I just want Frank to be happy.

That’s
all
I want really.

But I don’t think Matthew appreciated Jenna’s rather left-wing politics. He’s far more traditional than I first realised, and I’ve not told him yet about my misspent youth selling the
Socialist Worker
.

I’m starting to see it’s best not to argue too much. The vein on his forehead stood out alarmingly last week when Frankie said he was a Marxist at heart.

‘A communist?’ Matthew spluttered. ‘Well you won’t want your subscription to the
Grand Prix
mag then, will you?’ That had been Matthew’s idea of the perfect Christmas present for Frank and not really up Frank’s street at all – but I’d wanted Matt to feel that he was contributing emotionally as well as materially, so I’d demurred.

Matthew reacts very quickly to Frank and doesn’t seem to get his humour. It’s starting to occur to me that my husband and my son are clashing; tension’s growing by the minute.

Luckily Jenna is sweet and perceptive, asking Matthew about his work, which goes down well. Although Matthew seems stressed recently, I have to say; far more so than when I met him.

‘What’s Malum House named for?’ Jenna asks as I cut the cherry pie. ‘It means evil, doesn’t it – malum?’

‘Evil?’ Matthew seems shocked. ‘No, it’s the Latin for “apple”. It was built on the old orchards. There are a few apple trees left in the back garden actually.’

‘Oh I’m sorry.’ Jenna smiles at him. ‘I thought it seemed odd. I must have misremembered my Latin. It’s been a while.’

‘Custard, lovey?’ I change the subject quickly. ‘Hope it’s not too lumpy. Not my forte, custard.’

J
enna leaves
, and the headache that has crept up during the afternoon gets worse. I just can’t shift it, so I go to bed early.

‘I’ll be up soon.’ Matthew blows me a kiss from in front of
Match of the Day.
‘Take some more pills, hon.’

An hour or two later I wake up, needing a drink of water.

Matthew isn’t in bed.

I can hear voices; maybe he and Frank are chatting? But Frankie is asleep when I peer into his room.

I realise the voices are coming from above – from Scarlett’s room. I creep up the stairs, and the light is on.

When did she arrive?

Unsettled I creep back down and into bed.

I am relieved when, about twenty minutes later, Matthew comes to bed too. Reeking of alcohol, I notice, as I turn over to sleep. But at least he is here.