Why Don’t You Come for Me (21 page)

She had come without her watch, but she guessed it must be well beyond lunchtime when she turned for home. She had just reached the Old Chapel Gallery when she caught sight of Shelley, who was just emerging from Ingledene.

‘Hi.’ Shelley waved a hand. ‘Long time no see. Are you coming in for a coffee?’

In truth, Jo was still shaken from the events of the morning and would much rather have gone straight home, but Shelley’s invitation was the perfect way to get over an awkward hurdle, and a refusal was open to misinterpretation, so she agreed at once, waiting at the door of the gallery while Shelley unlocked it and preceded her inside.

‘Brian’s down in Barrow for the day,’ Shelley said. ‘So I’m holding the fort alone. The trouble is that I forgot Bri was going out and started some tea breads for the freezer, so I’ve just had to pop back and turn the oven off. How’s your Lake Artists project coming on?’

Jo was grateful to accept the prompt, noting that Shelley seemed keen to gloss over her recent absence and pick up where they had left off. She accepted a mug of Shelley’s bitter brew and began to outline some of her queries and ideas. When she mentioned the Pre-Raphaelites, Shelley said: ‘I’ve got just the thing for you. It’s a leaflet about all the places in Cumbria with Pre-Raphaelite stained glass – there’s a woman in South Lakes who’s an expert on it, and she’s produced this handout. I know I can put my hand straight on it; I only saw it the other day when I was hunting for something else. I’ll go and fetch it now. If anyone comes in, make sure they buy something nice and pricey – I could use the pennies for the meter.’

While Shelley was gone, Jo sipped her coffee and looked at the nearest paintings. There was an exquisite representation of a red squirrel in oils, hung alongside another by the same artist of a snowy owl, both precise and detailed as photographs, but with the depth and beauty which a mere camera could never achieve. These were in complete contrast to the huge canvas on the facing panel, which appeared to have been slashed about with browns and greens. Jo had little or no knowledge of abstract art, but she did know that Brian would not have hung anything he did not consider very good, and from where she sat, she could see that the price tag read £2,850. She supposed that an occasional collector making a purchase of that magnitude once in a while would help keep ‘the meter’ going for some time.

When Shelley came back, she was carrying not only the promised leaflet, but also three large books. ‘These might come in useful. This one is the book about Ruskin that I couldn’t find when I looked last time, and these others will give you a bit more background on the Pre-Raphaelites, since you seem to be branching further in that direction. It would give you a chance to put in a nice bit of scandal too, with Ruskin, Millais and darling Effie.’

‘It certainly spices up the human interest,’ Jo laughed.

‘I should have brought you some sort of bag. They’re a bit awkward to carry, and this one’s got a cover which keeps slipping about.’

‘There’s plenty of room in my rucksack. I’ve only got my sketch pad and some waterproofs.’ Jo unfastened the rucksack as she was speaking and unpacked her sketch book on to the edge of the table, while she opened the drawstring wide enough to accommodate the largest of the volumes.

‘How’s the drawing coming along?’

‘I think I’m improving.’ For a moment Jo considered asking Shelley’s opinion of her sheep and cattle, but it seemed presumptuous when Shelley was a proper artist who sold her pictures.

‘You should join the Art Society. I keep on telling you that’s the way to bring yourself on.’

‘I’m really not good enough.’

‘Rubbish – that’s what everyone thinks. The Art Society accepts anyone who’s keen – and you are keen – yes, you are. You’re always heading off out to draw something. You’d gain so much from it, and what have you got to lose?’

‘I’ll think about it.’ Jo was lifting the last of the three books into her rucksack. She imagined Brian, towering over her, making some cutting remarks about her efforts with a paintbrush. She had always been wary of Brian, and now it was even worse.

Shelley might almost have read her mind. ‘Brian’s a marvellous teacher, you know. He would bring you on no end if you enrolled for one of his painting days.’

‘No thanks.’ The words were out before she could stop them – way too emphatic. The awkwardness was palpable, but she couldn’t find the words to put things right. ‘I mean … it would be difficult. And – and I’m just not ready.’

‘Your choice, of course,’ said Shelley. She shrugged and half turned away, as if her attention had been caught by something which needed rearrangement on the table.

‘Thanks for the books.’

‘No probs. Hang on to them for as long as you need them.’ Shelley didn’t look up.

She knows, Jo thought, she knows what I thought about Brian. ‘See you,’ she said, as brightly as she could.

‘Yeah, see you later,’ said Shelley.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘I’ve been doing some thinking’, said Jo, ‘while you’ve been away, and I was wondering whether we should consider moving away from here, making a fresh start.’

Dinner was over. Sean had returned to his room, but Marcus and Jo had lingered at the kitchen table, finishing off a bottle of wine. She had spoken tentatively, her eyes cast down on the place where her dinner plate had recently been, but now that she looked up to see how Marcus would react, she suddenly noticed how tired he seemed.

‘This was our fresh start. A new place, a new enterprise. This is it, Jo. You can’t just run away and start again every few years.’

‘I just think that maybe we’d all be happier somewhere else.’

‘Moving is a huge expense. We can’t afford to extend our mortgage, then there’s the business and Sean’s school.’

‘It would be better for Sean if we didn’t live right out in the country like this. If he was nearer his school, living in a bigger community, where there were more young people … He’s had Harry this week, but Harry’s family went home yesterday and there isn’t anyone else of his own age for miles.’

‘But he’s just got started at his new school, and anyway, he always knows he can ask us for a lift to anywhere he wants to go. That’s how kids in the country manage – they travel by car between each other’s houses.’

‘He never wants to go anywhere. In fact, I don’t believe he has made any new friends – so it wouldn’t matter much if he did change school.’

‘Give him a chance; he’s only just settling in. Friendships don’t always happen overnight. It definitely wouldn’t do his education any good to have another move.’

‘Well, maybe he wouldn’t need to change school. There must be other places to live in the school catchment area.’

‘I don’t get it.’ Marcus changed tack. ‘What is it that you suddenly don’t like about living here? You used to love it. What’s changed?’

Jo hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him about the constant feeling of unseen eyes watching the house, and she certainly couldn’t tell him about the unfortunate episode with Gilda Iceton and her daughter. ‘It’s very isolated out here,’ she began tentatively. ‘You don’t notice when you’re away a lot, but it’s different now that I’m here all the time. In other places I’ve had friends living nearby.’

‘You liked the peace and quiet, you always said. You could always make a bit more effort – join something – get to know a few people. And what about Shelley? I thought the two of you got on well …’

The telephone saved her by trilling insistently at just the right moment. She stood up and lifted the phone from its cradle. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello – is that Joanne?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘It’s Monica here – Aunty Beryl’s daughter. I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh dear,’ Jo braced herself. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Well – inevitable really – but Aunty Joan has died. I expect you knew that she’s been poorly for some time.’

As Jo hunted up some appropriate expression of sympathy for Monica, a mixture of emotions rose within her. Aunty Joan had been one of her mother’s aunts, the one who had never married, to whom Jo had been despatched a couple of times between periods with foster-parents and other relatives. Aunty Joan had lived in a small, terraced house in Accrington, which she had originally shared with and then inherited from her mother. The bedrooms had been full of strange old furniture, cavernous wardrobes, the interiors of which smelled like mothballs. When everyone else had long since gone over to duvets, Aunty Joan’s spare bed was still made up with starchy white sheets, ton-weight woollen blankets and a shiny, purplish-red quilted counterpane over the top.

Jo would have loved to live permanently with Aunty Joan, who bought cream cakes from the baker’s shop to eat after Saturday tea and a block of fruit and nut to share on Sunday evenings, but it had been impossible: Aunty Joan was a shop manageress, who did not get home until six o’clock in the evenings and had to work on Saturdays. That would have made Jo a latch-key kid, and the authorities didn’t like that; although Jo could have told them that lots of people managed perfectly well in similar situations, and besides which, there were far worse things for a kid to be.

Mum’s other aunt, Beryl, could not have Jo either, because she already had her own daughters, Monica and Verity, in bunk beds and her mother-in-law sleeping in the little back bedroom. So in the end Jo had gone to live with Grandma Molesly, who had taken her out of duty because no one else would or could: and because, as she said to her sisters, what would people think, if you let your granddaughter go into care? Jo had barely kept in touch with the rest of the family since Grandma Molesly died, but now she asked Monica for the funeral arrangements and jotted them down, promising to be there if she could.

‘My Aunt Joan has died,’ she told Marcus when she came off the phone. He had risen from the table, quietly tidying up in the background, while she talked to Monica. ‘Her funeral’s on Wednesday. I think I should go.’

‘Come and sit down.’ Marcus was already moving into the hall. ‘I’ve got your glass. Remind me again how Aunt Joan fits in.’

‘Aunt Joan and Aunt Beryl were my grandmother’s sisters, so really they’re my great-aunts, but because they were a lot younger than my grandmother – not much older than my mum – they seemed more like
my
aunts. Joan was the one who never got married – Monica is one of Beryl’s daughters. Beryl was the younger of the two and she’s still alive.’ She paused for breath.

‘OK, Joan and Beryl were actually your mother’s aunts – so was the grandmother you went to live with their sister?’

‘Yes – that was Grandma Molesly. She was their much older sister.’

‘Your mother’s mother.’

‘If she
was
my mother’s mother.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I must have told you. She used to say that she didn’t think my mother was her daughter at all, and that maybe she had been given the wrong baby in the nursing home. I’m not sure if she said it because she wanted to distance herself from Mum and the way she turned out, or whether she really believed it. But whenever she was really annoyed over something I’d done, she would say, “But then you’re not really my granddaughter,” because of course if there had been a mix-up and my mother was swapped at birth, then I wouldn’t be her blood relative either.’

‘That’s an awful thing to say to a child.’

‘But think what it must have felt like for her, too. All the horror of the murder, those years of embarrassment, having a daughter who wasn’t quite right, then having me there like a great cuckoo in the nest, a constant reminder. She was too old to cope with a teenager in the best of circumstances, and those circumstances certainly weren’t the best.’

‘It’s still inexcusable. She shouldn’t have taken it out on you – her grandchild.’

‘But she wasn’t sure if I
was
her grandchild. That’s the point. These days she would probably have asked for a DNA test. Anyway, let’s not talk about it any more.’

Marcus put on some music and began to tell her how the latest tour had gone. There was no more talk of Grandma Molesly, but when they retired to bed and Marcus had switched out the light, Jo was free to remember her again. Except that she found she could not – her grandmother had become no more than a series of faded snapshots in her mind. Grandma in her chair behind the evening paper, Grandma calling sharply from the kitchen, ‘Tea’s ready’, or ‘Wipe your feet’. Grandma with her back to the kitchen, stirring something on the stove. Aunty Joan’s face was clearer, her eye shadow an overly bright blue, her lips shiny pink with lipstick and her nails always done in a matching shade; even then the makings of a double chin. If only they had let her stay with Aunty Joan. She wouldn’t have ended up at St Catherine’s if she had lived with Aunty Joan, whose house in Accrington was served by an entirely different set of schools. She would have been thrown into completely different company and never become involved in baiting Gilda Stafford. In fact, she would never have heard of Gilda until she moved in across the road. With no history between them, the situation in the lane the other day could have been easily resolved.

Not only might her school life have been different, but it followed that the rest of her life would have been different too. Lots of things might or might not have happened. Just one decision on the part of some case worker or committee – her entire future had hung on that moment and they had gone the wrong way. Or maybe not. Perhaps the path had been set in stone much earlier than that.

She thought about her own mother’s childhood. Could you take it back that far? What was it that had made her turn out the way she did? There had never been anything odd about the other members of the family. Beryl’s and Joan’s lives were steeped in ordinariness. Had Grandma Molesly been right about the nursing home? Perhaps she
had
been given the wrong baby – a child who brought a taint of bad blood into the family. Perhaps the mother of this other child had deliberately exchanged her baby for Grandma Molesly’s. Maybe this woman had stood over the cots in the hospital nursery, looking down on the sleeping mite who would one day become Jo’s mother, guessed at what was to come and taken her chance on a better outcome, a child forged from a safer set of genes.
Bad blood
– that was what they used to call it, when Grandma Molesly was still a girl. These days people pretended to know better, to embrace more modern ideas about the nature of mental illness, but deep down the old ideas were still strong. ‘Like mother, like daughter’, that’s what people said – not when Grandma Molesly had been a girl, but when she herself had been, barely thirty years ago. Once something really bad happened, no one ever looked at a family in quite the same way. We might pay public lip service to the theories of psychiatrists and their ilk, but our old instinctive senses kick in, once suspicions are aroused.