Authors: Jenny Tomlin
The women all looked at each other in disbelief. It was Gillian who was the first to speak.
‘Fucking hell.’
301
Chapter Eighteen
Grace couldn’t remember the last time she had been to Mass. It was one of those things she had outgrown along with homework and knee-length white socks.
She had a deep personal faith upon which she called in good times and bad, to guide and protect her, but aside from weddings and, latterly, funerals, she had ceased to be a worshipper in the House of God. Deep down, Grace still believed but she saw no reason to go to church to prove her faith. Sometimes, late at night, when she had been tossing and turning with nightmares about Uncle Gary or, more recently, the assaults and murders of the children, she had closed her eyes and given herself up to her God, praying for help. Her faith had taught her never to ask for more than knowledge of God’s will for her and the power to carry it out.
This morning, however, she had surprised John by getting up before him and was dressed and ready to go when he finally stirred. John blinked at his watch. ‘Where you going, Grace? It’s only quarter to eight.’
‘I’m off to church. See to the boys, will ya?’ She bent down and kissed her husband’s forehead, which 302
was still clammy with sleep. ‘I’ll be back by half-nine.
We can go to the market then if you fancy it.’
Sundays were usually family days when they had a cooked breakfast and then wandered down the market so that Grace could get her barrowload of flowers and say hello to friends and neighbours.
There was always a roast lunch – whatever the weather – and this was followed by John falling asleep on the sofa in front of the telly while the kids played on the floor and Grace got on with some ironing or just read the paper.
He studied her sleepily for a moment, searching for the right words, then thought better of it, turned over and said, ‘All right, babe, I’ll see you later.’
Grace tiptoed down the stairs, so as to escape without waking the boys. She grabbed her bag and keys and closed the front door quietly behind her. She placed the key in the door of the car then thought better of it and began the fifteen-minute walk to St Anne’s on Underwood Road, the Catholic church she had attended regularly as a child.
She felt a cool breeze lifting her white cotton dress as she marched along. In her mind she knew what she had to do, and was beginning to feel a steely deter -
mination run through her as she walked the familiar streets of her childhood. Iris used to be a stickler for church when her husband was alive, dragging Gillian and Grace out of their beds and making them accompany her there. Grace, as the more biddable of 303
the two, was happy to go along with it, always believing and never questioning the word of God, but Gillian was defiantly anti-religion and would loudly argue with her mother, using the mess in Northern Ireland as just one example to justify her position that religion was the cause of all the trouble in the world. ‘It’s not God who starts the wars, Gill, it’s us,’
Grace would say. It seemed obvious to her.
Since her husband’s death, Nanny Parks’s need for formal prayer had lessened to the point where she now only attended at Christmas and Easter, but she’d still never forgiven Gillian for marrying in a register office.
Grace tied a small white scarf under her chin and entered the cool of the church, inhaling its familiar scent of incense and beeswax. She walked to an empty pew halfway down, remembering to genuflect and cross herself before she took her seat. Instantly she felt calmness descend and a deep sense of belonging. It was as if she had never been away.
She was surprised by the number of people there, a quick head count totalled more than seventy, and wondered why she had stopped coming herself. She loved the way that church made her feel and in that moment realised why so many people still came here to worship.
Gazing up at the altar she vividly remembered taking her first Communion here and the enormous 304
fuss that had gone into making her dress, an elaborate garment of ivory silk with puffed sleeves that Nanny had scrimped and saved to buy the material for. Grace smiled at the memory of the missing hair ribbon bordered with antique lace, bought specially to match the dress, that they simply could not find on the morning of the ceremony. It later turned up in one of Gill’s drawers though Grace never told their mother that. She remembered the Communion photo too, all curls, lace and teeth, and how it still sat proudly on Mum’s sideboard with a rosary wrapped round it.
The priest, a bent old man with wispy white hair, walked past her down the aisle then and Grace squinted at him in disbelief. How incredible that Father Tom was still alive. He’d seemed ancient when she was a child, and he was still going. But when he started the service, the same strong Irish accent boomed around the church, helped now by a micro -
phone that had been installed so that people in the pews at the back could hear. Grace wasn’t paying much attention to the words of the service, lost as she was in her own thoughts and prayers to God. She had come here with a specific request in mind and wanted to get clearance from the Almighty before she committed an act in defiance of one of the Ten Commandments.
She knew the Commandments by heart, though she also remembered ‘“Vengeance is mine,” saith the 305
Lord.’ But didn’t he gain His vengeance through the actions of mortal beings? God had given her free will for a purpose. Grace was determined to use it to extinguish the evil around her. Evil was dwelling amongst her people, her family, her community, and she had to trust to her strength and God’s guidance to save them all from it. She had rarely felt so sure of anything in her life, and was strangely free from anxiety about what she faced. It was simply the right thing to do.
Grace knelt up at the altar rail to take Communion, and as he placed the paper wafer on her tongue Father Tom smiled at her and gave her a wink, pleased to see her back in his congregation after all these years. Grace was flattered that he remembered her and smiled back. She took a bigger gulp of Communion wine than was strictly necessary and the flavour exploded in her mouth, leaving her with a warm feeling of wellbeing.
When she returned to the pew, she knelt down and prayed hard. She prayed for John and her boys, for her mother and sister and all their friends and family, but mostly she prayed for the souls of the little children that had been taken from them and promised God that she would avenge their memory.
Silently, she spoke to Him of her plan and asked him for a sign, just something that would tell her He understood. As she knelt deep in concentration a shaft of light shone through the stained glass 306
window. Grace opened her eyes and looked towards it, seeing the Madonna and child brilliantly illuminated. That would do.
After the service the congregation filed out, pausing to exchange a few words with Father Tom who stood outside bidding his farewells. When it was Grace’s turn he shook her hand and smiled broadly, exposing several missing teeth. ‘What an honour to have you back with us, Grace,’ he said.
‘I’m amazed you remember me,’ she said, smiling back. ‘It must be twelve or thirteen years since I’ve been to Mass.’
‘Ah, you’re not to worry about that, Gracie girl.
There’s always a welcome for you here, and God never leaves us, wherever we are,’ said the priest, squeezing her hand before moving on to the next person.
Grace felt buoyed up and curiously elated as she made the fifteen-minute walk home, recalling the feeling from all those years ago. A good Mass really did sort you out. Time to think, time to be still and gather your strength before you went back out there and got on with life again. She promised herself she would start going back to Mass, John could cope with the kids for an hour or so on a Sunday morning.
She put the key in the lock and pushed open the front door – to be met by the smell of frying bacon, which made her empty stomach roll and boil until she 307
realised she’d have to run upstairs and be sick. It must be that Communion wine, she thought.
Drinking on an empty stomach was no good for you.
Next week she would have some toast before she went.
Grace wanted to speak privately with Sue before she let the others in on the plan; everybody would be needed to see this idea through to its successful conclusion but Sue was the key. If she could get Sue on her side, the others would fall into line more easily.
Once the necessary police enquiries and funeral arrangements for TJ had been made, Terry took the girls off to his sister’s in Broadstairs for a few days as they all needed a break. There was nothing to be achieved by staying at home; he and Sue rowed over every little thing, they were pulling each other apart.
If Wayne’s death had drawn them closer, TJ’s abduction and murder had stuck a bomb under them and blown their lives to smithereens. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t cry and she didn’t understand why he couldn’t pull himself together.
The two girls were completely distraught and seeing Mum and Dad fight was too much on top of everything else. So Terry had taken the initiative to get them away, have a short separation to give them all more space and time.
Grace made a point of getting to Sue’s first thing 308
on Monday before anyone else had the chance to turn up. She knew Sue was a morning person and liked to wake early and get on with her housework. Sure enough, when Grace arrived with her boys at 8.30 a.m. Sue was steadily working her way through a pile of ironing that threatened to topple off the kitchen table. Noel Edmonds was doing his morning show on Radio 1, and Sue seemed to draw reassurance from listening to him as usual and getting on with stuff. Grace could tell from the way she was standing, almost hiding, behind her ironing board that she wasn’t in the mood for hugs or comfort of any kind, so she made do with a quick peck on the cheek before shooing the boys into the garden and putting the kettle on. ‘Hope you don’t mind me turning up at the crack of dawn like this, Sue, but I wanted a word while nobody else was around.’
‘Fire away,’ said Sue, the steam from her iron hissing upwards as she straightened the creases in a West Ham duvet cover. Wayne’s, Grace supposed.
‘You’ve heard the news from Potty then?’
‘What, about George going on the missing list from the hospital?’ She looked Grace in the eye.
‘What about it?’ Sue’s tone was steely. ‘If you’ve come here to suggest another beating, you can forget it. It’s too good for him. It didn’t work. Nothing works!’
‘Well, that’s what I’ve come about, Sue.’ Grace hesitated then continued, ‘I think it’s time we took 309
care of him ourselves, left the men out of it.’ She coughed nervously, suddenly dry-mouthed, and Sue put her iron down and said, ‘Go on.’
‘Well, it seems to me that the police aren’t going to do anything. You’d have thought they might have looked into it after he got that beating, but according to Potty he’s got meals on wheels and everybody going “Poor George”. Makes you sick, really.’
‘Makes
you
sick? Lizzie saw him yesterday, limping round to the betting office like nothing had happened. Bloody do-gooders, always getting it wrong. What ’elp have I had, I ask ya? Nothing, that’s what.’
‘Well, that’s what I mean. I think we should take matters into our own hands. We can do better than the police or our men.’
‘Well, if you’re looking for someone to go round and stick a knife through him, I’m your girl.’ Sue lifted up a pair of little jeans and laid them on the ironing board. Grace wondered why she was ironing TJ’s clothes but said nothing.
‘I don’t think it should be any one of us.’ Grace drew breath and added, ‘I think it should be
all
of us.
You know, all for one and one for all?’
‘What. Like the Three Musketeers? Got it all worked out, have ya?’ Sue smiled bitterly and pro -
ceeded to clamp the steamy iron down on the little jeans, and for a moment Grace wondered if she was mad even to think of it, let alone mention it. Sue 310
looked drained. Maybe Grace’s timing was all wrong, but she was here now and she had to get the message across to Sue, make her understand that she was serious.
‘Kind of,’ Grace said softly. ‘But we need to get him out of that maisonette first.’
‘What? And take him round your place? So we can murder him? What with . . . your Hoover?’ Sue laughed hollowly.
‘No, but he’s got that garage round the back, hasn’t he? You see him there sometimes, tinkering with that old Cortina he never drives.’
‘What, the place with the red door?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one, number forty-nine. I checked it out this morning. It’s pretty quiet there. You’ve only got the back of the flats overlooking those garages.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ Sue put her iron down and looked directly at Grace.
‘Totally. It’s the right thing to do, I feel it in my bones.’
‘You and your feelings!’ Sue shook her head and smiled. ‘So quite apart from how you get him there in the first place, what you gonna do with him when you do? He’s a big bastard.’
‘I think we do everything to him that he’s done to our kids.’
Grace didn’t look up; she didn’t want to see Sue’s reaction. A charged silence hung in the air for a few 311
seconds before Sue came out from behind her ironing board and joined her at the kitchen table. Grace could tell from her expression that her mind was racing. A killing? Justice? God, what she wanted to do to him was no one’s business.
Arms folded and now giving Grace her complete attention, Sue stared at her. ‘And then what?’
‘Then we finish him off.’ Grace looked up for the first time and Sue held her gaze. ‘We finish him for ever.’
‘Fuck me,’ said Sue, staring into space. ‘Well, you’re full of surprises, Grace, I’ll say that for you.
Never thought you had it in you, but then again I never thought you’d been raped either.’ Grace visibly flinched. ‘I’m sorry, mate, it’s just that you look like butter wouldn’t melt in ya mouth, and yet you’re tough, Grace, tougher than I’d ever imagined.’