Everything stops for Paulie.
‘And deal with that sister of mine.’
‘Deal with Aunty Jean?’
‘Oh yes. She was the last bad apple, darling. She’s the end of all that.’
‘How do I trust you?’
‘You just have to really, don’t you? And I never knew about that poor little girl, nor was I expecting to find her in Heyworth.’ Peg heard him shudder. ‘Your mate woke up just after I saw the body. Saw me freaking out. Then I gave her a couple of that fat bitch’s horse pills.’
‘And nearly killed her.’
‘She’s alive now, isn’t she?’
‘No thanks to you.’
‘All thanks to me. No thanks to that cow of a sister of mine.’
‘Why did you hate Aunty Jean so much?’
‘She’s had me just like that all my life, darling. That’s why.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Keith.’
‘Keith?’
‘Ever since our brother died she told me I done it. You have to think what that done to me. I was just a kid. And she held it over me all my life. “It’d kill Mummy if she found out it was you, Raymond, doing it on purpose,” she’d say to me.
‘She was right, and all. It would’ve.’ His voice was wavering again. ‘And if she was right about it being me – and I have no way of knowing for sure, Margaret: I was only a nipper so how am I supposed to know what was true and what that sister of mine chose to lie about?
‘If she
was
right about it being me, then it was
my
fault my mother went off the rails like that. Keith dying sent her mental, Margaret. She was like a tiger after that, blamed herself for not watching her family all the time, and watched us like a bloody hawk after. There was nothing she wouldn’t do.’
Peg realised that it was now or never. It was time to ask the big question that she had never really understood, which now seemed impossible to fathom, given the facts.
‘Raymond?’ she asked.
‘Can’t you call me Dad?’
‘So why did you leave me with them, if you knew she was doing those terrible things, Raymond?’
‘I didn’t have a choice, did I? I was in the nick for six years. Then I tried to get you back, but Jean still had that bloody hold over me. Said you was making Mummy so happy that it would break her heart if I took you away. And of course, she’d have to tell her about Keith and all if I tried. My hands were tied. And I knew, at least, you’d be looked after. You were family. You’d certainly come to no harm. But I had to get out. I couldn’t be near my sister any more. And there were business concerns keeping me out of the country and all. I made my choice. I made a clean break. I’m not proud of it. Look, Margaret,’ he went on. ‘Or Peg, is it, you want me to call you? All right then, Peg it is.’
Peg sighed and closed her eyes.
‘It’s all over,’ he went on. ‘We can all live our lives how we want to now.’
‘But what do we do about Aunty Jean? She’s just lying here in the lounge.’
‘I want you two to leave the bungalow quiet as you can. Just get out of there. Go back to your little flat and have a nice Christmas. Archer’s on his way down now. Him and the boys will take care of everything else, make sure it looks kosher, like there’s been some sort of break-in and your aunt met her end that way.’
‘What about the girls they killed? And Tony’s family? Don’t they deserve some explanation?’
‘It’s a tough world, Peg. Look at what you got handed in life. Look at what I got handed, come to that. Nah. Sometimes you just got to look after number one, darling.’
Peg paused. She needed to think this through; work out what Raymond was asking her.
‘Look, girl,’ he went on. ‘My big concern now is keeping you safe and protecting our name. My old offer still stands. I can set you up. You can go in that estate agent’s day after Boxing Day and pick up them keys. You’ll have somewhere to live, you’ll be able to go to uni or whatever you want to do. Like all this never happened. Don’t you see? We’re free now, Peg.’
Peg looked at Loz and at Parker, both still held at gunpoint, their hands on their heads, both looking at her expectantly.
Eventually she spoke.
‘OK, Raymond. I’ll do it. But I’ve got two conditions.’
‘And what might they be?’ She could sense a smile in his voice. But it was more admiring than mocking.
‘The first is that you accept Loz as my partner and the fact that we will be sharing our lives, living together in the flat you bought for me.’
Loz looked sharply up at Peg, a frown on her face. Raymond paused on the other end of the line. Peg could hear applause, and the overexcited shouting of children in the background. The concert must have finished.
‘All right. All right. I suppose I owe her one. So long as you keep her quiet,’ he said at last. ‘And the second?’
‘I want you to help a friend of mine with a job,’ she said, looking at Parker. ‘Ex-military, good with surveillance.’
‘Sounds interesting. I’ll see what I can do. Now pass me back to Tweedledum.’
But Wayne had to take the phone from her because she had her hand over her mouth.
The last piece of horror had slid into place.
Then
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
It’s late at night and they think I’m asleep, but I’ve got earache and I’m wide awake. I’m trying to read
Alice in Wonderland
, but something is keeping me from concentrating. My eyes just skitter over the lines and I’m not taking anything in.
I’ve not said anything to anyone about what I saw. I’ve not said anything at all in fact. I’m having difficulty believing that I actually saw it.
I have bad dreams, Nan says. It’s difficult, she says, to tell the difference between dreams and real life. I have to forget my dreams.
She gives me medicine to help me with my bad dreams.
In the end I give up on my book. The dark up in my room is too scary to be in, so I get out of bed and crawl across the lino to the trapdoor where the ladder goes down, where the light is coming through from the hall downstairs.
They’re in the lounge, but for once I can’t hear the telly. They usually have it on pretty loud at night because, as Nan says, Gramps is deaf as a doorpost. If I put my eye in the far corner of the trapdoor hole, I can see right into the lounge. I can see Gramps in his chair, fast asleep, and Nan’s little legs sticking forward from her rocker. She’s got some knitting and the needles are going clickety-clack. She’s also talking to Aunty Jean over the intercom.
Because the telly’s off, I can hear every word.
I decide not to shout down to Nan about my earache. It’s more fun spying on them from up here. I’m like George in the Famous Five.
‘You’re sure no one’ll be able to tell?’ I hear Aunty Jean say. Her voice sounds croaky and crackly.
‘Nothing caused it,’ Nan says. ‘Just air.’
‘You’re ever so clever, Mummy.’
‘Poor old Frank. But he didn’t give us any choice, did he, Jeanie?’
‘No, Mummy. I’d like to know what he did with that key, though.’
‘Search me. I’ve looked everywhere.’ Nan puts her knitting down and crosses the room. ‘He could’ve thrown it in the sea, for all we know.’
‘What a bother.’
‘It’s a real bother. We’ve left all that mess in the garage, Jeanie. I don’t like messes.’
‘We had to leave after Meggy saw, Mummy though. And you weren’t to know Daddy’d hide the key. You were going to go back and clear up later, remember.’
‘I know. It’s a worry though.’
‘But if we can’t get in, then no one can get in, can they?’
‘I suppose not.’ Nan sighs heavily. ‘Poor Frank. It’s a real pity. A crying shame. He was a good man. A good husband. But he was going to tell, wasn’t he?’
‘Oh, he was, Mummy.’
‘I did the right thing, didn’t I?’
‘You had to, Mummy.’
‘Because what would you do without me?’
‘I wouldn’t be able to cope. Or Meggy.’
‘Or Meggy, you’re right, Jeanie.’
‘I am, Mummy.’
‘I’d better get rid of this then,’ Nan says, picking up a syringe from the table beside Gramps’s chair. ‘It’s dreadfully sad,’ she says, stopping to stroke his face. ‘But it’s better than him going to the police. If he – a
member of this family
– didn’t understand what I was doing, the police wouldn’t have the foggiest, would they?’
‘No, Mummy. They wouldn’t.’
‘And then where would you be, Jeanie? Without me to look after you?’
‘I’d be lost, Mummy.’
‘You’d be lost.’
‘And Meggy’d be lost, too.’
Nan sighs and shakes her head.
I duck back behind the trapdoor so that she doesn’t see me as she goes through to the kitchen. I hear the clanking of the bin as she drops the syringe in it.
‘You ready then, Jeanie?’ Nan says.
‘Nighty-night then, Mummy.’
‘Love you, my darling.’
There is a buzz and a crackle as Nan turns the intercom off.
The next thing I hear is Nan pressing the beeping buttons on the phone. Just three beeps.
‘Hello?’ I hear her say, her voice completely different now, all panicked and fluttery and helpless.
‘Hello?’ she goes. ‘Ambulance please. It’s, oh it’s so dreadful. I think my husband’s just had a heart attack. I don’t think he’s breathing.’
As quietly as I can, I crawl back into my bed and grab my sniffy blanket.
I pull it right over my head and put my fingers in my ears and I try to wipe it all out.
I make myself . . .
Forget.
Forty-Seven
Doing as Raymond had ordered, the band of three – bruised, limping, shell-shocked – hobbled surreptitiously out of the bungalow under the cover of a dark Christmas Eve, leaving the two men behind to cover their tracks.
‘Can we go down to the sea before we get the train?’ Loz asked. ‘I just need to sit for a bit.’
‘Are you sure?’ Peg said. ‘It’s freezing.’
‘Nah, let’s do it,’ Parker said. ‘I could do with a breath of fresh air myself after all that.’
They made their way down Tankerton Slopes to the promenade. It was a still, clear, piercingly cold night. The tide was high, right up and in, and a heavy moon lit the oily sea as it heaved and sighed. Had you not known that The Street was there, you wouldn’t have believed it existed.
‘Can we take a breather?’ Loz said, when they came to a wooden bench in front of one of the luxuriously beautiful converted wooden houses on the front. ‘My ribs are killing me.’
The three of them sat down and Peg put her arm round her Loz.
‘I do worry about the families of those girls, though,’ Loz said.
‘But would knowing what happened be better for them?’ Peg said. ‘Whatever they imagined might have happened, surely the truth is even worse.’
‘It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie,’ Parker chipped in. He had been very quiet since Peg had told him about the deal she had struck with her father, but he had clearly now thought it through. ‘Sometimes, girls, it’s best to just aim for an easy life. I’m looking forward to getting to know your dad a bit better out there in the sun. Look after number one, that’s what I say.’
Peg nodded. She had a lot of processing to do. Her brain felt like Doll’s bungalow at its worst, when the dirt and disorder had made it difficult even to enter. She had to recast her entire life, and she wondered whether the thought that Doll had done what she did with the best of intentions was going to be of any help to her.
‘Happy Christmas, girls,’ Parker said. He rolled two skinny cigarettes and offered one to Loz.
‘Happy Christmas,’ Loz said hoarsely, taking the roll-up from him.
Peg kissed Loz on her head, then she stood and jumped down onto the shingle.
Crunching down to where the cold sea heaved at the shore, she pulled the burned commonplace books out of her bag. They felt filthy and poisonous, untouchable, like raw shit.
In a sudden, jerking frenzy, she ripped the books into shreds, into paper dots that joined the real snowflakes, the purer snow, whirling in the wind, out over the shifting, icy waves.
Then she reached into her parka pocket and pulled out the voice recorder.
It felt heavier than it had before.
She glanced at it once, then, using a movement she remembered learning in school cricket, she lobbed it far out into the water, flinging it with such might that she thought perhaps she had ripped a muscle in her arm.
She watched as it arced through the air, splashing down to the surface. It paused there for a couple of seconds, as if to take a breath, before it was gulped down by the murky estuarine cocktail of North Sea and Thames River.
She stood, rubbing her arm, staring out into the devouring, moonlit waters.
Then, when the last piece of paper had whirled out of sight and the final bubble dispersed on the surface, she climbed back on to the promenade to join the others.
‘Everything’s going to be great now,’ she said. ‘And I’ll look after you, Loz. For ever.’
And somewhere, deep beneath the surface of the sea, the mud shifted.
Acknowledgements
Thank you:
To all the librarians and booksellers of the UK.
To Rosemary for introducing me to Tankerton (and a lot else); to Laura Escott for advice from the mortuary; to Aitor Basauri and @EddieYeah for Spanish translation (much of it lost in the edit – sorry about that); to Lin Dillon for her generosity; to Orlagh Stevens for her insights.
To my agent Simon Trewin at WME and my editor Leah Woodburn for just the best notes ever; to my indefatigable publicist Sam Eades, Emily Kitchin, and everyone else at Headline for providing the best possible home for my books.
To my homeys: Brighton Beach Hut Writers (beachhutwriters.co.uk), and Queen’s Park Lowbrow Book group; to my family: Tim (generous first reader), Nel (for her eagle eye and enthusiasm), Owen and Joey, and to my parents, Jane and Roy Collins and in-laws, Pamela and Colin Crouch.
After a drama degree at Bristol University, Julia Crouch spent ten years devising, directing and writing for the theatre. During this time she had twelve plays produced and co-founded Bristol’s Public Parts Theatre Company. She lives in Brighton with her husband, the actor and playwright Tim Crouch, and their three children.