The Liverpool Trilogy (3 page)

‘Deceased.’

The invalid noted the lie. Lucy’s eyes betrayed her, which probably meant that she was an honest woman who had been forced into a difficult position. ‘Children?’ was her next question.

‘Grown and flown.’ Lucy folded her arms. Over the years, she had been forced to become used to people staring at her upper body. She usually wore loose clothes, but this attempt at disguise could not save her from unwelcome scrutiny. Even the doctor was having trouble pretending not to look at Lucy’s 34E breasts. Well, if everyone could experience for just one day the nuisance caused by large mammaries, they’d think again. Bras needed wide straps, because narrow ones dug channels in her shoulders. She suffered backache, neck-ache and even face-ache if she tried to smile through the discomfort. Had she not feared the knife, Lucy would have got rid of her extra flesh years ago.

‘Have you registered with a GP?’ Richard asked.

‘Not yet. But I’m used to a female doctor.’

‘My partner’s a woman,’ he said. ‘Celia. She’s part time. Not a part time woman, a part time—’

‘Doctor,’ Moira chimed in.

‘Oh. Right. I’ll think about it.’ Lucy fled the scene and bolted her front door. ‘What happened there?’ she asked the cat when she reached the kitchen. The cat simply twitched his tail and began a long monologue that was probably a complaint of some kind. ‘Oh, Smokey.’ Lucy picked up the heavy animal. ‘What are we to do?’ She didn’t want a doctor so close, was worried about having a doctor at all, because they all knew each other, didn’t they? And her notes, from Bolton, would very likely say more than Lucy wanted anyone to know.

Next door, Richard Turner stood with his back to Moira and his gaze fixed on the river. He felt as guilty as sin, because he could no longer show love to the woman he had married. She had been a beautiful, tiny girl with a waist so small that his hands had spanned it. The more ill she became, the more he was forced to retreat. He could not manage to desire a person whose soiled underclothing he was sometimes forced to change. And the way she behaved was often embarrassing, as she carried on like a spoilt only child with doting parents who allowed her all her own way. Yet he did love her so much . . . Oh, what a bloody mess.

‘Richard?’

‘What?’ He didn’t turn.

‘She’s got magnificent assets.’

‘Who?’ He knew that the skin on his face had reddened.

‘Lucy.’

He lowered his head. He had loved Moira for as long as he could remember – since his teenage years. ‘Behave yourself,’ he said eventually. ‘And stop trying to find concubines for me.’ At last, he turned. ‘I love you. There’s more to life than sex.’ That was his brain speaking, but the rest of him craved . . . oh, well. Best not to think about all the other stuff. Like the warmth of a woman, the sweetness emerging from between parted lips, his hand on a breast, on a belly— ‘There’s more to life,’ he repeated.

‘There has to be,’ she replied sharply. ‘Because you can’t make love to a woman in a nappy. So how have you been managing?’

He shrugged and, as ever, was honest with her. ‘A few one-night stands with women I’ve met online. And a quick fumble with one of the temporary practice nurses – it came to nothing. But it has to be somebody for whom I only feel desire – no more than that. I can’t get involved.’

‘Why?’

He walked across the room. ‘Because you’re my wife in sickness and in health, you daft cow – it’s in the bloody contract. Because we have three children and, with luck, we’ll be grandparents in the fullness of time.’

Moira struggled to sit still. The shakes had started again, and there was no way of controlling her hands. ‘I can’t feel anything any more, Rich. Only pain, no pleasure. Even if I’m clean, it must be like making love to a side of beef. I don’t need to remind you that secondary progressive means no more remissions.’ She swallowed with difficulty. ‘You’re relatively young, and you need to sort this out, prepare for the time when I’m no longer here.’

‘Stop this. I mean it, Moira.’

She laughed. ‘Is there nothing like a pizza parlour? You know how people phone if they want food – don’t they deliver thin crust or thick crust women with or without anchovies?’

When she wasn’t being childish, she was priceless. He saw the crippled woman, heard the clever soul within. ‘With or without chips?’ he asked.

‘Without. Get a side salad. So, you want a busty woman with good legs and an undressed salad. Keep your figure, love.’

Sometimes, he needed to weep and scream. He wanted his Moira back, and he knew he would never get that. These days, she was barely capable of swallowing food, and he feared that she might choke to death. Her breathing was impaired and she couldn’t walk any distance without becoming completely exhausted or falling on the floor.

‘I’ll love you just as well if you take a mistress, Richard.’

He was definitely a breast-and-legs man. Lucy Henshaw had two of each, and all four seemed to be in excellent condition. She also wore the air of a woman who had not been touched for some time. Children grown and flown? She didn’t look old enough for—

‘Rich?’

‘What?’

‘I just want you to be absolutely sure that whatever, whoever or wherever, I’ll understand. But be careful. There’s a lot of disease out there.’

‘I know.’ He closed his eyes and pictured his beloved wife in her wedding gown, plain satin, yellow and white flowers dripping from her hands all the way to her shoes, hair loose in heavy waves down her back. He hadn’t wanted her to put it up. The severity of her clothing had served to emphasize that hourglass figure. She had been and would always be the most beautiful bride in the world. It was so damnably clumsy, this wretched disease. Steroids had affected her badly, and she had gained weight at a terrifying rate, so those particular drugs were used only in the direst of emergencies. The problem lay in the fact that emergencies were frequent these days.

Sex had been important to both of them, and fate had now removed any chance of physical closeness. It felt akin to bereavement, because a vital part of their marriage had been killed off by an enemy that could not be defeated.

‘Richard?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t.’

‘Was I thinking aloud?’

She shook her head. ‘Only I can hear it, darling. The rest of the world is deaf.’ If she tried now, she might manage. Sometimes, her hands were almost cooperative, and she could just about find the strength to use pestle and mortar. Anyway, the coffee-grinder would make short work of it. The happy pills. A sheet of eight was all she needed, but she’d take a damned sight more – who wanted to survive with a buggered liver? They’d need to be crushed, as swallowing was hard and needed concentration. Everything did. People breathed without thinking, ate without thinking, walked and talked without worrying. Sometimes, she didn’t even have control of her speech.

She looked at him. Love was a strange thing. It meant needing to die before he did, knowing that she daren’t choose an obvious way of self-disposal, because that would break him. Yes, her suicide would kill him, too. And with him being a doctor, the powers could blame him, pin murder via overdose on him—

‘Moira?’

‘What?’

‘Stop it.

It worked both ways. She could almost hear his thoughts, but he was similarly gifted – or cursed. When it came to theory, Richard was of the opinion that every man and woman owned his or her own life. Suicide was not always wrong, and he was of the school that approved of assisted and heavily supervised exit.

But when it came to Moira, he was seriously prejudiced and out of his depth. He knew that the time had come – he would have to hide her drugs. And he suddenly thought again about the theory of dignified death. As long as it was someone other than Moira, it was a good idea. Yet all those someones had relatives who didn’t want the sufferer to kill him or herself. He’d been wrong. Again.

‘I don’t want to die in Switzerland,’ she said. ‘Or to endure a life in a wheelchair with my head clamped back so that it won’t droop, and a tube into my stomach, and oxygen on tap—’

‘I know, love.’

He didn’t know. No one could possibly understand the dread that accompanied her from day to day along the pathway to perdition. It was hard work pretending not to care, carrying on as if she’d never felt better in her life. Only another sufferer would have an idea of the thoughts that circled in her head like buzzards searching for carrion. And there was more than one way to skin a cat. It didn’t need to be pills, didn’t need to be here. But it had to be soon, while she could still drive her motorized chair. The Liverpool–Southport line had three or four level crossings nearby. No one would blame him if she arrived home squashed. It needed to look like an accident. He would accept an accident.

‘Don’t leave me, Moira.’

She grinned. ‘Remember the first time I went out in my trolley? I ran over a traffic warden, a woman’s shopping and a post office. Mind, the post office hardly had a dent in it. I wish I could say the same for the warden’s foot and that poor woman’s eggs.’

He left the room. She could hear him sniffing back tears in the hall. Then her eyes closed and she was gone. They were running into the sea in Cornwall, chasing waves, being chased by waves. Every night in that huge hotel bed, talking, loving, talking again. And all the time, something followed them. Sometimes it was a shadow, a pale thing that hung back whenever she turned. But it grew. It came closer, its colour darkened and consumed her, and she was back in Liverpool with the children and . . .

‘Moira?’

She woke. He gave her a cup of tea. Well, half a cup, because she spilt so much if the cup was full.

Richard averted his gaze, because he didn’t want her to see the fear in his eyes. She wasn’t simply falling asleep any more; she was losing consciousness, and occasionally she stopped breathing. There was no help. Men walked on the moon – there was money and research enough for that. Moira walked on planet earth scarcely at all, and any possible cure or remedial treatment for multiple sclerosis would be paid for mostly by charities. Somewhere, someone had their priorities wrong.

The rage lasted for more than three days.

Cheated and abused by his own wife, Alan Henshaw tore up the few clothes she had left, burnt the wedding album, dug up her old man’s roses, contacted his daughter, and drank himself into near-coma. His wife would come back, he told himself in rare brighter moments. Lucy had nobody apart from her children, and she would be back. The woman hadn’t the guts to go it alone – she would need to come back.

Wouldn’t she? He had made her money grow – what the hell did it matter whose account was whose? As for the rest of it – his wanderings and his mistresses – what the buggery had she expected? Since the birth of Elizabeth, his wife had been as warm as a butcher’s freezer, as responsive as a corpse. And he liked younger, firmer flesh, which was quite normal in his scheme of things. Successful men needed variety, because variety was the spice of . . . something or other.

But, on the fourth day, when all the booze had gone, and he returned to a more normal frame of mind, he had to admit that he was beaten. Her solicitor, contacted by his, had outlined the whole damned mess, and Alan had no leg to stand on. The house was hers, as were the heavy mortgages he had obtained via fraud. Except they weren’t hers, because she hadn’t signed for them. Three handwriting experts had declared Lucy Henshaw’s signature to be forged, while a neighbour who had witnessed one of the documents admitted that Lucy had not been present at the time.

It was the end of the road for Alan. If he fought, she would walk all over him. If he didn’t fight, he might as well be dead. Could the children save him? How much of the stolen money had she given to them? It wouldn’t be enough. All he owned were twenty plots of land in Bromley Cross, a set of plans, and the clothes in his wardrobe. She, of course, would get away with the crime of forging his signature if the case went to court. She was a lady who had married a rogue, and the forging of his signature had been necessary so that she could take back her own money.

At the back of his mind lingered the suspicion that the land and the plans might well belong to her, so he’d have to find out about that, too. If he tried to sell to another developer, Lucy might decide to relieve him of everything.

A letter arrived. He tore it open so viciously that he had to piece together its contents in order to read them. She was being magnanimous. He could hang on to the Bromley Cross project and find investors, or he could sell it on. How kind of her.
The bills are in your sock drawer
. . . and his socks had been salvaged. That had been no easy task, since he had never before used a washing machine, even when sober. The socks proved one thing, though: she was capable of playing dirty. That quiet housewife had a temper. She wasn’t perfect.

The bills are in your sock drawer
. It was a large drawer. As voluntary company secretary, she had always dealt with bills. Jesus, he was probably in debt to every supplier within a twenty-mile radius. Even if he could sell on the plots and all approved plans, he’d probably still be penniless. A clever bitch she’d turned out to be, little Miss Top Heavy with her high-priced clothing, perfume, footwear and designer handbags.

He should go and see Mags before the shit hit the fan. She was his kind of girl, reed-slim, small-breasted, a teenager’s body with the brains of a businesswoman. Three shops she owned outright, and she was only thirty-odd. London-trained, Mags also had franchises in department stores all over the place, because she was good at what she did. Yes, she had borrowing power. When it came to competitions, her firm had won cups in every area of beauty, from hairdressing to make-up and nails. She was his only chance.

It was time to clean up the act. He stank of sweat and whisky. So he bathed, then showered, shaved, dressed and came downstairs to think a little further before turning for help to his current paramour. There would be a divorce, of course. Unreasonable behaviour leading to breakdown of marriage, and he could not contest it, so he’d just have to grin and—