My Sister's Bones(29)

‘Sound like a nice bunch,’ says Paul, taking a sip of beer. ‘I mean how spineless can you get?’

‘They probably thought they were doing the right thing,’ I say. ‘As I said, he was just a kid. Anyway, they left no forwarding address so Sally had no way of getting in touch when Hannah was born. I think the chances of Hannah finding him on the internet were pretty slim.’

‘Yeah, but it scared Sally,’ says Paul. ‘She got paranoid that Hannah was going to find her dad and leave her. It made Sally really jealous. She started drinking heavily again and that’s when her other side started to come out.’

‘Her other side?’

‘It was like she was two different people,’ says Paul, his voice heavy with drink. ‘One minute she’d be telling me how much she loved me, and then suddenly, whoosh, she’d just go mental.’

‘You mean violent?’

‘What? No, not really,’ he says brusquely.

‘Paul, I need you to be honest,’ I say, leaning towards him. ‘About Sally, about what’s happening to her. Look, I saw your arm. Is that something to do with her?’

He puts his head in his hands and sighs.

‘Paul, please.’

‘Okay, yes,’ he says, lifting his head. ‘Yes, she did it. Are you happy now?’

‘Of course I’m not happy. This is horrific.’

‘Well, how do you think I feel?’ he says. ‘I’m a man. I should be able to look after myself.’ He looks down at his drink, not meeting my eye.

‘What happened?’

‘It wasn’t her fault,’ he says, lowering his voice, aware of the other men in the room. ‘It was a few weeks back. She’d run out of wine and I caught her with the car keys in her hand, just back from the off-licence. I grabbed the keys and said she was crazy, that she could have killed someone driving in that state. She was so drunk she dropped the bottles, and then she went ballistic. She grabbed one of them and came at me with it, would have got my face if I hadn’t put my arms up to defend myself.’

‘My God,’ I gasp. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought I could deal with it, but truth be told, after that night I was scared. I still am. I just don’t know what she’s capable of when she’s drunk.’

I think about my visit to Sally earlier, the venom in her eyes when she talked about Mum. That awful grin on her face.

Paul drains his glass and I can’t help looking at his arms and wondering what else he isn’t telling me.

‘Paul, do you think she ever hurt Hannah? Physically hurt her?’

He puts his glass down and stares at me for a moment.

‘Be honest.’

‘I don’t know,’ he sighs. ‘If you’d asked me that question a year ago I would have laughed at you, told you there was no chance Sally would have laid a finger on her child. But after that night with the wine bottle . . . she was like a different person, Kate, like a monster. The anger, it was like nothing I’ve seen before.’

I nod my head. He may not have seen it before but I have. He might as well be describing my father. I think of those nights when I would cower in my room after a beating and have to listen while my father kicked the shit out of my terrified mother. It would go on for hours and hours. And the next day I would ask Sally if she’d heard it and she would look at me as though I was talking nonsense.

‘You need another drink,’ I say to Paul, putting my hand on his. ‘Same again?’

When I return from the bar he is gone, though his coat is still on the back of the chair. I put his pint down and take another long sip of my wine. The bottle’s nearly finished. Funny how after years of abstinence drink can so quickly become a habit again. I think of Sally and tell myself that after tonight I’ll go back on the wagon. I look up and see Paul weaving his way through the bar.

‘Sorry about that,’ he says as he sits down. ‘Call of nature.’

‘Cheers,’ I say, lifting my glass.

‘Cheers,’ he replies. ‘And thanks for the pint.’

I drain the glass and pour myself another. I feel quite tipsy. Tomorrow I’ll stop, but tonight I’m going to enjoy this warm fuzzy feeling. It feels like I’m holed up in a cocoon where nothing can get me, no nightmares, no voices, no images of him.

Paul is talking about his work but I’m not really listening any more. I catch snippets of words – Calais, paperwork, migrants – and I make sympathetic noises as he tells me about the upcoming forty-eight-hour strike by the French lorry drivers.

I swill the wine in my glass, and feel the bar spin slightly. I rather like it.

‘It’s going to cause chaos . . . Have to work late that week.’

As his story continues I take another gulp of wine, then another and another until his voice forms a strange snake-like coil around my head, binding me to the past. I’m aware of Ray watching me from the bar and suddenly I’m seventeen years old again, sipping Vermouth and lemonade with some unsuitable lad while Dad’s friend keeps an eye on me. But somewhere in the centre of my consciousness I know why I’m drinking. I’m thinking of him.

‘Where are you, Chris?’ I whisper to the swirling room and for a moment I think I see him over by the bar, standing next to Ray, but the image disintegrates and Paul is back, telling me that if the strike goes ahead he might have to ‘stay over in Dover’.