The Stepmother(114)
When I’ve smoked a cigarette, rung the hospital yet again and checked my emails on my phone, I’m a tiny bit calmer, and I drive the hire car up to the house.
Matthew’s opened the garage, looking even more rattled than earlier.
‘What’s up?’
‘The keys are missing,’ he says. ‘To the gun cabinet.’
‘Can’t help you there.’ I take a box of Jeanie’s old vinyl from him.
He walks back towards the garden. ‘I’ll fetch the mirror. I know she loved it – I want her to have it…’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say – but he’s gone.
Kaye appears out on the patio and lights a cigarette, wiping tears away like a scaly old crocodile – purely for my benefit, I’m sure. Save them, lady, I don’t bother saying. I feel nothing but contempt. I check my phone for messages for the hundredth time this hour. I just want to get on the road up north now.
Matthew and Luke reappear, carrying a hideous big mirror between them, all curly gilt frame.
‘I’m pretty sure that’s not Jeanie’s,’ I say.
Kaye’s about to object I can see – when suddenly Luke swears loudly. ‘Fucking hell!’
I turn at the same time as Kaye.
The girl I know to be Scarlett is standing in the garden, by the back doors. She’s wearing a pair of very short shorts, with bare legs and clumpy black ankle boots. Her baggy T-shirt screams Smells Like Teen Spirit in neon pink.
And in her hands she holds a long metallic shotgun.
‘Scarlett.’ Her mother laughs rather hysterically. ‘Don’t be silly! Put that gun down now!’
‘You, mummy dearest,’ Scarlett, teeth gritted, speaks loudly. ‘You can shut the f*ck up right now.’ And calmly she levels the gun at Kaye.
‘Scarlett!’ Kaye says, but she does indeed shut up – thank God. Her voice is nasal and whiny.
Luke is transfixed, staring open-mouthed at his twin.
‘I was wondering where that key went,’ says Matthew.
‘You fool,’ Kaye hisses at Matthew now. ‘You f*cking idiot. You left the gun cabinet key where the kids could get it? Seriously?’
‘Oh shut up, Kaye,’ he says tiredly. ‘I don’t think you’re in any position to blame others. Put the gun down, Scarlett.’
‘Yeah, shut up, Mum,’ Scarlett jeers.
The family is imploding cataclysmically right in front of me. If it wasn’t rather frightening, if Jeanie wasn’t lying inert in that hospital bed, it might almost be exciting. The web of loyalties is getting more complex with every second, and the journalist in me thinks of the story; echoes of Columbine—
But as it is, it’s pure alarm I feel as my brain races, trying to work out who exactly Scarlett has it in for and what she is planning.
If she really hates Jeanie, then I guess I’m the next best thing…
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kaye move towards Matthew, desperately whispering to him to call the police – and I realise something.
She’s scared of her daughter.
Or of the Beretta – or both, I’m not sure. But I thought they were so close…
‘Shop your little girl?’ Scarlett levels the barrels at her mother’s smooth, tangerine-vested chest. ‘That’s not very nice, Mummy.’
‘Scarlett, baby,’ her mother pleads, and I have a horrible premonition of Kaye’s perfect, fake bosom exploding, blood and guts spattering everywhere. ‘Please, what are you doing, darling?’
‘Scar,’ Luke says now, rather desperately, ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea you know.’
‘What do you know about good ideas, Lucas?’ Scarlett is both withering and tearful now. ‘You’re the one who f*cked it up again.’
‘I – I didn’t mean to,’ he splutters. ‘I was just messing around, that’s all—’
‘I warned you, Luke. I said you were doing more harm than good.’ Scarlett levels the shotgun again. ‘He likes to rampage through your personal life, doesn’t he, Daddy? And I mean it’s not like he hasn’t done it before, is it? Didn’t you notice? The second time he’s started a war of attrition, yeah?’
This girl is bright. She has a great future ahead of her – if she doesn’t blow us all to smithereens. My palms are sweating now, my own T-shirt drenched.
‘I was only messing around,’ he repeats. ‘Mum told me it’d be funny…’
‘And you do everything Mum says, yeah?’