The Stepmother(98)

 

When I’ve felt like I should call someone but don’t know who. When I’ve seen my big sister Jean looking very small; tubed up, gowned up, not breathing for herself any more but hooked up to a machine that’s doing the breathing for her, her face as white as the sheets she lies between. When I’ve sat holding her limp hand, berating both of us for this sorry state of affairs – but mainly myself of course. When I’ve smoked fags out the front next to the women with bad roots and pink towelling robes, shuffling in slippers, I catch a cab, and I go back to the cottage.

 

I try to think logically.

 

They showed me the note earlier: it was baldly simple and written in printed capitals.

 

I’m sorry – I can’t go on.

 

 

 

 

 

But why? Why now, exactly?

 

Because of Matthew? Really? Would it affect her to this degree, the heartbreak?

 

But maybe it was the final straw, after the hell that was Simon, twelve years ago. And then the Seaborne business – and then Prince Charming – who turned out to just be f*cked-up Matthew.

 

Given the crap we grew up in, it’s amazing really how high functioning she was, how she kept going most of the time. Because she had to. Because one of us had to.

 

Would she really have left Frankie? That’s what haunts me, more than anything. I have to tell Frankie – and soon.

 

I go through everything in the house.

 

It doesn’t take long to find the diary in her bedroom, tangled in the bed sheets – but it’s almost brand new I realise, as I tear through it; only been started this week.

 

So where’s the one before? That’s the one I need.

 

It’ll all be there in black and white I imagine. Where are the secrets of her heart?

 

Some time after I start searching I stop and drink the dregs of a bottle of wine in the kitchen – acidic Sauvignon Blanc that I hate and she likes – and then I check the time.

 

It’s dark outside now, but I walk down into Ashbourne and buy a bottle of vodka just before the off licence shuts.

 

I trudge back up the hill with it, spooked by the darkness of the countryside.

 

I sit at her table, and I drink the vodka neat, and I read the brief contents of the diary again, looking for clues.

 

There’s hardly anything though.

 

When I finish I go outside, and I smoke a cigarette, sitting on the bench in the tiny front garden. The sky is very big here, and there are hundreds of stars, and all the space scares me. It’s not natural.

 

I hear an owl hooting, and it makes me shiver. It’s an unearthly noise, and I think, God, where are all the people and the buildings and the light?

 

I think of her life in the few pages I’ve just read, and I think, Why the hell didn’t she tell me about this campaign of terror she was living under?

 

She did try though, didn’t she? Come on, Marlena, I think, you know she bloody did. Innocent Jeanie. Always willing to believe the best of people – and letting them make her feel like shit.

 

I feel the tears start again, and I dash them away impatiently. I don’t have time for this. I have to find out what happened.

 

Otherwise I will go as mad as…

 

As mad as Jeanie has. But what is it that pushed her over the edge in the end?

 

Okay – so that’s a no-brainer. I wince as I think of the BBC news site. Presumably Matthew and the abuse allegation was too much for her.

 

I light another cigarette, thinking, thinking, thinking. The vodka has made my head a little fuzzy, but I’m well used to drinking on the job.

 

Why was the daughter here the other day? That really puzzles me. This girl who was so close to her mother that she hated Jeanie at first, that she blew this hot and cold.

 

Why would Scarlett come to Jeanie, all the way up north, when she hated her at times? When Robo had just found out it was her sending the poisonous messages, trying to take Jeanie down?

 

Did she come to destroy her?

 

I need to find her, this Scarlett, and talk to her. I need her to explain. And I need to know what was going on with her and her father. I fear that this is what has pushed Jeanie to this point.

 

But another thought is there.

 

The thought that Scarlett could be involved in a worse way than might seem obvious.

 

But it can’t be that.

 

Can it? A fifteen-year-old girl couldn’t try to kill someone, remotely… No, it doesn’t add up…

 

And the police obviously don’t think anything untoward has happened. All the pills and the whisky bottle in the rucksack were signs enough for them: the writing was on the wall. Or in the medicine cabinet, rattling with pills – above the fresh blood on the carpet.

 

And Christ, how bad do I feel that I didn’t even know Jeanie had slid back down the slope?