Blood Sisters(77)

Bouncy Carer was taking a keen interest. ‘You come from near here, don’t you, ducks?’

This time, The Monster was quiet. No help there, then.

‘Do you recognize anything? Use your head, Kitty. Left and right means no, remember. Up and down means yes.’

‘She gets it … wrong,’ sniffed Margaret. ‘You can’t rely … on her.’

So she did both. Just to cover all her options.

‘Kitty seemed to recognize a place that we went through,’ reported Bouncy Carer excitedly, when they got back. ‘According to her notes, she used to live there.’

Very Thin Carer sighed. ‘I don’t think it helps to raise false hopes. Her in-laws are doing the same with this new research they keep going on about. The truth is that the poor woman’s mind went a long time ago.’

Hah. That’s what they thought. But what about all those flashbacks? There had to be something there, Kitty told herself, that would explain exactly what had happened to her. All she had to do was to find it.





58


July 2017


Alison


Every time I drive down to Mum’s, I marvel at the sight which meets my eyes when I round the bend where the road leads sharply down to the coast. After miles of motorway and then narrow B roads with high hedgerows, I always gasp when I see a sea of lights below, indicating the town and then the sea itself, with its glittering, sparkling waves dancing out as far as the eye can see.

Down the steep hill, towards the lifeboat station and past the elderly couple who have sold fish for as long as I can remember yet still look the same age. ‘Ugh,’ Kitty used to say. Yet she loves fish. Brain damage, we’d been told early on, can even change taste buds. Along the promenade where early evening swimmers are tiptoeing gingerly into the waves, though sometimes the water is surprisingly warm even if it’s a cold day. Snaking down a side street past a cottage I’d always loved as a child with its intricate iron shell decorations on the front. And then another side road towards Mum’s cottage where hollyhocks burst out of the front garden. It’s much smaller than the family home round the corner where I had grown up with Kitty and David and Mum. But I prefer it. It’s cosier. It has our things in it and not David’s. I can almost imagine from the pictures of Kitty and me scattered around the sitting room, that my sister is going to come running in any minute.

I have a sudden vision of the school bus one day when Vanessa refused to share part of her Creme Egg with Kitty, her so-called best friend. I’d felt upset on my sister’s behalf so told Vanessa that chocolate would give her spots. She hadn’t liked that. If I’d tried to like my sister’s friend a bit more, would that have helped?

‘Great timing,’ says Mum when she opens the door. Her arms envelop me. She smells of lavender. Her skin is so soft that I want to rest my own cheek against it for longer. But I have come here for a reason. Something that can’t be put off any longer.

‘Are you hungry?’ she says brightly, leading me into the kitchen. ‘I’ve made salmon pie. Your favourite. Sit down. There.’ She points to my place at the kitchen table. I always sat on the left of Mum when we were growing up. Kitty on the right.

I’d intended to ask her immediately but now it seems churlish when she’s gone to so much trouble over dinner. So we sit and talk over the meal about my work (again I skirt round the prison) and, inevitably, Kitty. ‘I know it can’t have been easy for Jeannie but I do think she could have tried a bit longer. Did I tell you that the home has only agreed to take her back on a trial basis?’

Before I can say no, she hadn’t, Mum stops. Aware, too late, of having said ‘trial’. The word which is hanging over us all. ‘How is it going?’ she says tentatively.

I shrug. ‘Robin seems like a competent lawyer.’

‘Good.’ She nods, but I can tell her hands are nervous. They are playing with her napkin. ‘I mean, that man – Crispin – is clearly intent on making trouble.’

I nod. Just as I haven’t told Mum about being suspended, so I haven’t told her the full story about my written confession. It would only worry her.

‘Mum,’ I say, putting together my knife and fork neatly on my plate. ‘There’s something I have to ask you.’

Her face goes rigid. Part of me suddenly feels that she has been waiting all my life for this. Had I really put it off before because other things had been going on? Or was it because I was scared?

‘It’s about the man in the prison I mentioned earlier,’ I begin. ‘Stefan. The one who said he was my father.’ I watch her face closely. ‘The man who Martin – or rather Crispin – killed.’

She shudders. Then again, it might be because she’s sensitive like me. Surely, no decent person likes the thought of someone being murdered, even if the victim was himself a murderer.

‘He knew a lot about you,’ I say. Now it’s my turn to twist the napkin. ‘He knew you wear lavender. He knew your name. He knew things about us. The –’

Mum stands up. ‘I told you before.’ Her voice is sharp. ‘Criminals can be very clever.’

I stand too. I tower over her. ‘How do you know, Mum?’ I say. ‘Did you meet my paternal grandmother? The one who was tall, like me? Blonde too? And why was my father’s name never on my birth certificate? Was it because you didn’t want to admit you weren’t married or because you didn’t dare to put down the name of someone who was on the run?’