Blood Sisters(79)

I think back to my men in the prison who hadn’t always seemed like murderers either. One of them had got married halfway through his sentence.

‘When he went to jail, I promised to visit. But every time I went, you cried and cried so much.’

‘You took me to prison?’ I have a mental flash of the babes in arms I’d seen during visiting days queuing up outside the high walls with barbed wire. I’d been one of them?

She nods. ‘It was horrible. And then … well … There was the other murder.’

I freeze. ‘What other murder?’

My mother looks away. ‘Soon after your father went to prison, he got a new cellmate who had it in for him. Kept calling him names and making racist taunts. Your father was a very proud man. He would not stand for insults against anyone he loved. One morning …’

She stops and I know she’s going to say something awful.

‘One morning,’ she continues falteringly, ‘the cellmate started up again in the showers. Your father attacked him with a razor blade.’

‘He didn’t …’ I begin.

‘Kill him?’ My mother’s voice is flat now. ‘Yes. I’m afraid he did. Even worse, it turned out that your father had bribed a guard to get the blade, which made it look as though the murder was premeditated. So he got life.’

That explained the length of my father’s sentence! Thirty-odd years is a long time for one murder. I’d learned that much during my own time inside. But another one – especially in a prison – is a different matter.

‘And that’s the real reason I broke off contact with him. I could just about understand the first set of circumstances leading to his arrest. But not the second killing.’

My poor mother. I reach for her hand. She grips mine back. ‘I began to think about your father in a different light.’

‘Not surprising,’ I murmur.

‘Soon after that, I met David. He was kind. Said he’d be a father to you. And I knew you would have a better chance in life if you didn’t know your father was a prisoner.’

Finally, it’s all beginning to make sense.

‘David made me happy. I wanted you to have a proper family. I was so thrilled when Kitty was born. I didn’t want you to be an only child like me.’

‘But Stefan …’ I still can’t say the word ‘father’ … ‘He said he wrote to you when I was eighteen.’

She nods. ‘He’d just been diagnosed with cancer then – slow-burning leukaemia – but it made him aware of his own mortality. He wanted to see you. Personally, I thought he had a right but David wouldn’t allow it. I made the mistake of showing him the letter.’

‘Had he known about Stefan before?’

‘No. I’d told him you were the result of a one-night stand with someone I didn’t know very well.’

I think back to those arguments between Mum and David just before the time of my A levels.

‘He was furious that you had a father in prison. And, well, he was jealous too. I could tell.’

‘Why? You didn’t feel anything for Stefan any more, did you?’

One look at my mother’s face provides the answer. ‘Sometimes,’ she says slowly, ‘you can’t help who you fall in love with. I loved David too, but in a different way. He could tell that. I made him promise never to tell you.’ She looks at me as if for confirmation.

‘He didn’t,’ I say truthfully.

‘So you can see why I was so upset when you went to work in a prison,’ continues Mum.

‘You knew Stefan was there?’

‘No. But I didn’t want to take any chances. When you told me about this man who claimed he was your father, I could hardly believe it. Out of all the prisons in the country, he was in that one.’

‘But you denied it.’

‘I had to. I was trying to protect you. You’d been through so much after Kitty. How would you cope with knowing your father was a murderer?’

‘I’d have liked to have known him better,’ I blurt out.

My mother draws me near to her. I breathe her in as I did when I was a child. ‘I know,’ she whispers. ‘And I took that away from you. I’m so sorry. Despite everything, I still can’t help thinking he would have been a good man in a different situation. Of course, he shouldn’t have killed that man while he was on remand. Or the other man in prison. But when we are young, we do some desperate things.’

Don’t I know that, all too well?

And now, as the court case looms, I have to face up to what I did myself all those years ago.

It makes me wonder.

Does bad blood run from one generation to the next?

If so, I have to find a way of stopping it. Whatever it takes.





59


August 2017


Kitty


Friday Mum came to visit not long after the trip to the zoo. At least, Kitty was pretty sure it wasn’t that long, although it was getting hard to tell now. She was so tired all the time. And The Monster felt as if it was going to burst her stomach. It looked like an enormous football.

‘The staff tell me you have been sleeping a lot,’ said Friday Mum. ‘Babies make you tired. I was the same with you and your sister.’