Lying in Wait(36)

I racked my brains to remember exactly what had been said during the search. There had been mention of the car, but no suspect was ever mentioned. Not to me.

‘Do you know if he, the suspect, was a … if he used prostitutes?’

‘I think that’s what stumped James. He talked to some street girls that worked the same area as your sister, but they didn’t know him and she hadn’t done street work for months before she disappeared. I don’t know why James was so convinced about that man. He accepted that they had no evidence.’

‘Do you remember any more details? Where he lived or worked?’

‘I’m sorry, Karen. James only told me that much because he was so frustrated with the O’Toole fellow. He would never have been deliberately indiscreet. But, Karen …’ she took my hand in hers and grasped it, ‘he was convinced that Annie was dead.’

I had been in denial for so long, but I knew she was right.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry about James.’

She exhaled a long plume of smoke. ‘We can’t let these tragedies stop us living. We’ll never forget our loved ones, but they would want us to be happy, darling. Your career is beginning. Let’s keep this to ourselves. Tell Dessie to be a man. You have to be allowed to move on. With or without him.’

I was shocked by her words. None of this was Dessie’s fault. It was this man, this suspect that James had identified, who had caused all the anguish and fear. I was going to find him, with or without the guards.





10


Lydia


The time after Andrew’s death when I was forcibly removed to a psychiatric institution was not the first time I had been taken from my home against my will. I spent nearly a year in an aunt’s house directly after my ninth birthday. It was because Daddy didn’t want me in Avalon after the accident.

It was just two years after Mummy had caused a scandal by running off with a plumber. She wanted to take us with her, but Daddy forbade it. He said he should never have married beneath him and that he would never get over the humiliation that Michelle, my mother, put him through.

Eventually, we all got used to her not being there. For the first year, I cried myself to sleep every night, wishing and hoping she would come home. Diana called me a baby and said that Mummy didn’t love us, but it wasn’t true. Mummy did love me once. I remember the feeling.

Mummy was very beautiful. I recall her quite well, even though all the photographs were destroyed. When I look in the mirror now I can still see traces of her, despite the fact that I am much older than she was the last time I saw her. She died sometime in the 1960s, alone and abroad apparently. I got a card from her on my wedding day, but I did not get to keep it. Daddy threw it in the fireplace. My twin sister, Diana, looked totally different from Mummy and me. Where I was fair, she was dark; my eyes were blue, hers were brown. My brow was high and she had no chin. She wasn’t pretty, but while she had not inherited Mummy’s looks, she had Daddy’s breeding. She was more refined than I. I remember Daddy saying that it was impossible to teach me any manners.

I clung to Diana after Mummy left, and I adored her with all my heart. We belonged to each other. But I valued our twin-ship more than she. It was annoying, to be frank, the way that she tried to go off and do things on her own and how she wanted to dress differently from me. She loved me, of course she did – one has to love one’s sister, especially if one is a twin – but as we got older there were times when I began to think that she did not like me. She would look at me sometimes with disgust if I forgot to chew with my mouth closed or if I licked my knife by accident. She rubbished my favourite books and said she preferred the classics. If I ever did something to upset her, she could go whole days without speaking to me. She said that she couldn’t wait until we grew up so that she could have her own house; I did not like to imagine a house without her in it, and cried at the thought. But I always forgave her quickly.

I wonder, if she had lived, would we be friends now?

For a while after Mummy left, Daddy withdrew into himself and spent long periods locked in the library, drinking brandy. Then he would emerge, drunk. He mostly ignored me because I reminded him of his wife. But he would take Diana on to his knee, telling her stories, giving her sweets and tickling her, giving her all the attention that used to be divided equally between the three of us. I was left to the care of our nanny and housekeeper, Hannah, who smelled of mothballs and snuff. Gradually, he began to love me again, although I could sense his suspicion that I would somehow betray him, and I suppose I did, though I spent the rest of my life making it up to him.

It was 1941, and Diana and I were to have a ninth birthday party, the first party since Mummy’s departure. We were terribly excited. We hadn’t even been to a party in the intervening years, I assumed because Daddy had forbidden it. All fifteen girls from our class had been invited, and Daddy had ordered us new dresses and ribbons for our hair. He had pulled string to get extra coupons. It was May, an unusually hot one, and trestle tables had been set up outside in the garden, laden with dainty sandwiches, jellies and trifles all covered with netting to keep the bees away. Bottles of cold ginger ale stood at the end in ice buckets. Bunting was strung between the apple trees. Daddy had decided the mourning period for my mother was over, and this was the first outward sign that he intended to re-engage with the world. He had invited his sister, our Aunt Hilary, and some friends too, a couple who laughed at everything he said and wore matching tank tops. The lady gave us a shilling each and professed how generous she was for the next hour. At the time appointed for the guests’ arrival, Diana and I were kneeling up on the chaise in the drawing room, our faces pressed to the window to see who would be first to arrive. Amy Malone came first and we knocked her over with our enthusiasm, leading her out to the garden, showing off the pond and the luncheon spread and the bunting and the large rocking horse that Daddy had presented us with that morning. We took turns and played for a while until it dawned on me that nobody else had knocked on our door. Where were they all? Daddy and the couple were talking at the far end of the garden as we ran in and out of the house to make sure that Hannah was listening out for the knocks on the door.