My Mother, The Liar

There was no bitterness in her desire to maintain Lila’s home intact, just a need to hang onto something old, familiar and warm. Lila’s flat was a home in the way that The Limes never had been, or could have been. Lila had been happy in her London flat, away from her dysfunctional family and all that had come with it. Rachel tried relentlessly to preserve that happiness, constantly hoping that the essence of it would magically transfer itself to her one day.

The flat was her bolthole, her sanity. To someone else it would look precisely the opposite. Hard evidence of her instability. Proof of her inability to cope with real life. Would anybody else understand that if you could force time to stand still and preserve a perfect moment of tranquillity that you could step in and out of that place at will?

Lila (or strictly speaking Lilian) Porter had been the polar opposite of her brother. From what little she’d been told about her father, Rachel had deduced that where William had been dull, Lila had been a bright beacon of life. Where he had been mean-spirited, she had been generous to a fault. Where William had resented, Lila had embraced. In Lila’s company, everyone felt alive. Even Valerie had grudgingly liked her, until Lila had died and had left everything to Rachel. After that Valerie hadn’t liked anyone much.

Frances had needled Rachel to sell the flat – it was London real estate, worth a small fortune. Life-changing in the right hands. Valerie hadn’t thought that Rachel’s were remotely the right hands. Rachel had measured wealth differently and had hung onto the flat even though her decision had been one of the issues that had permanently damaged the family ties. The other issue she still couldn’t, and wouldn’t, talk about.

Ever.

Chapter 8

Delia tried Charlie’s mobile number and listened to the dull uninspiring voice on the message service for the umpteenth time. There was no point in leaving yet another message; he hadn’t bothered to pick up the last three. Why the bloody hell did people bother having mobile phones if they were always going to leave the bloody things switched off?!

In frustration, she slammed her own phone hard on the table, dislodging the battery cover in the process and sending it skipping over the tabletop and onto the floor. ‘Sod it!’ she hissed, bending to retrieve it and groaning at the stiffness in her back. She couldn’t be bothered to fiddle with it to reattach it to the body of the phone, damned thing.

A horrible sensation was unfurling in her gut, an instinct that something was about to go horribly wrong. Charlie was incommunicado and Rachel bloody Porter was back on the scene. Adding two and two together she was coming up with nothing other than four, no matter how hard she tried to make it five. If she was right and he was with Rachel, they might well have another dead body on their hands by the time she caught up with him and throttled him for his foolishness. She was too old for all this, and so was Charlie. He was a bloody idiot where that girl was concerned, always had been, always would be.

Delia just had to hope that Rachel wasn’t as big an idiot. If she was, then God help them all.

***

By the time Ratcliffe and Angie reached the hospital that evening, having been told that Frances had been woken, she had lost consciousness again.

According to her doctor she hadn’t said anything of note during the short time that she had been lucid. Ratcliffe’s only conversation had been with Peter Haines, Frances’s rather urbane yet supercilious husband, whose main concern remained the worry that his good name was being linked with something as tawdry as murder. Haines was adamant that he didn’t know where Stella had gone, but had reluctantly agreed to supply a photo of her, though he couldn’t guarantee a recent one.

He had only conceded to their request because Ratcliffe told him that his wife’s purge of The Limes had been so meticulous that they had failed to turn up even the remotest clue as to Stella’s whereabouts – or her intentions. Even with a photograph and the help of the press they would be clutching at straws. If a person as nondescript as Stella wanted to disappear, it wasn’t particularly difficult to make a thorough job of it.

Thwarted by Frances’s insentient state, Ratcliffe called it a day and sent Angie home. God knows they all needed a decent night’s sleep – this case was getting harder by the minute and he wanted to face it head on and fresh in the morning. He’d switched his phone to silent earlier as per hospital policy and hadn’t thought to check it until he got into his car.

He assumed that the message he’d received when it had vibrated in his pocket was from his wife, nagging to know when he would be home. It wasn’t. It was from Charlie Jones, informing him that he’d had to take Rachel back to London to see her doctor. As a man Ratcliffe saw that as a very good idea – the woman was apt to flake out all over the place in his experience, so some medical attention would be a fine thing. As a copper he saw it as yet more buggeration. He hadn’t quite finished with Ms Porter. Having her back in London was going to be an almighty pain in his arse. As if he didn’t have enough of those already.

***

Surprisingly there was a parking space right outside the flat. Instinctively Charlie reversed in and switched off the engine, only afterwards thinking that he should just drop her and drive away. Just the same as all those times long ago when he had stood on this very pavement, looking up at her windows with his courage failing and forcing him to leave things well alone. He had always driven away.

‘Are you going to come in?’ she asked, the tremor in her voice informing him that she was fervently hoping that he wouldn’t.

Out of stubbornness he didn’t even bother to reply, just got out of the van and followed her up the steps into the building.

Inside the flat he remained silent as the wraith of Lila Porter wrapped itself around him like a stale smell. The past felt almost tangible and he had the sensation that he was being ripped backwards through time. That nothing had materially changed in the place was weird; that Rachel had never bothered to change it was stranger still.

In resistance to his reaction he tried to put a positive spin on it and thought of Amy. How she would love this place. She would see it as a giant dressing-up box where she could pretend she was someone else entirely. She had always told him that her ultimate fantasy would be to travel back in time.

It seemed that her mother had achieved it.

Rachel hovered in the kitchen doorway, showing her reluctance to allow him further into her domain. ‘I can do coffee if you don’t mind it black.’

Charlie glanced around again, glimpsing her existence, finding it wanting and dusty and faded. ‘OK.’

He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table under the window, keeping her in his line of sight, but maintaining a safe distance while he watched her fumble with the kettle. ‘So, what do you do with yourself then? Are you working?’ he asked, as if they were old acquaintances who had just bumped into each other. He felt as banal as the question had sounded.

She poured water in the cups and shook her head. ‘No.’

‘What do you do with yourself then?’ he pressed as she put the cups onto saucers and placed the whole paraphernalia on a tray just to bring it the few yards to the table. Just like her mother would have done – anything to keep up appearances.

She put the tray down, immediately silencing the rattling china that had been so effectively serenading her anxiety. ‘I read a lot, walk, watch the world go by. Time passes – I don’t notice it much.’

He picked up his cup, its dainty fragility looking incongruous in his calloused hand. It almost made him smile. ‘I half expected to find Stella here.’

Rachel hovered, seemingly reluctant to pick up her own cup. He noticed that her hands were still trembling. She gave a wry smile and shook her head. ‘She would never come here. Lila scared her. She had too much life for Stella.’

That a woman long dead yet still so tangibly present had the ability to dismay the living in such an assiduous way scared him a little too. ‘You know I said that Amy thinks you’re dead? She thinks that our relationship is sad and romantic and that I’m tortured by unrequited love and grief.’ He laughed, the sound of it full of scorn. ‘I’ve never had the heart to put her straight. And neither should you – whatever happens she needs to be kept out of this.’

‘I suppose it’s better for her to think that she was left by someone who didn’t choose to go,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s going to be hard to stop her reading papers or watching the news. I can’t be responsible for that, but she’ll never find out from me.’

Charlie couldn’t help it. The bitterness of what Rachel had done had been burning a hole in his gut for years. That she could talk to him so calmly about it just felt like insult heaped upon injury. ‘Better than knowing that your own mother dumped you without a word? Yeah, I’d say so. Anything would be better than that,’ he said with potent bitterness because the truth of her words illustrated a threat that neither of them could control.

Lila’s kitchen clock ticked loudly, marking the moments that the ugliness of it all hung in the air between them. ‘Better than knowing why,’ she said finally.

He gripped the cup, almost crushing it in an effort not to hurl it at the wall and watch the jagged shards flail her as they fell. ‘What about me? I’m not a little girl who needs to be protected from life’s shit, Rachel,’ he hissed, watching her wince at the suppressed violence of his contained rage and not caring. ‘Don’t you think I deserve to know why?’

‘I didn’t love you; I didn’t want her. I made a mistake.’ Even though she closed her eyes when she said it, unable to look him in the eyes, her words sliced at him like a razor – sharp and sure. The extent of the damage would be delayed by the swiftness of the cut, but he would feel it and it would hit bone.

He stood, moved towards her slowly, every step an exercise in measured control. He felt drunk, surreal, and incapable of coherent thought.

Chapter 9

Peter Haines stared down at the unconscious form of his wife and wondered if he loved her. Wondered if anyone could truly love a woman like Frances? She was admirable in many ways: cultured, elegant and formidable. Qualities quite desirable in a partner, but traits that could hardly be termed as lovable.

This was the first time he had ever observed her in a state of relaxation, albeit enforced. She looked different, not soft, just less determined than she normally did. It was a strange experience to see a woman you had shared a bed with – shared a life with – transformed into a stranger because of a bump on the head. Quite disturbing really.

Before this he had always felt proud of her as a wife. She represented him well, even though she could be a little strenuous in her opinions at times, even though her proprietary efficiency was a little forced. She was a good wife, faithful, but passionless. Her emotions ran cold and had set like stone, only ever emerging as grit-toothed sound bites, and only then when necessary to keep up appearances.

Children might have helped. However, they had never come along, and if he were honest, he wouldn’t have known what to do if they had. He wasn’t a man able to tolerate mess and chaos so maybe it had been for the best. He had no memory of being a child, couldn’t relate to what it was like at all. Even in his mother’s house, proudly populated with pictures of decreasingly younger versions of himself, he couldn’t make the connection, just felt slightly embarrassed by the tight-lipped, two-dimensional boy that he saw staring back at him from the photographs. Sometimes he was sure that he’d been born old.

Despite all that, the one thing he had never, ever anticipated was the prospect of being associated with scandal. Part of the reason that he had chosen Frances for a wife was because her background was good. Her family were a little odd, but of good pedigree, or so he had been led to believe. Never would he have contemplated that they could be capable of the level of depravity that was splashed all over the newspapers. It had come as a shock.

In some respects his other recent discovery had been a greater shock. When Valerie had died both he and Frances had been relieved – not only were they free of an unlikeable burden, they also stood to inherit a share of The Limes. Initially he had held out hope that Valerie had made a will, cutting out Rachel and favouring Frances above Stella. Typically, she had not.

He had assumed that the process of probate would be lengthy but at least straightforward. He’d been wrong. A complication had emerged already. Not only had Valerie not left a will, neither had William, and to top that, there was no evidence that William Porter was actually dead. When Peter had heard from the solicitor that no death certificate was in evidence he had been incredulous until he had discovered that there was no grave either. No funeral had taken place; no notice had been in the papers. William Porter had simply disappeared into the ether.

The only will that had ever decreed ownership of the house was that made by Stella’s birth mother. Technically William still owned the property. For Peter, it was a nightmare situation – one that was costing him eighty-five pounds an hour every time their solicitor even thought about resolving it. If just one of the bodies found had been William, it would have been far more simple. Distasteful, but simple.

Now that he thought about it, the whole thing had been a sham. In selecting him as a husband, Frances had achieved respectability and had managed to disguise herself and her family so that they couldn’t be recognised for what they were. He’d been duped, all his assumptions now proved wrong.

Stella, the single most ineffectual example of the human condition he’d ever encountered, had been someone to be pitied. Valerie, with all her apparent her pride in Frances, had been nothing but guise and guile, all designed to ensnare him and link him to a family of felons and sycophants. As for Rachel, he’d been fortunate enough to never have met her. From what he’d heard it had been a lucky escape.

He couldn’t even bear to look at Frances lying there seeming so peaceful and oblivious. She had nothing worse than a head wound whilst his whole life had been torn apart by her lies. In a fit of pique and disgust he took the flowers he had bought for her and rammed them into the waste bin. He was a decent man, a good man – honourable and upright. He hadn’t been equipped for this deceit. Without a backward glance at his wife he stalked from the ward.

***

Amy was well and truly pissed off. Sent home from her nurse-training placement early, she had caught a train home and had been desperately trying to phone her dad since. Only he wasn’t answering his phone, and now she would have to catch a bus from the station. She hated buses, especially late buses. They were full of drunks, gobshites, and people with hygiene problems. Some had passengers that combined all three traits – they were the ones who always wanted to sit next to Amy.

She had never come home to an empty house, had never been turned down when she had asked for a lift, had never opened the fridge and found it empty of food. Dad was always there, always had been, and now he wasn’t she was more annoyed with him than she wanted to admit.

It was his fault she was now standing at a freezing bus stop next to a person who obviously had failed to see the relevance of the ‘i’ in iTunes. Tinny music was leaking from his earphones and intruding into her already abrasive mood. Where the fuck was her dad?

They needed to talk. About what was in the papers. About why he was in the papers.

She had been in the office writing up patient notes before handover, when the other student, that supercilious wanker Nick Gribble, had slapped a newspaper down on the desk. Everyone had looked up as he’d said, ‘Never told us your dad was a criminal, Amy.’

Mortification hadn’t been the word for it. She’d told him to fuck off and had got a bollocking from her supervisor and sent home. The prospect of bouncing off the walls in the nurse’s home hadn’t appealed, so she’d come ‘home’ home, and no one was going to be there. What made her most angry was the fact that if something like a bank had gone out of business and money was at stake, the fucking papers wouldn’t have even thought about raking something up that had happened over thirty years ago! Money always trumped people in a news story.

There was a photograph of Charlie taking up half the page. Because a woman who’d gone missing, and who had probably killed her husband and kid, had been a witness at her dad’s trial. Didn’t put a photograph of her in there, did they? How fair was that?

Neither he nor Gran had ever talked about why he’d been in prison. She’d always known he had been, ever since her second day at school when Lee Price, a noxious kid who always had dried snot on his jumper sleeve had said, ‘My mum said your dad is a murderer. He chopped your mum into little pieces.’

She’d stared at him in disbelief, trying to equate what he had said with her big, strong lovely dad. She’d been horrified and angry and had yelled, ‘At least I’ve got a hanky! I don’t wipe bogeys on my clothes.’

She still felt stupid when she thought about it.

Gran had picked her up from school that day, and had been shocked to see a bandage on her hand. Lee Price had stabbed her with a pencil over the snot jibe. The story had come out in a tearful torrent and Gran had told her that it was true that her dad had gone to prison, but that it wasn’t true that he’d killed anyone. His first wife had been killed, but not by him. Amy had taken this on her five-year-old chin, because if Gran said it, the ‘it’ was gospel.

She had never since questioned his innocence. Even though on occasion (mostly when she was pissed off with him, like now) she had been haunted by the thought that he did seem to have a habit of marrying people who had suffered untimely deaths.

After that Gran wouldn’t discuss it, and Amy had been warned on pain of death to ask her father about it. Even so, the story ate at her. The dead first wife became the antagonist in her nightmares and she’d had no choice but to find out what had happened.

When she was thirteen, she’d gone to the library and had mastered the mysteries of the microfiche machine and had read the reports of what her father was supposed to have done. It didn’t stand up in her mind: the words ‘frenzied attack’ in the same sentence as her father’s name were so incongruent she had laughed. Still did. In her imagination she had packed the whole thing away in the same box as her mother’s death. It was all in the mental filing cabinet labelled ‘Romantic Tragedies’ along with other things that were too difficult to think about very often.

As far as Amy was concerned, the fact that bodies had been found at The Limes proved that her dad was innocent beyond doubt. Whoever had been killing people in that house, it hadn’t been him. Whoever the killer was, they had more than likely framed him. Simple.

At least that’s what she believed on good days. That’s what she would tell someone if they asked. On not so good days, when the world felt full of impending doom, she saw it differently. She was torn then. Between what she wanted to believe and what her logical mind suggested to her. The conviction that her father was incapable of being a frenzied murderer was absolute, but the suspicion that he might be capable of great passion, immense rage and deep hurt created a worm of doubt that wriggled in her brain from time to time. She knew for a fact that he’d done anger management courses over the years. Yet he’d never once lost it with her.

All she could base her darker thoughts on were the facts that her father loved her with a devotion that bordered on obsession, and he still loved her mother. If Gran didn’t stay him, he would have locked his child in the house for life just so he could keep her safe. She wouldn’t just be wrapped in cotton wool; she would be buried in it.

He never had curbed her freedom but she could tell he wanted to. Only the voice of reason stopped him taking her to a desert island where she would be safe for ever. She knew he still loved her mother because he never talked about her, and if anyone asked him his face would cloud with hurt so intensely that no one dared ask him again. That couldn’t be anything else but love, could it?

If he had loved the first wife as much, would he have killed her rather than lose her to someone else? Amy knew for a fact that he would kill anyone who threatened her safety. He had said so often enough.

A few years before, she had shared her worries with her best friend Kayleigh. Kayleigh had said that the only way to find out if he had killed the first wife was to ask her via ‘spirit’. They had hidden themselves in Gran’s bedroom and made a Ouija board out of scrabble tiles and had invoked the spirit of Patsy. Gran’s room had been a good choice of venue – after all, how scary could anything be if it was experienced on a bed of quilted pink satin surrounded by kitten ornaments?

Bloody terrifying as it turned out. They had scared each other shitless.

Kayleigh had led the proceedings. Her mother owned a deck of Tarot cards and she was familiar with the ritual of such things, having been witness to many a prediction of handsome strangers and sudden windfalls. Kayleigh had laid the letters out in a circle and had written ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on two pieces of paper. On a third she had written ‘goodbye’. She’d placed them in the circle. In the middle, she put a glass tumbler.

They had debated the glass. It had a picture of Blackpool Tower on it and didn’t seem a serious enough object to use in the circumstances, but it was all they had to hand and neither of them thought that any restless spirit would be too concerned about a bit of kitsch. Kayleigh had said that any spirit manifesting in Delia’s bedroom would have to be oblivious to tat, otherwise they wouldn’t bother coming at all. Amy had laughed with her, but had felt mildly offended all the same.

They had both said the Lord’s Prayer, just in case, before each putting a tentative digit on the upturned glass. ‘Is anybody there?’ Kayleigh had asked, sounding like Boris Karloff in a bad horror film. Amy had nearly fainted when the glass started to move. She’d pulled her finger away, accusing Kayleigh of pushing it, which she strenuously denied, saying, ‘If you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m going home.’ There had been pouting and umbrage taken.

Amy had reassured her that she was deadly serious and they had tried again, watching as the glass propelled itself under their fingers. The first few words it spelled out were nonsense, not even real words. Only when Kayleigh asked for Patsy to communicate with them did anything significant happen.

‘Are you Patsy?’ Kayleigh asked the air.

Amy had shuddered as the glass moved towards the slip of paper bearing the word yes.

‘Were you murdered?’ was the next question. Again the glass moved to yes.

Kayleigh had stared at Amy, eyes wide. ‘Who murdered you?’

Amy had been barely able to breathe as the glass had moved around the circle in undecided moves, finally spelling out the words: ‘not him’.

‘See,’ Kayleigh had said, pleased with herself.

Scared and unconvinced, Amy had asked the question again, but nothing happened. The glass hesitated and quivered under their fingers. ‘Did my father kill you?’ she demanded, desperate for a reiteration that it wasn’t him.

The glass moved again, sweeping around the circle again and again in dramatic arcs, then stopping abruptly in front of the slip of paper, which said ‘goodbye’.

Unnerved by the experience, they had scooped the letters back into their little bag and shoved them back in the Scrabble box. They screwed up the notes Kayleigh had written and threw them into the bin. Kayleigh was convinced that Amy had conclusive proof that Charlie was not a murderer. Amy wanted to believe it but wasn’t sure. Her logical mind refused to allow her to accept that they had just communicated with a dead woman. But what else could it have been?