Faith (21 page)

A lump came up in Stuart’s throat, for she looked the way his mother had after his father died. Wistful but resigned, and not wishing to burden anyone else with her deep sorrow.

‘I wish I could find some words to comfort you,’ he said and moved forward to hug her. It was only as he held her that he realized she was far thinner and perhaps shorter than she used to be; she felt more like a child of twelve or thirteen than a grown woman.

‘Enough sympathy,’ she said, stepping back from him and turning to pick up their drinks. ‘I miss them both terribly, but I have to carry on. And I want to know where you’ve been and if you’ve made your fortune yet.’

Stuart smiled, for he knew that when he first met her he often used the expression ‘When I make my fortune’. He was touched that she remembered.

‘I suppose I have,’ he said, and as she sat down on one chair he took the other. ‘But money’s a funny thing – the more you get, the more you seem to need. I haven’t got enough yet to retire to the Caribbean.’

‘Still as handsome as ever though,’ Lena smiled. ‘Are you married yet?’

Stuart shook his head. ‘Never met the right girl,’ he said. ‘And you were spoken for.’

He talked a little about his work and then went on to say how he’d been to Scotland to see Belle.

‘She didn’t tell me,’ Lena said indignantly. ‘I dare say she’ll insist she did tell me when I reproach her, and that I’d forgotten, but she didn’t. She seems to think I’m senile.’

Stuart thought it odd Belle had implied that to him too. ‘Maybe she had a lot on her mind,’ he said. ‘But tell me why you moved in here. You don’t look like you need to be in a nursing home.’

‘I don’t, not any more, but I was doolally after Frank died. I don’t remember much about it now, but apparently I wasn’t eating, acting strangely and wasn’t looking after myself. My doctor recommended I came here. When I began to recover, we discussed the possibility of sheltered housing because the house in Duke’s Avenue was far too big for me to live in alone. But I’d got to like it here by then, I had the nurses to have a chat and a laugh with, I’ve got lots of friends and old neighbours around here, so it’s easy for them to drop in. They offered me this nice big room – they call it the VIP suite – and said I could bring my own stuff here to make it like my own home. So here I am, bowed but not beaten.’

‘But isn’t it far more expensive than living in your own place?’ Stuart knew she must have got a small fortune from the sale of Duke’s Avenue, but as he understood it, nursing-home fees could quickly eat that up.

‘I made quite a good deal with the owners,’ Lena smirked. ‘You see, I don’t need nursing, and they like having a few able-bodied people around as it’s more cost effective for them. It’s a bit like living in a hotel really, except I know I won’t be kicked out if my health deteriorates.’

‘Does that mean you are allowed out then?’

‘Of course! It isn’t a prison,’ she said indignantly. ‘I go up to the shops, to the library, and sometimes have a night or two away with a friend. I help in the garden, go out to dinner sometimes with friends. It’s a bit depressing going down to the lounge or the dining room, mind you. Most of the other residents are gaga.’

‘Well, I’m very glad you aren’t,’ he said, wondering why on earth Belle had told him that Lena probably wouldn’t know him.

‘How did Belle seem to you?’ she asked, as if she’d picked up on his thoughts.

‘Very bitter and angry about Laura! That’s perfectly understandable, but I hadn’t expected it. You see, when I read up on the trial, it seemed to me that Belle didn’t believe Laura had done it.’

‘And now she’s rabid about her?’ Lena raised one eyebrow quizzically.

‘Well, yes,’ Stuart agreed.

‘I find that odd too,’ Lena said thoughtfully. ‘Frank, Toby and I went up to Scotland immediately we got the terrible news. We were all distraught of course, something like that is beyond anyone’s comprehension, but Belle was hysterical, she kept being sick, and over and over again she insisted that Laura couldn’t have done it.

‘As it turned out, with Frank dying and me being in such a state, there was no question of my going to the trial. But Toby was there, and as I understand it Belle still believed totally in Laura’s innocence and expected her to be acquitted. It was only later, when she came down here to sort me out, that she appeared to have completely changed her mind.’

‘The weight of the evidence, I suppose,’ Stuart said cautiously. ‘What was Toby’s opinion of the verdict?’

Lena frowned. ‘He was very confused. It didn’t help when he discovered that Laura lied to us all about her family. He said that she clearly wasn’t the person he believed her to be. As I expect Belle told you, he went off working abroad soon after – he’s in Australia now.’

‘I’m sorry, you must miss him a great deal,’ Stuart said.

‘I do, but in a way I’m glad he went, he’s got a far better life there, a lovely young wife now too, and a baby on the way. They are coming over next year for a month, which will be lovely.’

Stuart smiled. ‘So you’ll be a granny at last, that’s great. But getting back to the verdict in the trial, what did you think of it?’

‘I was, and still am, convinced of Laura’s innocence.’

‘You are!’ Stuart exclaimed in surprise.

‘Belle will tell you that’s because I’m losing my marbles,’ Lena said, leaning towards him in a conspiratorial manner. ‘But I knew Laura really well, almost as well as I knew Jackie. Yes, she lied about her family, she’d done a lot of things which perhaps she shouldn’t have, but I know she was not the conniving, uncaring and evil person the lawyers and newspapers made her out to be. But you know that, Stuart, you were in love with her.’

‘Yes, I was, Lena.’ Stuart sighed. ‘It is good to hear you stick up for her. You see, I went to see her in prison, and I believe she’s innocent too.’

Lena sat back in her chair and smiled. ‘That’s wonderful, and very big of you to put aside past hurts. But then, you always were a very balanced and fair-minded person, that’s why Frank and I liked you so much. Now, tell me how Laura is.’

‘Not the glamour puss she used to be,’ Stuart smiled wryly. ‘But she’s found some resources to keep herself sane in there and indeed she wrote to me after my visit and told me the whole story of her real childhood.’

‘Will you tell it to me?’

Once again a lump came up in his throat. It was astounding to him that this slight woman in her late seventies, who had had her happy life torn apart when she lost both her elder daughter and her beloved husband, still had the capacity to care about others.

‘I can read it to you,’ he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Lena looked at the wad of paper in his hand. ‘I’ll just put the flowers into a vase first,’ she said. ‘Would you like a top-up of your drink, or a cup of tea? I can make one, I’ve got my own kettle here.’

‘Tea would be good,’ Stuart said. ‘Drinking whisky in the afternoon is great if you’ve got nothing on later, but I’ve got to meet someone this evening.’

He watched as Lena bustled about finding a large vase and scissors to trim the flower stems and filling up her kettle, her movements swift and economic. He didn’t think she ought to be in this place surrounded by people waiting for death. She belonged the way she always used to, the matriarch at the very centre of not just her family, but all those other friends and friends of friends who gathered at Duke’s Avenue. He remembered how she would encourage people to talk as she hastily prepared a vast dish of shepherd’s pie or sausages and mash, how she always seemed to know exactly who had a problem they needed to share, or an issue they were troubled with.

By rights she should have had grandchildren running around her feet. She should be cosseted now by all those she’d helped so much with her ability to listen, her lack of bias or snobbery. And she should still have Frank by her side.

Life certainly wasn’t fair.

Once the flowers were arranged and placed on the table, Lena made the tea and came back to sit down opposite Stuart.

‘Right, let’s have it,’ she said in her typically direct manner.

It took Stuart some time to read Laura’s letter. There were five pages with small, neat writing on both sides of the paper, not one crossing-out or spelling mistake, and she’d told the story so vividly he could almost smell the damp and mould in the basement of Thornfield Road. As he finished he looked at Lena for her response. She was staring at her hands on her lap and a tear trickled down her cheek.

‘I suspected some of it,’ she said quietly. ‘Her Aunt Mabel never sounded real, more like a character invented by Agatha Christie. I thought that if she had really been that way Laura would have had better diction, and more sophisticated tastes. I noted too how wary she was of men, and how quickly and efficiently she did household chores, which isn’t usual for young girls from the kind of genteel background she described. But I didn’t ever probe because she had such a huge need to be liked and accepted. I was probably guilty of adding more detail to her fiction too. Etiquette, tales about my relatives, the finer points of middle-classdom – I’m sure you know the kind of things I mean.’

Stuart nodded. ‘She genuinely loved you and Frank though. She used to talk about you such a lot when we first met. You had clearly been a tremendous influence on her. And she didn’t exaggerate any of that, for the first time I came to Duke’s Avenue with Jackie, it was, and you were, exactly how she’d described.’

‘We loved her,’ Lena said simply. ‘She was easy to love. Frank once said she was like Judy, a stray dog we took in when the children were tiny. We saw her up at Alexandra Park and stroked her, and she followed us home. We didn’t want a dog, but Judy seemed to know that and made herself as inconspicuous as possible until we’d come round to her being there. Laura was the same, she would wash up, do my ironing, put Belle and Toby to bed, she tidied Jackie’s room, all without us really noticing. When she came to live here for a while after she and Jackie returned from a summer job in a holiday camp, she never encroached on any of our space, she made life easier and more ordered for me and all of us.’

She paused for a moment as if gathering herself. ‘How can anyone feel betrayed that she lied? She was just fifteen when she left home, and she wanted something better than she’d been born to. A weaker person would have tried to gain sympathy for herself, but instead she rubbed it all out and began again. I actually think that is courageous. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, when you put it like that,’ Stuart said. ‘But what do you think changed her from the sweet and eager-to-please stray?’ he asked.

‘Ambition, bad influences and more hard knocks,’ Lena said. ‘When she and Jackie moved on to doing promotion work, the girls they worked with and the businessmen they met gave them the idea that wealth was the thing to strive for. In a way I was proud that they became a pair of go-getters, but I was worried about their increasing cynicism and avarice.’

‘The sixties kind of encouraged that attitude.’ Stuart shrugged. ‘I know most people only remember the peace and love bit, but it was also a time for grabbing what you wanted.’

‘I thought Laura would make it all by herself, she certainly had the hunger and the determination, and she had a good business head, but instead she tried to take a short cut to it by marrying Gregory Brannigan,’ Lena stated and looked at Stuart as if she expected him to contradict her.

‘I hardly know anything about Greg,’ Stuart replied. ‘When I first met Laura she said she left him because there was another woman, and that she didn’t want to talk about it. She did tell me odd things later, that he was the owner of a toy company and that she worked for him. But mostly the lack of information about him made me afraid she still had feelings for him.’

‘Nothing could be further from the truth,’ Lena said stoutly. ‘She hated him come the end, and she was very afraid of him. I only met him a few times but I could see that he was a very forceful, controlling man. In my opinion if it hadn’t been for Jackie meeting up with Roger again, I don’t think Laura would have even gone out with him for very long, much less married him.’

She smiled at Stuart’s puzzled expression. ‘You do know that Roger was Jackie’s first real boyfriend, but they’d split up years before?’

‘Yes. Laura told me that.’

‘Well, she and Jackie were having the time of their lives until Roger came back on the scene and broke it up by asking Jackie to marry him. He had a down on Laura for some reason and suddenly she was left right out in the cold, lonely and rudderless. Greg seized the opportunity, whisking Laura off for weekends, dinner in smart places, and the next thing she was engaged to him. Both Jackie and I warned her that he was far too controlling, but I don’t think she could see beyond his house in Chelsea, the toy company and the fact that he came out of the top drawer. She married him, then Barney came along in 1970. Jackie and I thought we were wrong about Greg then – outwardly he seemed the ideal husband – but Laura was doing what she’s so often done since, covering things up. In fact I believe she was going through hell with him.’

Stuart frowned, remembering that when Laura walked out on him, he had become convinced that he and Greg had a great deal in common, for they’d both been kicked in the teeth by her.

He’d asked Jackie about him once, but she’d just passed him off as a ‘perve’. As that could have meant anything from a man touching up other women at parties to liking to dress up in Laura’s clothes, he let the subject drop. But he had been shocked when years later, just after Barney’s death, Jackie told him in a letter how she’d telephoned Greg’s parents to tell them what had happened, and to get an address or telephone number for their son. She said they’d almost bitten her head off, asking why she saw fit to tell them, as Barney was nothing to them, or Greg.

Stuart had known Gregory had never paid maintenance for his son and had never attempted to contact Laura so he could see him, but he found it unbelievable that anyone could be so callous about the death of a child.

‘What sort of hell did he put her through, Lena?’ Stuart asked.