From the Cradle (37 page)

‘She’s not your daughter, Penny. She’s Helen’s little girl. And Helen loves her very much.’

Penny shook her head. ‘No . . .’

‘Frankie!’

The scream made Patrick whirl around. Oh shit . . . It was Helen. She ran towards them across the rooftop. Those stupid hotel idiots. She screamed her daughter’s name again and rushed towards her. Carmella caught hold of her, holding her firm, despite how she thrashed and struggled. Penny stared at her, her lip curled with contempt, then she smiled.

‘You came,’ she said.

‘Give me back my daughter,’ Helen yelled. ‘What have you done to her? Frankie? Oh my god, is she dead?’

‘She’s fine,’ Carmella said, struggling to keep hold of her.

Penny said, ‘She won’t call me Mummy.’

‘That’s because you’re not,’ Helen panted. ‘You’re no one to her. Or me. I thought you were my friend! But you’re . . . you’re just a fucking ghost.’

Penny smiled. ‘It’s because you’ve brainwashed her. Poisoned her against me. Do you know how hard it was for me to watch you with her, the way you mistreated her?’

‘What?’

‘I watched you, all of you. And I listened to the way you talked about her at the gym, always moaning about how tired you were, how you wished you could have a break. Well, now you’ve got what you wanted. And I want you to tell her. You’re not her mummy any more. I am. She’s mine.’

‘No!’

‘Mine,’ Penny said, almost to herself.

She took another step backwards towards the precipice, then turned her face and kissed the side of Frankie’s head – and with that, Helen went crazy. She tore free from Carmella’s grip and raced towards Penny and Frankie.

‘Give her to me!’

Patrick tried to block her path, but she sidestepped him nimbly, and lunged at Penny, who screamed.

Patrick, who was facing Penny and Helen, felt the bullet graze his shoulder before he even heard the bang. He heard a gasp from behind him and cried out.

‘Carmella!’

She was on the floor, blood blooming across her white shirt. But her eyes were still open, her mouth moving. She lifted an arm and pointed over his shoulder. Helen was grappling with Penny, trying to pull Frankie from her grip. Patrick ran towards them – and at that moment, a rush of noise and wind almost blew him away.

A police helicopter rose from beyond the edge of the hotel roof, the
whomp-whomp
of its blades filling the air, hovering level with him and the struggling women. He waved his arms, pointed at Carmella, who was lying still on the ground, tried to shout above the roar, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice. The
helicopter
rotated, the cops inside gesticulating and trying to make
themselves
heard.

Several things happened at once. Helen spat in Penny’s face, the shock making the other woman loosen her grip, and Helen fell backwards with Frankie on top of her. Penny pointed the gun at them and flexed her finger on the trigger.

Yelling, Patrick leapt at her and, swinging his arm, knocked the gun aside. It spun across the floor. Penny stooped to try and grab it but Patrick grabbed at her and she tripped, twisting sideways and toppling over the edge of the roof, clawing at the rooftop and clinging to the raised edge of the building.

She screamed, the noise just audible above the din of the helicopter. Patrick grabbed her arms, holding onto her, preventing her from falling. Her eyes were wide with terror and he gripped her sleeves as hard as he could, but she was too heavy. He couldn’t
hold her.

Her expression changed, became calm. She knew it was over.

‘Don’t let go,’ Patrick yelled. But he couldn’t hold on to her, not without her dragging him with her.

She shouted something in his ear.

And fell, her body tumbling down the edge of the hotel, bouncing off a window ledge and spinning towards the shining roofs of the cars parked below. He turned his head away before she hit the ground.

Chapter 46
Patrick – Day 7

In the calm that followed the storm, Patrick sat heavily on the edge of a huge earthenware pot containing a small palm tree, considering his next move: Carmella, Helen and Frankie had been taken to hospital. Helen still didn’t know that her husband was dead. Alice was still at Larry’s – she’d have to be told, too. Even though Frankie was safe, Patrick felt numb with shock and despondency. So many liv
es lost
or ruined. Poor little Izzy. Koppler, Sharon Fredericks, Sean. Georgia and her ruined face. Alice and her ruined life.

Jerome Smith – although no great loss there. Even his stupid dog was dead. The residents of the Kennedy Estate would no doubt be heaving a huge collective sigh of relief. One of the officers had found the dog on the back seat of Smith’s car. Smith had left the window open a crack, but it hadn’t been sufficient in the blaze of an eighty-degree summer’s day, and the dog – Beyonce? Jessie J? No – Rihanna, wasn’t it? Rihanna had dehydrated, shrivelled up and died.

Then there was Eileen, who would probably never recover. Penny had shouted something in Patrick’s ear, just before she fell: ‘Tell Eileen it’s all her fault.’ He wondered why – perhaps Eileen had made their lives hell and that was why Penny had left? Or had she done something else, more sinister?

He stood up, his legs still feeling shaky. He didn’t understand why Sean had taken his own life at the sight of Penny’s
photograph
– but he was pretty sure he now knew who could explain it to him. He left the SOCOs flitting around the hotel roof like bright ghosts in paper overshoes, incongruous in the bright sunshine, and headed back to the Philipses’ house.

He leaned on the doorbell of the big house, feeling its emptiness in the echoey quality of the sound within. It would be on the market within weeks, he was certain. Helen and Alice probably wouldn’t ever want to set foot inside it again. Suddenly he felt grateful for his own life, however imperfect it was. His folks’ place was tiny and cramped, and his own house rented out to two
Bulgarian
dance teachers, but so what? Home was where Bonnie was, and her own beautiful, life-affirming energy. Nothing else mattered,
nothing
.

He shook his head, at the same time as he spotted a movement through the panels of frosted glass in the front door. He’d have to watch himself – any more of that hippie nonsense and he’d be dressing in saffron with cymbals attached to his fricking ankles, chanting in the streets . . . He bent down and peered through the letterbox. A large wheeled suitcase sat on the chequered tile floor of the hallway.

‘Mrs Philips! Is that you? Need a word. It’s DI Lennon. Please let me in.’

Everything was still, but he could smell the telltale scent of
cigarette
smoke, and after a minute, he heard a long sniff.

‘Mrs Philips – Eileen – open the door, please.’

Eileen appeared in the dining room door and shuffled down th
e h
all towards him. Even through the small rectangular frame o
f th
e letterbox it was clear that she was a broken woman. Gone was the bluster and the attitude, leaving a shell of a person, someone who looked as though all the blood and marrow had been sucked from her bones and replaced by grief and sorrow. Her hair was limp, her face unmade-up and deathly white. Wordlessly, she opened the door and stood aside to admit him, not meeting his eyes.

‘There’s some good news,’ Patrick said gently, steering her into a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Frankie has been found, safe and apparently unharmed. Helen’s with her now, at the hospital. They’re just checking them both over.’ Mentioning the hospital made him feel bad that he wasn’t there at Carmella’s side. But she was a pro. She’d understand. Thank God it was only a flesh wound.

Eileen gave a wan smile.

‘Penny had her, didn’t she,’ she whispered. A statement, not a question.

‘Did you know that already?’ Patrick turned away to fetch them both a glass of water, not wanting Eileen to see how much her answer mattered to him.

‘No. Not until I saw the photo on your phone. Where is Pe
nny now?’

‘When did you last see her, Mrs Philips?’

‘My daughter—’

‘Yes, your ex-daughter-in-law,’ Patrick said, handing her a glass of cold water from the tap which she took, clutching it to her chest with a shaking, liver-spotted hand, but not bringing it to her lips.

‘No. She was my daughter.’

‘So you thought of her as a daughter? You must have been very close, then.’

Oh shit,
thought Patrick,
so this will be another bereavement for the poor woman
. He hadn’t ever warmed to Eileen, but he wouldn’t wish this kind of emotional devastation on anyone, not even
Winkler
. A sudden noise made them both jump, but it was only a big ginger tom nudging his metal food bowl across the tiled floor in the utility room.

‘No. She was my daughter. My real daughter.’

Something in the tone of Eileen’s voice made Patrick begin to understand.

‘Your . . .
birth
daughter?’

Eileen’s chin sank to her chest as she nodded, too distraught for tears. She seemed semi-conscious. Patrick’s breath stopped in his chest.

‘But – isn’t she Alice’s mother?’

Another brief nod.

‘And Sean . . . he’s not your son? Is he your son-in-law?’ Patrick wondered how he’d got this all so wrong.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly into the silence, as if it had only just started marking the passage of time. Signifying the
collapse
of a family.

‘Please explain, Mrs Philips, I’m sorry, I’m really confused. I thought Sean was your actual son. How come your name is
Philips
too, then?’

Eileen began to sit up, and the glass slipped from her grasp, bouncing off her lap and smashing into a million pieces on the quarry tiled floor. Her lap was full of water that dripped through her polyester skirt like she was straining it through muslin. The cat shot straight past them into the hall in a ginger blur of panic, and the sounds of broken glass and dripping water reverberated in Patrick’s ears. He knew he should get a cloth, a dustpan and brush, make soothing noises, but he didn’t want to break the spell. He was so close to it all making sense, finally.

‘Eileen?’

She turned to look at him then, her eyes rheumy and he
art-broken
.

‘Sean is – was – my actual son. My youngest child.’

Patrick opened his mouth to speak but she carried on, flicking ineffectually at the water in her lap with the side of her palm.

‘Yes I know I told you I only had one child. But I didn’t. I had Penny first, five years earlier in 1970. I didn’t mean to. I was only seventeen, and I was in love. I met her dad, Horace, at Butlins. He was the first black man I’d ever talked to. I didn’t mean to get pregnant of course, and I didn’t realize I was until I was six months gone, and so was Horace.
Long
gone, he was. I gave the baby up for adoption. My mum and dad were furious with me, ’specially when I admitted the baby would be half-caste. Oh, you can’t say that these days, can you?
Mixed race.
Load of bollocks . . .’

A trace of her spirit re-entered her voice, just a trace. Patrick sat back in horror, the implications of Eileen’s story slowly beginning to make sense.

‘Then what, Mrs Philips? Or is it OK for me to call you Eileen?’

Another brief nod. Patrick wordlessly handed her a tea-towel and she arranged it on her lap to soak up the water, like she was in a restaurant and it was a napkin.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said, her voice once more dropping to a whisper. ‘I didn’t know that her adoptive parents had called her Penny. I’d named her Tracey. I tried to forget about her, married Sean’s dad in ’73, had Sean the next year. He was a nice man. Hugh was his name. He died when Sean was seven, of an aneurysm. Never knew about Penny. I still miss him. Unlike that black bastard, excuse my French, but I never liked the coloureds after that.’

Patrick tried to hide a wince at the blatant racism.

Eileen sighed, and her lips trembled. ‘I reckon that was why Sean never brought her home to meet me, ’cos she was half-caste and he knew I wouldn’t approve. I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know!’ Her voice rose. ‘We weren’t very close during that period. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend, that they’d moved in together. Next thing she’s pregnant, and they run off and get married. I was so upset and furious.’

‘What year was that, Eileen, when Sean and Penny got married?’

She thought a moment, tears now rolling unsteadily down her face. ‘How old is Alice . . . almost sixteen . . . so that must have been 1997. But I didn’t actually meet Alice till a few years later.’

‘How soon did you realize who Penny was?’

Eileen took a deep breath. ‘I finally went round to see him, fed up of getting the silent treatment. And there she was. She was as shocked to see me as I was to see her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d seen her before. She came to find me, see, her birth mother. Turned up out of the blue one day after tracking me down. And . . . I sent her packing. I didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be reminded of my mistakes. You can’t bla
me me.’

Patrick said nothing.

‘She must have met Sean after she left my house. Apparently, after I’d sent her away she went to the pub round the corner because she needed a drink, and Sean was in there. She swore afterwards that she had no idea who he was but . . . I don’t know. I read in one of my magazines that people are often attracted to other people who look like them, or who are similar. Maybe she, what’s the word, subconsciously recognized something in him. Was drawn to her o
wn blood.’

‘So what did you do when you realized they were together?’ Patrick felt so sorry for her. So sorry for all of them. Eileen put her head in her hands and shuddered at the memory.

‘I screamed at them. I was so angry. If only Sean had brought her home sooner, if he was the kind of boy who kept pictures of his mum around, none of this would ever have happened. I could’ve warned them then that it was incest, that it mustn’t go any further.’

‘But he hadn’t done, because he knew you’d be upset that she was mixed-race,’ Patrick said, understanding. ‘What a mess.’

‘Yeah. A mess is about right. I told them they were half-brother and sister.’

‘How did they take it?’

She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Shocked, obviously. Mortified. Penny went mental. I think she was mental already, but this tipped her over the edge. She did a runner, left Alice with Sean saying that Alice was a freak and she didn’t want anything to do with any of them . . . She buggered off to Australia and we never saw her again.’

‘Why did Sean tell everyone she was dead?’

Eileen dropped her head again. ‘He couldn’t find her, to get a divorce. He was so upset. He’d really really loved her. I felt so guilty that I’d come between them – maybe I shouldn’t ever have said anything. But then they might have had more children, and the next ones mightn’t have been right in the head, even though Alice was alright . . . He didn’t want Alice to know, obviously, and he didn’t want to tell her that her mum had just abandoned her. So he got rid of all the photos and told everyone that Penny had gone over to Australia on a work placement for six months and died in a car crash over there. Alice was only a toddler; it was better for her that she grew up thinking her mum was dead rather than the truth. He used to worry that Penny would show up out of the blue, but she never did. Not until now. I hate her, for what she did to him and Alice, the mental bitch.’ Eileen’s voice rose until she was alm
ost shouting.

Patrick took a deep breath. Penny must indeed have been mentally ill. He remembered her on the roof, calling Frankie by Alice’s name. Perhaps she thought she had another chance, to succeed with Frankie where she’d failed Alice? The two girls looked similar, the way that Penny and Helen were fairly alike.

‘She’s dead now, Eileen. She died this morning, jumping off the roof in the hotel when we were rescuing Frankie. I’m so sorry.’

‘Good riddance,’ Eileen said, but the words were drowned out in a storm of sobs that bent her double over her wet lap. All Patrick could do was squeeze her shoulder.

If it was easier for Eileen to blame Penny, then who was he to contradict her?

Finally Eileen sat up again and gripped Patrick’s wrists. ‘Promise me one thing,’ she said, staring right in his face. ‘You’re the only person in the world that knows now. You and me, nobody else. Promise me you won’t tell anybody, ever. Promise me. It would kill Alice. The poor girl’s lost her daddy. Don’t tell her she’s just lost her real mummy too. I don’t want her to know that Penny hated her. Do you promise?’

Patrick hesitated. How the hell was he going to write up the report without mentioning this one, crucial bit of information? Eileen would have to give a statement. Her eyes pleaded with him, and he had a sudden, unbidden thought of Gill locked up in her secure mental unit, trapped by one hasty, life-ruining action.

He was torn. He could imagine how devastated Alice would be if she learned the truth. But he was a police officer, a detective. It was his job to uncover the truth.

Eileen stared at him with desperate eyes. ‘Please, detective. Please don’t tell anyone.’

He walked away, leaving her sobbing. He had no idea what to do.