The Race (22 page)

“That’s Kiran,” said my father. “She has a little boy named Jonah. She showed me a picture of him.”

“She seems nice,” I said. I asked him to tell me about the other nurses and he seemed happy to do that. He seemed peaceful in himself, but I couldn’t get away from the idea that he must be lonely, that he must be wondering what his life had been about and what he had come to. These thoughts made me want to cry. I stayed for about an hour, then caught the bus into town and went straight back to London.

My father died the following day. I returned to Hastings eight days later for the funeral. I went to the crematorium straight from the station. There were more people there than I would have expected – Dad’s drinking pals from the Hughenden Arms and their wives, his brother Clive who lived in Bromley and Clive’s stepson Mickey, some other people I didn’t recognise but who Derek said were business contacts. After the short service we all stood around in the grounds of the crem for half an hour wondering what to say to each other then went our separate ways the minute we could.

It was a sad day. There was a sense of futility about it, the feeling that Dad’s life had been a waste of time. I tried not to think about Mum but it was hard not to. When Derek asked if I wanted to go and have a pub lunch with him and Linda I agreed at once. I was desperate to put the funeral behind me, and besides that I was hungry. Linda looked better than when I’d seen her in town, fuller in the face and with a bloom to her cheeks that had not been there before.

“Have you guessed?” Derek said. “Linda’s expecting. It’s early days but she’s definitely pregnant. We did the test yesterday.”

I glanced at Linda but she immediately looked away. “Congratulations,” I said to Derek. “What’s happening about the house?”

“We’ll have to stay put for a bit while the will goes through probate. The solicitor says it’s fairly straightforward, so it shouldn’t take long. You’re in line for half the money, did you know that?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said.

“We’ve been thinking it’d be best for you if you left it in the house. More secure, I mean. And there’s always a home for you with us, you know that.”

He seemed relaxed and in control, what you might call happy. The afternoon passed. When Linda went to the Ladies I followed her in. I thought she might want to talk, but she just made some breezy remark about the pub being crowded then darted back into the saloon before I had the chance to say a word. I was mystified by her change of heart, but then reminded myself that it was none of my business.

When I arrived back in London I asked Lana Sobel if I could keep my room on over the summer. She seemed surprised but then agreed it would be okay.

“We hardly know you’re there,” she said, and laughed. I trailed around New Cross and Deptford looking in shop windows until I found a cafe that was advertising for waiting-staff. The manager didn’t seem keen when she found out I was a student, but when I told her I’d be willing to carry on working during term time she hired me. We agreed I should work three days a week on a rota basis. The work was more tiring than my old job at the flower shop, but it bulked out my grant and meant I could set some money aside for emergencies. I knew that Derek would do everything he could to hang on to my half of the house money. It never occurred to me that I had a right to it, that I could bring a court case against him if he tried to deprive me of it.

That first summer in London was strange. Robyn was spending the vacation in Port au Prince. Her letters arrived at intervals, filled with the excitement of being in a new place and with the news that she was thinking about going out to work there permanently once she’d finished her degree.

They’re really short of teachers here
, she wrote.
But the children are just amazing. I don’t want to leave
.

I’d never imagined Robyn as a teacher but I felt sure she’d be good at it.

Peter stayed on in London for a couple of weeks after term ended, but then he left to go on holiday with his family in west Wales. They hired a cottage there every year, apparently. He asked me to go with him, and I was tempted but in the end I said no. I knew I would lose the cafe job if I went. Plus I was actually quite looking forward to some time by myself.

“I’ll still be here when you get back,” I said to him.

“It’s bound to rain the whole time anyway,” Peter said. “It always pisses down in Wales.”

We had a laugh about that, and I felt none of the anxiety that had consumed me when Tim left for Oxford. I was never in love with Peter but I did love him. The trust between us was complete, and never in question.

~*~

I didn’t hear from Linda again until the end of August, when Lana Sobel knocked on my door and told me I had a telephone call. I thought it might be Peter but it wasn’t. I didn’t recognise Linda’s voice at first. She sounded very faint, very far away.

“Christy? Is that you?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s me. Are you okay?”

There was an odd kind of breathy silence, and then I realised Linda was crying. What I was hearing down the line was the sound of her sobs.

“Are you all right, Linda?” I repeated. “Is it something to do with the baby?”

I wondered if she’d suffered a miscarriage or something – it was the only thing I could think of that was awful enough to account for such obvious grief. My heart lurched at the thought, and I remembered the hideous pink-white slipperiness of the dead rat behind the shed at Laton Road.

“There is no baby,” she said. She gave a bitter little hiccoughing laugh. “I was pregnant for less than a month. He should never have said anything.”

Had she lost the baby after all, or had she got rid of it? She didn’t say and I couldn’t decide which would be more upsetting. I only knew that if Linda had had an abortion and Derek found out, things would be bad.

“What is it, then?” I wished she hadn’t called. I found Linda’s apparent need of me, her mistaken belief that I held a kind of secret rapport with my brother oppressive and troubling.

Did she not, I wanted to ask her, have friends of her own?

But at the same time I could not ignore her. Derek was my brother, after all, and I thought I might just be the only person on Earth who could truly imagine how trapped and alone Linda felt.

“It’s Derek,” she said. “He found out about Alex.”

My heart missed a beat.

“When did this happen?” I said.

“Last night. He caught us coming out of The Tower, at the top of London Road. We’d been in there for about an hour, just having a drink, and when we went to leave Derek was just
there
. He went for Alex like he was – I don’t know, possessed or something, just knocked him down in the street and started kicking him. If some people hadn’t come out of the pub I don’t know what might have happened. It was awful, Christy, it was just horrible.”

She started crying again, in that way you do when you’ve finally got something terrible out in the open and there’s nothing left to do but let it take you. I felt helpless and I felt scared. Ever since the rape there’d been this tiny corner of my mind where I’d let myself believe that it hadn’t happened, that it had all been in my head and so there was never any need to think about it unless I chose to.

Hearing Linda crying like that, it brought everything back.

“Where’s Derek now?” I said at last.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I daren’t go near the house. Alex seems to think I’m over-reacting but I’m really frightened. I keep thinking he’s going to turn up here. Should I call the police?”

“No,” I said at once. “Let me talk to him first. Just stay where you are and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I heard her sigh with relief, and I could tell that I’d said exactly what she wanted me to say, that she felt better just from hearing me say it, at least for the moment. She believed I was in control, that I would know what to do. She was wrong of course, and so was I. I should have told her to call the cops, to go right ahead and tell them everything, that my brother had had this coming to him for years.

Did I honestly think I could make him see reason? Was the thought of Derek in the back of a police car so hard to take?

I was a fool, I see that now. But I was scared, too. More scared than Linda was, probably, because I knew Derek better.

~*~

I was outside Linda’s flat and ringing the doorbell less than three hours later. No one answered, so I rang the bell again then bent down and peered through the letterbox. There was a light on in the hallway, but no sign of movement. I sat down on the steps to wait. It occurred to me that Linda might have gone to Alex’s place, wherever that was, and I cursed myself for not thinking to ask for his phone number.

I waited for at least half an hour, all the time getting more and more agitated. In the end I left Linda’s and headed over to Laton Road. It was all I could think of to do. I took the short cut through the park, trying not to think too much about how Derek was going to react when I turned up out of the blue like this. If he guessed I’d been talking to Linda behind his back he would go mad.

The van was gone from out the front but I thought that might be a good sign. If Derek was out on a job then things must be getting back to normal. Or perhaps he and Linda were out together somewhere, talking things through in a civilized manner like rational human beings. I knocked on the glass then rang the bell and waited, not wanting to burst in unannounced. When no one answered I let myself in with my own key.

I could tell as soon as I stepped inside that the house was empty. I called Linda’s name anyway, then Derek’s, my voice rattling around in the silent hallway like a penny inside a broken slot machine. There was no answering call.

I went through to the kitchen. Clean dishes were stacked neatly on the draining board, and there were fresh soap suds clinging in gleaming clumps to the upturned washing up bowl. There was a smell of onions and cooked fat. It was clear that someone had been there in the kitchen only minutes before.

I wasn’t sure what to do next. It seemed logical just to wait, to make myself a sandwich and a cup of coffee and see what happened. But I was beginning to feel a bit freaked out. The house was too silent, too empty, and it was giving me the creeps. I realised I was afraid to go upstairs, even though I felt certain there was no one up there.

I checked the answer phone for messages. I didn’t expect to find anything useful – the people who called the house were mostly Derek’s clients – but when I pressed the button for playback the voice I heard was Linda’s, after all.

Derek, pick up the phone
, she said.
I know you’re in there
.

She sounded upset, on the verge of tears. Her voice was muffled by the sound of passing traffic. Which suggested she’d been calling from a phone box and not from the flat. Also I thought it was strange, the way she’d said ‘I know you’re in there’ instead of just ‘I know you’re there’. It was almost as if she’d been looking directly at the house when she made her call, as if she’d been ringing from across the road, which perhaps she had. The message had been left just an hour before. I was trying to decide if I should stay where I was or return to Linda’s flat when the phone rang. I was so startled I almost cried out. Hesitantly I reached out and picked up the receiver.

“Christy?” It was Linda. God knows how she knew I would be there. She sounded totally panic stricken. “Please come. I can’t talk for long, because I know he’s around here somewhere, hunting for me. He said he just wanted to talk, but he’s not making sense. I’m terrified, Chris. I think he wants to kill me.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. I asked her where she was, and she said The Dolphin, one of the pubs on Rock-a-Nore Road. “Just wait there, will you? You’re in a crowded pub – nothing can happen. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Just hang on.”

I left the house at once, cutting up through Elphinstone Road and then across the railway bridge towards West Hill. About half way there I started wondering if I’d left the kitchen light on, or whether it had been on already when I arrived. I wasn’t sure either way. It was too late to worry about that now.

It was a warm night, and the restaurants and bars along the sea front all had their doors open. Music and drinkers were spilling out into the road. The Dolphin was packed. I pushed inside, working my way through the main bar then through the pool room and out into the small walled beer garden at the rear. No sign of Linda anywhere. I even went into the Ladies just to check but she wasn’t there either. I made my way back out on to the street. I was starving hungry – apart from a pasty at London Bridge station I’d had nothing since breakfast. I was beginning to feel deeply annoyed as well as frustrated. It was as if they were playing with me, sending me out on a wild goose chase then watching from somewhere nearby and laughing like drains.

Why would they do that, though? What would be the point? And there was no doubting that Linda really had sounded petrified. I walked to the next pub along, which I knew had a phone box outside, and dialled the number of Linda’s flat. No reply, not even an answer phone message – either Linda didn’t have one or it wasn’t switched on. I thought about calling Laton Road but didn’t. What was I going to say if Derek picked up?

I hung around a bit longer, walking up and down the stretch of road between the two pubs, but there was still no sign of Linda, no sign of Derek either and it was beginning to get dark. I decided I to Laton Road. If Derek was there I’d tell him some story then catch the train back to London first thing in the morning.

I was really pissed off by this time, and for no reason I could pin down I was also frightened. I had started to get the idea that I was not in Hastings at all but in some fake version of it, a decoy-town. Even though the streets and cafes and houses were all perfectly familiar to me, I kept thinking I was going to turn the next corner and find myself lost.

Eventually that’s what happened. The Old Town is a warren anyway, a labyrinth of criss-crossing twittens and narrow courtyards, and on the night I went looking for Linda it seemed to expand. Strange houses loomed up out of the twilight. Streets I was expecting to find were no longer there. I walked for what seemed like miles along one alleyway, and when I came out I found I was in the kitchen yard of what looked like The Swan, a pub I knew had been destroyed by a bomb during World War Two. I recognised it from the old photos.