The Son-in-Law (11 page)

Placing the magazine on the table, he turned to the nearest bookcase. On top lay a jumble of thrillers by Dick Francis—his mother again. The next shelf held books that he remembered reading to Scarlet and Theo when they were last there: Roald Dahl and
Horrible Histories
. Stashed among these he spotted a thin, faded hardback. He lifted it out and held it up to a shaft of pale sunshine. Its cover was cinnamon and gold, slightly torn: an antique copy of Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet
. He knew it almost by heart.

For some minutes, Joseph held the little book between his hands. Finally he opened it, knowing what he would find on the flyleaf.

Happy Birthday to my Russian Prince.
You have given me life.
With my love forever,
Z x

He sank to his knees on the caravan’s thin carpet. A sound escaped him; a heaving, agonised yelp that made the dog lift her head and squint through rheumy eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he cried, and his voice broke on the words.

Jessy watched as tears sank into the fabric of the squab. After a time she crawled forward and nudged her face against Joseph’s foot. He felt the pressure, and reached down to caress her head. The tears kept coming.

‘I’m a wimp,’ he told the dog. ‘They should shoot me.’

Someone was coming. The caravan’s flimsy structure trembled, followed by a rapping on the door. Joseph reached into his pocket to pull out a tangled rag of tissue, and was blowing his nose when Abigail stepped in.

‘Now then,’ she remarked unemotionally, taking in the scene.

‘Now then, Abigail.’

‘Cleaning the floor?’ She didn’t wait for him to reply. ‘I thought you might like some breakfast in a nice warm kitchen.’

Joseph got to his feet, certain she knew he’d been crying like a baby. He caught a glimpse of himself in the bedroom mirror as he laid the book on his pillow. He looked like a rough bastard, the kind that used to come in off the merchant ships when he was a child: gaunt and shadowed, with dark stubble and desperate eyes. He’d aged a decade in the past three years.

‘Sorry,’ he said as they walked up the hill together. ‘I don’t look respectable. I’d better drive into Helmsley and buy a razor today.’

‘You’ll do,’ Abigail replied evenly. ‘What you need is proper food and a bit of mollycoddling. Unfortunately I’m no good at the mollycoddling part, never have been, but I can put a meal on the table.’

Which was true, thought Joseph as she filled his plate with home-grown bacon and sausages and scrambled eggs. Gus sat at the other end of the table, tucking into a feast of his own. He was forty or so, ruddy and solid, a man of few words. A blue beanie lay beside his plate.

‘Hi Gus,’ said Joseph.

The farm worker cast a glance in the direction of Joseph’s left ear. ‘Now then.’

‘Cold morning for it?’ Joseph persisted.

‘Aye.’

‘Still. It isn’t snowing.’

‘True.’

Gus seemed to think this was quite enough wild socialising. His gaze returned to his plate. Joseph wasn’t offended by the monosyllabic response. He’d expected it. He knew the man of old, and suspected some undiagnosed syndrome.

Zoe, of course, had managed to make a friend of Gus. She’d done that with people, with a gift for drawing out their stories and making them feel valued. She’d known more about Gus’s life than Abigail did.

‘There’s no syndrome,’ she’d once told Joseph. ‘Just isolation. Gus was brought up on a moorland farm, no playmates but the farmyard cats, snowed in for months of the year. He never saw anyone but his parents from one week to the next.’

‘School?’

‘An ordeal. He left as soon as possible.’

Zoe and Joseph were out walking with the children. The moors were a purple haze, laced with the tang of heather. Bees flickered in the shimmering air. She carried baby Theo in a sling across her front while Scarlet rode, singing, on Joseph’s shoulders.

‘I like the idea of an isolated farmhouse,’ mused Joseph. ‘Way up here, with just the children and you. Our own private world.’

‘Me too! Let’s pull up the drawbridge and be happy.’

‘I’m already happy,’ he protested truthfully, putting his arm around her. Zoe had been well for months, despite Theo’s arrival. He hoped they’d turned a corner.

‘I wish I could always feel like this,’ she said wistfully. ‘It’s not much fun sometimes, living inside my head.’ She took his hand and held it to her cheek. They walked side by side, joined at the hip, perfectly in step.

Abigail was looking at him. Digby had leaped onto her lap and was kneading her trousers. ‘All right?’ she asked.

‘Fine,’ he replied absently.

‘I hear your dad’s living abroad.’

‘Um . . .’ Joseph was mesmerised. He could feel the warmth of Zoe’s cheek, the swing of her strides alongside his own, the light pressure of her hipbone. She seemed more real than Abigail did. He made an effort to pull himself together. ‘Dad used to buy a lottery ticket every single week. It was his only hobby, watching those bloody numbers come up on the telly. A week after mum divorced him, he hit the jackpot.’

‘So he’s a millionaire?’

‘Dunno about that, but he raked in enough to retire to the Costa Blanca. We’re not close. He’s hardly ever met his grandchildren.’

Abigail ran her knuckles down Digby’s stripy back. ‘Silly fool,’ she said, with unexpected vehemence. ‘Always was. Not bad, just soft in the head. You off now, Gus?’

Gus was zipping up his overalls, mumbling about having a look at a trough. He left without further discussion.

‘Mum died,’ said Joseph. ‘Did Marie tell you?’

‘She did. In your sister’s opinion, poor Irene died of a broken heart. It was the shame that finished her off. She couldn’t stand the shame of being your mother.’

Joseph’s hunger abruptly dissipated. He dropped his knife and fork. ‘That’s
exactly
what Marie said at the funeral! Her very words. They let me out for the day so I could bury my mother, and my lovely sister told me I’d killed another woman.’

‘And what did you reply?’

‘Nothing. I had nothing to say. I thought she was probably right.’

‘Pig’s trotters,’ retorted Abigail. ‘Your mum was a good lass, don’t get me wrong, but anyone who liked their fish and chips and cider and smoked as many fags as Irene Scott did was asking for heart disease somewhere along the line. You could see it coming. If anyone’s to blame, it’s your dad for making her so bloody miserable she gave up on herself. He’s neither use nor ornament, that fella.’

‘Maybe shame was the last straw.’

‘Maybe that final packet of Benson and Hedges was the last straw! There’s nothing to be gained by blaming yourself for all the ills of the world, Joseph Scott, and your sister ought to have more sense than to go scattering nasty accusations like confetti.’

Joseph picked up the knife and fork again, but he didn’t eat. ‘Marie and I both wanted to be pallbearers, and the undertaker put me at the front with her right behind me. It felt like a bloody long way from the chapel to the grave, I can tell you. She kept spitting insults out of the corner of her mouth as we sweated our way across the cemetery, followed by all those solemn mourners. My cousin Eric was opposite and he almost dropped his handle, he was laughing so much.’

‘Ah, poor Irene. Her last journey, and her kids bickering all the way.’

‘
I
wasn’t bickering! I never said a word. Marie completely lost it over the tea and scones, started screaming at me, made a hell of a scene. Luckily my minders from the prison saw my predicament and galloped to the rescue. I was bloody pleased to get myself back behind bars.’

‘No screaming women in Armley?’

‘Well . . . no female ones.’

Abigail let out a throaty guffaw, while Digby ducked for cover.

Joseph was washing up at the sink when Abigail asked, ‘Will you be seeing those poor little ones?’

‘I hope so. I never got to comfort them, never got to tell them I was sorry, never even said goodbye. The Wildes don’t want me in their lives, so it looks like I’m going to have to go to court.’

‘You’re determined, are you?’

‘Just hanging on until the first court date.’

‘And then what?’

‘My solicitor’s hoping the judge will let me see them, maybe supervised by someone at first.’

‘Mm-hm. And then what?’

‘Then . . . well, I hope I get to see them a lot more.’

Abigail’s lips almost disappeared as she worked. Joseph kept casting covert glances at her. Finally, he couldn’t stand it. ‘What?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing.’

‘Abigail, I can tell you disapprove.’

She turned her back to let down the airer—wheels squeaking on the pulley—and began to fold clothes. ‘They’ve been through the mill, those kids.’

‘I know that.’

‘I trust you aren’t going to charge in there, kicking up trouble like a bull in a china shop.’

Joseph had washed the last plate, but he stood with his hands in the cooling water. ‘You think I’m irredeemable?’

‘That’s a long word.’

‘Am I, though? You’ve known me since I was a crawler. I care about what you think.’

Abigail shook out each garment with a cross little snap. ‘It isn’t for me to make judgements. All I know is that some kids lost their mother thanks to you, and some people lost their daughter.

And some kinds of damage aren’t easily mended.’

Joseph pulled out the plug, and watched the soapsuds as they were dragged down the vortex.

‘I can’t give them up,’ he said.

Ten

Scarlet

If you Google my dad’s name, you’ll come up with pages and pages of websites. There are newspaper articles and blogs and radio station sites and women’s right’s sites and sites for people who think sentences aren’t long enough. There are sites about bipolar and sites about domestic violence. Everyone has an opinion about my dad.

When Mum died, Gramps and Hannah took Theo and I out of our primary school in Tadcaster, where we lived, and moved us to a new one in York. I think the teachers had told the other kids who we were, and banned them from asking questions. It didn’t work, though. Theo and I were celebrities—and not in a good way. A group of boys bullied Theo about his dad being a ‘psycho’. Theo was only seven at the time. I found him in the bushes at the end of the playground, gasping for breath. That was his first ever asthma attack, and I bet it was the upset that caused it. We didn’t go to the teachers. We felt mortified, as though it was us who were the psychos.

The following week, I opened my lunchbox to find that someone had left a piece of paper in there. It was a news story, printed off the internet. I just glanced down at it, and then I felt my breakfast coming up into my throat.

SCHOOLTEACHER ON WIFE MURDER CHARGE

Joseph Scott was remanded in custody today, charged with the slaying of his wife Zoe. Scott, who headed the history department at prestigious Tetlow High School, is alleged to have attacked Zoe in a fit of rage at their Tadcaster home last month.

The article went on and on, but I didn’t read any more. There was a lovely picture of Mum. It was one of her wedding photos, but the journalist had cut Dad out of it so it only showed Mum’s face.

Someone had scribbled all across the top of the paper in bright orange highlighter: UR DAD IS SICK SICK SICK.

When I didn’t go back to class, my teacher sent a girl called Liz to find me. Liz was the kind of girl who always has a sharpened pencil and gets to be class leader because she is so responsible. She found me blubbing in the girls’ toilets, but I refused to say why.

‘Come on,’ she said kindly, and put her arm around my shoulder. ‘We’re just about to have a story. You don’t want to miss that.’

The next day, there was a note in my school bag. Another article, from another website. And the day after that. It went on for months. Sometimes it was in my bag, sometimes in my desk, sometimes in my coat pocket or my violin case. There were articles about the court hearings, and about Dad pleading guilty to manslaughter, and about him getting six years; and always a message in the orange highlighter.

I dreaded going to school.

One day, I nipped out of the classroom to get my violin. Liz was standing with her hand in my coat pocket. She looked at me. I looked at her.

‘Hi, Scarlet!’ she sang, cool as a cucumber. ‘Looking for my wallet. Someone’s swiped it. Mum said to check all the pockets.’ Then she turned around and walked away, with a piece of paper in one hand and her long hair swinging. I never got any more notes after that.

People aren’t always nice, I can tell you that for free.

So that’s why I made friends with Vienna, and only Vienna, though to be honest I probably wouldn’t have chosen her as a friend if my mum hadn’t died. She’s not the sharpest knife in the box, but what you see is what you get. There’s no way she’d have bitched behind my back or left horrible notes in my bag. She has mousy-brown hair which she wears in a fountain ponytail, and a freckly face. She eats too much chocolate and I’m afraid it’s starting to show on her bum. She lives with her mother and stepdad on an estate near the ring road, and she has a TV
and
an Xbox 360
and
a computer in her bedroom. Oh—
and
an ensuite
and
a king-sized bed with a pretend fur cover, like something off a James Bond film.

Hannah disapproves. I once heard her say that Vienna’s parents are ‘criminally negligent of that child’s intellect, such as it is’. Hannah thinks young people shouldn’t be encouraged to live in a virtual world, because the real world is jam-packed with magic. According to her, there are whole universes in a single atom. She’s published papers about that kind of thing.

I often go to Vienna’s house after school. We let ourselves in with a key they keep hidden in the garden wall. We tell our families it’s to do homework together, but actually we Facebook and watch TV. I was there just before the Christmas holidays began. We were watching
The Vampire Diaries
, lazing on the James Bond bed.

‘My dad’s taking my grandparents to court,’ I blurted.

‘Bunty did that,’ Vienna replied casually, eyes glued to the TV screen. Somebody was about to get their blood sucked. ‘Mum’s boss. Sued the council because she slipped on a pavement.’