The Son-in-Law (41 page)

‘You too,’ I murmured automatically. Then I turned my attention to the machine, which seemed determined to give me soup instead of tea.

‘Shouldn’t be too much longer,’ said Jane, as I entered the room with my plastic cups. Over at the window, Freddie lost his footing and clutched the sill.

‘Freddie,’ I snapped. ‘For God’s sake, sit down before you fall down.’

He turned his head to look at me, hurt stretching his eyes. ‘All right, all right,’ he murmured gently, and made his way towards a chair.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

A tap on the door made us all swing around. The blonde court clerk was poking her head into the room. ‘He has risen!’ she announced breathlessly.

I overcame an inclination to enquire whether she was referring to the judge, or to Jesus Christ. Funny how the most inappropriate and puerile ideas pop into one’s head in times of crisis.

‘Thank you, Vera,’ said Jane.

‘Five minutes. He wants to crack on.’

Jane glanced from Freddie to me. ‘Phones turned off? Good. Let’s go.’

•

Joseph

‘Five minutes,’ said Vera.

Joseph and Richard O’Brien both stood up, while Rosie reached into her handbag and lifted out a heavy book.

Joseph stooped to squint at it. ‘What the hell is that?’

She showed him the cover:
Pruning the Vine: A History of
Medieval Viticulture.
Despite his dry-mouthed tension, Joseph chuckled incredulously. ‘Light bedtime reading?’

‘No. Heavy, waiting-for-my-friend-in-court reading. If I get bored I’ll nip out and spend those vouchers. Maybe I’ll even treat myself to some real coffee.’

‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck.’

Still, he hesitated. He didn’t want to leave her. ‘Will you be praying for me?’

‘Should I be?’

He gestured helplessly.

She smiled. ‘You lot have taken up a fair bit of airtime lately. You, the children and the Wildes. Now off you go.’

Joseph forced himself to follow O’Brien out the door and across the lobby. He was pushing open one of the double courtroom doors when he glanced over his shoulder. To his horror, he realised that the Wilde contingent was hot on his heels. Hannah had hold of Frederick’s arm, either to give or receive support; possibly both.

Joseph felt a rush of shock at the change in Frederick. He seemed diminished, his cheeks sunken, his tweed suit hanging as though from a tall skeleton. He’d lost his casual confidence. Each step was taken carefully, the polished shoe testing the ground before he transferred his weight, as though the lobby was mined.

Joseph had no choice but to wait for them. If he let the heavy door go it would swing shut in their faces, which would seem deliberately offensive. He was forced to stand with an expression of awkward blankness, holding the door open as they approached.

Mrs Whistler was first, sailing into the courtroom with a genteel nod. As the Wildes came closer, Hannah’s face was firmly averted. Her mouth looked as though it was set in concrete, downturned and grim. They were level with Joseph when Frederick stopped and faced his son-in-law.

‘Come
on
, Freddie,’ muttered Hannah, through her teeth.

Freddie didn’t come on. He spoke with an effort, deliberately but intelligibly. ‘Good mm . . . morning, Joseph.’

Joseph ransacked his mind for perfect words: words that might heal wounds, or at least do justice to the old man’s bereavement. ‘Freddie,’ he stammered in the end. ‘I’m . . . sorry.’

Hannah looked stony. ‘If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be doing this.’

Joseph was left to close the door behind them, like a schoolboy. Lester Hardy sat at the back of the room, his head bent over a sheaf of papers. Vera busied herself at her desk.

And there they all were, yet again. In that explosive silence. Waiting.

The clock said it was eleven twenty.

A bluebottle buzzed up and down the double glazing, anxious to escape into air so cold that it would be dead by lunchtime. Joseph heard tiny snaps as the kamikaze crashed against the glass. He was acutely aware of Hannah and Frederick, just a few feet away from him. This was his last chance. He gathered his courage.

‘Freddie,’ he said out loud. ‘Hannah. Can we talk? I really want to—’

Too late. Knuckles sounded on the door of the inner sanctum. ‘All rise!’ roared Vera, leaping to her feet as the judge strode in and took his seat. The show had begun.

‘Mr O’Brien,’ began the judge without preamble. ‘I’ve read your chronology and the agreed statement of issues. You can open briefly.’

O’Brien didn’t seem very brief to Joseph. He told the story all over again: the ages of the children, the dates of various applications, the involvement of Lester Hardy. That poor bluebottle’s buzz became frenzied; Joseph wondered whether he could somehow let it out. Gradually, he became aware that O’Brien had stopped speaking.

‘Joseph,’ the solicitor hissed. ‘C’mon! I’ve called you.’

Later, Joseph couldn’t remember getting into the witness box or taking the oath. He heard his own voice, and felt a vague surprise at how unwavering it sounded. O’Brien took him through his statements, and he did his best to explain why he felt the children would benefit from the change. The bluebottle was walking along the windowsill. It seemed resigned.

Mrs Whistler had got up and was smiling sunnily at him. Joseph thought of the smile on the face of the tiger, and watched her warily.

‘Mr Scott,’ she began graciously, ‘after your wife . . . er
died
, you were on bail for how long?’

‘About six months.’

‘Yes. And in that time you didn’t once see your children?’

‘I wasn’t allowed to.’

‘Quite. And then you were incarcerated for three years?’

‘Yes.’

‘So that made a total of three and half years that these children had no contact with you whatsoever.’

‘I didn’t want them to see the inside of a prison. I didn’t want them being searched, and herded like cattle, and to hear those doors clanging. Anyway, I knew the Wildes wouldn’t bring them.

I wasn’t even allowed to send them letters.’

‘Do you accept that three and half years is a very long time in the life of any child?’

‘Yes.’

‘And for Ben, who couldn’t remember you at all, it was effectively
all
his life?’

‘Of course, but . . .’ Joseph sighed. ‘Yes. It’s a long time.’

‘And you also accept that their last sight of you—on the day Zoe died—was extremely disturbing?’

Someone scurried quietly into the room, easing the doors shut; a youngish man in a too-tight suit. He glanced at Joseph in the witness box before tiptoeing to whisper to the clerk. Joseph was distracted.

‘Mr Scott!’ Jane Whistler glared at him. ‘Their last sight of you was disturbing—surely you aren’t going to argue with me about that?’

‘No, I won’t argue. Of course it was disturbing.’

Vera and the young man were agog about something. She asked a question, and he gave a sibilant reply before hurrying away. Then Vera turned around and began to whisper to the judge. Mrs Whistler had noticed all this activity, and suspended her barrage of questions. The judge sat, head down, fingers tapping as though gathering his thoughts.

‘Mrs Whistler,’ he said finally, ‘I am going to stop you there for the time being.’

‘So be it, Your Honour.’

‘Yes. In fact I’m going to rise for a while.’

The solicitor lifted an eyebrow, and Joseph supressed a smile. Clearly, she wasn’t best pleased at the interruption.

‘The court office has just received a telephone call from St Mary’s College,’ continued the judge. ‘They’ve been trying to contact the grandparents. It seems that there has been some kind of incident involving Scarlet, and they would like Dr Wilde to call them immediately. So I suggest—’ ‘
What?
’ Hannah was on her feet, squeezing past Frederick, scrabbling in her handbag as the judge quietly left.

Joseph strode out of the witness box, fists clenched. An
incident
. The very word triggered a flood of adrenaline. To him it was police double-speak, a euphemism for horrors. In their early reports, Zoe’s death had been described as an
incident
.

‘Messages,’ shouted Hannah from the back of the court. ‘Freddie, there’re three messages on my phone!’ Her voice shook. Joseph had never heard his mother-in-law sound truly frightened before; not even in the hospital after Freddie’s stroke. In fact, he’d never seen any real chink in her rigid self-control. She seemed a different person now. She pressed buttons and waited with the phone to her ear, eyes wide as she strained to listen. Joseph moved several steps closer, his gaze fixed on her face. Even the bluebottle stood still.

‘Oh God,’ breathed Hannah. She dropped her handbag. Keys and a wallet spilled across the blue carpet. ‘Oh dear God.’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Joseph.

Her eyes swivelled to Frederick. ‘Scarlet’s been hurt.’

Thirty-five

Scarlet

They tried to pretend it was just another day. That was the worst thing. How could they do that? I wanted Hannah to say something real. I wanted her to show she knew how awful this was for us. But she was so busy trying to hide her own feelings that she hadn’t the time to notice ours.

I’d spent the whole night blocking my ears against the singing. Theo had wet his bed, of course, and tried to cover up by bundling all his sheets into the basket and sneaking into the shower. Even Ben was in a state. I just about had to drag him down the street.

‘I don’t want to go to school,’ he moaned.

‘You do,’ I reminded him. ‘They need you in the play, remember?’

That cheered him up. He was the wolf in the reception class production of ‘Three Little Pigs’, and was really throwing himself into the role. He huffed and he puffed all the way to school. Theo didn’t say a word, though.

‘You okay?’ I asked him, when we got to their entrance.

He shrugged. ‘I wish today was over.’

He was clamping his lips, trying not to cry. I hugged him furiously. Then I hugged Ben. I was almost in tears myself as I pushed them towards the door.

‘Bye,’ I said quickly. ‘Love you both.’

By the time I reached my own school my eyes felt dry and aching, and the rubber band was twisted all around my guts. I was afraid I was going to throw up during assembly. They were dishing out awards that day. Everyone else seemed to care so much—as though it mattered who had the highest marks in biology, while three of the people I loved most were fighting and hating. I thought perhaps it would be easier not to exist at all.

I got through maths somehow, checking my phone under the desk every two minutes to see if there were any messages. Second period was chemistry, taught by bald Mr Hicks. He’s about to retire, and is a good teacher except that he has absolutely no control over the class. He had us working in pairs with Bunsen burners, testing for glucose. Vienna doesn’t do chemistry, so my lab partner that day was a girl called Livvi, one of the cool crowd. She’s the kind of total bitch who straightens her hair every day—hair that’s a different colour every week, incidentally—and pretends to be all friendly, then openly giggles about you with her mates. Hannah reckons they’re jealous, but that doesn’t help. Livvi left all the work to me, of course, because she was far too cool to make any effort herself. I felt weird from not sleeping, and my hands were shaking. I accidentally tipped too much Benedict’s solution into the test tube.

Livvi was delighted that I’d cocked up. ‘Scar-
let
!’ she yelled, for everyone to hear. People stopped to look. ‘Now we’ll have to start all over again.’

Mr Hicks was in the storeroom, so he wasn’t there to calm things down. One of Livvi’s friends chimed in from another bench. ‘Oh, Scaaaar-let!’ she sang. ‘Poor you, Livvi, I feel so sorry for you. D’you want to come and join me and Brianna?’

I was holding the test tube over the Bunsen burner using tongs, waiting for the solution to turn orange; but with all the distraction I burned my hand and that made me drop the tongs. The next moment there was shattered glass and chemicals all over the bench, and Livvi was going ballistic.

‘What did you do
that
for?’ she shrieked.

‘Shut up,’ I said.

‘Oh my God, you’ve ruined this jersey!’

That was when the rubber band snapped, big-time.

‘I said shut up, you frigging bitch!’ I screeched. I grabbed the nearest test tube rack and smashed it onto the floor, which caused pandemonium as glass shot out in all directions. Then I did it again, with another rack. There were girls screaming and running away. I felt as though I had to do this—I had to break things, I had to smash everything up. Mr Hicks came belting out of the storeroom. By then I was crying hysterically. I picked up a piece of glass and sliced it across my forearm, near the elbow. It didn’t hurt so I did it again, making a big X.

Immediately, blood gushed out. Livvi wailed and pretended to faint, but Mr Hicks ignored her. He was actually a lot more sensible in a crisis than I would have expected. I vaguely remember him sending one girl to fetch the teacher from next door and another to get the lab technician. Then he marched me into the storeroom, snapped open the first-aid kit and pressed a pad onto my arm. I was still crying, and he didn’t try to talk to me. Suddenly, I realised that the classroom had fallen silent. I heard the tap-tapping of a pair of heels.

‘Scarlet went mental, Miss!’ That was Livvi’s voice.

Whoever had come in obviously wasn’t interested in talking to Livvi. Seconds later, Miss Grayson looked into the storeroom.

‘Hello, Scarlet,’ she said calmly. ‘I hear you’ve had an accident?’

I nodded, still sobbing.

She cast an eye over the damage. ‘Not nearly as bad as it looks. Think you can walk to my office? Good girl. I’ll take over, Mr Hicks, thank you.’

I don’t remember much about getting to her room; I was beside myself. I wasn’t even worried about all the trouble I’d be in for trashing the science lab. The outside world had stopped mattering—the girls, the teachers, Miss Grayson’s secretary: they all seemed to be fictional, like people you see on television. Or perhaps it was the other way around. I was fictional. I didn’t matter. As Miss Grayson settled me into an armchair in the corner of her office, I noticed a streak of blood on her silky blouse.