The Last Thing She Told Me Page 13

  She got up and was about to storm off upstairs when she appeared to remember that Maisie would be having her bedtime story.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, stepping towards her but stopping short of touching her. ‘Great-grandma would not have killed those babies. I told you that, didn’t I? The bones have been taken away now and there’s nothing there to be scared of. It’s just a normal house.’

  ‘Normal? There’s nothing normal about that house, and there’s no way I’m ever going to live there. If you want to go, it’ll be without me.’

  She stomped upstairs. I heard her lock the bathroom door behind her. She would stay in there until she was sure Maisie was asleep. I sank down on to the sofa and started to cry. It must have been about five minutes before I felt James’s arms around me.

  ‘I take it that didn’t go too well?’

  ‘You were right. It’s a stupid idea.’

  ‘No. I was being an arse. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You were right, though.’

  ‘What you said made complete sense. I just don’t want to live in that house.’

  ‘Neither does Ruby. I don’t suppose Maisie will be too keen, either. It’s a lot to throw at them, on top of everything else.’

  ‘Let’s not rush into anything. We’ll sit down tomorrow and go through the finances. See if we can come up with any other options. I’m not ruling it out.’

  ‘Well, Ruby is.’

  ‘She’ll come around.’

  ‘You said that about Mum.’

  James groaned. ‘I really am just a total arse, aren’t I? Maybe you should shoot me. That’s what they do with old horses, isn’t it?’

  ‘Can’t afford to,’ I said. ‘Not while you can still unblock a U-bend.’

  *

  The police called early the next morning before I’d even left for school.

  ‘Is it a good time to talk?’ asked DI Freeman.

  ‘I’ve got ten minutes before I go to work.’

  ‘We’ve got the DNA results back.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Would you like me to go through them in person or is over the phone OK?’

  ‘Now’s fine,’ I said, not wanting to prolong the agony.

  ‘The DNA indicates that both babies were your grandmother’s children.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘However, paternally, they do not appear to be related to you.’

  It took me a moment to work out what he was saying.

  ‘You mean they weren’t my grandfather’s?’

  ‘It seems not.’

  The picture in my head of what might have happened immediately scrambled, like one of those little puzzles where you have to move the squares around. The babies weren’t Grandad’s yet they were buried in the garden of a house that Grandma had only moved to on the day she married him. I couldn’t work out how to fit the pieces together.

  ‘None of this makes sense.’

  ‘I appreciate it must have come as a bit of a shock. The other thing you need to know is that our forensics team are satisfied that the babies were born at or very near full-term. What they aren’t able to determine is whether they were stillborn or died shortly after birth.’

  ‘So we’re never going to know?’

  ‘It makes the investigation very difficult because, without any other evidence, it’s almost impossible to establish whether a crime was committed or not. They can’t date the bones to a specific year, either. Their best estimate, due to their condition, is that they are between fifty and seventy-five years old.’

  Grandma had got married in 1955, which was when they’d moved in. At some point after that, I still didn’t know whether it was before or after Mum was born, she must have had the babies. Though I had no idea who the father would have been.

  ‘So what happens now?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to carry on investigating?’

  ‘We’ll be having a case-review meeting to determine that, but I just wanted to pass on the information to you as soon as we had it.’

  I could feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. I felt further away from the truth than ever. ‘How will we clear her name, though? If you can’t prove whether the babies were born alive or dead, there’s always going to be this big question mark over her reputation, isn’t there?’

  ‘It’s not our job to clear her name, I’m afraid. Our job is to find out if a crime was committed.’

  The steeliness in his voice reminded me that, as far as the police were concerned, Grandma was still the prime suspect. ‘Do you think she killed them?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s not for me to say.’

  ‘You must have a hunch, though?’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. I imagined DI Freeman rolling his eyes while he scrolled through the rest of the cases he had on the go.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Let us complete the case review next week and I’ll speak to you then, before we make a statement to the media.’

  That was it. There was no point in arguing any further. I was only going to end up pissing him off more than I already had done.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  I put the phone back into my bag and stood there, staring out of the window. They weren’t Grandad’s babies. Did she kill them because of that? Was that the great family secret? Or did he kill them because he’d found out? I needed answers, and if the police weren’t going to provide them, I’d have to find them myself.

  20 June 1944

  Dear Betty,

  Just to be alone with you today meant everything. You are so, so beautiful. I have never seen skin as pale as yours. You’re a proper English rose, Betty. A thing of rare beauty. Only, unlike a rose, you’re soft and sweet. You couldn’t hurt anyone if you tried.

  I told you I’d be gentle with you and I was. I promised it would just be kissing and touching but when I unbuttoned your shirt and saw you like that; ran my fingers down the curve of your back and stroked your breasts, it was all I could do to stop myself going any further. You nearly broke me, Betty. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you. I know you want to wait but I’m not sure I can wait much longer. I can’t get that image of you out of my head. I can taste you on my lips. Smell you on my skin. It’s driving me wild just thinking about it. I can’t concentrate. All I can think of is how much I want you.

  You haven’t got to worry about anything. I will treat you better than any girl has ever been treated, give you everything you ever wanted.

  Last night, when one of our planes didn’t come back, I prayed that we’ll have time, Betty. That I won’t be taken before I’ve made love to you. I couldn’t bear to be taken not knowing what it feels like to be inside you.

  I hope you don’t feel I’m putting you under too much pressure, because I sure don’t mean to do that. I respect you more than anything but I also need you to understand that living for the moment is all I can do right now.

  I can’t wait until next week and there’s no reason why we should. Meet me again on Friday. The same time and same place. Keep counting the planes out and counting them back in again but try not to worry because there’s no way I’ll be getting shot down until I’ve seen you again..

  I meant what I said. I love you and I always will.

  Yours always,

  William

  12

  The house greeted me with an eerie silence and the slight smell of damp. As I stepped inside I realised I would never be its true owner and neither would Ruby. We would both be visitors, tiptoeing over the remnants of the life that had gone before. Perhaps it should be opened to the public as some kind of social-history museum. People could come and walk through Grandma’s life, touch the wallpaper that went up in 1972, see the radiogram that was her social media and marvel at the hand-knitted tea-cosy.

  Nobody
’s life would ever again be played out like hers. Sixty-two years she’d lived here. The current generation could only dream about being able to own a house in their mid-twenties. And people moved so often, these days, updating décor and contents so frequently. They passed through houses rather than leaving an imprint on them, as Grandma had.

  I went to the living room. I still saw her lying there in bed, sipping her Ribena through a straw. Heard her humming to herself and reminding me to warm the pot before I made the tea. I switched on the heater, conscious that as the nights were getting colder we’d have to find a way to heat the house more regularly.

  I left the door open and went back upstairs to her bedroom, switching on the heater in there too. I started going through the boxes of photographs in the top of the wardrobe, searching out the oldest ones, those before Mum had been born.

  I came across the wedding photographs first. I had seen the one in the frame downstairs but had never thought to ask Grandma if she had any others. There were half a dozen black and white prints in an envelope. A tall, slim brunette with high cheekbones in a long dress with a tight-fitted bodice, standing next to a solidly built man in a sharp fifties suit, who looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. I gazed at Grandad, wondering if he’d had any idea that the babies weren’t his. Whether he’d mourned their loss or been responsible for it. Because if he had known they weren’t his, he would have had the perfect motive to murder them at birth.

  Was it possible Grandma had already been pregnant with another man’s baby – or babies – when she got married? I stared hard at the photo for any sign of a baby bump, but the tight bodice suggested that was not the case. She might have been in the very early stages of pregnancy and tried to pass it off as Grandad’s, until he’d found out somehow and taken revenge. What I hated about the revelation that the babies weren’t Grandad’s was that it made it much more likely that they had been killed. It was less likely now that this was a sad tale about stillborn babies. Suddenly there was a motive and a new prime suspect. My grandad, the murderer. How plausible was that?

  I hadn’t known him well enough to have a view on it. He’d died when I was sixteen, just one week into the new millennium, as if he’d given it a try but really didn’t fancy being part of this new-fangled thing. I tried to think back to the sombre figure with the weak chest I remembered from my childhood. He’d been a man of few words, preferring to sit in his armchair and read the newspaper than converse with others. I didn’t remember him playing games with me, or even laughing and joking. He was simply Grandad, who had sat in the corner after he retired from his job at the council and waited for death to come and get him. Except now he had blood dripping from his hands.

  I sighed and moved on to the next box. A small one with a mixture of crumpled brown paper envelopes, rather than the Kodak wallets. I opened one at the back and took out the photos. Three young women in shirts and dungarees, their hair tied back with scarves. It took me a moment to see that Grandma was one of them. She looked very different from the wedding photo. Fresh-faced and natural, though still stunningly beautiful. She’d been a Land Girl towards the end of the war, somewhere in the countryside in North Yorkshire, which must have been quite a shock to her system, coming as she did from Leeds. She’d mentioned it to me once, fairly late on, when I’d been peeling potatoes in the kitchen. She’d told me it had been the Land Girls’ job to grow and harvest the vegetables that were used at the air base next to the house where they lived.

  I looked down at the photo. She seemed happy. Far happier than she appeared in her wedding photo. I turned it over: ‘Linton-on-Ouse 1944’. I got my phone out and googled it. Linton-on-Ouse had been home to several squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. And she’d been living next door to them when she was, what, seventeen or eighteen?

  I went back to the box and searched frantically through the photos. If she’d had a sweetheart in the air force, there might be a picture. There wasn’t, though, not among all the envelopes I looked through. If there had been someone, he was so special she’d kept his photograph separately. Somewhere secret so that it wouldn’t be found.

  I climbed down and looked around the room. I went through the obvious places first: the chest of drawers, under her mattress, the bedside cabinet. Nothing. Maybe she wouldn’t have hidden anything so personal in the room she shared with Grandad. I tried the back bedroom first, the one that used to be Mum’s. But there was so much clutter in it, silly things like old laundry baskets and suitcases, that it was impossible to know where to begin. The other bedroom was no better, filled with carrier bags of old clothes and boxes of bric-à-brac that could have supplied three large jumble sales.

  After half an hour of rummaging and finding absolutely nothing of interest, I sat down heavily on the floor. It would take me weeks to go through every bag and box in the house and I’d promised the girls I’d be back before bedtime. Besides, even if there had been a wartime sweetheart, he couldn’t have been the father of the babies buried in Grandma’s garden at some point after 1955. Not unless the relationship had continued after she had married Grandad. But why would she have married him and not her sweetheart? None of it made sense.

  I went back to Grandma’s room and looked at the wedding photograph I’d left on the bed. Grandma must have had a secret lover and somehow Grandad had found out that the babies were not his. If the babies had been killed, then one or other of them must have been responsible. And my money was on Grandad.

  *

  When I got home, James was watching the tail-end of Finding Dory with the girls. He was sitting between them, one arm around each. It was the only time Ruby still looked like a little girl, when she was curled up on the sofa watching TV with him. As soon as she unfurled those long limbs and stood up, I would be reminded that she wasn’t so little any more. But it was nice that there were still moments when I could look at my family and pretend everything was as it used to be.

  I squeezed on to the end of the sofa next to Ruby. She was so engrossed in the film that she let me take her hand without protest.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘What bit are we up to?’

  ‘Dory’s just going to get flushed out into the sea,’ said Maisie, through a mouthful of popcorn.

  James passed the bag to me, taking a handful as he did so. ‘I like sitting in the middle,’ he whispered to me. ‘Double popcorn rations are always welcome.’

  I took some, then offered the bag to Ruby, who shook her head and passed it back.

  ‘She’s going to follow the shells now,’ said Maisie, who always kept up a running commentary on films we’d already watched. ‘When we saw this at the cinema with Grandma, she started crying at this bit.’

  I frowned. I hadn’t remembered Mum had taken them.

  ‘Well, there’s no danger of you suffering from short-term memory loss, is there?’ said James, as he ruffled her hair.

  ‘When are we going to see Grandma again?’ asked Maisie. ‘We haven’t seen her since the funeral.’

  ‘We’ve all been a bit busy lately,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you’ll get to see her at some point.’

  James turned to look at me. I gave a little shrug. It was the best I could come up with.

  ‘Can we see Uncle John again soon?’ Maisie asked. ‘Or is he busy too?’

  ‘I’m sure we can arrange that. You liked him, didn’t you?’

  ‘He told good stories,’ said Maisie. ‘And he was funny.’

  Dory started following the shells. I glanced down at Ruby, whose eyes were moist with tears. I gave her hand a squeeze.

  ‘Has Grandma seen Uncle John yet?’ asked Maisie. ‘She was the one who lost him.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  ‘She must be very busy.’

  ‘Yeah, she is.’

  Dory’s parents swam through the murky waters at the bottom of the ocean to find Dory waiting there.r />
  ‘And at this bit Grandma really, really cried,’ said Maisie.

  I heard a soft sniff next to me. I stroked Ruby’s hair.

  ‘They put the shells out for her,’ said Maisie. ‘That’s how she found them. Why doesn’t Ruby’s daddy put shells out so she can find him? Or maybe we could put some out so he can find her.’

  An anguished sob came from Ruby. She jumped up from the sofa and fled the room before I could say anything.

  ‘Doesn’t she want to see the end?’ asked Maisie.

  James looked at me but I shook my head. ‘I’ll go,’ I said.

  Ruby was face down on her bed, crying into her pillow. The knife twisted inside me. I’d done this to her and it never tired of reminding me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, sitting down next to her and putting my hand on her back. ‘She’s too young to understand how hurtful that was.’

  ‘I’m not too young, though,’ said Ruby, turning over to face me. ‘And I want to know who my dad is.’

  I swallowed and looked down at my other hand, fiddling with the cord of my hoodie. ‘Oh, Ruby, we’ve been through all this.’

  ‘No, we haven’t. Not properly. Just some vague stuff about him not sticking around afterwards and never having been in touch.’

  ‘That’s all there is to know, sweetheart.’

  ‘No, it’s not. That’s all you wanted to tell me. But I’m old enough now. I’ve got the right to know.’

  Everything inside me squeezed tightly together. I feared I might stop breathing. I also feared I might lose her trust entirely if I didn’t tell her more than I had before.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m not proud of what happened. I’m pretty ashamed, to be honest. That’s why I’ve never gone into too much detail. That and the fact that I didn’t want to hurt you. That most of all.’

  Ruby’s eyes were fixed intently on my face. She needed more. But there was only so much more that I could give.