The Last Thing She Told Me Read online

  I got out of the car and walked up the side entrance. The white tent was gone from the garden. It was dark, and hard to see if the fairy statues had been put back in the same places. I turned on the torch on my phone and walked down the path to the far corner. The statues had been put back, although not in exactly the same places. The one with her wings open was further back than she had been before, and the other fairy had been angled differently, the outstretched hand now pointing towards next door’s fence. A crushing sadness washed over me. The ground beneath them had been emptied of its secrets. They had nothing to stand guard over now. Nothing to protect. And I had no doubt that that had been their role all these years. If they could have cried, they would be crying now. I wished, not for the first time, that they could speak. As a little girl, I’d wanted to be their friend, wanted them to call my name and ask me to play with them. Tonight, I simply wished they could whisper their secrets to me, tell the story that remained untold.

  Inside the house it was cold. Grandma had resisted all attempts to persuade her to have central heating installed. It was wasteful, she’d said, heating the whole house when you could be in only one room at a time. I turned the light on in the hall and went through to the front room to switch on the electric heater. I looked about to see if I could tell where the police had moved things. To be honest, it looked far neater than it had been. I smiled to myself as I imagined ringing the police and complaining about the tidiness they had left behind. Grandma wouldn’t have liked it. She always used to say she had a place for everything: it was simply that she was the only person who knew where it was.

  I walked back down the hall. I couldn’t help thinking that any clues I was looking for weren’t going to be hidden downstairs in the tangled mess of the final years of her life. They would be upstairs, in her bedroom, put away in boxes and shut off from view but not forgotten. Not by her, at least.

  Grandma’s bedroom was decorated in a pale lavender. For a moment, the colour tricked me into thinking the room smelt of lavender too, but it didn’t. It smelt of dust and stale air, if anything. Time had stood still in this room. There had been no seventies floral carpet, no eighties makeover with Laura Ashley frills and co-ordinating accessories. The curtains were faded and plain. The dark wooden floorboards were covered with two large patterned rugs, one on either side of the brass bed. The wardrobes were big wooden ones: Grandma had never been impressed by MDF. She wanted solid and dependable. I suppose that was why she had married Grandad. I didn’t remember seeing a loving glance pass between them, a twinkle of an eye or a quick smile. But he would never have gone off with anyone else. He was part of the furniture.

  I opened the wardrobe in which I’d found the briefcase of documents and checked for anything else among the shoes and handbags but there was nothing. I stepped back and looked up. There was a shelf above the hanging rail at the top. I fetched a chair, climbed onto it and peered inside. There were several cardboard boxes, which looked as if they had been there for years. I took one from the left-hand side and lifted it down. It was heavier than I had expected. The word ‘photos’ was written on one side in blue biro.

  I sat on the bed, brushed the dust off the box and opened the lid. There were piles of Kodak photo wallets inside. I pulled one out from the back of the middle row and opened it. It took me a moment or two to realise that the young girl I was looking at, wearing an orange polo-neck and short brown skirt, was Mum. She was grinning at the camera. Her whole face shone. I didn’t think I could ever remember seeing her so happy. I turned the wallet over. It had ‘1971’ written on it. She would have been about the same age as Ruby. I flicked through the other photos in the wallet. I wondered what had happened to that girl with the long legs and a ready smile.

  She’d never spoken much about her childhood. I’d always imagined she must have been quite lonely, an only child on the edge of the village. She didn’t look unhappy in the pictures, though. Quite the opposite.

  I picked up another wallet from the front of the box, marked ‘1963’. The first picture in it was of Mum as a five-year-old, outside the back door, the same grin on her face. An older teenage boy was standing next to her, crouching to her height, with his hand on her shoulder. He had a mop of dark brown hair. I turned the photo over:, ‘John and Irene’ was written on the back in Grandma’s hand. I flicked through the photos until I got to another with a woman, who looked very much like the boy’s mum, standing behind them. The reverse of the photo said ‘Olive, John and Irene’. I looked at Olive, trying to work out if there was any resemblance to Betty. The nose, maybe, and perhaps the jawline. There again, I wasn’t much like Justin.

  I put the wallet back and picked up another. John was in there again, this time with Mum as a toddler. There were more pictures of Olive with both of them and some with Grandma too. These were family photographs, I was sure of it. I picked out other wallets at random – John and Olive appeared to be around at all significant occasions, such as Christmas and birthdays. Eventually, I found one of John between Olive and a man with a moustache. I turned it over: ‘Olive, Harold and John.’

  I had a sudden recollection of a Christmas card that used to come every year when I was a child. It was signed from ‘Auntie Olive, Uncle Harold and John’. I’d never thought to ask Mum who they were and why we didn’t see them. But I knew now: they were family. Auntie Olive must have been Grandma’s sister, the older one she’d fallen out with. I took out a later wallet marked ‘1974’. There was no sign of Olive, Harold or John. It was as if they had been air-brushed from Grandma’s life. There were only photos of Mum as a sullen teenager, peering out from beneath a heavy fringe, the smile conspicuous by its absence.

  Why had Grandma fallen out with Olive? Maybe she had known something about the babies. Had Grandma got pregnant in later life? Or had Olive threatened to reveal a secret from long ago?

  I got out my phone and called Mum. She didn’t answer. It was like she was trying to air-brush me from her life. Me and her only grandchildren.

  I texted her: This is stupid. There are things I need to know. Why won’t you help me? I pictured her staring at her phone, deciding whether or not to reply.

  If you know what happened, please tell me. I just want the truth.

  I waited. Nothing. I threw the phone on to the bed. I’d have to do this myself.

  I went back to the photos and went through each wallet methodically, checking the reverse of every image. I’d been looking for a good half-hour when I found it: a photograph of Mum when she was tiny, being held by Olive, with John and Harold standing next to her. Written on the back was ‘Irene with the Armitages’.

  Bingo. I put the photo wallet into my bag, put the box back into the wardrobe and decided to leave the rest of the things I’d supposedly come to do. I wanted to go home. I wanted to try to track down my family.

  *

  I was so excited about what I’d found that I didn’t notice the piece of paper on my windscreen until I sat in the driver’s seat. It was flapping in the breeze. I got out and reached over to pull it out from under the wipers. My first thought was that it might be a rather strange sympathy note left by a neighbour. I held it up to the light from the lamppost. It was neatly typed in block capitals: CALL THE POLICE OFF BEFORE YOU REGRET IT. I heard my own sharp intake of breath and immediately looked across the street. It was dark. Nobody was around, not even any twitching of curtains from the houses opposite.

  I got back into the car and locked the door. It was one of the neighbours. It had to be. It was clearly intended for me and they must have recognised my car from when I’d visited Grandma. Andrea had been right. People didn’t want this sort of thing going on in the village. I wondered whether to knock in case she’d seen or heard anything but decided not to bother her. She was probably sick of the whole thing. Was that all it was, though? Someone not liking the unwanted media attention. Or did someone know something I didn’t? Did they have something to
hide?

  I started the engine and took the handbrake off, aware that my heart was beating faster than usual. I needed to go home. I needed to think about what the hell I had opened up here.

  *

  James was in the front room watching the football with the sound turned down low.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, as I came in. ‘Manage to get some stuff sorted?’

  I took the note out of my pocket and handed it to him. I watched his face as he read it. Saw that tinge of reddish purple come to his cheeks.

  ‘Where was this?’ he asked.

  ‘It was on my windscreen when I came out of Grandma’s.’

  ‘Fucking Little Britain, that village is.’

  ‘Maybe someone knows something.’

  ‘No. They just don’t like having the TV cameras there, puts the village in a bad light. Probably worried that it’ll affect their house prices.’

  ‘I should give it to the police. There could be more to it than that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone trying to hush up something that happened years ago.’

  ‘More like Andrea next door having her nose put out of joint.’

  ‘She wouldn’t do that. She’s always been dead nice.’

  ‘Yeah, to your face. I can’t imagine she’s thrilled at having all that going on next door.’

  ‘She still wouldn’t do something like that.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be one of the others, then. Some old bloke too chicken to say it to your face.’

  He handed the note back to me. He was probably right. It would just be some local busybody.

  ‘So, what do you think I should do with it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of handing it to the police. Ignore it. It’s the best way to deal with people like that.’

  I put the note back into my bag. ‘I’ll hang on to it for a bit. Wait and see if there are any others.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said James, getting to his feet. ‘You look like you’re in need of a glass of red.’

  When he came back with two large glasses, I had the photo of John, Olive and Harold on the coffee-table.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, sitting down next to me on the sofa.

  ‘I think I’ve found Grandma’s older sister and her family.’ I explained about the photos I’d found. How it looked as if Grandma and John had practically grown up together.

  ‘John’s probably still alive,’ I said, ‘even if Olive and Harold are dead. He’s Grandma’s nephew. I should try to find him, let him know. He should have been at the funeral.’

  ‘So why wasn’t he?’ asked James.

  ‘I think Grandma had some big falling-out with Olive. I remembered we used to get Christmas cards from them when I was little. I’m pretty sure I once caught Mum throwing one in the bin.’

  ‘Well, she must know what went on.’

  ‘I’m sure she does. She’s not telling me, though. I tried calling, texting. She doesn’t want to know.’

  James blew out and shook his head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It sounds like major family falling-out territory. I’m not sure you should get involved. It could make matters worse.’

  ‘Worse than my grandma having two babies buried in her back garden and my mum having cut off all contact with me and my children, you mean?’

  James smiled. ‘Fair point. But I’m still not sure it’s a good idea to go raking up old stuff.’

  ‘I want answers. I want to know what happened.’

  ‘So do the police. Leave it to them.’

  ‘But Grandma didn’t ask the police to look after her babies, did she? She asked me.’

  James shrugged and went back to watching the football. I knew what he was thinking. That I was as stubborn as Mum and Grandma put together. I picked up my glass and took it through to the kitchen, getting my laptop off the dresser and setting it up on the table. It was probably a needle-in-a-haystack job, but there was no harm in looking.

  John Armitage came up with tens of thousands of results: a hedge-fund manager, a professor of art, someone offering crystal healing and meditation. After half a dozen pages I clicked on images but soon realised I had no idea what I was looking for: the teenage boy in the photo would now be a grey-haired man.

  I sighed and googled Olive Armitage, then scrolled down past a plethora of green wax jackets to a long list of Olives who clearly had nothing to do with Grandma’s sister. I don’t know why I bothered clicking through to the second page, when it seemed so hopeless, but as soon as I did, I saw it. The article from the Halifax Courier, only published in April. ‘Olive celebrates her century’ was the headline. My hand was shaking as I clicked on it. The photograph came up straight away: a frail lady with wisps of white hair, sitting in an armchair behind a little table with a cake, ‘100 Years Young’ iced on the top.

  It was her. It had to be. The caption underneath said: ‘Olive Armitage celebrates her hundredth birthday at Rose Croft Nursing Home in Heptonstall.’ My mouth fell open. You could see Heptonstall from Grandma’s house: it was the village on the opposite side of the valley. I couldn’t believe that the supposedly long-lost sister was so close. And still alive at a hundred, come to that. I picked up the laptop and went back into the living room.

  The game had ended. The post-match analysis was in full-flow.

  ‘I’ve found her,’ I said, thrusting the screen in front of James. ‘I’ve only bloody found Grandma’s sister in Heptonstall.’

  James looked at the screen and back at me. ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘What are the chances of that?’

  ‘I should have dug around earlier. She could have come to the funeral.’

  ‘Come on, Nic. They hadn’t seen each other for years. She might not have wanted to come. Betty probably wouldn’t have wanted her there either.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? The point is, I’ve found her. And if anyone’s going to know what happened, it’s her.’

  *

  It was only as I put my phone on to charge before I went to bed that I thought to check it for messages. There was only one. It was from Mum and it read: Please leave it alone. You don’t understand what you’re dealing with.

  I couldn’t make up my mind whether to go and meet him or not. I didn’t even know if I’d enjoyed the kiss. It had felt quite nice but I’d been so shocked that he’d done it, and I knew it was wrong. I’d felt bad about it ever since. And I knew if I went to meet him now that he’d kissed me, it would be really wrong. Nice girls didn’t do things like that. But if I didn’t go as usual, he might come to find me. Knock on the door. Wake the whole place up. I couldn’t let that happen. How would I explain what had been going on? I’d have to tell them everything and I’d be in such big trouble. It wasn’t worth the risk. I would have to go as normal. Maybe he wouldn’t do it again. Maybe I hadn’t done it right and he’d tell me he didn’t want to see me again. Perhaps he wouldn’t even turn up. If he didn’t, I could simply come back, no one would be any the wiser about what had gone on and that would be the end of it.

  As I turned the corner I saw him standing by the gate. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling but every muscle in my body clenched. I tried not to let him see that as I walked up to him.

  ‘Told you you’d come back for more.’ He grinned. I could barely climb over the gate, my legs were wobbling that much. As soon as I stepped over the top, I felt his hands on my hips and a second later he was lifting me down. When my feet touched the ground, he turned me around and started kissing me. Harder and more urgently this time. Like we had thirty seconds left on earth and he wanted to get this over with. I tried to pull my mouth away, but he wouldn’t let me. I didn’t like it. This wasn’t what I wanted at all. His hand was on the back of my head and he was hurting my neck.

  A second later his left hand went up
my top and he was feeling my breasts, squeezing and grabbing them. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me. I knew I should push him away, but my hands stayed frozen to my sides. I couldn’t shout out and, even if I could, there was no one around to hear, only a few sheep and they couldn’t help me. And he was far too strong for me to fight him off. So I stood there and let him carry on, all the time feeling dirty and stupid inside. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be romantic, us watching the sunrises together. I hadn’t ever thought it would end up horrible and dirty like this. All I could think was that I was glad I didn’t have a skirt on because if I had, he would have had his hands up there as well.

  I could already feel him hard against me. I had to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. He took his hands off me for a second to start undoing his trousers. In that split second, I ran. Without my head even thinking about it, my legs simply took off. Normally, he would have followed and caught up with me, but in the time he took to pull his trousers back up and fasten them, I was gone, over the gate and down the lane. I only stopped when I rounded the corner to home and glanced back to see that he wasn’t behind me.

  I closed the gate silently behind me and stood for a second, trying to catch my breath so it didn’t wake anyone when I went inside. My body flooded with relief, so much so that my legs went a bit weak. But the relief was swiftly followed by the realisation that he wouldn’t be happy about this. Not happy at all. And waiting for him to decide what to do about it would be the worst bit of all.

  9

  I lay in bed with my arm draped over James. It was one of my favourite times of the week, the Saturday lie-in. It wasn’t even a lie-in, according to pre-children terms, but after a week of getting up at six thirty, it felt wonderfully luxurious to watch the clock edge slowly towards eight thirty. Maisie was already up: I’d heard her go downstairs half an hour ago. We had a deal at weekends: she could watch a DVD on her own as long as we were not disturbed before eight thirty. Ruby was still asleep, the teenage body-clock clearly kicking in. Not that we were complaining.