Careless In Red (41 page)

He said, “Mum! What’re you doing here? Those the Labs?” with an inclination of his head in the general direction of the garden.

Bea saw he was eating, which would have been a mark against his father had Pete’s snack consisted of crisps or chips. But he was munching from a plastic bag of apple slices and almonds, of all things, and the bloody child appeared to be actually enjoying them. So she couldn’t get riled at that, but she could get riled at the fact that he was home at all.

She said, “Never mind about me. What’re you doing here? Did your father allow you to stay home from school? Or have you done a bunk? What’s going on? Are you alone? Who’s upstairs? What the hell are you doing?” Bea knew the game: It started with truancy and went on to drugs. Drugs led to breaking and entering. That led to gaol. Thank you so very much, Ray Hannaford. Wonderful job. Father of the year.

Pete took a step backward. He chewed thoughtfully and watched her.

She said, “Answer me at once. Why aren’t you at school?”

“Half day,” he said.

“What?”

“Half day today, Mum. There’s a conference or something. I don’t know what. I mean, I knew but I forgot. Teachers’re doing something. I told you about it. I brought home the announcement.”

She remembered. He had done, several weeks ago. It was on the calendar. She’d even told Ray about it and they’d discussed who’d fetch Pete when the shortened day ended. Still, she wasn’t ready to apologise for the suspicious leap she’d made. There remained fertile ground here, and she intended to till it. She said, “So. How’d you get home?”

“Dad.”

“Your father? And where is he now? What’re you doing here alone?” She was quite determined. There had to be something.

Pete was too astute for her, his parents’ own son, possessing their ability to cut to the quick. He said, “Why’re you always so mad at him?”

That wasn’t a question Bea was ready to answer. She said, “Go say hello to your animals. They’re wanting you. We’ll talk afterwards.”

“Mum…”

“You heard me.”

He shook his head: a teenager’s black movement that signaled his disgust. But he did as she told him although the fact that he went outside without a jacket telegraphed his intention of not remaining long with the Labradors. She had little enough time, so she ran up the stairs.

The house had two bedrooms only. She made for Ray’s. She did not want her son exposed to photos of Ray’s lovers posed suggestively, with backs arched and pert breasts thrust skyward. Nor did she want him looking at their discarded bras and flimsy knickers. If there were coy notes and gushing letters lying about, she intended to find them. If they’d left smears of lipstick playfully on mirrors, she would wipe them off. She intended to absent the premises of whatever souvenirs his father kept of his conquests, and she told herself it was in Pete’s best interests that she do so.

But there was nothing. Ray had swept the place clean in advance of Pete’s arrival. The only evidence of anything was evidence of his fatherhood: on the chest of drawers Pete’s most recent school photo in a wooden frame, next to it their daughter, Ginny, and her daughter, Audra, and next to that a photo from Christmas: Ray, Bea, their two children, Ginny’s husband with Audra in his arms. Playing happy extended family, which they were not. Ray’s left arm around her, his right arm around Pete.

She told herself it was better than displaying a photo of Brittany or Courtney or Stacy or Katie or whoever she was, coyly smiling on a summer holiday, bikini clad and tan of skin. She checked the clothes cupboard but found nothing there either and she went on to slide her hands under the pillows on the bed in a search for a few bits of lace that would go for night clothes. Nothing. All to the good. At least the man was being discreet. She turned to head for the bathroom. Pete was watching from the doorway.

He was no longer chewing. The bag of his carefully prepared guaranteed-to-be-nutritious snack dangled from his fingers. His jaw looked slack.

She said hastily, “Why aren’t you with the dogs? I swear to you, Pete, if you insist on having pets and you don’t take care of them—”

“Why d’you hate him so much?”

The question stopped her dead this time. As did his face, which bore an expression of pained knowledge that no fourteen-year-old boy should carry round on his shoulders. She felt deflated. “I don’t hate him, Pete.”

“Yeah, you do. You’ve always. And see, I don’t get it, Mum, ’cause he’s a decent bloke, seems to me. He loves you, as well. I can see that, and I don’t get why you can’t love him back.”

“It isn’t as easy as that. There are things…” She didn’t want to hurt him, and the truth would do that. It would come at this point of his delicate dawning manhood and it would tear it to pieces. She began to move past him, to get to the bathroom, to complete her futile investigation, but he was in the doorway and he didn’t move. It came to her how much he’d grown over the last year. He was taller than she now although still not as strong.

“What’d he do?” Pete asked. “’Cause he must’ve done something ’cause that’s why people get divorced, eh?”

“People get divorced for lots of reasons.”

“Did he have a girlfriend or something?”

“Pete, that’s really none—”

“’Cause he doesn’t have one now, if that’s what you’re looking for. And it must be ’cause it can’t be drugs or something like that ’cause you know he doesn’t take drugs. But is that it? Did he? Or drink or something ’cause there’s this bloke at school called Barry and his parents are splitting up ’cause his dad broke the front window in a rage and he was drunk.” Pete watched her. He seemed to be trying to read her face. “It was double glazed,” he added.

She smiled in spite of herself. She put her arms around him and pulled him to her. “Double glazed,” she said. “Now that’s a reason to throw a husband out.” But he jerked away from her.

“Don’t make fun.” He went to his room.

She said, “Pete, come on…”

He didn’t reply. He shut the door instead, leaving her looking at its blank panels. She could have followed, but she went to the bathroom. She couldn’t stop herself from a final check even though she knew how ridiculous she was being. Here, like everywhere else, there was nothing. Just Ray’s shaving gear, damp towels hanging lopsided from a towel bar, across the tub a sky blue shower curtain drawn to dry. And in the tub, nothing other than a soap tray.

A clothes hamper stood beneath the bathroom window, but she didn’t go through this. Instead, she sat on the toilet seat and looked down at the floor. This was not to study the tiles for evidence of sexual malefaction, but to force herself to stop and consider all the ramifications.

She’d done that more than fourteen years ago: She’d considered the ramifications. What it would mean to stay with a man and have his child when day after day what he so plainly told her he wanted was a termination to the pregnancy. An abortion, Beatrice. Do it now. We’ve raised our child. Ginny’s grown and left the nest and this is our time now. We don’t want this pregnancy. It was a stupid miscalculation and we don’t have to pay for it the rest of our lives.

They had plans, he told her. They had great and wonderful things to do now Ginny was grown. Places to go, sights to see. I don’t want this kid. Neither do you. One visit to the clinic and it’s behind us.

It was odd to think now how one’s perception of a person could change in an instant. But that was what had happened. She’d looked at Ray with eyes newly born. The passion of the man, and all of it about killing off their own child. She’d just gone cold, right to her core.

While he’d spoken the truth—she had given up on the idea of a second pregnancy when it hadn’t happened within a reasonable period after Ginny’s birth and with Ginny at university and engaged to be married, she and Ray were free to plan a future—it wasn’t a truth carved in stone for her. It never had been. It had, instead, been a quiet acceptance that had bloomed from initial disappointment. But it wasn’t meant to be interpreted as the end all and be all of her life. She couldn’t come to terms with how Ray had arrived at the belief that it was.

So she’d told him to leave. She’d done it not to shake him and not to make him see things her way. She’d done it because she’d believed she’d never really known him at all. How could she have known him if what he wanted was to end a life they had created from their love for each other?

But to tell Pete all this? To let him know his father had wished to deny him his place on earth? She couldn’t do that. Let Ray tell him if he wished.

She went to Pete’s room. She knocked on the door. He said nothing, but she entered anyway. He was at his computer. He was on Arsenal’s Web site, surfing through pictures of his idols in a desultory way so completely unlike him.

She said, “Homework, love?”

He said, “Did it already.” And then after a moment, he added, “I got a perfect mark on the maths exam.”

She went to him and kissed the top of his head. “I am so proud of you,” she told him.

“That’s what Dad says.”

“Because he is. We both are. You’re our shining star, Pete.”

“He asked me about those Internet blokes you date.”

“That must have made for some good stories,” she said. “Did you tell him about the bloke Dog Two lifted a leg on?”

Pete snuffled, his form of forgiving laugh. “That bloke was a real wanker. Two knew that.”

“Language, Pete,” she murmured. She stood for a moment, looking at the pictures of Arsenal that he continued to click through. “World Cup’s coming,” she said unnecessarily. The last thing Pete would be likely to forget was their plans for a World Cup match.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “World Cup’s coming. C’n we ask Dad if he wants to go? He’d like us to ask him.”

It was a simple thing, really. They’d not likely be able to get an extra ticket, so what did it matter if she agreed? “All right,” she told him. “We’ll ask Dad. You can ask him tonight when he gets home.” She smoothed his hair and kissed his head again. “Are you going to be okay on your own till he gets here, Pete?”

“Mum.” He made it a drawn-out and patient multisyllable word. I’m not a baby was the implication.

“Okay, okay. I’m off,” she said.

“See you later,” he told her. “Love you, Mum.”

SHE WENT BACK TO Casvelyn. The bakery where Madlyn Angarrack worked was established not any great distance from the police station, so she parked in front of that grey squat building and she walked to find it. The wind had picked up, blowing in from the northwest and carrying with it a chill reminder of winter. It would be this way until very late spring. That season came slowly, in fits and starts.

A pleasant-looking white building on the corner of Burn View Lane, Casvelyn of Cornwall was opposite St. Mevan Down. Bea reached it after a hike up Queen Street, where the pavements still held shoppers and cars still lined the kerb despite the growing lateness of the afternoon. It might have been any shopping precinct in any town in the country, Bea thought as she hurried along it. Here, identifying the shops by name, were the ubiquitous dismal plastic signs above doors and windows. Here, beneath them, were the tired-looking mothers pushing their babies in pushchairs and the uniformed schoolchildren smoking in front of a video arcade.

The bakery was only slightly different to the other shops, in that its signage was faux Victorian, fabricated from wood. In its bowfront window, trays held row upon row of the golden pasties for which the bakery was known. Within, two girls were boxing some of these up for a rangy young man wearing a hoodie with Outer Bombora, Outta Sight printed on the back.

One of these girls would be Madlyn Angarrack, Bea reckoned. She decided it had to be the slim, dark-haired one. The other, enormously overweight and spotty faced, sadly did not appear to be someone who might have been the object of an attractive eighteen-year-old boy’s lust.

Bea entered and waited till they had served the customer, who relieved them of the last of the day’s pasties. Then she asked for Madlyn Angarrack, and the dark-haired girl, as Bea had suspected, identified herself. Bea showed her warrant card and asked for a word. Madlyn wiped her hands down the front of her striped pinny, glanced at her companion who looked a bit too interested in the proceedings, and said she’d talk to Bea outside. She fetched an anorak. She didn’t, Bea noted, look surprised to have a detective come calling.

When they were out on the pavement, Madlyn said, “I know about Santo, that he was murdered. Kerra told me. Kerra’s his sister.”

“You wouldn’t be surprised that we’d want to speak with you, then.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Madlyn gave no other information and she waited, as if fully informed of her rights and wanting to see how much Bea knew and what, if anything, Bea suspected.

“You and Santo were involved.”

“Santo,” Madlyn said, “was my lover.”

“You don’t call him your boyfriend?”

Madlyn glanced at the down across the street from them. Maram and sea lime grasses at its edge were being tossed by the growing wind. “He started out my boyfriend,” she said. “Boyfriend and girlfriend, that’s what we were. Going on dates, hanging about, surfing…That’s how I met him. I taught him surfing. But then we became lovers and I call it lovers because that’s what we were. Two people in love who expressed their love through sexual intercourse.”

“Baldly stated.” Most girls her age wouldn’t have been so direct. Bea wondered why she was.

“Well, that’s what it is, isn’t it?” Madlyn’s words sounded brittle. “A man’s penis entering a woman’s vagina. All the befores and all the afters as well, but it really comes down to a penis entering a vagina. So the truth is that Santo put his penis into my vagina and I let him do it. He was my first. I wasn’t his. I heard he was dead. I can’t say I’m sorry about it, but I didn’t know he’d been murdered. That’s actually all I have to tell you.”

“It’s not all I need to know, I’m afraid,” Bea told the girl. “Look. Would you like to go some place for a coffee?”

“I’m not off work yet. I can’t leave, and I shouldn’t even be out here talking to you.”

“If you’d like to meet later…?”