Dancing in the Moonlight (29 page)

‘Don’t be ridiculous, I wasn’t even in Sunderland the day it happened. I’d stayed overnight in Newcastle and there are any number of people who can confirm
that.’

If he had meant to convince her of his innocence, it had the opposite effect. ‘So you had your alibi while your lackeys did your dirty work.’ She had known, hadn’t she? From
the first moment the police had called, she’d known it was Tom Crawford who was responsible. But how could she prove it?

As though he could read her mind, Tom said softly, ‘It’s dangerous to besmirch a man’s good name without proof, lass, so be careful. Be very careful what you say.’

‘Good name!’ She was beyond caution. ‘You’re filthy, putrid, you always have been. My da called you scum, and he was right.’

His nostrils flared and colour seared his cheekbones, but still he didn’t raise his voice. ‘Is that so? Well, I seem to remember you weren’t above giving me the eye at one
time.’

‘You liar!’

‘A liar, am I?’ He moved swiftly, gripping her arms above the elbows and shaking her once, very hard. ‘And what are you? What was that story you gave my mother about the bairn
being six months old?’ He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘Once I’d found out where you were, it didn’t take me two minutes to find out the truth. Did you tell him? The sap you
married? Did you tell him it was mine?’ He shook her again. ‘Because she is, isn’t she?’

A couple of men who were passing by on the opposite side of the street stopped, and one called out, ‘You all right, lass?’

Tom let go of her, swinging round to snarl, ‘Sling your hook. This is nothing to do with you.’

‘I’m fine.’ A brawl in the street because of her would be the final straw. She was already notorious as the wife of the man who’d been brutally murdered, and Lucy knew
the old rumours about her swift marriage to Perce and Daisy’s subsequent arrival had been stirred into flames once more. ‘Really, I’m all right.’

The men still hesitated. ‘You sure, lass?’

‘You heard her, didn’t you?’ Tom took a step in their direction at the same time as Lucy said, ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

As the men ambled off he turned back to her. ‘I know when she was born and I’m not daft. Why would you lie about it to Mam, unless you didn’t want me to find out? It
wasn’t very clever, lass, now was it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Lucy didn’t falter. ‘I never told your mother my daughter was six months old, she must have misheard me.’
Terror of what might happen if he didn’t believe her gave her voice a ring of truth, and she saw that she’d disconcerted him. ‘Daisy was early, as it happens, but she was my
husband’s child.’

‘I don’t believe you. My mother doesn’t get things like that wrong.’ His voice had changed to a deep growl.

‘I don’t care what you believe.’ Lucy’s face was devoid of colour, but adrenaline born of fear kept her back straight. She was fighting for Daisy rather than herself; she
would not have this fiend lay any claim to her daughter.

‘Is that so?’ Tom gritted his teeth, struggling to control himself. He didn’t want a scene any more than Lucy did. He was aiming to become a town councillor in the
not-too-distant future, and mud had a habit of sticking.

‘Aye, it is and, whatever you say, I think you had a hand in Perce’s death like you did in my da’s and Ernie’s.’

‘That was an accident, for crying out loud.’

‘Accident or not, you were responsible.’

He swore, his voice low but vicious. ‘What’s the matter with you anyway? You could have had a life of ease with me, decked out like a lady and not having to lift a finger. Instead
you chose to live in these filthy streets, with a stinking fishmonger pawing you about.’

‘Perce was ten times – a hundred times – the man you are.’ She glared her hate, wanting to puncture the inflated ego. ‘And he didn’t have to rape me to get
what he wanted.’

For a moment she thought he was going to strike her. His face livid, Tom seemed unable to speak for a moment and she watched his hands bunch at his side as he resisted felling her to the ground.
Then, with the words hissed through his teeth, he said, ‘But he’s dead and I’m alive. Remember that. And I’ll be watching you from now on, wherever you go.’

He had turned on his heel before she said, her voice shaking now, ‘I’m not answerable to you, Tom Crawford. I’m not answerable to anyone.’

He swung round, his eyes gimlet-hard. ‘Keep it that way. I don’t know if the bairn’s mine, not for sure, you’ve seen to that, but my mam’s not hard of hearing and
she doesn’t often make mistakes, so I’ll draw me own conclusions, if it’s all the same to you. And no one takes what’s mine. Keep that in mind if you get the notion to play
Happy Families again, all right?’

The sky had clouded over, the blue all gone and grey taking its place. ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ she said dully. ‘You killed him because of me.’

He didn’t answer, but after a few moments of staring at her face, he smiled.

She had her answer.

That same day, at two in the afternoon, as the first fat snowflakes began to fall from a laden sky, Lucy had another visitor. Ruby and John were minding the little ones
upstairs and Lucy was scrubbing the shop from top to bottom. She had been working since she had come in from the encounter with Tom Crawford, needing the hard physical exercise to counter the
consuming guilt and grief she was feeling about Perce’s death. Why had she married him? she asked herself over and over again. If she had gone right away from Sunderland, Perce would still be
alive. But how could she have done? She’d had no money and there had been Ruby and John and the twins to consider. And if she’d gone when she’d found out she was expecting Daisy,
her daughter wouldn’t be here now, because the way she had been feeling then, the river was the only answer. And why –
why
– had she told Enid Crawford that Daisy was so
much younger? In Tom Crawford’s eyes it had been tantamount to admitting Daisy was his, once he’d asked around and found out her true age. It had been stupid, so stupid, but she’d
panicked that evening and in attempting to throw him off the trail had made everything a hundred times worse. And Perce had paid the price.

So the recriminations reverberated in her head hour after hour until she felt she was going mad. And that feeling was heightened when she heard a tap at the window and straightened up, to see
Jacob standing outside the shop.

For a moment Lucy couldn’t move; she just stared at him. He was taller than she remembered and well built, a man already at seventeen with no vestige of the boy or youth left. Of course
that would be his work in the forge, she told herself numbly. And he was well dressed. Not as his brother had been, acting the toff, but Jacob’s overcoat hung full and thick and was the same
dark grey as his cap.

Somehow she made herself walk to the door and turn the key, and now her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer and threatening to jump out of her chest. As his eyes swept her from head to foot
she was acutely conscious of the big calico apron she’d pulled on over her dress to do the cleaning and of the wisps of hair that her exertion had loosened from the piled coils on top of her
head.

His voice was just the same, though, deep with a slight catch of huskiness in it, which had always thrilled her in the past, as he said quietly, ‘It’s been a long time,
Lucy.’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’ It was a whisper.

‘I didn’t hear about what had happened until last night – we don’t have a newspaper every day. I’m sorry. About your husband.’

Again she nodded, not knowing what to say or do. The snow was beginning to settle on his cap and shoulders and, opening the door wider, she said, ‘Would you like to come in?’

He hesitated, and Lucy wasn’t to know that the sight of her was tearing Jacob apart inside. From the moment he’d read the paper the night before, he’d been beside himself.
‘Still no light on the murder of the fishmonger in Long Bank,’ the reporter had written. And then had followed a list of the fishmonger’s dependants, starting with his young wife,
Lucy – his second wife, the article had emphasized – and her sisters, Ruby, Flora and Bess, and brother, John, and the fishmonger’s two children by his first wife, along with a
thirteen-month-old daughter by the present Mrs Alridge. A family deprived of their breadwinner was always tragic, the article had gone on, but under such violent circumstances doubly so. It had
finished with the usual, ‘If anyone knows anything about the events of . . .’ and so on.

He’d read it twice, the blood thundering in his ears, and he must have looked like he felt, because Dolly had glanced up from her knitting and given a start, saying, ‘What is it,
lad? What’s wrong?’

It had been a long night and he’d counted every minute of it as he’d paced the floor of his room. It had to be her, which meant she had never left Sunderland and gone down south
after all. She’d been in the town and she was married with a bairn. He had been at death’s door and eating his heart out for her, and she had been canoodling with some bloke or other
and getting wed.

Round and round he had walked, every emotion under the sun searing his breast, until he thought he’d lose his mind. By the time he’d come down to breakfast he’d known what he
had to do. It wasn’t wise, he’d known that even before he’d told Abe and Dolly his intentions and they’d advised him to hold his horses and wait a while, but he had to see
her today. And now here she was. In front of him. And if the fifteen-year-old girl had been lovely, the young woman she’d become was breathtaking.

He had thought he was managing fine without her, that Lucy was his past and he was content for her to remain there. He was his own man now, wasn’t he? A partner in a good, solid business
that one day would be his. He’d even bitten the bullet and started courting steady. Felicity was a nice lass, bonny, but not forward. He’d come to terms with the fact that the Lucy
he’d danced with in the moonlight was not what she’d seemed, that he’d made a huge mistake and was better out of it. Events had proved that he hadn’t really known her. No
use crying over spilt milk, that was a mug’s game, and at least he wouldn’t be fooled again.

But he had been fooling
himself.
He looked into the azure-blue eyes, which he had never thought to see again, and nothing mattered. Not her betrayal, not her marriage to another man,
nothing. He loved her. Still. It was like she was part of him. ‘Why did you leave the way you did, when I was in hospital?’ He hadn’t meant to say it. He’d told himself on
the way here that, if he saw her, he would be polite but formal, express his condolences whilst letting her know that he didn’t think much of her treatment of him. Draw a line under things
– that’s what he’d intended.

‘I had to.’ Her eyes had fallen from his. ‘Donald had left us and the little ones would have been put in the workhouse.’

‘You must have known my mam wouldn’t have let that happen.’

‘They were my responsibility, no one else’s.’

He could not take his eyes from her face, but still he didn’t move from the doorstep. ‘You didn’t come to the hospital or even write to say where you were. We thought Donald
had made you go down south with him.’ She did not reply, and he went on, stating the obvious, ‘But you were here in Sunderland with this man, the fishmonger. I didn’t know you
knew him. You’d never mentioned him.’ Steeling himself, he asked the question that had tormented him all night. ‘Did you love him?’

She made a little movement of her head, which could have meant anything. Her voice a whisper, she said, ‘Please don’t do this, Jacob.’

Don’t do this? After all she had put him through, she said: Don’t do this? He had the right to ask, damn it. ‘Did you? Did you love him?’

She raised her head, her blue eyes looking straight into his and her voice stronger. ‘Perce was a good man, a fine man. The very best.’

Jacob nodded slowly, hurt afresh and wanting to hurt back. ‘And twice your age. A widower, the paper said, with two bairns, and his wife still warm in her grave when he wed you. Seems this
good, fine man didn’t waste any time in making sure his needs were provided for.’

She blinked, her face turning a shade paler. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘No?’ When she remained silent, he said tersely, ‘I understand you have a daughter. Thirteen months, isn’t she? And you say it wasn’t like that?’

She wanted to take the look out of his eyes, to confess everything, tell him the truth, but to do so would be a death sentence for him and maybe for her too, and there was Daisy to think of. He
would go looking for his brother. Whether he killed Tom, or Tom killed him, the end result would be the same. Jacob would either be dead or would swing at the end of a rope. If she gave him the
slightest inkling, fresh blood would be on her hands. This had to end. Now. Her voice hardly audible, she said, ‘You shouldn’t have come here today, Jacob.’

She actually registered in her own body the flinch he gave. She was near tears, but she told herself she must not give way because, if she did, she would be lost. Enough people had been
sacrificed because of her. First her father and Ernie, then Perce, but if Jacob was attacked a second time, he would not survive it. Tom would make sure of that. From the moment she’d seen Tom
today she had been absolutely sure he’d arranged the beating Jacob had taken that night two years ago, and that he’d expected his brother to die. Maybe she had always known it deep
down.

Jacob stood looking down at her bowed head. He heard himself say stiffly, ‘I can see that’, while his mind shouted at him, ‘Tell her how you feel, man. What does it matter
about her husband – he’s dead and gone. Tell her you love her.’

But what was the use? And why humiliate himself further? Everything about her stated that she wanted him gone. He was an embarrassment, a reminder of things best forgotten, as far as she was
concerned. She had said he shouldn’t have come. Well, she needn’t worry. Hell would freeze over before he’d come again. The finality of the thought came through in his voice when
he said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Lucy.’

He turned, striding away through the snow, which was now swirling and dancing in an already white world, and he didn’t look back. It would have served no purpose if he did. He could barely
see a thing through the mist of tears blinding his eyes.