Fall From Grace (26 page)

Keep me in your heart, son and please, please don’t hate me.

With love,

Dad

When Kelly and Lydia came back into the room they found Paul on the floor, in a heap, crying his heart out. Paul kept himself quiet for a couple of days. He was trying to digest everything and had read and re-read his father’s letter so many times that the paper was starting to flake. His life had suddenly changed and without hint or warning. His beloved father had kept so much from him and not that he was beyond the grave he couldn’t go to him for answers. All he did know was that a firm of Manchester solicitors who catered to the rich and famous had been trying to contact him. His status as a member of society had changed but he didn’t feel it. His heart didn’t beat any faster at the knowledge of what he was now a part of. He’d have to deal with it. They would keep on at him until he did. But he was going to keep them at arm’s length until he’d worked out how he was going to deal with it all.

He’d also read up about the British Fascist movement and all the trouble they’d caused when his father was involved and he was ashamed that his father had been part of it. He couldn’t reconcile the father he knew with the man who’d organised for stones to be thrown at immigrant children on their way home from school. His father was right. It was the sort of activity that Paul abhorred. Then when he came to think about himself it made him wish that his father had let his Uncle Doug and Aunty Sheila adopt him. That would’ve saved him a lot of physical and emotional harm at the hands of his step-mother.

But what did infuriate him one afternoon was when his sister Denise sent a message to say that she wouldn’t be able to make it to her father’s funeral. He rang her to find out why and she said that it was because ‘George is getting his bonus from the bank this month and we’ve got a holiday booked to Mauritius, flying first class, five-star hotel and everything. It really can’t all be undone at such short notice.’

‘You selfish bitch.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, are you going to let your mother come and stay with you for a while? She’s on her own and despite her shrugging the shoulder act she’s grieving, Denise. You’re her daughter and she needs you. God knows, I don’t know why I’m trying to help her because I’ve enough reason not to. But she is grieving, Denise. Surely you realise that?’ He heard his sister sigh down the phone. ‘Denise?’

‘Well it’s just that it’s not very convenient for me at the moment.’

‘Oh well death isn’t very convenient! Especially when it’s your own father! You knew, didn’t you? You knew that you and I didn’t share the same mother?’

‘It would be a first if you did,’ said Paul. ‘You used to stand by whilst she beat the hell out of me. You watched, you even laughed sometimes when I thought I was going to pass out with pain. That makes you just as evil as she was.’

‘It’s always so good to talk about our childhood days with you, Paul, but I must go,’ said Denise. ‘And anyway, George would be more than happy to advise you on your investment potential now that you’re filthy rich.’

‘Oh, really? Well let me tell you something, sister dearest. Now that I am wealthy I may use some of it to influence the promotion decisions of the bank where George works.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘Oh? So you can dish it out but you can’t take it? How weak you are. Well if I choose to make hell for you I will because now I can. I can settle some scores now that I’ve got the resources, so I wouldn’t be so fucking smug if I were you. I suffered at your hands for years and you’d deserve anything I chose to do to you. Enjoy Mauritius. Next year it might have to be an off-season caravan in Margate.’

*

The morning of the funeral Paul took a picture of his mother, one of the ones his father had been saving for him, to the chapel of rest and placed it in the coffin with his father. He’d been able to reunite them at last. He’d done his duty as their son. It had broken his heart but it was the best he could do.

He did find it rather uncomfortable walking behind his father’s coffin with Mary but he took a deep breath and got on with it. On top of the coffin he’d placed a Liverpool FC scarf and had even managed to get the team to sign a farewell card to his Dad who’d supported the club throughout his life. The sight of the scarf made his Uncle Doug break down. They’d been supporters since they were small boys and Paul promised to go with his Uncle from now on.

‘You’ll be too busy,’ said Doug, tearfully.

‘I’ll never be too busy for you, Uncle Doug,’ said Paul, equally as emotional. ‘I want you and Aunty Sheila to always remember that. I’m your son now.’

As they walked towards the grave he glanced behind him at his Uncle Doug and Aunty Sheila, followed by his Uncle Leonid, Kelly and Lydia and the rest of the mourners just behind them. Paul had managed to read the eulogy at the service without breaking down but he didn’t know how long he’d be able to last.

The coffin was lowered into the ground and he saw that Mary was crying. The sight made him furious. Her sister Alma, who Paul had always detested, had come down from her home in Keswick and passed her a hanky to wipe her face with. Mary was going to go back with Alma after the funeral for a couple of weeks. He saw her to Alma’s car.

‘I know about all the pain and misery you caused me! I understand you chose to make my life a living hell because you were too stupid to see beyond your own pain. That’s why you took it out on me. For Dad’s sake I wanted to try and help you but I can’t do that. I just can’t get past the memories of what you did to me and I can’t forgive you. If you’d have had any dignity at all you’d have divorced my Dad, a man who clearly didn’t love you anymore and saved us all a lot of unpleasantness. But instead you decided to hold onto him and to be cruel to an innocent child. You disgust me and after today we’re out of each other’s lives for good. Oh and by the way, that goes for that slut daughter of yours as well. Goodbye, Mary’

‘Now you just wait a minute,’ said Mary, attempting a fight back. ‘I’m owed by you as well! You’re going to be rich now and I want mine!’

Paul felt all the anger of what she’d done to him over the years rise up inside him and fill his voice. ‘You have the nerve to bring that up at my father’s funeral! Well let me tell you, I owe you nothing! Now get out of my sight and stay there or so help me, I will not be responsible for what I do to you.’

Kelly and Lydia didn’t want Paul to be alone that night but he insisted he’d be fine and that he wanted to have some space to think.

‘Anyway, you’ll only be next door,’ said Paul. ‘I’ll knock on the wall if I need you.’

‘Keep your phone right beside you,’ said Kelly, ‘and pre-programme it for a 999 call. Just in case you get any unexpected visitors and need help fast.’

Paul knew that she meant Jake and what he hadn’t told anyone was that he’d seen Jake that day. He was standing a good fifty metres away, beside a clump of trees, in the cemetery when Paul’s father had been lowered into the ground. He’d smiled and nodded at him before Jake had disappeared. But at least he’d come and paid his respects to Paul’s Dad. And Paul was grateful for that.

He did jump though when he heard a knock at the front door. Immediately he knew it wouldn’t be Jake. Someone on the run like that wouldn’t just walk down the street and knock on his door as if he’d just gone down to the off license for a bottle of wine. And it wouldn’t be Kelly or Lydia because they’ve both got a key. He looked at his watch and saw that it a little after nine o’clock. So who was it at this time?

‘Well I shall make up the bed in the spare room,’ said Paul. ‘You’re not going home on your own. I’ll drive you back in the morning.’

‘He was scared, Paul,’ said Leonid. ‘He was scared of how you’d react. You’ve always been so close and he just didn’t want to risk that.’

‘But I’m more ashamed because he kept it a secret,’ said Paul. ‘If he’d come clean about his involvement with those bloody fascists then I’d have been angry beyond words but I would’ve had time to come to terms with it. As it is I want to get hold of him by the scruff of the bloody neck. I mean, when I think of your life story, Uncle Leonid, and your support for the Germans during the war, which was understandable given the circumstances your country was in, the fact that you and Dad were such good friends perhaps should’ve led me to put two and two together. It wouldn’t have taken a great leap of the imagination.’

‘No, perhaps it wouldn’t,’ said Leonid, ‘but you mustn’t forget that he gave it all up for your mother and the life he was wanting to build with her and you.’

‘I realise that, Uncle Leonid.’

‘Then send him the peace he deserves to have on the other side,’ said Leonid, ‘he gave it all up for the love of a woman, your mother.’

‘Yes, it was badly decomposed of course but they’ve managed to identify it. She was just a few metres back from Gatley Hall, just before the start of the woods on the southern side. I’m going to arrange to have her buried next to my Dad.’

Joe and Steve went round to see Lorraine Cowley and this time she gave them a lot more than the time before. She felt like she could talk with more freely now that she was certain Glenn Barber was dead and her story coincided with what the parents of Shona Higgins had finally told them.

‘He took our Michaela because I couldn’t make the repayments he’d set,’ said Lorraine, crying. ‘I begged and pleaded with him but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘And when did he say he would release her?’ asked Steve.

‘When he considered my debt to have been paid,’ said Lorraine. ‘It was entirely in his control. I had no say just like I’ve had no say in anything to do with my life.’

Steve rolled his eyes up impatiently to the Heavens. Joe offered Lorraine a handkerchief which she took.

‘Thanks,’ said Lorraine, wiping her eyes.

Joe took one of the chairs around the kitchen table and brought it up close to her. He sat down on it and placed his hand on Lorraine’s shoulder.

‘Come on now, Lorraine,’ said Joe. ‘We’ll do our best to get her back but you’ve got to level with us and we’ve wasted enough valuable time as it is. We’re here to help you, Lorraine. But to do that you must try and help us. Do you have any idea where Michaela could’ve been taken by Barber?’

‘No,’ said Lorraine who now was sobbing. ‘I just couldn’t afford to pay him back.’

‘Look, with Barber dead that must mean that the chances of finding all the girls we know he’d taken, are good,’ said Joe. ‘So come on, if there’s anything you can think of, you’ve got to tell us.’

‘AlI know is she went to school that morning and never came back,’ said Lorraine. ‘And I blame that blasted Paul Foster.’

‘Paul Foster the social worker?’ Steve questioned. ‘Why do you blame him?’

‘Because if he’d have left us alone in the first place and not tried to interfere on this estate then we might not be in this mess now.’

‘So you’d rather owe money to the likes of Barber than to a collective credit union?’ said Steve. ‘Isn’t that what he was trying to get started?’

‘Credit union,’ Lorraine sneered, her tears temporarily dried up. ‘It’s all Foster’s fault and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. He’s messed up the lives of all my kids.’