Father Unknown (47 page)

Ellen looked incongruous with her hair loose, dressed for a party in a flouncy Laura Ashley dress in dark green needle-cord with a lacy collar and cuffs. It was mid-calf length, like something from Edwardian times, and she wore lace-up boots.

She opened her home-made elderberry wine once they were in the parlour, and within minutes they were all chatting away, laughing and guzzling down the wine as if it was lemonade. Josie didn’t have more than the first glass, it was too strong, but just watched the others and pretended she was enjoying it all as much as they were. She remembered thinking that she couldn’t get her parents to laugh like they did with Ellen, not even if she had dressed one of the pigs up in Violet’s Sunday best!

The candle on the cake was lit, they all sang ‘Happy Birthday’, and Albert said his best present was Ellen coming home.

Josie pulled into Taunton Deane services, not so much for coffee, but because she was crying now. She turned off the engine and leaned her head on the steering-wheel, trying to control herself, but she couldn’t.

Watching her parents with Ellen that night had been torture. They hung on every word she said, laughing fit to bust at her stories about her kids at school. Josie remembered how often she’d tried to make them laugh with some of her old stories about modelling, but they always turned away and said they didn’t want to know about ‘that’.

The talk turned to farming later, Albert going on about what yield of corn so-and-so had, how many tons of potatoes someone else had dug up. He said he’d planted daffodil bulbs in the top field just recently as he’d been advised flowers for the London markets were becoming a lucrative crop. Ellen sat there listening, entranced the way she always was.

Finally Josie got up and made them a night-cap, hot toddies with whisky, fresh lemon juice and a spoonful of honey. That was about the only thing she could do right for Albert. He always liked the way she made them.

But this time she dropped a few drops of an antihista-mine into them. She had been given this mixture years ago by a chemist in London when she had an allergy, and had always kept some by her in case of another flare-up. One of its side-effects was that it acted like a sleeping draught. She looked around at her family as she took the glasses in and realized they were so drunk now that she could have given them arsenic and they wouldn’t have known.

The hot toddies were drunk, but still they kept talking, and Josie began to get nervous they’d fall asleep down there in the parlour and she wouldn’t be able to move them.

Just after eleven, Albert finally said he was going to bed, and then they all went staggering off up the stairs. The last thing Josie heard Albert shout out was ‘Don’t forget the fire-guard, Dumbo.’

That favourite insulting nickname of his wiped out the last of her qualms. He thought it was funny, but every time he used it Josie felt he’d slapped her. That was how he saw her. Dumb.

She waited until she heard their bedsprings creak, then waited and waited until she could hear both Albert and Violet snoring. Then she went up to check on them.

Her parents were both out cold, the room stinking of whisky. She stood there for some time just looking at them. They lay there back to back, Violet so fat, Albert so thin and scrawny, and thought how repulsive they were with their mouths open, snoring lustily. They had brought her into the world without love, their meanness and coldness to her had ruined her life. They deserved to die.

Ellen was fast asleep too, her curls like golden foam on the pillow. She was wearing a pair of Josie’s pyjamas. Josie took off her jeans and sweater, and put on Ellen’s dress and tights which were on the chair beside the bed. Finally her slippers were replaced by Ellen’s lace-up boots.

It was only then that she felt bad about what she intended to do. She and Ellen had had some good times up in that cold, miserable room. She looked at it one last time, the old torn posters of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, pictures of animals they’d stuck up there when they were kids. But she hardened her heart and reminded herself that Ellen had failed her too when she really needed her. She bent to kiss her cheek, then went downstairs and set to work.

First she turned on one electric ring on the cooker and left the tea-cosy on top of it, with another tea towel right by it, the end trailing down to a paraffin can on the floor.

The parlour was next. She scattered some newspapers about and opened one of the paraffin cans she’d put in there earlier in the day, then prised a burning log out into the hearth and waited till it caught on the hearth rug before moving the settee nearer.

Putting on Ellen’s coat and scarf, and picking up her handbag, she was ready to leave. She took the top off the paraffin can by the stove, then turned off the lights. The tea-cosy on the hot plate was already smoking.

Once outside she waited a few minutes, shivering in the cold wind. She looked at her car, remembering with some nostalgia how proud she’d been of it when it was new. But it was rusted and unreliable now, and she would be glad to drive Ellen’s carefully maintained Ford.

She could see a bright glow in the parlour windows. The fire had clearly reached the settee now. It was time to go.

Half-way up the track to the road in the pitch darkness, she heard a sort of whoosh from behind her. She guessed that was the first paraffin can going up. But suddenly there was so much light she thought they’d see it for miles around, so she ran the rest of the way to Ellen’s car.

Josie sensed someone peering at her in the darkness, and looking up she saw a man staring in at her from the services car park.

‘Are you all right?’ he shouted. It was still pouring with rain and the man was wearing a waterproof jacket with a hood pulled over his head.

She wound the window down just enough so he could hear her. ‘Just having a rest,’ she said.

‘I thought you were crying,’ he said, coming a little closer. ‘Want a cup of tea and a chat?’

She shook her head and put the window back up. Ellen would have said he was just a kindly trucker. Josie knew he was a dirty bastard hoping for a shag.

Something strange hit her as she went into the services. The lights were suddenly too bright, the noise from the games machines and the piped music were too loud. Everyone seemed to be staring at her.

She ran to the toilets in panic, yet on checking her face in the mirror there didn’t seem to be anything that unusual about her, other than that she was pale and her eyes red-rimmed. But the feeling of oppression wouldn’t leave her, so she bought a cup of coffee to take away, and some cigarettes, then rushed back to the safety of her car.

Back on the road again she became aware she’d have to make some sort of plan. Where was she going, where was she going to stay? Yet she couldn’t seem to get to grips with making a decision. And having felt so strange in the services, she knew she couldn’t face going to a hotel or guest-house.

Weird, disjointed things kept coming into her head as she drove on and on through the rain. She saw Daisy lying on the settee, her red hair tumbling down, vivid against the pale blue material of her dress. One moment she knew it was Daisy, the next she was thinking it was Ellen. She saw her mother’s face too, her lips curled back like a snarling animal’s. Then faces of men from her past came at her as well – Mark, Beetle and a whole procession of others whose names she’d long forgotten.

At one point well past Exeter she was so agitated she pulled up and thought she’d turn round and go home, unable to remember why she’d come this way in the first place. But there was a barrier in the middle of the road, and that seemed to mean she could only go one way.

A red light came on by the speedometer. She looked at it again and again before realizing it was warning her she was low on petrol.

There were no more cars now, just her headlights sweeping out through the rain ahead of her. She began to get the idea she would overtake the lights if she drove too fast, and she slowed right down. But the slower she drove, the more aware she became of the darkness beyond the side windows and behind her. Not a light anywhere, just deep blackness which seemed to be pressing in on her.

When she saw a petrol station up ahead, golden light spilling out across the road, she began to cry again. She didn’t know if it was relief, or fright at having to get out and fill up the tank.

Terror engulfed her as she got out of the car. A man was watching her from behind a glass screen in the kiosk, and her hands were shaking so badly she could barely manage to unlock the petrol cap. The whirring noise of the pump frightened her still more, and the pitch darkness just beyond the oasis of light on the forecourt made her shudder. She glanced around fearfully as the tank filled, and she thought she saw eyes glinting in the darkness. Stuffing the nozzle back into its holder, she leapt back into the car and drove off without paying, the accelerator pressed right down to the floor.

On and on she went, panic making it hard for her to breathe. A sign to Bodmin seemed to have some significance but she couldn’t work out what, and when the odd car came towards her, she swerved, thinking it was going to hit her.

Then suddenly she came out of country lanes into a town with street lighting. With a sharp jolt she recognized it as Truro. The cathedral to her right and the houses on her left were unmistakable, comforting in their familiarity.

‘Going home,’ she muttered. ‘Going home. I’ll be all right when I get there. Just a few more miles.’

But as she turned on to the road to Falmouth and the street lighting ended, her fear came back worse than ever. The road was winding, trees came right overhead like an arch. Her headlights picked out hideous faces on tree trunks, and the rain was falling so fast the wipers weren’t sweeping it away.

Nothing looked familiar now. She came to a huge roundabout she’d never seen before, then another, and thinking she’d taken the wrong turning she went round it again and turned off into what she thought was the road to Maenporth.

It had similar houses for a little way, but they suddenly ended and she was going down a winding hill with high hedges on either side. Yet it didn’t seem right, she thought she ought to be coming to the beach by now. Thirteen years was a long time to be away, but surely she’d know it still even after such a long time?

The road bore round sharply to the right, confirming in her mind that she’d taken the wrong road, but she went on anyway, hoping to come to some lights or a signpost.

Suddenly a village green with white painted cottages all around it was before her. A telephone box stood on the grass, its light glowing yellow in the darkness. Ahead of her across the roof of a low cottage was the sea – although it was not clearly visible, nothing else glistened quite like water.

It wasn’t a place she recognized, and she slowed right down, looking longingly at the telephone box. But whom could she phone for help?

In a flash of lucidity everything suddenly came back to her. Her vanity case on the passenger seat, stuffed with wads of notes and her jewellery. Cases of clothes and shoes in the back seat and the boot. She’d almost certainly killed Daisy, and when they discovered her body, which they would very soon, as her car was still in the car park of Askwith Court, they’d come after her.

Josie was trembling all over, and icy cold even though the heater was on. She stopped the car and leaned on the steering-wheel, trying to think.

Once again she’d been drawn back to Cornwall against her will. It was probably too late to try to get out of the country, besides, she knew she was in no fit state to try an airport or one of the car ferries. Even now the police might be looking for her, by morning they definitely would be. Hotels and guest-houses were out of the question. She was too noticeable with her red hair to remain hidden.

She drove on very slowly round the green and down towards the sea, glancing back at the cottages as she went. Sturdy, well-built old places, with roses round the doors. The kind people dreamed of spending a holiday or their retirement in.

The road bent round sharply to the right, and then again to the left, and all at once she was by an old quay, grassed over now with age and lack of use.

She stopped the car engine and just looked. The tide was high, and when she opened the window she could hear the loud slapping of waves and smell that wonderful salty smell on the wind that she’d missed so much when she first went to London.

There was too much cloud for moon or stars, yet her headlights beamed out on to the black choppy water and it seemed, in some strange way, to be beckoning her. She thought for a moment of all those hundreds of little boats that had put out to sea from there over the last two centuries.

Her mind turned back to Daisy, and how she’d suggested that they made a trip to Cornwall together. She’d refused point-blank, making out she hated everything about the place, but that wasn’t so. It was in her blood and she had always loved it, however hard she tried to fight it.

Thinking of Daisy made her start to cry again. She had really liked her. She was like Ellen without her righteousness, Josie without her weaknesses. A sunny-natured girl who made life richer for everyone whose lives she touched. Josie hadn’t wanted to hurt her.

The game was up now, there was nowhere and no one to run to, she was already growing wet from the rain coming in the window. She looked at the fence around the quay, it was a feeble wire one, broken down completely in parts, and as fate had brought her to this place, it seemed a fitting spot to end it all.

Putting the car into second gear, she revved it up and then let the brake off. The car shot forward over the broken fence and bounced as it hit some ruts. She put her foot right down on the accelerator and felt it sail through the air momentarily as it left the quay wall. A loud splash, then a wall of water engulfed it, cutting the engine and the lights.

The water which had rushed through the window was icy, but she could feel the car still floating and bobbing in the waves. It struck her then that this was not going to be a quick or painless death. But then, after what she’d done, she couldn’t expect that.