Lemonade and Lies (8 page)

“Mum, you’re always telling us to be careful and then you go and break your wrist,” Millie scolded me. But she wasn’t really angry with me. She looked relieved to have us all back together again. We were crowded into my tiny kitchen, about the same size as the hospital room I’d just left. But a whole lot cosier.

“I know. But you know me. Two left feet.”

“That’s impossible.” Tom looked up from the table where he was teaching Alice how to make pancakes (an uphill struggle). “Everybody has one left and one right foot,” he said.

Tom was a logical thinker. Left-brain stuff.

“Fancy falling over the windbreak.” Millie gave me an old fashioned look, and I wondered if she really bought my cover story.

“Yeah. I was too busy watching Aunty Alice make a fool of herself on a surfboard.”

“I heard that! I’ll have you know my surfing technique has been admired in some quarters.”

“Aunty Al?”

“Yeah, Tom?”

“When you marry the surf guy, can I have free lessons?”

Like most kids his age, Tom’s innocence gave him a directness that in adults might have made them social outcasts.

There was a pause. A prickly, uncomfortable silence that I figured Alice was struggling to fill. She didn’t believe in marriage. But how do you explain that to a six year old.

She looked at me, her eyes desperate, hoping I would rescue her. But I was useless right now. My reaction time was slowed down to a crawl by the medication for my broken wrist, not to mention all the other bits that were slowly mending.

There was a commotion at the back door and Alice was saved from any embarrassing explanations about the knotty morality of not having to marry someone you fancied, (simply living with them). She let the
thing
in.

I guess I haven’t mentioned the other difference in our strange household, apart from me with my arm in a cast, Alice being slowly domesticated, and Tom taking a new interest in the mechanics of pancake production.

There are five of us now: Millie, Tom, Alice, me and Rupert. You could have knocked me over with a limp celery stalk when Alice described the scene. The RSPCA inspector tramping into the back garden, pacing out the yardage with her and the kids in tow. Then all of them marching over the road to inspect the park where the beast could be taken for invigorating romps.

Alice, pretending to be me (she has no shame) had explained that, although she had until recently worked at a highly challenging job, she had given this up to do part time work. This would allow her to be at home with the children and any new addition, e.g. a very sparky English Setter.

By some strange quirk, the man found our environment to be ‘within acceptable limits’ and the small parcel of land that passed for a garden, a suitable space for the slobbering beast.

Rupert was a virtuoso in the art of slobber. Not that I had any room to criticise right now, for the medication made my mouth slack and a small trickle of saliva was currently dribbling its way onto my chin.
Hey – I never said I was perfect!

‘Get that bloody great thing away from my pancakes,’ screamed Alice. ‘He’s unhygienic.’

But the frantic instruction hadn’t the slightest effect on Rupert - or Tom. I could hear my son’s laughter as the dog hoovered up the pancake batter, and I found myself joining him (Tom, not the dog) and laughing hysterically. That would be the Diazepam the doctor had prescribed for my short-term anxiety. And it seemed to be working just fine, for I didn’t have an anxious bone in my body.

When I’d been recovering in hospital, some bright spark diagnosed my reluctance to talk about what happened on the cliff top as a ‘withdrawal from reality’. Despite the fact I’d tried hard to remember.

I’d had a visit from the on-call psychiatrist. She seemed a well meaning woman who’d informed me I was experiencing a brief psychotic episode brought on by trauma and stress. She’d explained this quietly and gently, her lips forming the words slowly and deliberately as if talking to someone hard of hearing. Or senile.

She went on to explain her 'non-judgemental policy’ and how we would both 'take the journey back to wellness together'. I’d wanted to slap her. To knock the patronising expression of empathy clean off her understanding, non-judgemental face. But maybe she meant well. I didn’t go to her clinic as she suggested, but didn’t feel bad about it. There were enough people with problems already out there. She’d still be able to make her mortgage payments.

*

I didn’t know how we’d get the dog thing past my stepfather. For Tom refused to budge without Rupert.

“Leave it to me,” my mother had said. “Your father’ll be fine. (She insisted on calling him that, when he obviously wasn’t. My real father was dead.) I’ll plant the idea in his head and let him take the credit for it. Usually works.”

The woman had been doing that most of her life with him. And yet she still sounded cheerful about the whole thing. But then I guess you would be, if you hadn’t seen your grandkids for a while. And didn’t realize the size of the dog that was included in the package.

I hadn’t been specific on the dog-front, and made no comment when my mother sung the praises of poodles and how she’d always wanted one. She’d be fine. She’d be off turning her lemons into lemonade before you could blink.

The journey to Scotland wasn’t great. Long and tedious. We had to change trains twice, and Rupert turned into the Hound of the Baskervilles on station platforms. Alice and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, though. But her suggestion that I should treat the whole train thing as an adventure didn’t help.

I had a broken wrist for God’s sake. The mother of all headaches. Was trying to come off Diazepam. And worried about meeting the old man again. But I suppose if my mother could be optimistic living with someone whose hero was Attila the Hun, then I should at least make an effort to be cheerful.

On the plus side, we were all safe and Viktor Kabak seemed to have vanished. And now my long-suffering boss had arranged a short (paid!) sabbatical stroke sick-leave for me and was holding open the new job. Sometimes, things really do work out. Even when you’re only a reluctant optimist.

*

“There’s more meat on a herring with the back chewed out of it.”

Cheers
! It wasn’t much of a welcome, but I hadn’t expected one from him.

My stepfather had a way with words that made them sound brittle. I didn’t think I looked that bad.

I’ve always been streamline, I’ll give you that, and maybe I’d lost a bit of weight in hospital. But some people might have been sensitive and not mentioned it. Not Harry Webster. He believed in truth at whatever cost, even if it demolished a person’s self esteem. He’d chipped away at mine for years.

Don’t get me wrong, the man was not intentionally cruel. He was a hard worker who believed in strong family values (as long as they were his) but couldn’t show feelings of love or loss.

I’d once called him an emotional cripple - when I was a know-it-all teenager. And I can still remember the awful sound of my mother sobbing long into the night because of my words. I couldn’t take them back. But I’d come to a sort of unspoken agreement with him that we wouldn’t bother each other too much. We sang a different song that was all. I hoped he wouldn’t teach my children his tune. But right now I had no choice but to leave them with him.

We had to stay the night, Alice and I. And in a way I was glad, because it meant that Millie and Tom wouldn’t feel like they’d just been dumped.

Everyone went to bed soon after we arrived, even the bounding hound. But then days were short up here at this time of year, the evenings long and dour. I wondered how my kids would survive the transplant; taken away from friends, a school they were used to. But I suppose the most important thing was that they’d be safe.

Early next morning I persuaded Alice to take a walk with me. It had started to rain and the wind was blowing with the kind of enthusiasm you’d expect on the west coast of Scotland. Bracing. Still, it was better than the stilted conversation at the Webster breakfast table.

“Bloody cold,” said Alice who’d lost the intrepid edge that had carried her through the train journey. The great outdoors wasn’t her natural habitat. And going to look at the revamped harbour in the small fishing village of Maidens, where my parents had decided to spend their retirement, hadn’t been her first choice.

“Always cold up here,” I said. “The old man only retired to this place to prove a point. Thinks he’s a hard man.”

Alice gave me one of her penetrating looks. “You don’t like him much, do you?”

“You reckon?”

“It’s me, remember? This irony thing you’ve got going may work with other people, but I know you. So this bloke wasn’t a perfect father, so what?”

“Perfect? Ha!”

“And maybe he damaged your self image as a kid.”

I couldn’t believe she was doing this. Taking his side. She was supposed to be my friend. I couldn’t answer, for what was there to say. He’d been a critic of everything I’d ever done, ever aspired to. In his eyes I had no worth.

“Did you ever think that maybe the guy’s just not good at the touchy-feely stuff? Maybe he feels things but can’t put them into words. Did he ever hit you?”

“No, ‘course he never bloody hit me. I’d have smacked him one back.”

Alice laughed. “I bet you would.”

“What about your real dad? Maybe you just resent this guy because he took over.”

“Look, can we leave it now?” I put my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to hear it, or think about it.

“That’s adult! While you’re at it, why don’t you hold your breath until you throw up?”

How dare she suggest I was acting like a child. I ran on down to the harbour by myself, the wind whipping at my jacket, rain stinging my face, mingling with the tears. And how could I leave my poor kids in a place so alien to them?

What did it matter that Robert the Bruce had landed here. Or that the local primary school had small teaching groups and took the pupils up to Culzean Castle as part of their history lesson. Or that Millie and Tom could learn to sail and take riding lessons, galloping along miles of sandy beach. None of that meant anything when I thought about how I was leaving the two people who meant most to me in life. Abandoning them to the man who had screwed with my head. And now had the chance to do it to them.
I sank down onto the freezing concrete, my back against the harbour wall, my body shaking with silent sobs. And all at once I understood. It was a kind of mourning; a bereavement. It didn’t matter that I had no choice. I had given my children away.

*

“Where’s Alice?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “She went for a walk.”

“She’d better turn up soon. Father’ll take you into Ayr for the train, but you need to be leaving in about thirty minutes.”

“We can get a taxi. No point in him driving all that way.”

My mother gave me a cynical look. “Up to you. But it’s not that far, is it? Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. And what’s wrong with your face? Your eyes are red.”

“It was windy down by the harbour.”

“Mum, you had a call on your mobile,” shouted Tom, like we were all hard of hearing. That boy never seemed to talk normally. “Mr McDonald says you need to get back to him.”

“Ronald McDonald,” chimed Millie, in a sing-song voice.

“Ronald McDonald? Who’s that dear?” asked my mother. “A friend of yours, is he?”

I ignored Tom’s look of surprise. He may only be six, but I guess he’d already figured out that while he was staying with his grandparents there’d be no more Kids Meals, and that things could be different from now on.

“Okay. So when did Jamie phone?” I fired the question in Tom’s direction. It seemed sensible; he’d taken the call.

“Don’t know. I don’t have a watch, do I? And you won’t get me a mobile,” he whined. Maybe not an ideal choice then.

“Ten minutes ago,” my mother shouted over her shoulder, proving she could still do the multi-tasking bit: clear the breakfast table, make sandwiches, and keep her finger on the household pulse. She’d always been good at that.

“Right.”

Jamie answered immediately. “Thought you’d like to know, we’ve tracked down Kabak. Intel says his cartel partners aren’t happy with him. They’re trying to oust him, so he’s gone back to Scandinavia.”

“Thought you said he was Russian.”

“He is. You’re Northern, but you’re in Scotland.”

“North East.”

“What?”

“I was brought up in the North East.”

“Fair enough. Now about Kabak . . .”

“Yeah. Got it. So that’s it then?”

“Not quite. It changes nothing. Still a live case, so I’ve talked the suits in charge of expenses into letting me take another shot at him.”

“What, in Sweden?”

“Norway. The cartel works out of Oslo, and that’s where that cretin of a husband of yours has gone. God knows why. It won’t be for a social visit to see Viktor Kabak, not when your Bill’s spent the last month trying to get away from the sonofabitch.”