Rock a Bye Baby (38 page)

Rita Taylor was stretched out on the sofa eating chocolates, eyes glued on the television. All around her drawers and cupboards hung open. Items of clothing had been flung over the back of the sofa; more items were scattered over the floor. This included chunks of orange, red and blue glass – modern chunky vases bought by her father at extortionate prices. Some of the glass was in pieces having been smashed against a wall.

Rita didn’t move when she heard the front door slam.

‘I’m home!’

Her father’s cheery disposition evaporated on seeing the state of the room.

‘What the fuck …! What’s this?’

‘Coronation Street.’

‘I don’t mean that! I mean this!’

Alan Taylor was standing in the middle of something resembling a war zone.

Rita shifted herself and chose another chocolate. ‘She’s gone.’

‘Then good riddance to the old tart. But why my
Whitefriars! What the fuck did she do that for?’ His voice broke with emotion as he stared down at the chunks of heavy glass. They looked like coloured ice in a sea of blue and orange Wilton carpet.

‘Because she couldn’t find a mirror to break and leave you with seven years bad luck,’ said Rita once she’d swallowed most of the chocolate she was eating. Not once did her attention stray from Elsie Tanner who was presently coming on strong to Len Fairclough.

Alan picked up the biggest chunks of glass. He regarded the jagged edges and the multi-coloured shards scattered all around. There was no chance they could be mended. They were finished – just like him and Stephanie.

‘After all I did for her …’ he muttered.

‘Never mind. At least you won’t have to worry about a divorce,’ remarked Rita.

He scratched his head and nodded. That much was true. It wasn’t common knowledge but he’d never married Stephanie despite her pleading. Still, it definitely had its advantages. Not having been married in the first place also meant he didn’t have to pay maintenance.

‘I suppose she ran off with another bloke.’

Rita filled him in on the details. ‘Someone she met at the club years ago.’

‘Really?’

He couldn’t help sounding shocked. What surprised him the most was that he hadn’t had a clue that she was leaving. The bitch!

‘Well, I suppose it’s good riddance then.’ He leaned over the back of the sofa and gave his daughter’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘You’re beyond the age of needing a mother anyway.’

‘Too right.’

‘I take it this is a good programme,’ he said, nodding at the screen.

‘Great.’

‘You’re not going out tonight?’

Rita loved this new drama series and her father’s interruptions were beginning to get on her nerves. ‘Look, Dad. I’m having second thoughts about being a mod. I have to think things through.’

Alan grinned. ‘You mean the bloke you currently fancy is a long-haired git wearing a leather jacket and riding a motorbike. Right?’

The credits were rolling.
Coronation Street
had finished, Elsie was considering her options with Ken and her son was in some kind of trouble – as usual. Rita would watch what happened next week. Her eyes were shining with excitement when she turned round to face her father.

‘I’m back with Pete. It was off with him and now it’s on again. We met up again the other week and, well, one thing led to another. And guess what he
told me? His mate, Johnnie, the bloke Marcie was sweet on, has been killed. So where’s Marcie? Her family said she’d gone off to live with him and his parents until they got married. But guess what?’

‘You keep me guessing a lot,’ said her father. This was the first news he’d had about Marcie for ages. But he was patient. He left his daughter to tell him at her own pace.

‘Pete and the boys went to the funeral. And guess what?’

‘Not another guess!’

‘His dad was a vicar!’

‘Is that so?’

‘St Luke’s, Pimlico. That’s where Pete told me he lived, though he’d always played it down. Johnnie didn’t like people knowing that his dad was a vicar.’

Rita carried on talking about Pete and how wonderful it was to make up and how they’d talked about getting engaged, and married, and having their own house …

Alan wasn’t listening. In his head, he was making further enquiries, diving into his car and heading for London, more specifically, St Luke’s, Pimlico.

Rosa Brooks had made the mistake of buying a sketch pad and a box of poster paints for Garth. Since then he’d made a habit of setting himself up on her kitchen table. While she cooked and cleaned, he drew and painted to his heart’s desire.

‘Some of my pictures are stories,’ he told her, ‘and some are for real.’

He did her one of vegetables growing in the garden. The detail was quite explicit – the vegetables were growing in the exact same place as where the shed now sat. She pointed that out to him.

‘Yes, but this is how they would have looked like if we had planted them.’

Rosa frowned. ‘We?’

Garth nodded. ‘Tony was digging there, it was raining and dark and I had nowhere else to go.’

Rosa nodded gravely. Garth’s mother was famous for turning him out when the occasion demanded. There was no room for a backward son at one of Edith Davies’s liquor parties.

‘I helped him,’ he said, as he gravely outlined his hand with a blue-tipped paintbrush.

‘He asked you to help him,’ Rosa stated.

Garth shook his head. The tip of his tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth.

‘He didn’t seem to see me. And then the other man came.’

‘Other man?’

‘The one who came to the pictures with me and Marcie.’

Rosa knew he meant Alan Taylor. Garth was a sweet soul but it wasn’t wise to accept all he said as gospel truth. She had to confront her son. She had to know what he’d been doing that night and why Alan Taylor had turned up.

‘I hid,’ said Garth.

‘The other man did not see you?’

Garth shook his head.

And my own son was too drunk to realise that someone had been helping him dig.

The next question was the most difficult to ask.

‘Was my son burying something in the hole you were digging?’

‘A sack.’

‘A sack?’ Her old heart doubled its beat.
Holy Mother of God, give me more time. I promise I won’t protest when the time comes. But not now. Please not now!

‘A sack of something.’

Marcie had disobeyed the rule that baby must lie outside the main entrance in her pram in all winds and weathers. She’d been promised to a bank manager and his wife. They were unable to have any more children and required a companion for their three-year-old boy.

‘As though Joanna is a puppy,’ she’d said contemptuously.

The papers were being drawn up. It had been pointed out to her that she was under age and thus an adult would have to sign for her. Miss Turnbull offered her services.

Marcie had fled the oppressing brown décor of the old dragon’s office and gone out into the fresh air. On the way she grabbed Joanna from her pram and ran with her to the seat beneath the tree.

Again and again she had wished for a miracle, waking in the middle of the night, fear lying like a damp blanket against her skin. Miracles were the only option she had left.

The summer was cool, but she didn’t care. Well wrapped up, mother and baby remained sitting on the wrought-iron seat beneath the oak tree. She was running her fingertips over Joanna’s soft cranium when she sensed a shift in the state of things.

For a brief moment the sun warmed her face, then was gone again.

‘Hello, Marcie.’

For a split second she could barely breathe. She looked up and there he was. Alan Taylor!

The colour drained from her face. ‘What are you doing here?’

Nothing had changed. She saw the same old cockiness as he sat down beside her.

He reached out and touched the baby’s fingers.

‘Boy or girl?’

‘Girl.’

The sound of her own voice seemed far away. Joanna’s tiny hand had slipped out of her mitten. Very gently, Alan pushed it back in again. Joanna reacted, her hand curling around Alan’s thumb.

He looked up at her suddenly.

‘I suppose you’re wondering how I found you.’

Dumbstruck, she only managed to nod her head and say, ‘Yes.’

‘Our Rita’s become a rocker again. She’s back with that Pete. He told her that Johnnie had got killed on his bike and that the service had been at his old man’s church. So I went to the vicarage. Told him I was your dad and was worried about you.’

Alan’s fair hair was slicked well back from his face. ‘And before you ask, no I didn’t tell your dad that I was coming here. I wanted to come alone.’ He looked down at the baby. ‘I wanted to see my kid.’

‘She’s not yours!’ she snapped, cuddling Joanna more tightly.

He eyed her searchingly. ‘You don’t know that for sure.’

The way he looked at her brought back her horror on discovering what he’d done. He saw that look and blushed like a girl.

‘I’m sorry. I was well out of order. But I’d been drinking …’ He rubbed at his eyes and all over his face. ‘I was crazy for you.’

‘Just as you were for my mother?’

The remark took him by surprise. Alan Taylor always had an answer for everything, but on this occasion he looked lost for words. At last he seemed to snap awake. He shook his head.

‘She told me to get lost. But instead, she was the one who got lost.’

Marcie was instantly alert to whatever information he was about to give. ‘Where did she go?’

He shook his head again. ‘Sorry, love. I don’t know. Truly I don’t.’

‘Did she go off with somebody?’

He seemed to think about this for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he passed the palm of his hand over his chin.

To Marcie it seemed like an hour before he answered, though it was only minutes.

‘I can’t see it myself. There had to be something, but … hey … what do I know?’

Then came the most terrible question of all, the
one that had been haunting her so vigorously of late.

‘Did my father kill her? Is she buried beneath the shed?’

His look was penetrating. His jaw moved from side to side as though he were chewing something.

‘Look. There’s something else I want to talk to you about. Steph’s buggered off. I can give you and the kid a home. Me and Steph were never married so I’m free to do what I like. Marry me and we’re a family. What do you say?’

Her jaw dropped. This was the man who had got her drunk and then raped her. Before she could answer, he voiced the main advantage, the one she could not easily ignore.

‘Joanna wouldn’t have to go for adoption.’

‘She doesn’t have to! I could raise her by myself.’ All the advice she’d received had told her such a thing wouldn’t be wise, but deep down a small niggle kept telling her otherwise.

His eyes fixed on hers as he shook his head slowly. ‘You’d be an unmarried mother. Nobody would want to give you a job. Nobody would want to rent you a flat.’

‘I could go home – back to Sheerness.’

‘And embarrass your family? I don’t know your gran that well, but I do know she’s old school. You get married before you sleep together and not the other way round. And as for your dad—’

‘How is he?’

‘He’s fine.’

Sensing he was on a winning streak, Alan carried on with a list of reasons why she should marry him.

‘The gossips would still have field day,’ she pointed out.

‘But not for long. Girls who get into trouble are forgiven once they’ve got a ring on their finger and a husband at their side. Think about it.’

She did think about it and realised he was right. Girls who got into trouble and gave birth to bastards were never allowed to forget the fact. If they married, even after the event, the past was put behind them.

Marcie looked down into her baby’s sweet face. Joanna yawned and clenched her fists – as though she wants to take on the world, Marcie thought. Getting involved with the man who had attacked her was the last thing she wanted to do. The whole thought of Alan touching her again made her feel ill. And yet, even in the few days she had known her baby daughter, she knew there wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do in order to keep her safe – and close. Was she willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of Joanna? Of course she was.

The thing is I want to be there when she does take on the world, she thought. I want to see her take her first steps and go out on her first date. ‘I want to watch her growing up,’ she said at last, voicing her feelings.

Alan spread his hands and shrugged. ‘There you are then.’

A sudden thought came to her. ‘They’re signing the papers today; or rather Miss Turnbull is signing on my behalf.’

Alan got to his feet. ‘Is she now? They like their paperwork, don’t they. I had to give them your dad’s name and my address before they even let me in the door. Well, we’d better go and sort things out then, hadn’t we.’

Miss Turnbull was not amused. She met them just inside the front door. Alan wasted no time telling her exactly what was going to happen. He turned to Marcie. ‘Give me the baby and get your things.’

Miss Turnbull’s face turned from slightly pink to deep puce as Marcie handed Joanna over to Alan and dashed for the stairs.

Up in the small room she’d shared with Sally and Allegra, she threw everything into her old battered case. Before dashing back downstairs she paused to consider more fully what she was doing. Alan had taken advantage of her when she’d been at her most vulnerable. She wouldn’t be doing what she was doing at all except for one thing – or rather one person. Joanna

She dashed back downstairs.

‘But everything is arranged!’

Miss Turnbull sounded as though she were fit to burst. Her angry voice had set Joanna crying.

‘Then UNARRANGE them,’ Alan said.

He handed the baby back to Marcie.

‘Look,’ said Miss Turnbull, waving the adoption papers in front of his face. ‘These have been long and laboriously filled in, and they’re in triplicate. Think carefully about what you’re doing.’

‘I know damn well that paper can be ripped to bits if need be.’