The Corner House (43 page)

‘No.’

He rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘And I never married.’

‘Neither did I.’

The ensuing silence was acutely painful. Stephen sought a change of subject. ‘What’s wrong with Eva?’ he asked. ‘Hasn’t she done a good enough job?’

Theresa nibbled at the edge of an anaemic-looking biscuit. All her life, she had been answerable. Firstly, her father had ruled her life. Michael Nolan, a monstrous bigot, had chased all his children, had forced them into early marriages. Theresa, deeply wounded by the rapists, had been cast off. Eva Harris had helped her and had helped herself to Jessica’s twin sister. Again, Theresa had enjoyed no say, no control.

‘Theresa?’

Everyone was answerable, she supposed. To bosses, to families, to God. She knew people with lives worse than her own had been. With unwelcome but familiar suddenness, her skin began to crawl. The second rein on her had been held by Betteridge, Hardman and Chorlton, who still sounded like a firm of solicitors. ‘I should have sued them at the time, should have got the police in.’

‘Yes, you should.’

She scarcely heard the man who had been another jailer, wished he would go away. Deadened senses were coming to life in his presence. She had always wanted love, to be loved for herself and in spite of herself. This doctor had loved her instinctively,
unconditionally. His soft, gentle eyes were clouding her own vision. ‘I saved most of my wages,’ she told him now. ‘For Jessica. Maggie will take care of her, you’ll see. I’ll probably die young, not of TB, but because of the rheumatic fever.’

His hand crept over the tablecloth and enclosed her fingers. Startled, she stiffened, then felt the ice thawing in her veins. Warmth crept along her arm and into her chest. This was a mess. She had no room for complications, no time for dalliance. How could one town contain such a man alongside slime like the other three? ‘Do you still dream of your brother?’ she asked. Her breath, already shortened by disease, contracted even further. He was so wonderful, so kind.

‘Sometimes,’ he answered. ‘And I dream about you, too. Like my twin, you were becoming a mere shadow.’

‘I’m still a shadow.’

‘Very thin,’ he agreed.

It was as if she had been given a pill, a sedative of some kind. Her body, unused to total relaxation, threatened to keel over. Was he a healer as well as a doctor? Could he make her well?

‘Spit it out,’ he said.

‘For analysis, doctor? Or are you trying to relieve me of this horrible coffee?’ His presence illuminated their table, trimming the hem off a dark brown day. No-one else existed. Drinnan’s drifted off into a mist. The two of them were no longer restricted by mere masonry.

‘Tell me,’ he asked again.

Barriers between them had slipped off quietly, had gone the same way as the ice-cream bar’s walls. ‘It’s too awful, especially for you.’

Stephen fought the urge to catch her up in his arms and remove her from an unkind world, to take her somewhere else, somewhere clean and fresh. The Alps. He could get work there among richer consumptives. A month. She had asked for a month.

‘I lost someone, Stephen.’

He swallowed hard. ‘A lover?’

‘No. A long, long time ago. Someone was stolen from me.’

‘Ah.’ He waited. ‘Go on.’

Theresa went on. ‘After the attack, when I knew I was pregnant, I wanted to die there and then. Eva saved me, took me in, found me somewhere to stay. She blackmailed my house out of Maurice the Mole, Roy Chorlton’s father. Eva and the Walsh brothers – they’re fishmongers – got money out of the three families. I was grateful.’

He watched her as she remembered the gratitude, but he dared not speak. He feared that she might bolt like a frightened filly if he interrupted.

‘My Jessica and Liz Walsh’s baby were born on the same night. Eva was the midwife in both cases.’ Theresa clung to his hand, her lifeline. ‘Liz’s child died. It was a little girl, small enough to be buried in a shoe box.’ She placed her other hand on top of Stephen’s, making sure that contact would continue while she spoke. ‘During labour, I fainted a couple of times. I know now that I gave birth to identical twin girls. One was removed and swapped for a shoe box.’

His mouth opened, but the words took their time. ‘By Eva?’

Theresa nodded.

‘Good grief.’ He shook his head slowly, as if kicking his brain into a gear that could accept such news.

‘She never told me, Stephen. In all these years, she has said not one word.’ The fear was gone, while the anger was damped down past embers, almost to a heap of warm ashes. ‘I think Eva persuaded the Walshes to move to Liverpool. Danny, he’s the older brother, keeps the Bolton end of their business going, with his wife to help him. Well, I suppose Eva got a real shock when I, too, ran off to Liverpool. She visited me, brought Jessica with her.’

‘And kept your secret—’

‘She kept her own secret, too,’ said Theresa softly. ‘Guarded it so well. Then I saw Jessica on Bold Street in Liverpool. Except it wasn’t Jessica. It was Katherine Walsh, daughter of Bernard and Liz.’

‘What did you do?’

Theresa smiled sadly. ‘What could I do? I’ve not been much of a mother. I’ve concentrated on Jessica’s future, on her adulthood. I think I distanced myself so that she would not get too reliant on a mother who is guaranteed to die young. But now, after the deception, I’ve decided to take Jessica away from Eva. Perhaps it’s a form of revenge, because I’ve been very angry. As for Katherine – well, I made sure I met her. We spent about twenty minutes together in a café in Waterloo. Bernard Walsh must have been scared to death in case I spoke up. I didn’t, of course. Katherine has a proper family, parents who will look after her.’

Stephen Blake found himself trembling. ‘But they’re sisters,’ he said. ‘Twins, from the one egg. They knew each other long before they were born.’

Theresa lowered her head. ‘I realize that. Jessica had an invisible friend called Lucy. When I talked to Bernard Walsh, I found out that the girls have even
shared symptoms. Just one was ill, but the other felt the same pain.’

‘It happens, believe me.’

‘I need no convincing.’

His other hand came up to join hers on the table. He held tight to Theresa’s fingers as he spoke. ‘They must be told some time,’ he insisted.

‘Yes.’

‘Did Mrs Walsh not offer to take Jessica, too?’

Theresa shook her head. ‘She didn’t accept that her baby had died. According to Bernard, she shut herself down, lost her reason for a few hours. Liz Walsh is one hundred per cent sure that Katherine is her own, that Katherine has no twin sister. I can’t tell her. I can’t do it, Stephen.’

‘God.’

‘Exactly.’ Theresa allowed her eyes to close. ‘My heart is such a mess, too. I need treatment to buy more time. I look into the future and I see Jessica alone. While she’s a child, people will rally round, I know. But when she’s grown and in her twenties, she’ll have no blood basis, no relatives who want her. Except for my sister, who’s as mad as a hatter. And my daughter shouldn’t be alone, because she has the closest tie possible, a twin.’

This was a good woman. She had worked herself near to death to provide for her daughter, had deliberately chosen not to interfere when meeting the other girl. ‘You’ve done your best,’ he told her. ‘In the circumstances, you have acted like a saint.’

Her eyes flew open. Saints did not carry guns in their handbags and hatred in their souls. ‘I made my decision and details are with a lawyer,’ she said. ‘While talking to a solicitor about buying a house, I shall be making my will with regard to the care of
Jessica and so forth. As for the two girls, I decided that twenty-four was about the right age, not too young, not too old. Whether Liz likes it or not, my twins will have each other.’

‘And Eva?’

Theresa lifted a shoulder. ‘I’ll forgive in time. And, of course, she may have to sign documents in front of witnesses, just to prove to the two girls that they are related. There’ll be no case for Eva to answer, no kidnapping charge or whatever, because that would damage Katherine and the Walshes. Eva knows what’s coming – I’ve seen it in her eyes. As for me, I just want everything written down tidily for the future.’

He blinked a couple of times. Having found her, he could not bear to imagine being separated from her again. She must not die, not yet. ‘I’ve loved you for years,’ he declared bravely.

Taken aback by this out-of-context statement, Theresa told the whole truth. ‘I think I began to love you, too. It was frightening. I’ve no idea how to love a man.’ She almost laughed at him. ‘You’ve gone very red.’

He could not lose her. Even if her life was going to be short, he would be a part of it. ‘When do you move?’

‘In three weeks.’

‘And then?’

She sighed. In three weeks, it would all be over. A smoking gun, emptied of bullets, a sick woman running to this doctor for protection. Could he be her alibi? No, he was too straight for that and, anyway, she must not abuse him. ‘I’ll come to see you.’

They disentangled their hands and ordered more
coffee, this time made with water. Over the more palatable brew, they talked about all kinds of things, about Jessica’s schooling, about the sanatorium and new, exciting drugs which might just promise a speedier cure for TB. He boasted about his car, a second-hand item with no sense of decorum; described his house in the country, his washing machine with automatic mangle which actually ate clothes. ‘I’m down to five socks,’ he grumbled amiably. ‘Thank God they’re all black. I change one each day.’

She believed him. With her face beginning to glow, Theresa drew a word-picture of the old sailors in Jutland House. ‘They treat a game of draughts like war. Dominoes can be fatal, and we put away the dartboard for obvious reasons.’

Stephen laughed, then glanced at his watch. He had to be back on duty within the hour. ‘Promise me you won’t disappear again.’

‘I promise.’

‘May I see you again in a few days? Nothing strenuous, just another coffee with a slice of toast.’

Theresa placed a hand to her brow in the classic pose of a ham actor. ‘Oh sir,’ she sighed. ‘I do not think I have the strength for toast.’

He mumbled something deep in his throat.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’ She didn’t miss a trick. He would have to tread softly, because he was about to tread on her nightmares. From which poet had he bastardized that thought? ‘Don’t give up hope,’ he advised her. Tomorrow, he would ask for extended leave. If refused, he would give notice. By fair means or foul, Stephen Blake would drag Theresa Nolan to Switzerland.

The table was laid. Maggie, who had had enough of Ruth McManus’s company, had accepted Eva’s invitation with alacrity. ‘She keeps giving me these evil looks,’ Maggie told Eva and Jimmy. ‘If I take Jessica up to my room for a little talk, she follows us and gives me an extra evil look.’

‘Aye,’ replied Eva Coates. ‘One of them looks could fell a rhinoceros from forty paces. I don’t know what gets into her, I really don’t.’

‘She’s insane,’ opined Maggie loftily. ‘A few slices short of the full loaf. Do you know, she watches me while I’m asleep. It does me no good waking up with her leaning over me. And that daughter of hers is another one, sneaking up behind me in the yard, telling me to be careful in case her mam goes strange. Goes strange? She’s gone there quick smart already on the express train – and no return ticket. I can’t wait to get out of that place.’

Jimmy rattled the
Bolton Evening News
into shape in order to pursue his new hobby. Each night, he read the obituaries, sometimes aloud and with feeling. ‘He only does it to prove he’s still alive,’ Eva was often heard to say. Several years older than his wife, Jimmy considered that surviving TB was his greatest achievement.

Jessica came in. ‘Is Mam not back yet?’

‘No,’ chorused the two women.

Behind his newspaper and still at the births column, Jimmy kept quiet. Apart, Maggie and Eva were both manageable – he even enjoyed sensible conversations with one or the other. Together, they were a force with which he would not care to contend. So he read the announcements columns instead.

‘Do you think she’ll be in soon?’ asked Jessica.

‘Yes.’ Once again, the voices were united. Jimmy
reached the deaths. It occurred to him that Maggie and Eva were like a ventriloquist’s act – one opened her mouth, and the same sound came from the other.

Jessica flitted about for a few seconds, smiling tentatively when Eva caught her eye. Eva understood the reason behind Jessica’s nervousness. How many times had Eva herself come close to pointing Dr Stephen Blake in the direction of Liverpool? Jessica had not betrayed her mother – she had simply tried to get Theresa to face the fact that she needed treatment.

‘Harry Bowker’s gone,’ said the voice behind the news.

‘Shut up,’ ordered the female duo.

‘Died in his sleep.’

‘So will you if you’re not careful.’

Satisfied that his wife had regained the ability to speak solo, Jimmy carried on reading.

Eva placed the bread board on the table and crowned it with a nicely browned cottage loaf. Jessica was still twitching like a marionette. Jimmy was in his rightful place behind the
Evening News
, while Maggie employed her hands with a bit of knitting. Eva had tried so hard, but had failed to dislike Maggie Courtney. When Theresa’s new household came into being, Maggie was going to be a part of it. Eva would lose Jessica, who had become a daughter – perhaps a granddaughter. But it had only been a matter of time. Theresa had, at last, found out about the other twin, and had taken umbrage.

‘Are you all right there, Eva?’ asked Maggie. Her heart bled for this poor soul. The Irishwoman had asked herself time after time what she might have done in the circumstances. But she could not discuss
any part of Theresa’s past, because the past belonged to those who had created it.

‘I’ll live,’ replied Eva.

Jessica’s eyes were fixed on the door, her ears alert for the sound of footsteps in the lobby.

Jimmy’s newspaper shivered. ‘He were nobbut sixty-two—’

‘Shut up,’ yelled Eva.