Till We Meet Again (13 page)

Susan had taken her in to get a picnic that first summer and she’d thought it was the most marvellous house she’d ever been in, not a bit creepy as she’d expected. Beautiful polished old furniture, a hall with wood panelling and carved newel posts, a kitchen kept warm by an Aga, and Susan’s mother, plump and jolly, making fairy cakes which she let them eat still hot. Then there was the glorious huge garden. Parts of it were kept almost wild, with flowering shrubs and trees, there was a small pond tucked away, a summer-house, dozens of fruit trees and a lush green lawn that sloped down to the river Avon, flanked by beautiful flower beds.

Beth didn’t see Susan’s grandmother because she was taking a nap, but she saw her friend’s pretty bedroom and her collection of dolls with exquisite clothes made by her mother. There were no dank, gloomy rooms in that house, no hideous old oil paintings or broken furniture. And Susan had a father who worked in an office. Beth never met him either, but she’d seen a photograph of him that day and remembered he was handsome, smiling, and she knew without a doubt that he never hit his wife or children.

During subsequent holidays Susan didn’t ever take her into her house again, but there had never seemed anything odd or sinister about that as there was no real reason to. If it was fine weather they went out on their bikes, if it was wet they hung around the shops in Stratford, or went to the pictures. And as Beth had never had friends home to play with her, it didn’t really occur to her that other children did that. Yet there were, looking back, oblique hints that all was not well. Susan did mention that her granny was a trial, that she made nasty smells and was always breaking things. She always seemed to be mentioning hanging out the washing for her mother too.

Beth could surmise from that now that the old lady was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, that she was incontinent, and that Mrs Wright was run ragged caring for her practically twenty-four hours a day. But she’d known nothing of such things back then, what young girl would unless they’d experienced it in their own family?

Beth wondered now whether Susan didn’t tell her about it because she was ashamed. Or whether she felt she’d said quite enough for Beth to understand, and thought her hard-hearted too because she never commiserated with her.

Likewise, when Mrs Wright had her stroke, Beth didn’t really know what that meant. Susan did relate in her letters that she was partially paralysed, with her speech impaired, but she gave no graphic descriptions as to what the implications in caring for her would be. Besides, Susan seemed only too happy to look after her mother, in one letter she’d joked about it being a good way of getting out of real work.

In Beth’s imagination Mrs Wright was still the smiling, plump woman she’d met, the only difference being that she now sat in a wheelchair and directed Susan to make the cakes and cook the dinner. As Beth’s own home life was so awful, she even envied Susan. She visualized her sitting companionably by the fire with her mother on a cold afternoon, or Susan taking her for a walk in her wheelchair when it was fine.

Of course she knew now that she should have read between the lines of Susan’s letters and realized that the reason she didn’t seem to know anything about rock music or current books and films was because she had no time or opportunity for these things. When Susan apologized for her letters being very short and dull, Beth should have cottoned on that she was over-tired and got no stimulation to write anything jollier.

But at that time Beth was in the sixth form, struggling with her own problems. It was enough for her that in almost every letter Susan kept urging her not to give up her dream of being a lawyer, and reminded her that she was clever enough to sail through all the exams and shine at the end of it. If it hadn’t been for that, Beth might very well have abandoned school where she felt like a pariah, left the home she hated and found some dead-end job.

‘You owe her a lot,’ she muttered to herself, and felt a stab of shame that she’d purposely let their friendship wither and die when she started at university.

Maybe her reasons were sound. Cutting herself off from everyone who knew the old Beth was the only way to create a new one. She remembered how she spent what seemed a huge chunk of her first grant cheque on new clothes – a red velvet maxi-coat, long black boots and a dramatic black hat. It was vital to look sensational, that way she could banish for ever the memory of shabby hand-me-downs, of ridicule from her peers and pity from neighbours. In that outfit she didn’t need Susan to tell her she was clever, she knew she was. No one would dare humiliate a girl who looked that way.

‘It wasn’t the way you looked that did it,’ Beth murmured to herself. She knew now it was the defences she’d built round herself that stopped them. And she would never know what good things she kept out, along with the bad.

Chapter eight

Steven Smythe was very surprised by Susan Fellows when he made his first visit to her the following day.

He knew of course that people in Dowry Square had thought she was a wino, therefore he expected her to look rough, with wild hair and perhaps some teeth missing. Yet the most outstanding thing about Susan Fellows was her very ordinariness: she was the kind of woman Steven would expect to work in a cake shop or a supermarket.

She was in fact an almost exact opposite of Beth in every way, small, dumpy and nervous, and Steven’s first impression was that she was a little dull-witted too. It was hard for him to see how the implacable Beth Powell could have ever struck up a friendship with her.

But no sooner had he got over that surprise than Susan gave him another. She said she was worried she’d upset Beth by dismissing her as her solicitor. Steven was amazed, he wouldn’t have expected someone charged with a double murder to give a jot about anyone else’s feelings. He’d barely got into the interview room at the prison and introduced himself before she launched into an anxious explanation.

‘Don’t worry, you haven’t upset her,’ he replied. ‘She understands your reasons completely, and that’s why she sent me in her place. But she does hope you’ll let her visit you now and again, as a friend.’

Susan clearly hadn’t expected that, for her lower lip trembled and her eyes swam with tears. Steven had read in the police report that she’d showed no emotion on her arrest, so this was a break-through as far as he was concerned. Or else Beth meant far more to her than he’d been led to believe.

‘Is that allowed?’ she asked.

‘Well, we’re from the same law firm. The prison officers have no way of knowing whether or not we are both really working on your case,’ he said with a smile. ‘Beth’s lost a lot of sleep over you. She needs to see you, to know how you are coping. We both hope you will finally come round to agreeing with us how you should plead at your trial.’

‘I don’t see how I can plead anything but guilty. I’ve admitted what I did, there were witnesses,’ she said almost wistfully. ‘Surely it’s all cut and dried?’

Steven heard that note in her voice and was pleased. It was quite common for first offenders to believe they deserved harsh punishment, especially a woman who’d taken another’s life. Yet after a couple of weeks in prison most changed their views, and their pleas.

Steven sensed she was basically a very honest woman. It was in her face, and the way she spoke. After hearing from Beth about the awful room she lived in, he was quite convinced that she’d been through hell since her daughter died. All he had to do was discover exactly what kind of hell.

‘Few things in the legal profession are entirely cut and dried,’ he said. ‘There is always a loophole somewhere, but to look for that I have to know everything about you. Now, why don’t we just talk generally today? I’d like to get to know you at least as well as Beth does.’

Susan’s head jerked up. ‘She doesn’t know me at all. We were only fifteen when we last met in Stratford. We probably didn’t exchange much more than twelve or fourteen letters after that.’

‘Why did you stop writing?’ Steven asked gently. ‘Just grew out of each other? Or was it something else?’

‘Beth went off to university, and I was stuck at home taking care of my mother,’ Susan said with a shrug, as if that explained it enough. She paused, perhaps realizing it didn’t. ‘There were no hard feelings on my part. I must have been a very dull pen pal in the last couple of years. I expect I’d have thought there was something wrong with her if she persisted, with all those student parties, dances to go to, and boyfriends.’

Steven had always been good with female clients. He had been told by some of them that they never noticed they were being questioned, it had just seemed like conversation to them. He hoped he could make Susan feel that way.

‘Because all you had to write about was the cooking and cleaning?’ he asked.

She nodded, then began describing an average day. There was no bitterness in her tone as she explained how her mother needed help with everything – dressing, going to the lavatory and being wheeled around to where she wanted to be. It sounded exhausting, for there wasn’t just the nursing care, but the housekeeping too. ‘I was lucky if I got into bed by twelve at night,’ she finished up. ‘Then Mother often rang for me during the night. I had a struggle to find time to write to Beth, let alone search around for something interesting to tell her.’

‘And you were so young,’ Steven said sympathetically. ‘You must have felt bitter sometimes, everyone else your age doing the whole Sixties bit, whooping it up, the peace revolution, the wild clothes and music, while you were playing Mum to your own mother. How long did this go on for?’

‘Eighteen years,’ Susan said with a sigh. ‘But I wouldn’t say I was bitter, that’s far too strong. I loved Mother and I wanted to take care of her. But there were moments when I questioned the fairness of it. I was standing down the garden watching the river one day,’ she went on with a half-smile. ‘I saw the river as my life going by, with me just stuck there watching. It made me feel so sad. One day, I shortened a skirt, just to look like everyone else then in their minis. Father told me to let it down again. He said it was incongruous for someone taking care of an invalid. I must have been the only girl in the Sixties wearing knee-length skirts.’

‘Was he often like that?’

‘Well yes, I suppose he was.’ She sighed. ‘I think he stopped seeing me as his daughter, or even a real person. I was just the one who looked after him and Mother.’

Gradually Steven got her going, and she began telling him how as the years went by her father began to come home later and later, how she never had Saturdays off as promised, how isolated she was from the real world. Steven was appalled, for he had no doubt that what she’d told him was the truth. He even suspected she was playing down the grimness of it out of loyalty to her mother. It was almost like one of those Victorian melodramas, a young girl locked away from the world for eighteen long years.

‘I would never have wanted Mother to go into a home,’ Susan explained. ‘But I did start to blame Father because he wouldn’t pay for more help. He said he couldn’t afford it, but I knew that wasn’t true, and it hurt to find he wasn’t the generous man I’d always believed he was. He didn’t seem to care either that I was so cut off. Television was my only real link with the outside world, but it was also torture as it showed me everything I was missing. Do you remember Pan’s People who used to dance on
Top of the Pops?’

‘I loved them.’ Steven beamed.

‘So did I, they were so beautiful, so sexy and graceful. But I hated them too because they were everything I wasn’t, they had the whole world at their feet. Whereas I wore slippers all day.’

Steven found that almost unbearably sad, for just the mention of Pan’s People whizzed him back to his student days. He could remember lolling on the floor of the flat he shared, a bottle of beer in one hand, a joint in the other, arguing with his mates about which girl was the most gorgeous.

He tried to imagine what Susan had looked like as a young girl. The image which sprang to mind was of Judith Durham in the New Seekers, singing ‘The Carnival is Over’. Plump, straight hair with a full fringe. Not a beauty perhaps, but wholesome and very warm. The kind of girl he recalled he and his flatmates always fell back on when they wanted a home-cooked meal, a shirt ironed, or someone to mother them a bit.

‘What pop stars did you like?’ he asked.

‘The Beatles, of course.’ She giggled a little and suddenly she looked far younger. ‘I adored David Bowie too, and Marc Bolan. I think I liked them because Father said they were pansies.’

‘I tried to look like Marc Bolan for a while,’ Steven said, laughing at the memory. ‘I had long hair then and I dyed it black. When my father discovered I sometimes put on makeup too, he had a fit.’

Susan laughed for the first time. She had a delightful laugh, like water running over stones.

‘I can’t imagine you dressed like him, you’re too big,’ she said.

‘I don’t think I succeeded in looking like him.’ Steven grinned. ‘I certainly didn’t attract any girls with it either. But tell me, Susan, who did you admire? I don’t mean pop stars, another woman perhaps that you looked up to.’

‘Vanessa Redgrave,’ she said without any hesitation. ‘She was so lovely, and such a good actress, but she used to speak out about the Vietnam War in rallies and things. You wouldn’t think anyone in her position would care.’

‘What about Germaine Greer?’ he asked. ‘I seem to remember she was something of an icon to most young women then.’

What she said was lost on me,’ Susan admitted with a little giggle. ‘I didn’t have a clue about men, and I’d been brought up to believe that women must take the servile role. Even if things had been different, and I’d gone out to work, I don’t think I’d have been the liberated type. I only ever wanted to be a wife and mother.’

‘Just supposing you had been free to go out to work, what would you have liked to have done as a job?’

She laughed again. ‘The possibilities were a bit limited, given that I had no qualifications. But I think I’d have liked to be a gardener.’

‘Really?’ This surprised Steven almost as much as hearing she admired Vanessa Redgrave.

‘If it hadn’t been for the garden back then, I think I would have given in to despair,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘There’s something about tending plants, watching them grow, that’s very healing. Maybe if I hadn’t had to take that squalid room in Clifton Wood, found a place with a garden, I might not have ended up the way I did.’

Steven felt a surge of elation. Was he getting closer to discovering the reason behind Susan’s actions? ‘Why’s that?’ he asked, keeping his tone light.

‘I would have had something else to focus on,’ she said with a shrug. ‘The room was so awful, I had to get out of it. I used to find myself making for that little square by the surgery, day after day. Instead of watching plants grow I was watching those two. It sort of took me over.’

Steven lost the idea that she was dim-witted then and there. It wasn’t a vacant look in her greenish-blue eyes as he’d first thought, but rather that she preferred to live somewhere else in her mind than in the present.

‘Where did you live before that, after you left Ambra Vale?’ he asked.

She winced.

‘Bad memories?’ he said softly, and reached across her desk to take her hand. ‘I’ve got two children, Susan, I can well imagine the hell of losing one.’

‘Everyone says that,’ she said sharply. ‘But it’s something you have to experience to understand. It’s like you are dead too, shot through the heart, but still breathing and walking about. There’s no sunshine any more, all the beauty of nature you used to see all around you, that’s gone too.’

Steven was dismayed when he glanced at his watch to find their time was almost up. He had covered a great deal of ground about Susan’s early home life, and he didn’t want to leave now, just as she was talking about her feelings. But he knew he must because he had another appointment back at the office in half an hour.

‘There’s a great deal more we should talk about, but no time left today,’ he said. ‘I’ll come again at the end of the week. Do you think you could tell me about Annabel’s father then, and where you stayed before Belle Vue?’

‘You want a lot,’ she said, looking at him with cold eyes. ‘I don’t know I can tell you that.’

‘My mother always used to say, “Better to tell it all than let it fester inside.” I didn’t know what she meant by that when I was a boy,’ Steven said. ‘I do now.’

‘My mother used to say, “Least said, soonest mended,” ’ Susan retorted. ‘That makes a lot more sense to me.’

‘I think that expression refers to things said in the heat of the moment,’ he said reprovingly. ‘What I meant is quite different. Think about it, Susan, maybe try writing some of it down. Then I’ll see you again on Friday.’

‘Is Beth a talker?’ she said unexpectedly, just as he was getting up to leave.

‘No, she isn’t,’ Steven admitted. ‘We’ve worked in the same office for a year now, and I still know nothing about her. Was she a talker when you knew her?’

‘Yes and no,’ Susan said thoughtfully. ‘She didn’t talk about her family much, but she could chat non-stop about anything else.’

‘Why did you ask me that?’ Steven said.

Susan blushed. ‘I don’t know exactly. I suppose it’s just the same as you wanting to know all about me, so you can understand why I killed. I always thought if I was ever to meet Beth again she’d be sort of larger than life, dynamic, full of bounce. But she isn’t like that, she seems sad to me. I just wondered why. She’s not married either, is she? Has she been?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘But if I find out I’ll tell you. Only it will have to remain a secret between us,’ he added, tapping his nose and winking at her.

Susan laughed again, perhaps more at the silly face he was pulling than at what he’d said. ‘You’re all right, Mr Smythe,’ she said. ‘Thank Beth for me for sending you.’

As Steven drove back into Bristol it was Susan’s remark about Beth he was thinking about, as much as anything she’d said about herself. It was a little ridiculous to consider seriously a judgement on someone’s character made by a person who had known her thirty years ago, but Susan struck him more and more as thoughtful and astute.

Beth had intrigued him right from the first day she had arrived in the office. His first sighting of her was as she bent over to unpack a box of books in her office, with her back to him. She was wearing a plum-coloured suit with a slim, long skirt which had a split at the back. He remembered curbing the desire to give her a wolf-whistle, for the combination of her curly black hair against the red of her suit, and her long, shapely legs in sheer black tights, was very sexy.

Instead he introduced himself and offered to help her with the books. She straightened up, looked him up and down and said something about how she needed to do it herself so she would know exactly where each book was. Dramatic was the only word that summed up how she looked. In high heels she was as tall as himself, and her face with her pale ivory skin, wide mouth and rather cold eyes appeared almost ghostly framed by the mane of black hair. She was not a beautiful woman by any means, but alluring in the manner of old silent-movie film stars.