Two Women (63 page)

Colin was quiet. Standing up he walked to the window and looked out across the Thames.

‘This is some view, isn’t it?’

Geraldine didn’t answer him, she knew he wasn’t expecting an answer. He was trying to sort it all out in his own head. He was quiet for some minutes.

‘If Susan has kept it to herself this long, sat in prison knowing all this, she’s never going to admit it publicly. You realise that, Geraldine, don’t you?’

She sipped her wine and let what he had said sink in. Still she didn’t answer him. He turned from the window and stared at her.

‘Why didn’t Roselle tell me any of this? Why did she decide to tell you and not me?’

Geraldine shrugged. It was a very feminine, very graceful action. But it was lost on Colin. He was angry, hurt and humiliated.

‘Couldn’t trust a mere man, is that it? We’re all the same, are we? To the Geraldines and the Roselles of this world. Shitbags the lot of us. Is that it?’

He was looking at her now and she stared calmly back at him.

‘You’d really have to ask her that. I don’t know why she decided to tell me and not you. Maybe because it was easier to tell another woman about a friend’s private and personal business. Maybe because I had a better, plusher, more expensive office. I really don’t know. All I do know is we have to help Susan Dalston in any way we can. Even if that means getting her out some other way.’

Colin was nonplussed, not sure he had heard her correctly.

‘What are you talking about?’

Geraldine sighed and refilled their glasses.

‘What I mean, young man, is maybe we have to keep Susan’s secret and work on another way of getting her home with her kids where she belongs.’

He stared at her in amazement.

‘You cannot be serious!’

Geraldine laughed.

‘You sound just like that mad American tennis player. Listen to me, Colin. If that woman has sat it out for over two years to try and protect her child then she deserves to be helped in any way we can. I have Matilda Enderby on my client list, I have all the feminist organisations behind her, she’s as good as out. Yet I know in here,’ she punched her chest forcefully, ‘that she killed her husband and probably enjoyed doing it.

‘You know we tread a fine line daily. Even if people are guilty it’s our job to give them the
best
representation we can. No matter what a client has done. Even paedophiles are granted the best legal representation. Surely someone like Susan Dalston is as entitled as Matty Enderby or a child molester to be helped? I am commonly supposed to have one of the best legal minds in the profession. My name alone will ensure she gets a fair hearing. You know that’s true.

‘I am my father’s daughter - Terence O’Hara, the legal eagle of his day. I want to help Susan Dalston and I’d do it for nothing if I had to. Just once I want someone I know is a good person, whom I know does not deserve to be locked up, to walk free. It would make me feel that for once in my whole miserable, worthless life I really did make a difference.’

Colin stared at her as if he had never seen her before. The force of her words alone was enough to persuade him she was right. He sat beside her and smiled gently.

‘I never knew you had a miserable life.’

He looked around the expensive apartment. His eyes took in the bareness of the walls and surfaces. Not a photo, not a knickknack, nothing. It was completely devoid of anything that said Geraldine lived there. It was almost clinical.

In her eyes he saw loneliness and hurt. It grieved him.

‘So we’re in this together then?’

Her voice was small.

He smiled sadly, a lop-sided grin that made him look very handsome and very young.

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’

 

Debbie walked into the hospital room. Holding before her a carrier bag full of sweets and drinks, she smiled nervously at her niece.

‘Hello, love, how are you feeling?’

Wendy was so astounded to see her Aunt Debbie that she started to cry and laugh at the same time.

‘I thought it was me mum for a second. Come and sit down, it’s lovely to see you, really it is.’

They were the right words. Debbie walked in and sat on a chair by the bed. She hadn’t seen Wendy for two years and the change in her was remarkable. The girl looked almost a woman now with that thick hair inherited from her father and the big chest that was Susan all over again.

‘You’ve grown, I can see that.’

Wendy nodded. Her aunt looked terrible. Aunt Debbie who had always been the arbiter of fashion looked old and tired. She wore no make up and her hair was lank. Her clothes were too tight but nondescript. Her appearance made Wendy sad. She didn’t know why.

Debbie saw the appraisal and smiled.

‘I had a long journey, love. So, how are the kids then?’

‘They’ll be here in a minute. Miss Beacham, the social worker, is bringing them. She’s ever so nice, Debbie. We’re seeing as much as we can of Rosie before she goes, I suppose.’

The desolation in the girl’s voice brought a lump to Debbie’s throat.

‘I had a lovely letter from your mum, love. She asked me to keep an eye out for you like.’

Wendy sat up properly in bed.

‘I have to see a psychiatrist apparently. Tell them why I tried to top meself. Like this situation doesn’t say it all! Still, at least I can go back to the home soon. I wish I hadn’t done it, Debbie, I really do. I caused me mum so much grief and stuck in nick there was nothing she could do, was there? I just worried the life out of her.’

Debbie saw a girl who was half child and half woman and it hurt to know that she herself had not tried to help the children at all since Susan had gone.

‘How’s Uncle Jamesie?’

The question was asked merely out of politeness and it showed.

Debbie smiled.

‘The same as usual, love. He’ll never change all the time he’s got a hole in his arse.’

The way she said it made them both laugh, though neither of them knew why they were laughing so hard.

‘How’s me nan and granddad?’

‘The same. They’re still a
pair
of arseholes.’

They laughed uproariously again and Miss Beacham heard the laughter and was pleased as she walked the children down the ward.

If Wendy could laugh like that she had to be over the worst.

Barry and Alana walked in with Rosie between them. She looked lovely in a little yellow dress and shoes with a large hat to match, courtesy of the kindly Simpsons. She ran to the bed. Putting up her chubby arms, she immediately wanted to sit on Debbie’s lap.

Debbie lifted up the beautiful child and smiled at her. Rosie smiled back happily and, pointing to the window, said loudly, ‘Garden. Doggie.’

They could hear a dog barking in the distance and all laughed with her. At three she was slow speaking but had picked up more words over the last few weeks.

Barry, spying the sweets, said jauntily, ‘Shall I put all this away in your dresser for you?’

He had already opened the carrier bag and was sorting through the booty.

Alana smiled at her aunt nervously. Debbie smiled back. Miss Beacham stood and watched until Wendy, remembering her manners, introduced them.

‘This is me mum’s sister, me Aunt Debbie. This is Miss Beacham, our social worker.’

The two women nodded at one another.

Debbie felt so out of place she went quiet. It was guilt, the guilt of knowing that while she had been wasting time trying to hold on to a man who was no good and never would be, these four children, her own flesh and blood, had been trying to come to terms not just with the loss of their father but also their mother.

‘Ain’t it lovely down here, Auntie Debbie? We’re going to the sea front later. Miss Beacham promised.’

Barry’s voice told everyone, especially Miss Beacham, that he was going whatever anyone else thought.

‘Why don’t you join us, Debbie? I’m sure the kids would like that.’

Alana didn’t look too sure but little Rosie had taken a shine to her auntie and was grinning all over her face as if she understood what they were saying.

Debbie didn’t answer, but she smiled and that was an acceptance.

Later, as she watched the kids playing around together, enjoying each other’s company, as she saw the deep affection they held for one another, Debbie envied Susan what she had achieved against all the odds.

She had produced four beautiful loving kids who still worshipped the ground she walked on. Even though she was away from them, had been away from them for so long. If nothing else the visit had certainly put her own life into perspective.

 

‘You all right, Matty?’

‘If you ask me that once more I’ll go mad,’ she snapped.

Susan shrugged. ‘Well, you look ill, girl. Depressed. I’m just worried about you, that’s all.’

Matty stood up. Pushing Susan down into a chair she took over tidying her hair. As she expertly fashioned it into a neat French pleat, she said sadly, ‘Sometimes, Susan, the past catches up with you and you can’t be bothered to fight it any more. No, I’ll rephrase that. You’re not in a position to fight it any more.’

‘What you on about, Matty?’

‘What I said. I’ve come to what’s called a watershed in my life.’

Susan laughed.

‘You don’t half come out with some things, Matty. I thought a watershed was where you went before they invented indoor toilets.’

Matty grabbed her hair playfully and made her sit still.

‘A watershed is when something happens and you have to make a decision. A decision that will affect the rest of your life. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing, don’t you? We breeze around this place yet we’re captives. Whatever else we do, whatever we think inside, we’re captives here and basically we know it. All our thoughts are on getting out, being back in the world. In your case, being back with your family is your priority. I mean, I’m basically a very selfish person. I always was and prison hasn’t changed that. If anything I’m even more selfish than ever.

‘
You
are learning that you should have been more selfish. If you had been, you wouldn’t even be here. You did the same as me ultimately, you protected yourself. But, unlike me, everyone here believes you.’

‘Stop it, Matty. You
have
got the prison blues, like you’ve had for ages. Christ, your appeal is a foregone conclusion. You’ve even got celebrities saying you should never have been locked up. What have I got, eh? I can just see Wham! signing a petition for getting me out, can’t you?’

Susan laughed.

‘Cheer up. If you let yourself get down in here, you’re lost. Every day I have to make myself cheerful. Make myself face the day. My kids’ letters get me over the blues. You need to do something else with your life. If ever anyone needed someone else to think about, that person is you. Do you the world of good.’

Matty walked around and stood in front of her. Placing her hands on her shoulders, she said seriously, ‘Susan, you’re the only person I’ve ever really cared about. I told you I would talk to my brief and I didn’t. I didn’t because at the end of the day I wanted her to work for me and only me. That’s how big a person I am. I didn’t even want to help you when it came to it. I’m not noble or nice or any of the things you make me out to be.

‘I’m a sociopath, Susan. I know that and you should be warned about that. Be on your guard against me and people like me. We’re destroyers. We destroy everything we touch because we want to. We can’t help ourselves. I’m Barry in a dress with a pretty face and a trim little figure. Please stop pretending I’m anything else.’

Susan looked into that earnest face and sighed sadly.

‘You’re not. You’re unhappy and lost deep inside, just like I am. You need to talk to someone, get all that rottenness out of you. I ain’t a shrink but I sussed out you wasn’t all the ticket, mate. But people get like you are for a reason. Parents shape their kids. Husbands and wives shape each other’s lives.

‘Now I don’t pretend to have your brain capacity, Matty. You’re clever, really bright. Turn that brain on yourself, help yourself, because at the end of the day that’s what we all have to do. Look at ourselves in the mirror and see ourselves for what we really are.’

The two women were quiet for a few moments then Matty said seriously, ‘But that’s just it, Susan, I have turned my brain on myself and I know what I am. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I
already
know myself inside out. It’s knowing myself so well that’s depressed me. The past catches up with you, no matter how clever you think you’ve been. The past is the future but you don’t realise that until it rears its ugly head again.’

Susan shook her head and said vehemently, ‘You’re wrong, Matty, so wrong.’

She grinned, the same little grin she always put on when she wanted people to like her.

‘Am I? Are you so sure about that, Susan?’

 

Geraldine stretched. She was tired but feeling much better than she had before talking to Colin the whole afternoon. She had opened another bottle of wine and now felt the tightness around her eyes that white wine always gave her. She was not a drinker.

Colin, though, could gulp wine at an astonishing rate. As she saw him refilling the glasses she accepted the hangover she would have the next morning.

She liked him. He was easy, uncomplicated and kind. Very kind.

‘Do you think Susan will work with us? I mean, Geraldine, I know it all sounds great in here but this is a false environment. At the end of the day it’s what she wants, not what we want.’

Geraldine took the glass of wine and shrugged.

‘I think after what happened with Wendy she’ll be willing to do anything to get out.’

Colin still wasn’t convinced.

‘If we can get a closed courtroom we could tell the truth, and that’s more powerful than anything we could dream up. Plus the truth is much harder to disprove, isn’t it?’