Beggar Bride (32 page)

‘Yes, of course.’ He drew in a slow, deep breath. ‘Where is she now?’

‘Who?’

‘Helena. Is she in Devon?’

There was something in the sound of his voice—something, something—what could it possibly be? Was he angry with her? She, who only wanted to please him in any way she could and so continue the marvellous sense of exhilaration which his presence, like a drug, like sorcery, somehow produced.

His fingers fastened in her hair and drew her head backwards, pulling with a steady strength as he waited for her answer.

‘She’s here. She came here yesterday with the twins.’

The pain became pleasurable so she didn’t wince or cry out, but stared into his magnificent face with an expression of reverence and gratitude, humble almost to abjectness. She might have dropped to her knees at that moment, and prayed to him, if he hadn’t been holding her up with such a firm grip. She was ashamed and alarmed to think how madly she wanted to worship him.

‘Well, little Honesty, you go back to the house…’

She had to ask him. ‘What are you going to do?’

He didn’t answer. He merely smiled and let her go.

‘Don’t…’ But she stopped short, afraid to offend him. She had wanted to say, ‘don’t hurt Helena.’ Honesty sighed and lowered her lashes instead.

It was after that that Helena went missing. This wasn’t particularly uncommon, she often went off forgetting to tell anyone what she was doing, what was peculiar was that she left the abominable twins behind. All that week Honesty had to put up with them, and whenever she tried to see Callister his caravan door was closed, he was busy.

‘Go away,’ he shouted.

Huh. Busy with some other woman no doubt. But she went away in wistful bewilderment, lost and powerless, deprived of everything except the need to be with him. Stinging with humiliation, with jealousy biting deep in her heart, Honesty took to her horse, riding madly and dangerously till her heart beat fast with fear but that was a poor alternative to loving with Callister.

And it was at the end of that week when Clayden came in and announced in a voice as cold as the grave, ‘Ghastly news, I’m afraid. Lady Helena’s body has been discovered in Hurleston Woods.’

N
O STONE IS LEFT
unturned.

Whoever is writing these sinister letters relishes the sneaky task. They have gone deliberately out of their way to turn Angela Harper into a case study of some importance, hiring spies—like the DSS—to track down people she’s almost forgotten, interviewing old school pupils, neighbours, nosy parkers, delving into all the intolerable little secrets Ange thought were lost forever.

This is just the kind of thing that would happen if you married into royalty.

‘And I do remember,’
wrote Aunty Val in the last of her monthly letters,
‘the trouble we had with you at Telford junior school when you refused to admit it was you who slashed the coats in the cloakroom when you’d actually been seen leaving with a pair of scissors. You were so stubborn in those days, weren’t you, Angela, such a hard-faced little liar, you categorically denied it. The school was forced to ban you for a month, they said you disrupted the classes so manipulatively that other children were suffering unacceptably because of your behaviour. And what a time we had with you during that month! You were staying with Uncle George and Aunty Pat at the time, remember, that rather nice couple with a bungalow and a weeping willow tree in the garden? You built a tree house, I remember, and refused to come out…’

And so it went on, remorselessly, gruellingly, exposing Angela’s most painful memories, the ones you manage to push, like dreams, right to the back of your consciousness, and sometimes, when you were very tired, they try to break out at night and play yo-yos with your head like goblins.

‘You were with that nice, respectable family, the Wilsons, for four years, weren’t you dear? And they showed you nothing but kindness. Until there was some nasty business about three in a bed and Mrs Wilson had you seen by a child psychiatrist before she reluctantly decided she could no longer keep you for fear of affecting her pleasant, well-mannered boys. Twelve years old, oh dear, it pains me to think of it even now, twelve years old and yet so worldly wise, so knowing.’

So far Ange has not shown Billy or Tina any of the letters. At first she decided to keep them secret until she had a chance to watch them closely, every gesture, every word, every look took on some sinister meaning and when Tina remarked, ‘You stay here, Ange, we’ll take the kids out today, you’re looking so tired,’
what did that mean?
What new device for her torture were they inventing between them, because only Billy knows some of the shameful events relayed in Aunty Val’s letters, but most of them Ange has never told anyone at all.

‘And of course, dear, you must have known that your mother, Tracy, was a prostitute, if she hadn’t been killed in that terrible crash she would have died of some nasty disease…’

But Ange never knew that.

She watches Billy and Tina with the children, too, playing with them, bathing them, laughing and tumbling on the floor together, pretending to be horses on hands and knees. Is this innocent play, or is there more to it? Jacob’s progress is still satisfactory, but now that Archie is growing up they are the same size, there’s only three pounds in weight between them, they share the same clothes, and Archie has nearly the same breadth of vocabulary as Jacob. Their similarity is quite remarkable, it gets harder and harder to keep this phenomena from other people, although the Ormerod family, so smug, have no eyes for anyone but Archie, they don’t even seem to notice that there are two other children around.

Fabian, too, is constantly under Ange’s scrutiny. He has changed. Since she asked him for money he is colder towards her, he touches her less frequently, no more pats on the hand, no more arms round her waist as they walk together side by side. Their sex life, never an earth moving experience, has trickled away to almost nothing… once a month, if that. And anyway, he’s hardly ever at Hurleston these days and Elfrida says this was only how it was before, his frequent visits home seemed to be part of a honeymoon period which is now, apparently, over.

And why not? They’ve been married for nearly three years now. How time flies. And life must go on.

‘You’re looking peaky, Angela,’ he’d said, peering at her mockingly. ‘Not too bored, I hope, spending all this time doing nothing?’

He was sneering at her. But what he said was perfectly true. These days time does lie heavily on her hands.

She wishes, now, that she’d taken more notice of the twins’ sinister suggestions about their poor mother’s death, and not put them down to some morbid childish fantasy, some defence mechanism which had mutated. They had suggested that both Maudie Doubleday and Murphy O’Connell knew more about that than they said at the time. In her angst Ange is even driven to visit Hurleston churchyard in the rain with a small bowl of winter hyacinths. Ange shivered, as she stood by Helena’s graveside, wondering, wondering about her death. She’d been pregnant, Maudie told her confidentially, only just, not so much that a pathologist would notice and most of her stomach was gone anyway. Is that the reason she had to die? Was Ffiona the killer?

Or did Fabian decide he just couldn’t stand her any longer?

Whatever, Ange knows she has been degraded to a condition where she has not only lost her pride, but whatever dignity she ever possessed. And it’s just not fair that she’s the one they are targeting when Billy and Tina are just as culpable as she.

The only time she and Billy get to be completely alone is in bed together during their brief stays at the Broughtons. Ange is going to have to confront him. There’s a cold distance between them at the moment, created by Ange, but she just can’t help it.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.

‘Nothing, Billy,’ says Ange, gazing at him steadily.

‘And don’t stare at me like that, for God’s sake, it’s unnerving. If there’s something wrong tell me, don’t just sulk.’

Many times he has tried to hug her close, but she pushes him away without explanation. If he’s not in Tina’s arms already then he soon will be.

No. She can’t go on like this any longer, bearing this massive burden alone. If Billy is involved then she’ll know at once, she’s certain she will, but knowing the truth,
anything
would be better than this.

Thank goodness, at last Tina is paying a belated visit to Sandra Biddle. Ange went yesterday with the children and the social worker commented on her loss of weight.

‘Oh I’m fine, Sandra, really. But it’s surprising how much work two small children make, running around after them both, fetching and carrying.’

‘Doesn’t Billy help?’

‘Of course he does, when he’s home, but he’s quite often away for nights on end, working.’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Sandra. ‘He’s got that job on the roads hasn’t he? I must say I never thought Billy would stick at anything for so long. And how’s the new house? How have you settled in at the Broughtons?’

‘That’s fine,’ said Ange, hoping the social worker couldn’t see into her smile. She doesn’t feel easy in these old clothes any longer. She feels dirty and common and gauche, less able to conduct herself as she would like.
Less respected.

‘I expect you miss Tina, don’t you. You three became quite friendly in the end.’

What has Tina been saying? Ange hopes like hell that Tina has managed to stay discreet during her few visits to the social services department.

They don’t spend enough time here in this little square house which, after Hurleston, makes all of them feel claustrophobic, living on top of each other like this. Ange and Tina pretend to be sisters when the neighbours come asking, and they do come, they come all the time if you let them.

June Brightly, next door at number sixty-nine, is the worst. She believes, as do all the neighbours round here, that Billy and Ange work as caretakers at a caravan site in Devon and their job means they must be there ninety per cent of the time.

‘It doesn’t seem fair to me,’ said June Brightly, her sharp face concealing none of her spite. ‘There’s those who could do with a home, but the council give this one to you. You don’t need it. You can’t tell me that you lot need it.’

Billy said, sighing, ‘It’s a job, June. We might live in, but jobs don’t last long these days, not for any poor bleeder, but you’re right, I suppose, I could give it up and come and live here on the dole, watch the box all day if that’d please you.’

‘Well why don’t you rent it out? It’s nothing but a worry, seeing it standing empty most of the time, a temptation to the bleeding vandals.’

‘It’s not your worry, June!’

‘Oh but it is my worry. That’s where you’re wrong.
It is! We don’t want crime directed here. Most of us have just escaped from all that, and now here you are, inviting them in with open arms.’

‘Give over, June, look around you, there’s nothing for the buggers to take.’

‘Well, there’s always the squatters,’ said June, unconvinced.

They come to the Broughtons as often as they can, but June is always waiting, and moaning on, stirring up the rest of them if she can.

But now Tina has gone to see Sandra Biddle and Ange decides she won’t wait until bedtime, she’s got to show Billy the letters and she might as well get it over and done with.

How good he looks these days, how strong and masculine, how much he’s changed in the past few years, shows what a little hope can do. He stands more upright, he holds his head with pride, although that little blond curl still falls down over his eye reminding her of the people they were before…

‘I’ve been getting these.’ Her gaze is full of alert hostility.

‘What are they? Who are they from?’

‘Look at them, Billy, read them,’ her voice raps out and she wrings her hands as she watches him.

‘What’s this all about?’ Billy looks up, having read only the first lines of the first letter, and the signature on the back. ‘
Is this some kind of sick joke?’

Ange swallows a blob of terror. ‘That’s what I thought at first. But look, they kept coming, they go on and on and on…’

Billy pales, any shadow, any flicker of a smile fades from his face. ‘Shush, let me read.’

He sits down heavily on the sofa, and Ange sits beside him, watching his face, never daring to move her eyes from his face, watching steadily for signs of treachery, the slightest change of expression while he reads all these things, all these things she has ever been afraid or ashamed of, that happened to that strange, unknown creature that was herself as a child. Outside the windows children play, dogs are barking, an old engine is revving up and a plane banks overhead and makes for Heathrow. Billy is very silent beside her. Is he admiring his own handiwork, or is he folding up with fear inside, as she does every time she thinks about Aunty Val? The handwriting, all in black Biro, is long and loopy, a little shaky, just like an elderly person would write and the paper is always the same, pale blue Basildon Bond in lined and matching envelopes.

Ange watches carefully as his expression gradually changes from astonishment to fear and back to astonishment again.

He looks up briefly, and they gaze into each other’s eyes, before he goes back to reading again.

‘Oh God,’ he sighs, now and then. ‘Oh, bloody hell! Oh shit! Oh fuck!’ And then he goes back to, ‘Oh God.’ When he has finished, fifteen minutes later, he gives an uncontrollable shudder.

‘Oh Jesus, Ange! What are we going to do?’

She shakes her head. She shrugs. She holds her hands out helplessly, ‘What can we do?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me at once?’

‘I thought it might be you.’

Billy puts his head in his hands, sinks into a kind of stupor. ‘You’re mad. Why would it be me?’ He gently takes hold of her arm and carries on in a low voice, stroking. ‘I can’t even feel angry about this, I’m just so frightened.
Why would it be me, Ange?
What’s happening to us?’

Ange doesn’t care about anything else. She should have prepared him for this shock, she’s been unkind and unfair.
I can trust him, oh, thank God, thank God, I can trust him. A
great weight lifts from her shoulders. She knows absolutely now that Billy had nothing to do with this. He is not the most accomplished of liars, she could always see right through him and that hasn’t changed.