Authors: Hilary Bonner
‘I wish my Phil was here,’ she said. ‘He didn’t have the strength to fight the way he would have done once. And nobody would listen to him. That’s what finished him, I think. Do you know, we even had to fight to get Craig’s belongings back, and we never got anything like all his stuff back, we were quite sure of that.’
‘What about Jocelyn Slade’s family?’ asked Kelly. ‘What do they think about all of this?’
‘We only ever knew of her mother, and Craig said she’d been ill for years. We wrote to her after Jossy died. My Phil was good at things like that. But we never heard back. And after Craig was killed, well, Phil wasn’t interested in anything except that. Although Phil always did think there was a link between Craig and Jossy dying, but then he became so ill he just wasn’t capable of following it through. And me, well, I had my hands full looking after Phil. So, do you think their deaths were linked, Mr Kelly? Do you think our Craig and his Jossy were murdered?’
‘I don’t know, Mrs Foster. I don’t know enough about anything yet. All I do know is that three young people have died suddenly and somewhat curiously, within a short period of time, and that the third one
predicted his own death. “They killed the others, they’ll kill me too,” he said. What we do have here, Mrs Foster, is the makings of something extremely suspicious indeed. At the very least.’
Kelly felt quite excited as he climbed back into his car. Three deaths at Hangridge. What was going on in the barracks of the Devonshire Fusiliers?
It really did seem that he might have been right from the start, and that his gut instinct about Alan Connelly’s death being suspicious had been spot on.
While he considered what steps he should take next, he reached in his pocket for his mobile phone and attempted to switch it on. The phone didn’t seem to be working. He held it to the car’s interior light and peered at the display panel. Damn. The battery was dead. He had forgotten to take his charger to Scotland the previous day and he supposed that he must have finally emptied the battery when he made his calls from the train. He hadn’t switched it on since then. If Moira or the girls had been trying to call him, he wouldn’t even know.
He checked his watch. It was almost 9.30 p.m. Still not too late to go round. They’d be pleased to see him.
It took Kelly less than fifteen minutes to drive from Babbacombe along the coast road, with its rows of pretty, flower-adorned private hotels, to Moira’s St Marychurch street. He pulled to a halt outside her pale-blue-painted house and, as was almost customary, stayed in the car for a moment or two while he steeled himself for the visit. It was awful that he had to do that. But he couldn’t help it.
After a couple of minutes he climbed out of the car,
locked it, and then stepped across the pavement towards Moira’s front gate. As he did so, he looked at the house properly for the first time. There were no lights on. No lights at all. Yet there were always lights on after dark, because Moira could no longer leave the house and one of the girls was always with her. And he knew that even when she was trying to sleep they left a low light on.
Kelly’s heart sank into his belly. He rang the doorbell. He hammered on the door. He called through the letterbox. There was no response. There really was nobody in.
He turned his back on the house and leaned against the front door. It was a cool evening but he realised that he was sweating. The palms of his hands were damp and the brow of his head felt as if it was on fire. He closed his eyes. He was shaking.
‘Oh, my God,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Oh, my God. It can’t be. Not yet, surely. She can’t have …’
Automatically, he reached into his pocket for his phone before remembering that it was not working. There was a phone box at the end of the road. He took off for it at a run. He didn’t somehow trust himself to drive his car the short distance.
When he got there, he had to fish out his diary to look up Jennifer’s mobile number. He fed pound coins into the phone and dialled.
‘We’ve been trying to reach you since this morning, John,’ she responded at once. ‘Mum got so bad in the night that we called the doctor in the early hours. We were going to call you as well, but she wouldn’t let us. You know what she’s like. She said she’d be fine once the doctor had given her something, and she didn’t want your night’s sleep disturbed because you get up
so early to write. Anyway, the doctor made her as comfortable as he could, but … but, I guess there’s not much left that he can do. Not any more. And he rang later to say he’d got her a place in the hospice at Newton Abbot. We’re all with her now …’
‘I’m on my way,’ said Kelly.
He walked briskly back to the MG, trying to calm down. Moira wasn’t dead, but she was dying. That was the message, more or less, and was only what had been expected for some time. None the less, he was still trembling. It had really shaken him to arrive at Moira’s house and find it locked up and dark. And, as ever, the guilt ate away at him in a totally physical fashion, as if some vicious alien creature was gradually devouring his internal organs. He hadn’t been in touch for two days and Moira had refused to let him be disturbed in the night because he was writing. Which was actually a very bad joke.
The hospice was in a modern purpose-built building on the outskirts of Newton Abbot. Kelly had been there once before, to visit an old friend who had died in the hospice the previous year, and had hoped never to have cause to step foot in the place again.
When he had made his first visit, the atmosphere had not been what he had expected. The hospice was a calm and peaceful establishment where the nursing was both unobtrusive and highly efficient, as well as noticeably caring. Kelly thought the staff who worked there were remarkable. It was not a job he could do, that was for certain. However you dressed it up, people went into a hospice to die, and Kelly didn’t think he could cope with that.
He tapped lightly on the door to Moira’s room. Jennifer opened it, smiled and ushered him in. All three girls were gathered round Moira’s bed. But they rose to leave almost as soon as Kelly arrived.
‘You’ll want to be alone with Mum,’ said Jennifer. ‘In any case, we could do with a cup of tea or something.’
Kelly nodded. As ever, none of the girls had uttered a word of criticism. They did not know, of course, that to his further shame, Kelly was not at all sure that he did want to be alone with Moira, but he could not possibly say so. He sat by the bed, very close to her, and put his hand over one of hers.
Moira smiled weakly at him. She looked terribly ill, but Kelly could see that she was genuinely pleased to see him.
‘I’m so sorry …’ he began.
Moira kept smiling. ‘Aren’t you always?’ she said very quietly.
‘I guess, I am,’ he smiled back.
‘You do love me, though, John, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, my darling, I love you, I really do love you.’
That was easy. Seeing her lying there, so terribly poorly, he felt quite overwhelmed by love. But he also knew that the manner of his love for Moira had all too often been inadequate. A psychologist, who had seemed to Kelly to be blessed with far more common sense than most of his kind, had once told him that the trouble with love is that it means different things to different people. Kelly was all too aware that while it was the absolute truth that he loved Moira dearly, it did not necessarily mean that he loved her in the way she loved him. Moira was so much more steadfast than him, for a start. She had never let him down, not once in ten years, which was certainly more than Kelly could say.
‘I love you, too, John.’
‘I know that, darling. You don’t have to tell me. Don’t tire yourself …’
‘No, I want to tell you. There’s so much I want to say, John, you won’t lose touch with the girls, will you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘They’ll be all right, all of them, I’m sure. I had good insurance, as you know, so there’ll be a little bit of money for them each, and there’s the house, of course.
But Jennifer is only nineteen. It’s very young to be left on your own. And Lynne’s only a couple of years older. At least Paula is married and has a family of her own, and I know Lynne and Jennifer can visit her and Ben whenever they want, but none the less …’
Moira’s voice tailed off. Kelly didn’t know quite what to say.
‘She looks upon you as her father, you know that, John,’ Moira continued. ‘You’ve been a damned sight better to her than her own father ever was, that’s for sure.’
Jennifer’s own father had beaten his wife and more or less ignored his daughters. Everything in life is relative. Kelly hoped to God that he had been better to all of Moira’s girls than Peter Simmons had been. But he knew only too well that he had been a bloody lousy father to his own son. To Nick. It was funny how life paid little tricks like that.
‘I look upon Jennifer as my daughter, Moira,’ Kelly said. And that was almost true, too. But then, Jennifer had put few demands on him, which had made it all right. Kelly was never very good at coping with demands.
‘So, you’ll keep an eye on her, spend some time with her.’ Moira’s voice was little more than a whisper now. Kelly could see that even the smallest exertion drained her.
‘Of course I will.’
Kelly was distinctly uncomfortable. Moira was giving him instructions about what she would like him to do after she was dead. That was perfectly clear. And yet, as ever, the ‘d’ word was never actually used. Kelly found himself once more wishing he wasn’t at her bedside to hear this. Wasn’t with her at
all. It was dreadful, he knew, but he just wanted to be anywhere in the world, doing anything, absolutely anything at all, other than sitting at Moira’s bedside watching her die, while knowing that the terrible reality of what was happening would never be addressed. Not ever. Moira had been a nurse, and yet in spite of that, or maybe because of that, she had never wanted to discuss any aspect of her illness and what it meant. Quite possibly, because she knew only too well exactly what it meant.
‘Don’t try to talk, darling,’ he said. ‘Don’t tire yourself. You just rest and I’ll stay here beside you.’
He squeezed her hand and felt her squeeze back. But it was almost imperceptible. Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be drifting off again. After a bit, he wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or unconscious.
He rang the bell for a nurse. One came very quickly, leaning over Moira and gently taking her pulse.
‘It’s hard to say, really, exactly what’s going on,’ she said. ‘But as long as she’s peaceful, not in too much pain, not distressed, well …’ She straightened up from the bed, just a young woman, a slip of a thing with long pale hair tied back in a ponytail, little more than a girl, and yet doing this extraordinary job. Kelly didn’t know what to say to her.
The nurse turned to face him directly. ‘Well, that’s the best we can hope for now,’ she said quietly.
Kelly nodded. Jennifer and Paula returned as the nurse left. Kelly saw that they both looked worn out.
‘Look, I’ll stay with your mother tonight,’ he told them. ‘Why don’t you both go home, get some rest. Neither of you got much last night, did you?’
The girls, in particular Jennifer, protested at first
but eventually gave in to their obvious exhaustion and agreed to leave. At least this is something I can do for them, Kelly thought, at least I can give them the chance to rest.
One of the nurses brought him a cushion and a blanket, and he settled in the armchair by the bed, watching Moira for any change. Her breathing was shallow. Her eyes were closed. She lay very still. Kelly found the whole situation quite terrifying.
His chair was not particularly comfortable and his mind was in turmoil. He did not think there was a chance of him sleeping a wink, and indeed he did not want to sleep. He wanted to watch over Moira. That was, after all, what he was there for. He could hardly bear to think about what she must be going through, lying there just clinging on to life. Periodically a nurse visited to check on Moira. Once, she asked him if he would like a cup of tea, an offer he gratefully accepted. Midnight came and went, then one, two and three o’clock. But from then on, it seemed that he was not aware of very much until Jennifer returned in the morning. He was disturbed by the sound of a door opening and someone moving around in the room, and he opened his eyes to see her there, just as she gave Moira a kiss on her forehead.
‘Hi,’ he said, rubbing his fingers over his stubbled chin and his tongue across furry teeth. ‘I-I must have dozed off.’
‘That’s allowed, John.’ Jennifer smiled at him. She looked like a different person this morning from the exhausted young woman he had sent off home the previous night. Her skin glowed, her hair shone from an obviously recent shampoo, and her eyes were bright and clear. She seemed totally refreshed.
Kelly glanced at his watch. It was only 7.30 a.m. But Jennifer had obviously managed a good night’s sleep. Kelly wondered at the resilience of youth.
‘How’s she been?’ Jennifer asked.
Kelly hesitated for a moment. The bitter truth was that he hadn’t a clue. Although he would not have believed it possible, he must have slept for at least four hours, and even based on the time he had been awake before that, just sitting and watching Moira, he did not know how to answer Jennifer’s question.
How had Moira been? Asleep or unconscious? He did not know the answer to that. Waiting to die? That was the correct answer, he reckoned, but it was one you did not give. Not in this family, anyway. Maybe not in most. Kelly didn’t know. He had never spent the night sitting beside the bed of a dying woman before. And he rather hoped he never would again.
‘The same,’ he said, eventually.
‘Ah.’ Jennifer smiled tenderly down at her near-comatose mother. Kelly stood up, stretching aching, cramped limbs. One leg had gone to sleep. He held on to the foot of the bed as he made his way clumsily over to where Jennifer was standing.
‘Thank you for staying with Mum,’ she said.
Kelly just nodded. He didn’t reckon he deserved any thanks. Not with his track record.
He stared down at the recumbent figure on the bed. He couldn’t explain quite what he felt. At that moment, he possibly loved Moira more than ever before. And yet, at the same time, he could barely recognise her as the woman he had shared his life with. She had changed quite dramatically since he had last seen her, only a couple of days earlier. She was so horribly thin, wasted really, and deathly pale.
But it wasn’t that. It was more that the very core of her no longer seemed to be there. As if her soul had somehow already left her. She just didn’t seem to be Moira any more.