Resolutions (14 page)

‘Scared? No, I wouldn't go that far, and I'd also say she's wary of Rina, though Rina has so far been an ally. Mac, however . . . Mac wants Peel, and Mac knows enough about Karen to make life very hard.'

‘I think it's more personal than that,' Fitch speculated. ‘Rina told me once that Karen felt he let her down. Parker senior snatched his son, Karen called on Mac to help and she thinks he didn't act fast enough. That's how come Rina and Tim ended up on the cliff top that day, when Parker took his tumble. Anyway, we're trying to apply logic and reason here. Karen doesn't need a reason, the way I see it.'

He picked up his mug and peered despondently into the now empty depths. ‘Truth is, when Rina called and asked for me to come down, I thought she'd just got a bee in her knickers over nothing. Teach me to think again, won't it?'

At Peverill Lodge, tea went much better than Rina expected. Karen heaped praise on the sandwiches and cakes and sausage rolls the Montmorencys had provided. She laughed at the jokes Bethany Peters told – despite the fact that it took the joint effort of both sisters to remember the punchline – and listened to the very hesitant duet George had been persuaded to perform with Eliza, clapping loudly at its end. Even Ursula relaxed her guard enough to tell Karen that George had been put up a stream at school and was now in second from top for most subjects. She sounded, Rina thought fondly, rather more like a proud mother than a de facto girlfriend.

‘Well done, Georgie,' Karen said softly, and Rina could see the very real pride in her eyes. ‘I knew you could do it. You just needed to be somewhere settled down.'

Rina looked anxiously at her young friend. Karen had just given him an opening; would he take it?

George did. He took hold of Ursula's hand – something Rina had not seen him do before so openly – and said, ‘I like it here, Karen. I
am
settled. I'm getting on at school, I've got friends and I—'

‘And I'm really happy about that,' Karen interrupted, ‘and of course Ursula can come and visit any time she likes, but, George, you need more than that and I can offer that now. I've got us a little house and I've found you this great school and—'

‘And I don't want to go.' There, he'd said it. George bit his lip and Karen stared. Rina was shocked to see bright tears fill Karen's eyes.

‘Rina, can we, I mean, can George and I talk somewhere private, please?'

Rina hesitated. She looked at George, who took a deep breath and then nodded. ‘You can use my room,' Rina said. Her little sitting room at the front of the house was usually off-limits to all but a select, invited few.

‘Thanks,' Karen said. She got up and went out into the hall.

‘George.' Ursula's eyes were wide with concern.

‘It's OK,' he said. ‘She's my sister and I love her. She'll understand.'

He let go of Ursula's hand and followed his sister. Rina showed them into her sitting room and quietly closed the door.

George accepted Karen's hug, returned it, recalling all those times when Karen's love had been the only thing between him and a world of pain. He sat down in one of the fireside chairs and Karen took the other, bringing it close so that the chair arms touched. ‘I want you with me, little brother. I've made so many plans. You'll love the little house – look, I've got photos on my mobile.'

George looked at the pictures she had taken, noting absently that her phone looked as expensive and sophisticated as everything else Karen owned now. She was right: it was a lovely little house – small, Georgian-looking almost, with a pretty cottagey garden. There were pictures too of the inside and what would be his bedroom, and she had all these plans for what they could do together. ‘There's a basement, George. We could turn it into a games room. You remember how we always used to joke about doing that. We'd have a TV and games machines and table football.'

George laughed, despite his misgivings. ‘Like the one they had at . . .' He tried to think which of the many hostels and refuges they had been at. ‘Well, that place, you know. We got told off for being out of bed.'

‘Yeah, well, it was two in the morning and we were making enough noise to wake the entire house.'

‘And I was only eight.'

‘Yeah, well, that too.'

They both fell silent. It was just after their dad had come back, and George had seen first-hand just why his mum and his sister had dreaded his return. He'd been too young when his dad went to prison to recall what it had been like before.

‘That was the first time we ran away from him,' he said.

‘Second,' Karen told him. ‘You were a baby; you won't remember.'

‘Karen, why didn't she go away when he was in prison? Why didn't she just take us and go somewhere else? We'd have been all right. Just the three of us. Karen, do you miss her?'

Karen shook her head really sadly. ‘You know, I think that's what hurts such a lot. I don't. She was . . . well, she wasn't like a mum; she was like someone else to take care of. George, I never knew what we'd be coming home to. If
he'd
be there, if she'd be . . . well. You know.'

‘I can't believe she killed herself. We'd always been so careful. We always hid the pills, always made sure she couldn't . . .'

‘I know,' Karen said quietly. ‘That day, well, I guess I just didn't hide them. I gave Mum her meds and then I left and . . . I guess she must have found the rest.'

Something in the way she said it jarred on George's consciousness. They'd talked about it so often: what would happen if their mum did succeed in one of her suicide attempts. She'd seemed so much better when they'd come to live in Frantham, even got a job. Then their dad had turned up again and everything had gone wrong.

‘Did you . . . Karen, did you leave the pills where she could find them?'

For a minute he thought she was going to get mad with him or deny it, ask him how the hell he could even think such a thing. But she didn't. Tears poured down carefully made-up cheeks, and George found himself thinking that the old Karen rarely wore any make-up apart from a little lip-gloss. ‘I didn't think she'd do it, George. But I was sick of taking care, of being the adult, of having to think about every little thing. I left the flat and then I remembered I'd meant to put the pills in my bag and I'd not done it. I thought about going back and then . . . then I just couldn't be bothered, if you want to know the truth. I just didn't want to know any more. All I could think about was what was happening to you – and Mum, well, I guess she'd just dropped way down my list.'

They fell silent, each immersed in their own thoughts. Then George asked, ‘How are you paying for all this stuff?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Oh, Karen, don't do that, you
know
what I mean. The house, the clothes, the car—'

‘It's a hire car.'

‘Yeah, but when did you learn to drive?'

‘I took lessons before I left, remember?'

‘Yeah, but, Karen, what are you doing? Do you have a job?'

She laughed. ‘I work, if that's what you're asking. George, I've got this plan. There's this little gallery – the woman who owns it, she's retiring next year. We've talked and she's going to be selling up. I want to buy, take over from her. George, it'll be great, a proper home and a proper business.'

‘Paid for how?'

She frowned. ‘Does it matter?'

‘Yes, it matters.'

She laughed. ‘I don't see why. What matters is us; what's always mattered is us. Family. There's just you and me now, just like it always was, really. Difference is, George, I can look after you properly now. We can have a proper life with a proper home and a real future. By the time she's ready to sell next year, I'll have more than enough put away to buy the gallery, keep everything going while we get established. She'll be selling the business and the goodwill that goes with it, and it's right on the promenade, so there's all the passing trade in the summer.'

‘Karen, stop, please stop,' George begged her. ‘Just tell me something.'

‘Anything.'

‘Are you . . . are you like our dad?'

She stared at him. ‘I'm nothing like our dad. Our dad was a mean-minded thug. He hurt us, he hurt our mum; he lived to hurt people. How can you say that, George?'

He took a deep breath. ‘I know what you did,' he said quietly. ‘About Mark Dowling. Karen, how is that so different from the way our dad was?'

She laughed then, actually laughed, and George, shocked and profoundly disturbed, did not know how to respond.

‘Is that all?' Karen asked him. ‘Look, George, Mark Dowling was an arse, a prick, a . . . Mark Dowling deserved what he got. I have no remorse to spare for the likes of Mark Dowling, or our dad, for that matter. I wish I'd managed to kill the bastard way back. Trouble is, I suppose, it takes a bit of practice to get things right – a bit like you and that piano.'

George felt his breath grow tight and thick in his lungs. ‘And have you practised since?' he asked her. ‘Karen, I don't want any of this. I want my big sister back, like it was before. I don't want all this, this stuff. I just want ordinary.'

She shook her head emphatically. ‘No, you don't, Georgie, not really. That's just other people telling you what you should want, claiming to have the moral high ground. But tell me this, Georgie, where was their moral high ground when our dad was beating the shit out of our mum, out of me, threatening you? Who helped us then?'

‘Rina helped us. Tim helped. Mac helped.'

‘Mac?' She laughed again. ‘Look, I'll grant that Rina and Tim stepped up when we needed them – Rina in ways I think she now regrets, but, anyway, I'll grant you that. But Mac? No way. Let me tell you something, George. I called him when I knew our dad had snatched you. I called him, but did he come? Did he hell! He was out there doing some bloody TV appearance. You were gone – our dad had taken you away – and there he was, telling the world that they'd get whoever killed poor Markie baby, swearing he wouldn't let the killer get away with it. Friend? Yeah, I thought he was, but twice he let us down.'

‘Twice?'

‘Came to arrest me, didn't he?'

‘You'd already gone.'

‘Just as well, wasn't it? George, Mac is the
enemy
. He might say all the right words and he might play nice when it suits him, but don't think he gives a damn. Just don't you ever think that.'

George's mind was in turmoil. He knew that Mac had come to arrest Karen, hadn't really been surprised. He knew too that Mac had no choice, given what he'd figured out. That Mac had been absent at the precise moment his father had come for him was something George knew Mac regretted desperately – they had talked about it – but he also knew that no one can be in the right place at the right time all of the time. Should he say that to Karen? George decided it would be a waste of breath.

‘I want to stay here,' he said as firmly as he could. ‘I don't want to go with you. I don't want to be a part of whatever it is you're doing.'

‘You wouldn't be. You think I want to involve you in . . . Oh George, I'm doing all of this for us. Like I told you, a year from now and we'll have a house, a business, a way forward for both of us. You'll finish school and maybe even do university. George, you've seen all those kids in care we met at hostels and homes and everywhere. Most of them would be lucky if they did anything with their lives. Thick, most of them. Had it all battered out of them. But not you and me. We're different. We survived, George, and now I'm going to make damn sure we do more than just survive. I'm doing whatever it takes now, to make sure of that.'

George stood up. ‘No,' he said firmly and he saw it flash across his sister's face, even as it crossed his own mind, that it was the first time he had refused her anything. A brief, bright burst of anger, soon gone, she stood too, hugged him again, but George sensed that this time the embrace was somehow possessive and territorial, not a simple expression of affection.

‘You'll come round,' she said confidently. ‘It's all a bit much, isn't it, our kid? I'm pushing a bit too hard. Right, I'll be off for now, before Matthew offers me more cake – any more and I think I'll explode.' They returned to the rest of the company and Karen took her leave, laughing and joking again and telling the Peters sisters to make sure George kept up with the piano practice. George said nothing. He stood in the hallway until she had been waved off by the entire household.

Rina started towards him, but Ursula got there first.

‘You OK?'

‘No, not really.' He knew she wouldn't pester him with questions. One thing he and Ursula definitely had in common, they liked to tell things in their own time, if at all. Their relationship, George thought, was as much about all the things they could safely leave unsaid as it was about telling.

‘We'd better get ready,' Ursula said. ‘Our taxi will be here.'

Rina nodded. ‘I'll get your coats,' she said. She looked anxiously at George and then at Ursula. Out of the tail of his eye, George saw Ursula shake her head.
No questions now; just leave well alone
. He was relieved to see that although Rina pursed her lips, clamping down on the very natural impulse to ask what Karen had said, she took Ursula's lead. She was, perhaps, the only adult he had ever met who knew when to leave things alone.

George took a deep breath, leaving it to Ursula to deal with the effusive farewells. He felt he ought to say something that was vaguely normal, but just couldn't quite remember how. ‘How's Mac?' he managed as the taxi sounded its horn outside and Rina opened the front door.