The Cold Cold Sea (34 page)

He hadn’t listened any more. Alicia Bryson? No, she was Helen... his Helen. And she’d be in Lower Banford all summer, that was all that mattered. He would find her and make her his own darling love. And there was a child, too, another Helen? Little Helen? How perfect.

And now it was Friday and the sun was setting behind his beautiful woods. Most schools had broken up today, so his Helens might be packing now, getting ready for their journey even as he was thinking about them. Mrs Mullen would know when they were due; he would go and find out first thing tomorrow. And then, whenever it was, he’d be waiting for them. Big Helen and little Helen, and very soon they’d be on their way to join his first Helen, in Paradise.

He would do it all in a beautiful ceremony at the holy place in the woods, and surely then he’d be able to lay the ghost of his own special darling to rest. Helen, haunting him from Paradise.

She wouldn’t be alone for much longer.

Alicia Bryson eased her elderly VW back into fifth gear after what seemed like the hundredth lot of road works, and glanced across at her daughter. Eight-year-old Jenny was dozing in the passenger seat, dark hair already escaping from her precious pigtails – Pippi Longstocking was the latest craze – and a selection of soft toys on her lap. Poor kid. This wasn’t the best start to the holidays for her, a long, boring drive up the motorway when she could have been out celebrating the start of the summer holidays with all of her friends in Bedford.

Alicia grimaced. This was so not what she wanted to be doing today. Just exactly how was she supposed to give her daughter a fun-filled summer holiday in a tiny Yorkshire village where they knew no-one except her father and Margaret and there wasn’t as much as a swing park?

And now they were stuck behind a smelly white van, hell, even on Sunday everyone and his dog was travelling up the M1. Tight-lipped, Alicia pulled out to overtake. Lower Banford here we come.

You’re going back to the bad place
.

The thought came into her head as clearly as if her childhood self had spoken aloud, and Alicia winced. Other kids had had loving homes. She’d had ‘the bad place’, the house where her father still lived, and it was even coming back as a ghost in her head now.

It just hadn’t seemed fair. How she’d longed for parents like her friends had: friendly, strict only when they had to be, and caring. Instead she’d had family prayers for hours every evening, listening to her father’s rants about God and the good life and lectures about the devil and all his works. The devil’s works included things like women wearing trousers, novels, all music except hymns and psalms... As a child Alicia had been afraid of her father, and when childhood gave way to puberty the accompanying hormones and tantrums had turned life into a nightmare. The climax came when she was fourteen and her punishment for sneaking off to the cinema with a boy was the loss of her hair, hacked off by her father in a sickening fit of self-righteousness.

Remembering her teenage angst brought tears to Alicia’s eyes, and she blinked repeatedly. The fast lane of the M1 wasn’t a good place to start bawling about something that had happened half a lifetime ago. How lonely she had been back then. Mum had been no help at all; she had prided herself on being obedient and submissive right up to her death. Alicia had been left to fight her own battles.

‘Bo-ring. Are we nearly there?’ said Jenny, sitting up and pouting out of the window.

‘We are, and you’re being very good,’ said Alicia, patting Jenny’s jeans-clad leg. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, Jen was here too. Time to put stars into her daughter’s eyes.

‘You know what? Aunt Margaret’s got a dog now. We kept it a secret to surprise you. His name’s Conker and he’s huge, he’s a Newfoundlander. Chocolate-brown colour. You’ll love him.’

Jenny stared, her face lit up like Christmas and Easter rolled into one, stuffed animals clutched to her chest. ‘Did you hear
that
?’ she whispered. ‘A new friend. Conker.’ Eyes shining, she gazed back out of the window, and Alicia smiled to herself. Oh, how very much she loved Jen. Her dreamer.

‘Why did we never go to Grandpa’s for the holidays before?’ said Jenny, turning back so quickly Alicia jumped. ‘Tam goes to her Grandma’s all the time.’

‘Just a sec,’ said Alicia, thankful that a speeding motorcyclist halfway up her exhaust was giving her a couple of minutes’ thinking time. What could she say to that? That ‘Grandpa’ had been a terrible father and she had run away to Margaret the day after her sixteenth birthday and could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d been back in Lower Banford since?

Hardly. She didn’t want to shatter Jen’s illusions about her one remaining grandparent who was going to die soon anyway. And how awful did that sound?

‘Well, Grandpa hasn’t been well for a few years now,’ she said. ‘And before that you were just a baby.’

And the whole purpose of this ‘holiday’ was to find another solution for her father, she thought grimly. A care home was going to be the best option, and as his next of kin – as uncomfortable as that felt – Alicia knew that she was the person to organise it.

A road sign loomed above them and Alicia flipped on the indicator. At last, here was their exit. She swung off the motorway, her shoulders up to her ears with tension.

Here was Merton, first place on the road back home and nearest big town. The fateful cinema was still here. Alicia glared at it as they passed, then grinned. It had got her a free haircut, hadn’t it? Better just practise the irony, she’d need it again before the summer was over, she could see that coming a mile off.

After Merton came the Banfords, a trio of villages along the River Ban. Her old secondary school was in Upper Banford, with memories of French homework done on the bus, and agonising over boys and spots. And always being the outsider, the only one who didn’t have eyeliner or jangly bangles or whatever the latest fashion was. Then came tiny Middle Banford whose one claim to fame was the ambiguously-named Ban Theatre Festival; four weekends each June when the South Yorkshire Drama Club performed whatever it was they’d spent the past several months rehearsing. This year it had been
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and the press reviews for once had been favourable.

Two miles on was Lower Banford, nestling between the river and the wooded hillside, quiet and peaceful.
The bad place
.

‘Lower Banford!’ said Jenny, sitting up straight as they passed the road sign. ‘Mummy, we’ve arrived!’

‘We have indeed,’ said Alicia. Her voice came out a hoarse whisper, and she cleared her throat a little too hard, aware that Jenny was still looking at her.

The village street was deserted. Apparently shops still closed on Sundays here. It was a yesterday kind of place, old houses with old people living in them. Her father’s house was right at the back of the village, the garden bordering on the woods that crept round the hillside. A pretty place that held dark memories.

Alicia turned up the narrow lane, inching past the row of cars parked along one side, and then through the gateway to pull up under the Scotch pine in front of the house. Two storeys of crumbling red brick covered in green ivy, a weed-and-gravel driveway leading round to the long back garden. Home sweet home. Or something.

This is the bad place. You’ve come back to the bad place
.

The young voice was tinged with fear now, a haunting little whisper in her head. Where were these thoughts coming from? Panic fluttering in her throat, Alicia stared up at her father’s bedroom window. Was the voice her childhood self? A sudden wave of nausea made her gut spasm and her legs shake. Bile rose right into her mouth and she swallowed, desperately trying not to retch. This was the bad place and for the first time since the night of her sixteenth birthday she was actually going to sleep under this roof. For six long weeks there would be no escaping this house and the parent she had run from.

The nausea passed as suddenly as it had come. Knuckles still white on the steering wheel, Alicia took a deep breath, cold sweat on her forehead. She needed to get a grip. All that was left of her father was a frail, old man, and she was an adult now. She could do this. Jenny was staring at her, puzzlement all over her small face.

‘Mummy?’

To Alicia’s relief, Margaret opening the front door created the necessary diversion, for as soon as Jenny saw Conker prancing about the hallway she was off, soft toys forgotten for once.

Resignedly, Alicia turned and lifted her handbag from the back seat, knowing that all she wanted to do was grab her daughter and drive away and pretend that everything was all right. But grown-ups didn’t do things like that. They faced reality.

She fixed a brave smile on her face and opened the car door.

His vigil started just after lunchtime. He had been quite unable to stop himself. The thought of Helen coming to Lower Banford, driving along the village street and then up Woodside Lane... He had to be there to see it. An early-morning visit to the shop yesterday and a casual remark about summer visitors had set Mrs Mullen off, he’d listened to a long monologue about tourists before she provided him with the only detail he was interested in: Alicia Bryson and her daughter were expected on Sunday afternoon.

At twelve on the dot he stationed his car near the bottom of Woodside Lane, and settled down to wait for Helen. He had an excuse ready, in case anyone saw him and tapped on the window. One of the houses further up the lane was empty, and he was going up to have a quick look round, wasn’t he? After all, his own place was nothing special. Looking at property was a perfectly natural thing to be doing.

Nobody noticed him so he didn’t need his excuse. There was nothing he could do except sit and wait, but the thought of Helen driving towards him, getting closer by the minute, nearer and nearer... How wonderfully exciting that was, an amazing feeling, almost orgasmic. It made his entire body tremble and the sweat, never far off, soaked through his shirt yet again. He was waiting for Helen... He didn’t want it to end.

And then suddenly, they were here. Fortunately the lane was narrow, so you had to slow right down when you turned in from the main road. Helen’s car crawled past him and there she was, and oh, she was just as perfect as he remembered, with such a beautiful worried expression on her face. If only he could hold her and kiss that frown away.

An instant later he saw the little girl and knew straightaway that here was another true love, an even greater love, if such a thing was possible. Little Helen, gazing out of the passenger seat window, and oh! – she’d seen him, she had looked straight at him – what had she thought? Did she realise that here was the man who was going to send her to Paradise? No, of course not.

But send her he would. And soon. What a wonderful time he would have, planning his ceremony, making sure that the road to Paradise was smooth.

His Helens had arrived.

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