Dellen opened her eyes. For a moment she looked confused, until she saw Kerra. And then she pulled to her the garments nearest her right hand. She clutched these to her breasts and, in doing so, she uncovered a pair of shears and a carving knife. Kerra looked from these to her mother to the clothes. She saw that every item on the floor had been rendered useless through slashing, slicing, hacking, and cutting.
“I should have used them on myself,” Dellen said dully. “But I couldn’t. Still, wouldn’t you have been happy had I done it? You and your father? Happy? Oh God, I want to die. Why won’t anyone help me die?” She began to weep tearlessly and as she did so, she drew more and more of the clothing to her until she’d formed an enormous pillow of ruined clothes.
Kerra knew what she was meant to feeclass="underline" guilt. She also knew what she was meant to do: forgive. Forgive and forgive until you were the incarnation of forgiveness. Understand until there was nothing left of you except that effort to understand.
“Help me.” Dellen extended her hand. Then she dropped it to the floor. The gesture was useless, virtually noiseless.
Kerra shoved the damning postcard back into her pocket. She grabbed her mother’s arm and hauled her upwards. She said, “Get up. You need to bathe.”
“I can’t,” Dellen said. “I’m sinking. I’ll be gone soon enough and long before I can…” And then a wily shift, perhaps reading from Kerra’s face a brittleness of which she needed to be wary. She said, “He threw out my pills. He had me this morning. Kerra, he…he as much as raped me. And then he…And then he…Then he threw out my pills.”
Kerra shut her eyes tight. She didn’t want to think about her parents’ marriage. She merely wanted to force the truth from her mother, but she needed to direct the course of that truth. “Up,” she said. “Come on. Come on. You’ve got to get up.”
“Why will no one listen to me? I can’t go on like this. Inside my mind is a pit so deep…Why won’t anyone help me? You? Your father? I want to die.”
Her mother was like a sack of sand and Kerra heaved her onto the bed. There Dellen lay. “I’ve lost my child.” Her voice was broken. “Why does no one begin to understand?”
“Everyone understands.” Kerra felt reduced inside, as if something were simultaneously squeezing her down and burning her up. Soon there would be nothing of her left. Only speaking would save her. “Everyone knows you’ve lost a child, because everyone else has lost Santo, too.”
“But his mother…only his mother, Kerra-”
“Please.” Something snapped within Kerra. She reached for Dellen and pulled her upright, forcing her to sit on the edge of the bed. “Stop the drama,” she said.
“Drama?” As so often had happened in the past, Dellen’s mood shifted, like an unanticipated seismic event. “You can call this drama?” she demanded. “Is that how you react to your own brother’s murder? What’s the matter with you? Have you no feelings? My God, Kerra. Whose daughter are you?”
“Yes,” Kerra said. “I expect you’ve asked yourself that question a number of times, haven’t you. Counting back the weeks and the months and wondering…Who does she look like? Who does she belong to? Who can I say fathered her and-this would be critical, wouldn’t it, Dellen?-will he believe me? Oh, p’rhaps if I look pathetic enough. Or pleased enough. Or happy enough. Or whatever it is that you look when you know you’ve got to explain some mess you’ve made.”
Dellen’s eyes had grown dark. She’d shrunk away from Kerra. She said, “How can you possibly say…?” and her hands rose to cover her face in a gesture that Kerra assumed was meant to be read as horror.
It was time. Kerra pulled the postcard from her pocket. She said, “Oh, stop it,” and she knocked her mother’s hands to one side and held the postcard to Dellen’s face. She put a hand on the back of her neck so Dellen could not remove herself from their conversation. She said, “Have a look at what I found. ‘This is it,’ Mum? ‘This is it’? What, exactly? What is ‘it’?”
“What are you talking about? Kerra, I don’t-”
“You don’t what? You don’t know what I’ve got in my hand? You don’t recognise the picture on this card? You don’t recognise your own bloody writing? Or is it this: You don’t know where this card even came from and if you do know-because we both damn well know that you know, all right?-then you just can’t imagine how it managed to get there. Which is it, Mum? Answer me. Which?”
“It’s nothing. It’s just a postcard, for heaven’s sake. You’re behaving like-”
“Like someone whose mother fucked the man she thought she was going to marry,” Kerra cried. “In this cave where you fucked the rest of them.”
“How can you possibly-”
“Because I know you. Because I’ve watched you. Because I’ve seen the story play out over and over. Dellen in need and who’s there to help her but a willing male of whatever age because it never bloody mattered to you, did it? Just that you had him, whoever he was and whoever he belonged to…because what you wanted and when you wanted it was more important than…” Kerra felt her hands begin shaking. She pressed the card to her mother’s face. “I should make you…God. God, I should make you…”
“No!” Dellen squirmed beneath her. “You’re mad.”
“Even Santo can’t stop you. Santo dead can’t stop you. I thought, ‘This will get through to her,’ but it didn’t, did it? Santo dead-my God, Santo murdered-didn’t make a ripple. Not the slightest diversion in what you planned.”
“No!”
Dellen began to fight her, clawing at her hands and her fingers now. She kicked and rolled to get away, but Kerra was too strong. So she began to scream.
“You did this! You! You!” Dellen grabbed at her daughter’s hair and eyes. She pulled Kerra down. They rolled on the bed, seeking purchase among the mass of linens and covers. Their voices shrieked. Their arms flailed. Their legs kicked. Their hands grasped. They found. They lost. They grasped again, punching and pulling as Dellen shrieked, “You. You. You did it.”
The bedroom door crashed open. Footsteps hurried across the room. Kerra felt herself lifted and heard Alan’s voice in her ear.
“Easy,” he said. “Easy, easy. Jesus. Kerra, what’re you doing?”
“Make her tell you,” Dellen cried. She had fallen to her side on the bed. “Make her tell you everything. Make her tell you what she’s done to Santo. Make her tell you about him. Santo!”
One arm holding Kerra, Alan began moving towards the door.
“Let me go!” Kerra cried. “Make her tell the truth.”
“You come with me,” Alan told her instead. “It’s time that you and I had a real talk.”
BOTH OF THE CARS, similar to those that had been reported in the general area on the day of Santo Kerne’s death, were standing at one side of LiquidEarth when Bea and DS Havers pulled up at the erstwhile Royal Air Station. A quick glance through the window showed that Lew Angarrack’s RAV4 held a surfing kit along with a short board. Jago Reeth’s Defender held nothing as far as they could see. It was pitted with rust on the outside-the salt air was murder on any car in this part of the country-but otherwise it was as clean as was possible, which wasn’t very clean at all, considering the weather and the likelihood that he had to keep it parked outside. It did have floor mats and on both driver’s side and passenger’s side there was plenty of dried mud for their consideration. But mud was a hazard of life on the coast from late autumn through the end of spring, so its presence in the Defender didn’t count for as much as Bea would have liked.