The journalists were gone from the back lane when I got back. I still feel that they’re watching me. Trisha was watching television with Margie in the front room. She asked me how the visit went. I shrugged. She didn’t tell me off or make any statements about what had happened, which I was grateful for. Yeni was hiding in the kitchen, looking uncomfortable. I think Trisha has been hounding her all day. It’s obvious that Yeni doesn’t like Trisha at all, and I feel I can trust her because of it.
I was suddenly struck by the terrifying thought that Yeni might leave and I’d have to find another au pair and explain the situation to her and the agency and her parents. No one in their right mind would let their teenage daughter come to the house of a lone man whose wife’s a murderer. I realized that I must be much nicer to Yeni, so I asked her if she’d like pizza for dinner and ordered it in for us all to share. I got a big one with artichoke and olives because that’s what she likes. I know she appreciated it because she went out to the deli later and bought me a bar of marzipan (“Fur jyou, Lachie”) and left it in the fridge.
I wonder about Susie. I wonder how I could live with her and know her so little. I keep looking at the picture of us in Corfu and realizing that we’ve hardly seen each other since Margie was born. I thought that was normal when couples have a baby. I thought you had to take each other for granted and concentrate on the child. I was looking forward to it, actually. It’s a normal part of the rhythm of life. It doesn’t mean one of you can go off and fall in love with a psychopathic convict.
chapter fourteen
THEY PHONED AT SIX-FORTY THIS MORNING TO ANNOUNCE THAT they were coming and arrived just after five p.m., dressed for an Arctic winter. We left their suitcases in the hall and sat around the kitchen table. The place looked nice because Mrs. Anthrobus had been and everything was clean and polished. Mum had brought a basket of pretty red and yellow jellied fruits from Marbella, and we had them with a high tea in the old manner, bread and jam and cakes and Marmite and several strong pots of Ceylon. The garden had never looked so inviting, and I wished I were out there, alone, working up a sweat pruning the apple tree and raking the leaves, kicking up the damp smell of the earth and settling the beds for winter.
Dad’s getting old. He never speaks when Mum’s there, and Mum is always there. He’s smaller than ever before, and his eyelids are coming away from his eyes. He looks awfully tired, not long-trip tired but life tired. I tried to hug him, but he sort of brushed his forehead against my chin and pushed me away.
As with Trisha, Mum and Dad were not invited to my home, nor did I in any way encourage them to come here. However, my wishes and well-being are of little concern to this elderly triumvirate. I’m little more than a sideshow, a useful prop for them to prove to each other how caring and family-oriented they are. Afraid Trisha was usurping her by coming here first, Mum’s been fussing around the house, spraying her scent in corners and doorways. She knows Trisha warned Susie about me before the wedding and is very suspicious of her.
They’ve begun a vicious exchange of tit-for-tat pleasantries that can only end in bloodshed. Trisha says how well I’ve done, and Mum trumps that by saying she knew I would do well, having known me since childhood. Trisha wants to give up the guest room in favor of Mum and Dad, but Mum and Dad want to sleep in the coal cellar so that Trisha won’t be disturbed by dad’s snoring, because you do snore, don’t you, Ian? Eventually I gave M amp;D my room and said I’d sleep downstairs, that it didn’t matter because I wasn’t really sleeping much anyway.
Mum stroked my hair and looked accusingly at Trisha. Trisha smiled and muttered, “So kind.” The irony of this sort of comfort is completely lost on both of them. They have nary a care that their support has resulted in my being put out of my bed.
Margie is loving it, though. They held her, one at a time, and fed her, cooing and gasping at her every move. It is lovely to see her through fresh eyes, because I forget how enchanting she is. The proportions of her facial features are perfect really, and she’s very clever. She plays little jokes, hiding things and so on, and her singing and talking is very advanced. She chats away all the time, to toys and walls and floors and shoes and the telly. She tries to boss everyone around, getting us to sit in chosen seats, hold a particular doll, eat things, and she claps her hands with pleasure whenever we do her bidding.
I was hoping with everyone here that Yeni might get a few days to herself, but Mum and Dad insisted that she join us for afternoon tea and quizzed her in pidgin Spanish. Having gone to the trouble of bastardizing her language, they were quite indignant to find the discourtesy unreciprocated. Yeni apologized in Spanish and reacted to their stonewalling by blushing and wobbling her head from side to side. Then she sloped off to hide in her room. She really must not leave.
I said I was going to the loo and went up to her room to see if she was okay. She was sitting on the end of her single bed, looking at the pictures in a book about the Romans. She had wound up the noisy little circus clock that Susie had as a child, the one with the seal balancing the ball on his nose. The anxious, tinny tick-tock bounced from wall to wall, making her seem like a child waiting out her time in detention. I gave her a quizzical thumbs-up. She raised a limp thumb back and stretched her lips across her teeth. I made a wait gesture and brought the portable television through from my room. I sat it on the chest of drawers at the end of her bed and plugged it in. I pointed at my watch. “Friends,” I said, and her big fat face lit up.
“Friends?”
“Yes,” I said and turned it on, fiddling with the aerial until I found good reception. Mum called me, and as I went to open the door and go back downstairs, Yeni darted from the bed and caught my arm, turning me around. She gave me the toothiest, cheesy grin and a big, affirmative thumbs-up. We both giggled behind our hands as Mum called again, and I dragged my heavy feet back downstairs to the unwelcome support and comfort of my family.
I got a locksmith to come this morning before Mum and Dad arrived and install a Yale on this door. It makes the room feel so much more private. When I came back up after tea and heard the firm lock slide shut, I found myself smiling and looking around, rubbing my hands, secure in the knowledge that I was up in my high attic room, alone.
Susie’ll be pleased when she does get out. I’ll give her both keys and let her get on with it.
Harvey Tucker had the cheek to phone and leave a message reminding me to look out for that file for him. I found it on the disk with the Gow files from Sunnyfields. It’s a table of the people who contacted Gow, dates of when they did, and notes of whether they came to visit or not. I can see from the top left-hand corner of the document that the table has been made up by both Tucker and Susie, so he’s not lying. He did do some of the work. I’m reluctant to hand it over, though. I can’t bring myself to admit Susie really did take the files, and I don’t want to contribute to anything else being published about Gow. Susie must have had a reason for erasing all the other copies: she obviously didn’t want Tucker to get ahold of it.
Donna McGovern’s name is in there. It says she contacted him (“2/2/98 letter, romantic content, photograph encl.”). Then the first visit (“Scottish Prison Department approval for visit. Gow approval for visit”) and a flood of letters, one a day, until the file entries stop abruptly around the time Susie got the bump. A rush of letters from strangers accompanied Gow’s wedding, presumably people wishing him well or ill or just freaks who had seen him in the paper. The most worrying correspondent is the one who wrote fifty-three times in two years (all “sexual content”) and was knocked back for a visit every time, often by Gow himself. But that was a man, a Mr. Thomas Wexler whose address is given as 221 Grape Street, Bristol. I like knowing that. I may go to Bristol one day, and I wouldn’t want to run into Mr. Wexler without knowing that about him.