Ester looked up. ‘What?’
‘Yeah, funny, isn’t it? He’s a nice guy, and so’s the builder bloke, but all their niceness does is make me miss Lennie.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about him.’ She fetched a mug and spooned in some Horlicks.
‘Well, you’d better stop bloody thinking of him. You’d better forget he ever existed, even more so after what we all did to get rid of his body.’
Connie poured hot milk into the mug and stirred it, then joined Ester at the kitchen table. ‘Why is it the bastards of this world mean more than a nice bloke?’
‘Because, sweetheart, you’re a sucker.’
‘I am not.’
‘Course you are. Lennie beat the living daylights out of you.’
‘He loved me in his way.’
‘What way? Who you kidding? He had you on the game and you call it love? He’s not worth even thinking about — no pimp is.’
‘He wasn’t my pimp.’
‘Pull the other one and grow up. He pimped for you, wanted you back on the game. That’s why you ran off and left him so don’t start fantasizing that it was all lovey-dovey and he’d have you in a cottage with kids and roses round the garden gate. He was a piece of shit.’
‘You didn’t even know him,’ Connie retorted.
‘I didn’t have to. Know one, know them all. And you got so used to being his punch bag you—’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Yes, you were!’ Ester pushed back her chair and took her dirty mug to the sink, crashing it down on the draining board. ‘You got loving all confused with being smacked, sweetheart. Wallop, I love you. Hit me and it means that you do. Beat me up and it means you love me even more — but then, when he’s got you on all fours, crawling like a dog, he’ll give you one last kick and you’re out, used, abused and your head fucked up.’
‘You’d know, would you?’
‘Yes,’ Ester hissed.
‘That why you go with women?’
Ester slapped Connie’s face hard. Connie sprang to her feet, ready to go back at her, but Ester was too fast, already walking out of the kitchen. ‘You got no right to do that.’
‘And you’ve got no right to think you know anything about me. But lemme tell you, I know men, know them better than you, anyone else in this house ever will. Right now you make me sick, moaning about that two-bit punk. We all went out on a limb for you — we fucking buried him! Instead of bleatin’ on about how much he loved you, you should thank Christ he’s out of your life.’
‘Oh, yeah, my life’s so much better now, is it?’
‘It just might be.’
Connie followed her to the door. ‘Is it really going ahead, the robbery? I mean, for real?’
Ester had doubts but right now she was not about to voice them. ‘Go and get back to bed. We’ll all know soon enough.’
She went upstairs and Connie took her half-finished drink to the sink. She noticed that, as usual, Ester had not washed her mug, or even bothered to rinse it under the tap. For want of something to do, she began to clean around the sink.
Norma washed up their supper dishes, taking her time as she felt awkward in the strange, rather old-fashioned house, and Julia had been very distant, almost aggressive. Julia’s mother was very ill; the stroke had robbed her of speech and movement, and she lay in her bed, her eyes open wide as if staring directly at the ceiling.
Julia had been shocked to see her so immobilized and, as a doctor, she had quickly assessed her condition and known instantly she would need round-the-clock nursing. It would be impossible for her to remain alone at the house, even with a housekeeper. She had sat beside her mother for most of the afternoon. She had a lot to say to her, always had, but they had never really talked. Now they never would. Her mother would never speak again. Julia even had to change her as she was incontinent, had washed her as if she were a baby, cleaned the bed and tidied her thinning white hair. She had not said a word but her gentleness was touching. Now she sat staring at the silent figure, knowing a home was the only option left to her as the elderly housekeeper could not be asked to take care of her, and a nurse was out of the question financially.
Julia held the frail, bony hand. ‘Oh, Mama, we should have talked. I’d have liked you to know who I am but, well, it’s too late now.’
Norma peeked in. ‘I’ve cleared the dishes and washed around the kitchen. It was a bit grimy.’
‘Thank you.’ Julia didn’t want to talk to Norma, almost resented her presence.
Norma crept to the bed and looked at the old woman. She made not a sound, never moved a muscle. There was just the vacant stare at the ceiling.
‘You can share the bedroom with me,’ Julia said quietly.
Norma whispered that she would go downstairs and watch television, and crept out again. Even her creeping around annoyed Julia — maybe because she herself wanted to scream.
She began to pack her mother’s nightwear, hairbrushes and toiletries in a small bag, ready for the move. She would arrange a private ambulance in the morning and check all the homes that would take her. She opened and shut drawer after drawer as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the invalid, carrying the garments back and forth to the open case on a low bedside chair. She thought she should perhaps put in some bed jackets or cardigans and started to search through the dressing-table drawers. She saw the newspaper clippings, hidden beneath a fine wool shawl. At first she didn’t think anything of them but then, as she removed the shawl, she couldn’t help but read the headline: ‘Local Doctor in Drug Scandal’.
Julia’s heart pounded. She sat down on the dressing-table stool and got out the neat stack of clippings. They detailed her arrest for possession of heroin, her charges for selling prescriptions and her trial and sentence. The secret she had so painstakingly kept from her mother, all the years of lying and frantic subterfuge had been a waste of time because all the time she had known.
She screwed up the clippings into a tight ball and hurled them into the waste bin but it was a while before the anger rose, humiliation uppermost at first, before she raged at what her mother had forced her to do, and she turned to the silent figure in the bed.
‘You knew! You knew, all those years, and you never told me, you never talked to me!’
In the drawing room below, Norma heard the banging and scraping from above and she ran up the narrow staircase. When she got to the bedroom, she stood at the doorway, frightened, as Julia shook her mother’s bed until it rattled, until the old woman seemed about to roll out of it.
‘No, Julia! No, stop it! For God’s sake, stop this!’
Julia then turned her fury on Norma, ready to lash out at her, at anyone who came near her, but Norma was quite able to take care of herself and gripped Julia tightly. ‘Julia, it’s me, it’s Norma, stop this...’
‘She knew, Norma. All the years I’ve broken my fucking back keeping it away from her, and she knew.’
Julia slammed out of the room. Norma didn’t understand what she was talking about but she quickly settled Mrs Lawson back on her pillows and tucked in the bedclothes. She leaned over the bed, touching the frail, wrinkled hand. ‘It’s all right, she’ll be fine.’
Norma felt such sadness as the mute figure’s helpless fingers tried to hold on to her and tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be taken care of, Mrs Lawson, and I will look after Julia.’
Only the tears indicated that the old lady understood.
When Norma went into Julia’s room, she found her lying on her bed, the bed she had used as a girl, and with fists clenched cursing her own stupidity.