The sound of the front door opening gave her a queasy feeling and she quickly slammed the lids of her cases and zipped them up.
‘Hiya! Are you upstairs, Mandy?’ yelled Chloe. ‘We’ve brought fish and chips from the takeaway as Mum couldn’t be bothered to cook …’
Her voice trailed off as Mandy appeared on the landing lugging her cases behind her. ‘Is everything OK?’ asked Pat.
‘I’m going home for a few days,’ Mandy replied. ‘I just need a bit of time to myself.’
Pat and Chloe looked at each other, a baffled look crossing their faces. ‘Has something happened? Is it the baby? Is he OK?’ asked Chloe.
‘Yes, the baby’s fine.’
‘Then why are you leaving? I thought you were happy here?’
Mandy paused and stared at the two strangers below her, realising she didn’t really know them at all. They had lied to her from the day she’d first met them, and she resented them for every mistruth they’d sold her and every fake promise they’d made.
‘I know about Richard,’ Mandy said slowly but firmly.
‘What do you know?’ Pat asked.
‘I met Michelle Nicholls today, Richard’s ex-girlfriend. She told me a lot of interesting things about him, like that he was quite the ladies’ man and that he didn’t want kids of his own. But that’s not even the half of it, is it?’
‘Whatever she’s told you, she’s lying,’ said Pat immediately. ‘Michelle is a bitter little tart, angry because Richard didn’t want her anymore.’
‘So you didn’t beg her to have Richard’s baby and then harass her when she said no?’ Mandy fixed her glare on Pat.
‘No, of course we didn’t, darling. Before he died, Richard told me he never loved her.’
‘“Before he died”! Pat, stop it. I know the truth. I just spent the afternoon with him in his nursing home.’
Pat held her hand to her mouth in surprise and Chloe looked away.
‘Why did you lie to me?’ continued Mandy. ‘Why did you tell me he was dead?’
‘We didn’t mean to,’ Chloe interrupted, her voice trembling. ‘When you turned up at the remembrance service, we assumed you knew he was alive. Then when you came to the house, we realised you thought he was dead and …’ She glanced at Pat. ‘Mum thought it best not to upset you any further. I wanted to tell you the truth but then it all went too far.’ Again, she exchanged an uneasy look with Pat.
‘You even showed me where you had sprinkled his ashes, Pat. What kind of mother would do that? When her son is still alive?’
Even Chloe looked surprised at this. ‘Mum?’ she said quietly, but Pat ignored her.
‘For all intents and purposes he is dead,’ said Pat. ‘I lost my little boy and I wanted him back. And you, you wanted a child. I’m sorry I lied to you but it’s worked out for all of us, hasn’t it?’
‘That was the plan then, to replace Richard with my baby?’
‘No, we could never replace him,’ snapped Pat.
‘Then what? Because from what his nurse told me, you never go and visit him. You pay for his care but you’ve had nothing else to do with him since before you met me.’
‘It’s too hard,’ said Chloe. ‘To see someone who was so full of life, drained of everything that made him exist. It’s just too bloody hard.’
‘Oh, poor you. What about your brother? He’s the one who’s all alone up there. You’ve even banned his friends from seeing him.’
‘Don’t you dare judge us,’ Pat said, making her way up the stairs towards Mandy. ‘You’re lucky you’ve only seen him the way he is now – that body in bed who needs a ventilator to breathe, a pipe down his throat to feed him and a catheter to piss through. You have no idea how fortunate you are not to have known him back then, because you have nothing to compare him to now. That boy is not my son anymore. That body is not him, so don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing, because you are clueless.’
‘Mum, Mandy, please calm down,’ said Chloe, but she was ignored again.
‘So what am I to you then? Just a vessel to carry his baby?’
‘No, of course you’re not. If we’d just wanted that, we’d have found a surrogate.’
‘But that’s what you wanted from Michelle, wasn’t it? You asked her first.’
‘We weren’t thinking clearly back then,’ added Chloe. ‘We were grieving and still in shock. We understand that now, don’t we, Mum? That’s why we sent Rich’s DNA swab to find his correct Match, to find the person to have his child with. And that’s you.’
‘What?’ Mandy lost her grip on the suitcase handle and it fell to the floor. ‘You did the test for him?’
Chloe hesitated. ‘You make it sound worse than it is,’ she said, and lowered her head. ‘Mum was just doing what she thought best. Please, Mandy, just leave your cases there and come downstairs and let’s talk about this. You’re part of our family, just like the baby will be.’
Mandy shook her head and laughed. ‘You’re wrong. I am not part of this family and I’ll be damned if my baby will be either. You’ve lied to me from the word go, so how can I ever trust you? I need to go home and start putting my life back together, without you two in it.’ Mandy grabbed her suitcases and pulled them towards her and started making her way down the stairs.
‘Like hell you are,’ yelled Pat and ran up the last few stairs until she was face to face with her. ‘You aren’t taking my grandchild away from me.’ As she said this she yanked at her arm, which made Mandy lose her balance.
Mandy fell forwards. She managed to grip the handrail just before her legs gave way, but with the force of her giant body falling, she didn’t catch herself in time to stop her forehead from cracking into the spindles. She felt the warm trickle of blood run down her face. She held herself steady with one hand and with the other Mandy reached to touch her wound. When she realised it was a deep cut, she immediately felt faint.
‘I’ll call for an ambulance,’ yelled Chloe, and ran into the lounge for her phone.
‘Don’t move, you stupid girl,’ said Pat. She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and placed it on Mandy’s injured head. ‘How could you put my grandchild at risk like this?’
‘You and your lies did this,’ Mandy wept.
‘We could have been happy, just the four of us. You were honestly like another daughter to me, but you shouldn’t have gone sticking your nose into business that didn’t concern you. Whether you like it or not, I am going to be a part of this baby’s life. Nobody – not you or any court in this land – is going to keep me from my grandson.’
Scared and disorientated, Mandy wanted to get as far away from Pat as possible. She pushed away Pat’s arm, which was supporting her, and once again reached for her suitcase. But as she tried to descend the staircase her legs buckled and she tumbled, cracking her already injured head against the bannisters and spindles, before falling down the remaining steps and landing in a crumpled, unconscious heap, face down on the floor.
Chapter 82
CHRISTOPHER
The odorous molecules of Number Twenty-Nine’s auburn hair charged up Christopher’s nostrils and dissolved in his mucus, creating a signal to his brain.
But there was something about the fruit-infused ingredients in her generic brand of shampoo that repelled him and, to the best of his recollection, it was the first time a smell had ever had a negative effect on him.
Christopher wanted to get through this as briskly and efficiently as possible, but the skin around her neck was thin and he’d wrapped the wire around it too tightly, causing it to penetrate. He loosened the slack a little, concerned that it might pierce her jugular and release a jet of blood across the room. Cleaning up each microscopic droplet would be far too time consuming and Christopher wasn’t in the mood.