Sandra shrugged. “Maybe. And I wouldn’t know about his personal beliefs. All I know is that Linda Fish — you know, that woman who runs the Writers’ Circle — wouldn’t take any money towards engaging visiting speakers and readers.”
“Linda Fish, the Champagne socialist?”
“Well, yes.”
“What does she know about him?”
“Oh, she’s got contacts among South African writers, or so she claims. All this anti-apartheid stuff is a load of bunk, she thinks. She’s got a point. I mean, after all, whatever he professes to believe he’s still earning his fortune by exploiting the system, isn’t he?”
“I’d better have a talk with her.”
“Well,” Sandra said, “you don’t make his kind of money by being square and above-board, do you? Let’s drop it anyway. I’m sure Linda will be delighted to see you. I think she’s secretly fancied you ever since she found out you’d read Thomas Hardy.”
Banks gave a mock shudder. “Look,” he said, “I’ve just had an idea.”
Sandra raised her eyebrows.
“Not that kind of idea. Well… Anyway, when all this is over — the show, the case — let’s go on holiday, just you and me. Somewhere exotic.”
“Can we afford it?”
“No. But we’ll manage somehow. Tracy can stay with your mum and dad. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
“No. They’re always glad to see her. I bet she’ll mind this time, though. To be separated from the first boyfriend for even a day is a pretty traumatic experience, you know.”
“We’ll deal with that problem when we get to it. What about the holiday?”
“You’re on. I’ll start thinking of suitably exotic places.”
“And… er… about that other idea…”
“What other idea?”
“You know. Erotic places.”
“Oh, that one.”
“Yes. Well?”
Sandra looked at her watch. “It’s ten past eleven. Tracy said she’ll be home at twelve.”
“When has she ever been on time?”
“Still,” Sandra said, finishing her drink and grabbing Banks’s arm. “I think we’d better hurry.”
IV
The tea was cold. Wearily, Brenda Scupham picked up her cup and carried it to the microwave. When she had reheated it, she went back into the living-room, flopped down on the sofa and lit a cigarette.
She had been watching television. That was how she had let the tea get cold. Not even watching it really, just sitting there and letting the images and sounds tumble over her and deaden the thoughts that she couldn’t keep at bay. It had been a documentary about some obscure African tribe. That much she remembered. Now the news was on and someone had blown up a jumbo jet over a jungle somewhere. Images of the strewn wreckage taken from a helicopter washed over her.
Brenda sipped her tea. Too hot now. It wasn’t tea she needed, anyway, it was a drink. The pill she had taken had some effect, but it would work better with a gin and tonic. Getting up, she went and poured herself a stiff one, then sat down again.
It was that man from the newspaper who had got her thinking such terrible thoughts. Mostly the police did a good job of keeping the press away from her, but this one she had agreed to talk to. For one thing, he was from the Yorkshire Post, and for another, she liked the look of him. He had been kind and gentle in his questioning, too, sensitive to her feelings, but had nevertheless probed areas Brenda hadn’t even known existed. And somehow, talking about her grief over the loss of her “poor Gemma” had actually made her feel it more, just as speculating about what might have happened to the child had made her imagine awful things happening, fears she couldn’t shut out even now, long after the man had gone, after she had taken the tranquillizer, and after the images of Africa had numbed her. It was like being at the dentist’s when the anaesthetic numbs your gums but you can still feel a shadow of pain in the background when he probes with his drill.
Now she found herself drifting way back to when she first got pregnant. Right from the start she knew instinctively that she didn’t want the child growing inside her. Some days, she hoped to fall and induce a miscarriage, and other, worse days, she wished she would get run over by a bus. The odd thing was, though, that she couldn’t actually bring herself to do any of these things — throw herself down the stairs, get rid of the foetus, jump out of a window. Maybe it was because she had been brought up Catholic and believed in a sort of elemental way that both suicide and abortion were sins. She couldn’t even sit in a bathtub and drink gin like that dateless June Williams had done when Billy Jackson had got her in the family way (not that it had worked anyway; all June had got out of it was wrinkled skin and a nasty hangover). No, whatever happened just had to happen; it had to be God’s will, even though Brenda didn’t think now that she really believed in God.
Later, still stunned by the pain of childbirth, when she saw Gemma for the first time, she remembered wondering even back then how such a strange child could possibly be hers. And she turned her back. Oh, she had done the necessaries, of course. She could no more neglect to feed the child and keep her warm than she could have thrown herself under a bus. But that was where it stopped. She had been unable to feel love for Gemma, which is why it felt so strange, after talking about her loss to the reporter, that she should actually feel it now. And she felt guilty, too, guilty for the way she had neglected and abandoned Gemma. She knew she might never get a chance to make it up to her.
She poured another gin. Maybe this would do the trick. The thing was, it had been guilt made her hand Gemma over in the first place. Guilt and fear. The social workers, real or not, had been right when they talked about abuse; it was their timing that seemed uncanny, for though Brenda might have neglected her daughter, she had never, ever hit her until a few days before they called. Even then, she hadn’t really hit Gemma, but when the man and the woman with their posh accents and their well-cut clothes called at her door, she somehow felt they had arrived in answer to a call; they were her retribution or her salvation, she didn’t really know which.
Gemma had angered Les. When she spilled the paint on the racing page of his paper, he retaliated, as he usually did, not by violence, but by hitting her where it hurt, tearing up and throwing out some of her colouring books. Afterwards, he had been in a terrible mood all through tea-time, needling Brenda, complaining, arguing. And to cap it all, Gemma had been sitting there giving them the evil eye. She hadn’t said a word, nor shed a tear, but the accusation and the hurt in those eyes had been too much. Finally, Brenda grabbed her by the arm and shook her until she did start to cry, then let go of her and watched her run up to her room, no doubt to throw herself on her bed and cry herself to sleep. She had shaken Gemma so hard there were bruises on her arm. And when the social workers came, it was as if they knew not only how Brenda had lost her temper that day, but that if it happened again she might keep on shaking Gemma until she killed her. It was silly, she knew that — of course they couldn’t know — but that had been how she felt.
And that was why she had given up Gemma so easily, to save her. Or was it to get rid of her? Brenda still couldn’t be sure; the complexity of her feelings about the whole business knotted deep in her breast and she couldn’t, try as she might, sort it all out and analyze it like she assumed most people did. She couldn’t help not being smart, and most of the time it never really bothered her that other people knew more about the world than she did, or that they were able to talk about things she couldn’t understand, or look at a situation and break it down into all its parts. It never really bothered her, but sometimes she thought it was bloody unfair.