The Golden Fury

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

He leafed through quickly—too quickly for Aldira’s liking—but stopped halfway through and pulled out two sheets.

“These were notes I wrote up after we found out about the husband’s affair,” he said. “Nick Irving said it was a fling and he didn’t know the woman’s full name when I questioned him in front of his wife. But he did. He rang me the next day and told me. He didn’t want Bria to know. We checked her out—the other woman—where’s her name?

Marian Laidlaw. That’s her.”

Aldira wrote it down, checking the spelling. “And what was she like?”

she asked.

“My sergeant saw her. Says here she was a pleasant, decent woman of thirty-five. Older than Nick Irving but a nurse, like Bria. The fling had gone on a while, according to her. There’d been talk of Nick Irving leaving his wife but then it had ended. When Bria found out.”

“A nurse?” Aldira said, her pulse quickening. “b****y hell. Did she know Bria? Did she work at the Basingstoke Hospital?”

“No, sadly not,” the detective said. “We got all excited like you—

thought we’d found ourselves a proper suspect—but Miss Laidlaw had a cast-iron alibi. She was on duty on a geriatric ward in Southampton—

miles away and with dozens of witnesses. Another dead end.”

“Interesting, though,Aldira said.

“Len, dinner’s on the table,” his wife shouted through.

“Well, I think I’ve told you everything I know,” DI Rigby said.

“You’ve been brilliant,” Aldira said and shook his hand firmly. “I don’t suppose I could borrow your notes for a couple of days? Promise I’ll return them . . .”

“Len!” The voice was more insistent now.

“Coming, love,” he called back. “You can photograph them, but I can’t let them go. And anything I’ve said you’ll only use as background?

No quoting me. Understood?”

“You have my word,” she said and Joe started copying the pages on his phone.

I’ve got out my old diaries from the suitcase under the spare bed. It’s the first time in years I’ve looked at them, but the baby has made me want to check on how it all started. In case my mind has been playing tricks.

They’re cheap, thin exercise books filled with tiny writing. My teenage years. Funny how I divide my life into blocks of time. Like I was different people. I suppose I was. We all are.

When I read them now, I want to weep for her—for me—and the girl I might have been.

She was so young and innocent—nothing like thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds I see on the bus, shouting and swearing, frightening old ladies.

Teenage Emma scribbled away about her life as if she were Jane Austen, recording the conversations and rivalries at school and home, observing the people around her. And occasionally, she described her feelings—

like when she saw a boy in town she liked. She used words like

“dreamy.” And that’s what they were, these boys, fodder for imagined romances and happy-ever-afters. Poor Emma. Outside her books and diaries, the world wasn’t like that, even if it looked like it for a bit.

Darrell Moore was her—my—first coup de foudre. She would probably have called it love at first sight. Whatever it was, it was devastating, literally. Not devastating, the opposite of awesome, as used on the news by people to describe minor events. But devastating as in overwhelming, savage, shattering. I couldn’t think straight.

The diary says we went for a walk—with hearts round the words—

and I remember him stroking my hair, squeezing my shoulders, and putting his arm round me as we walked along the promenade that first time. I loved it. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to touch every inch of my skin. He was so lovely, he took my breath away.

I was so dazzled by Darrell that I almost forgot why I’d come to Brighton. We were on our way back to the station when I asked him if he knew where Charlie was.

He said he had no idea, hadn’t heard from him in years. Even joked about him becoming a stockbroker. I didn’t understand why it was funny when he said it—I didn’t know Charlie had been a musician when he met Jude. Darrelltold me Charlie had written a song about her. About her eyes. My eyes, Darrell said, and he kissed me. I wrote in my diary that it was my first proper kiss. A sweet kiss.

He asked me to come and see him again. I wrote that I would’ve done anything he asked at that moment. And I would have. I was thirteen and had just been kissed for the first time. I couldn’t see anything wrong in it.

I was in love.

But Harry reappeared, furious at being abandoned, and grabbed my arm to take me home.

I remember we walked away, me looking back as Harry frog-marched me off. Darrell stood in the middle of the pavement, surrounded by shoppers and holidaymakers, looking at me until we turned the corner and I burst into tears again.

Harry was telling me to pull myself together—I expect she was a bit frightened about the state I was in. She’d never seen me like that. I’d never been like that. Normally, I was the sensible one, soothing and calming her when she was upset or angry, but she was the nurse that day.

She went to the toilet on the train and got some loo roll to mop me up, but it was as if something had broken free inside me.

Harry thought I was crying because it’d been a disaster—she hadn’t seen the sweet kiss on the lips—and she tried to help by saying horrible things about Darrell.

“He smells,” she said. “Like stale bread. I don’t think he washes.”

I told her he didn’t know where my dad was and pretended to go to sleep so I wouldn’t have to talk.

Harry let it go—she got bored easily, luckily—and started talking about the man at the sweet stall who’d chatted her up.

He’d had horrible spots, but she got a free candy floss.

The kettle was boiling furiously—she’d forgotten to close the lid again—and she turned it off at the plug. She’d been like that all day, losing things, putting things in the wrong place. Her head was full of Will.

“For goodness’ sake,” she said loudly. “You’re too old to be getting in a state over a man.” And she laughed, light-headed with the feelings that were reemerging.

I wonder what he looks like now, she thought for the umpteenth time, smoothing her hair and holding her head high to stretch the creases in her neck.

She dialed Emma’s number for the tenth time and put the receiver down before it connected. She desperately wanted to talk to someone about Will but, after last week, she knew her daughter wouldn’t want to hear about it. But Emma was the only person who knew Will as she did.

She’ll have got used to the idea by now, Jude told herself as she picked up the phone again.

“Emma, it’s me,” she said. “How is the work going?”

“Oh. Hello. I was going to ring you to thank you for lunch last week,”

Emma said.

“I’m sorry I said that about you getting ill, Em,” Jude said. Sheneeded to make the peace as quickly as possible so they could move on to Will.

“That’s okay,” Emma said, her voice lighter. “I’m sorry I was so moody. I’ve been a bit tired.”

“You’re probably working too hard. Anyway, it was good to see you.

And to share my news.”

Emma’s silence was as loud as a clanging bell but Jude ignored it, chattering on determinedly about Will’s call, where she might meet her ex-boyfriend, what she might wear, what they might talk about.

When Jude finally drew breath, Emma said, “I wonder what he looks like now.”

“I was just thinking the same thing, Em,” she’d gushed. “He was always so handsome, wasn’t he? We were all in love with him, weren’t we?”

“Umm, well, I wasn’t,” Emma said so quietly that Jude had to strain to hear her.

“What did you say?”

“I said I wasn’t,” Emma repeated, louder.

“Oh, Em, you were. You were always there, hanging on his every word. You even went to that party with him. Do you remember?”

She could see Emma, all eyes and jailbait legs, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, drawing Will’s attention away from her. Jude got in a huff about it sometimes and Will had laughed her out of her jealousy.

“Well, he certainly made a big impact on me,” Emma said. “He did that.”

“There you are,” Jude said.

“Any adult man would have done,” Emma said. “If you remember.”

“Oh God, let’s not go down the long-lost-daddy route, Em. Will was not your father.”

“No,” Emma said. “He wasn’t.”

She hesitated, and Jude waited for her to say it.

“And he made you throw me out when I was sixteen,” Emma said.

“He didn’t,” Jude snapped. “It was my own decision based on your behavior. You were impossible to live with and it was driving a wedge between us.”

“Between you and me or you and him?” Emma said.

“Both. You were trying to force him out with your lies and tantrums.”

“Lies?”

“Saying you’d seen him chatting up other women. Trying to destroy our relationship. You can’t deny it, Emma.”

“I’m not denying it. I did see him chatting up that woman down our street.”

Jude was furious all over again—with her daughter and herself.

“It was all perfectly innocent,” she hissed. “She denied it completely.”

“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” Emma said.

“Look, I know I wasn’t the perfect mother, but you weren’t the perfect daughter, either.”

“But you were the adult, Jude,” Emma said, their discussion returning to well-worn lines. “Anyway, I’m just surprised you want to see him again now. He did leave you.”

“Things are different now,” Jude said firmly as if closing the subject.

But a voice whispered in her ear, And I am so lonely.

I should have carried on working. Stupidto have retired early.

She’d given up being a lawyer when her parents died and left her a bit of money. “I’m sick of it all,” she’d said. “I’ll be a lady of leisure instead. I’ll go to afternoon concerts and museums.” But she hadn’t got into the swing of having spare time. She chafed against it constantly.

Against life, really.

“Well, it’s up to you, Jude,” Emma said. “But be careful.”

Afterwards, the phrase echoed in Jude’s head. But she silenced it.

Things have changed, she told herself.

My head is full of Will Burnside, and I find I’ve doodled a stick man on my notepad. My pen has gouged deep into the paper as I rerun my final days in Howard Street. The house reeked of disappointment. It seemed to drip down the walls and taint the food.

I can remember the hiss of the whispers between Jude and Will, the staccato urgency of phone calls and the closing doors. My exclusion.

How could Jude say I was in love with Professor Will?

The drawing is on the same sheet as the reporter’s name. Aldira Waters. I trace over the letters with my pen as I think about how I can talk to her without showing my hand. I need to know what she knows.

Maybe put her off the track. Away from me.

I could mention the d**g addicts, I think, and stop drawing.

I scroll down through the chapter I’m working on and write down the first name I come to.

“Hello, I am Anne Robinson and I used to live in Howard Street,” I try it out. “Did you know there was a house of d**g addicts in the street?

I think the baby belonged to one of them.”

It sounds stilted and scripted so I have another go, trying to make it sound more natural. “Hello,” I say again, sounding even more forced.

“Oh, forget it,” I say, and throw my pen across the room.

But I know I’m going to do it. It’s a good idea. She’ll go looking for the sad kids. Since Jude mentioned them, I’ve tried to remember them—I think they must have lived at number 81—but I can only recall them as a group, not individuals, with their dirty hair and stick-thin arms tattooed with needle tracks. “The living dead,” Will used to call them.

What if she asks questions? I think, biting the skin round my fingers.

I start writing down details I remember. There was a girl called Carrie.

They were there for years. Or it seemed like years. They’d gone before I left in 1985, I think. The landlord cleared them out early one morning.

All their stuff was on the pavement, smashed cups, spilled bags of pasta, stained sheets, and old jumpers. The addicts didn’t take anything with them. It all stayed until the next time the binmen came round and shoveled it aboard the lorry. I’d forgotten all that until today. Packed it away with everything else.