Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

‘Would that make a difference?’

‘Not to your being approved the gadgets. You don’t need someone here twenty-four hours, so you’d still want those. We couldn’t expect your family to provide full-time support.’

‘That’s true enough. Kay’s got her own family to look after now. And she works full-time. Pamela lives in Surrey. She married a southerner.’ As if it were a different breed.

‘Two daughters, then?’

‘Aye. I’d have liked a son, but Archie loved his little girls.’

‘Any grandchildren?’

‘Five.’ She hoisted herself to her feet and soon we were poring over photos. The Surrey brood were girls too. There were two of them. Not exactly lookers. They’d inherited their grandfather’s prominent teeth and in many of the shots their mouths were full of metal. Mrs Mariner seemed not to notice the beaver features and I heard about their academic success, their brilliance at the piano, the gymnastics classes. Kay had also produced two daughters. Closer in age, they appeared together in school photographs. They were younger too. Even the most recent pictures showed them in primary school sweatshirts, their hair tied up with ribbons.

‘Lucy and Claire,’ Mrs Mariner said. ‘Aren’t they bonny?’

They were. Bonnier at least than Abby and Natasha in Godalming.

‘Do you see a lot of them?’ I didn’t want to push for information on Thomas too quickly.

‘Not as much as I’d like. They only live in Whitley Bay. I’d have them for Kay after school. Archie wouldn’t mind picking them up. But she won’t have it. She says it would be too much for me. Maybe she thinks I’d not be able to care for them properly. You can understand her being worried. After Thomas. And Ronnie can afford a childminder. It’s not as if they’re short of cash.’

‘Thomas?’ I could have played safe and left it. I already had enough information to trace Kay. But I was curious. There had been a few photos of a young boy among the rest but nothing recent.

‘Thomas is Kay’s son. The only lad…’ She shook her head gently. Something about the face and the white curls reminded me of a doll I once had. It moved its head. It was brought by a charity to the kids’ home one Christmas. New. Still in its box. All wrapped up. But I couldn’t see the point of it, just sitting there, moving its head from side to side. I swapped it for a backboard that made a screeching noise when you chalked on it.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said. ‘None of my business.’

‘Thomas is Kay’s son. Older than the girls.’ She looked around guiltily, as though there might be someone to overhear. ‘She had him before she got married.’

‘Tough.’

‘She’d only just left school. We found out she was expecting soon after she finished her A-levels. She had a Saturday job in a big department store in town. That’s where she met the father. He was a student, a bit older than her, working his way through university.’

‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘No. We knew nothing about him. Not even his name. She didn’t even want to tell us that much. We tried to help her through it. It was something you thought about in those days: what would I do if one of them fell pregnant? And I knew I couldn’t get cross or angry. No point, is there?’

This was all a bit close to home. I was thinking, I wish you were my gran. If my mum had had someone like you, I wouldn’t have been dumped outside a church for a collie bitch to sniff out.

‘Did she ever think of an abortion?’ It was something I’d thought about. The dizzying notion that I might never have been born.

Mrs Mariner shook her head. ‘By the time we realized what was going on, it was too late for an abortion. And I was glad. I didn’t think she’d be able to live with herself afterwards, no matter what she said at the time.’

‘What did she say?’

Mrs Mariner didn’t answer directly. Not because she was becoming suspicious about my questions. Everyone expects a social worker to be nosy. Just because she wanted to explain in her own time.

‘Kay was an easy child in a way. She liked everything just so. She always kept her clothes lovely and I never had to nag her to tidy her bedroom. She was organized, you could say. Not like Pam, who was a walking whirlwind. Kay had her life planned. She was going to train to be a teacher. Little ones. She wouldn’t have been able to control the older children. And she liked to be in control, our Kay. Then I suppose she met this lad at work and they were careless, unlucky, and she fell pregnant. But it wasn’t in her scheme of things. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She wouldn’t admit it even to herself. Do you understand what I mean, pet?’

I nodded.

‘I guessed in the end that she was expecting. You can’t live in a house this size and keep secrets. And like I said, with teenage girls it was always something that was a possibility. You’ll understand when you’ve bairns yourself.’

I said nothing.

‘It made her ill,’ Mrs Mariner continued. ‘Not physically ill. She just couldn’t accept it, not even when she was the size of a barrage balloon. We couldn’t get any sense out of her. She wouldn’t talk about the father. We wouldn’t have made a fuss. You can’t imagine Archie with a shotgun. But we thought the lad had a right to know, to play his part. He’d have parents. Imagine having a grandchild and knowing nothing about it.’

She paused again and I thought it was a story she hadn’t told for a long time.

‘He was born on Christmas Eve. An east wind that would cut your legs off. Too cold for snow. I went with her to the hospital and helped her through labour and she was as good as gold, breathing and panting just like they’d showed her. Braver than I’d been with mine. I thought it was going to be all right. There’s nothing more real than labour, is there? Nothing like holding the babby at the end. She’d have to accept him, then.’

‘And did she?’

‘She wouldn’t look at him. She burst into tears and said she wanted him adopted. Now I think that would have been best. I shouldn’t have interfered. But I thought she was ill. Depressed even. Not fit to make a decision. I thought she’d regret it when she was better…’ She was looking out through the window at the snowing pink petals. ‘I’d held him, you see. My first grandchild. A boy, like I’d always wanted for myself. I wasn’t thinking straight either. Selfish. She’d always done what she was told. Perhaps that was how she got pregnant. She’d go along with what he wanted to please him. And when I said she should keep the baby, she went along with that too.

‘I looked after Thomas when she was at college, doing her teacher training. I’d been working in the office at Parsons, not much of a job, not something I minded giving up. He was a lively one, always full of fun and mischief. He kept me young. Kay would be here in the evenings to bath him and put him to bed, and she never took advantage, never stayed out late. But deep down I always felt it was a chore for her. She did it out of duty. Not because she enjoyed it. She’d tuck him in and read him a bedtime story, but he could have been one of her pupils. Do you know what I’m saying, pet?’

I nodded. I knew exactly what she was saying.

‘Sometimes I think of the both of them he liked Pam best. She was a laugh. She took him to the park and didn’t mind when he got mucky. When she married and moved south he cried his eyes out.

‘Kay was thirty when she married. Thomas was eleven. He’d just started the big school and was finding it hard to settle. Nothing serious, but the big lads were rowdy and he could be quite nervy. Then Kay met Ronnie. He owns that big garage on the coast road and she bought a car from him. That’s how they met. She was teaching then of course, working in the infants’ school in Wallsend, where she’s deputy head now. She was doing very well for herself even then, but she and Thomas had never moved into a place of their own. It must have been a shock for the lad. New school, new home, new stepdad…’