Quintin Jardine - For The Death Of Me

‘Now it’s my turn not to understand,’ she shot back. ‘What do you mean?’

I gazed at her, rather coldly, I suspect. ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘We’re both tired and under great stress, saying things we’d never normally say. Let’s strike everything that’s just been said from the record, okay?’

‘What did you mean, back in the car, about things I should have handled better?’

‘Mary,’ I murmured, ‘I really don’t want to get into this.’

‘What did you mean?’ she hissed.

I took my wallet from my pocket and opened it. I showed her the photo that’s on display there, of Susie and the three kids; the light was good enough for her to see it clearly. Then I slid a finger into the space behind the credit-card slots and drew out another image, of Tom. I’d taken it myself a year earlier, on the day that I’d found him in California, to mark it, but for another reason too.

Before I go any further let me take you back to something I told you in my last confession to you, about the moment in which I saw him for the first time: ‘In an instant, I knew everything: there was no thought process involved, I just knew everything.’ That’s what I said to you then. I’ll bet you thought you knew what I meant; but I’ll bet you also, any odds you like, that you didn’t.

I showed Mary that photograph, and then I showed her another, a snap of another child, taken thirty-five years earlier. The likeness was incredible: they could have been twins.

Her cheeks seemed to collapse into her face as she sucked in her breath; the gasp was so loud I was afraid she’d waken Ellie, but it would take an earthquake to do that.

‘I warned you against this,’ I growled quietly, ‘but you had to insist. So maybe you’ll explain to me why my son, conceived with Primavera and borne by her, should be the living image of my late first wife. . your daughter. How can that be?’

She shook her head, her mouth set in a tight line.

‘It’s out of the box now, Mary,’ I told her grimly. ‘You can’t put it back.’ I glanced at Ellie, and I feared that there might just be an earthquake in that room if we stayed there. ‘Come on,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

Conrad was sitting in a chair outside the door; he was wide awake. I said we were going for some fresh air, and asked him to sit with Ellie, in case she wakened and our absence made her think the worst.

We couldn’t actually go outside, in case we bumped into the press, so I simply turned left at the end of the corridor and tried the first door I saw. It was locked, but the second wasn’t, so we stepped inside. When I found the light switch I saw we were in a private office, probably belonging to one of the senior staff.

I took the two photos from my wallet once more, and held them in front of my step-mother until eventually she looked at them again.

‘I’m not kidding myself, am I? Those children are almost mirror images. One of them is Tom, and the other’s Jan at the same age. We’re agreed on that, yes?’ I ground the last word out, brutally. She nodded. ‘So where does that take us, Mary?’

She tried to turn away, but I grabbed her shoulders and held her, so that she had to look at me. ‘Where?’ I asked her again, but she stayed silent. I began to wonder whether she had kept her secret for so long that she was unable to give it voice.

So I did it for her. ‘Unless there’s an ancestral link between the Blackstone and the More family, or the Mores and the Phillipses, that none of us knows about, there are only two possibilities. Either Alex More is my father, or Mac Blackstone is Jan’s.’ Actually, the first of those had never entered my head until then, the moment when I confronted the truth that had been doing my head in since I first clapped eyes on Tom. I didn’t believe it for a second but I found I couldn’t avoid it.

‘Either way,’ I began, then drew a breath to calm me down, for I was in danger of exploding. ‘Either way, one thing’s for sure: Jan was my half-sister, wasn’t she? For me to father a child who’s her double, with someone else. . there can be no other explanation.’ And then I found myself voicing the last inevitable question: ‘Or are you going to tell me that you didn’t know either?’

The last twist, the one my mind hadn’t let me consider before, threatened to blow a few circuits in my brain. What if neither Mary nor my dad had known? What if Alex More and my mum. .

Her silence lasted another ten seconds or so. If I’d thought about it, that last question had offered her an escape route, but if she saw it, she didn’t choose to take it. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I knew. Alex was sterile. Jan had to be Mac’s daughter.’

This is a terrible thing to admit but, although part of me was horrified, the greater part was relieved. I couldn’t have handled the discovery that My Dad wasn’t really.

It didn’t blow away my anger, though: that fell on her, full force. ‘And you kept that from the two of us. You let us. . Christ, Mary, Jan was pregnant when she died!’

‘Yes, but. . Oz, I couldn’t.’

‘One more thing: does he know? Does my dad know?’

‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t. It was a one-off: he and Flora had been at a Round Table party in someone’s house. Alex was away at a conference so I babysat for Ellen. There was a lot of drink at those Table dos, and that Flora, for the only time in her life, had a right few too many. She was pregnant with you, but I don’t think she knew it then. Mac brought her home, and carted her straight upstairs. Then he came back down. He’d had quite a few himself, and I’d sipped my way through the best part of a bottle of wine in the course of the evening. He said something about how nice I looked, I said something similar in return, we got close, there was kissing, and then there was more than kissing. We never mentioned it afterwards. . I don’t know about him, but I was embarrassed, for it was completely untypical behaviour on my part. . and I think both of us made sure that the same circumstances could never arise again. But I fell pregnant shortly afterwards.’

‘So you must have known from the start.’

‘No!’ Her protest was so spontaneous that I believed her. ‘I didn’t know about Alex’s condition then, neither did he. I didn’t know anything about peak fertility times either. We weren’t long married and we were trying for a family, trying quite hard if you must know. I admit that when I became pregnant the thought did cross my mind, but I discounted the possibility. Then when Jan was born, she didn’t look a bit like Ellen or you. . You and Jan were babies at the same time, remember.’

‘Yes, but Ellie and I both looked like our mum when we were infants; it never occurred to me till I saw Tom, but he’s very like my granny Blackstone. So was Jan in the picture I just showed you. When I looked at some older photos, I discovered that they were quite alike as young women too.’

‘Mac’s never noticed that, I promise you; he certainly never mentioned it to me, and I don’t think he’d have been able to keep it to himself if he had noticed it.’

‘When did you find out the truth?’

‘Years later; when Jan was thirteen, I think. Alex and I had been trying in vain for another baby, and finally we went to see a specialist in Edinburgh. He checked us both out, then said he was very sorry but Alex’s sperm count was virtually zero. Alex asked what had brought this on, and the consultant told him he’d always been like that.’

‘Jesus, that was tactful of him.’

‘Indeed. When I challenged him privately, he tried to claim that the case notes didn’t say we already had a child, but he’d examined me pretty carefully so he must have known.’