Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

He reached out and laid his right hand over her left hand, and his forefinger touched the wedding band that Marcus had given her. ‘It really doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Now, would you like me to have a word with Dawlish about this flat?’

‘But of course it matters. Especially if Serridge is a murderer as well as everything else.’

‘I don’t agree. We’re not our parents. If Serridge really is your father, he’s nothing more than a biological accident. You can choose your own father. You can choose whoever you want. Or you can do without a father altogether.’

‘Something wrong with that tart?’ asked the manageress, looming menacingly behind Rory.

‘Not at all.’ Lydia obediently took up her spoon and fork. ‘It looks lovely.’

The manageress watched her chew and swallow a mouthful. She shuffled away.

‘See?’ Rory said. ‘You’re practically a daughter to her now. Next time we come here, she’ll probably take the food off my plate and insist on feeding it to you.’

He watched the smile breaking slowly over her face. While they ate their pudding, he told her about his hopes that the Berkeley’s article would lead to others. Afterwards she insisted on paying the bill.

Outside, he took her arm and slipped it through his. They walked back to Bleeding Heart Square together for the last time. In Charleston Street Serridge drove past in his car but he appeared not to notice them.

As they turned into the square, they saw Captain Ingleby-Lewis in front of them. He had just left the Crozier. There was a roll to his gait, as though the cobbles, puddles and cracked paving slabs were swaying this way and that on the swell of a mighty ocean. He paused by the pump, holding on to the handle to restore his balance. He heard their footsteps behind him and turned his head.

‘Ah — hello, my dear.’ He looked first pleased to see Lydia, and then guilty; his memory was slower to respond than his emotions.

‘Hello, Father,’ Lydia said, leaving her arm in Rory’s. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye.’

You must come to a decision about the diary. It’s a dangerous thing to keep. Besides, you have read it so many times that you know what it says: you can recite passages from memory. You are disposing of so much else, so why not this as well?

But something stops you. The diary will stay the same. You can’t rely on memory to do that. Memory is a process, not something finished, complete in itself.

That is why you keep the diary. That is also why you must destroy it.

You hear the doorbell and it pulls you from a remote corner of your mind where you float between past and future. Only the standard lamp is alight, and the fire has died. The drawing room is insubstantial, full of shadows. It no longer feels like a room you have known all your life. The shabby furniture has lost its meaning, and so have the books on the shelves and the pictures on the walls. The room might just as well be a shop selling second-hand household effects.

You go into the hall and pick your way through the rubbish, your father’s, your mother’s and your own. You know who it will be and you do not want to have to deal with the questions. You have had enough of all this. You open the door and the shock of what you see hits you like a gust of wind. It’s not Rory after all. It’s not even poor Julian.

‘Fenella,’ Joseph Serridge says. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’

‘No,’ you say, and your voice is cold and perfectly steady.

His body almost fills the doorway, blocking out the night. He is the shadow who buys what you are and pays you with a dream that rots into nightmare.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asks, with a ghost of a chuckle in his voice. ‘Looks like you’re running a junk shop.’

You hold the door to steady yourself, to keep the shadow out.

‘Suit yourself,’ Serridge says. ‘We can talk on the doorstep if you want your neighbours to hear. It was you, wasn’t it? Go on — admit it.’

Oh it was you, all right; you never hid that from yourself. Philippa Penhow came into the barn and saw Joseph Serridge lying back on the straw and you riding on top of him with your skirt up around your armpits. His arms were clamped on your shoulders, holding you down.

Philippa Penhow couldn’t have seen your face, not then, not from the doorway, but she said, ‘It’s you, Fenella, isn’t it? Oh, how could you?’

‘It’s you sending me all that rubbish,’ Joseph Serridge says. ‘Why now? Christ, it was years ago. What’s the point?’

You tell him the truth. ‘Because Mother died.’

‘You told her?’

You shake your head. Because you loved Mother. Because she loved you.

Serridge stares down at you and forms his fleshy, hair-fringed lips into a silent whistle. ‘You’re cracked, my girl. You know that?’

‘I’m what you made me.’

‘You knew what you were doing. You wanted it — go on, admit it. You were all over me, remember? Begging me. That’s why you wired that day, that’s why you came.’

Oh, you remember. What you remember most of all is the absence of choice. The devil made you want him.

‘All those hearts — it’s like something out of a bloody fairy tale. What are you trying to do? Feed me up or something?’

You do not reply. You want to remind him what he’s done, what he’s made you do.

‘And then that skull — you should get your head examined, my girl.’

This jolts an answer out of you: ‘I didn’t send you a skull.’

‘Someone did.’ He lunges towards you as if about to envelop you in a bear hug. You force yourself not to step back into the house. He looks down into your face and you stare back at him. The hall light shows the reddening nose and the broken veins.

‘I saved your life,’ he says. ‘Remember what would have happened if I’d told them the truth. Even if they hadn’t hanged you, they’d have locked you up and thrown away the key.’

The truth is that you didn’t mean to do it. The truth is that you were trying to save Joseph Serridge. The truth is never enough.

Philippa Penhow no longer looks like herself. Eyes and mouth gaping, arms outstretched, she drops her handbag and rushes into the barn. You scream and topple away from Joseph Serridge. He swears at Philippa Penhow, but the strangest thing of all is that he’s smiling. He is enjoying this: the two women fighting over him .

Philippa Penhow has picked up a brick from the corner of the barn. She isn’t fighting you: she’s trying to hit Joseph Serridge with it. You didn’t think she could be so strong. He’s not smiling any more. He’s writhing, this way and that, encumbered by the trousers round his knees and the folds of his overcoat. She swings the brick at his face, misses, and hits his shoulder instead. He yelps with pain. She raises the brick again, in both hands. She is standing on a fold of the overcoat and her weight pins down one of his arms and prevents him from rolling away. He tries to raise the other arm to shield himself but he will be too late .

One small woman, one big man .

You throw yourself forward, knocking Philippa Penhow off balance. Her hat falls off. You struggle with her for the brick. She is stronger than she looks, stronger than she should be. You bite down on her hand and she cries out. You wrest the brick from her and raise it in your hands. She is reaching for another brick. You smash your own against the side of her head, into the wispy hair just above the ear. A corner of the brick bites into her, flinging her down onto the pile, onto another brick. You hit her again. The bricks squeeze her head like a pair of nutcrackers squeezes a walnut .