Chapter 11
’Daddy’s Never Coming Home Again...’
Without doubt, the defining moment in Jennifer Cole’s childhood was the suicide of her father when she was just nine years old. It wasn’t that she was unusually close to her father; truth to tell, she much preferred her mother. It was more that the repercussions of his death were so far-reaching and unpleasant for the little girl that she never forgave the woman whom she blamed for driving her father to taking his own life.
The name of Melanie Pearl was heard a lot in Jennifer’s home after Richard Cole was suspended from his job. Although the Head had not named the child to him, Cole knew that only twelve year-old Melanie could have any motive for making such an accusation against him. In fact, she had warned him that he would be sorry for questioning her about her protection racket, but he had taken it to be no more than the usual sort of bluster which cross little girls engage in.
The investigation was passed over to the police and Cole of course remained suspended while they investigated. Eventually, they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge him with any offence and, naively, he thought that this would mean returning to Chingford County High, where he was head of mathematics. The Head had other ideas. He told Richard Cole that it would be an impossible situation for him to resume working there, coming into contact with the child who had levelled such serious accusations against him. Of course, the governors would give him an excellent reference and everybody wished him well for the future, but there it was. His career at Chingford was over for good.
The former head of mathematics did not know the precise mechanism by which word of his fall had spread to other potential employers, but the fact was that he was not even called to interview for any of the posts for which he applied. In the end, he was reduced to signing on with an agency and looking for work as a supply teacher; but even that did not work. Once a middle-aged man has had to leave his job after being investigated by the police for interfering with little girls, the chance of his gaining any further employment with children becomes vanishingly remote.
For over a year Richard Cole doggedly pursued teaching jobs, until it finally dawned on him that he would never again work in a school. Teaching was all that he had ever done, all that he had ever wanted to do. Without this, how would he provide for his wife and daughter? Somehow the strength ebbed away from the man as the months passed and he began to despair of being able to work again, until the day came when Jennifer’s mother sat her down and told her that Daddy had gone away.
‘When’s he coming back again?’ asked the child.
‘Daddy’s never coming home again...’ replied her mother.
For a professional, middle-class man on quite a decent income, Richard Cole had made remarkably little provision for his family’s welfare in the event of his death. There were a couple of insurance policies, but because the circumstances of his death, his body was found hanging from a tree in Epping Forest, suggested suicide; the companies concerned refused to pay out. The fact that a suicide note was found in his pocket and that the inquest brought in a verdict of suicide made the insurance companies’ position unassailable.
There were no savings to speak of and the only real legacy was the house in which his widow and child remained. The trips to Florence, so that he and his family could visit art galleries and cathedrals, had eaten up a big chunk of Richard Cole’s salary and ensuring that the house was well decorated and filled with period furniture had seemingly accounted for the rest. In short, Jennifer and her mother were completely broke. The mortgage on the house still had fifteen years to run and so Mrs Cole was compelled to go out and earn a living. She had previously worked part-time as a teaching assistant, but now she needed to put in some serious hours of work or face the prospect of she and her daughter being turned out of their home. The death of her father therefore marked a step-change in the little girl’s whole way of life. Previously, her mother had always managed to meet her at the end of school in the afternoon. Now, Jennifer had to go to after-school club, with the other children whose parents worked long hours.
For the first time that she could remember, money was now tight and Jennifer was compelled to make do with clothes that were a little too worn or a shade too small for her. Children that age notice such things and she became the target for teasing; which sometimes escalated into bullying. She knew who was responsible for these petty humiliations; it was the same person who had precipitated the crisis which had robbed her father of his job and driven him to his death; with all the consequent ill-effects which now afflicted Jennifer and her mother.
The name ‘Melanie Pearl’ had been mentioned often enough by Jennifer’s father and as she and her mother’s situation grew ever more desperate, the thought of the girl who had told those lies about her father began to be something of an obsession with Jennifer. One of her mother’s friends pointed the girl out to Mrs Cole and from time to time, when they were out shopping for instance, her mother would spot Melanie and point her out to her daughter, saying something like, ‘There she is! Little madam, just look at her! Butter wouldn’t melt.’
Of course, by the time that Jennifer started secondary school, Melanie Pearl had been despatched to Canada by her parents and so dropped out of sight of the Coles. When she was sixteen though, Jennifer opened the local newspaper to see Melanie’s face staring out at her. It was a candid and unposed photograph, taken outside the magistrate’s court. Within a year of returning from Vancouver, Melanie had become embroiled in some financial scam, for which she ended up in court. Jennifer read the article carefully; noting every detail. The passing of five years or so had done nothing to diminish Jennifer Cole’s hatred for the young woman whom she blamed for an increasingly wretched lifestyle. She had done poorly in her GCSEs, because to keep the bills paid, Jennifer had been obliged to get evening and weekend jobs; which left little time for studying and revision.
The newspaper article didn't give Melanie Pearl's address, but Jennifer knew where her parents lived. At odd times over the last few years, she had done a bit of digging about Pearl and her family, the woman had become a little bit of an obsession. This was, after all, the person who was ultimately responsible for the fact that Jennifer had done badly in her GCSEs and was unable to consider taking A levels, because unless she started bringing in a wage herself, then it would be impossible to pay the mortgage and she and her mother would be homeless.
'That Melanie Pearl's back.' Jennifer told her mother.
Mrs Cole didn't seem all that interested by the news. 'Is she? I heard her family'd sent her off somewhere. Good riddance.'
'Yes, well she's back now. D'you think that she's gone back to live with her mum and dad?'
Mrs Cole gave her daughter a strange look. 'How would I know? I couldn't care less where she is, quite honestly.'
'Don't you care about what she did? Or have you forgiven her?'
'Of course, I care. I don't see what there is to be done at this late stage though. Nobody who knew your father would have thought him capable of such a terrible thing. Besides, when all's said and done, she was only a child at the time. Maybe she's changed now.'
'I don't think so,' said Jennifer and produced the newspaper which reported Melanie Pearl's conviction. 'Looks to me as though she's not changed at all.'
Her mother skimmed through the piece and said, 'Well it's nothing to do with us now, is it?'
It was quite incomprehensible to Jennifer how her mother could be so laid back at the reappearance of Melanie Pearl, who now probably lived less than a mile from them. Later that evening, Jennifer told her mother that she was going for a walk. It was a dark and gloomy winter's evening, with sleet rattling and slapping against the window panes every so often. Her mother said, 'Going for a walk? You must be mad. It's freezing out there, you'll catch your death.'
'I need some fresh air. I'm only going to stretch my legs.'
'Well, be sure to wrap up warm, then.'
It really was a foul night and by the time she reached the house where Melanie Pearl's parents lived, Jennifer had repented of her rashness in coming out. After all, perhaps her mother was right. Maybe they should just let it lie. Then, as she passed the house, she saw Melanie Pearl through the front, downstairs window. She was dressed very nicely and laughing. She may just have been in court, but it looked to Jennifer as though she was doing very nicely for herself. A furious sense of the injustice of the thing rose up in her throat and made it hard for her to breathe. The house next to the Pearls was having some work done and there was a neat pile of bricks stacked in the front garden. Lying nearby was a broken brick. Jennifer picked this up and without even thinking about it, hurled the half-brick as hard as she could at Melanie Pearl. The window shattered in a most satisfying and spectacular way and she ran off into the night.
Over the course of the next fortnight, Jennifer took to passing the Pearl house after dark almost every night. Her mother wondered what was taking Jennifer out in the cold and dark, but since she was never out for more than an hour or so, it didn't seem important enough to worry about. Twice, Jennifer scratched the paintwork of the Jaguar parked in the Pearl's driveway. This was satisfying, but still not sufficiently violent to assuage her feelings of anger towards the family. She wanted to harm them, damage their property. It was clear that they were doing very nicely for themselves and she suspected that Mrs Pearl didn't have to work long hours, just to make sure that they didn't fall behind with the mortgage.
A week before Christmas, a small fire was started against the front door of 82, Tiverton Park; the home of the Pearl family. It didn't amount to much and was soon blown out by the wind, but it nevertheless gave Mr and Mrs Pearl a nasty shock when they discovered the charred paper and twigs which had been piled up by the door. The damage wasn't great; just some blistering and discolouration of the paintwork, but it was frightening enough for them to call the police. They hadn't bothered to do so for the scratches on the car, but this was a little more serious.
Three days after the fire at the Pearls' house, Jennifer Cole was stopped by a police car which had been told to keep an extra eye on Tiverton Park. The girl wasn't doing anything, just walking out late at night; which struck the officers in the car as a bit funny in such cold weather. They drove her home, checked with her mother that this really was where she lived and then left. There was no reason to connect her with the campaign of harassment against the Pearl family, but the nuisance ended at about that time anyway. Eight years later, Inspector Lucas would find a record of the teenage girl being stopped and questioned.
Confession
It was getting darker outside the window now and although she couldn’t turn her head to see, the woman in the bed fancied that she could hear drops of rain splattering against the panes. A quiet despair had begun to grip her. The nurse had noticed nothing amiss; why should any other visitors? Probably, she was the only person in the whole world who knew that the woman sitting by the window was raving mad. After all, if she had never noticed this important fact before today; why should anybody else? The woman who had tried to murder her a few days earlier began speaking again.
‘Of course, I’ve told you how careful I was about using different methods every time, but there were two occasions when I repeated myself. You’re one, of course. The other was when I first started. It was March, almost a year after that birthday party. This was to be the first truly random one. I just had to do somebody. All I knew was that I wanted it to be done in public. That was somehow important. Like my debut on the stage, if that doesn’t sound too weird.’
It did sound weird of course and the fact that the woman telling her the story didn’t really know that, said it all.
‘I wanted it to be a girl a bit younger than me and she had to be a particular type. That was important too. I walked round those streets by the Bank of England and the Mansion House. You know round there at all? Then I found the perfect target. She was really young, looked like a teenager. And she had one of those beautiful, ethereal faces. Like an angel. I just had to kill her.'
Chapter 12
Death of a Stranger
Margaret Hilton was in a hurry to get home that Friday evening. The platform at Bank underground station was as crowded as she had ever known it and the first train had simply been too packed for there to be any prospect at all of her getting on it. Still, it was always like this at half five on a weekday. At least she had managed to manoeuvre herself right to the edge of the platform. Like most seasoned commuters in similar situations, she stood with her legs braced, so that she wouldn’t inadvertently end up with the crush of people behind, pushing her in front of an oncoming tube train.
The office junior’s position at the firm in Lombard Street wasn’t quite what Margaret had envisaged when she left college the year before, but then, as her mother pointed out; she was lucky to have a job, the way things were with the economy. At eighteen though, Margaret Hilton thought that she deserved something a little more exotic than this. In the six months that she had been working in the City, she had grown heartily sick of the cramped tube trains and stultifyingly dull office routine. In the distance, she heard the rumble of the next train. With luck, she’d be back home in Epping within three quarters of an hour.
Behind Margaret, a woman a few years older than her moved into position. In her right hand, she held a curious weapon which she had fashioned herself from part of a bicycle spoke. It consisted of a wooden handle, from which protruded a three inch-long piece of a spoke which had been sanded down until it was fearsomely sharp. Making this device had meant a lot of time spent working in the garage, for it had to be just right. The handle had been made from a length of wooden dowelling rod, which had also been carefully sanded until it was quite smooth and fitted comfortably into the palm of her hand.
She found that spending time putting together a tool of this kind was therapeutic. Planning and preparing for a murder was all part of the thing and of course the longer she spent getting ready for killing somebody, then the fewer murders she would end up committing. This was an important consideration, because it wouldn't do to race around London killing people too often. Somebody would be sure to notice and the last thing she needed was somebody getting it into their head that there was a serial killer on the loose.
The device which she held concealed in her hand was almost invisible, unless you were looking for it. She had taken the precaution of painting the sharpened piece of bicycle spoke black, so that nobody would see it glinting or shining. It couldn't be seen against the dark of her coat. There was little or no possibility of anybody spotting what she was about to do.
The rails began to resonate and vibrate, signalling the approach of the next train. A warm breeze blew along the platform too, as the oncoming tube train displaced the air in the tunnel and acted as a piston to push it into the station. Knowing that the time was just right, the young woman pressed the home-made awl she was holding, hard into the back of the thigh of the girl standing in front of her. Only a pair of tights protected the girl’s leg and so hard did the woman push, that the thin piece of metal slid smoothly and agonisingly through skin, sinew, fat and muscle; until it almost reached the bone.
The reflex action of anybody receiving a sharp jab in the back of the thigh is to lift the foot and bend back the knee; which is precisely what Margaret Hilton did as the metal spike bored its way through her leg. Before she even gasped in pain, Margaret raised her right foot and kicked backwards. This was a perilous position to be in; on the very edge of the platform with the train arriving. The person behind her put her left foot forward and hooked it round Margaret’s left foot; making sure that she could not move from the spot. Then she pushed her forward; not rapidly, in a way which might attract attention from other people on the platform, but rather by exerting a slow and irresistible pressure in the small of the girl’s back.
From the moment of the piece of metal first going into her thigh, until the point when she overbalanced and found herself toppling off the platform and straight into the path of the oncoming train had taken a little under a second; not even enough time to scream. So it was that Margaret Hilton plunged down, head first, uttering only a muted cry of dismay. Not so the woman who had caused her death. As soon as she was sure that the girl would be unable to regain her balance, she began screaming hysterically at the top of her voice. At the same moment, a few other passengers gasped as they saw that somebody had fallen from the platform. Another woman began screaming as well, which was good. The driver of the tube train had slammed on the brakes and those waiting on the platform was deafened by the screech of metal on metal. People who had been near to the girl who had fallen, surged back and in the resulting chaos and panic, the woman who had caused the death of a complete stranger was able to slip through the scrum of commuters, go up the escalator and leave the station.
Once she was out of the station, she knew that she was home and dry. The main thing was not to attract attention to herself, but this was easier said than done. The sense of exhilaration was almost overwhelmingly pleasurable and it was all that she could do not to grin or start laughing hysterically. This had been by far and away the best yet. Not only had she carried out the killing in front of scores, perhaps hundreds of people, there had been no vulgar motive for the death. It was this that she felt had cheapened the previous murders, that there had been that element of self-interest, which made them a little like commercial transactions. This one though was perfect. It had not been necessary and she had gained nothing by it.
In her pocket, she had the weapon that had brought about the young girl's death and knew that this would have to be disposed of carefully. it would be foolish to abandon it in a rubbish bin, just in case somebody might connect it with the attack at Bank Station. She walked along Bishopsgate towards Liverpool Street Station and then saw an opportunity. Building work was being carried out on a massive scale and a skip full of builder's rubble was standing in a building site, right on the edge of the pavement. She stooped down to fiddle with her shoe. All around her, people were hurrying along with no other thought in their minds than getting home as swiftly as possible. Removing the spike from her pocket, she stood up and then wobbled as though about to overbalance; putting out her hand to steady herself by holding onto the edge of the skip for a moment. When she walked on, the murder weapon was gone, mixed in with a ton of broken pieces of wood, fragments of plaster and twisted pieces of rusty metal.
There was no real reason to avoid catching the tube home, but for some reason she felt that it would be better to travel by bus. She was lucky enough to get a seat and all through the journey, she replayed the murder over and over in her mind.
Chapter 13
Tanya
Throughout her childhood and adolescence, two ideas dominated Tanya Cartwright’s life. One was the overwhelming and urgent need to make up for the hideous scar with which she had disfigured her sister; the other that she must never, under any circumstances whatever, allow herself to become angry. These twin obsessions were to shape, some might say stunt, her life as she grew up.
Guilt about her sister’s facial scars was understandable and regularly reinforced by Tanya’s parents; especially her father. The anxiety about anger though was chiefly a product of the therapists and counsellors to whom she was taken from the age of three onwards. Both her parents had persuaded themselves that their younger daughter was a ferocious little creature who had deliberately harmed her mother and sister. The reality was of course that both incidents were unfortunate, but resulted really from nothing more than the sort of behaviour to which most two year-olds are prone. That the consequences had been so long-lasting and tragic was not really the little girl’s fault. In ninety nine cases out of a hundred, a toddler swinging her head about in the course of a tantrum will cause no harm to anybody and it was sheer chance which had in Tanya’s case ended in her knocking out her mother’s teeth. Similarly, small children bash each other round the head with toys all the time, with no ill-effects; other than the odd bump or bruise. The fact that children of Jemma and Tanya’s age were playing with heavy, metal toy vehicles made a serious injury a little more likely. Had her father provided them with plastic lorries instead, then the odds were that Jemma wouldn't even have been bruised; let alone have suffered a ghastly and disfiguring injury. By implication, this would have laid some of the blame for the tragedy at George Cartwright's door. Better by far for her father to fix the entire responsibility on the shoulders of a child whom he didn't even like.
The first counsellor to whom Tanya’s parents took her said exactly these things to her mother and father; pointing out that there was nothing really wrong with their youngest child and that they shouldn't have let the girls play with a rusty old metal toy in the first place. George Cartwright was having none of it. As far as he was concerned, Tanya was like a female version of the kid from The Omen and he wanted her to be cured, exorcised or otherwise dealt with in such a way that she would no longer be a menace to her immediate family. He accordingly found a child psychotherapist who engaged to ensure that the three year-old girl would never again display anger, with all the attendant risks for those around her. It was not so much the actual anger which this woman sought to eradicate; merely its external manifestations. In other words, she wasn’t at all worried if little Tanya Cartwright became as furiously aggressive as could be, as long as she didn’t show it or do anything about her feelings. One didn’t need to be an expert to see that this was a strategy which, while it might solve a short-term difficulty, was going to store up problems for a child in later life.
The woman who undertook to control Tanya Cartwright’s passionate nature, as her parents required, not only worked with the little girl herself, but also taught her mother and father various techniques which would calm the child down if it looked as though she were about to explode with rage; which is how her mother and father thought of their younger daughter's tantrums. These methods entailed raising a warning finger to the child when she started getting excited and taking her away to sit by herself as a precautionary measure if there was a risk to others. So successful were these tricks, that George Cartwright began using them when Tanya was merely showing any sort of emotion; such as getting excited at the prospect of a day at the seaside. ‘Calm down.’ she would be told, ‘Or do you want some quiet time?’ The aim was to turn Tanya into the same kind of placid and self-contained child as her big sister; somebody who displayed no outward signs of any kind of emotion; good or bad.
By the time that she joined her sister at secondary school, the counselling which Tanya had received had had the desired effect of turning her, at least outwardly, into a pleasant, good-natured and obedient girl. She however thought of herself as a freak of nature; something akin to the incredible hulk. She had had it drilled into her that if she grew angry, then she might lose control and people could get hurt, but she had extended and generalised this message into, ‘If you show any feelings, people will get hurt.’ Tanya was terrified that if she allowed herself to reveal any sort of emotion, then a situation would develop in which she would mutilate or scar somebody as she had her sister all those years ago. This meant that all the turbulent emotions, of which any which any healthy pubescent girl is possessed, were turned inwards and found no outlet in laughter or tears, shouting, screaming or high spirits. Indeed, Tanya would not have dared to scream or cry, lest her personal demon should be unleashed upon the world.
By her twelfth birthday, Tanya Cartwright was regularly hurting herself whenever she felt annoyed or anxious. Whenever any emotion appeared on the horizon, Tanya would pinch the sensitive skin on the inner fold of her arm; twisting it in her fingers until the tears sprang to her eyes. Some of the girls in her class had already experimented with self-harming, scratching and cutting their forearms; but this invariably led to parents noticing, followed by an embarrassing fuss. Tanya was more cunning than that. She hit upon the one part of her body where nobody would be likely to see the results of what she was doing. After all, whoever looks at the soles of anybody else's feet? She had only been at secondary school for a term, when she began injuring her feet in various ingenious ways. One of these was to heat up a screwdriver on the hob of the gas cooker, until it was almost red hot. Then she would touch it to the sole of her foot.
The pain from the wounds which Tanya inflicted on her feet, sometimes with the hot screwdriver and at other times with needles from her mother's sewing box, acted to remind her every time she stood up or walked that she must control herself. Of course, being in constant discomfort like that did nothing to sweeten the girl's temper. She might have learned to suppress all outward signs of frustration and anger, but that didn't mean that Tanya didn't get cross and annoyed just like anybody else. She simply had to release any such feelings on the quiet, with no external display of passion.
On a few memorable occasions during her adolescence, Tanya’s rigid self-control vanished entirely, with disastrous consequences. When she was fourteen, for instance, she killed the family cat during a display of anger and frustration when she was alone in the house. She hadn’t set out to harm the animal; it was merely collateral damage. Because she was like an emotional pressure-cooker, a slight misfortune would push Tanya perilously close to breaking point and the wonder of it was that this didn’t happen more often. On this day, she had been unjustly rebuked by a teacher and also some friends had made an arrangement to visit the cinema without telling her. She felt wounded and angry and when she got home to the empty house that afternoon and opened the fridge, a bottle of mayonnaise, which had been precariously balanced in a ledge of the door, fell to the floor and smashed. Whereupon Tanya Cartwright went berserk and began screaming.
The frenzy lasted only for a few seconds, until Tanya regained control of herself, but in that time she had swept the glass fruit bowl from the table, smashing it to smithereens and then picked up a chair and hurled it across the kitchen. By ill-chance, Boofles, the black cat which had been the companion of her childhood, had chosen just this moment to enter the kitchen via the cat-flap in the back door. The chair struck his head with great force, twisting it awkwardly and snapping his neck. He lay, half in and half out of the cat flap, mewing pathetically for a minute, before quietly dying. When she saw what she had done, Tanya was distraught, for it confirmed all that she had been persuaded to believe about the evil effects of any display of emotion by her.
After she had cradled Boofles in her arms as he died, she laid him gently on the floor and then set about tidying up the kitchen. When she had done so, Tanya lit the hob and took a knife from the drawer. She heated this in the flame for a while and then unbuttoned her blouse and pushed her bra to one side; exposing her left nipple. Then she touched the hot blade to her breast. The pain was so ferocious that she let out a shriek and dropped the knife on the floor, where it melted a little of the vinyl floor tile upon which it landed.
Having punished herself for the outburst, Tanya placed the cat in a carrier bag and then carried him out into the street to find somewhere to dispose of him. She was feeling desolate about the loss the pet, but even more heartbroken about the fact that once again she had allowed her emotions to escape, with tragic results. She determined that from that day forward, she would keep an even tighter rein upon herself.
Chapter 14
Jemma and Chloe
Because the injury to her face had occurred when she was so young, Jemma could not remember a time when she was not hideously disfigured. It was simply a given; an unfortunate fact of life which one accepted, as one would a limp or squint. As she grew up, Jemma knew that if she looked in the mirror, she would see a face which was essentially split into two parts. There was the top half; from the nose up and then there was the lower part. The upper half of Jemma’s face was preternaturally beautiful; like a fairy. Then, below that, were the twisted lips and crooked scar which ran diagonally across from her upper lip to the point of her chin.
There was never any doubt in Jemma’s mind that she was her father’s favourite. He told her often how much he loved her and the family dynamic was of him and Jemma on the one hand and her mother and Tanya on the other. When she was tiny, her father would take her out on special trips to museums and art galleries; just the two of them, leaving Tanya at home with her mother. He would tell her how much he loved her and sometimes she would ask, ’Do you love me more than anybody in the world?’ and he would assure her that he did. On one occasion, six months or so after she had come out of hospital with the terrible scar across her face, she had, despite her age, felt uneasy that her newly altered appearance might have affected how her father felt about her. It was a Saturday and they had gone to Kew Gardens for the day. Although George Cartwright had not admitted so to his wife, he could hardly bear the sight of Tanya after what she had done and he hoped to be out until his younger daughter had been put to bed. This time, when he told Jemma that he loved her, she responded by looking straight into his eyes and asking, ‘Do you love me more than Mummy?’
It was a ticklish situation, which he dealt with by smiling and touching his finger to his lips to enjoin her to silence. By which, Jemma understood perfectly well that although her father was not going to say so out loud; he did indeed love her more than her mother.
There was nothing perverted or unnatural about the fiercely protective love which Cartwright felt for his daughter. She was his firstborn and he cherished her. Nor did the scar alter his feelings for her; other than to make him want to shield her even more from harm and take care of her.
As she grew older, the bond between Jemma and her father grew even stronger. She had a rough time at school over the years and it was always to her father that she turned for comfort; rather than her mother. There may not have been anything odd or unsavoury about the love which George Cartwright bore for his daughter, but the same could not be said about her feelings for him. In adolescence, she was frankly in love with her father. He was all that she desired in a man and Jemma convinced herself that this feeling was reciprocated.
Now almost from the time of his first child’s birth, Jemma’s father had been actively unfaithful to his wife. He was not particularly discrete about his infidelity; certainly, Yvonne Cartwright knew that he strayed on a regular basis. She chose to turn a blind eye towards his behaviour, her only concern being that the girls did not learn about it. She felt that it would have an adverse effect on their ideas about sex and relationships were they to know how promiscuous their father was. There were times, when Jemma was being openly contemptuous of her mother, safe in the assurance of her father’s love, that Yvonne felt a fleeting temptation to tell her daughter just what the man she adored was really like. She never did though and, astonishingly, it was not until a fortnight before Jemma’s disastrous twenty-first birthday party that she finally learned the truth about her father; a discovery that had the most profound and injurious effect upon her. It happened like this.
The Easter vacation at Durham was due to start on April 6th and would we followed almost immediately by the Finals; the examinations which would determine whether or not the students got Firsts or Seconds. A week earlier, Jemma had been talking to Chloe. She said, ‘I’m not really looking forward to going home this time.’
‘Why not? Nothing wrong, is there?’
‘No, it’s just I’m going to have to study like mad and my parents’ll want to talk and do things. I wouldn’t enjoy anything though. I’d just be dying to get back to my books.’
Chloe said impishly, ‘By parents, I suppose you mean your dad? You never go anywhere with your mother, do you?’
Fond as she was of her friend and much as she valued Chloe, there were times, thought Jemma, when she could be a little too sharp for her own good. Sensing that she had overstepped the mark a little, Chloe grinned and said, ‘Sorry! Only kidding.’
For a moment, it seemed as though Jemma was seriously annoyed, but then she smiled back and said, ‘You really are a one sometimes. I don’t know why I put up with you. Anyway, I was going to say that I’m planning to go back a few days earlier and then come back here so that I can have an extra week of studying quietly here; just before the Finals start. That’s OK with you, isn’t it?’
‘Course.’
So it was that Jemma, who was not always in the habit of warning people in advance about her movements, fetched up at her parents’ house unexpectedly, let herself in, went upstairs to her room and, glancing into her parents’ bedroom as she passed the open door, happened to see her father making love to Katherine Saunders; although of course she did not at that time know the woman’s name. What she did know, when she had given a muffled shriek and the two people in her parents’ bed had stopped what they were doing and sat up, was that her father had been shagging a woman who could only have been a few years older than Jemma herself. Ignoring her father’s entreaty for her to give him a chance to explain, Jemma ran up to her own room, locked the door and then burst into a fit of hysterical weeping. She was vaguely aware of the doorknob being rattled and her father calling to her, but Jemma simply plugged in her earphones and turned up the music until she could hear nothing.
It is impossible to overstate the sense of betrayal Jemma felt at the sight of her father thrashing about in bed with that young woman. Knowing that she was her father’s special girl and that he loved her more even than his own wife had been what sustained Jemma as she grew up with a terrible facial disfigurement. She was beautiful to her father and he loved her so much that he didn’t even make love to his wife. This was the fantasy version of life which she had built up as a psychological defence and it had worked very well indeed and although she still agonised about the ravaged state of the lower half of her face, her father’s devotion to her somehow got Jemma through it all. She was his favourite and he didn’t like Tanya or even her mother very much at all in comparison.
Then the recollection of Celia, who had practically been her best friend when she was sixteen, came unbidden into Jemma’s thoughts. Celia, whom she had had screamed at and who had changed overnight, at least in Jemma's own estimation, from trusted friend to spiteful troublemaker. Celia, who had told Jemma that her father had come onto her in the most unambiguous way possible.
A terrible fear gripped Jemma and, as she generally did these days when she needed counsel or advice; she rang Chloe. After pouring out the story of what had happened that day, when she returned home without any warning, she went on to tell her friend all about Celia and the things that she and her one-time friend had said to each other. After she had finished speaking; there was a dead silence. Jemma said, ‘Well, for God’s sake say something, Chlo. I’m going out of my mind.’
At last, after another lengthy pause, Chloe said, ‘Your dad tried in on with me as well.’
Now it was Jemma’s turn to be lost for words. When she spoke again, her voice sounded tinny and unreal in her own ears; as though it was coming from a long way away. She wondered if she might be on the verge of passing out. ‘When was that? How long ago?’
‘Couple of years ago. First time I came to your house. You and your mum went to see some aunt, remember?’
‘You never said a word? You didn’t think I deserved to know? You cunt!’ Having said which, Jemma broke the connection and then switched off her mobile.
It would be hard to say which of the two friends felt the more miserable after this brief conversation. Jemma’s whole life had crumbled into dust; for she had found that the most important person in her whole life had been cheating and lying to her for years. She had no doubt at all that Chloe was telling the truth; just as she knew for sure that Celia too had been, five years ago. She understood perfectly why Chloe had never told her about her father propositioning her. Honesty compelled her to admit, at least to herself, that had Chloe said this to her a couple of years ago, when they had only been friends for a few months, then she would have discarded her in exactly the same way that she had Celia.
Chloe felt sick with distress at being spoken to like that by the woman with whom she was so deeply in love. She felt so upset, that five minutes after the call was over, she was sick in her wastepaper bin. As she sat there, miserable and alone, she found herself musing about how much she hated George Cartwright; whom she blamed for all this. She thought what a pleasure it would be to kill Jemma’s father.
George Cartwright couldn’t face his daughter that day and so he hustled his latest paramour from the house before his daughter came out of her room. When Jemma finally emerged, the house was in darkness and she went downstairs; switching on lights as she went. As she got to the bottom of the stairs, Mrs Cartwright opened the front door and Jemma suddenly found herself sobbing in her mother’s arms. Half an hour later, as they were sitting facing each other across the kitchen table, Jemma’s mother said, ‘He’s always been like that. It’s just his way. He started almost as soon as we were married.’
‘Didn’t you mind?’
‘Yes, I minded,’ said Yvonne Cartwright spiritedly, ‘But in other ways, he’s been a very good husband. He’s taken care of us all, paid the bills, provided a home. It’s just like a...I don’t know what you’d call it. His weakness, I suppose.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘You?’ said her mother in surprise, ‘Would you have believed me?’
'You say it's been going on all the time?' asked Jemma, terrified of hearing her mother's answer to the question which now tormented her, 'You mean before I was born?'
'I can't put a date on it,' said her mother wearily, 'Yes, probably.'
'Does he have any other children?'
'Why ask me? Why don't you ask your father?'
'I'm asking you.'
It was bad enough for Jemma's mother learning that her husband had brought one of his tarts into the house and actually used their bed to have sex in. It was taking all her strength not to fly into a rage and smash something up. To be cross-examined in this way by her own daughter, the one who had always adored her father and often treated her mother like an unwelcome intruder, was just too much. She stood up and shouted at the top of her voice, 'Ask your precious father about it. Don't come crying to me after all these years. Ask him. But you won't like the answer, I'll tell you that for nothing.' Then she walked from the room and a moment later, Jemma heard the front door slam.
Later that night, Jemma rang Chloe; who had left a dozen messages. She said, ‘I’m sorry, Chlo. I can’t really talk about it now, but I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have listened if you had said anything. I see that. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’
After the connection had been broken, Chloe whispered, ‘I love you.’