Yorkshire Post, and for another, she liked the look of him. He had been kind and gentle in his questioning, too, sensitive to her feelings, but had nevertheless probed areas Brenda hadn’t even known existed. And somehow, talking about her grief over the loss of her “poor Gemma” had actually made her feel it more, just as speculating about what might have happened to the child had made her imagine awful things happening, fears she couldn’t shut out even now, long after the man had gone, after she had taken the tranquillizer, and after the images of Africa had numbed her. It was like being at the dentist’s when the anaesthetic numbs your gums but you can still feel a shadow of pain in the background when he probes with his drill.
Now she found herself drifting way back to when she first got pregnant. Right from the start she knew instinc —
lively that she didn’t want the child growing inside her. Some days, she hoped to fall and induce a miscarriage, and other, worse days, she wished she would get run over by a bus. The odd thing was, though, that she couldn’t actually bring herself to do any of these things?throw herself down the stairs, get rid of the foetus, jump out of a window. Maybe it was because she had been brought up Catholic and believed in a sort of elemental way that both suicide and abortion were sins. She couldn’t even sit in a bathtub and drink gin like that dateless June Williams had done when Billy Jackson had got her in the family way (not that it had worked anyway; all June had got out of it was wrinkled skin and a nasty hangover). No, whatever happened just had to happen; it had to be God’s will, even though Brenda didn’t think now that she really believed in God.
Later, still stunned by the pain of childbirth, when she saw Gemma for the first time, she remembered wondering even back then how such a strange child could possibly be hers. And she turned her back. Oh, she had done the necessaries, of course. She could no more neglect to feed the child and keep her warm than she could have thrown herself under a bus. But that was where it stopped. She had been unable to feel love for Gemma, which is why it felt so strange, after talking about her loss to the reporter, that she should actually feel it now. And she felt guilty, too, guilty for the way she had neglected and abandoned Gemma. She knew she might never get a chance to make it up to her.
She poured another gin. Maybe this would do the nick. The thing was, it had been guilt made her hand Gemma over in the first place. Guilt and fear. The social workers, real or not, had been right when they talked Tbout abuse; it was their timing that seemed uncanny, for ‘.hough Brenda might have neglected her daughter, she
had never, ever hit her until a few days before they called. Even then, she hadn’t really hit Gemma, but when the man and the woman with their posh accents and their well-cut clothes called at her door, she somehow felt they had arrived in answer to a call; they were her retribution or her salvation, she didn’t really know which.
Gemma had angered Les. When she spilled the paint on the racing page of his paper, he retaliated, as he usually did, not by violence, but by hitting her where it hurt, tearing up and throwing out some of her colouring books. Afterwards, he had been in a terrible mood all through tea-time, needling Brenda, complaining, arguing. And to cap it all, Gemma had been sitting there giving them the evil eye. She hadn’t said a word, nor shed a tear, but the accusation and the hurt in those eyes had been too much. Finally, Brenda grabbed her by the arm and shook her until she did start to cry, then let go of her and watched her run up to her room, no doubt to throw herself on her bed and cry herself to sleep. She had shaken Gemma so hard there were bruises on her arm. And when the social workers came, it was as if they knew not only how Brenda had lost her temper that day, but that if it happened again she might keep on shaking Gemma until she killed her. It was silly, she knew that? of course they couldn’t know?but that had been how she felt.
And that was why she had given up Gemma so easily, to save her. Or was it to get rid of her? Brenda still couldn’t be sure; the complexity of her feelings about the whole business knotted deep in her breast and she couldn’t, try as she might, sort it all out and analyze it like she assumed most people did. She couldn’t help not being smart, and most of the time it never really bothered her that other people knew more about the world than she did, or that they were able to talk about things she
couldn’t understand, or look at a situation and break it down into all its parts. It never really bothered her, but sometimes she thought it was bloody unfair.
She finished her gin and lit another cigarette. Now she had talked to the reporter she thought she might like to go on television. They had asked her on the second day, but she had been too scared. Maybe, though, in her best outfit, with the right make-up, she might not look too bad. She could make an appeal to the kidnapper, and if Gemma was still alive… . Still alive … no, she couldn’t think about that again. But it might help.
She heard a key in the door. Les back from the pub. Her expression hardened. Over these past few days, she realized, she had come to hate him. The door opened. She went and poured herself another gin and tonic. She would have to do something about Les soon. She couldn’t go on like this.
Later that Saturday night, after closing-time, a car
weaved its way over a desolate stretch of the North York
Moors some thirty miles east of Eastvale. Its occupants
—Mark Hudson and Mandy Vernon—could hardly
keep their hands off one another. They had been for a
slap-up dinner and drinks at the White Horse Farm
Hotel, in Rosedale, and were now on their way back to
Helmsley.
As Mark tried to concentrate on the narrow, unfenced road, the rabbits running away from the headlights’ beam, his hand kept straying to Mandy’s thigh, where her short skirt exposed a long stretch of delectable nylon-encased warm flesh. Finally, he pulled into a lay-by. All around them lay darkness, not even a farmhouse light in
sight.
First they kissed, but the gear-stick and steering wheel got in the way. Metros weren’t built for passion. Then Mark suggested they get in the back. They did so, but when he got his hand up her skirt and started tugging at her tights, she banged her knee on the back of the seat and cursed.
“There’s not enough room,” she said. “I’ll break my bloody leg.”
“Let’s get out, then,” Mark suggested.
“What? Do it in the open air?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“But it’s cold.”
“It’s not that cold. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm. I’ve got a blanket in the back.”
Mandy considered it for a moment. His hand found her left breast inside her blouse and he started rubbing her
