Rosie Read online

  The post arrived just as Donald came downstairs and he brought it into the kitchen with him and handed it to his mother. She sifted through the letters.

  ‘There’s one for you,’ she said looking across at Rosie. ‘I think it’s from Gareth.’

  Rosie opened it eagerly, but her smile faded at the first line.

  Dear Rosie,

  I’m sorry but I’ll have to pack you in. It isn’t just because of your dad. I know you can’t help that, but you haven’t been exactly straight with me about a lot of things, like the nursing and coming up to London. You seem to care more about Donald and your gardening than you do about me too. I think we’ll both be happier apart.

  Best wishes,

  Gareth

  Rosie read the short, cold letter twice. She couldn’t believe that after telling her he loved her for over two years he could just abandon her now when she needed him most. He wasn’t even man enough to admit he was shaken by discovering who her father was; he had to blame his change of heart on her caring more for Donald and gardening.

  Norah came over to where Rosie sat and put a hand on her shoulder. She had watched the girl reading the letter and guessed its contents by the shocked look on her face. Rosie turned towards her employer, burying her face in her chest for a moment, but steeled herself not to cry.

  I’m so sorry, Rosie,’ Norah said. She took no satisfaction from finding that her intuition about Gareth had been correct. She had a feeling Rosie was going to find it harder to deal with this than with any of the other tragedies in her life.

  ‘I feel so responsible,’ Thomas said to Norah on the telephone one evening a few days later. ‘I was too blunt with the lad. I shouldn’t have walked out when I did, but stayed until I’d talked him round.’

  Norah had telephoned Thomas because she was very worried about Rosie. Since the letter had arrived from Gareth she’d been like a robot, doing everything she normally did, but slowly, silent and expressionless. She hadn’t cried or talked about it. She’d gone out with Donald to work, come back at the usual times, eaten meals with them and each night watered the garden, then joined them in the sitting-room to watch television as usual. Yet Norah knew the girl was desperately unhappy and hiding it away wasn’t going to help her at all.

  Saunders, rather surprisingly, had walked into a police station in Manchester on the day his picture was in the paper. It seemed he was working as a night porter in a hotel and he had a cast-iron alibi for the times both women were killed, as he was on duty from nine o’clock in the evening until nine the following morning. Rosie had only shrugged her shoulders when she was told this. Even the news that he appeared to have escaped any criminal charges for what he’d done at Carrington Hall didn’t seem to affect her.

  Frank had tried to get a reaction from her about half an hour earlier by telling her that the police had found Seth’s van somewhere on the moors in Somerset. Rosie had just looked at him blankly as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. Frank hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell her that in the van were items which had come from both Miss Pemberton’s cottage and Freda Barnes’s flat. He didn’t think it wise to confirm to her that her brother really was the murderer.

  ‘If Gareth truly loved her, he wouldn’t have needed talking round,’ Norah said firmly. ‘He’d have come straight down here on the next train to support her. She’s well rid of him in my opinion, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see her breaking up inside.’

  ‘Shall I come down for a few days?’ Thomas suggested. ‘Maybe I can get her to talk. I’ve only got a few watch-mending jobs to do, and I could just as easily do those down there. Mr Bryant owes me several days off and it’s our quietest time at the moment.’

  Norah had been hoping this was what he’d say. ‘That would be wonderful if you could manage it,’ she said eagerly. ‘Donald’s been like a faithful dog, never leaving her side for a moment, but that might be making her worse.’

  ‘I’ll be down tomorrow afternoon,’ Thomas said without any hesitation.

  As Thomas was putting a few tools and a change of clothing into a small bag ready for the next day, Seth was lurking round the back of a Somerset pub, considering which of the five cars parked beside it would be easiest to steal. He was in Brean, where he and Norman used to come to as kids to swim in the sea and play in the sand. It couldn’t be called a resort exactly, not like Weston-super-Mare a few miles away. It was just a few houses straggling along the flat coastal road. But there was a holiday camp and several caravan parks. In July and August it was a popular haunt for working-class families, who didn’t seem to mind the lack of amenities and appreciated the long sandy beach.

  It was a beautiful night, warm and still, the sky like black velvet sprinkled with sequins, but it gave Seth no pleasure to think he could comfortably spend the night on the sand dunes if necessary and sleep to the soothing sound of waves on the beach. He wished he could go to the pub.

  Shafts of golden light spilled out through the open windows along with the sounds of chatter, laughter and the clink of glasses. Pat Boone’s ‘I’ll be Home Soon’ was playing on the juke-box, and he could hear a couple of young girls giggling round by the front door as they chatted to some lads on bicycles. Seth yearned for company, wished more than anything that he could go and join all those holiday-makers with their sun-reddened faces, drink a couple of pints of cider, play darts and watch the girls. But he didn’t dare. Someone was bound to recognize him.

  It had been a mistake to come back to Somerset. He should have gone up north somewhere, straight after knocking off Miss Marks. But what with all that money he’d found, he couldn’t drag himself away from London. He’d bought himself a flashy suit, stayed in a posh hotel, pulled a couple of girls and drunk himself stupid. Then all at once, before he’d even had time to get his head straight, they’d found the woman’s body and to his shock and surprise his face was slapped across all the daily papers, along with some other geezer’s.

  Rosie had put him in the frame. He knew that with utter certainty, even if the papers made no mention of her. All the hatred he felt for her came back more strongly than ever. He would get even with her if it was the last thing he did.

  But some sort of homing instinct made him come back here instead of going down to Sussex or fleeing up north. He’d had the idea he could hole up on the moors for weeks without being spotted while he made some plans. But it wasn’t like the old days any more, there were holiday-makers everywhere, camping, walking, caravanning and bicycling. He’d left his van parked in a lane where he thought no one would ever notice it, gone off for a bit of a walk with his shotgun to look for some rabbits, and as he came back the police were crawling all over it. Luckily they didn’t see him; he’d managed to duck down behind a hedge. But they left a copper guarding the van and so he’d had to leg it, leaving everything he owned inside. All he had now were the clothes he stood up in, his shotgun and the last hundred quid he’d got from Miss Marks. He smelled bad, he had thick stubble on his chin and he was desperate because he knew there was enough evidence in the van, including that claw hammer, to tie him to both murders.

  He had to get away. There were police everywhere. He was sick of hiding in ditches and under hedges, and he was starving because he didn’t even dare go into a shop for something to eat, or for some fags or a newspaper. If he could just get down to Sussex and find Rosie, he could force her to help him before silencing her for good. All he needed was a car.

  The Standard Vanguard looked the best bet. It was new and he’d driven one of them before for Del. It was also furthest away from the pub, so perhaps no one would hear him start it up and he’d be long gone before they knew it had been stolen.

  His luck was in. The car wasn’t locked. He slid into the seat and the leather upholstery smelled good. It took only a couple of seconds to wire it up and he was away down the sea road towards Burnham. From there he would go cross-country to Sussex.

  As Seth drove across Salisbury Plain much
later that night, he was reminded of his National Service days. He’d been stationed at Warminster for some time and they’d often come out here on manoeuvres. Looking back, all his happiest times were in the army. Maybe he should have signed on as a regular.

  The soft breeze coming through the window was soothing. All he could see was the road ahead in the beam of the headlights, and the odd rabbit and fox scuttling for safety as he approached. He wished it was dawn so he could watch the sun come up. Next to the Levels this was his favourite place, wide-open space, undulating hills, hardly a house in sight – a wildness that suited his character perfectly. If he could have his way, he’d like to live in a remote cottage somewhere out there in the darkness.

  From force of habit he reached over the bench seat for his cigarettes. But as his hand touched the smooth leather, he was reminded he had none.

  ‘Fuck you, Rosie!’ he exclaimed. It was also force of habit to blame her for everything. Over the last few days he’d been spending a great deal of time thinking about her and considering the best way to punish her for screwing up his life.

  It all started with her birth, now he came to think about it. Up until then it had been just Cole, Norman and him. Of course Ruby was there too, but she didn’t interfere much with their life. She just cleaned and cooked and, in his own way, Seth quite liked her. She was soft and gentle like women were supposed to be.

  ‘October it was, and pissing down,’ Seth mused aloud. He was nine, Norman eight, and he remembered they came in from school to find that the stove had gone out and there was no tea on the table. Ruby called out from upstairs.

  ‘Get me some help, boys,’ she yelled. ‘The baby’s coming.’

  They went upstairs to see her. She was lying in their dad’s big bed holding on to the wooden rail on the bedhead. Her face was all blotchy and kind of puffy. Her nightdress had come open in the front and Seth remembered her swollen belly was very white and crisscrossed with little blue veins. One big breast showed and it made him feel sick.

  ‘Seth, run up to the village and get me some help,’ she said in a wheezy voice. With that she screwed up her face and started making a terrible noise down deep in her throat. Seth turned tail and ran.

  Maybe if he hadn’t noticed Tommy on the way to the village he would have gone for help, but Tommy had seen some big eels in one of the ditches about a mile away, and when he asked Seth to go with him to catch some he forgot all about Ruby.

  It was pitch dark and nearly eight o’clock when Seth got home. He and Tommy had caught five eels and taken them round to Tommy’s granfer’s. His gran had given both boys some soup and dried off their wet clothes.

  As he walked back into the kitchen, Cole lunged at him and caught hold of his ear. ‘You little bastard,’ he yelled, pulling him roughly around the room. ‘Why didn’t you get help for Ruby? She could have died if I hadn’t come in when I did.’

  Cole shoved him over a chair, pulled down his trousers and took a stick to his behind. But what really stuck in Seth’s memory, more than the pain, was the sound of a baby crying upstairs. In the days that followed when he couldn’t sit down because his backside was so sore, it was the baby he blamed. In the months afterwards he found even more reason to hate his new baby sister.

  Cole doted on her. He boasted down the Crown that he instantly felt something for her because he delivered her himself, and he called her Rosie then and there because she had a mouth like a rosebud. It wouldn’t have been so bad for Seth if his father had kept his crowing for other people, but he was always picking the baby up and making Seth and Norman admire her too.

  According to Cole she was the prettiest, cleverest, sweetest-natured baby on earth. He would walk in the door from work and scoop her up out of her crib before he even spoke to the boys. On summer evenings he would stroll around the orchard with her in his arms. Once she could walk he took her off down the lane. Seth could still vividly recall seeing the big man almost bent double as he held her hand.

  Nothing was the same after Rosie’s arrival. She had Ruby’s entire attention, and Cole demanded that the boys help around the house on Saturdays instead of going out to play. In the past Cole had often played football with them in the evenings, but now he sat in the kitchen dangling Rosie on his knee. She got titbits from his plate and, as she got bigger, he bought her hair ribbons and picture books. Seth heard him telling her that he loved her.

  Seth was convinced that the only reason Cole bribed someone on the draft board to find him unfit for active service was Rosie, too. One by one all the able-bodied men around Catcott went off to war, but Seth and Norman had to endure the jeers of the other boys who said their father was a coward. Later on during the war, public opinion changed towards Cole because he almost single-handedly supplied the village with rabbits, ducks and other food, but the shame of those first two war years was stamped permanently on Seth’s mind.

  There were many times when he was tempted to hurt Rosie badly, but he didn’t dare. Cole was dangerous when he was angry, and he’d be more than angry if he found his precious little girl had been touched. The only way Seth could find to get at the kid was through her mother, and even though he had little bitterness towards Ruby, aside from bringing the kid into his home, he found dozens of ways to distress her. Cole might have idolized his daughter, but he wasn’t as soft with Ruby. If his dinner wasn’t put on the table as he walked through the door, if his best shirt wasn’t ironed and aired when he needed it, or he thought she’d been squandering his money, then he was likely to slap her.

  It was easy enough to distract Ruby while cooking the dinner; she wasn’t the smartest woman alive. One favourite trick was to move the clock hands back, then quickly change them when he heard his father’s truck. The best shirt could easily fall off the line into mud out in the orchard. He could take some money out of her housekeeping tin and go to the village shop and buy something frivolous and feminine, then leave it somewhere where his father would see it.

  Each time Cole slapped Ruby, Seth hoped that she’d run off like his own mother had done. He didn’t think she would leave Rosie behind. She cared too much for her.

  But Ruby didn’t leave. Seth caught her crying often enough. He heard her telling Cole one night that she thought Seth was playing tricks to get her into trouble, which started another row. Soon Cole was sullen towards her and she towards him, but still she stayed.

  It was the summer of 1942, when Seth was fifteen, that Cole and Norman went away on an overnight job in Birmingham, leaving him to look after Ruby and Rosie, tidy up the yard and take over his father’s fire-watching duties. Seth bitterly resented being left behind. The chances of Catcott being bombed were extremely remote; the most they ever saw of war were planes overhead and a few distant booms from Weston-super-Mare. He had wanted to see the bomb damage in Birmingham. He’d even hoped to be caught up in an air raid so he’d have something to boast about to his mates. As he toiled in the hot sun, humping timber and shifting piles of tyres, his resentment towards Ruby and Rosie grew even stronger.

  After tea, Seth went up to his room to have a snooze before going out for the fire-watching. He knew Ruby was intending to have a bath as she’d lit the boiler in the outhouse earlier in the evening. He heard her fill it, then the squeals of laughter from Rosie as she went in first. Then Ruby brought Rosie upstairs and put her to bed.

  As he lay there on his bed, thinking dirty thoughts and idly playing with himself, he heard Ruby go back downstairs and add more water to the bath. He waited for the creak and scrape on the stone flags which meant she had climbed in, then crept downstairs to watch her through a crack in the kitchen door.

  He had never thought she was beautiful before. But she was that night. By day she always wore her hair up, and the shape of her body was always concealed under a loose dress and apron. He knew her to be twenty-seven and that seemed very old to him. But as he peeped through the crack in the door she was standing up in the bath soaping herself all over, her chestnut hair cascading do
wn over her breasts.

  She was all pink, white and curvy, with a small waist and plump little buttocks. As she soaped over her tits and down into that triangle of reddish hair, Seth’s cock leapt up like a barber’s pole.

  She screamed as he came bursting through the door naked, and tried to grab a towel to cover herself. But Seth just leapt on her, tossing her down on to the stone floor of the kitchen, and thrust his hardness inside her.

  That all-too-brief, wonderful moment was one he still liked to savour now. She was all wet and slippery. She smelled of soap and her fanny was so hot and tight, so much better than his own hand.

  It was like living on a knife’s edge when his father came home. Seth was terrified Ruby would blurt out what he had done, yet at the same time he was determined to have her again at all costs. He bought her silence with little threats towards Rosie. She was five now and followed him about like a little sheep. He had only to turn back towards Ruby as he took the kid out for a walk and mime cutting her throat in order to remind Ruby to keep her trap shut.

  He didn’t get to have her very often. Ruby was clever at making sure she was never alone with him in the house, but sometimes he found a way of coming home in the afternoons without Norman and his father, and then he would pounce. Ruby cried and pleaded with him at these times, again and again she insisted she was going to tell Cole. But Seth knew that each time he screwed her she was less likely to. She should have told Cole the first time.

  But then one day in the autumn of 1943, just after Seth’s sixteenth birthday, Cole announced he was going up to Birmingham the next day to price a demolition job and he would take Norman with him. He said he would drop Seth off at the farm near Bridgwater to finish off mending a barn roof they’d been working on together, and if they put his bike on the back of the truck, he could ride it home later in the day.