Annie watched him go, then turned back toward the graveside. Over to the left, she saw Max still there, in a tight huddle with Steve, Chris and Tony. Gary was gone. Ignoring them all, she went toward Sarah and Nigel. On the way there, a group of eight people, men and women, approached her, their faces grim, their eyes accusing. She was jostled, and she heard the words traitor bitch hissed at her. Someone spat at her feet, spattering her legs with phlegm. Shocked, she shoved and pushed her way through them and emerged shakily on the other side.
Gathering herself, she took a breath and then walked on to meet up with Dolly’s relatives. She held out a hand that wasn’t entirely steady and said: ‘Hello? I believe you’re Dolly’s brother and sister? I’m Annie Carter. I was a friend of hers.’
Up close, Sarah’s resemblance to Dolly was even more pronounced. She did have the same posture, the same sloping well-padded shoulders, the same tough stockiness of frame. But this woman had never hit the dye bottle like Dolly had, crisping her hair to the texture of straw; this woman’s was a soft mousy brown fashioned into an old-style set-and-shampoo which did nothing for her pallid features. Her eyes were light blue, reddened with tears. She wore an unflattering and overlong black coat with a silver spider brooch high up on the lapel. Her mouth was thin, her lips trembling. She looked at Annie’s hand and seemed to debate as to whether or not she was going to shake it. Then she made her mind up, and did. Her grip was limp, and damp.
‘Did she ever mention me?’ asked Annie.
The woman shook her head. Annie was staring at her, thinking it was weird, to see Dolly’s features on this woman’s pale, set face – and yet it was obvious this woman was no Dolly. She looked timid, introverted, and Dolly had never been either of those things. Annie found herself wanting to shake the woman, to say, Come on, Dolly, show yourself, I know you’re in there.
Stupid.
‘We never saw Dolly,’ said Sarah in a low lisping voice.
Annie watched her curiously, waiting for explanation. When it was obvious she wasn’t going to get any, she turned her attention to the man standing there. Dark brown eyes on this one, but again – Dolly’s features. That hot surge of exasperation was overwhelming now, the need to shake some life into them. The man looked no more animated than the woman. He had the look of someone permanently undernourished, with a thin mouth, sunken cheeks . . . and yet, there it was, in the stance, in the build, sometimes even in the expression of the face, fleeting, there one moment, gone the next; an echo of Dolly Farrell, her friend.
‘Dolly left home when she was thirteen. She never kept in touch,’ said Nigel. His mouth thinned into a prudish line. ‘We heard she became a prostitute.’
Maybe that had something to do with her own father fucking her in the first place, thought Annie, feeling an upsurge of anger at Nigel’s disapproving tone.
Perhaps these two dour little creatures didn’t know anything about what the father had done. And was now really the right time to bring it up? She didn’t think so.
‘She was the salt of the earth, Dolly,’ she said. ‘The best friend I ever had.’
‘Well, we wouldn’t know about that,’ said Nigel with a sniff of disapproval.
I don’t like you, thought Annie.
Ah, but that was unfair. She’d only just met these two; it was too soon to decide that they had no balls, no guts, no drive and no feeling; Dolly had had all that and more. Once again it crashed in on her: the realization, the terrible knowledge of what she had lost. She swallowed hard and said, ‘She never talked about her family. Is it . . . are there more brothers and sisters?’
‘We have a younger brother, Sandy.’
Then why isn’t he here too? wondered Annie. It was like drawing teeth, trying to get a word out of them. ‘Couldn’t he come?’
‘He’s in a home,’ said Sarah. ‘And Dick’s in New Zealand.’
‘And your parents . . . ?’ asked Annie, thinking of the father – that bastard.
‘Mum passed last year. Dad died years ago. An accident on the railway.’
‘He worked on the railways? I never knew that.’
‘Oh yes. Started out in the signal boxes but then he went on to be a wheeltapper, and a shunter.’
That meant precisely nothing to Annie. ‘Shunter? What’s that?’
‘They connect the engines to the carriages. Dad’s accident was about five years after Dolly left home,’ said Nigel accusingly, as if Dolly being there could have prevented it.
‘What happened?’ asked Annie.
They looked at her in dual disapproval. They didn’t like giving out personal information, or any damned information at all, she could see that; but fuck it and fuck them, she wanted to know.
‘He was crushed,’ said Nigel. ‘By one of the engines. It was a terrible accident. People don’t realize how dangerous it can be, working on the railways. Accidents happen all the time.’
Or more likely it was an act of God, thought Annie, thinking of the dirty old goat mauling Dolly about.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she lied. People were still passing by, staring at her. Hunter was right. She had to be careful.
Nigel and Sarah both nodded morosely, and stood there looking at the grave.
‘Now Dolly’s with Dad,’ said Nigel after a pause. ‘In heaven. If she repented of her sins before she died.’
A shiver went through Sarah, so intense that Annie stared, wondering if the woman was going to collapse, fall right into the open grave and land, thunk, on her sister’s coffin.
‘Yeah,’ she said, thinking that Dolly was bound for heaven for sure.
But the father . . . ?
That old bastard was cooking over a low light in hell, with Satan turning the spit. And a fucking good job, too.