‘He did things to Dolly,’ said Sarah.
When she saw Sarah in Ellie’s kitchen, Annie thought that Ellie had been right, she was clutching the table as if letting go could sweep her away, into madness. Ellie and Annie sat opposite her, and they closed the kitchen door firmly.
‘You’re safe,’ said Annie, because she thought it would calm Sarah down.
‘Nowhere’s safe. I thought I was safe at home,’ said Sarah, and her pale blue eyes looked wild. ‘So did Dolly. But she wasn’t, and neither was I.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Ellie, and stood up and went about the business of making tea.
‘Nigel said I should never speak of it. He said it was all in my imagination, and Dolly was bad and going straight to hell. He loved Dad, you see. Worshipped him. But now this . . .’ Sarah’s voice trailed away. ‘He said it was filthy, disgusting, what she turned into, and then I told him that it had happened to me with Dad, and I said maybe it had happened to her too, and that was why she left. He was so mad when I said that. Furious. He said I ought to shut my dirty mouth. He said it shamed the whole family, me making things up like that.’
‘But now Dolly’s been killed.’
‘Yeah.’ Sarah’s eyes met Annie’s; tears started to roll down her pale face. ‘It haunts me, all this. The bad stuff he did.’
‘Your dad.’
‘Yeah. Him.’
‘Dolly had to leave home because of it,’ said Annie. ‘Did you leave home?’
‘No. I stayed. Looked after Nigel and Dick and Sandy. Helped Mum around the place. Did what Dolly used to do. And then he had the accident on the railway. And it was all sort of OK, after that.’
‘Except I don’t suppose it was, not really,’ said Annie.
‘It was our secret shame, our family. Mum half off her head, and Dad doing that.’ Sarah gulped. Ellie placed a mug of hot sweet tea in front of her, and she let go of the table and fastened her hands around the warmth of that instead. ‘I’ve got the cutting from the paper. I kept it all these years. Like confirmation, I suppose. Like it was in black and white, and that was good, that proved he . . . he wasn’t coming back.’
Ellie put down two more mugs of steaming tea and a plate of biscuits. Sarah let go of her mug long enough to scramble in one of her raincoat pockets and pull out a yellowed scrap of paper. She shoved it across the table to Annie.
Annie unfolded it; it was nearly torn down the middle, from being folded up for so long. She read:
Railway tragedy
Samuel Farrell, who worked as a shunter on British Rail, was killed in a freak accident late yesterday. He leaves behind a wife and five children.
Annie read it, refolded it, shoved it back across the table. It was similar to the piece that Jackie had discovered and given to her. Sarah put the paper back in her pocket and clung on to the warm mug once more.
‘Nigel said I shouldn’t speak of it, not to anyone, that it was all filthy lies, but I have to now. He’s long dead, our dad, and now poor Dolly is dead too. I suppose what he did to her sent her the way she went, into the way of life she led. I don’t think it was her fault, although Nigel says it was, that we’re all responsible for our own actions.’
Nigel’s got a bloody lot to say for himself, thought Annie.
‘She was always good to me, Dolly,’ said Sarah.
‘She was a diamond,’ said Ellie.
‘To think of her ending that way, I don’t like it. And I just wanted to tell you, if there’s anything I can do, anything, you’ve only to say.’
Nigel’s not going to like this, thought Annie.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I got married, you know,’ said Sarah. ‘But we divorced. Because I couldn’t be a wife. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do anything.’