Chapter 54: Linda Booth

Ashford: Saturday, October 11th

‘You need to listen to them, Mum.’

Harriet Worth was on the seat of the large bay window changing the baby’s nappy. She didn’t look up. ‘No, I don’t. Coming in here telling me my husband’s some sort of gangster. It’s ridiculous.’ She wrung a cloth out from a small bowl and wiped it over the little boy’s skin. ‘You’ve always hated your … George from the minute he came into the house. So, no, I don’t need to listen to this rubbish.’

‘It’s not rubbish. And this proves I was right to hate him,’ Karen said. ‘Tell her, Linda.’

‘I don’t want to hear it.’ Her mother spoke through two large nappy-pins held between her lips while drying the baby and lathering cream on him. She took a long time to wrap the towelling nappy around him, before fastening it. Eventually, she sat back, her hands resting on her thighs.

‘It’s true, Harriet,’ Linda said.

‘Mrs Worth to you, missy. You’re not in charge here, this isn’t the hospital.’

‘Sorry. Mrs Worth. And I’m sorry, but it’s true.’ Linda exchanged glances with Richard, sharing the woman’s distress. ‘It did happen.’

‘Okay, then.’ Harriet pulled a white cellular blanket off the back of the settee and wrapped the baby in it before picking him up. ‘Tell me again. I’m not going to believe it the second time around, but I can see you’re not going to leave until you do.’ She gazed out of the window at the garden as though disinterested in anything they had to say, but Linda saw how she shook as she held the baby to her shoulder.

‘You tell her this time, Linda. It’s your story after all,’ Karen said.

‘And that’s what it is, a cock-and-bull story.’ Harriet gave them a sideways look. ‘Oh, for goodness sake sit down, you look like judge and jury standing there.’

They perched on the edge of the settee. Linda wished she was anywhere but in the house that was contaminated by George Shuttleworth. She couldn’t think of him now as anything but Shuttleworth.

‘Well, go on.’ Harriet swung round, glaring at Linda but there was a tremor of apprehension in her voice.

Linda clasped her hands between her knees and spoke slowly. ‘I was about seven,’ she said. ‘From what I can remember of before … of before it happened, I’d gone off on my own. It was Whit Sunday. The band contest was on so it must have been after six o’clock.’

Harriet made an impatient noise. She rocked the little boy, looking back out of the window.

‘I think I’d fallen out with my cousin. I suppose I was sulking about something because I ran off.’ She stopped, all at once there in that moment: feeling the warm cone of chips in her hand, the noise of the crowded pub, seeing her cousin skipping with two other girls, remembering how cross she’d been that Jacqueline had so quickly forgotten her.

She shivered: images of the deserted prison camp clear in her mind – the old mill with its black and empty windows, the big gates. ‘There was new barbed wire all around the fence,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

‘What?’ Harriet swung round. ‘Where?’

Linda hadn’t realised she’d spoken out loud. She didn’t answer. ‘Anyway, I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up he was there; it was as though he’d been watching me.’ She couldn’t help the shudder.

Richard squeezed her arm. ‘You’re doing great, Lin.’

Karen held Linda’s other hand. ‘Go on. Please.’

Linda looked squarely at Harriet. ‘He said Mum was looking for me and I should go with him.’ It felt as though the words were stuck in her throat and she’d have to push them out. The sun, pouring light across the room in a wide line, divided it into light and shadow.

Swallowing, forcing herself to carry on she said, ‘He didn’t take me to my mother … he took me into the old mill. I kicked and screamed but he hit me. Hard. Here.’ She touched the back of her head. ‘Until then I don’t think anyone had ever hit me. He kept me there for days. I was shut away. It was so dark.’ She ran her tongue around her mouth but it didn’t help the dryness. ‘I found out later it was some sort of a boiler-room in the basement of what used to be a hospital. Part of the camp.’ For a moment Linda was back there listening to the scuffles of rats.

Harriet frowned. ‘I thought you said it was an old mill.’

‘It was the one in Ashford; the one turned into a POW camp in the war.’

Harriet didn’t acknowledge Linda’s explanation.

‘He tied me up. Part of the time he put something over my mouth because I couldn’t stop screaming.’ She heard the sharp intake of breath from the woman sitting opposite her, holding the baby close and rocking faster. ‘I don’t remember much more. I knew I tried to escape, I remember that much. The next thing I knew my uncle, Uncle Peter, Richard’s father,’ she nodded towards him, ‘was holding me in his arms and shouting. I remember the words. He was shouting “She is here.”

‘I promise you, the man who took me, who kidnapped me, was your husband. His real name is George Shuttleworth, not Worth.’

She waited, the three of them waited, watching Harriet struggling to keep control.

‘But why? Why would he do that? You were just a child.’

Linda felt something give inside her: a release of the tension that had held her rigid from the moment she’d walked into that house. ‘He hated my family. There is so much history between them. Too much to explain right now.’

‘I have a right to know,’ Harriet whispered. ‘You’re accusing my husband of this dreadful thing. You say he hated your family but you don’t tell me why.’ Now she was still, tears trickling down her cheeks.

‘Richard’s told Karen. Let her tell you.’ Linda let go of their hands and stood; she needed to leave, to get away. ‘But you do believe me, don’t you?’

‘No. I don’t know. I have to think. George will be back any moment. You need to go.’

‘I’ll come back on Monday, Mum,’ Karen said.

‘You’re not staying?’ Harriet clutched the baby tighter. He began to cry.

Karen stroked his cheek. ‘No. I’ll be back on Monday, when he’s gone to work. I’ll ring first.’

Harriet didn’t answer her. ‘You should go,’ she said again to Linda.

‘Yes,’ Linda said. She held her hand out to Harriet. It was ignored. But the horror in the woman’s eyes told Linda she believed what she was saying.