She picked up the burgundy-red passport and looked at it. Seemed like an ordinary passport to her, but she saw the gleam of expectation in Hannah’s eyes so she guessed there was more to it. Flicking to the photo page, she slanted it to look at the image. It was a typical passport shot, unsmiling, but there was no disputing that this was a good looking, pleasant-faced man. There was something about his eyes that said he smiled easily.
‘James Parker,’ she read, then looked up. ‘Your father. You take after him. Maybe it’s why she hated you so much. You reminded her of the man who abandoned her.’
‘Hated me!’ Hannah looked surprised for a moment. ‘Yes. Do you know, I never really thought of that. Oh, I know she didn’t have any affection for me, but hate… but yes, I think you’re right.’ She reached out and tapped the back of the passport. ‘But for the wrong reason. Look again.’
The wrong reason? Perhaps Susan was tired, weary, her head over-filled with her own problems, but she didn’t know what Hannah was talking about. She could see disappointment in her eyes, and looked at the photo again, trying to understand. Then it came to her. A bit like the photos that idiot investigator had originally given her, but this time, it wasn’t what she wasn’t seeing that was the issue; it was what she was seeing. The passport. Because if James Parker had gone to Thailand, how could it be there? She checked the dates, then nodded and looked up. ‘Your father never went to Thailand.’ She shut the passport. ‘He didn’t go anywhere.’
‘He always seemed like a magical person to me, but not even he could have crossed international borders without documentation.’
‘So he’s still in the UK.’ The disappointed expression had returned. Susan wanted to shout at Hannah, to tell her she’d had enough. That she didn’t care, that all she wanted was Mark.
Hannah reached for the passport, opened it, and stared at the photograph of her father. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ She snapped the passport shut. ‘I don’t think he ever left our home in Yorkshire.’
Susan was weary and befuddled, not stupid. She looked at Hannah in horror. ‘You think she killed him?’ It seemed to be a huge leap to her but then she remembered how the mother had slapped the grieving child, how she’d forced her to lie. Susan had never met a woman like that. She was possibly capable of anything.
‘I think it happened that last night, in their bed.’ Hannah spoke calmly in a matter-of-fact way, but Susan could see the struggle it was for her as she dabbed tears away roughly with the balled-up tissue in her hand. ‘I always wondered why she’d brought it with us when we moved. She left everything else behind.’ She snorted a laugh. ‘Would you believe I thought it was because she hoped he’d come back. What a fool I was.’
‘You were ten!’
‘Ten,’ she nodded agreement. ‘And since then, for thirty years, I’ve hated him for leaving me, for never saying goodbye. And now I know it wasn’t true, and I feel…’ She snuffled noisily, ‘…bereft and angry. I could have been a different person, a good person.’
Susan could have said she was, but it was too late for more lies. ‘What are you going to do?’
It was a long time before Hannah looked up, her fingers almost caressing the cover of the passport. Susan wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Not really. Her thoughts might be even darker than the ones rattling around Susan’s head.
‘Do?’ Hannah rubbed the tissue over her eyes, then snuffled again. ‘All these years believing he’d abandoned me. All these years searching for…’ She looked at Susan, her eyes focused and sharp. ‘What the fuck was I looking for all these years, eh? You were right. A daddy complex. And all this time…’ She took a deep breath and straightened in her seat. ‘There’s only one thing to do really. Make my bitch of a mother pay.’
Her face was twisted and angry, her fists clenched. Maybe she’d learned something about violence from Ivan. Susan reached a hand across the table towards her. ‘Don’t do something you’ll regret.’
Hannah looked at the hand for a moment before sitting back and folding her arms across her chest. ‘You thought I’d killed Ivan; now you think I’m going to what? Kill my mother?’
Susan felt colour flood her cheeks. It had been exactly what she’d thought. ‘I’m sorry.’
Hannah blew her nose and dropped the tissue onto the pile that was building up on the floor beside her chair. ‘Don’t be. I would kill her if I could, but despite everything, despite what you saw–’ She pointed towards the ceiling. ‘–I’m really not a violent person. What I’m going to do is take the passport into my local nick and tell my story to the police. I’ll give them the passport, tell them how swiftly we moved from Yorkshire, and about the vegetable plots at the end of our garden there. Mother was always digging. I guess that’s where they’ll find him.’
How far Susan had come, when she didn’t think it was strange to be sitting at a table opposite her husband’s mistress discussing whether or not her father was buried in the vegetable patch. She was about to say that she’d heard Hannah was a great actress, had opened her mouth to say she didn’t believe a word of her story, when Hannah spoke again, silencing her.
‘When I do, then at last, I might finally be able to write my own narrative.’
It was such an odd thing to say, Susan gave a gruff laugh. ‘What does that mean, write your own narrative?’
‘Doesn’t it sound better than getting a life?’
Actually, Susan had to admit, it did. ‘Much better. My sisters, Mark, even my damn son, they’re always telling me I should get a life. Writing my own narrative sounds far better.’
‘Why don’t you?’
Susan wasn’t sure if Hannah genuinely wanted to know or just keen to switch the conversation away from herself. It was no harm to give her a little space. ‘Write my own narrative?’ Why didn’t she? She thought of all the excuses she’d used over the years. Her sisters, Mark, Drew, no time, too much to do. ‘Ruts, they’re dangerous traps. You stick your head over the parapet, it looks scary out there, so you duck back down where it’s safe. Stay there nice and cosy.’ She shook her head as the truth hit her. ‘I’d wanted to go to university when I left school. I couldn’t then but I could have in the years that followed. Damn it, I could go now.’
Hannah smiled. ‘You’re around the same age as me, aren’t you? Forty-ish?’
‘Forty-one.’
‘Not too late then, is it?’
‘Not for you either.’ Susan watched as Hannah’s smile was replaced by an expression of defeated sadness. It had probably been there all along, buried under the exotic layer of glamour she’d kept in place for years. ‘What’s stopping you?’
Hannah took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid.’
The voice was light, almost childish. The voice of that little ten-year-old girl finally being able to admit that she was frightened. Susan did what came naturally: she got to her feet, went to Hannah, and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘You can do it, go to the police, get justice for your father. And then do that writing your own narrative stuff.’ She gave a final squeeze, then straightened. ‘What about Mark?’ As if they were going to discuss custody of her husband. The situation was getting more ridiculous. She wanted to leave, to get away from this stinking house, this damaged woman, but she couldn’t leave until she knew where she stood.
Hannah pulled her mobile from her pocket. ‘He’d never have been happy with me, you know, not long term.’ She tapped out a message. ‘There,’ she said, turning the screen towards Susan, who leaned forward and squinted to read it.
This was a mistake. I was trying to recapture what we’d had. It wasn’t working. Goodbye.
‘He won’t hear from me again,’ Hannah said. ‘You’ve been kind to me, it is much appreciated, and to show how much, you won’t hear from me, or see me again.’
Susan looked at her. Not one word of apology for what she’d been put through. The words sounded sincere and were matched by the expression on her beautiful face but could she really believe she’d gone to all this trouble to get Mark, then drop him when she had him? She’s a brilliant actress. Ethan’s words echoed in her head. But then he’d been a liar too. There was nobody to trust. ‘I’d better get going. You going to be okay?’
‘Yes.’ Hannah picked up the passport and got to her feet. ‘I’ll say goodbye to Ivan, then head to the police station in Thornbury.’
‘Right.’ There didn’t seem a lot else to say. They weren’t friends. Susan shivered at the thought. She’d done what she’d set out to do, even if the journey to getting there was far different to what she’d planned. ‘Good luck,’ she said, then nodded towards the door. ‘I’ll get going.’
She felt Hannah’s eyes following her and was suddenly conscious of the knives sitting only a few feet away. What if she grabbed a knife and killed Susan? Nobody knew she was there. If the story about her father was true, it could be a case of like mother like daughter. There were probably vegetable plots nearby. Susan would be fertiliser. She was about to break into a run for the door when she heard Hannah speak again.
‘Drive carefully.’
Two simple words, but there was a hint of malicious glee in them as if Hannah had known exactly what Susan was thinking. She didn’t turn, but simply raised a hand in a last farewell, and walked quickly to the front door, pulling it open on a sigh of relief. Then she was outside, in the rain, breathing cool, fresh, clean air.
Susan pulled the door shut behind her and crunched across the gravel driveway to her car.
It was time to go home.