Her father was eating his evening meal in the dining room when Claire arrived to visit. Or rather, pushing the food around his plate. Had he lost weight? It was hard to tell, since he appeared to have dressed for dinner in a jacket and tie.
She hovered at the dining room door holding onto Ella’s hand and wondering whether she should go in. The carer who’d taken him under her wing when he’d first arrived spotted her and came over.
‘Is he eating?’ Claire asked her.
The carer, Julia, nodded. ‘He’s fine,’ she said. ‘Just a bit grumpy.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He got the hump because we had to gently persuade him that the motorbike belonging to one of our visitors that he was trying to drive off on wasn’t his.’
Claire caught her breath as, out of nowhere, an image of Sophie’s mother appeared: the pretty woman in the leopard-print shoes, her petrified face blistering and burning, her eyes… Clamping her own eyes shut, she tried to block it out, her chest expanding painfully as she felt a sense of the woman’s abject terror.
‘Mummy…’ Ella tugged on her hand, bringing her sharply back to this place, this time, this man she no longer felt certain how to approach. ‘Why did Grandad try to drive off on a motorbike?’ she asked, her expression one of worried confusion.
Claire swallowed, and found her voice. ‘I don’t know, sweetheart,’ she answered with a shaky smile. ‘He must have got a bit confused. He does sometimes, doesn’t he?’
Her forehead knitted in consternation, Ella nodded slowly before looking back at her grandad. Then she let out a gasp, her eyes springing wide, as Bernard yelled, ‘Get your bloody hands off!’
Claire turned to see her dad on his feet, his face puce with rage and one of his hands clamped over that of the man sitting beside him, who appeared to be stealing the food from his plate. It was the hand her father was waving his fork about with that was concerning Claire, though. ‘Dad!’ She stepped instinctively forward.
‘I’ll sort it,’ Julia said, stepping smartly in front of her.
Claire watched as, her tone jolly, Julia placated her father, relieving him gently of the fork as she did so, and easing his other hand away from the sheepish-looking resident beside him. She was obviously used to such volatile situations.
‘Back to your own dinner, Raymond,’ she said, then, placing an arm around Bernard’s shoulders, she encouraged him away from the table. ‘Why don’t we go and get your pudding, Bernard?’ she suggested cheerily. ‘It’s apple pie and custard tonight.’
His face still flushed with indignation, Bernard looked her over. Claire could almost see the wheels going round as he scrambled for the thoughts in his head. Then, ‘I detest apple pie and custard,’ he said, his chin jutting, his gaze now fixed forward and his expression unimpressed.
Claire’s heart dipped helplessly. That wasn’t true. Apple pie and custard had always been one of his favourites. She so wanted to talk to him. After two days trying to pluck up the courage, that was her main reason for coming here tonight, but seeing how he was, how could she hope to get any sense out of him?
‘In which case, I’ll have it,’ Julia responded, unperturbed. Giving his shoulders a squeeze, she smiled reassuringly back at Claire, and then dropped her gaze to Ella. ‘There are some jigsaw puzzles in the day room you might like,’ she said kindly. ‘There’s a Thomas the Tank Engine one I’ve been dying to have a go at. I’ll be on my break in five minutes. Fancy helping me with it?’
Ella nodded timidly. ‘Uh huh,’ she said, looking as if she would far prefer Thomas the Tank Engine to a visit with her grandad.
Immensely grateful, Claire smiled back, then squeezed Ella’s hand and led her along the corridor to the day room. She wouldn’t bring her again, she decided, her heart swelling with an overwhelming sense of loss for the man she’d once thought her dad was. She didn’t know him at all any more. She’d possibly never truly known him. That was her stark reality. He might not have physically pushed her mother, but he’d driven her to her death, Claire was growing certain of that. He must have known that by cheating on her, destroying their marriage, eroding her self-confidence, he was slowly killing her.
Pushing down the crushing hurt churning inside her, she fixed her smile in place as she chatted to Ella about the exciting prospect of Auntie Sophie coming to stay and helped her search through the various boxed games and jigsaws stored on the bookcase in the day room.
Five minutes later, Thomas the Tank Engine located, the pieces emptied onto the table and two of the four corners found, Julia came in. ‘Crisis averted,’ she assured Claire with a bright smile. ‘He’s in his room watching his favourite DVD. The one with Steve McQueen escaping from the Germans on a motorbike.’
‘The Great Escape,’ Claire supplied. She’d watched that film over and over with him. ‘Do you think that’s why he was trying to borrow the motorbike?’ Julia rolled her eyes in amusement.
‘Probably.’ Claire smiled weakly. ‘I’ll just pop and say hello to Grandad,’ she said to Ella. ‘Will you be all right, sweetheart?’
‘We’ll be fine, won’t we?’ Julia said, settling herself in the chair Claire had just vacated. ‘Ooh, look another corner.’ She picked up a jigsaw piece delightedly. ‘How many more do we need?’
‘One,’ Ella said decisively, and proceeded to palm through the rest of the pieces. ‘I bet I find it first.’
Glad to leave her in Julia’s capable hands, Claire headed on out and up the stairs to her father’s room. His door was open a fraction. She tapped on it; pointlessly, she realised. Sitting in his chair, his hands resting on the wooden arms and his eyes glued to the TV, Bernard didn’t even glance in her direction.
‘Dad…’ Claire approached him tentatively. ‘How are you?’
No response. His gaze – glazed over, almost – was still fixed on the screen. Claire wondered if he was seeing what he was watching, or whether his mind had drifted off to some other place. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t visit before,’ she said, summoning up a smile. ‘I took Ella away to spend some time with her.’
Bernard blinked. Other than that, he barely acknowledged her, but Claire was sure she saw a flicker of recognition cross his face. ‘We went to Rhyl,’ she announced, then took a deep breath. ‘To see Sophie,’ she added nervously.
Bernard’s attention was still firmly on the TV, but the slight shift in his gaze told her something had registered.
‘Do you remember her, Dad?’ she asked. Mentally crossing her fingers, she pushed on. ‘Sophie?’
This time, Bernard stiffened visibly. A deep furrow forming in his brow, he pulled himself more erect in his chair. Still he didn’t acknowledge her. It was as if he was determined not to.
Don’t do this, Dad. Please look at me. Claire had put this recent behaviour down to the disease, imagining his mind had wandered off to some place in his distant past. Now, she was sure that it had – to the very place she was so desperate to find out about – and that he could probably recall every detail. Determined to get through to him, to have him admit what he’d done, if nothing else, she crouched down in front of him, obscuring his view.
‘Do you remember Cathy?’ she asked him, her tone firm but, she hoped, not threatening. He couldn’t leave her with so many unanswered questions. She needed to know he cared. That somewhere along the path he’d chosen to take, deceiving people, destroying lives, he’d considered the consequences.
He didn’t reply; merely tightened his grip on the arms of his chair, a sure sign that he was agitated.
Cautioning herself to tread carefully, Claire placed a hand over one of his. She didn’t want to panic him. ‘Catherine Tyson. Do you remember her, Dad?’
She watched him carefully. He didn’t react, but the two bright spots blooming on his cheeks told her he was hearing her. That on some level, what she was saying was having an impact.
‘Did you know her well?’ she forged on.
Bernard didn’t answer, snatching up the TV remote from the table beside him instead.
‘Dad!’ Claire gritted her teeth as he pointed the remote around her and turned up the volume. ‘Please talk to me. I have to know.’
His expression that of a recalcitrant child, he increased the volume another notch and stared mutely ahead.
‘Was it her that you and Mum argued about?’ Frustration mounting, Claire almost shouted over the motorbike on the TV, which was revving too loudly in her head. ‘Was Mum jealous?’
Though he seemed to resolutely ignore her, she was sure he understood her. There was something in his eyes. A spark of rebelliousness? Anger? Claire couldn’t tell, but every instinct was screaming at her. He’d been lying, hiding the truth from her all these years. ‘Was Mum jealous of Cathy? I need to know, Dad.’ she implored him. ‘You have to tell—’
Bernard yanked his hand from under hers, and stood abruptly, sending her sprawling back on her haunches. Momentarily stunned, she gathered herself and scrambled to her feet. He’d gone over to the window. His body tense, shoulders stiff, he stared out at the garden beyond.
‘Dad…’ She took a step towards him, stopping as he about-faced. His cheeks were ruddy, his expression thunderous. Claire took a faltering step back.
Bernard glowered at her for an interminably long minute, and then seemed to deflate where he stood, his tension dissipating to give way to what appeared to be a mixture of guilt and regret – and in that moment, Claire knew. Fear gripped her chest, her heart pumping inside it with shock and raw anger. Acrid grief kicked in fiercely – for the mother she hadn’t been able to grieve the loss of properly because she’d blamed her; been angry with her for turning to alcohol as a crutch to help her through whatever she was suffering, for being so drunk she’d been unable to stop herself falling. Nausea swirling inside her, she heard it again and again, the wretched accusation that plagued her dreams: It’s your fault, you bastard. You drove me to it. The dull thud… thud… thud of her mother’s body bouncing off each step of the stairs, her limp figure lying twisted at the foot of them, her eyes fixed, pleading for the nightmare to end. For him to stop.
The strange yelp of fear, she heard that too, and the short loaded silence that followed it. She was back in the hall, her seven-year-old-self, holding her breath, holding the tears in; straining to listen, to see. And now she did see, with crystal clarity. The dream she’d had, the one that had been different: her mother’s face ridden with guilt as she lay broken and still in the hall; the words she’d whispered: I’m sorry, my darling. I tried to stop him.
To stop his affair, Claire had thought, trying to interpret it when she’d woken. But what if she was wrong? She hadn’t established exactly when Sophie’s mother had died; whether it was before or after her own mother. What if was before? If her mother had succeeded in persuading him to end it, might he have been involved somehow in the tragedy that had befallen Sophie’s mother?
But he had been involved. Hadn’t Sophie said her mother’s ex-boyfriend had been consumed with jealousy? That he might have killed her deliberately. She’d died because of Bernard. Her own mother had died because of him too. He had blood on his hands. Claire felt a surge of raw anger rise hotly inside her. It was an inescapable fact. Had he hit her before she fell, she wondered now; lashed out in the heat of the argument?
Her mother had been scared. Claire hadn’t seen her teetering at the top of the stairs, but she’d heard her fear. She’d felt it. Her heart felt as if it might explode inside her as she stared hard at her father. He looked back at her, his expression one that she’d come to know and dread: bewilderment as he struggled to understand where he was in time and space, to recognise the people standing in front of him. Was it genuine? In this moment, was this his reality? Or was he hiding behind his illness to disguise his guilt? Because if he was, that was beyond cruelty.
‘I did love her,’ he said suddenly.
An icy shiver running through her, Claire narrowed her eyes. ‘Who?’ she managed, past the tight lump in her throat.
‘Ruth,’ he said. It was as if he’d heard every thought in her head.
Claire swallowed back the sour taste of her own fear. ‘Did you hurt her?’ she asked, holding his gaze.
Bernard didn’t answer for a second. Then, ‘I don’t remember,’ he said, the look in his eyes that of a frightened child.
‘I have to go.’ Claire could barely get the words out.
She was almost through the door when he asked, ‘Will you come to see me again?’
She didn’t answer this time. She couldn’t.
‘I thought you were my friend,’ Bernard said, his tone forlorn, as she fled.