Jeanie returned home to find a despondent Kitty.
‘They want me again right away. Some contract that’s just come through. A three-weeker to the South Island.’
‘But you’re barely home,’ Jeanie said, thinking how much safer she felt when Kitty was in residence.
‘They don’t count being home as necessary. They pay me for the ten hours or so every day I work, and I get time off in lieu for every hour over forty per week. So I don’t have to start for another few days, but I’m tired. Bone tired.’
‘I can imagine,’ Jeanie said, shedding her jacket. She loved coming home to a warm house and a friendly face.
‘I think I’m going to have to look for something else. I’m too old for this sort of thing.’
‘You’re not too old, just that they push you too hard,’ Jeanie said. ‘I wish you could take over PeopleCare from Neil. Now that would suit me very well.’
Kitty smiled. ‘I wish.’
‘I’ll make dinner tonight,’ Jeanie said. ‘What do you hanker for when you’re on the road that you can’t get in all those restaurants?’
‘Home made pea soup?’
‘I’ll soak the peas overnight and we’ll have it tomorrow. What about tonight?’
‘Lamb chops on the barbecue? Loads of silver beet from the garden?’
‘You’re on. Just put your feet up and I’ll get you a before-dinner drink with salt ’n’ vinegar chips. How does that sound?’
‘G’n’T, please,’ Kitty said, but as soon as she thought she was alone, Jeanie saw her drop her head into her hands.
Jeanie fixed the dinner, not burning the chops too badly, and Kitty ate well.
‘Your cousin. Bert. I had coffee with him this morning,’ Jeanie began. ‘I have some stuff to tell you, but it can wait.’
‘Heaven’s Beth. I’m full of a wonderful home-cooked dinner with the prospect of pea soup tomorrow. I’m mellow.’
‘It’s just that my life is a bit complicated. I’ve had to tell Bert some details I haven’t told you yet,’ she hesitated. ‘That’s not fair, because I trust you. And yet I’m always unloading on you. Sorry.’
‘It’ll be my turn next, you ninny. Relax.’
Jeanie smiled briefly. ‘You have been very good to me and I appreciate it.’ She was determined Kitty didn’t have to find out things other people knew. Some of them anyway.
‘I’m happily on the receiving end right now,’ Kitty said. ‘So, spill it out. I’m a great listener.’
Jeanie recounted the story of the passport, just as she had told Bert. It came out fairly easily this time.
‘How awful, Beth,’ Kitty said. ‘You want me to still call you Beth?’
Jeanie laughed. ‘Beth, Jeanie – which is my real name – it’s all the same to me. “Hey You”, gets my attention too.’
‘Seriously, I would not like to be in your situation. Anything I can do, just say.’
Her reaction was caring, and Jeanie felt a surge of warmth for her friend. And a twinge when she realized how Fred had been so judgmental after she told him this same piece of information. ‘You’re doing more than your fair share,’ Jeanie said, then told her about Bert’s recommendation to pick a totally new name. ‘Of course, then it becomes really complex with my employment. Neil’s one person I definitely do not trust.’
‘Why not use your maiden name?’
‘I would love to. But it’s recognizable.’
‘You’re worried about the person you’re hiding from? Oh. Your husband is not dead, that was just a cover story? Surely he would never think of looking for you in New Zealand?’
Jeanie’s heart rate accelerated. ‘I have to believe that. Otherwise I’d go crazy.’ She agonized about telling Kitty the real story about Pete.
‘In other words, he’d be unlikely to come here,’ Kitty said.
Jeanie nodded. Maybe now was the time. ‘You know I said something about being a battered woman.’
Kitty nodded. ‘I have to confess I’m in two minds about the term though. You mean he was physical with you?’
‘Oh yes. And psychologically abusive too. It, well, it led to things.’ She paused. Jeanie wanted to share her secret with another woman. Kitty was compassionate. But she didn’t know where to start. Just like when she told Fred.
‘I know something about it,’ Kitty said. ‘We had bad trouble in the family a few years back. Second cousin or whatever. My mother’s cousin’s son, Gerald. He was killed.’
Jeanie flinched. ‘Killed?’
‘You won’t have heard about it over in Aus but it sure made headlines here. They lived just outside of Wanganui. Ordinary family, or so we all thought, with two kids. I didn’t know them really. Only met them once at my great-grandmother’s funeral.’ Kitty stretched her legs towards the fire. ‘Devastated the family. Tore it apart. Looks like permanently.’
‘Tell me.’ Jeanie managed to get her voice working. ‘What happened?’
‘To start with, Gerald disappeared. His wife was telling everyone he had left her. She was complaining like mad that she and the kids had nothing to live on. Meanwhile my mother’s cousin – his mother – started ringing the police saying her son hadn’t been in contact and it was unlike him. She was onto her beloved daughter-in-law right away, I can tell you. Then my mother became involved. Helped her cousin write a letter to police headquarters in Wellington, and that finally interested them. Turned out the bitch-wife had given him rat poison. Buried him under the tomato plants. She confessed eventually.’ Kitty drew breath. ‘It was an awful time. Mum and her cousin were saying how Gerald was such a nice guy and his wife was saying he was a wife-beater. We all became involved one way or another. My sister had had troubles in her first marriage. But when she tried to calm down Mum and her cousin, it only made things worse. I had to tell her to back off. She ended up screaming at me. And I was just trying to make peace in the family.’ Kitty shook her head.
‘The wife? Convicted of murder?’
‘Manslaughter, would you believe. She had this fancy Christchurch lawyer who convinced the jury she was so badly treated that anyone would have done what she’d done. Honestly! Conveniently forgetting there’s plenty of women who’ve been treated badly who don’t bump off their husbands.’
Jeanie had never seen Kitty so agitated. Almost as agitated as she was.
‘There were so many consequences. My mother’s cousin died a year or so later. Cancer. Stress, I’d call it, and grief. Mum was hugely upset. They were cousins and the same age. The daughter has never contacted my sister since and she’s still giving me the cold shoulder for my interference. The whole family is fff … listen to me, I almost used the F-word.’ Kitty sighed, one trembling hand touching her forehead. ‘And that was years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jeanie said. Kitty, using the F-word?
‘Hey, not your problem. And the latest thing is that the bitch herself is out of prison already. Wants to have her kids back from my other cousin who’s made a damn good job of raising two messed up kids.’ Kitty shook her head. ‘It just doesn’t end.’ She pushed her chair back.
‘Kitty…,’ Jeanie said after her, but Kitty just smiled and walked into her bedroom, obviously needing to be alone.
In the guest bedroom, Jeanie allowed herself to think about Kitty’s family story. Too damn close to home. Now she could never tell her about what had happened to her as Jeanette, even without saying what she did to her husband. Kitty made her feelings clear. The “bitch” had killed Gerald, no matter he was an abuser. The wrecking of family relationships was something Jeanie had not weighed up. Maybe it was too easy to say it was all about abuse. She had sympathy for the wife in Kitty’s story, abhorred her decision to kill her abuser, but was pleased the sentence was manslaughter not murder. No question. But the far-flung consequences to even distant family were unexpected. Jeanie sank onto the bed with no energy even to get undressed. Murder, or even manslaughter. Destroying a person’s life. Denying the family. Mostly denying Beau.
She unbuttoned her blouse towards getting ready for bed. Had Pete any family at all? No one she knew – the two of them had always said they were the last of their lines – but that was not the most important thing. Family was family, and Pete’s family would exist, somewhere. There were distant relatives in the world who would remember when he was a child, a schoolboy, the happy groom at a wedding. Somebody’s cousin’s child. Never knowing his violence within. And she thought she may have a second cousin or two somewhere in Perth. Tears welled up behind her lids. She finally put on her pyjamas and pulled up the duvet.
Killing. Homicide. How long ago was it? It felt a lifetime but it was only nine months since she’d wielded that cricket bat. She felt a wave of guilt start somewhere in her middle and spread outwards and upwards until she was helpless, becoming buried under the enormity of having taken another person’s life. She physically ached. She tried to say to herself what she’d always said before: there was no way out. Nothing she could do. He would just carry on, even if she were dead herself. But tonight, the guilt won. She shivered in her bed and it wouldn’t stop. This was not about Pete and his personality. Not about what she had gone through for years. Not about the myriad details and subtleties of his day-to-day maltreatment. Or his physical abuse. Just one bare fact. She had taken a life. Prevented a future. Stopped a heart beating. Finished it. Imposed her own will upon another person. The ultimate crime. She killed him. How could she go on?
It was a drained and despondent Jeanie who went to work the next day. She told herself she had to carry on. She had to look after herself if nothing else. Even if Pete no longer had a life, she did. Not that there was anything commensurate in that, it was just that if life was there, it had to be lived, with all its complications.