But Aubrey carried on, ‘A baby might have brought some couples together, and if Christine had chosen me I would have accepted Doug beating me to within an inch of my life, if only she had been the one bringing me round. But she chose him, and it ended everything between us. No one knew though. She left for her maternity, and never came back.’
‘It must have been tough.’
‘Harder than you can imagine.’
‘Did Doug know?’
Aubrey gave a hollow laugh, ‘Oh, she told him alright. She told him, babe in arms, the first time he came to visit her at the hospital! I hated her for that, more than for anything else, after he told me.’
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Doug turned up a week or two later, I found him sat in the office waiting to see me. God knows what it did to him to be told like that, at his proudest moment. I feared the worst; but all he said was that Christine wanted to be a full time mother now, and wouldn’t be coming back; and that to make up for her lost wages, he asked a hundred pounds a week more for himself, to cover the household bills.’
‘A fair bit in the Eighties. And you agreed?’
‘Of course! He could have named his price; and the way I was feeling right then I would have paid it without question. It wasn’t blackmail you see, but a way of putting things right, and I thanked him for offering the solution. The next week he came back to work, as regular as ever.’
‘And you got along?’
‘We were civil, would say Good Morning, nod, share the football scores. He made it easy for us to get along. And sometimes he would say in the canteen or as I was passing his machine how his daughter was doing, how she had painted a funny picture at school or had won a race at sports day; just little things, said in a way no one would twig, or that I could ever thank him for. He had won in a way you see: he had my daughter and the woman I loved. These things are never clear cut, Inspector.’
The room was silent, before he offered in explanation, ‘It was the physical reality of holding the baby, you see, why Christine told Doug like she did. Some instinct told her that she had to start being truthful now, that the wellbeing of the baby depended on her being surrounded by honesty, however harshly told… or so she tried to explain to me later, I never got it.’
‘You spoke to her too?’
‘I only saw her that one last time, my Christine, but she wasn’t the same woman. I went to the house when I knew Doug would be on shift — I shouldn’t have gone, it could have killed him if he’d seen me. She had this aura about her like the newly converted, only one who took no joy in being born again. I thought at the time that she seemed like a woman taking vows to join a nunnery, though that would be slanderous against the nuns! I think she hated who she’d been, and hated me too for loving that side of her. It was zealotry, Inspector. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t stay long. A shame, so much went unsaid…
‘And that was that, I saw neither she or her daughter again; until Isobel had grown up, and she came and found me out, and at last we became friends.’
Chapter 36 — Meanwhile, Next Door…
‘Why can’t I speak to the Inspector,’ asked Isobel, now playing the petulant child.
‘You know why,’ answered Sergeant Smith. ‘Now I really need you to tell me about your relationship with Anthony.’
‘And he’s already blurted out our secret?’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘Okay,’ began Isobel, with what seemed to Cori deliberate haste, as if the quicker she spoke the quicker it would all be over. ‘I first found out who my father was when I came home from school one day, and told my parents I was going to be doing my work experience at the Aubrey’s office. I was fifteen and getting into trouble, and thought it was the first thing I’d have to tell them for a while that might make them proud…
‘I was so upset at their reaction, I didn’t know what I had done. It took a whole night of shouting at them to find out why they were so set against it — I could guess it was nothing to do with school. It didn’t help, when they did tell me, that they were both so embarrassed about it. It’s still a thing I don’t like to talk about.’
‘So what happened next?’
‘They blocked the work experience; which got me into more trouble with the teachers, but I didn’t care by then. But they did arrange a meeting, they knew I had to see him. Whether they expected us to be such good friends I don’t know, but that made things even more difficult.’
‘More? ’
‘I got into trouble earlier today with your Inspector; he told me off for saying my parents didn’t love me. Of course I knew they did, but they were just so… hard to fathom. Dad — I still call Doug dad — he was always proud of me, but I would catch him sometimes looking so sad, and when I’d ask him why he would just shake it off. And as for mum, she would have died for me, I know that. When we argued, about me — it was always about me — she was deadly serious, because what I did with my life was the most important thing in hers. But she couldn’t show me that she loved me, she always held back.’
‘So how were things with Anthony?’
‘He was lovely, right from the start. I don’t think we had any father-daughter relationship, we weren’t even very similar. But we got on really well. He told me how much he had wanted to know me all these years, and at last I got some answers about what had happened back then. I’m not saying it all made sense right away, but he could talk to me in a way my parent couldn’t. I think I really, really loved him. He was my best friend.’
‘But still you left?’
Isobel drew back at Cori’s question, perhaps facing further things she didn’t like to talk about,
‘I was always going to leave home as soon as possible, I knew that even before I learnt all this about Anthony. I hated school by then, and nothing in town made me want to stay.’
‘And there was Carman?’
‘I couldn’t believe when I met Stephen, that this boring little place could hold someone so exciting; or so I thought then. Of course I’d just found Anthony, but this was different. I was star struck, Sergeant, head over heels. And of course Stephen wanted to leave too, but he had plans and a route laid out; and I hoped that if I loved him enough then he would take me with him.’
‘And it didn’t bother you that he was into drugs?’
‘I’d done a little bit myself,’ she said sheepishly, ‘and when you’re young it’s a thrill to be doing what people tell you not to, to be jeering at the police. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ Cori almost laughed.
‘He was lawless and I loved it. I was just so glad I’d caught him in time. Anthony hated him though, and couldn’t understand why I’d want to leave when he and I had only got to know each other. And there was also…’
Cori took Isobel’s hand, and urged her to continue.
‘Well, the thing is that Anthony was still a secret. I couldn’t tell anyone he was my dad, not even my best mate, Connie. There were times we went for meals, just Anthony and I, and I was worried what people would think of us, that they would jump to conclusions. In the end we met mostly at his house, which was bad as he spent too long there anyway and needed bringing out.’
‘It must have been confusing?’
‘But in the end you grow up, and you want your own space.’
‘So you left both sides of your family behind?’
‘I had to, I had no choice. Can you understand?’
‘Two years. Two years I had my daughter for; and then she went again.’ Anthony Aubrey shot Grey a look of such pity and longing, that the detective could only guess at how destroying Isobel’s abandonment of him, of him personally as he would have seen it, must have felt.
‘Two years, and then she left with that vermin. Isobel, Isobel,’ he began asking, as if she were with them in the room. ‘You knew how much I loved you and you cut me out. You were my secret, the only one I loved, and I couldn’t tell anyone. Have you any idea how hard that was? To love you so much and not have anybody know?’