He shifts his focus to Serena briefly, and I can see this has cost her. It’s cost her dearly. ‘I’m only telling you that because I don’t want to lie about the truth.’
I keep staring at Serena as Jack Halnsley explains it all. Who did it. Why. How he found out who did it. What he’s wanted to do about it.
As he speaks, as he explains, tears waterfall down my face, tears tsunami down Serena’s face.
We stare at each other, we wipe away tears and accept that this is how the story and the legacy of The Ice Cream Girls ends.
serena
Two days ago
‘What do you need my help with?’ Jack Halnsley asked me.
I lowered myself onto his sofa, trying to avoid taking in anything about his house. I didn’t want this to last for any longer than necessary. ‘I want . . . no, I need you to tell Poppy, the Poppy, that your mother did it.’
He did not speak for long seconds and in that time I noted the tea towel over his shoulder, the water stains on his clothes from where he’d been standing at the sink washing up. I wondered for a moment if he had a girlfriend, wife, kids. We hadn’t talked about any of that.
‘Did what?’ he asked. He knew very well what, but he wanted me to say it out loud so I could hear how appalling a thing it was to be asking of him.
‘That your mother killed your father. And she didn’t come forward and confess because she was scared of what would happen to you if you didn’t have him or her.’
Jack took a couple of steps backwards while keeping me in his eyeline. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘I need . . . Poppy saved my daughter. At the expense of her family. I just need a way to help her to move on. She still half thinks it was me. I need her to have someone else as the perpetrator so she can let it all go.’
‘And what if she goes to the police?’
‘And says what? There’s no proof. She won’t go to the police without proof. And you can just say that you’ll deny it if she goes to the police. That you’ve tried to get your mum to confess and she won’t.’
‘Is that what you think happened? That my mum did it?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But it’s a possibility. At various points over the years I’ve been convinced it’s everyone from my sisters to your mum to one of the other girls he abused to Poppy’s father.’
‘But not Poppy?’
‘Yes, Poppy. Everyone with the slightest connection to him. Even myself because I have memory loss from around that time and I sometimes wonder if I did it and blocked it out.’
‘So why my mum?’
‘Poppy will believe you if you tell her it was your mother. It will make sense to her because she will have felt like hurting Marcus to get away from him. I know I did. I’m sure most people in a relationship like ours would. And Marlene had years of him. It wouldn’t surprise anyone – especially not someone who experienced it – that she would eventually snap.’
‘Why would she have told me of all people?’
‘Just say that after you met me you started to have your doubts about me or Poppy having done it. And that when you talked it over with your mother, she broke down and confessed. That you’re still trying to work out what to do about it, but at the moment she won’t talk about it again and you’re not sure what you can do because she’ll deny it if you go to the police and there’s no evidence.’
He shook his head and paced a little across the cream rug. ‘You make it sound so easy, Serena. Like it’s a simple thing. Accusing my mother of murder to relieve the suffering of the person who probably did kill him. Why would I? And why would you think it was OK to ask me to do this. She’s my mother.’
‘Please. Please. She would never have to know. I can pretty much guarantee that Poppy won’t do anything with the knowledge. It’ll just be a relief for her to know for definite. And like I say, there’s no evidence for anyone else to do anything else. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t at least plausible that she’d done it. If it wasn’t a real possibility.’
More silence.
‘If I do this, what would I get out of it?’ He followed up this question with a stare that was direct and unwavering.
I inhaled deeply before I replied. ‘What do you want?’
We both knew what Jack Halnsley wanted – it was clear in the way his desire shaded his father’s face.
‘What do you want, Jack?’ I repeated.
‘I want you . . . to . . . to tell me about him. Properly. Just spend some time with me, talking to me about him. Not just the stuff you told me last time. The good things as well. Just more about him.’
‘As I just told you, I have memory loss,’ I replied. ‘My husband, who’s a doctor, thinks it’s post-traumatic stress. I think it’s cos I got hit in the head a few too many times. Either way, I have memory loss, especially from that time.’
‘I’m sure you can remember enough to tell me what I want to know. It won’t be for long. I just want to know about him from someone who will actually tell me things, not twist it to be whatever they think I want to hear.’
I pressed my hands on my lips.
‘It won’t be for ever. And . . . and if you want me to do this for you, then I want you . . . to do this for me.’
‘Fine,’ I stated. ‘Fine.’ It wasn’t fine. But what could I do? Poppy helped to free my daughter from hell. This was a small thing for me to do in exchange.
Part 18
poppy
Now
‘Grandma! Grandpa!’ Betina screams.
Outside Granny Morag’s beach hut we’ve set out the white fold-down table and have put out four chairs. We’re having supper here tonight and the table is covered in various Tupperware boxes with copious amounts of food. The large water pitcher has blackcurrant squash and the smaller water jug has rhubarb gin and pink soda. Alain has been reading a newspaper and I’ve been reading a book with my right flip-flop off so I can tease Alain under the table. A more perfect summer evening we could not have envisaged, planned or executed.
We both look up at our daughter as she hurtles like a bowling ball along the promenade towards her grandparents and almost knocks them over when she connects with them.
My reality is completely different now. I don’t feel the need to hide away from the world any more. I have a new sense of freedom that was given to me when Jack Halnsley told me the truth about who killed his father. Part of me, the tiniest little part of me, wants it made official. I want to look ‘the Law’ in the eye while they tell me they’re sorry and that they’ll compensate me for my lost years. But that is the tiniest part of me.
Most of me is free now, properly free, and I do not need anything else.
Mum and Dad tried to talk to me at the hospital but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t engage with anyone; I just went home and got straight into bed and began to cry.
Properly, properly cry.
I didn’t even want to drink or to smoke or to cut up. Those things were distractions, ways to mitigate my feelings, transmute uncomfortable feelings. With this knowledge, this truth, I didn’t want to veer away from a moment of feeling this. It was like it was finally, finally, over. And because of that, I could finally weep. Properly sob. What happened to me was awful and wrong and I could finally acknowledge that by being sad, being hurt, being properly broken.