A silence followed that seemed to swallow Pete up; a black hole that allowed nothing in, nothing out until it had done with him and then spat him out again.
‘That was my baby in Tara, don’t you say it wasn’t,’ he said at last.
‘It couldn’t have been, mate.’ Pete watched a tear slip down his brother’s cheek, lodge in his beard and glisten. Another followed and another.
‘They’re wrong.’
‘They’re not, Pete.’ This from Lucy, her face drawn, pale. ‘I wish they were. For all our sakes.’
Pete stood up. He kissed the head of his brother and Lucy’s cheek and headed for the door.
‘Stay here with us,’ said Griff. ‘Don’t go, I’ll worry about you doing something daft.’
Pete turned. ‘I swear I won’t do anything like that. We’ve had enough misery but I need to be alone to think and you need to be alone with your wife.’ He strode out. His world turned upside down for the second time. And this time he wondered if it could ever be righted.
*
Cora made a remarkable recovery after Pete and Griff had gone. She patted her hair back into place and applied a bag of frozen peas to her face to reduce the swelling, then took her compact out of the kitchen drawer, sat and dabbed some powder onto her cheek. She’d won, her smile said. A victory worth the price of a small injury. There could be no coming back from this for the brothers Moore. She then announced to Nigel that his family were not welcome in the house again or she would leave.
Nigel, who had sat at the kitchen table watching her five-minute repair transform her before his eyes, raised his head and spoke.
‘Then leave.’ His voice barely above a whisper, but heavy with repulsion.
Cora pulled her head back into her wrinkly neck.
‘I beg your pardon, Nigel?’ she said.
‘Throw your tenants out of your house and move back to where you came from. I don’t want you in my house another night. Another hour, actually.’
She waved away his words with an impatient flick of her wrist.
‘You’re being ridiculous. You saw what happened there. How can you defend it? You have no idea what I’ve had to put up—’
Nigel slammed his hand on the table like a gavel and Cora jumped and tellingly, she also shut up.
‘You know, Cora, I have never witnessed evil before today, but that was pure and simple evil what you did, and to a boy who didn’t deserve it and has been through enough without hearing that – from you. My God . . .’ Nigel threw himself from the chair then, paced to the far end of the kitchen ‘. . . I thought, I really thought we could overcome things with a bit of patience. I knew you were putting your stamp on the place, I defended you always until you cut down the rose bush because I knew you’d done that out of sheer callousness, to hurt my family. When we got together, you weren’t this Cora. Was it an act to reel me in? I kept on hoping the Cora I first met would turn up again, the real Cora. But this . . .’ he threw his open palm in her direction ‘. . . this is the real one isn’t it, one capable of a level of malevolence I have never seen before and hope I never see again.’
Cora sat silently, letting him expunge. She clutched at the thin row of pearls around her neck, a present from Nigel. He loved buying presents, wanted to spoil someone the way he had spoiled Julie-Anne. But this woman wasn’t Julie-Anne, and after what she’d done tonight, Nigel didn’t know who or what she was. He felt nothing for her. Nothing. His feelings for her had been dashed away with one clean sweep.
‘You would always pick blood over water, Nigel,’ she said eventually.
‘That’s a cheap line you have used too much, Cora and it won’t wash with me this time.’
She changed tactic because her usual get out of jail free card wouldn’t help her any more.
‘I will apologise,’ she relented stiffly, driven into a corner.
‘That’ll undo everything, of course,’ he said with a scoff.
From outside a raucous chorus of the Hokey Cokey reached them, reminding them of the context they were in. Cora jumped on it, knowing Nigel wouldn’t want to cause a scene, would be quicker to forgive.
‘It was an overreaction on my part, that’s all.’
He saw her skin blotching underneath the pearls.
‘Well, I’m not overreacting,’ replied Nigel, calm, steady. He had said everything that he needed to, any more would be superfluous and would change nothing. ‘Take a suitcase, get out of my house and I’ll have everything else of yours packed up by the morning.’
Cora blinked heavily. She had expected the promise of an apology would blow it all away. She had mistaken Nigel’s kind manner for weakness, not strength. She needed to play for some time and affected a wavery voice.
‘I have nowhere to go that quickly, Nigel. I think we should sleep on it.’
He remained a brick wall to all of her shots. ‘If you don’t, I will get the police, who will escort you out in full view of everyone here, don’t think I won’t, because I don’t give a bugger what the neighbours think. And, while we’re on, if you so much as mention Lucy’s name to the police, I’ll make sure that every one of your sponge-eating ladies’ group cronies hears exactly what you’re capable of. Now, I’m done. Your stuff will be in my drive at seven in the morning. Don’t even bother thinking about knocking on my door because you won’t get in.’
His mind clear, incisive, he strode out then towards the key rack in the hall, wrestled the front and back door keys from her keyring, pocketed them and returned to the kitchen.
‘I’ll give you one hour,’ he said, and rejoined his party.
*
A text pinged on Pete’s phone.
Hi, only me. Hope the party is going well and you’re having a great time. Missed you tonight at the meeting. Wasn’t quite the same. Yvonne and Maurice left the meeting arm in arm. My best – L xx
More fool them, said Pete to himself. He didn’t reply and switched off his phone.
Chapter 40
10 October
Pete barely slept. He felt both physically and mentally sick. Sick to the stomach of the situation he was in, because it was like being plunged back into a different pool of grief, a colder, harsher one. He needed to keep his thoughts herded, the job he had decided to do firmly in his sight or he would crumble and there would be nothing left of him to reconstitute. He set off for Bannen’s Financial Holdings, asked to see Tara’s old boss, laid on the importance. He said he’d wait. He wasn’t in a mood to be sent away. Wendy McCulloch wasn’t someone Tara had liked much and Pete got the feeling it was two-way traffic. He parked himself for twenty minutes in reception with a complimentary coffee and eventually Wendy McCulloch came out to greet him. She was much younger than he’d imagined, a whizz-kid probably. Tara was always rather disparaging about those. She’d not been very kind about Wendy.
‘How can I help you, Mr Moore?’ said Wendy, shutting the door of her office behind them.
Pete reached into the carrier bag he had brought and pulled out Tara’s eighteen-month desk diary. It was one of the items he hadn’t thrown or given away. He’d stored it in a box with the pregnancy test, photos, her bright red lipstick, the Burberry scarf he had bought her for Christmas. Her wedding ring.