Viola left a note for Elspeth saying that she was in love. That there was nothing anyone could do about it. And that she wanted never to see either of them again.
Elspeth took the news hard. She wiped away any sign of Viola, taking down photographs from the walls and stripping her bedroom with a white-hot fury. ‘As far as I’m concerned, Viola is dead,’ she said. In one way Katy was pleased to see the back of Viola and all the arguments that her presence had caused, but she could see how much Elspeth was hurting. She often wondered, in the years that followed, whether Viola had meant her parting words or if she had been pacifying her so that she could run away without Katy telling Elspeth.
Elspeth grew more brittle as time passed, as though she blamed Katy for sending her real daughter away. There were occasions when she refused to speak to her for days at a time, never giving a real reason. But Katy knew that the resentment was there, bubbling beneath the surface, every now and again rearing its head.
But it wasn’t until later, when Katy grew up and became Kathryn, when she had her own children, that she began to doubt her mother’s actions. How could she have wiped her only daughter so easily from her life?
Now here they are, thirty years later, and Viola is dead. Elspeth will never have that chance to say sorry.
Kathryn stares at Elspeth. When Jim called and said Viola was dead, she’d passed the receiver wordlessly to her mother. Now Elspeth’s face is ashen, her mouth trembling.
‘Here, come on, let’s sit down,’ says Kathryn, gently, taking the receiver from Elspeth’s hand and leading her into the sitting room.
‘She’s dead,’ she says again, her voice wobbling.
‘I know,’ she soothes. ‘But … you must have expected it?’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ she snaps. ‘Why would I? She was only forty-seven.’
‘I know … It’s just that you never heard from her and I thought that must have been why.’
‘It was only two years ago she died. All those years she could have been in touch.’ She puts a hand to her heart, her face pallid. ‘I suppose I hoped I’d see her again before I …’ She trails off.
‘Before you what?’
She draws herself up so she resembles the formidable woman Kathryn was in awe of as a child. ‘I’m nearly eighty. I’ve been suffering from bad health.’ She still has her hand on her heart. ‘I know I won’t make more than a year or two.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘I’ve got heart disease, Kathryn.’
Kathryn doesn’t know what to say. She swallows. What does this mean? ‘Are you saying … are you saying you’re dying?’
‘We’re all dying.’ Her eyes glisten. A heart attack had killed Viola, according to Jim.
‘Oh, God.’ Kathryn doesn’t know what else to say. If only things could have turned out differently. If only Viola had been kind when Kathryn was adopted into their family. Kathryn had wanted a sister, a friend, not an enemy. Then none of this would have happened.
Kathryn reaches across and takes her mother’s hand. It’s small and frail in her own and she can feel all the bones and veins. If she could turn back time she would change it all. She’d be the bigger person because, in the end, she had succeeded in causing this pain.
Elspeth looks up at Kathryn with pale, watery eyes. ‘There’s something else that Jim told me.’
Kathryn braces herself.
‘Viola had children. A daughter. A twenty-year-old daughter.’
This hits her harder than the news of Viola’s death and the room spins. A daughter. And a much longed-for granddaughter for Elspeth. Probably beautiful and blonde and petite, like Viola herself.
But Elspeth hasn’t finished. She is grabbing her hand and telling her there’s more. Kathryn’s stomach turns over because she thinks she knows what Elspeth is about to say and she clutches her mother’s hand, like she’s eleven years old again, not wanting to let go. Not wanting to lose her, to lose everything she’s worked so hard for. She doesn’t want to hear the words but they float towards her anyway in her mother’s clipped tone.
‘When Viola ran off with Danny, they lived in a commune in Norfolk somewhere. Eventually they separated and Viola met another man, Dominic Green, and they had a daughter. A daughter called Willow.’
I can see you through the window. You’ve left the lights on and the curtains open; a great view into your shabby little flat. You should be more careful. All those potential Peeping Toms. You needn’t worry. It’s only me here tonight. Watching you. Waiting. You wear your grief well. Less makeup, not so tarty. You’re quite pretty beneath all that slap. Not like the others, though, with your copper hair. But that doesn’t matter to me. You see, I have a taste for it now. The kill.
And I’ve decided that you’re next.
42
Courtney
The flat feels empty, not homely, now that Willow has left, the walls bare of all the photos of Courtney and Una, just patches of lighter-coloured magnolia paint where the frames had been. Courtney surveys the place she once thought of as home. It was never much, but she and Una had made the best of it. Now it’s just an empty shell, devoid of Una and her warmth, Willow and her chatter. Kris, thankfully, has taken his stuff and she’s begun to pack her belongings into boxes. Her mum and dad will drive over tomorrow to take them to their house in Filton.
Yesterday she’d found one of Una’s hairbands down the back of the sofa. She’d held it for ages, staring at the long blonde hairs interwoven around it.