It turned out the stuff in there wasn’t Kaye’s – it was that poor girl Daisy’s. The maid is in the garden. Daisy, who Luke may or may not have tried to destroy deliberately. Apparently he swore blind he didn’t see her when he backed the car up – and it could have been the last dog that he was aiming for anyway.
I don’t know why Matthew didn’t sort the room out. Largely because he couldn’t bear to admit what had happened I think.
* * *
Luke has been signed up for psychoanalysis – the tough sort: an hour a day for weeks and months and years. Maybe there’s hope for him. He’s not intrinsically bad I’m sure. He’s just a confused, lost boy, hoping for his mother’s love. I think he’ll always be less than – never enough for her expectations.
But maybe now less of a threat than Kaye’s gorgeous daughter – whose sheer youth and vitality was driving her mother slowly mad.
Marlena told me what happened and what had been discussed. But I never really understood how much he did of his own accord – because some of it Kaye seemed to know about, and other things, like poisoning the poor little dog Justin and, in the process, accidentally poisoning himself, were all his own ideas, it seemed.
Classic trait of a sociopath – or, worse even, a psychopath: inflicting the pain you feel yourself on something else helpless.
Some time after it all, Luke wrote me a letter. I imagine he was forced to, but I was glad to receive it, all things considered.
I am very sorry, Jeanie, he wrote, for making things difficult. I didn’t think of the effect it would have on you. I didn’t mean to scare you so much.
But I would dispute all of those claims. He made me think I was going insane, and he scared me badly, however misguided his motives were.
Still, he was only a kid – and his mother was filled with such jealousy, undoubtedly she corralled him for her own ends.
Jealous of her own daughter’s youth and beauty. That’s a terrible place to be. There’s no way forward from that, no magic elixir of youth.
Only mirrors, to keep reminding you the clock’s ticking on.
And Scarlett?
She came to see me one day in London, when Frankie and I were staying at Marlena’s – before I moved back up to Derbyshire.
We went to a very cool restaurant in Spitalfields, all square tables and no pictures. I bought her a ‘gastro’ burger, whatever that was – and I had bangers and mash. We chatted about school. Scarlett told me about living some of the time with her godparents, Alison and Sean, and some of the time with her dad. She was also getting counselling she said.
Scarlett asked about Frankie, and I told her that he was too old for her, and it was too complicated – better they be friends. She picked at her nail varnish and didn’t mention him again.
I understood from Matthew that he’d got his police inspector mate, Kipper, to put the fear of God into Scarlett over the gun incident. Kipper ‘arrested’ her, locking her up in the local police station for a few hours. Then he interviewed her about the shooting. She understood she was on a ‘caution’, though I don’t think it was ever an official one. After all she hadn’t actually committed a crime.
But she knew that if she ever did something like that again, it would be far more serious.
I wanted the best for her. I felt sorry for her, and I’d grown quite fond of her – but I couldn’t see how our relationship could pan out.
We didn’t talk about her mother really that day – she wasn’t seeing Kaye much yet – but looking at her shovelling her fries in with alacrity, I remembered what it was I’d seen in those home movies that had bugged me.
Initially I’d read it as admiration for Kaye – but when I’d looked again, I’d seen it wasn’t.
It was a look of fear on her face when she looked at her mother: fear and hostility.
I realised that Scarlett’s act of violence came from her rage at not being heard. At having her voice and her feelings stifled by the woman who was meant to love her above all else.
I felt sorry for the girl – for both the kids. They had everything they wanted materially, and their lives were still a mess. I hoped that Matthew would be able to be a better father if women were out of the way – for the time being, anyway. There was no doubt he loved his children dearly; they had that security.
‘I know you’ve been cutting yourself,’ I said quietly as we waited for our pudding, and Scarlett flushed like her name. ‘You can’t deny it this time. I saw the blood in Ashbourne, on the carpet. I saw it in Malum House too that time.’
I’m pretty sure she wanted me to see it – in Ashbourne at least. It’s usually a cry for help in my experience, leaving a clue.
I’d told Matthew at the time in Malum House, and he’d ignored it; I’d told Kaye before. If I’d not moved out, maybe I could have done something directly, but now I made sure I told Matthew again, told him he needed to watch out for his daughter’s mental health. It was his responsibility.
Frankie was mine.
Over chocolate cake and ice cream, I told Scarlett I was learning tai chi and karate, and she grinned.