The Philosophy of Disgrace Read online

  The doorbell rang, jolting her out of her reverie with the subtlety of a brick.

  ‘Sorry to bother you love, but does Charlie Jones live here?’

  ‘Yes’ Amy said, ‘but he’s not in at the moment, I can get him to ring you when he gets back.’ She said politely. If your dad was a builder it wasn’t unusual to have complete strangers banging on the door because they’d locked themselves out and wanted to borrow a ladder, or they had a leak, or a blockage or something.

  ‘Oh no, don’t worry, I only wanted to drop this off to him, only I thought it might be important.’ She reached into her pocket and handed a broken SOS bracelet to Amy. ‘I think your mum must have dropped it when she had that fit in the cafe today, poor woman, I hope she’s feeling better now. I didn’t find it until after they’d gone or I would have given it to her then, but I remembered seeing your dads van parked on the drive so I thought I would drop it off on my way home. It’s lucky really, I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with it if I hadn’t recognised your dad, and he did a lovely job on my sister’s extension. Anyway, I must be off, hope your mum is better love.’ She said as she waddled off down the drive.

  ‘Thanks.’ Amy said. The word was so quiet it wafted into the night unheard. She shut the door and stared at the bracelet, puzzled, her mind trying to make sense of the woman’s words. Perhaps she had the wrong Charlie Jones. But she couldn’t have, she’d said she recognised him. It dawned on her that maybe he did have a girlfriend, one he hadn’t told her about, one who had a habit of having fits in public places. Perhaps that was where he was now, in hospital with this sick woman, whoever she was. She pried open the bracelet to get a look at this woman’s name. If her dad had met someone, she had a right at least to know her name.

  She had to look twice at the tiny piece of paper to establish that what her eyes were telling her brain was correct. The name inside the identity bracelet was Rachel Porter. But it couldn’t be, that was the name of her mother, and her mother was dead. Her mother had died after having her, Gran had told her.

  This couldn’t be right.

  The truth didn’t dawn; it hit her full pelt, like a punch, leaving her reeling from the impact. She felt sick. She threw the bracelet across the hall as if it was a toxic thing, a physical lie. She stared at it, half expecting it to dematerialise in front of her, but it lay on the bottom stair, tauntingly real.

  The address had said London, Bayswater. She shook her head and went back into the lounge, she would prove this wrong, prove that stupid woman wrong. At most, this would be a coincidence. They wouldn’t have lied to her about this. It wasn’t possible.

  She had discovered that the internet was a wonderful thing a long time ago, you could find out pretty much anything if you knew where to look, and 192.com was a good place to start. All you needed was a name, and a vague idea of location, then you could find out someone’s phone number, address and even whether they were registered to vote. Rachel Porter had no phone, but she was on the electoral roll, she did exist.

  Amy still wasn’t quite convinced that this Rachel Porter was the same Rachel who had married her father and died in childbirth like the tragic heroine of her fantasies. It occurred to her that there would be a death certificate, a record of her mother’s demise, and she knew exactly where to look. Her dad had a trunk at the end of his bed where he kept his personal things, if evidence was anywhere it would be in there. Dispassionately she headed for the stairs fully prepared to break into the trunk.

  Most of what she found was old business accounts, copies of VAT returns and such like. Plus there were drawings and fathers day cards that she had made for him over the years, all wrapped in the shawl she had used as a baby. Before this she would have thought how sweet he was to cling on to such things, but at that moment in time she was so angry she wanted to tear everything to shreds.

  In the bottom of the trunk was tin box, locked. She had never picked a lock, wouldn’t have had a clue how to do it and didn’t fancy spending hours pissing about with a hairgrip and getting nowhere. Neither was she prepared to waste time looking for the key. Her father was a security conscious man, had spent too long in the company of felons not to be, so wherever the key might be, she would be unlikely to find it easily. Instead she ran down to the garage, taking the box with her and broke it open with a pickaxe, the contents exploding all over the concrete floor on the third blow. The box was ruined, she couldn’t have cared less, was only interested in the contents. Sure enough, she found her own birth certificate, and his and Rachel’s marriage certificate. No death certificate. Just a pile of letters addressed to HM Prison, Dartmoor. She opened just one, and realised that they were the letters her mother had sent to him in prison, she opened more, scanning the handwriting and seeing that some were from her Gran too. Only one envelope seemed to stand out from the others, it was stiff and large, the address typed and to this house, her home. It was from a London solicitor, from Rachel’s solicitor, warning Charlie not to contact or visit or they would have no alternative but to apply for an injunction against him. “My client has no wish for further contact with you”, she read.

  The letter was dated fifteen years ago, she had been five. Rachel had been alive and hadn’t wanted to see them, had gone so far as to threaten legal action if Charlie even tried.

  If her mood was angry before, this discovery only served to fuel the flames, she was incandescent!

  Rachel’s address was now etched into her mind; she would go there, confront the woman who had faked her own death. Amy wanted to know why, and she wanted to know now. It took only moments to look up train times and find that if she was quick she could be on a train in forty-five minutes, in London an hour and a half after that. She took the letters and stuffed them in her back pack, she also took her father’s secret stash of cash, five hundred pounds, rolled up and secured with an elastic band and kept hidden in a piece of spare waste pipe in the back of the sink unit cupboard. He thought she didn’t know about it, but she had watched him many a time unscrew the dummy pipe and store his money. He owed her at least this, so she wasn’t going to feel bad about it.

  As she headed across the sitting room towards the door, she looked towards the mantelpiece and saw the photograph of her father holding her, she had been about four and was sitting on his shoulders and they were both grinning at the camera. It was a mutual favourite picture and she couldn’t remember a time when it hadn’t been on display somewhere in the house. She was sick of it! It wasn’t real. None of it had been real. Not this house, not her dad, not this life.

  She picked up the picture and hurled it against the wall, wincing as the image shattered, littering the floor with tiny shards of glass. For good measure, she followed it with the cold pizza, watching in satisfaction as it slid slowly down the wall, leaving a trail of cold, congealed tomato paste in its wake. Then she left, slamming the front door so hard that the glass pane at the top cracked with the impact.

  For a moment or two, Rachel thought that Charlie might hit her, she would have let him. It would be well deserved.

  He was breathing hard, gritting his jaw against all the things he wanted to say, clenching his fists to stop himself tearing the flat apart and smashing her life, just like she had smashed his.

  Rachel watched him, wary. ‘Tell me about Amy, what’s she like? And I know I don’t deserve to know’. The desire to know something of her child fought gamely with her fear of his anger.

  Charlie sighed, the tension suddenly ebbing away, leaving him deflated, exhausted, done. He couldn’t be bothered to fight her. What was the point ‘She’s like you, to look at.’

  Rachel was disappointed at this; she would have preferred her to look like him. ‘Does she have friends, is she happy?’

  ‘She’s happy enough; she’s at college, training to be a nurse. There are plenty of friends, no boyfriends, or at least none that I know of, not that she would tell me. She’s a good kid.’

  ‘You always were good at scaring off unwanted boyfr
iends’. She said, a sad little smile just turning up the corners of her mouth.

  He jammed his hands in his pockets and gritted his teeth again. ‘Let’s not attempt small talk eh?’ He knew exactly what she was talking about but was in no mood for gentle reminiscences. Instead, he moved away from her, out into the hallway and into the sitting room, shocked that Lila’s presence in the flat was still stronger than Rachel’s, even though Lila had been dead for twenty years. He fingered the spines of books, peered at photographs, breathed in the scent of the undead past.

  Rachel watched him from the doorway, noticing as he touched the books that he still wore his wedding ring. She hadn’t kept hers; she’d left it behind, on the table, the day she’d left. She had thought it would help him to hate her, help him move on, have a life. Nevertheless, here he was, waiting for her to tell him the truth. It wasn’t going to happen. The truth was story no one should ever have to hear. But she owed him something, and she really needed him to leave.

  ‘After I had her, the fits were really bad, you know that. I was really scared I would hurt her. I couldn’t cope. I thought she would be better off without me, you both would. I was a liability.’ She said, unable to look at his face.

  Charlie didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at her, standing in that mausoleum of a flat, looking like she was still a gawky kid, expecting him to believe everything she said. He shook his head and gave a wry laugh. ‘Bullshit!’

  Rachel was floundering, she needed him to leave. ‘Look, you only married me because I was pregnant with Amy, then you realised you couldn’t even leave me on my own with her. What kind of life was that, for any of us? I was grateful you took me on, but I grew up and realised it was never going to work. That’s it, all there is to say. You should thank me; I did us all a favour.’

  Charlie’s aw fell in disbelief, he shook his head. ‘Christ! You’re just like the rest of them! What is this? The Porter curse or something? He whirled round throwing his hands into the air, making her flinch away from him, which only served to make him even angrier. He made for the door, ‘Do us both a favour Rachel, and don’t come back, not ever. OK?’

  Rachel winced as the door slammed. One of Lila’s plates wobbled and fell of the dresser, smashing irretrievably on the hard floor of the kitchen. When she was sure he wasn’t coming back she bent to pick up the pieces, struggling to breathe as the knot of pain in her chest started to unravel, releasing eighteen years’ worth of grief and anguish as it unfurled. The pain of it made her gasp, she grasped one of the slivers of broken china, squeezing it hard, hoping that the sensation would cancel out the choking agony she felt. White light shot through her brain, shorting out the capacity for further thought.

  Charlie gunned the van, screeching away from the building like a man possessed, frightening the living crap out of a gang of drunks who were serenading the neighbourhood on their way home. He didn’t care if the police pulled him over; he didn’t care if he lost control and went crashing into the nearest lamppost. All he knew at that moment was that Rachel was right; she had done them all a favour. His temper was still white hot when he reached the M4.

  Amy’s train had come to a complete standstill, grinding to a halt in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. All she could see when she peered out of the window was her own face staring back at her, the glass made mirror by the pitch-black night.

  The carriage was almost empty, its few passengers staring at each other and shrugging with confusion at the delay. Amy had two seats to herself, and was glad she wasn’t opposite anyone who might want to engage her in inane conversation. Just in case, she stared at the floor in a deliberate attempt to avoid potential eye contact. Had the station shop been open she would have bought a magazine and hidden behind that, but everything had been closed when she got there, even her ticket had come out of a machine. Hers was the last train, so not even a buffet car, so she was stuck.

  Then she remembered the letters. It seemed that fate had presented her with an opportunity to look through them before she got to London. Knowledge was power, and if she intended to confront her mother, a little power wouldn’t go amiss.

  She rummaged in her bag for the bundle of letters just as an announcement came over the speakers, telling them all that there was a delay up ahead and that the train would be moving again as soon as they could resolve the problem. She opened the first letter to a chorus of grumblings and sighs from her fellow passengers as they complained about the delay.

  To her disappointment, the letter was from her Nan, but its contents were quite interesting. “Rachel comes to see me most days, calls in after school. I can’t say I blame her not wanting to go home to those nutcases. Although she seems a bit brighter now Roy has gone, I still can’t get over that, him just up and leaving like he did. I thought he would hang in there until the bitter end, still given what he was up to with poor Patsy I can’t say I’m sorry he’s gone, even though it should be him behind bars and not you. Anyway, little Rachel sends her love, poor kid!” The rest of the letter was of no interest to Amy, just her Nan wittering on about the price of meat, and what colour she was going to paint the lounge. Some things never changed. The date was interesting, April 14th 1978. She pulled out the marriage certificate and checked Rachel’s date of birth. When the letter was written she her mother would have been eleven years old.

  Until this point Amy hadn’t known that her mother was one of the Porter family, hadn’t realised that she had been connected to what had happened to her dad. How stupid she’d been, never to ask any questions, to have just blithely gone through her life thinking that everything was just tragic and lovely, and that everyone in it was fundamentally OK! All this time and she’d not even been curious, what the hell was that all about?

  She tore open the next letter; this time dated 1979, and scanned the page looking for a mention of Rachel in the mundane ramblings of her Nan’s scrawl. “Rachel still visits, she’s growing up fast, and I don’t suppose you would even recognise her now. Still, she sends her love, always asks after you.”

  And so they went on, letter after letter, marking the years of her father’s incarceration with nothing more than a few flimsy pages. Rachel was made to sound wonderful, a girl who blossomed over the years, who was sweet, charming, and kind. This Rachel did not sound like the type of person who would abandon her child. Wonderful, lovely Rachel.

  Then the last letter, when Rachel was eighteen “I can’t tell you how upset I am. Rachel came today, it had been raining, came down in bloody buckets, so by the time she got here she was soaked to the skin. Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that wet, so, like you do; I got her to strip off her wet things. Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m that upset I have to tell someone. Anyway, I made her take her blouse off, and you’ve never seen anything like it! That bloody bitch of a woman has been beating her with a belt. That poor kid has scars all over her back. You can see the buckle marks where the skin is broken. I couldn’t believe it, I knew Valerie Porter was a bitter woman, but I never thought she would do that to a kid. I tell you, it was all I could do to stop myself going round there and taking the belt to the old bitch herself!”

  Amy stopped reading, her head full of the picture that her Nan had described. Then she turned the page, only to find that the words had been blocked out in heavy black ink. The whole page had obviously been screwed up at some point, and then smoothed back out. She guessed that was her father’s doing, he must have read it and lost his cool, being stuck in a cell where he could do nothing about it.

  There were no more, because in ten years, he’d only kept the letters that mentioned Rachel. Amy didn’t want to dwell on it, something about a grown man, her father, being that fascinated by a kid bothered her. She stuffed the letters back in her bag and stared back at the window, trying to look beyond her own frowning face.

  If she did the maths, her dad was fifteen years older than Rachel was. That would be like her going out with Brad Pitt now, or Ge
orge Clooney. It didn’t seem quite so perverse when she thought about it like that. Plenty of girls went out with older blokes, one of the girls in college was knocking off a lecturer, and if looks were anything to go by, her dad had a good ten years on him. Still, she wasn’t related to them.

  What did it matter anyway? It wasn’t the reason Rachel had abandoned her, and it wasn’t the reason her Nan and her dad had lied to her. The only thing that was clear was that her Nan had loved Rachel, and so had her dad, so god knows what had gone so wrong that they had rather pretend she was dead. And as soon as the damned train got moving, she would find out what it was, straight from the horse’s mouth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mary Hammond sat down, sighed heavily and kicked off her shoes under the desk. If time were on her side, she would get a glance at the morning paper before the day shift got in. Although she would be lucky, the patients had been buzzing all night, God knows what got into them all. When she’d taken the job as Night Sister on the unit, she’d hoped it would be an easy ride, but this lot were like night owls, perking up as soon as the sun went down. Lunatic was the right word, all lively when the moon was out. She had only just managed to get Bill Smith back in his bed, and to manage that she’d had to ply him with Ovaltine and force a couple of Zopiclone down his neck.

  Something was upsetting him, usually he was the least of her worries on nights, but according to his notes he hadn’t been much better during the day lately either. What with that and the student’s kicking off at each other, so much so that one of them had to be sent home, things weren’t particularly rosy in the workplace. That was one thing about regular nights; no snot nosed student’s to deal with. She’d met the lad, Nick, bit of an arsehole in her opinion. Thought he was God’s gift to nursing and had all the answers. She thought with a smug smile on her face, give him a couple of years and he’d know the score. There were no cures in this game. She’d met kids like him before, they really wanted to be doctors, but hadn’t made the grade, or didn’t have the stamina, so they would try their hands at nursing, throwing their weight about, calling the shots. Mary had a good cure for them, send them round the ward with a trolley full of enemas’ then send them back half an hour later with the bedpans to deal with the fallout. That usually shut them up. It gave a whole new meaning to a shit day at work, she knew that much.