I need to see if I can get to the bottom of it, love. I know it won’t bring him back’ – Kathleen flinched slightly at the way he said that – ‘but if there’s any little thing. Anything that might give her a crumb of comfort …’
‘I can’t see how anything could do that,’ Kathleen said. ‘When people kill themselves, well … there’s not much that can be said, is there?’ She wanted to go on – to point out that there probably wouldn’t be. That, to her mind, it had been a completely spur of the moment thing. No, more to the point, would be to find out what was happening on the outside. Had someone been threatening to hurt him? To kill him, even? There were plenty bad enough and mad enough on Canterbury Estate. She wished she had more of an idea of what he’d wanted the gun for. To commit crime or in fear that it was about to be committed against him? But she decided to say nothing. Not to her dad. Not right now.
A thought occurred to her, out of the blue. ‘What will you do with his things, Dad?’ She asked him. ‘You know, when eventually, they have to be – well, you know, sorted out?’
‘What, his clothes and that? Go to charity most likely, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I doubt your mam would be happy to pass them on to anyone local – don’t think she’d cope well with seeing anyone prancing around in one of his fancy suits, do you?’
‘Your mam.’ It never rankled any less. Kathleen shook her head. Was that what had happened to her real mother’s things? That her dad couldn’t bear the thought of seeing anyone in them? She thought of the welfare shop down on Great Horton Road, and all the fuddy-duddy stuff they had hanging in the window. Dead people’s clothes? It wasn’t a nice thought. She thought about Terry then. Had he kept stuff? Was there anything left for him to hang on to, or had everything been burned in the fire? Or was he like her, cast adrift with only memories to hang on to?
She wished her father had kept something of her mum’s for her. Anything. Just a blouse, or a favourite cardigan or something that she could have sniffed.
‘D’you want me to help you?’ she asked him.
‘Would you?’ He seemed pleased that she’d offered. ‘Once our Monica’s up and gone. I gave your mam a couple of those pills the doctor prescribed for her. She’ll be out for a good while.’
‘I hope so,’ Kathleen said ruefully, managing the first smile to him in days. ‘There’ll be hell to pay if she finds us in there. She’d bloody murder us!’
Which wasn’t the most diplomatic thing to have said, but it at least raised a smile from him too.
They finished off the early morning chores together, John dealing with the back of the bar, while Kathleen, having taken Monica her tea and checked she was up for work, finished off the big room and went and dealt with the toilets.
Monica was back down in what seemed like no time, hair and make-up immaculate and only the grim set of her mouth giving any indication of how she was feeling. It was still very early, and Kathleen had the impression that getting out of the pub was her first priority every morning – only once she set off up the road could she breathe out and start her day. Oh, how she wished she could do just the same.
‘Mum’s spark out,’ she told her stepfather, not even glancing in Kathleen’s direction.
Kathleen’s dad nodded. ‘And will be for a good while, I’ll bet,’ he said, their nods of acknowledgement confirming that was much the best thing for everyone.
‘Anyway, I’m off,’ she said and now she did seem to acknowledge Kathleen’s presence. ‘Some of us have proper jobs to get to.’
It was her way, Kathleen decided, of excusing her disappearance. Point-making, to deflect any negative comments about how little she was currently around. So let her, she thought. I really don’t care.
Not so her dad. ‘Enough of that,’ he said. ‘Kathleen works every bit as hard as you do. Just get gone,’ he added mildly, ‘and less of the gob.’
It was the first cheering thing Kathleen had heard from him in days.
Less cheering was the business of entering Darren’s bedroom, which was dark – Irene had obviously decided to keep the curtains closed now – and smelt musty and stale.
The bed was all awry from where Irene had been climbing in and out of it, but apart from that, it looked as bare and neat and characterless as it always did. Darren had been as tidy in his personal habits as he’d been with his clothing. It was just such a tragedy that his personality had led him so inexorably to the chaotic world of the out-of-control gambler.
Now she was in here she really didn’t know what she could help with. Riffling through Darren’s personal papers was the last thing she felt like doing.
Her father, however, seemed to have no such concerns. Perhaps conscious of the clock ticking, he immediately went to the wonky old wardrobe, getting down on his knees to see what he could find in the bottom – the place where Darren apparently shoved his paperwork. Out of sight, out of mind? She studied her father’s back. He’d said little of his personal feelings, but he must have them. Darren had been his stepson for a long time, after all. And he’d liked him. They’d rubbed along fine.
She went to join him, aghast at just how much stuff was jumbled together at the bottom of the wardrobe – who knew so much was hidden behind the thin wooden doors? There were piles of boxes and files and she accepted a shoebox he’d handed her, and was soon lost in a thick sheaf of sundry documents. Many payslips, a bunch of bank statements, a bundle of handwritten letters that she recognised as being from a girl he’d been going with for a while a couple of years back, and betting slips – all of them old ones, for small, seemingly insignificant amounts, but which had still amounted to the seeds of his destruction.
It was difficult to know what to look for, she realised, and, again, her thoughts strayed back to the business of having to be here – like a pair of snoops, in a room they had no business being in, with the weight of its absent owner pressing down.
She could have sat there on the edge of Darren’s bed for hours, no doubt, she realised, but for a sound, through the wall. Was Irene stirring?
Her dad obviously heard it too, because his head jerked up, listening. She wasn’t sure what he’d been going through – he now seemed like an island in a sea of bits of paper – but he quickly closed the lid on the box he had in front of him, and gestured to her that she should do the same, and hand it back to him.
She did so, glad to leave, unsure what purpose could be served here, and was just heading out again, her dad close behind her, when she heard a rustle.
She turned. He seemed to be stuffing something into his dressing-gown pocket. ‘What’ve you found?’ she whispered.
‘What?’ he said, before putting a finger to his lips. Then he shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
She continued out of the room, her dad following, switching off the light with careful fingers. It was only when they were back on the landing that she saw his face was white.
‘What have you found, Dad?’ she said again.
He shook his head. ‘I told you,’ he mouthed. ‘Nothing.’
And she knew he wasn’t telling her the truth.
