Faith - Lesley Pearse [215]
‘I’m glad you’ve come round,’ Meggie said with the air of someone who had expected it. ‘She tried to blackmail me once, said she’d tell Ivy about me being a prostitute.’
Laura’s mouth fell open. Although Meggie had admitted what she’d been in a letter, she hadn’t expected her ever to bring it up again.
‘Don’t look like that! I can say the word out loud if I have to. But I only brought it up now so you’d know about Mum.’
‘How did you deal with it then?’ Laura asked.
‘Told her everything I knew I learned from her. And recently I told Ivy the truth too, just to be on the safe side.’
‘You told Ivy?’
‘Yes. I didn’t want to shatter her illusions, but better I did it than her hearing it from Mum.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘She looked thunderstruck, and for a moment I thought I’d blown it with her. But then she said it made sense of a few things which had puzzled her, mostly me being off men. After that she did the usual Ivy thing, a million questions. We drank a couple of bottles of wine and we began to laugh about it. As she said, it’s ancient history.’
‘You are a couple of tough cookies,’ Laura said admiringly. She still had the idea she had to look out for her sisters, but almost every day of the last couple of weeks she’d had evidence that wasn’t necessary.
You take a leaf out of my book.’ Meggie grinned. ‘Ignore any spiteful remarks Mother dearest might make. Don’t tell her about Jackie leaving us anything, and don’t ask after her health or she’ll bang on about her ailments all day.’
It was a shock to Laura to realize that the frail little old lady getting out of Meggie’s car on Sunday was her mother. Her back was bent over, she was very thin, her hair was snow-white, and when she lifted her head Laura saw that her face was as wrinkled as a prune.
‘Hello, Mum,’ Laura said and helped her up on to the doorstep. She was repelled by the stale smell of drink, cigarettes and an unwashed body coming from her mother, but she tried not to back away. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘Who are you?’ June asked, looking puzzled.
‘It’s Laura, of course,’ Meggie said from behind her.
‘But Laura’s in prison!’
Meggie smirked at Laura, and patiently explained, as they helped their mother in, that her sister was out on bail pending an appeal. ‘I always told you she didn’t do it,’ Meggie added somewhat triumphantly. ‘But never mind that now, we’re going to have lunch.’
The lunch went much better than Laura expected. Meggie gave the old lady a large glass of wine and that seemed to have remarkable restorative powers, in as much that she ate a great deal, having told them before that she couldn’t get food down. She didn’t talk about her ailments, but that was because Meggie steered her away from the subject. She told them about a pensioners’ coach trip she’d been on to Brighton, and that she often went to the cinema in the afternoons. She did repeatedly interrupt herself to ask where Ivy and her grandsons were, and Laura felt Meggie had the patience of a saint to be able to keep explaining they couldn’t come because the boys were playing in a football match.
It wasn’t until they had finished lunch and gone to sit down in the sitting room that June suddenly asked why Laura got bail.
Laura explained as best she could. ‘It looks as if Belle, Jackie’s sister, killed her,’ she finished up.
‘The woman who was killed came to see me once,’ her mother said.
‘Jackie did?’ Laura said, not believing her.
‘Yes, she asked me a lot of questions about you.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘She had red hair, and she was posh. She said she used to live in Muswell Hill. I didn’t like her.’
Laura looked at Meggie for confirmation this was true, but Meggie just shrugged.
‘Why didn’t you like her?’
‘Because she wouldn’t give me any money.’
‘You asked her for money?’ Meggie exclaimed.
‘Well, I hadn’t got any, and I could see she had. She wanted to know about our family, and I said she’d have to pay for the information.’
Laura sighed deeply. ‘What did she say to that then, Mother?’ she asked.
‘She said I’d already told her all she