The Liverpool Trilogy Page 3

  ‘Moira?’

  She woke. He gave her a cup of tea. Well, half a cup, because she spilt so much if the cup was full.

  Richard averted his gaze, because he didn’t want her to see the fear in his eyes. She wasn’t simply falling asleep any more; she was losing consciousness, and occasionally she stopped breathing. There was no help. Men walked on the moon – there was money and research enough for that. Moira walked on planet earth scarcely at all, and any possible cure or remedial treatment for multiple sclerosis would be paid for mostly by charities. Somewhere, someone had their priorities wrong.

  The rage lasted for more than three days.

  Cheated and abused by his own wife, Alan Henshaw tore up the few clothes she had left, burnt the wedding album, dug up her old man’s roses, contacted his daughter, and drank himself into near-coma. His wife would come back, he told himself in rare brighter moments. Lucy had nobody apart from her children, and she would be back. The woman hadn’t the guts to go it alone – she would need to come back.

  Wouldn’t she? He had made her money grow – what the hell did it matter whose account was whose? As for the rest of it – his wanderings and his mistresses – what the buggery had she expected? Since the birth of Elizabeth, his wife had been as warm as a butcher’s freezer, as responsive as a corpse. And he liked younger, firmer flesh, which was quite normal in his scheme of things. Successful men needed variety, because variety was the spice of … something or other.

  But, on the fourth day, when all the booze had gone, and he returned to a more normal frame of mind, he had to admit that he was beaten. Her solicitor, contacted by his, had outlined the whole damned mess, and Alan had no leg to stand on. The house was hers, as were the heavy mortgages he had obtained via fraud. Except they weren’t hers, because she hadn’t signed for them. Three handwriting experts had declared Lucy Henshaw’s signature to be forged, while a neighbour who had witnessed one of the documents admitted that Lucy had not been present at the time.

  It was the end of the road for Alan. If he fought, she would walk all over him. If he didn’t fight, he might as well be dead. Could the children save him? How much of the stolen money had she given to them? It wouldn’t be enough. All he owned were twenty plots of land in Bromley Cross, a set of plans, and the clothes in his wardrobe. She, of course, would get away with the crime of forging his signature if the case went to court. She was a lady who had married a rogue, and the forging of his signature had been necessary so that she could take back her own money.

  At the back of his mind lingered the suspicion that the land and the plans might well belong to her, so he’d have to find out about that, too. If he tried to sell to another developer, Lucy might decide to relieve him of everything.

  A letter arrived. He tore it open so viciously that he had to piece together its contents in order to read them. She was being magnanimous. He could hang on to the Bromley Cross project and find investors, or he could sell it on. How kind of her. The bills are in your sock drawer … and his socks had been salvaged. That had been no easy task, since he had never before used a washing machine, even when sober. The socks proved one thing, though: she was capable of playing dirty. That quiet housewife had a temper. She wasn’t perfect.

  The bills are in your sock drawer. It was a large drawer. As voluntary company secretary, she had always dealt with bills. Jesus, he was probably in debt to every supplier within a twenty-mile radius. Even if he could sell on the plots and all approved plans, he’d probably still be penniless. A clever bitch she’d turned out to be, little Miss Top Heavy with her high-priced clothing, perfume, footwear and designer handbags.

  He should go and see Mags before the shit hit the fan. She was his kind of girl, reed-slim, small-breasted, a teenager’s body with the brains of a businesswoman. Three shops she owned outright, and she was only thirty-odd. London-trained, Mags also had franchises in department stores all over the place, because she was good at what she did. Yes, she had borrowing power. When it came to competitions, her firm had won cups in every area of beauty, from hairdressing to make-up and nails. She was his only chance.

  It was time to clean up the act. He stank of sweat and whisky. So he bathed, then showered, shaved, dressed and came downstairs to think a little further before turning for help to his current paramour. There would be a divorce, of course. Unreasonable behaviour leading to breakdown of marriage, and he could not contest it, so he’d just have to grin and—

  Elizabeth ran through the hall. ‘Daddy?’ she shouted. ‘Daddy, where are you?’

  Oh, God. This was all he needed. ‘Library,’ he called.

  She almost fell through the doorway. ‘What’s happened?’ she cried, throwing herself into his arms. Her world had shifted on its axis. Lizzie now realized that Mother had been both anchor and safety net, and she wasn’t here any more. Whose fault was it? What had caused her to disappear so suddenly and without warning?

  He placed her in a chair. ‘Your mother’s buggered off, that’s what’s happened. She’s left without so much as a by-your-leave.’

  ‘Where? Why?’

  Alan shrugged. ‘God knows. I told you on the phone to stay where you were, because there’s nothing any of you can do. I don’t know where she is, don’t know why she did it. There’s no money – she’s taken the lot.’

  Lizzie swallowed. ‘All of it?’

  He nodded.

  She could scarcely believe this. Mother had always been scrupulously fair and honest. Perhaps she was having some kind of breakdown. Women of a certain age seemed to suffer until they got through the menopause. ‘She’s set up an account for me. And she’s paid my fees and my rent for as long as I’m in London. The boys will be finished at uni in about ten months, so they probably got a little less. She’s always been like that, Daddy. Always fair.’

  Lost for words, he simply grunted.

  ‘The house?’ she asked.

  ‘Hers, and mortgaged.’

  Lizzie’s jaw dropped slightly. ‘But she would never risk Tallows, Daddy. That’s totally out of character. This house was in the Buckley family for generations—’

  ‘It had to be done, Lizzie. The firm was going under. There was no alternative.’

  She sat perfectly still for several seconds. ‘Where is she?’ she asked again. ‘What have you done? Daddy, I demand to know where my mother is. What have you been up to? Is it another of your women?’

  Heat flooded into his face. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  She tutted. ‘Daddy, everyone knows – it was the talk of our school, especially when you started messing about with the chemistry teacher. I’m not apportioning blame, but Mother wouldn’t just go off like that. It isn’t in her nature. She’d put up with just about anything – she has put up with an awful lot just to keep Tallows. I’m not daft. I know it’s partly, if not totally, your fault.’

  He mumbled something about Lucy having changed.

  ‘We all change,’ came the reply. ‘Otherwise, I’d still be in a pram, while you’d be existing in a two-up-twodown at the wrong end of Deane Road. But my mother is not a bad woman. She wouldn’t steal and run unless she had a damned good reason. What happened?’

  He offered no immediate reply.

  ‘Daddy, no matter what, I’ll always forgive you.’

  She wouldn’t. He was damned sure she wouldn’t. ‘Lizzie.’ Her name arrived on a sigh. ‘I can’t explain. I came home early after a meeting, and she’d disappeared with most of her clothes. The cat was still here, but that disappeared the next day … or the day after …’

  ‘You’ve been drunk.’ This was not a question. ‘And you haven’t fed him, so—’

  ‘A letter came,’ he said. ‘She has the cat. There are letters for you and your brothers, too. Posted in Bristol. She wrote in my letter that she’d sent copies to wherever you were staying, as well. Aren’t the boys in Chester with Billy Maddox? Weren’t you in Somerset?’

  ‘Yes. I got mine. It said very little. Then w
e spoke on the phone and you were drunk again, so …’ She paused. ‘But Mother wouldn’t go as far as Bristol. She’s a northerner to the core. She wouldn’t even move across the Pennines, and well you know it.’

  ‘No, but she’ll have made sure they had the wrong postmark. It’ll all have been done through Glenys.’ As soon as the words were out, he wanted to bite them back. Lizzie knew Glenys – the whole family knew her. ‘Though I think your mother may have gone to a different firm,’ he added lamely.

  Lizzie walked to the window. ‘Grandfather’s roses,’ she said. ‘Why have you dug them up?’

  ‘Temper,’ he admitted.

  ‘That was a wicked thing to do.’ She turned and glared at him. There was more to this than he was willing to admit. Her mother was neither a bolter nor an adventurer – she was a reasonable, quiet and fairly gentle soul who looked after everyone except herself. ‘Is Tallows to be sold?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  She sat down again. The man who had been a wonderful daddy was clearly a poor father. Those golden days of childhood, the memories she treasured, were untrue. Because he was untrue. Something enormous had happened while she’d been away in Somerset, and she intended to get to the bottom of it. ‘No matter what, I shall always love you,’ she said softly. ‘But I fear I may stop liking you.’

  ‘So you’re on her side?’

  ‘It isn’t a case of sides, Daddy. It’s to do with trust and truth. This was Mother’s house long before she was born – it’s been in her family for a very long time. She would have sold every stick of furniture before mortgaging Tallows. It would be out of the question.’ The contents of Tallows were worth a small fortune.

  He could not meet the gaze of his own daughter.

  ‘Well?’ Her fingertips tapped on a table. ‘Well?’ she repeated.

  He looked at his watch. ‘I have an appointment,’ he announced. After planting a kiss on the top of her head, he left the room.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ she called after him.

  The only reply was the slamming of the front door.

  She stayed where she was for almost half an hour, then she picked up the phone. Some kind of decision needed to be made, and she was the only one here, so it was up to her. When the connection was made, she spoke briefly to Glenys Barlow.

  ‘But you can’t,’ Glenys said, when she had finished.

  ‘I must. Find somewhere, Glenys. I mean it.’

  ‘But you’ll need help, Lizzie.’

  ‘Then send some. Now.’ Lizzie replaced the receiver. Sometimes, she reminded herself of her father – barked commands, refusals to listen. Arrogance. She knew where his attitude came from, because he’d risen from nowhere, and many folk who climbed through life on the backs of others developed bad habits. It was as if he had to remind himself that he was a self-made man, one who had escaped the slums. But he wasn’t self-made. He had reached his zenith via Mother’s family name and money. Anger simmered. Yes, she was very much her father’s daughter.

  It was her father’s daughter who filled a fleet of four large vans with antiques and other items she knew her mother would miss. It was her father’s daughter who followed those vans to a secure lock-up in Manchester. She had one key, while the owners of the unit held the other. Both keys would be needed to access the storage space. She paid two months’ rent in advance before going home to wait for her father to return.

  Tallows looked grim. Furniture was sparse, and where paintings had hung, cleaner wallpaper and paintwork screamed, ‘Look – you’ve been burgled again.’ But Lizzie didn’t care. She was her father’s daughter, and she would sit on a fortune until she got the truth from whatever source. Even the attic had been emptied, because Lizzie knew how much her mother loved all that silly stuff.

  The silly stuff and furniture was worth a packet – the insurance premium was high, because well over a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of items had travelled to Manchester today. Her father didn’t know the value of the things that had provided his environment for over twenty years. Who had said that? Was it Oscar Wilde? She couldn’t look it up, because all the books were gone. But she was fairly sure that it was Wilde. A cynic was one who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Hey-ho. That was her beloved father to a T.

  When Lucy entered the house, she knew that the phone had been ringing. It was as if it had left a sound-shadow in its wake, a trace of itself that clung to walls and furniture. She went into the kitchen, placed her purchases on the table, splashed her face with cold water, and picked up the cat.

  He told her a very long story that was probably connected to confinement, homesickness and complaints about the neighbourhood.

  ‘Shut up,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been to Liverpool. It’s brilliant. I think it’s going to be City of Culture soon. The shops are marvellous, Smokey. Good clothes as cheap as chips, lovely shoes, fabulous hairdressers. And I bought a book about its history. They’re so … lively. Mind, I might have done better with an interpreter, but what the hell? We live and we learn.’

  The cat struggled until she released him. He was a spoilt brat, and she should have been a firmer mother to him. She watched while he stalked off, ramrod-straight tail twitching in anger, every hair bristling. Well, he had better get used to things, because she was going nowhere.

  But she did go. She went into the pages of a book that told her about cellar dwellings, poverty beyond her ken, dockers queuing in all weather for work, Irish immigrants, Paddy’s Market, ragged urchins who had survived war and gone on to become remarkable people. This was where Bolton’s cotton had come in from the southern states of America, where oranges and bananas were offloaded along with pineapples, grapes and fine wines. She read about children who had drowned in vats of molasses or rotting fruit. Lucy learned in half an hour what many Liverpudlians took for granted. This was a unique and wonderful city. Its people had made it so.

  The phone rang. Engrossed in a chapter concerning the development of the city’s famous waterfront, Lucy was reluctant to reply, but she did. It was Glenys.

  ‘She’s what?’ Lucy yelled.

  ‘Hang on, love. I don’t want my eardrum split, thank you very much. I’m sorry, Lucy, but she made sense. I tried to contact you several times before, during and after the event, but—’

  ‘But I was in Liverpool.’ In town. She had to learn that Liverpool was town. And now Lizzie was kicking up a fuss. ‘Where’s she put it all?’

  ‘A place in Manchester. She filled a fleet of vans, and she did it for you, Lucy. So much for the kid who loves her daddy, eh? When I asked, she said she wanted everything kept safe in case he flogged the lot.’

  Lucy swallowed.

  ‘She misses you, sweetheart.’

  ‘I miss her. Paul and Mike, too. But they outgrow us, Glen, and we must outgrow them. I suppose she did what she saw as the right thing. In fact, she did what I ought to have done and didn’t dare.’

  ‘Well,’ Glenys sighed, ‘I’ve done my bit. Why didn’t you answer your mobile?’

  ‘I forgot it again. I know, I know – I’m hopeless. But you must come and stay. I have to show you the shops and the restaurants – awesome. Oh, and I found—’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shut up. I’ve a client waiting.’

  Smiling to herself, Lucy replaced the receiver. After a few moments, she moved back to the kitchen, picked up her book and opened the door for the cat. ‘Go on,’ she urged.

  He sat there, a very dramatic tail waving angrily back and forth. Used to the larger life, he was not pleased about the massive cage that kept him safe.

  Lucy had another few words to say. ‘We’re all in prison, puss. Even our own bodies are containers. You have to deal with it. So do I. Now bugger off and chase butterflies.’

  He buggered off.

  Lucy sat with what she knew was a silly smile on her face. Lizzie, a daddy’s girl, had grown up sensible and decisive. She saw a need, and she filled it. E
lizabeth Henshaw had come down not on the side of her mother, nor in support of her father. She had simply removed valuables to a safer place until life became slightly less confusing. ‘You’re a mixture of me and your Aunt Diane,’ Lucy said softly. ‘Pragmatic, yet creative.’ Yes, Lucy had given the world a marvellous woman, and two young men who were decent, funny and industrious.

  ‘So I can’t have done it all wrong, can I?’ Forcing herself to be fair, she admitted inwardly that Alan had been a good dad when the kids had been small. He’d dragged them all over the place, had taken them camping, fishing and sightseeing. There was good in everyone, and that fact should never be ignored.

  There was one thing about which she would remain immovable, though. According to Glenys, Lucy owed nothing, a fact that could be proved beyond a shadow of doubt. The house was hers, and she would keep it. Alan Henshaw would have to leave Tallows. That wasn’t cruelty; it was common sense. And she carried on reading about the city she intended to adopt.

  Two

  Margaret Livesey did not suffer fools gladly. She was known far and wide throughout the beauty profession as a hard woman, one who would threaten to sack a first-year or an improver for a badly folded towel or an untidy shelf. And she had the complete measure of her current lover, one Alan Henshaw, property developer, cheat, liar and womanizer par excellence. He was her temporary squeeze, no more than that. She enjoyed his company, but he had suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth, so he’d probably moved on to a newer model with a better chassis and automatic transmission. Which was all right by her, because she had stuff to do. He wasn’t the only one who ran a business, and it was time he learned that.

  Today, one of the new girls had scalded her hand and needed treatment, while a sink had started to leak halfway through the afternoon, so Mags was not in the best of moods when Alan rolled up at her house in his BMW. ‘Huh,’ she mumbled under her breath. ‘No word for ages, and now I suppose he wants a red carpet. Tough. He can bog off, because I have had e-bleeding-nough.’

  She’d been trying to reach him for several days, but his mobile had been switched off, and she never phoned his house in case the wife answered, yet here he came marching up her path as if everything in the garden might just be perfect. He was like that. Thought he was pivotal, a fulcrum around which the rest of the world must travel in a direction dictated by him. If he was all right, everything was all right. Well … just let him start, because she was fit for him at present. One wrong word, and she’d probably crown him with her best Kathy Van Zeeland bag. Would he improve her day? Was her mood picking up?