Josephine Cox Sunday Times Bestsellers Collection. Josephine Cox

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      ‘I see.’

      When Bridget next spoke, it was to give Lucy a warning. ‘Don’t get mixed up in what you don’t understand,’ she cautioned. ‘What Barney does or doesn’t do is none of our business.’

      From Bridget’s reaction, Lucy suspected she knew more than she was saying. As the realisation dawned, she confronted her. ‘You knew all about it, didn’t you?’ she demanded. ‘You knew Barney was drinking and womanising. Don’t deny it, because I can see it in your face!’

      ‘All right, yes, I did. In fact, I’m told it’s been going on for some time, and now it seems he doesn’t give a bugger who sees him! But I didn’t think it was my place to tittle-tattle. If Barney Davidson has a problem, he’ll deal with it. Doesn’t he always?’ Not wishing to be drawn onto dangerous ground, Bridget quickly drank up her tea, took her shopping and went upstairs with it. ‘I’ll see youse later,’ she called back.

      Unable to get Barney out of her mind, Lucy vowed to visit the Davidsons that evening. ‘I’ve got to go and see him,’ she muttered as she helped Tillie to peel the potatoes for dinner. ‘I need to ask him outright.’ She knew him well enough to do that.

      Barney had been preying on her mind a great deal of late; behaving strangely, going away for hours on his own, and now this. In the beginning, she had thought it might be the trauma of what had happened that night, but drinking in a public-house with such a woman; arm-in-arm in the street and laughing as if he didn’t give a damn who saw him … this was not the Barney she knew and loved. In the wake of Jamie’s death, her embarrassingly romantic feelings towards him had vanished; but now they had resurfaced and she couldn’t help it, he was never out of her thoughts. It was getting to the stage where she was afraid to look Vicky in the eye, in case her friend read the truth on her face.

      Later that evening, when dinner was over and the kitchen at 23, Viaduct Street was spick and span, Lucy put on her hat and coat and set off for Overhill Farm.

      As she went up the path to the front door she heard raised voices and the sound of a door slamming. Suddenly, the front door was flung open and Susie came rushing out, straight into Lucy’s arms. ‘Oh Lucy! Ronnie and Daddy are saying bad things to each other, and they won’t stop …’ She began to sob uncontrollably.

      Lucy held her close. ‘Ssh, don’t worry, it’ll be all right,’ but she could still hear the two men inside, and now Thomas’s voice, pleading with them to stop arguing. A moment later, the door opened and Vicky emerged, looking distraught as she searched for Susie. On seeing Lucy she was visibly relieved. ‘Oh, dear God, Lucy, I don’t know what to do. It’s like my whole world’s falling apart.’

      Trembling and distressed, she took Susie by the shoulders. ‘Run inside, sweetheart, and fetch our coats.’ Calming herself for the girl’s sake, she suggested with a shaky smile, ‘We’ll go for a little walk, eh, you, me and Lucy? When we come back, happen it’ll all have sorted itself out, eh?’

      Relieved to see her mammy smiling and comforted by her words, Susie ran to get their coats. ‘What’s happening?’ Lucy asked worriedly. ‘Is it Barney?’ In her troubled mind she could still see him and the woman.

      ‘Yes.’ Vicky shook her head. ‘There’s something very wrong,’ she said. ‘Barney’s been so odd of late – wandering off and not coming back till all hours. He’s not been sleeping easy, and sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night, I look out of the window and he’s pacing the yard like a trapped animal. He’s suddenly got the devil of a temper on him, too, snapping and snarling and jumping down our throats at the slightest thing; he even smacked Susie last night because she came downstairs crying after having a bad dream. It’s not like him, Lucy. He’s always been such a loving man.’

      She took a long, weary breath. ‘And now, Ronnie swears he saw Barney in Liverpool today … “arm-in-arm with a trollop”, he says, and he swears that the pair of ’em were drunk.’

      With raw eyes she looked into Lucy’s face as though searching for some kind of reassurance. ‘I didn’t believe it of him, Lucy. “It couldn’t have been your father” – that’s what I told Ronnie. “He would never do such a thing”.’ Her voice broke. ‘But to be honest, Lucy, somewhere in the back of my mind, God forgive me, because of the way Barney’s been behaving, I’m half-inclined to believe what Ronnie saw.’

      When Susie returned and they had on their coats and scarves, the three of them wandered away to the spinney; these days they were reluctant to go near the river, because of the bad memories.

      Lucy made no mention of the fact that, like Ronnie, she too had seen Barney on the streets drunk and laughing with a woman. Instead she told Vicky, ‘I’ve an idea Barney might still be suffering the effects of that night. It was a terrible thing for him to witness. Grief and shock can affect us all in different ways,’ she said in a low voice. God knows, she herself was half-demented with it. ‘Maybe Barney is not able to deal with the horror of what happened?’

      Vicky had already considered that. ‘Of course he suffers from remembering, as we all do.’ She reached out to squeeze Lucy’s hand. ‘But it’s more than that,’ she went on sombrely. ‘Now I think about it, I’ve seen a few changes happening in Barney, long before that night. He’s been getting more preoccupied and distant, as though he’s always got something on his mind, and none of us are a part of it.’

      She shrugged. ‘He’s been working so hard – pushing himself until he hurts. It’s as if he’s trying to prove something. He’s changed, Lucy, and now it’s got so I can hardly recognise him as the man I married.’

      In spite of her determination not to let young Susie see her upset, Vicky began to cry, softly at first, and when she could no longer hold it back, the crying became wrenching sobs that tore her apart. ‘I’m sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’ For the first time in her married life, she did not know how to deal with Barney.

      Running to her, Susie threw her arms round Vicky’s waist; in a choked voice she told her, ‘Don’t cry, Mammy, it’s all right. Please don’t cry.’ The normal roles of mother and child were reversed, and Vicky was ashamed.

      After a time they walked on; Lucy lost in her own thoughts, Vicky also quiet now, and Susie with her hand clutched in her mammy’s.

      All three were thinking of Barney. Lucy was determined to get him alone and have a heart-to-heart with him; Vicky wondered how she could win back the man she loved; and her frightened daughter silently brooded over the night’s event, her heart alive with all manner of emotion – and shockingly, even the smallest beginnings of hatred towards the father she adored.

      When they got back to the house, despite the cold, Ronnie was seated on the garden bench. With his head down and his hands over the back of his neck, he did not hear them approach.

      ‘Ronnie?’ Going immediately to him, Vicky put her arm around his shoulders. ‘What are you doing out here in the cold?’

      Ronnie looked up. In the half-light from the windows she could see that he’d been crying. ‘What is it, love?’ She sat beside him. ‘What’s happened?’

      For a long anxious moment, Ronnie gave no answer. Instead he glanced back at the house, then he looked at his mother and the tears ran down his face. ‘That man in there,’ he whispered brokenly. ‘I don’t even know who he is any more.’

      Rising to Barney’s defence, Vicky told him firmly, ‘Whatever he says or does, and СКАЧАТЬ