‘Do you?’ she said, with an odd note in her voice.
‘It was a fucking terrible place,’ said Strike. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten.’
‘Are any of the people who were at the Aylmerton Community still there?’
‘Only one, as far as I know,’ said Strike. ‘She claims to have been a victim of the Crowthers. She’s married to the church’s leader.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Mazu,’ said Strike.
‘Oh God,’ said Lucy, and she covered her face with her hands again.
Horrible suspicions were now assailing Strike. He’d believed nothing more serious than feeling scared and sometimes hungry had happened to either of them at the Aylmerton Community; that they’d narrowly escaped what had later been all over the press. In his memory, he’d always been with Lucy, sticking close, trying to make sure she wasn’t invited anywhere by either of the Crowther brothers. From their adjoining mattresses on the floor, brother and sister had whispered at night about how much they hated the place, about how much they wished Leda would take them away. That was all that had happened, surely? That was what he’d believed, for years.
‘Luce?’ he said.
‘Don’t you remember her?’ said Lucy savagely, dropping her hands. ‘Don’t you remember that girl?’
‘No,’ said Strike truthfully.
His memory was usually excellent, but Aylmerton was a blur to him, more feeling than fact, an ominous black memory hole. Perhaps he’d deliberately tried to forget individuals: better by far to consign the whole lot to a faceless slough that need never be waded through, now it was all over.
‘You do. Very pale. Pointed nose. Black hair. Always wearing kind of tarty clothes.’
Something shifted in Strike’s memory. He saw a pair of very brief shorts, a thin halter-neck top and straggly, dark, slightly greasy hair. He’d been twelve: his hormones hadn’t yet reached the adolescent peak at which the slightest sign of unsupported breasts caused uncontainable, sometimes mortifyingly visible, excitement.
‘Yeah, that rings a bell,’ he said.
‘So she’s still there?’ said Lucy, now breathing fast. ‘At the farm?’
‘Yeah. As I say, she married—’
‘If she was a victim,’ said Lucy, through clenched teeth, ‘she sure as hell spread it around.’
‘Why d’you say that?’ said Strike.
‘Because she – because she—’
Lucy was shaking. For a couple of seconds she said nothing, then a torrent of words exploded from her.
‘D’you know how glad I was, knowing I was having a boy, every single time they scanned me? Every single time. I didn’t want a girl. I knew I’d’ve been a lousy mother to a girl.’
‘You’d’ve been—’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Lucy fiercely. ‘I’d have barely let her out of my sight! I know it happens to boys too, I know it does, but the odds – the odds – it was only the girls at Aylmerton. Only the girls.’
Lucy continued to breathe very hard, intermittently dabbing her eyes with kitchen roll. Strike knew it was cowardice, because he could tell Lucy needed to tell him, but he didn’t want to ask any more questions, because he didn’t want to hear the answers.
‘She took me to him,’ said Lucy at last.
‘To who?’
‘Dr Coates,’ said Lucy. ‘I fell over. She must’ve been fifteen, sixteen. She had me by the hand. I didn’t want to go. “You should see the doctor.” She was half-dragging me.’
Another brief silence unrolled through the room, but Strike could feel Lucy’s rage battling with her habitual reserve and her determination to pretend that the life to which Leda had subjected them was as long dead as Leda herself.
‘Did he,’ said Strike slowly, ‘touch—’
‘He pushed four fingers inside me,’ said Lucy brutally. ‘I bled for two days.’
‘Oh fuck,’ said Strike, wiping his face with his hand. ‘Where was I?’
‘Playing football,’ said Lucy. ‘I was playing, as well. That’s how I fell. You probably thought she was helping me.’
‘Shit, Luce,’ said Strike. ‘I’m so—’
‘It’s not your fault, it’s my so-called mother’s fault,’ spat Lucy. ‘Where was she? Getting stoned somewhere? Screwing some long-haired weirdo in the woods? And that bitch Mazu shut me in with Coates, and she knew. She knew. And I saw her doing it to other little girls. Taking them to the Crowthers’ rooms. That’s what I talk about most in therapy, why I didn’t tell anyone, why I didn’t stop other little girls getting hurt—’
‘You’re in therapy?’ blurted out Strike.
‘Christ Almighty, of course I’m in therapy!’ said Lucy, in a furious whisper, as somebody, probably Greg, now full of banana cake, walked past the sitting room door and headed upstairs. ‘After that bloody childhood – aren’t you?’
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘No,’ repeated Lucy bitterly, ‘you don’t need it, of course, so self-sufficient, so un-messed-up—’
‘I’m not saying that,’ said Strike. ‘I’m not – bloody hell—’
‘Don’t,’ she snapped, arms wrapped around her torso again. ‘I don’t want – never mind, it doesn’t matter. Except it does matter,’ she said, tears trickling down her face again, ‘I can’t forgive myself for not speaking up. There were other little girls being led away by that Mazu bitch, and I never said anything, because I didn’t want to say what had happened to m—’
The sitting room door opened. Strike was astonished by the abrupt change in Lucy, as she wiped her face dry and straightened her back in an instant, so that when Jack entered, panting and wet-haired, she was smiling.
‘These are great,’ Jack told Strike, beaming, as he held up his bow.
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Strike.
‘Jack, go dry yourself off and then you can have some banana bread,’ said Lucy, for all the world as though she were perfectly happy, and for the very first time in their adult lives, it occurred to Strike that his sister’s determination to cling to stability and her notion of normality, her iron-clad refusal to dwell endlessly on the awful possibilities of human behaviour, was a form of extraordinary courage.
Once the door had closed on Jack, he turned back to Lucy, and said quietly, and almost sincerely,
‘I wish you’d told me this before.’
‘It would’ve upset you. Anyway, you’ve always wanted to believe Leda was wonderful.’
‘I haven’t,’ he said, now being completely honest. ‘She was… what she was.’
‘She wasn’t fit to be a mother,’ said Lucy angrily.
‘No,’ said Strike heavily. ‘I think you’re probably right, there.’
Lucy stared at him for a few seconds in blank astonishment.
‘I’ve waited years to hear you say that. Years.’
‘I know you have,’ said Strike. ‘Look, I know you think I think she was perfect, but of course I bloody don’t. D’you think I look at the kind of mother you are, and remember what she was, and can’t see the difference?’
‘Oh Stick,’ said Lucy tearfully.
‘She was what she was,’ repeated Strike. ‘I loved her, I can’t sit here and say I didn’t. And she might’ve been a fucking nightmare in loads of ways, but I know she loved us, too.’
‘Did she?’ said Lucy, wiping her eyes with kitchen roll.
‘You know she did,’ said Strike. ‘She didn’t keep us safe, because she was so bloody naive she was barely fit to open a front door on her own. She fucked up our schooling because she hated school herself. She dragged fucking terrible men into our lives because she always thought this one was going to be the love of her life. None of it was malicious, it was just bloody careless.’
‘Careless people do a lot of damage,’ said Lucy, still drying her tears.
‘Yeah, they do,’ said Strike. ‘And she did. Mostly to herself, in the end.’
‘I didn’t – I didn’t want her to die,’ sobbed Lucy.
‘Jesus, Luce, I know you didn’t!’
‘I always thought one day I’d have it all out with her – and then it was too late, and she was g-gone… and you say she loved us, but—’
‘You know she did,’ said Strike. ‘You do, Luce. Remember that serial story she used to make up for us? What the fuck was it called?’
‘The Moonbeams,’ said Lucy, still sobbing.
‘The Moonbeam family,’ said Strike. ‘With Mummy Moonbeam and…’
‘… Bombo and Mungo…’
‘She didn’t show love like most mothers,’ said Strike, ‘but she didn’t do anything like other people. Doesn’t mean love wasn’t there. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t fucking irresponsible, either.’
For a couple of minutes there was silence again, but for Lucy’s steadily decreasing sniffs. At last, she wiped her face with both of hands and looked up, eyes red.
‘If you’re investigating that so-called church – what’s it called?’
‘The UHC.’
‘Just make sure you get that bitch Mazu,’ said Lucy in a low voice. ‘I don’t care if she was abused herself. I’m sorry, I don’t. She enabled them to do it to other girls. She was pimping for them.’
Strike considered telling her that getting Mazu wasn’t what he’d been hired to do, but instead said,
‘If I get the opportunity, I definitely will.’
‘Thank you,’ mumbled Lucy, still wiping her puffy eyes. ‘Then it’d be worth you taking the job.’
‘Listen, there was something else I wanted to tell you,’ he said, wondering, even as he heard himself say it, what the hell he was playing at. The impulse came, in a confused way, from a desire to be honest, as she’d been honest, to stop hiding from her. ‘I – er – I’ve made contact with Prudence. You know – Rokeby’s other illegitimate.’
‘Have you?’ said Lucy, and to his amazement – he’d hidden the burgeoning relationship from her out of fear that she’d feel jealous, or that she was being replaced – she was smiling through her tears. ‘Stick, that’s great!’
‘Is it?’ he said, thrown.
‘Well, of course it is!’ she said. ‘How long have you two been in touch?’
‘Dunno. A few months. She visited me in hospital when I – you know—’