Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,103

I said. “One sugar.”

The head withdrew and the door closed.

“I like Julie,” my grandmother said again.

“Was that Julie?” I asked, but Nanna didn’t answer. She was looking again out of the window. I took her hand in mine and stroked it.

We sat silently for a while until the woman came back in with a tray and two cups.

“Are you Julie?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “I’m Laura. But we do have a Julie here, and your grandmother calls all of us Julie. We don’t mind. I’ll answer to anything.” She laughed. “Here you are, Mrs. Talbot,” Laura said, putting the tray down on a table beside her armchair.

It was comforting for me to know that there were such caring people looking after my Nanna.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Just pull the alarm if you need anything,” Laura said, pointing at a red cord that hung down the wall alongside my grandmother’s bed. “She should be all right for a while, but call if she needs the loo or anything. She can sometimes get quite urgent.”

“Thank you,” I said again, “I will.”

I sat patiently drinking my coffee as my grandmother’s tea slowly cooled.

“Here, Nanna,” I said, giving her the cup. “Don’t forget your tea.”

“I don’t drink tea,” she said, but she still took the china cup in her thin, bony hands and drank from it. The tea was soon all gone, so I took the empty cup from her and put it back on the tray.

“Nanna,” I said. She went on looking out of the window. “Nanna,” I repeated a little louder while also pulling on her arm. She slowly turned to face me.

“Nanna, can you tell me about my parents? Can you tell me about Peter and Tricia?” It didn’t seem odd for me to call my parents by their names rather than Mummy and Daddy. I’d never had a mummy and daddy, only a nanna and grandpa.

She looked up at my face, but the sharpness of fifteen minutes previously had begun to fade. I feared I had missed my chance and that I was losing her. At the best of times, what I was asking would not have been easy for either of us. In her present state, it might be impossible.

“Nanna,” I said again with some urgency, “tell me about Peter and Tricia.”

“Peter and Tricia?” she said, some of the sharpness returning.

“Yes, Nanna. Peter, your son, and Tricia, his wife.”

“Such a dreadful thing,” she said, turning away from me and again looking out of the window.

“What was a dreadful thing?”

“What he did to her,” she said.

“What did he do to her?” I asked, pulling gently on her hand to keep her attention. She turned back slightly towards me.

“He killed her,” she said slowly. “He murdered her.”

“Tricia?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. She looked back up at my face. “He murdered Tricia.”

“But why?” I asked. “Why did he murder Tricia?”

“Because of the baby,” she said.

“What about the baby?” I pressed her. “Why did he murder her because of the baby?” I wondered if he had killed her because the baby wasn’t his.

My grandmother stared into my eyes. “He killed the baby too,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Whose baby was it?”

“Tricia’s baby,” she said

“But was Peter the father?”

“Peter ran away,” she said.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Peter ran away because he killed Tricia. But was Peter the father of her baby?”

That quizzical look appeared again in her eyes.

“It wasn’t Peter,” she said slowly. “It was Teddy who murdered Tricia.”

I sat there staring at her, thinking that she must be confused.

“No,” I said. “Surely it was Peter who murdered Tricia? That’s why he ran away.”

“It was Teddy who murdered Tricia.” She said it again quite clearly. There was no confusion.

I sat there stunned. So it was not my father but my grandfather who was the murderer.

“But why?” I asked pitifully.

“Because of the baby,” she said equally clearly. “Your grandfather was the baby’s father.”

Oh my God, I thought. My mother’s unborn female child, who would have been my little sister, would also have been my aunt.

I stayed with my grandmother for another hour trying to piece together the whole sorry story. Trying to pull accurate details out of her fuzzy memory was like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube while blindfolded. Not only could I not see the puzzle, I didn’t know when, or if, I’d solved it.

But now that she had started to give up the secret that had burned within her for so long, she did so with a clarity of mind that