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  There was Bob, already some way up ahead! Hurrying along the promenade, Gloria finally caught up with him and entwined her arm with his. ‘I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m sorry. Blackpool’s …’ Not the Bahamas. Not the Maldives. Not Tokyo or Hong Kong or even London. ‘ … smashing. This is very thoughtful, honey bunny.’ She stretched upwards on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. Her pride stuck in her craw along with a piece of wayward, indigestible fish batter as she tried to swallow it.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said, touching her carefully styled hair that had so far withstood even the stiff seaside wind. ‘Let’s go to the Pleasure Beach.’

  Gloria took a step backwards, patting her straightened fringe. There was an enigmatic glint in Bob’s eye. ‘Ooh, I’m not sure I—’

  ‘You’re not scared of having fun, are you?’

  The brightly lit old tram rattled along the golden mile promenade, scudding past glorious gaudy illuminations that spanned the street in a cat’s cradle of twinkling lights, until they reached the Pleasure Beach. Under normal circumstances, Gloria would have been able to think of nothing less pleasurable, but she had downed two stiff sweet sherries en route. Darkness had fallen, giving a normally god-forsaken place a certain showbiz glamour.

  ‘How about that ride?’ Bob said, pointing to what appeared to be airplane fuselages spinning slowly round above them.

  ‘I get dizzy.’

  ‘Try it! There’s blinking kids on there. Look! Lickle kids. If they can do it, you can.’

  She allowed herself to be corralled into boarding the gateway ride. Found herself laughing as the rudimentary fuselages spun faster and faster. There was the blackness of the sea. There was the Pleasure Beach, all spangled and sparkling and riotous. There was the sea. There were the lights. There was Bob, with his arm around her. Gloria felt like she was in a centrifuge with all her pent-up inhibitions spinning away from her, leaving a happy woman behind as the true nucleus.

  ‘My word. That was some kind of fun!’ she said, staggering down the ramp, giggling, once the ride had ended. ‘What’s next?’

  They tried the Ghost Train, charmed and appalled in equal measure by its tackiness and terrible ghouls, daubed in UV paint inside the two-tier ride. Gloria screamed as their cart plunged abruptly from high to low on the outside, only to disappear back in, where they were greeted by a horrible half-dressed skeleton that looked like it needed a good dusting.

  ‘Big Dipper!’ Bob suggested next.

  Ignoring the persistent buzzing of her phone, she allowed herself to be yanked along to a rickety old rollercoaster. ‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ she said, eyeing the sharp turns and steep curves of a wooden frame that looked as though it had been built in the Victorian era, or at least not long after it. A packed car of thrill-seekers hurtled up and down towards their vantage point on a pedestrian bridge. They shrieked with a mixture of fear and pure unadulterated adrenalin as they shot past.

  ‘It’s flipping child’s play compared to the Big One.’ Bob pointed to the giant metal structure beyond that dwarfed the iconic old ride.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aw! Spoilsport. And to think I had you down as a bit of a risk-taker!’

  He nudged her playfully. A grin sliced into his too-tight face. Those small teeth shone blue-white in the glare from the surrounding attractions, putting her in mind of an electric eel. Again, that nagging feeling that she should turn on her heel and just go home frayed the edges of her warm, sherry-fuelled sense of well-being. But like the unpopular girl in the class, Gloria shrank away from the implicit criticism that she was cowardly or boring in any way.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  Grabbing the safety lap-bar in the carriage, with the wind biting through the fabric of her woollen coat and into her stockinged legs, she caught Bob studying her. He rattled her bar.

  ‘Just checking. Ha ha.’ He smiled and blew her a kiss, tugging at his own bar, almost as if he were testing its strength.

  ‘Maybe you’re the bundle of nerves,’ Gloria said, batting her eyelashes at him. Trying to appear alluring and unfazed by this dreadful excuse for entertainment.

  As the carriage started to climb its first tall slope, Gloria saw the park fall away from her. Up here, she felt exposed. The whole structure felt flimsy in that biting Irish Sea gust. And Bob kept testing the bar, though they were about to hurtle into the abyss.

  ‘Give over, rattling the bar, will you?’ she said.

  But her words were snatched away as the carriage plummeted downwards. The scream that tore itself free of her lungs felt primal and liberating. Gloria’s hair was flattened against her forehead. Spray splashed her from the log flume as they swooped low and soared high, coinciding with other rides in the illuminated dark of an autumn night, full of possibly ill-portent in a Lancashire seaside town. Twisting and turning precariously, the carriage rocked into the bends and almost flung her from her seat.

  Bob leaned into her. It felt like he might knock her from the carriage.

  Gloria tried to shout ‘Move!’ but her words were swallowed as the carriage nose-dived into a pitch-black tunnel. All she had seen before entering this black hole was a sign warning the carriage’s occupants not to stand. Screaming in the dark, she was sure she could feel Bob trying to push her out.

  Chapter 39

  Sheila

  ‘Jesus, no!’ Sheila’s phone slipped from her fingers, dropping onto the top step of the grand oak staircase of her new business premises. It bounced. Dropped to the next step down and the next, gaining momentum until it came to rest on the landing below. ‘This can’t be happening.’ Nausea hit her in waves, causing her to dry-heave. She gripped the banister to steady herself.

  There was click-clacking above her, as somebody was hastening down the stairs.

  ‘You all right, love?’ A frowsy-looking woman – a secretary, judging by the polyester suit – from one of the offices above stopped short on the stairs when she saw Sheila gasping for air, grasping at the sudden cramps in her stomach.

  Sheila nodded. ‘Yep. Fine, thanks. Dicky tummy. Steer clear if I were you. Think it’s norovirus.’

  The woman’s smile faltered. Nodding with feigned sympathy, she hastened down the stairs, leaving Sheila to absorb the information: Youssuf thought he had seen Paddy, alive and sipping tea in some shitty café in Bury’s indoor market. Paddy O’Brien. Alive. The blurry photo of her supposedly dead husband would be forever more singed into her neural pathways. A phantom bad memory. A harbinger of her own personal end of days.

  Gingerly descending the staircase, though she felt she might lose her footing at any moment, she retrieved her phone. Sitting on the step, she traced her finger over the intricate spider’s web of cracked glass. It was still working, thankfully.

  With a protective hand over her abdomen, she started to dial Conky. Instinctively wanting to tell him the earth-shattering news but regretting the call the minute the phone started to ring.

  ‘Sheila. Are you okay?’ His voice was thick with concern but echoed as though he were in a lofty space. The cannabis farm, perhaps. Or maybe the spa of her house. ‘Any news from Gloria? I’ve been ringing and ringing her but—’

  ‘Bollocks to Gloria,’ she said, waves of nausea threatening to drown her. ‘I think Paddy’s still alive.’ Already several steps ahead, she knew he’d ask where she had got such outlandish information. ‘I’ve seen a photo. I’m sure it’s him, Conk.’

  There was a beat of silence between them. ‘Send me the photo.’

  With slippery, cumbersome fingers, she forwarded the image. Locking the fearful tears inside as she closed her eyes. ‘It’s on its way.’

  ‘Are you crying, darling?’

  She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her silk blouse. ‘No. Conky, if it’s true and he’s still out there …’

  ‘I’ve got it now, She.’ His voice flattened to a sombre monotone. ‘Oh, shite. It bloody well looks like him, doesn’t it? I mean … how? Just fucking how? And where did you get this?’<
br />
  There it was. The question she didn’t want to answer. ‘That doesn’t matter. I need to find him, Conk. I buried the bastard. You carried his coffin from the church and helped lower the damned thing into the ground. For Christ’s sake! I saw him. Dead. I saw his dead body in Katrina’s nursing home, Conk. With my own eyes! This doesn’t make sense. I need …’ The sob erupted from deep within her without warning. She ended the call, not wanting to hear Conky’s suspicion masked by words of manly comfort.

  The stairwell started to spin in a vortex of claustrophobia; every dust mote on the air threatening to snuff the life out of her. She had to get outside. But first, there was someone she needed to call.

  ‘Sister Benedicta, please,’ she told the woman at the other end of the line.

  The hold music – some religious aria that grated on her nerves – seemed to go on for an age. Finally, her sister-in-law picked up.

  ‘Sheila. This is a surprise.’ Katrina’s voice was devoid of warmth. It rang with the brisk efficiency of a nun that ran a convent and its attached nursing home like some South American autocrat. Hail Sister Benevolent Dictator Benedicta, full of grace and grit. ‘How are you? How are the girls keeping?’

  ‘He’s alive, isn’t he?’ Sheila said, gripping the banister and pulling herself up. Fearing for the baby inside her. ‘Meet me in an hour.’

  ‘What? What nonsense is—’

  ‘Jodrell Bank. Under the big dish.’

  ‘Who’s alive? I can’t possibly—’

  ‘I’ll be waiting. One hour. You don’t turn up, I’m going to the police.’

  She had an hour to pull herself together. An hour to decide what to say. She’d never needed a vodka and tonic so much in her life.

  When she pulled up at the site of the giant Lovell radio telescope that was today pointing straight up to the heavens, her hands were shaking violently. The interior of the Panamera was pungent, not with the smell of fine leather but with the smell of vomit, mercifully caught in a Waitrose bag at the traffic lights on the main dual carriageway that cut through Parsons Croft.

  ‘Take a deep breath, Sheila,’ she counselled herself. ‘You can face this old bitch. You’re strong.’

  Negotiating the pathways of the sprawling rural discovery site was tricky in the heels she had deliberately changed into to give her a physical advantage over Katrina. She turned her ankle twice. Kept her eyes peeled for a stout nun, dressed in navy. But it was hard to see past the armies of children who walked hand in hand, wearing brightly coloured anoraks, screaming with delight on their school day-trip.

  The white structure of the big dish, which sat on a criss-crossed rotating base resembling an old rollercoaster that had somehow missed the point, dwarfed everything around it for miles. Sheila was out of her jurisdiction, but Katrina, an unknown quantity now that Paddy was ostensibly gone, would never try anything on with so many children around. It was in the middle of nowhere. It was the perfect spot.

  ‘Where are you, you lying old bag?’ she muttered, holding her coat tightly closed against the wind that whipped across the flat Cheshire plains.

  There she was. Rubbing her hands together by the fence that lined the telescope’s circular track. Same anorak. Same flat walking shoes. Same A-line skirt. She was wearing a short navy veil that lent softness to her otherwise flinty O’Brien face.

  Sheila felt anger surging through her, heating her freezing extremities and thawing the frosty words she had planned.

  ‘Where’s Paddy?’ she said, strutting towards her sister-in-law.

  Katrina didn’t bother to smile. Not now. ‘In the cemetery. What on earth is wrong with you, Sheila?’ Her sharp blue eyes spoke to early nights and clean-living. They cut through Sheila’s bluff like lasers. ‘Are you mentally ill?’

  Suppressing the urge to punch a nun, Sheila took out her phone and showed her Youssuf’s photo. ‘Explain that, you scheming old bag. How the hell did you do it, Katrina? Tell me who we buried if it wasn’t Paddy? And where is my lying snake of a husband?’

  Touching her crucifix with a short-nailed finger, Katrina’s brow furrowed. She finally smiled in that pitying, sarcastic way she normally reserved for Frank. ‘That’s not Paddy, you silly woman!’ Handed the phone back. ‘How can you possibly think that? And how could you think that of me? I’m a Bride of Christ, Sheila O’Brien. After all I did for you and—’

  ‘Save me the bullshit, Katrina,’ Sheila said, snatching the phone back. Glancing down at the photo yet again and questioning what she saw clearly. ‘That’s Paddy. Taken two weeks ago in Bury. Do I have to get his grave exhumed?’

  But Katrina had already started to walk away. Shook her head and raised her hand dismissively. Shouting merrily over her shoulder. ‘I’ll see you at Christmas for Midnight Mass. Bring the girls. Give them my love, won’t you?’

  Stumbling over the patchy grass, made muddy by the trampling feet of visiting hordes, Sheila gained on her. Grabbed her by the shoulder. ‘It’s him! He was dead and now he’s alive and you’re in on it. I want the truth.’

  Katrina came to a standstill. With an iron grip that was clearly bolstered by hatred, she picked Sheila’s hand off her shoulder. Turned around slowly. But for the red rash of split veins on her cheeks, her face was as drained of colour and thunderous as the oppressive steely canopy of rainclouds above them. She stepped towards Sheila, uncomfortably close now. Speaking with clipped consonants in a deadly quiet voice that was almost whisked away on the breeze.

  ‘How dare you, you disloyal strumpet? Do you have no shame?’ She raised an eyebrow in challenge. ‘Do you have no fear?’

  ‘Are you bleeding threatening me?’ Sheila asked, steeling herself to stand her ground. Had she completely underestimated the O’Brien blood that ran through the veins of this woman of the cloth?

  Sheila noticed Katrina’s hand sliding into a bulging pocket of her navy anorak. A dangerous shine to the nun’s eyes. A shine she’d seen time and again in Paddy’s eyes, right before he’d punched, kicked or forced himself upon her. Her first thought was of Tariq’s baby, growing in her womb and of the bright future she instinctively felt was about to evaporate at the hand of Sister Benedicta.

  ‘Am I threatening you?’ Katrina said. ‘Oh, I don’t deal with threats, my dear. I only deal in promises.’

  Katrina started to withdraw her hand slowly from her pocket. Sheila baulked, stumbling backwards in those damned heels. Falling, falling to the ground …

  Chapter 40

  Gloria

  ‘No, I really don’t want to go on anything else,’ Gloria said, shaking her arm free of Bob’s. ‘I need to sit down. I’m all of a dither.’ She walked briskly ahead of him, keen to put as much distance between her and the Big Dipper as possible.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that,’ he said, jogging to catch up with her. He put his arm around her and squeezed her tightly. Planted an uninvited kiss on her cheek. ‘You were laughing your head off!’

  Gloria felt suddenly like a small girl, overwhelmed by all the glare and the noise; the tattooed louts and their pierced girlfriends; the smell of frying and sugar and low-grade processed meat on the sizzle; the infernal peer-pressure to enjoy this kitsch-fest. ‘I’m not an adrenalin-junkie like you, Bob,’ she said, annoyed by the tears that welled in her eyes. She missed the now-familiar presence of her son and grandson. Even Sheila and Conky or the women from church would do. She felt alone. ‘I wasn’t laughing my head off. I was screaming. And I felt like I was going to fall out of that dratted carriage.’

  ‘There’s no point going now!’ Bob said, rubbing her upper arm.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. I want to go.’

  ‘One more ride. Please. Then we’ll head off.’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Please.’

  Her body felt sluggish and old in that place for youngsters. The strength she gleaned from Jesus had never eluded her so completely as in that den of slot machines and cheap thrills. But she was relying on Bob for a lift home and, in truth,
didn’t fancy a two-hour drive back through snail’s pace, snarled traffic sitting beside a sulking man whom she desperately wanted to love her.

  ‘Go on, then. One last ride.’

  ‘It’ll definitely be the last. I promise.’

  Bob stared at her in silence, as though he were evaluating her. Neither smiling nor frowning. She felt like she had been placed on a slide beneath the lens of a microscope. That gnawing feeling was amplified.

  ‘Wild Mouse,’ he said. Nodding. ‘Yep. Just the ticket.’

  The rickety-looking ride looked like something from a 1970s horror flick. It was another wooden structure, by the looks. Gloria had never seen such steep drops and tight turns.

  ‘Oh, this makes the Big Dipper look like a kid’s ride. I’m really not happy about this, Robert,’ she said. ‘My hair will be completely ruined.’

  The tiny carriages that appeared to seat only two – one in front of the other – ricocheted around a track that had been tightly packed into a space the size of the average bungalow plot. It was ludicrous. It looked more than precarious. She doubted even prayers would keep her safe in something designed to look like a mouse but which was clearly just a death trap.

  ‘Your hair’s fine! You’re gorgeous.’ Bob patted her bottom. Winked. Pointed to the revellers who were already hastening around the hairpin-bends. ‘Listen to them! They’re loving it. I adored this ride when I was a young lad. It’s a cracker. One of the best lickle rollercoasters in the world. Honest.’