Bad Blood (Tales of the Notorious Hudson Family, Book 5) Read online

  ‘Not a chance,’ Christine said. ‘He’ll be a Parker, just like the rest of us.’ She leaned across to stroke Joey’s head. Joey. He did look like a Joey. ‘Another kid in our family with just my mam’s name to carry him. Poor little fucker. Another one without a dad.’

  Josie managed a smile but didn’t say anything to contradict her. She knew as well as Christine did that little Joey would be exactly that. Another kid who didn’t know who his dad was, just like his mum and his uncle. ‘But with a wonderful mam to take care of him,’ she said, rising from the chair. ‘And, speaking of mams, if I don’t get back and fetch our Paula soon I’m going to have my ear chewed off, aren’t I?’

  Christine reached for Josie’s arm. ‘You sure, mate? You sure Eddie’s going to be okay with me – us – staying?’

  ‘Course he is,’ Josie said. ‘So let the nurse know, okay? I’ll phone here in the morning to check you’re still okay to be discharged, and if you are, I’ll be back lunchtime to pick you up.’

  ‘And you’ll pick up my stuff and that from home?’ Christine asked, realising there was still all that to sort yet. ‘And all the bottles and nappies and stuff in my bedroom?’

  Josie nodded, and promised she’d do exactly that. Though as Christine watched her leave, and returned the wave Josie turned and gave her as she disappeared, she wondered if any of it would actually be in her bedroom. Knowing her mam as she did she wouldn’t have been remotely surprised if Josie told her tomorrow that it had all been dumped in the front garden. She sighed. Of the home that wasn’t her home any more.

  If it had ever really been in the first place.

  Chapter 4

  Josie looked out of the bedroom window and immediately felt guilty. It wasn’t yet eight in the morning, and it was Saturday, too, but already Eddie was out the front, shirt sleeves up, spanner in hand, tinkering with his beloved Ford Escort. Well, not so beloved currently, as it was refusing to work, but she didn’t doubt he’d eventually get it going again. If there was any justice, at any rate, given the amount of time he spent taking care of it.

  She’d done wrong, landing Christine and the baby on them without asking him. Inviting trouble to their door, as he’d immediately pointed out. They both knew what Lizzie Parker could be like when she was roused.

  But his concern was, as ever, more for Josie than for himself, and the fact that he’d taken it as well as he had made it worse. It wasn’t just the business of getting involved in it, after all. It was also that it wasn’t fair to expect him to put up with a newborn for the best part of a fortnight. He worked all hours, and Paula was a handful enough currently, being at that age when it was all ‘me, me, me’, day and night, and with the long days and short nights of summer thrown in, she was up before six every morning as well.

  Paula was sitting on her parents’ bed, flicking through a picture book and singing to herself. Josie glanced at her daughter now, and couldn’t help but smile. She also wondered, as she often did, how she’d managed to be so incredibly blessed. There was her sister Lyndsey, off her head mostly, her brother Vinnie banged up in prison, and here she was, with her Eddie, her beautiful little daughter, and, since the spring, even their own lovely home. So much happiness, which she wasn’t sure she’d any right to.

  She hardly dare think about it. Dared not take any of it for granted, ever – if she did she had this horrible notion (which never seemed to go away and often visited her in nightmares) that something terrible would happen, and she’d lose it all again.

  Right now, however, Josie’s thoughts were on Christine, and she wondered what kind of night she might have had. Pretty sketchy, if her own first night with Paula was anything to go by. And with everything else – with her future so uncertain, she doubted the poor girl had slept a wink. ‘Come on, missy,’ she said to Paula, holding her arms out to pick her up. ‘Let’s go down and make your dad a cuppa, shall we? See if we can butter him up a bit.’

  ‘Ah, bribery, now, is it?’ Eddie remarked, as Josie went out to join him, mug of tea in one hand, Paula on her opposite hip. He threw the spanner he’d been wielding back into the rusty old biscuit tin that served as his tool box.

  ‘Sort of,’ Josie admitted. ‘I do feel bad, love, I really do. I just couldn’t think where else she could go.’

  ‘Back to her fucking mother’s, is where,’ he said, accepting the tea. He’d been out there for some time now and had smudges of black on his nose and cheeks.

  ‘Dirty Daddy!’ Paula trilled. ‘Dirty Daddy!’

  Josie set her down. Being early on a Saturday morning, the street was safe enough, being so quiet. And she was more interested in the mud in the front flowerbed than the road.

  ‘Seriously, love, that’s what should be happening, Mo’s kid or otherwise. Can you imagine us treating our Paula like that? Ever? I’d fucking kill for her, I would.’ He shook his head. ‘How could anyone throw their own kid out?’

  Josie loved Eddie for lots of reasons – had done since she’d first started seeing him. But never more than when he talked about their Paula. Even though, at the same time, she knew she’d lived a bit more than him, which meant she knew that, in real life, it wasn’t always that simple. Thank God that, for him, it was.

  ‘I know, love,’ she said, ‘but perhaps she’ll come round.’

  ‘That mad cow had better not come round here!’ he said, and she could tell from his expression that he was purposely misinterpreting her meaning.

  Josie smiled. ‘She wouldn’t dare.’ And of that she was sure. For all that Lizzie could mouth off, Josie was still a McKellan. No, there was no danger of anything like that. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘it’s only for the ten days while the midwife is calling – and you’ll be at work most of the time anyway, so you’ll hardly see them.’

  Eddie grunted, then put the tea down and picked up his spanner. ‘Well, let’s hope so,’ he said, ‘and I mean it, babe, really. I’m not having you running around like a mad thing looking after that bleeding kid of hers, all right?’

  Josie tried not to grin. For all his big talk – which he liked to try out from time to time – Eddie was actually a teddy bear at heart. And a loyal one; another reason why she’d fallen for him so completely. He’d do anything for her and Paula, and he’d always fought her corner – never been afraid of her family (rare in itself). Even Vinnie. She felt safe with him, secure, and that was a feeling beyond value, her life before she’d met him having been no sort of life – her childhood destroyed by rape and, she’d thought, her future with it. But he’d saved her. Would poor Christine be as lucky?

  She came around the side of the car and nipped his bum through his oily jeans. ‘Thanks, babe,’ she said. ‘Now, how do you feel about a bacon sarnie? Only I’ve got to nip down to Lizzie’s and pick up Christine’s stuff for her, and –’

  ‘And muggins here is expected to hold the baby? Bleeding typical!’

  Josie turned and blew him a kiss as she scooped Paula up and headed back inside. ‘Half an hour, I’ll be, tops, babe,’ she promised, deciding that this would probably not be the time to mention that she was going to have to shell out for another cab to fetch Christine back. No, that could wait and, who knew? He might yet fix the car. Miracles did sometimes happen.

  Josie wasn’t expecting any miracles on Quaker Lane, though. The sarnie made and eaten and the baby put down for her morning nap, she left Eddie to his tinkering and walked the short distance from their house to Lizzie’s. It was a proximity that had, up till recently, been quite a plus.

  Before all the business of Christine’s pregnancy, Lizzie’s home had been a friendly, familiar place, mostly because Josie couldn’t remember a time when Lizzie and her mam hadn’t been friends – that they’d make the trip there from Ringwood Road to catch up on all the gossip, or would have Lizzie, Nicky and Christine in their own kitchen. She’d been one of the constants in a difficult, traumatic childhood.

  But this was trauma of a different kind. One that could drive a wedge between the
m. As she walked, she pondered the conversation she’d had with Lizzie yesterday, before she’d gone down to the hospital and made such an exhibition of herself. Was she regretting that now? She’d been adamant then that she was washing her hands of her daughter. Would she still be of the same mind this morning? Josie hoped not, but though she hung on to a vestige of optimism in her heart, her head said that Lizzie would have softened not a jot.

  Reaching the house, and trotting down the cracked concrete path, she decided that, today, she’d not simply walk in. Instead, she bent down and lifted the flap on the letter box. There was a low whine, which she recognised as the hum of the vacuum cleaner. It being Saturday, Lizzie would be cleaning the house. She was no clean freak but she always did the housework on Saturday mornings, because Mo’s ‘weekly’ visits – when they happened – always happened on a weekend.

  And he invariably came bearing gifts. Drugs, often – usually just some weed or a bit of Lebanese black – a few cans of cider, and invariably ready cash. And to an extent that since becoming one of his ‘regulars’ five years back, Lizzie had even given up her job on the fruit and veg stall on John Street Market, fancying herself as some sort of pampered ‘kept woman’. It was a point of contention, though Josie wouldn’t ever dream of mentioning it. Just one of those things that made you realise the sort of woman you didn’t ever want to be. Though Eddie brought the wage in while she looked after little Paula, that was a team effort, both of them doing their respective jobs; she would never in her life want to be ‘kept’ by any man. In fact, she couldn’t wait to get back to work at the factory.

  ‘Lizzie! It’s me!’ she yelled through the letterbox. ‘Can I come in, mate?’ But Lizzie clearly couldn’t hear her, because the whine of the hoover carried on. She stood up again, tried the door. But it was locked, which surprised her. No one ever locked their doors on Canterbury. Was that how it was, then? That she was expecting her daughter – less than twenty-four hours after giving birth – to show up on the doorstep, babe in arms?

  She was just bending down again when the sound of the cleaner stopped. ‘It’s me!’ she called. ‘Josie! Can you let us in, mate?’

  She heard a noise on the stairs, then the door was flung open. Lizzie stood there, looking gaunt underneath her usual layer of slap; all in place, of course, despite her only doing the cleaning. Josie wondered if she’d ever feel that same sense of competitiveness with Paula as Lizzie had done since Christine hit her teens. No, she couldn’t. Not at all. It was beyond her imagining.

  But perhaps that was because she’d never seen herself as a looker. Far from it. She’d spent most of her childhood and teens doing everything she could to remove every trace of girlishness. First as a response to all the slap her own mam wore and after Melvin … She shuddered. After what he’d done to her … Well, it was almost a miracle, her and Eddie. She’d never forgotten that. He’d saved her. Made her whole again. She’d never forget that, either.

  Maybe it was different for women like Lizzie. She’d been a looker, no doubt about it. Striking. Always a head turner. And when it seemed she’d given birth to an equally pretty daughter, Josie would have reckoned she’d be pleased. But it was never like that. The more Christine grew and blossomed, the harder Lizzie seemed to take it; dressing younger and younger, as if clinging desperately to a raft. She’d embraced punk like a drowning man might embrace a lifebelt, and though she didn’t know it, there were mutterings from those who liked to mutter that, with Mo’s thing for young flesh well known around the estate, she was looking a bit raddled and desperate these days.

  She certainly looked raddled now. ‘Oh, so it’s been discharged then,’ she said, turning around and stalking off down the hallway. ‘And you’re putting her up, then, are you?’ she added. ‘Like some kind of mug?’ She turned around in the kitchen doorway, her eyes boring into Josie’s reproachfully. ‘I thought you were a fucking mate, Jose.’

  ‘I am, Liz,’ Josie said, shutting the front door and following her. The house smelt of furniture polish. Ordinary. Clean. Funny how easy it was to create an atmosphere of calm and normality. Just that whiff of polish and everything was okay. Was on the surface, at least. There was still all the crud swept under the carpet. ‘And like I tried to tell you yesterday,’ she continued, ‘there’s no point going on one at me. I’m just the bleeding piggy in the middle, me, as per usual.’

  Lizzie had picked up a packet of Regals from the kitchen counter and now lit one, blowing the smoke across the room towards Josie. ‘Your choice,’ she said coldly. ‘What do you want, then? All her worldly goods, I assume?’

  Josie shook her head. ‘No. Look, Lizzie, she’s only stopping at mine till the midwife’s done her visits. She needed a fixed abode, didn’t she? You know that as well as I do. And while she’s with me, she’d going to put in for a council flat –’

  Lizzie sneered. ‘Oh, she is, is she? Just like that, eh?’

  Well, you should know, Josie thought, irritable at Lizzie’s complete lack of insight. Wasn’t the promise of getting a council place precisely why she’d decided not to abort Nicky? She’d said so often enough down the years, and Josie had understood – all her friends had. Having a baby – though unplanned – was her chance to create a better life. To get away from her horrible excuses for parents. Could she not see it was happening again? Was she blind?

  ‘No, not just like that,’ she replied, ‘but she’ll obviously get one, now she’s got a nipper in tow.’ Though what was going to happen between the midwife finishing and a place being found for her, Josie had no idea. She couldn’t expect Eddie to keep her longer. Wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. But maybe, just maybe, Lizzie would come round. She needed to hold the baby. Make that connection. That was key. That it registered that it was her own flesh and blood. That might just soften her up a bit. Right now, though, her expression said it all.

  ‘Anyway, for the moment, I just need the stuff for little Joey. The bottles and nappies and that, plus a few bits and bobs for Chrissy. She’d got nothing but the clothes she had on when I took her in yesterday. And they’re in a right state, as you can imagine, the poor thing.’

  If Josie had hoped the mention of Christine struggling in labour might soften Lizzie’s heart, she was mistaken. ‘Oh, it’s Joey, is it?’ she said. ‘Little Joey. Diddums.’ The same implacable expression greeted this acid pronouncement as it had everything else.

  But then, all of a sudden, Lizzie seemed to drop the attitude as swiftly as she might have a hot brick. She pulled out a stool from under the worktop and sat down on it heavily, her face beginning to contort as she did so.

  She was crying. That was what was happening. She was sobbing. Josie hurried to put an arm around her. She felt bony. Brittle. ‘Aww, mate,’ Josie said, squeezing her friend’s shoulder. ‘I know this is all shit – I do – I really understand how you must feel about it, you know. But in time you’ll work it out. I know you will. You have to. We’re talking about your grandson here, Lizzie. It’s –’

  ‘Yes, my grandson by my fucking bloke, Jose! Don’t forget that little detail! My daughter’s bastard by my fucking bloke! You don’t get it, do you? That’s all I can think of – of her screwing my fucking fella! Where did they do it? When? I can hardly bear go in her bedroom without heaving. Were they screwing in there whenever I was out at fucking work?’

  ‘Liz, it wasn’t like that … He worked on her. Got her drunk …’

  There it was. Out. If it could ever have stayed in. Lizzie angrily shook Josie’s arm from her shoulder. ‘How the fuck would you know? She give you blow by blow about it, did she? Fill you in on all the sordid details? The little bitch. I’m not interested in hearing any of her fucking excuses. How could she do that to me? I never want to see her or that fucking kid again as long as I live.’

  Josie felt the irritation well again. ‘What about Mo?’ she asked. ‘Hmm? Where does he figure in this? What’s his part in it, eh? I told you, it wasn’t like that!’

  ‘So she says.�
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  ‘Don’t be so bloody naïve! That’s the way you’re determined to see it, is it? That he’s just some poor helpless sod whose head was turned by your calculating, predatory daughter? I notice you’re cleaning the house. Hoping to see him, are you, Lizzie?’

  She had to stop herself saying more. From spelling out a few more home truths. Christ – like she even had to! He was the biggest bloody drug dealer around and the biggest womaniser to boot. How Lizzie could live in such breathtaking denial was beyond astonishing.

  Josie sometimes wondered if life wouldn’t be a whole lot less fraught with anxiety if she could be that blessedly naïve. Oh, yes, Lizzie had probably lived a bit – she was in her thirties, after all – but at the tender age of twenty-two, so had Josie. Too much, too soon. And as a consequence she knew exactly what some men were like. Not just the filthy nonce who’d raped her. But her own scumbag of a brother-in-law, Robbo, who’d tried to get himself between her legs too.

  And who was she to say – in all seriousness – how that particular nasty memory could have turned out differently? Suppose he hadn’t been a coke-head and a twat and a loser? Suppose he’d liked her, been kind to her, been a confidant and friend to her? How could she say, hand on heart, that she wouldn’t have succumbed to his charms? And Mo was a charmer. Good looking, full of swagger, knew how to smooth-talk women. Whether Christine accepted the fact or otherwise, he had as good as raped her. Known exactly what he was about, confident of controlling her innocent teenage mind.

  It had been playing on Josie’s mind, that – that the reason Christine was adamant Mo hadn’t forced himself on her was that she still harboured some sort of wildly naïve hope that, now the baby was born, he’d have a sudden change of heart, and sweep them both off on his white charger. God, she hoped not, but she wasn’t ruling it out.