“We worked out the timeline, Ricky, Shari, Yaz, and I; when Dad married Barbara in London he was still married to Nicky’s real mother, in Albany, New York State. He lied to everyone, he even lied on the marriage certificate we found that he signed when he married Barbara, he lied about his name, his age, and left out the fact he was married in the US. While he was married to Barbara, he was going back and forth to Albany and making out like he was living there, sharing custody of Nicky with Julia, Nicky’s mother.”
He shook his head sadly.
“We found out much later that he’d abducted Nicky when he was three and brought him back here to England, changed his name, and gave him to Barbara to look after. She brought him up, he thought she was his mother, too, but he never let him, or us, call her “Mum”. She was just “Barbara”, nothing else.”
Jamie stirred.
“You have another brother, this Nicky; where is he now?”
Bobby smiled.
“Nicky and his family live in Albany, New York State. He’s a great guy, he always was, we just never let ourselves see it for ourselves. His wife Ashley is a lovely girl, and he has two lovely kids, Barbara and Judy. His mother, Julia and her husband also live there.”
I was watching him closely, and at mention of Nicky’s mother his eyes softened and his lips twitched; obviously Bobby had some kind of personal connection with this ‘Julia’ person. Yasmin pulled a photograph album out from a drawer in the coffee table, and opened it.
“This is Nicky,” she said.
I was astonished; Nicky was yet another version of Bobby and Rick, this time a golden-haired, tawny-eyed version almost identical to Ricky. It was almost eerie how similar they looked, almost like triplets, even though there were several years between all of them.
Bobby took the album from me and put it on the table, a sombre expression on his face.
“My father treated Nicky very badly; whatever he did wasn’t good enough; he was always covered in bruises, sometimes black eyes too, and it was the same for Barbara. Rick and I were a pair of disrespectful little pricks; my father treated Nicky like shit, so we did too, with a big helping left over for his mother, Barbara.”
“But she wasn’t… ” I began, but Bobby stopped me.
“We know that now, but we didn’t then: we just thought that we could do what we wanted. Nicky and Barbara were nothing to do with us so we could say or do what we wanted to them, and my bastard father never once put a stop to it. This was how we grew up. We left them out, and all they had were each other.”
He smiled, just a twitch of his lips, but it was genuine.
“She used to call him “Little Saint Nick,” you know; she really loved him, and he loved her, he still does; he found his real mother, he went back to America and found his birth mother, and he loves her very much; she didn’t abandon him, or give him away, he was stolen from her and he knows that, so he does truly love her; every so often he’ll remember something about her back when he was a toddler and he was still her son, but in his heart Barbara is “Mum”, and she always will be. He loved her more than life itself, and we hated him for it, and we hated her for loving him. I know, but we did it because my father, that sick, twisted piece of… ”
He knuckled his eyes.
“He encouraged us, so we did. I have no excuses that make a damn’s worth of difference; we knew better, we knew down inside us that it was wrong and we did it anyway.”
“What about Barbara… ” began Jamie, but the haunted look on Bobby’s face quelled him.
“My father used to drink, and when he’d had enough to drink, whatever he’d been brooding about, or cooking up in his twisted mind, he’d take it out on her. We used to listen, and you know what we did? We’d laugh, and giggle like ninnies, and listen to the sound of Barbara crying and asking him to stop , please stop, and he never did, and we did nothing, ever. Not once, and then… ”
I glanced at Jamie, at his set, expressionless face, but I grew up with him, and I knew that face. He was angry. So was I, but I hadn’t heard the whole story yet.
“What happened to Barbara, what did he do to her?” he asked, his voice even and uncoloured by emotion, but again, I know Jamie better than anyone in the world does except Mummy, and I could hear the “Angry Jamie” harmonics in his voice.
Bobby’s knuckles showed white as he clenched his fists, and the tendons in his neck stood out starkly, taut as violin strings.
“We don’t really know what happened, not first hand. We got this from Nicky several years later, but from what we could piece together, he was drunk one night, beating Barbara as usual. Nicky went to try and help her and dad hurt him. Years later I saw what dad did to him, we all did. He nearly killed Nicky. Ten years later he’s still in pain. It’s never going to stop for him.”
He paused, his expression bleak and bitter, staring at something only he could see. When Shari nudged him he gave a start, as though he’d forgotten we were there, so lost in his memories was he.
“What happened to Nicky?” I asked softly, almost afraid to find out.
Bobby’s face twisted in distaste.
“My… father, that psychopathic… he beat Nicky with his belt, but not just any belt, no; he had a special belt, one he’d had the buckle specially honed with an edge on it. He took it, and… and he flayed Nicky, he took the skin off him, like one of those medieval torture floggings? Today, Nicky’s back is just a mass of scar tissue and open sores. That’s what he did to him, but that’s not the worst of it.”
He paused and I braced myself; something bad was coming, I didn’t want to hear it, but I knew I had to. I tried to slip my hand into Jamie’s but I couldn’t, his hands were clenched tightly, with the knuckles showing white and his forearms stiff, the muscles tense and unyielding. His posture was stiff and ram-rod straight, outrage evident in his every line.
“Barbara tried to clean up Nicky. She made him get out of there, she knew Dad was going to keep hurting him until he killed him; it was just a matter of time. She had some money, and she had gone through Dad’s papers and found Nicky’s real mother, his birth certificate, stuff he needed, so she gave him those as well, and she took him away in the middle of the night, while Dad was passed out. Barbara put him on the London train and that was the last we knew of him until… until… ”
His expression grew even bleaker.
“Dad found out next day that Nicky was gone, and that Barbara had gone though his papers, and… and… ”
Two tears rolled down his face as he bit his trembling lip.
“Please, no more. Don’t make me do this, I can’t, not again… ” he whispered to Shari, who shook her head, her own eyes brimming as she thumbed his eyes dry.
“You have to finish this, baby, they have to know, she deserves it… ” She murmured. “Finish it, Bobby. For her.”
Rick slid up next to him and, surprisingly, Yasmin too, who slid behind Bobby on the couch and hugged him, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Please Bobby; tell them, you have to let this go, please… ” she murmured as Rick laid his hand on Bobby’s shoulder too, holding onto Yasmin’s hand.
“You have to, Big Feller,” he murmured. “It’s the only way.”
Bobby breathed deeply several times, psyching himself up for what was coming, while I took in the sight of an entire family huddled together, bonded into a single unit because they shared a terrible burden. I knew it was bad, their body-language shouted it out and Jamie had picked up on it too, from the way his hand crept into mine and held me tightly.
Bobby nodded at Shari, squared his shoulders , and started speaking again, telling us the whole shocking, unspeakable thing, the final truth of what had really happened to my daddy’s beloved little sister.
“When Dad sobered up the day after Nicky… left, he knew my mo… that Barbara had been through his stuff. He knew and he punished her. The first we knew of it was when the police showed up. Dad had called them, because Barbara had… because… it… Shari, I can’t do this, please don’t make me do this… ”
He turned to Shari and buried his face in her shoulder, his body shuddering . Shari stroked his hair even as tears poured down her face at Bobby’s distress. Yasmin and Rick both hugged Shari with tears in all their eyes, as they maintained that close physical contact while Bobby’s grief worked through him.
Jamie looked at me, back at Bobby, at me again, and I saw the question in his eyes: just what in the Hell had been going on here?
Bobby looked up from Shari’s shoulder, his eyes puffy and red, but his emotions back under control; his knuckles were white though; he was still wound-tight over this.
“My father… that worthless, lying, filthy piece of… he’d called the police, because Barbara had committed suicide: she’d hanged herself in the old Butler’s Pantry. She was dead… “