Fly in the Ointment Read online

  Well, thank you, Stuart. Thank you very much.

  During the week in which that bitch of a prosecuting counsel kept flapping that bloody wig in the jurors’ faces and letting rip about my capacity for secrecy and my pure cunning, I felt obliged to offer Trevor back the ring he’d given me. ‘I will admit,’ he said, ‘that Dad has spent a good deal of time this week warning me I might regret saying the words “till death do us part” to a homicidal maniac. But shall we just press on? See how it goes?’

  As any fool could see, it wasn’t going to go well. And sure enough, after a quite insultingly short time out of the court discussing the matter, the jury trooped back in and they pronounced me guilty.

  Trevor was calm enough about the news. ‘Eight years, my sources suggest. So, Lois, if you behave yourself in clink you might be out in six. Shall we just wait and see? And if you still fancy the idea when you come out and I’m still ploughing this long and lonely furrow . . .’

  Frankly, I think he is amused by the idea of marrying a jailbird. ‘When we get married,’ he tells me on visits, ‘you’ll have to promise never to take me on any walks near the canal.’ Once, just as the warder was looking at her watch in that determined fashion, I asked him what his father had to say about his plans and he was decent enough to look me in the eye and tell me outright, ‘If I am honest, Lois, right from the start, Dad has been far more upset about the fact that my eye fell on someone too old to give me children.’

  I made a face and shrugged. ‘We could adopt.’

  After, when I was in the queue to get my revolting supper, one of the other girls who’d had a visitor that day asked me, ‘What did you say to set that bloke of yours laughing so hard he nearly fell off his chair?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Nothing much. We were just talking.’

  ‘What about?’

  I gave it a little thought. And then I answered, perfectly honestly, ‘We were just talking about how sometimes in life you can get second chances. And sometimes you can’t.’

  The other brick is Mrs Kuperschmidt. She couldn’t be more disapproving if she tried. But all her training leads her to follow guidelines. (‘Sarah, your doing that is what fetched me up in here!’ as I say bitterly. ‘So you had damn well better keep it up now!’) The rules say Larry’s interests must come first, and since I’m definitely the most consistent emotional attachment in Larry’s life, she’s swung things so he gets regular visits. Guy brings him in. We have a laugh. Larry gets spoiled to death by all the prison officers and volunteers in the creche. I think he likes the prison, and Guy appreciates the fact that having to bring him to such an out-of-the-way spot twice a month means that he gets to use my car.

  And Mrs Kuperschmidt was a real gem about my father’s death. She knew I couldn’t give a toss, but she still sent one of her brilliant read-between-the-lines notes as good as telling me which tack to take in my request letter to the Governor, and also hinting that there would be others present to make the effort worthwhile. So I was granted permission to go to the funeral. Trevor was there. And Guy and Larry. And Sarah herself. Once we’d spilled out into the crematorium grounds, it turned into a party. (No one was going to waste time grieving for that mean-spirited old goat.) It was so lovely to be out under trees, and see green distances instead of gates and walls.

  I sidled up to Trevor. ‘Did you bring it?’

  ‘Would I forget my orders?’ He reached into his pocket and drew out Malachy’s prism. He had polished it until it shone. The small length of invisible fishing wire I had attached to it when Malachy was little now had an added length of silver cord.

  I looked around for Larry. As usual, he was mucking about with Guy, playing some jumping game around the graves. I called him over.

  ‘Here.’ I gave him the prism. ‘Hold it up, sweetie.’

  It caught the sun. Larry was staring into it so hard he didn’t notice what was happening across his clothes and mine.

  ‘Look at your woolly.’

  The movement he made in glancing down set rainbows swaying. He stared, entranced. Did he remember it? Did he remember anything? We never asked. He never said. All that was obvious was he was happy.

  I felt pride bursting out of me and I reached out to set the prism spinning just as Malachy used to do. The sprinkles swayed and danced.

  My grandson’s eyes met mine. ‘Is it for me, Lo? Can I keep it?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s yours.’ I took the little swan-shaped hook I’d made in metalcraft out of my bag and handed it over. ‘Your dad will hang it for you.’

  I turned to Guy. ‘You’ll fix it in his bedroom window for him, won’t you?’

  Guy grinned. ‘Sure, Lois. Nice for him to have a keepsake from his da—’

  He broke off just in time. Not that I think Mrs Kuperschmidt was close enough to hear, or that it might have set Larry thinking. After all, the child is only seven. But there are things best left unsaid and there’ll be time enough for all of that when Larry’s older. Right now we’re all a whole lot safer sticking with a fiction that suits us all.

  I think that Sarah Kuperschmidt was quite surprised at my good spirits on the journey back. ‘Usually, even the tiniest taste of life outside can be unsettling.’ I won’t make the mistake of putting things this way to the parole board, but I did try to explain how I never minded going back inside after these rare trips out because I honestly thought that, though things had turned out strangely, they had turned out well.

  ‘Balanced,’ I told her. ‘Almost biblical, in fact. A life for a life.’

  For I did feel that, through my lack of courage and attention, I’d let one child go to the bad. But then the very Lois who’d emerged from that was the same Lois who had grown the wit and guts to save another. Don’t things even out?

  She was appalled by the suggestion, I could tell. And so I hastily pretended I hadn’t meant it. Just a flash of black wit. I was so sorry. And the moment passed. She’s a kind woman or she wouldn’t visit me.

  And so we made our way towards Security. ‘Now don’t forget,’ she took the trouble to whisper in my ear before they led me off towards the wing. ‘Next week, before the parole board. You are sorry, right?’

  Yeah. Right.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Fly in the Ointment is Anne Fine’s seventh novel. Her first was the critically acclaimed The Killjoy, which was runner up for the David Higham Prize for Fiction. Taking the Devil’s Advice and Telling Liddy have both been adapted for radio. The Observer referred to her novel In Cold Domain as ‘a glorious tirade against the grind of motherhood’ and the Evening Standard described All Bones and Lies as ‘splendid, clever, cruel and funny’. Anne Fine’s work has been translated into over thirty languages. She has two grown-up daughters and lives in County Durham.

  For more information on Anne Fine and her books, see her website at www.annefine.co.uk

  Also by Anne Fine

  THE KILLJOY

  TAKING THE DEVIL’S ADVICE

  IN COLD DOMAIN

  TELLING LIDDY

  ALL BONES AND LIES

  RAKING THE ASHES

  and published by Black Swan

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  FLY IN THE OINTMENT

  A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552774673

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781407083926

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2008 by Bantam Press

  a division of Transworld Publishers

  Black Swan edition published 2009

  Copyright © Anne Fine 2008

  Anne Fine has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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