Guilt at the Garage

TWENTY-SEVEN

A couple of days later, Carole was walking with Gulliver on Fethering Beach when she heard heavy footsteps running up behind her. She turned to see a breathless Adrian Greenford.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, without enthusiasm.

‘I … Gwyneth said I’ve got to say something to you.’

‘I don’t think I really want to hear anything from you.’

‘No, please, Carole. She’ll really make me suffer if I don’t say it.’

‘“Make you suffer”?’

‘That’s what she does, Gwyneth. She makes me suffer. She makes me do things for her. It’s because … you know, with the woman in Ilkley … I hurt Gwyneth so much. That’s why she’s confined to the wheelchair. She’s making me suffer for what I did. And then I fell in love with you and—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Carole, now really angry.

‘No, I did. From the first moment I saw you, I just knew. But Gwyneth knew too, and she made me do the things …’

‘What things?’

‘The unpleasant things.’ Carole still looked puzzled. ‘Like leaving the notes … going along the alley behind our house, going into your garden and …’ He swallowed uncomfortably. ‘And smashing the glass on your car.’

‘You did all that?’

‘Yes. Gwyneth made me.’

She looked at him, this pathetic man, locked into a marriage whose psychological depths she did not wish to plumb, and thought that, often, there was a lot to be said for divorce. Not, of course, that Gwyneth Greenford would ever allow her husband such an easy way out.

And what made the whole scenario even more ghastly was that Adrian Greenford clearly got some kind of charge out of the situation.

‘Goodbye,’ said Carole. ‘Come along, Gulliver.’

Woman and dog strode over the sand in the direction of High Tor.

Rhona Hampton died soon afterwards. Shannon, who’d always ‘loved her Mum to bits’, was devastated. Jude went to the funeral. So did Red, who had reacquainted himself with the old woman in her final weeks. A month or so later, he started taking Billy Shefford with him on Sunday fishing trips.

Malee, cheated of her husband’s real revised will, spent a lot of money with solicitors, reinstating its provisions. It took a long time, but Shefford’s Garage finally became the property of Billy Shefford. He began trying to negotiate with Nissan about the possibly of making it into a dealership for them. They weren’t very interested.

His wife Shannon, meanwhile, kept saying it was all pointless because soon people wouldn’t be allowed to use cars, thus giving the planet a chance of survival. She thought it very unlikely that either of their sons would want to go into the garage business when they grew up.

Until the change to a dealership came – and there was a strong suspicion it never would come – Shefford’s continued as it always had. The elderly residents of Fethering appreciated that Billy Shefford would pick up their cars and return them when they required servicing. And that they could get filled up with fuel without getting out of their cars.

Frankie continued working at Shefford’s as she always had. And continued changing her hair colour every month, accumulating new perforations and different unsuitable men.

Once the business of the garage had been sorted, Malee returned to Thailand. Carole heard the news some months later on the village grapevine. She felt a moment of guilt for not having been back in touch with the woman, but it soon passed. Carole Seddon wasn’t any more racist than any other middle-class Englishwoman of her age and background.

Fethering could be very cruel to people who didn’t fit its templates.

Tom Kendrick continued, subsidized by his mother, to do very little.

Karen and Chrissie did actually move to Hebden Bridge, where they continued to be blissfully happy.

The court proceedings against Jeremiah and Dr Rawley, in the way of the English law, took a long time to reach fruition.

The threatening behaviour towards Jude was the unequivocal charge that could be brought against them. The police had witnessed it and there was confirmatory video footage of the attack.

But the false cancer cure they were peddling through VADJ Trading on the Internet came into a grey area of international law which is still not adequately policed. They were made to take down their web presence but it was very difficult to find proof of the actual harm that they had done.

And, of course, their main crime, the misleading diagnosis and treatment which had led Bill Shefford to take his own life … well, that could never be proved.

It was a very unsatisfactory outcome, particularly for Carole and Jude. Dr Rawley was given a three-year sentence and Jeremiah, who had not actually used a weapon, eighteen months. There was a move to have the doctor struck off by the General Medical Council, but it was discovered that he had been many years before. Since then he’d been operating illegally under a variety of names, in the USA and Australia as well as the UK. When suspicions built up in one locality, he just moved on to another under a new identity. And presumably Jeremiah moved at the same time. Their cynical scams had been going on for a long time.

After serving probably half of their prison sentences, the two of them would all too soon be out in society again. They would no doubt shift their theatre of operations again, but their evil practices would probably continue. The world will never lack for the gullible and the terrified, searching for a miracle cancer cure.

No action was taken – or needed to be taken – against the Magic of Therapy Centre in Smalting. It was a bona-fide concern which rented out treatment space to various alternative therapists. All those who used it had produced some form of professional validation and the fact that among them was the occasional con artist was not the fault of the centre.

Oh, and Carole finally allowed Jude to have a look at her right knee. It was on their return from a rather boozier lunch than Carole had intended at the Crown and Anchor. The weather had warmed up a bit, she was wearing a skirt and no tights, so there was no issue of undressing. Jude had noticed her hobbling on the way back to Woodside Cottage.

‘Let me just have a look at it,’ she pleaded.

And Carole, who was in pain and had rung the Fethering Surgery that morning to be told she couldn’t get an appointment for three weeks, made the concession.

Jude did not even get out her treatment bed. She just felt the swollen joint and identified the problem immediately. Dr Rawley’s diagnosis of arthritis had been (like so much else in his life) wrong.

‘Hm. Have you been doing something recently that involved a lot of kneeling?’

‘No, I don’t think I – ooh, yes, when I redecorated the spare room a few weeks back, I had to kneel a lot when I was painting the skirting board.’

‘And was that when the pain started?’

‘I can’t really remember but … you know it could have been.’

Jude grinned. ‘There you are then. It’ll soon clear up. All you need to do is take lots of ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation and rest it up as much as possible.’

Carole was very disappointed. ‘That’s just the kind of thing the GP would have said to me.’

‘So? That’s the standard treatment.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘Well, once the swelling’s gone down, I could recommend some exercises to speed the recovery.’

‘Is that all?’ Carole still felt short-changed.

‘What were you expecting?’

‘I suppose … something different from what I’d get at Fethering Surgery.’

‘There’s no need for anything different. My training and the experience I’ve gained over the years have given me a pretty good understanding of human anatomy. For a purely physical injury, the treatment I’d recommend is more or less exactly what a GP would offer.’

‘You mean’ – Carole couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice – ‘no healing?’

Jude giggled. ‘What were you expecting – a bubbling cauldron and weird incantations?’

‘Well …’ Carole did not admit that she had been anticipating something along those lines.

‘When you consult me about something that needs healing techniques, then I’ll heal you.’

‘Oh. I think it’s very unlikely that I ever would consult you about something like that.’

‘So do I.’ Jude was having even more difficulty in suppressing her giggles. Through them, she managed to say, ‘I do have a stock of ibuprofen if you need some.’

‘That’s all right. I’ve got some in the bathroom cabinet.’

‘Fine.’

‘Oh, but you haven’t told me …’

‘Told you what?’

‘What’s actually wrong with my knee. What have I got?’

The barrier holding back her giggles burst as Jude announced, ‘Housemaid’s knee!’

Carole was shamed by the diagnosis. Housemaid’s knee? Not only did the very name have overtones of a music-hall joke, it was also extremely common. Carole Seddon would never want to have anything associated with a housemaid.

The moment she got back to High Tor, she rushed up to the spare-room office to look up her condition online. She was rewarded by a much better name for it. If the subject ever came up in conversation – unlikely but Carole always liked to be prepared – she would say that she had suffered from prepatellar bursitis. And she would say that it had cleared up of its own accord with ibuprofen, rest and exercise. She would certainly never admit to having been healed.

Fortunately, the knee was almost back to normal by the weekend in March when Carole had her two granddaughters to stay. The weather was good, Lily and Chloe were at a delightful age, and they loved scampering around on the wide space of Fethering Beach. They made so much fuss of Gulliver that he thought all of his birthdays and Christmas had arrived on the same day.

The grandmother indulged them all weekend. She took them to the wonderful aquarium in Brighton, where they went through glass tunnels with sharks swimming beside and above them. She also bought them seaside delights like fish and chips and Fethering rock, of which their parents might not have approved. But Stephen and Gaby never knew about these illicit treats because the little girls were sworn to secrecy. And no fish and chips or Fethering rock appeared in the expert photos and videos which Carole took on her new phone and WhatsApped back to Fulham. But the newly pink girls’ bedroom featured quite a lot.

It was a wonderful weekend for three.

The ripples from Bill Shefford’s death stayed with Jude for a long time. What hurt her was the harm that the actions of people like Jeremiah and Dr Rawley could do to the image of healing. Every charlatan publicly unmasked did lasting damage to her profession.

And Jude was also starting to get itchy feet. The trip to Leeds had been part of it, but there was more than that. There were other lives she wanted to lead. She still very definitely believed in healing. But she wondered whether she believed in Fethering any more.