BooksBarbecue
Back Harbour Street
Chapters (47)
  1. Contents
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-One
  23. Chapter Twenty-Two
  24. Chapter Twenty-Three
  25. Chapter Twenty-Four
  26. Chapter Twenty-Five
  27. Chapter Twenty-Six
  28. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-One
  33. Chapter Thirty-Two
  34. Chapter Thirty-Three
  35. Chapter Thirty-Four
  36. Chapter Thirty-Five
  37. Chapter Thirty-Six
  38. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  39. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  40. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  41. Chapter Forty
  42. Chapter Forty-One
  43. Chapter Forty-Two
  44. Chapter Forty-Three
  45. Chapter Forty-Four
  46. Chapter Forty-Five
  47. About the Author

But not Peter Gruskin, Joe thought. He’d hardly have been born. He remembered Vera and her manic behaviour at the briefing the day before, her conviction that Pawel Krukowski was dead. ‘Tell me about Margaret’s husband?’

‘What about him?’

‘What was he like?’

It was as if she hadn’t heard him again. He wondered if she was lost in her memories, or if this vacant stare was a technique she’d developed to persuade social workers that she still needed to stay at the Haven.

‘Susan.’

She turned her head slowly. Her eyes were cloudy and it was as if she hardly knew him.

‘Tell me about Margaret’s husband. Pawel. The Polish guy.’

‘I never met him,’ she said. Her head was tilted to one side, as if she was listening to a far-away voice. ‘When I moved into Harbour Street he’d already disappeared.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

They had a fish-and-chip lunch in the Mardle Fisheries. Only a few days to Christmas, and the staff wore Santa hats and a crackly version of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ played on a loop in the background. Joe didn’t think he’d get anything more from Susan, but Vera had told him to buy her lunch and, anyway, he thought it would be a treat for her. He’d started to think of her as a slightly batty aunt.

‘Were the fisheries here when you lived in the street?’ He thought Susan went in and out of reception like a badly tuned radio. Sometimes she listened and understood, and at other times she seemed in a world of her own.

She nodded, her mouth full of chips. ‘But only the wet-fish shop and the takeaway. Not a sit-down restaurant.’

‘And the pub was there?’

‘Yes.’ She scrunched up her forehead, a parody of someone thinking. ‘The landlady was called Val. She ran the place for years. I don’t know what happened to her. She had a son.’ Again Susan frowned in concentration, as if remembering the man’s name was a sort of test. ‘Rick? It might have been Rick. I never liked him. He was cruel to me. Made fun. There’s nothing clever about making fun.’ She put her hand to her mouth as if she regretted giving so much away and returned to her meal.