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The Stepson: A psychological thriller with a twist you won't see coming(9)

Author:Jane Renshaw

They were never going to have to stay off school because their ma had forgotten her own rule of not the face or the hands. They were going to be so safe and loved and happy they wouldn’t even know it. They wouldn’t even know how it was to be anything else, in the honest-to-God pink palace that the Clyde family called home.

‘The welcome committee!’ said Duncan, stopping the car at the front door, where his sixteen-year-old son Nick was standing with Duncan’s snobby sister Yvonne and her husband Michael. Yvonne was tall and willowy and wearing one of her trademark power-dressing black trouser suits. She looked like an accountant or a lawyer or a corporate bitch, not a farmer’s wife who made cheese. Right enough, it was upmarket cheese pregnant folk couldn’t eat because pasteurisation was for plebes, but it was still just cheese. Michael, on the other hand, was a real Farmer Giles, with his red nose and flat cap and one of those cream shirts with a pattern on it like the squared paper you used to get in school. He ran the big farm across the fields that had been in Duncan and Yvonne’s family for a hundred and seventy years. Maggie was hazy on the family history, but it seemed the Clyde family had once owned most of the land round here, but a lot of it had either been sold off or parcelled up amongst different Clydes in the 1960s, and Duncan had ended up buying Sunnyside off his cousin when his uncle died.

Yvonne and Michael had big false smiles on their faces like they were going, It’s shit that you’ve got that common wee piece pregnant, you silly bastard, but look, we’re trying to make the best of it here, all right?

‘God’s sake,’ went Maggie. ‘I feel like I should be giving them the royal wave and asking if they’ve come far.’

Duncan laughed but, as if he had an idea what she was thinking, he rested his hand on top of hers where it cupped her belly. ‘It’s going to be fine. When they get to know you properly, they’re going to love you as much as I do.’

‘Do you love me?’ The words were out before she could stop them.

Now that the honeymoon was literally over, now they were back to reality, was he going to change his mind about wanting to be with her?

His handsome face softened into a big smile. ‘Of course I love you, you daft bitch.’

Duncan had been an officer in the Army when he was a young man, before and just after he and Kathleen were married, so Maggie guessed he must have used swear words all the time when he was giving the men a bollocking, which, judging from what she’d seen on TV, would have been twenty-four/seven. But now he never swore, except when the two of them were alone together, when, as he said, he could let rip with impunity. Swearing, belching, farting, you name it. Duncan said he’d never felt so at ease with anyone as he did with her, and he’d certainly never have carried on like that with Kathleen. If he and Kathleen had been in bed together and he’d felt a fruity one building, he’d always take himself off to the en suite to let it out rather than polluting the airspace of the marital bed.

He had no such qualms with Maggie, chuckling away and lifting the duvet and inviting her to get a noseful of that one.

He had no inhibitions with her, she guessed, because, unlike Kathleen, Maggie McPhee was no lady. But she couldn’t say he didn’t treat her like one. Now, he came round the car to open her door and take her hand to help her out, even though Nick had come running across the gravel giving it, ‘Dad!’ Duncan was leaving him hanging, just saying, ‘Well, it’s good to be back – how are things? Yvonne and Michael don’t seem too frazzled after two weeks of your company,’ and not going in for a hug until Maggie was safely out of the car and waddling towards the house.

She put on a fake smile and did a daft dance with Michael – did they hug, did they not? – finally going for a loose folding of arms around shoulders as he asked about the journey and the traffic. Why was it that men were obsessed with traffic? Yvonne didn’t make any sort of move towards her, which was fine by Maggie. All she said was a tight, ‘Well, we’ll be off. Let you get settled in.’ Let you get your feet under the table, you frightful little oik.

Maggie smiled sweetly. ‘Thanks, Yvonne.’ Aye, piss off, bitch.

An image came into Maggie’s head of her fist connecting with that sour mouth, teeth flying, the long willowy length of Yvonne smacking back on the fancy hall tiles, the back of her skull cracking open, blood spilling over the tiles and seeping down between them.

Just like what happened to Kathleen.

The psychiatrist they’d made her see in the young offender institution had said Maggie should try to immediately think about something else when thoughts of violence came into her head, and she’d played along, nodding and saying things like, ‘Aye, right enough, that makes sense.’ But what was the harm in a nice wee fantasy now and then? What had that bastard known about real life anyway, stuck up there in his ivory tower? He’d been a laughing stock in the YOI. Borderline, they’d called him, because that was the diagnosis he gave everyone, Maggie included: borderline personality disorder.

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