by S. E. Lynes
She holds up her hands in prayer. ‘Please.’
DC McGann frowns, pulling back the sheet from Ted’s skin, which is yellowish and shot through with mouldy patterns. His swollen body is dead, so dead. Grey fogs his ribs. There is his appendix scar; his shrivelled penis nestling in the dark frizz; his legs, bluish, hairy, bald patches on his shins. She can’t stop looking. DC McGann is already pulling the sheet back into place. The sheet. The shroud.
Carol turns away from the window and presses her hands to her face. Nausea rises in her chest. She wanted to see all of him. To see that it was all of him. And it was him and not him, familiar and strange: slack and bare, skinny limbs, gigantic belly, no vanity left now in death.
Behind her, DC McGann sniffs. She didn’t notice him come back out.
‘Bruises killed him,’ she says. ‘And here’s me, covered in bruises all my life and still alive.’
‘He took quite a beating.’
‘He’d have hated to be seen like that. Always pulled his stomach in for photos.’ She steps back and bends over, crosses her arms over her belly against another rush of nausea. What was she expecting? To feel nothing? That she could pretend he was someone else, someone else’s, not as much a part of her as her own bones? She presses her fingertips to the glass, stares at her fingers, splayed and white around the tips. Her engagement and wedding bands shine yellow – looser now than when she ran away. She left them on out of some sense of loyalty, as if taking off two silly rings would amount to betrayal after she’d abandoned him without so much as a note.
She twists the rings around her finger. ‘I should take these off. The diamond keeps dropping underneath. It bangs on the surfaces, you know? I’m terrified of scratching everything.’
‘Mrs Watson.’
‘Thirty-five. Beaten to death outside his local, silly bloody bugger. Drunk, I assume.’
‘Mrs Watson?’
‘He’ll be somewhere even whisky can’t take him now, won’t he?’
‘I knew it was him,’ says the copper, touching her lightly on the elbow. ‘Recognised him myself. We’ve had a few … dealings with your husband these last few months.’
‘What do you mean, dealings?’
‘Trouble, you know. He was lucky he hadn’t been locked up before now. Or unlucky, I suppose. All I’m saying is, this wasn’t the first time, like.’
‘It’ll be the last, though, won’t it?’
He looks at his shoes, then back at her. ‘Listen, there’s some papers to sign, some personal effects, et cetera.’
Head thrumming, she lets herself be steered away.
* * *
From the patrol-car window, the grand houses in the old part of town slide away, one after the other. Iron gates protect them; mature shrubs skirt their long front gardens. Further back, chimney pots float in a sky slowly bleaching now to pale pink. Here the golf course, there the church, now a housing estate so familiar – the place she ran from – cul-de-sacs coming off the main road like lungs off a windpipe, supporting life, living, breathing: Solway Grove, Ullswater Place, Coniston Drive. Coniston Drive, her old address, her home. Her home once more, she supposes, but not tonight.
‘I used to live on this estate,’ she says to McGann, who drives in silence while she sits in the darkness of the back seat. ‘I always liked the trees. The grass, you know? And the little lanes and that.’ She wants him to know that she once lived in this nice place. It seems important.
‘I’ve got a mate lives here. It’s friendly, he says.’
She’s pleased that he doesn’t sound surprised, hasn’t taken her for rougher than she is, just because of the house he found her in.
‘Our Graham was two when we moved in,’ she says. ‘But then it took ages for our Nicky to come along. Funny really, with Graham happening so quick.’ She remembers when they first moved from their flat in the old town to the new housing estate, the house they’d bought from the plans. The garden, how big it seemed, how posh. Our own piece of England, Ted said.
‘I tell you what,’ she continues. ‘That lawn was Ted’s pride and joy. He used to try to make stripes with the lawnmower to get it like Anfield, you know? And his legs were that white they used to glow in the summer when he wore his shorts. He used to make the kids laugh so much sometimes they were nearly sick. Used to do Max Wall impressions in his long johns, used to have them in hysterics.’ She draws a face with one finger on the window pane. ‘He was skinny too. All the drink went to his belly till he looked like a boiled egg, you know, a boiled egg in a cup. Well, a dinosaur egg.’ She chuckles. How easy it is to talk, in the dark, to the back of a stranger’s head. There’s hardly another vehicle on the road. Inside the car, only silence.
‘I left him to protect the kids,’ she says, into that silence. ‘I thought he was going to kill me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the copper replies.
Ted’s bruises, how like her own they were. Perhaps death was what happened if they came all together instead of one by one. Perhaps Ted had always been killing her – slowly, over years.
The copper drives on, turns onto the expressway.
‘He had this rage in him, you know? It was what made him fun in the early days. Exciting, like, you know? I didn’t realise he’d turn it on himself. Because that’s what he did in the end, didn’t he? It wasn’t me he was punishing. It was himself.’
Thirty
Nicola
2019
My father was murdered in the street. It’s not a phrase that falls easily from anyone’s mouth. There’s always a moment’s hesitation, a small gasp before the words can be formed and expelled. They change my relationship with whoever hears them. They are usually arrived at only after a certain measure of intimacy, of trust, and after all attempts at avoiding the subject have been exhausted. Sometimes I leave it there. Sometimes I add that my father was an alcoholic who was beaten to death by a gang outside his local pub. A brainless crime with no motive, no reason other than drunken fists raised in the dead of night, a pack mentality, bored boys with insufficient medical awareness to know that head injuries can be fatal. If I were to tour schools, talking to kids, this is one of the things that I would tell those boys, floundering in their male insecurities, their confusion, their hormones and their rage. The appeal of violence is so strong; it is a life force as old as time. Men have always murdered, baited each other in packs. From Shakespeare to the latest gritty TV drama – gangs, senseless rivalries, war. Knives and guns, chains and baseball bats. Whatever. Not the head, I would tell these boys. Never the head. Their intention is rarely to kill. It is their ignorance that makes murderers of them.
I wasn’t awake when the police came. I woke to the sound of a car engine starting and looked out to see a blue flashing light driving away from the house. I crept downstairs to find Graham sitting at the picnic table we were using for a kitchen table at the time, head in his hands. When he looked up at me, his eyes were red. But back then, his eyes were often red. At eleven years old, I had no clue that this meant he was using. To me back then, red eyes meant only that he’d been crying.
‘Gray?’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’
He sniffed loudly and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Do you w-want some ch-cheese on t-t-toast?’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She’s had to g-go out for s-something.’
‘What?’
He shrugged. ‘Do you want cheese on toast? I’m having some.’
‘Are we allowed?’ I will have asked – always the goody two shoes.
Graham stood, ruffled my hair as he passed me to get to the grill. ‘Yes, we’re allowed. Mum said. Do you want Branston?’
We ate our cheese on toast there at the table in the middle of the night. I can’t remember what we talked about – it was probably television or my friends – but I was filled with the hot thrill of my older brother deigning to talk to me like he had a couple of nights before. He didn’t say much a
bout himself, didn’t speak about his friends. I didn’t know if they were from the school he had gone to briefly or from round the estate – only that his eyes were often red like they were now when he had been out with them. It was exciting, there with my big brother in the middle of the night, eating toast. It was like it had been when I was very little, when my parents were happier, and they would get in late from the pub and the smell of Chinese takeaway would come drifting up the stairs.
My dad would stage-whisper, ‘If anyone’s still awake there’s some chicken chow mein going spare.’
My eyes would pop open. Graham would invariably be on the floor by my bed. He used to sleep there when my parents went out because I was always afraid of the dark. I would sit up and find his eyes glinting at me.
‘Yesss!’ we would say at the same time, punching the air, scrambling out of our covers to go and share the illicit late-night treat.
These were the nights my father was nice.
That night, when we finished our cheese on toast, Graham said he had to go out.
‘Mum’ll be back soon,’ he said.
I didn’t want him to go, but he said he had to do something, that it was urgent. I was far too scared to go back to bed, so he fetched my bedding for me and brought it downstairs. Jim had rigged up a VCR to the television and Graham put a video on for me, switched on the big light, as we called it, since we didn’t have a lamp or anything, and told me to lie on the sofa till Mum got back. I was miserable, desperate for him to stay. But I didn’t want to let him down. I feared that if I protested and made him stay, he would think I was stupid and little and stop talking to me again.
‘She’ll only be half an hour,’ he said. And he left.
I hated being alone. I lay on the sofa, ears pricked for every sound, eyes on stalks. A vague need to pee I ignored, not daring to go to the loo. I knew that something was wrong, of course I did. I just had no idea what. I stayed under my covers and watched some stupid film or other, fretting. I must have fallen asleep through sheer exhaustion, because the next thing I remember was the sound of the key in the door.
‘Graham?’ It was my mother’s voice. I jumped up off the sofa. ‘Graham?’
‘Mum,’ I said.
My mother appeared at the living-room door. Her eyes were as red as Graham’s had been. She took off her coat and threw it on the armchair. ‘Everything OK?’
I nodded, still half asleep. I wasn’t OK but I didn’t want to land my brother in it.
‘Nicky, love. Where’s Graham?’
I shrugged. I knew now that wherever he was, he was not running an errand. ‘Dunno.’
‘What d’you mean, you don’t know? Did he say where he was going?’
I shook my head. Everything had turned strange. Wrongness shimmered in the air like heat. Did I know it had something to do with my father? I don’t think so, not in any concrete way.
‘Nicky,’ my mum insisted. ‘Where is he?’
‘He hasn’t been out long,’ I lied, yawned, shivered.
Mum put her arms around me. She was warm, but she didn’t smell like herself. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed, eh?’ She guided me upstairs, settled me in my makeshift bed and tucked me in. ‘Can you remember what time he went out?’
‘I heard noises,’ I said, eyelids drooping. ‘Were the police here?’
‘The police? What makes you say that, love?’
‘I saw blue lights. I saw a police car driving away.’
And she, Carol, had been in it. How difficult it must have been for her in that moment, knowing that my father was dead, wrestling with whether to tell me or let me sleep. And the truth is, I can’t remember what she found to say. She may have mumbled something about it being one of the neighbours, up to no good. What I do recall is that I wanted to stay awake and feel her arms around me for a little longer, but that sleep was pulling me under, away from her.
‘Nicola?’
‘Yeah.’ I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t.
‘When did your brother go, can you remember?’
‘He made me some cheese on toast,’ I said, my words slurred with exhaustion. ‘He said you said we could. I fell asleep on the sofa and then you were back.’
‘Did you look for him? Nicky? Did you leave the house?’
I shook my head.
‘Good girl. That’s my clever girl. Sleep tight, love.’
I felt her lips on my cheek. I was safe, safe now that she was here. Sleep took me.
Thirty-One
Carol
1985
In the lounge, the television screen snows. The overhead light is still on. The sick feeling returns. For a moment Carol thinks she is going to throw up, but she stands very still and it passes. Graham has left his sister alone in the house – on this night of all nights. Poor girl won’t have dared leave the lounge. She will have been stuck there, rigid with fear. Selfish boy. Stupid, selfish child. Thinks he’s a man but he’s not. He’s a child, a baby. He’s all over the place. She should call the police, she should call …
A click comes from the back of the house. In the short time she’s lived here, she has come to know the sound the back door makes when it closes. A sniff. Graham’s sniff – she’s had his whole life to learn that noise. Has he been watching the house, waiting for her to come back? She checks her watch. It is after three.
Sure enough, Graham is in the kitchen, rustling in the bread bin. He has not put on the light. In the dull yellow glow from outside, he looks different. She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes. Instead, she pulls the cord for the light, which buzzes and flickers and flashes, fighting with itself before giving up and staying on.
Without turning to look at her, without saying hello or asking about his dad, Graham pulls two floppy slices of Mother’s Pride from the packet. She checks him all over, for damage, and sees that his ear has been pierced with a gold stud. Even in the dull half-light, his ear lobe is as red as raw steak. He looks up at her for a second, as if daring her to say something about the earring. His expression is hateful, arrogant. He turns to the fridge and pulls out the margarine and a jar of apricot jam. He opens the cutlery drawer so fast the knives and forks crash against the side of the tray. All she can do is watch him spread the margarine thick on the bread, then the jam. He presses the second slice onto the eggy-looking mess and lifts the white wedge to his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot and strange, pushed up by putty half-moons. He has left his sister in the middle of the night, the night he has found out his dad has died, to go and get his ear pierced. She knows this is so, and yet part of her cannot accept or believe it.
‘Did you leave the back door open?’ she asks.
He grunts, picks up the key from the worktop, dangles it at her like she’s stupid. He is chewing noisily.
‘So?’ he says.
She nods. ‘Yes.’ There is no hug for her here, no warmth or kindness from her son, this boy who has been her friend, her ally, her cheeky monkey. Where he has gone, she has no idea.
He sits at the table, spreads his legs wide apart. Takes another bite of the sandwich.
‘You’ll want another butty,’ she says. ‘That one won’t touch the sides.’
He nods, coughs into his hand.
‘Cup of tea an’ all?’
She makes the sandwich, wonders who on earth has pierced his ear in the dead of night, which one of these wolf-kids. Who has he been with? Where? And what’s with all the mystery? She takes the second sandwich to him, on a plate, with the tea, and sits down, leaving a chair between them.
‘So,’ she says.
He doesn’t look at her. ‘So, he’s dead then, yeah?’
She swallows down the overwhelming need to cry, an ache lodged in her throat, sharp as tonsillitis. She reaches into her bag and pulls out the small plastic bag that the copper gave her. Out of it she takes Ted’s signet ring – the letters EW engraved on the oval top – and slides it across the table. He never wore a wedding ring, only this.
‘This is yours now.’
Silently Graham picks up the ring and puts it on his middle finger. He spreads his fingers, makes a fist, then stretches them out again. The ring fits him. She reaches for his hand, but he takes hold of his mug. The tea, she knows, is still too hot to drink.
‘J-Jim c-coming back now, is he?’ He spits the words, his eyes small and mean.
‘Jim didn’t kill your dad.’
He shrugs. ‘Never said he did.’
Something knots in her belly. Jim left two days ago. Said he was going to see Tommy. And now Ted is dead.
Graham stands, stuffs the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and picks up the tea.
She makes her voice as loving as she can. ‘Get your head down for a bit, eh? See you in the morning.’
His feet thud, taking the stairs two at a time. He’s probably spilling tea. She doesn’t care. It’s a shitty, horrible stairwell in a shitty, horrible house. But now they can get out of here. Ted had life insurance, she’s pretty sure. He was always terrified of the machines at work, always scared of hurting himself, made a fuss of any little scratch. She can move back, be next door to Pauline and Tommy again, like old times. Except now she won’t have to face Pauline over the fence wearing sunglasses at seven in the morning, pretending she can feel a migraine coming on. They can start again, her and the kids, properly this time. There’ll be no one to stop her chatting to other people, no one to stand over her while she plants vegetables in the garden, saying she’s an idiot, that it’s not worth it, that they’ll get eaten by pests. There’ll be no one to stop her dancing.
She gets up, switches off the light and returns to the table. Shame burns her face. Ted is barely cold and she’s planning her future. She is a bloody monster.
But surely Graham can settle now. And wanting that isn’t a bad thing, is it? Graham isn’t lost. He’s in shock, that’s all. Didn’t the detective chap say that, before? But there’s a gnawing mouth murmuring at her that there’s something else here, something darker. Where was he just now, leaving his little sister all on her own in the middle of the night? And why does she feel more than ever that her own son, who has been at her shoulder through all of it, is a stranger to her? Now, when they can all finally step forward, it’s as if a shutter has been pulled down, one she’ll never be able to pull back up.
