For Richer, For Poorer

by Kerry Wilkinson

  ‘Fancy a trip to London?’

  ‘Who’s paying?’

  ‘The great British taxpayer.’

  Archie screwed his face up. ‘On the one hand, I’ve got to put up with those soft southern jessies for a day; on the other it’s a day out of here. What have I got to do?’

  ‘Look threatening.’

  Archie cracked his knuckles. ‘For a minute there I thought it was going to be something difficult.’

  The tight red-brick terraces of Abbey Hey were so similar to the row that Sam lived on close to Whitworth Park that it was as if someone had decided the only houses that could be built in the city were long dreary rows that all looked identical. Cars were parked half on the pavement on either side, just about allowing vehicles to pass each other along the centre. Each house was kitted out with a satellite dish and burglar alarm, with a huddle of grey wheelie bins arranged at the end of every street. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a dustbin lorry chuntered.

  Jessica parked outside an off-licence which had long curls of barbed wire attached to its roof and the surrounding wall. Somebody had sprayed the words ‘Abbey Gay’ onto a black rubbish bin in yellow paint, under which someone had written in Tipp-Ex: ‘Youre mums gay’.

  Jessica wondered if this was the type of insult kids would be throwing at each other in ten years’ time. Or twenty? She could remember lads in her school calling everything ‘gay’ and that was twenty years ago. Sometimes insults lived forever.

  She checked the address and then walked along the road, away from the terraces, checking the house numbers. Given Jessica’s initial impression of the area, the side street that Rosemary had once lived on was a surprising change. Instead of grimy brickwork and graffiti, it was as if she’d wandered into a corner of green suburbia: low walls, leafy hedges, bay windows and patches of neatly trimmed lawn.

  Jessica eased the metal gate open and went along the pathway, doing what she was sure the officers had done the previous day: knocking on the front door.

  Although the street wasn’t too bad, the house itself looked awful. The lawn was overgrown, the hedges had begun to encroach onto the pavement and Jessica could see the pile of mail inside the hallway through the frosted glass of the window next to the door. She’d phoned the landlord but he said that if they did run into Rosemary then he wanted a word too, seeing as she hadn’t told him she was moving out. He claimed she owed three months’ rent and said the first he knew of it was when he’d come around to find no one living there. Given that he’d used the word ‘bitch’ three times in the same sentence, Jessica didn’t feel much sympathy for him.

  She peered through the front window but there were no signs of life, so she climbed the back gate and dropped into the rear garden, where things were even messier. An upturned wheelbarrow had grass and weeds growing around it and the hedge at the back was so badly overgrown that Jessica had no idea where the garden ended. She again peered through the window but it didn’t look as if anyone had lived there in months.

  Jessica unlocked the gate and let herself out and then knocked on the house next door. After three properties with no reply, she crossed the road, knocking on the first door of the terrace. A man wearing socks, loose cotton shorts and a white vest with a blanket of grey hairs poking out answered, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

  His lips barely moved. ‘What?’

  Jessica pointed towards the house. ‘Did you know the woman who lived there?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m asking.’

  ‘You DSS?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who are you then?’

  By the time Jessica had taken out her ID card, the door had been slammed in her face.

  And that was the politest it got.

  The woman at number forty-two told her to piss off, the five-year-old at number forty tried to kick her in the shins, and the bloke at thirty-eight said he wasn’t interested in buying anything at the door.

  Jessica walked back to her car, thinking she’d wasted as much time here as she had yesterday at Bootle Street. Apparently, it wasn’t just DCI Topper and DI Franks who had stupid ideas. She’d thought that at least one person might have known Rosemary, or perhaps had an idea of where she’d gone. On reflection, this didn’t seem the type of area where residents poked too much of a nose into other people’s business.

  Back at her car, there was a pair of children sitting on the wall next to the shop, reaching up and trying to touch the barbed wire. Neither of them could have been older than ten, both with shaved heads and wearing jeans and big coats. Jessica knew she should do something – they were clearly bunking off school – but sometimes, admittedly not often, she fancied the quiet life.

  As she unlocked her car, she heard one of the kids behind her: ‘Oi, Miss – you got a fiver?’

  For a moment, Jessica stopped, staring across the other side of the road, wishing the child hadn’t spoken. After a deep breath, she turned to see the boys had climbed off the wall and were now watching her from the ground.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  One of them was a little taller than the other and had his collar turned up. He looked every inch a skinhead in waiting, his accent like Archie’s but even stronger: ‘It was cancelled today.’

  ‘Which school do you go to?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  Jessica sighed. This really wasn’t what she’d signed up for all those years ago. ‘What can you remember?’

  He put his hand out. ‘I know what five quid looks like. Ten is even better.’

  ‘Why would I give you ten quid?’

  The taller kid nudged the other one with his elbow. Reluctantly, the second lad reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something round and silver. At first Jessica had no idea what it was but she felt the sluggish realisation hitting as she walked around to the rear of her car to see the circular gap in the middle of the boot.

  She turned around slowly. ‘Did you nick that from my car?’

  The taller one replied: ‘It fell off. Finders keepers – but we’re offering it back to you. We’re nice like that.’

  ‘Give it back.’

  He held his hand out again. ‘Tenner.’

  Jessica took a step towards them. ‘Give it back.’

  He laughed and put on a mocking voice. ‘Oooh, we’re really scared. How about you give us ten quid and a blow job?’

  Jessica stared at him, unsure how to reply. He couldn’t have been any older than ten. The shorter one glanced at his friend, clearly not wanting to be there. Jessica took another step forward, feeling far more nervous than she knew she should. Two days previously, she’d taken down someone twice her size, now she was feeling intimidated by two kids who weren’t even old enough to be at secondary school.

  ‘Just give it back.’

  ‘Fuck off, you slut. It’s twenty quid now, just for talking back.’

  Jessica took her ID out of her pocket. ‘I could just call my police mates down.’

  The boy shrugged without looking at it. ‘Yeah, you do that. We’re not even old enough. My dad would sue the arse off you – then he’d fuck you in it, you dirty bitch.’

  Jessica stopped herself again. If he wasn’t old enough, that meant he was nine at the most. She could see the fury in the boy’s face: his snarled top lip, half-squinting eye, the way his fists were balled. She knew it wasn’t all sweetness and light on some of the estates around here but it was a big jump from that to how these kids were behaving.

  Then she remembered watching through the window as her car blew up with Adam inside; the flames, the noise, the heat, the screaming, the sirens. His skin. His eyes.

  She shivered.

  Suddenly, this wasn’t just a pair of feral kids messing around with her; this was someone who’d touched her car. If they’d nicke
d the badge off the back, then what else had they done? If the tallest one could talk so confidently about the things his dad would to do her, then what else was he capable of?

  Jessica locked eyes with the taller boy, who was still sneering. ‘Don’t look at me like that, you fat slag.’

  She held her hand out. ‘Give it back.’

  ‘Twenty. Fucking. Quid.’

  In a flash, Jessica lunged forward, grabbing the taller boy by the throat. He might have an attitude but he was still a kid and weighed nothing. With little effort, she lifted him off the ground, hurling him towards the wall. He landed a metre short, but skidded backwards, eyes wide, more with surprise than pain. The second boy was standing dumbstruck as Jessica snatched the badge from his hand, stuffing it into her pocket.

  Slowly, the taller boy got to his feet, not taking his eyes from Jessica. ‘You’re going to fucking regret that, bitch.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m gonna sue you, your boss, your mum, your dad, fucking everyone.’

  Before Jessica could say or do anything particularly stupid, an Asian man in an apron emerged from the shop. He looked nervously from one boy to the other and then Jessica. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘That fat paedo bitch is trying to touch me up.’

  Jessica turned and walked back to her car without a word, a stream of abuse disappearing into the distance behind her.

  She weaved through the side streets back towards the main road before it finally hit her. She’d never cared about cars in the past but this was more than that. It didn’t matter what that mechanic said or what the British Aerospace man thought, someone had done something to her previous car and it had been meant to blow up with her in it.

  Adam.

  Jessica pulled over to the side of the road and closed her eyes. She could see his face, hear him laughing, picture his pasty, thin body in one of those stupid T-shirts he wore all the time. What would he think now? Beating up nine-year-olds was a new low. And for what? A stupid badge from the back of her car that she wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t called her back.

  Congratulations – she’d finally hit rock bottom.

  18

  Jessica leant back into the train seat and closed her eyes, even though Archie was still talking from the seat opposite. ‘Three hundred quid each?’

  She pushed her head into the slot between the seat and the wall, replying without opening her eyes: ‘You’re not paying.’

  ‘That’s not the point – three hundred quid for a train ticket from Manchester to London?’

  ‘It’s because it was peak time.’

  ‘Sod that, we could have flown for less.’

  ‘Yes but we’d spend forty-five minutes trying to check in while some bored woman looked at us like we’d just insulted her mum. Then you get the security guards feeling you up. I don’t know about you but that’s really not my thing.’

  ‘Depends on the security guard, I suppose. If there’s any tidy twenty-somethings, I’d be up for it.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s how all the successful relationships start – being groped at an airport. It’d give a good story for the wedding breakfast anyway. But that’s not even the worst part – what about the food at an airport, or on a plane? It’s like eating your own feet.’

  ‘Have you ever tried eating your own feet?’

  ‘When I was in primary school, this Jamie Lambert kid stole my shoes and socks and wouldn’t give them back until I’d put my big toe in my mouth.’

  ‘You’re that flexible?’

  Through her closed eyelids, Jessica could sense Archie’s eyes popping out of his head. She let him have his fantasy for a few seconds and then crushed it. ‘I was only about seven. I can barely touch my own toes now.’

  ‘Oh. Anyway, three hundred quid each – we could’ve got a taxi for less than that. I could’ve got my mate to drive us down and back for two hundred tops. We could—’

  ‘Can you let me sleep?’

  ‘What am I going to do for two and a bit hours?’

  ‘Read? Pontificate? Think long and hard about man’s inhumanity to man? I don’t care.’

  ‘Pfft – some mate you are.’

  Some clown on the tracks at Watford, something about leaves, a soggy sandwich and three and a half hours later the train rolled into Euston. By then, Archie was practically climbing the walls; his phone was almost out of battery, his list of ways they could’ve got to London for less than a combined six hundred pounds largely exhausted. Although hiring a pair of ostriches and pointing them in the right direction was something that Jessica would have certainly been up for.

  Jessica checked the maps in the train station, trying to figure out the best way to get to Hackney. She turned to Archie, who was flicking up the collar on his coat and sniffing the air suspiciously. ‘Aren’t you going to help?’ she asked.

  ‘Help what?’

  ‘I don’t know where we’re going.’

  ‘So let’s get a taxi.’

  ‘I thought you were against spending money unnecessarily?’

  ‘To be honest, I feel a bit dirty being this far south. It’s like cheating on your missus, innit?’

  Jessica leant closer, wondering if she’d heard correctly. ‘It’s not like that at all.’

  He shook his head, pushing his top lip out. ‘Nah, not for me, this place. Let’s not arse about – don’t wanna spend any longer here than I have to.’

  ‘You come from Manchester!’

  He rocked his shoulders forward as if he had a nervous tic. ‘Aye, what’s your point?’

  Jessica shook her head. ‘Nothing – fine, we’ll get a taxi.’

  Their journey across London was punctuated by the driver who couldn’t stop talking about Tottenham, and Archie who was seemingly up for a ruck about anything. It ended with him slamming the door and telling the driver to ‘come back when you’ve got as many titles as us, pal’.

  He turned to Jessica, shaking his head and poking a thumb towards the departing vehicle. ‘Can you believe that guy?’

  ‘I’m just wondering how my life has come to sitting in the back of a cab listening to two blokes argue about football.’

  ‘It’s not my fault – he got my hackles up when he started talking about that ref at Old Trafford, I mean—’

  ‘All right, United are better than Tottenham – happy? Now shut up and let me do the talking.’

  Richard Froggatt wasn’t exactly how Jessica would have imagined someone who’d done almost four years in prison for robbery and was still on probation. Especially given her encounter the previous day, she’d been expecting somebody with strong, battle-hardened skin, scars, short hair and tattoos. Instead, Froggatt was thin with shoulder-length hair, glasses which he wore on a chain around his neck, and a blazer with matching blue cord trousers. He welcomed Jessica and Archie into his flat and disappeared off to put the kettle on as Archie poked through the bookcases in his living room.

  ‘London type,’ he said dismissively.

  Jessica sat in an armchair that had a good view of the street. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Archie pulled a thick book off the shelf. ‘Look at what he’s reading; all people banging on about their feelings. Typical southern sort.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this. You’re actually offended that he’s chosen to live here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, why would you?’

  ‘Because the sun comes out down here.’

  Archie put the book back and turned to face her. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake – can we stop doing this every time I point out that London isn’t the hole you think it is and Manchester isn’t all ambrosia and light either. They both have their good sides and they both have their bad sides. Let’s leave it at that.’

  Archie straightened his shirt. ‘Aye, let’s leave it at that. For now.’

  Jessica knew Archie was proud of his area but this was ridiculous. She’d jo
ked that he’d never left the place but the more she thought about it, the more she realised he never told stories about where he’d been on holiday. Almost every experience involved ‘being out in town’, while the only time he mentioned other places in the UK was when he talked about the away grounds he’d visited with Manchester United. Until she’d taken the plunge and moved into a residential home a little outside of the city, Jessica’s mother had been the same, spending most of her life in the same village. With Archie, it wasn’t just familiarity, it was that he was genuinely baffled why anyone would choose to live elsewhere if Manchester was an option. She’d thought he had enough of an issue with people from Liverpool but that was nothing compared to his contempt for those who lived in the south.

  ‘Have you ever been to London?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘We beat Palace down here a few years ago – plus I’ve been to QPR.’

  ‘Have you ever been down for a reason other than football?’

  He shrugged. ‘Why would I?’

  Jessica didn’t have a reply but Froggatt returned shortly afterwards with a tray, teapot, three cups and six bourbon biscuits.

  He might have robbed a few houses but Richard Froggatt sure knew how to entertain.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to see us, Mr Froggatt,’ Jessica said, introducing herself and Archie.

  He sipped his tea one minuscule slurp at a time. ‘Not a problem, though you do realise I’m completely reformed now?’

  They all say that.

  ‘Obviously; I understand the book is going well?’

  ‘Oh, marvellously, yes. It’s a big thing now, isn’t it? Write a book when you get out of prison. I wrote every word of mine – no ghostwriter needed.’

  He laughed at what Jessica wasn’t sure was a joke. She didn’t smile either way. ‘Well, I suppose everyone’s got a book deal nowadays. Anyway, you’ve done really well for the victims not to come after you with a civil case considering it could be seen as profiting from a crime.’

  Froggatt frowned but Jessica remembered she was actually here to get information from him, not wind him up, so she moved on quickly. ‘I’ll be honest; I’ve not had time to read your book all the way through but I have gone through a few passages and I was particularly interested in the fact that you gave away some of the money you stole.’