A Life Without You

by Shari Low

  ‘Evening m’am, could you step out of the car please?’

  The realisation hit me like a slap on the face.

  I climbed out, and over the shoulder of a cop that looked about twelve and a half, I saw a light go on in the lounge of that bastard’s house. He’d called the police on me? My overriding emotion flipped straight from dread to seething rage.

  ‘Can I ask what you’re doing here?’ the officer said.

  ‘I’m staring at the house of the scum that killed my daughter.’

  That clearly took him by surprise, and his partner, and older man who’d been standing next to the bonnet of their car, observing, stepped forward.

  ‘Ma’am, can I ask your name?’

  ‘Val Murray.’

  ‘And your daughter?’

  ‘Dee Harper.’

  Instant recognition. The older cop gave the younger one a subtle nod and then stepped forward to take over.

  ‘I remember what happened to your daughter. I’m very sorry. Darren Wilkie was charged with it?’ It was a question, but he already knew the answer.

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded. It didn’t surprise me that they knew about Wilkie and his crimes. For all Glasgow was a big city, I knew Dee’s death had been a talking point and it stood to reason that the cops who were responsible for Wilkie’s area knew what he’d done.

  ‘Mrs Murray, I’m going to have to ask you to step into the car with us. A complaint has been made that your vehicle has been seen here on several occasions. I do apologise, but we will have to fill out the necessary paperwork.’ I could see the big cop was mortified at having to take this further. Just doing his job. I understood. ‘We’ll make it as quick as possible and there will be no need to go down to the station,’ he added when I didn’t move.

  Even in my raging state, I could hear there was a message of compassion in his voice. We know this doesn’t seem fair. Just come with us and we’ll make it as painless as possible.

  I didn’t care. I’d never had so much as a parking ticket or speeding fine in my life, and nothing could be as sore or as devastating as what had already happened. I thought about Don, about Mark, and I knew they’d be beside themselves, probably even furious with me, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t about them, it was about Dee.

  I was about to follow them when I saw a shadow crossing the road towards us, a figure in black. I tensed, the police officer sensed it and turned around to see what was behind him, his arm automatically going across me to protect me.

  For a split second I thought it was Darren Wilkie, but no. Too small. Too slight.

  When she reached us, her eyes took me in and immediately widened.

  ‘I know you. You’ve been in the café.’

  I said nothing, just met her stare. Her cheeks were even more sunken than the last time I saw her, her eyes sitting on top of black circles.

  ‘You’re the one that’s been sitting out here?’ she asked.

  I didn’t flinch. The cop stepped in to clarify, and it was obvious this woman was known to him. ‘Mrs. Wilkie, this is Mrs. Murray.’

  A blank look. She had no idea who I was. I decided to help her out.

  ‘I’m Dee Harper’s mother. That animal of a son of yours killed my daughter. So go on, do your worst. Have me arrested. It’ll be nothing worse than what your family has done to us already.’

  Her head recoiled like I’d slapped her and she was stunned speechless.

  ‘We’re just going to have a chat with Mrs Murray in our car and we’ll take care of this. Why don’t you go on back inside.’

  My thoughts exactly. Go crawling back under whatever rock you came from.

  ‘No,’ she said. It was almost a whisper, until she found a stronger voice to continue. ‘Can we just forget I called and let this go, Bob?’ she asked, addressing the older officer. I don’t know if I was more surprised that she knew his name or that she didn’t want them to take me away.

  After a pause for thought, he agreed. ‘Aye. I think that would be the best all round, Margo,’ he said, before turning to me. ‘Mrs Murray, if you’d like to go on home now, we’ll take this from here.’

  His relief was obvious. Move along. Nothing to see here. But then she spoke again, this time to me. ‘Can I talk to you? Properly. Not here,’ she said, shocking me again. What did I have to say to her? There were a few home truths that I could deliver and my adrenalin was still pumping, so I heard myself agreeing.

  ‘OK, but I’m not coming in there,’ I spat. Hell would freeze over before I’d step foot in that evil bastard’s house.

  ‘Your car?’ she suggested. I nodded and she turned to the police officers. ‘Thanks Bob,’ she said, her tone grateful, but it was obvious she was asking him to go now.

  ‘We’ll be in the area for the next hour or so,’ he said. ‘If either of you have any problems, just call 101. Mrs Murray, I’m sorry about your daughter.’ With that, he gestured to his younger partner and they climbed back into their car and drove off.

  Only when I was back in the driver’s seat did I realise that my whole body was shaking.

  The criminal’s mother walked around the bonnet and got in the other side and for a few moments neither of us spoke.

  ‘I called the police because I thought you were a drug dealer,’ she finally said.

  ‘That’s rich,’ I spat, still staring forward, not trusting myself to look at her, disgusted at the thought of having her in my car, sitting in a seat that Dee had sat in many times. The thought made me want to retch.

  ‘I know. Darren owes money to half of the pond life in this city,’ she said, ‘and they turn up here looking for it. My house has been attacked so many times we’ve got the local station on speed dial. They don’t even realise he’s away.’

  ‘Away where?’

  ‘Inside. Been in Barlinnie for months. Nothing to do with what happened to your daughter. Drugs this time. Again. He’s been dealing for years. Using for longer. If it’s not the dealers that are raiding us, it’s him looking for money for more stuff.’

  I was incredulous that she was saying all this to me. This wasn’t what I’d expected at all. I thought she’d be just like him, protecting him, but the disgust was in every word she spoke.

  ‘Mrs Murray, there’s nothing I can say that will make what happened to your daughter any less awful, but I’m so sorry. I really am. You must hate us and I don’t blame you. There’s nothing I can say to defend him because, the truth is, Darren didn’t turn out right. His whole life he’s been in one lot of trouble or another, right from when he was a boy. Special schools. Borstal. Care. Prison more times than I can remember. This is the only home he’s ever had, but he’s not been welcome here for a long time. There’s a badness in him and that’s the honest truth. We’ve tried everything to turn him around, but nothing worked. I could sit here all day long and tell you about the stuff that he’s done to our family, to me, to my husband, God rest his soul, but I don’t want you to think for a minute that I’m trying to share your pain. None of our other weans turned out like him. They’re ashamed. We all are. I’m sorry for everything he’s taken from you.’

  She was suddenly racked by a hacking, crippling cough.

  ‘Lung cancer,’ she said. ‘Five decades of fags. I’m not saying that for sympathy, just so you know.’

  That explained the change from the burgundy dyed bob to the short grey crop.

  Another coughing fit. ‘The chemo is a bastard of a thing,’ she croaked, trying to recover.

  I’d have to have been made of stone not to have felt for her. Dear God, what a life. I had wished all sorts on Wilkie and his family over the last year, but not like this, not now, not on a mother who had so obviously been hammered by life.

  Neither of us said anything for a while, until I finally found my voice. ‘Our Dee was something special,’ I told her. ‘A big personality. She had a husband. Friends. A career. It’s all gone. I’ll never see her grow old and I’ll never hold her children.’ I was choking the words out, ea
ch one of them caught on a rock of grief that was rammed in my throat. ‘He took that away from her. From all of us. I’ve never hated anyone more than I hate him.’

  Her breathing was heavy and I saw that the windows were steaming up, creating a cocoon against the outside world.

  ‘So you’ve been coming here to wait for him?’ she asked. ‘Because I’ve seen your car here a few times. That’s why I called the police.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I really don’t know what I’d have done if I’d seen him. I haven’t slept a night since Dee was killed so I just drive. Here was one of the places I’d end up. And the café.’

  ‘How did you know I worked there?’ she asked.

  ‘Was driving past here one night and I saw you leave and I followed you.’ There was no point fudging the truth. ‘None of this makes sense, I know that. Since the minute he got in that car and turned the engine on, nothing has made sense.’ The fact that I was sitting here, as the sun was starting to come up, speaking to his mother, was testimony to that.

  ‘He’s going to be inside until the trial,’ she said, ‘and then for God knows how long. He deserves everything he gets – and it breaks my heart to say that about one of my own but it’s true. I came to terms with that a long time ago. I understand you hating us. If this happened to one of my girls I’d feel the same.’

  She had girls. I’d never given any other members of the family a thought, focusing only on her son. She buckled with another barking cough.

  ‘The police told us he’s pleading not guilty,’ I said. ‘So we’ll need to sit through every detail of that day, relive it all, because he’s not man enough to admit it. Has he not caused us enough pain? But I’ll be there, because I want to see him in court and I want him to suffer.’

  She nodded, everything about her defeated. ‘That’s fair enough. I’d do the same.’ As she put her hand on the door lever, she paused. ‘Just don’t think that we support him and that my family are defending his actions because we’re not. It’s a sorry thing to say, but he was dead to us a long time ago.’

  Her frail hand pulled on the door lever, and instinctively I reached out and touched her arm.

  ‘I’m glad we spoke,’ I told her, meaning it, all the anger gone now. ‘I won’t be back or bother you again.’

  The sadness in her face told me that she already knew that.

  I drove home, numb, replaying every line of the conversation in my head, one thought rising above the others – in some ways, her sentence was worse than mine. I’d lost Dee, but I had the comfort and pride of knowing that she was a good and decent person, that she never did harm, she loved and was loved back. His mother had also lost a son, for he was gone in almost every sense, but all he had left behind was a broken heart and shame.

  It was proper daylight when I pulled into the car park at the end of our block, then walked slowly up to our door, and let myself in.

  Don, his face purple, flew out of the kitchen and stopped dead when he saw me, then threw his arms around me like I’d come back from the dead. ‘Jesus Christ, Val, where have you been? Me and Mark have been up half the night. We were just about to phone the police.’

  His hug was so tight, his emotion so raw, that for the first time in a long, long, time, it felt good to have him hold me.

  ‘It’s a long story, Don. Come in and put the kettle on and I’ll tell you about it.’

  Chapter 37

  Jen

  I hadn’t given it much thought when Mark texted to say he’d be in late. If anything I was grateful for the reprieve from facing him again. I was tired, I was irritable and I could quite happily have shut up shop and not come in today. I’d done a fair amount of thinking yesterday. When I arrived back from Barcelona I’d jumped in a cab and headed back to my own house. I’d told Luke it was because the estate agent was bringing a viewer to see it first thing this morning and I needed to get it sorted out. It wasn’t a complete lie. The estate agent was bringing a viewer this morning but he was showing them round because I couldn’t face it. That aside, I’d made the decision on the way home from Barcelona that I was going to move back in until the house was sold. It made sense to be there to have it spick and span before each viewing. At least, that’s what I told myself. The truth was, it was hard to be around Luke with Dee’s betrayal at the very front of my mind, constantly torn over whether or not to tell him. He had offered to come help, but I’d refused, saying that I was feeling crap, so would rather just get it ready and then catch up on sleep. Some hope. I spent half the night thinking that he might show up anyway, but thankfully he didn’t. And yes, I knew that made me a rubbish friend, but I just didn’t have it in me to console him and sympathise with the fact that he was feeling shit about himself. I had enough of my own crap to deal with at the moment and aaaaargh! I was so bloody angry. I was feeling like the most put-upon, manipulated idiot that ever existed. Dee was a serial shagger, Pete was a traitorous adulterer and Luke was out getting his rocks off. Why had he done it? And why did I care? It was always going to happen eventually but I think I’d slipped into a comfort zone where it was him and I against the world and now he’d just stepped out of it and left me alone. I didn’t need any of this. None of it. And frankly I was pissed off with the world.

  I made my way into the shop an hour early so I could make sure everything was restocked and in order after my weekend away. Josie wandered in right behind me, a vaper hanging from her bottom lip. It was her latest attempt to quit the cigs. I’d completely forgotten she was coming in this morning because she’d missed her Saturday night shift. Something to do with a Book Club field trip involving Tom Jones.

  I immediately resolved to act like nothing was wrong, otherwise I knew I’d get the third-degree interrogation.

  ‘You look like someone stole your knickers off the line,’ she observed archly, before going for a more direct, ‘What’s up?’

  I obviously needed to do more work on my ‘nothing’s wrong’ face. ‘I’m fine. Just had a rough weekend.’ Understatement of the year.

  ‘Thought you were in Barcelona?’ she asked, clearly confused about my misery.

  ‘I was. It’s a long story Josie, and unless you want to hear me wail, you’re better off skipping right over it.’

  She put her handbag on the desk, pulled up Dee’s chair and looked at me expectantly. ‘I don’t do skipping,’ she announced.

  The dam broke. I should have kept everyone’s confidences and kept the lies covered up, but I was just so damn weary that I told her everything. Dee’s affair. Luke’s one-night stand. Pete’s cold indifference and new relationship. How devastated I felt about every single bit of it. I had to tell someone and if it was going to be anyone, Josie was the best person for the job. There was nothing she couldn’t cope with, nothing would shock her and, more importantly, she loved every one of us. Except Pete. That love-horse had long since bolted.

  After twenty minutes, she tossed aside the vaper and fished a packet of cigarettes out of her bag. After another ten, she pulled the chair over to the back wall, climbed up on it, opened the window that was closer to the ceiling than the floor, and leaned out so she could smoke. The woman was closing in on seventy and she was the most irresponsible person in any room.

  She was also the best listener. All the while, she never commented, only asked questions for clarification.

  ‘Och, that lass,’ she said, when I finished the whole saga about Dee. ‘She never could content herself. Val would be heartbroken if she knew.’

  ‘I’ll never tell her, Josie, and I know you won’t either. You’re the only person I’ve told.’

  I’d thought about telling Val, thought about whether I had any right to keep such an important part of Dee’s life from her, but in the end I knew I couldn’t. It would break her heart all over again, tarnish her daughter’s memory. She could never know. This was my, and now Josie’s, secret to hold.

  ‘That’s a smart decision, my love. It’s a big secret to keep but you’
re right to do it. What about Luke? Are you going to tell him?’ she asked, as she closed the window, climbed down and then flicked on the kettle.

  I’d thought about this almost constantly over the last twenty-four hours – at least, when I wasn’t thinking about him sleeping with Callie – and I’d changed my mind every time.

  ‘I don’t know. On the one hand, I don’t want to shade his memory of Dee and for him to doubt how much she loved him, because even although she did this, I know he was the love of her life.’

  Josie nodded sagely.

  ‘But on the other hand, what if he ever finds out and he realises I didn’t tell him? He’d never forgive me. We don’t keep things from each other.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ she asked. We always joked about Josie’s right eyebrow raise of cynicism, but I didn’t understand why she was deploying it in my direction. It took me a moment to get back on track.

  ‘Yeah, of course. Why would you say that?’

  ‘I know you’re staying there.’

  Ah. I was wondering when that would come up. ‘He told me you knew,’ I confessed. ‘But I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to talk about it while Val didn’t know. I just felt weird in case she thought I was stepping into Dee’s life. We just… I don’t know how to explain it, Josie, but we were both lonely living on our own and it just helped us get through it when we had each other for company. God, it’s all so complicated. I’ve moved out now anyway.’

  She had the window open again and was standing back up on the chair, arm dangling out with another cig. It was a blessing we were on the ground floor otherwise there would be a serious risk to life, limb and lungs.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because… if he’s going to be seeing Callie, I don’t want to get in the way. Everyone needs to move on sometime.’

  ‘And there it is,’ she declared, but there was no triumph in her voice. ‘You’re lying to yourself and the two of you are lying to each other.’

  My head was starting to really, really hurt again. ‘Josie, what are you on about?’