by Sarah Hilary
‘I need to ask you about what happened earlier today, but before that too … With Terry, and Beth.’
‘Okay.’
’Why were you living with them, perhaps we can start there, instead of at home?’
‘Home was a head-fuck. Locks, alarms. I didn’t think it’d be worse with them.’
‘With Beth and Terry.’
Clancy nodded.
‘How was it worse?’
‘At least at home I could see the fucking locks.’
The appropriate adult shifted in silence, as if he disapproved of the bad language.
Clancy shot him a look of contempt.
‘Was Terry a friend of the family? Is that why you went with him?’
‘He wasn’t a friend. My lot don’t do friends. They do associates. People who can be counted on in an emergency. Terry was one of those. Reliable. He heard about me running off, and he offered to let me bunk down at his place for a couple of nights. I thought that was okay. I mean, he’s not a pervert or anything, and it was raining a lot back then. I didn’t mind the streets, but I hated the rain. So I went with him. It was okay for a bit. Then he gave me my own room, made a big deal out of it. I wouldn’t have stayed except the little kids liked having me there. Later … I wanted to be sure they were safe.’
‘Carmen and Tommy.’
He nodded. ‘I’d have been better off on the streets.’
He put his hands together, wedged them between his knees. ‘I knew this girl, Josie. She ran away from home, ended up on the streets. I saw her this one time, living rough, eating junk from bins, even the stuff they spray with dye to stop people eating it. She was better off than I was in that place.’
He’d had his own room with the Doyles, a warm bed, decent food. He would rather have eaten ruined food from bins, on the street.
‘I should’ve run as soon as I saw the head-fuck.’ He hugged his hands with his knees, all elbows, spiky as a cactus.
He reminded Marnie of someone she’d not seen in a long time: the girl who’d let Adam Fletcher take over her life.
‘Why did you take Carmen and Tommy to Doug Cole’s house?’
‘I could see where it was headed. He was getting worse. She couldn’t cope.’
‘But why Cole’s house, why take them there? Why leave them alone?’
‘Because it’s safe there. I thought they could play with the toys, it’d keep them happy. He’s okay. He’s a weirdo, but he’s okay.’ His shoulders shrugged. There was something else under the pretence of not caring. Bewilderment.
‘You took Esther’s pills and hid them in your room. Why did you do that?’
Clancy wiped his nose with his hand. ‘Dunno. I wanted something of theirs.’ He put his chin up, daring her to dispute what he said next. ‘I thought I could sell them.’
His first answer sounded more like the truth: I wanted something of theirs. Like Noah, taking his mother’s medication. Clancy wanted Marnie to think he was a tough nut. Empathy made her shiver. ‘You were excluded from a couple of schools. What happened?’
He bit his lips together. ‘The usual … I got a ton of crap because I didn’t have any mates, because I was a loser, and because I got on okay with the little kids and that was weird.’
He raised his chin again. ‘Little kids think I’m a laugh, and they trust me. But that’s weird, apparently. That’s perverted. So yeah. I got kicked out because I punched some kid in my year for saying shit about me.’ He clenched his fist and looked at it.
Marnie wondered how she’d ever imagined a likeness, however fleeting, between this angry boy and Stephen Keele. Clancy wore his anger as armour. On the surface, even at fourteen years old, Stephen was cold. All his rage driven down, hidden away. The only way to understand him, if that was what she wanted to do, was by sticking her hand in that cold fire of hate and misery and memory, for however long it took.
‘What happened earlier today, with Terry?’
‘He was freaking out. Ever since you moved us out of that house …’ Clancy’s eyes went to the window, then to the wall. Tracking a line of shadow, smaller now, knotting his body tighter against the questions. ‘He’s off his head. You saw him. You know.’
‘I know … some of it. You took the children to Mr Cole’s house because you were scared of what Terry might do. Is that right?’
‘He was talking about taking us all somewhere safe. It was doing our heads in, not just me. She was stressing out. Carmi and Tommy … I just wanted to stop him doing anything worse.’
‘Why didn’t you stay with them, in Mr Cole’s house?’
‘I wanted a burger,’ he answered quickly; too quickly. As if he’d prepared the reply. ‘There was nothing decent to eat in the house. I got some bananas for the kids, but I was hungry. I wanted a burger.’ Nicotine stains, faded, on his fingers.
‘You didn’t want to smoke in the house, with the children?’
Clancy flushed, but he nodded.
She would warn him, later, about the two women on the estate who’d been feeding him cigarettes: Adam’s unofficial spies.
‘Then what happened?’
‘Then it all kicked off.’ Clancy curled smaller in the chair. ‘He came home. I saw his car. I couldn’t go back then, could I? Your lot were everywhere. So I ran.’
‘To the Isle of Dogs?’
‘Not then. Later. When he came after me.’ He lifted his head quickly. ‘He had a guy in the boot of his car. In the fucking boot. Did you know that?’
‘Yes. He got out. He’s okay.’ She paused. ‘How did Terry know where to find you?’
‘Merrick,’ Clancy said through clenched teeth.
‘Ian Merrick? How did Merrick know where you were?’
‘He found me. I was hiding on one of his sites. I knew all about the stuff he was into, because my dad was part of it. Buried. All that shit … That’s how they met. They were all going on about this new place Merrick had bought, where they used to teach kids how to climb. It sounded pretty cool. Safe. I knew where it was, knew it’d be dry …’ He looked at his hands. ‘Didn’t think the fucker would call him, did I?’
‘Merrick called Terry?’
‘Told him I was trespassing. Said he should call the police. He backed down, though. Next thing I know, he’s there.’
‘In the man-made cave. That’s where you went?’
Clancy nodded. ‘Where you found Merrick.’ He put a hand to his mouth, chewing at his thumbnail. ‘You found Merrick, right?’
‘Yes, we did. Can you tell me what happened? Between Merrick and Terry?’
‘He stuck up for me.’ Clancy rubbed at his face in confusion.
‘Terry?’
‘Yeah … Merrick was bitching about what a fuck-up I was, how everyone said so, even my mum and dad. Terry told him to shut up. They were yelling at each other. Merrick was coming out with some crap about Terry being a soft touch, a bleeding heart; said he only took me in to fill the hole in his life … That’s when he said he was going to show me how men solved problems.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Terry. Matt. Whatever the fuck he’s called.’ Clancy shifted in his seat. ‘That woman from the tunnel … she killed those kids.’ He wore the knowledge, everything he’d witnessed in the tunnels, like a stain on his skin. ‘His kids.’
‘She was very ill,’ Marnie said. ‘It’s called post-partum psychosis …’
‘I know. She had pills for it, but she stopped taking them. She should’ve kept taking the pills.’ He chewed his nail, sounding like an adult, looking like a child. ‘It fucked him up. He blamed Merrick for the bunker, said Merrick must’ve known.’
‘What did Merrick say?’
‘He said he didn’t know. He kept saying it. Like I kept saying I didn’t know where Carmi and Tommy were.’ He sucked blood from the cuticle he’d torn with his teeth. ‘That’s when he hit Merrick, with the torch. I thought he’d killed him. But he said he was breathing, he checked. He tied his wrists with a coat hanger.’
Clancy cringed. ‘He was always going on about the fucking coat hanger, yeah? It came with my uniform, I didn’t want it. But it freaked him out. He said you could kill someone with it. I mean, as if. But maybe he meant he could kill someone.’
He stopped, looking lost for a second. ‘I thought he was going to do it. Kill Merrick. Put the hanger through his eye, into his brain. I saw that once, on a DVD. He looked like he’d do it. I got scared. He was always angry when I was scared. Not angry like most people. He never shouted. He never hit stuff. He just … went quiet.’ Clancy rubbed at his eyes. ‘He had this voice, when he was mad. Very quiet, very fuck-you. He said we were going somewhere we’d be safe. He wanted to talk to me, he said, make me see what I’d done. I thought he meant Carmi and Tommy. I told him I didn’t know where they were. I was too scared to tell him. He was off his head.’
‘So you went with him, to the Isle of Dogs?’
Clancy nodded. ‘I knew about the tunnels. My dad was all over that. But I didn’t want to go down there. I managed to lose him on the site. And you. I tried to get you out of the way, like Carmi and Tommy. I didn’t know what else to do. I had to go down into the tunnels; there wasn’t anywhere else to hide.’
‘And Terry came after you.’
‘Yeah. You saw. He’d have killed me, and maybe you too, if she hadn’t come.’
He started chewing his thumb again. ‘That’s it. That’s everything that happened.’
He looked like a child. At fourteen, Stephen Keele hadn’t looked like a child. But he’d been brought up by parents like the Brands, who believed the world was a dangerous place where you had to prepare for the worst.
‘Tell me about your mum and dad. You’ve said you don’t want to go home. Why?’
Clancy was quiet for a bit, then he said, ‘Josie, my mate, she told me why she ran. Her dad was having an affair, only she called it playing away from home. She said she didn’t feel safe knowing what he was up to.’
‘Like you,’ Marnie hazarded. ‘You didn’t feel safe at home.’
Another laugh, too old to be coming out of a kid this young. She’d never heard Stephen laugh, but plenty of times he’d sounded older than his years. Cynical, because he’d been taught to expect the worst? The way Clancy had been taught.
‘They’re safe. If that’s what you’re worried about. That house is the safest place on the planet. It’s a fucking fortress, thanks to Merrick. Nobody’s going in or out.’
‘But you didn’t feel safe there. Like Josie didn’t feel safe.’
‘Not like Josie.’ He blinked, looking away. ‘There’s no playing away from home in that place. Fuck that, there’s no away from home. That place is everything. Mum and Dad’s perfect world. “Everything you need’s here.” That was their favourite line. Food, water … Like the whole universe is in that house and you’d better fucking like it. You’d better not complain it’s making you sick being stuck in there day in, day out. You’ll take your turn with the chores and laugh at their jokes and pretend to be part of their perfect fucking nuclear family, because if you don’t? If you don’t …’ he was crying now, ‘they’ll wipe you out.’
Wiped out. Was that how Stephen had felt when he came to their house?
‘They’ll look right through you,’ Clancy said, ‘like you’re not there. Like you were never there in the first place. Like you’re nothing. I got sick of being nothing. No one can live like that. You couldn’t.’
‘I couldn’t,’ she agreed.
I did it for you.
Was that what Stephen had meant? Did he think he was saving her from a fate like the one Clancy was describing? Places of exile …
I did it for you.
Clancy wiped his nose again. ‘Terry gave me grief about growing up, what it meant to be a man, but at least he never did that, never made me feel like nothing. You’d better not be thinking about sending me back to them, because I’ll run. I’ll fucking run.’
He looked at Marnie, eyes blazing. ‘You’d run too. If it was you … No matter how much stuff they gave you, if you had to live like that? You’d run too.’
45
Connie Pryce wore the rain on her face like a veil.
Debbie said it was only right and proper that it rained. Funerals needed rain, she said, as if the earth was going to put up flowers. Perhaps it was; perhaps it would.
Connie’s coat was fire-engine red, the boys’ favourite, she said. Ron wore a black nylon mac over his suit. Fran Lennox looked frozen, wrapped in a sheepskin jacket. Everyone was in black, except Connie, and Marnie. Maybe she should have replaced one of the black suits she threw out after her parents’ funeral, but with Connie in her red coat it didn’t matter that Marnie wore grey. She had no trouble crying at this funeral. No one did.
The rain meant they all could weep, even the men.
Ron had come up to Marnie before the service. ‘I was wrong.’ He was gruff, apologetic. ‘When I called this a cold case, said we couldn’t do anything that mattered. We did. The boys are with their sister now, and their family has a place to come, to be with them. You were right. I just wanted to say that.’
Marnie had nodded, digging up a smile before the tears came.
Ed held her hand throughout. She was grateful for his body heat, hadn’t been able to get warm since coming out of the tunnels.
Adam was at the service, staying at the back of the church. When they filed out into the rain, he was standing under a tree, smoking, no one to tell him it was a nasty habit, to complain about the stink in his clothes. Marnie caught a glimpse of the child, Tia, crinkling her nose against the smell, refusing to hug him until he’d washed. ‘Daddy!’
Matt Reid was at the service with a minder; he’d volunteered for psychiatric treatment. The CPS was still deciding whether to charge him, and with what. Marnie hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Tim Welland was doing his best to talk the CPS down. Ed had offered himself as a witness in Matt’s defence.
The rain had wiped out Matt’s face. Beth held his arm, staying close. Her sister was taking care of Carmen and Tommy, but there was hope for his new family.
Marnie had to believe that.
Esther had stayed away. For Matt’s sake, she’d said.
She didn’t believe he would ever forgive her, or even that he should, but Marnie was holding on to the memory of his remorse in the tunnel, his realisation of the harm he’d done unthinkingly to Clancy, to a child in his care. He’d known a little of the darkness that had consumed Esther.
Marnie hoped he could forgive Esther, and himself, enough to find peace.
Ed pressed warmth into her hand. ‘My place or yours?’
She smiled at him, weak with gratitude. ‘Yours. Please.’
46
Sol was sleeping on the sofa when Noah got home, his face squashed by the pillow, profile smudged and soft as a child’s. Maybe Dan was right and this was Sol’s safe place now.
Noah was glad. If that was the case … he was glad.
He stood and watched Sol for a long time, grateful for the end of the day, and the end of this case. Glad of the fact that his family wasn’t broken, that his brother had come here when he needed help. Clancy Brand had been forced to run to strangers. Sol had run to Noah. He still didn’t know why, what Sol was hiding from, but perhaps it didn’t matter.
Sol cracked an eye open. ‘S’up, bro?’
‘Nothing … Go back to sleep.’
‘I was gonna cook.’ Sol swung his bare feet to the floor. ‘Dan said you had rice and shit … I do a mean risotto.’
‘All right. Let’s cook. But let’s do it at Mum’s. She could use a decent meal.’
Sol pulled a face. ‘For real?’ Then he grinned. ‘You’re doing the washing-up.’
‘Fine. I’m doing the washing-up.’
Sol reached for his bag, but Noah shook his head. ‘Stay, for a while. Or longer, if you’d like.’
‘You’re not kicking me out?’
‘I’m not kicking you out,’ Noah said. �
�You’re my brother. Stay as long as you want.’
47
St Thomas’s Hospital, London
Rain wipes the mirror from my window, washing my reflection clean.
I want to say, ‘It’s over,’ but I can’t.
Not quite. Not yet.
The truth takes up too much room in my mouth and its taste is strange, leaving splinters between my teeth, under my tongue.
I’m not Alison any longer.
I’m more, and less, than that.
Esther …
I’m trying to be Esther again.
The way she was before.
Matt’s wife, the mother of his children, loved and loving.
The boys are with Louisa now. Matt and Connie can visit whenever they want. If I stick with the pills, they say that I can visit too.
One day.
The rain won’t stop, but it’s soft, bringing the green scent of leaves through the glass, washing London clean.
I sit and watch it coming down, and I think of Matt standing by their graves, with the peace of the rain on his face.
Fred and Archie and Louisa and Matt.
All together. At last.
Author’s Note
No Other Darkness is a work of fiction, but I found the following to be particularly relevant and/or inspirational when I was writing and later editing the book:
David Emson’s experience of PPP which appeared in an article by Lois Rogers, published in the Sunday Times, 13 January 2013
The Joe Bingley Memorial Foundation, a charity which aims to help women and their families by raising awareness and providing help and information about postnatal depression: www.joebingleymemorialfoundation.org.uk
Derelict London by Paul Talling, published by Random House, April 2008 (978-1-9052-1143-2)
Acknowledgements
For helping me to navigate the choppy ‘second novel’ seas, I’m indebted to my terrific agent, Jane Gregory, and her team. For her nerves of steel, I thank my brilliant editor, Vicki Mellor. Special thanks to Elizabeth Masters and Emily Griffin at Headline, and Emily Murdock Baker at Penguin.
For everything else, I thank my family. I could never have written a book about broken families had I not come from such a safe and happy one. The same goes for my friends, especially Anna, custodian of my sanity and Keeper of the Gin.
