by Jessie Keane
The kid spat in his palm and Aysha shook on it and passed over the cash. She went up the concrete pathway to the house. Joey’s dad’s rust heap of a car was parked up on the long grass in the front garden, beside an old pink sofa with the springs hanging out. The nets up at the windows were coffee-brown, and the front door was so badly scraped that it was impossible to tell the colour. The wood around the battered faux-brass letterbox looked scorched. She knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ roared a male voice after a pause. She could hear the telly going.
‘It’s me. Aysha,’ she shouted back.
There was a scrabbling sound and then the door opened. Joey peeked around it, then quickly pulled her inside. ‘Don’t stand out there shouting the odds,’ he said, yanking her after him into the dingy sitting room.
Joey’s dad was on the sofa in front of the telly, dressed in his usual uniform of vest and brown trousers. Some daytime show was on but she could barely see the screen for the cigarette smoke in here. The room stank of fags, booze and male sweat. Aysha wrinkled her nose and tried not to breathe.
Ten, twenty years’ time, is this Joey? Is this what I’m going to end up with?
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Aysha hated herself for it. Yeah, Joey came from a bad family. That wasn’t his fault. It didn’t mean he was bad, did it? She loved him. He was handsome and . . . but Jesus. This business with the old lady. He couldn’t really have been involved in that, could he? He was going to be a father soon. She needed a man. Not a fucking delinquent.
That was exactly what he looked like right now, standing there in his dad’s house with his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets and his eyes on the floor. He looked like a boy, scared when he’d been caught raiding the biscuit tin. Aysha thought of the men in her own family, rugged, big, tough. That they would ever be involved in anything as shabby as this was out of the question.
‘What happened, Joey?’ she asked him flat out. ‘What is this about the old lady who died?’
‘Fuck it, Aysh, I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said.
‘And what are you doing here? We should be at home.’ She couldn’t stand this place, or Joey’s low-life father. Truth was, it frightened her to see it and she avoided it whenever she could. Joey seemed far more comfortable here than he ever did at home with her folks. Maybe this was where he really belonged.
Joey was avoiding her eyes. His dad coughed loudly and reached down, popped open another can of beer, his gaze fixed to the telly.
‘Joey?’ persisted Aysha.
‘I got some stuff upstairs, I stopped over to pick it up,’ he said.
‘Does that matter? When all this shit is going on?’ demanded Aysha.
‘Look, I gotta . . .’ He hiked a thumb at the open doorway and then left the room.
Aysha followed him as he went up the stairs and turned left. He opened a door and went into a poky grey room with a disordered bed and a thick layer of assorted crap all over the floor. He picked up a black bin bag and started throwing open drawers, emptying T-shirts and underpants into it.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Aysha. ‘I thought you brought all your stuff over to the house.’
He shrugged. ‘Some of it got left in the rush,’ he said.
‘Joey, for God’s sake! Why are you doing this now? Haven’t we got enough trouble, without you faffing about rearranging your fucking underwear?’
‘Look.’ He turned to her and his dark eyes were full of anger. ‘Listen, all right? I gotta take off for a while.’
‘You what?’ She couldn’t believe what he was saying to her. ‘But Connor stumped up bail for you, you can’t just . . .’
‘Christ, you don’t know a fucking thing, do you?’ he yelled suddenly.
Aysha flinched. He’d never shouted at her before. Not once. ‘Then tell me,’ she said. ‘Is it true about you and the old woman? That you set it all up?’
‘No! I was just shooting the breeze with my mates, telling them what I saw, that’s all. It was fucking stupid of me, I admit that, but that’s all I did.’
‘Well, that’s OK then. You made a mistake, but you weren’t involved in any nasty business . . .’
‘Aysha. For fuck’s sake, get real! I shopped them to the Bill. The coppers pulled me in for it, some neighbour told them I was doing the garden for the old bint, and . . . I made a deal with them. It was all my fault, I admit that. But beat up the old bird that way? I wouldn’t do that. So . . .’ He paused, zipped up the bag.
‘So what, Joey?’ Aysha felt numb. She was heavily pregnant with his child, and here he was, getting involved in sick-making stuff like this.
‘I dobbed in my mates,’ said Joey. ‘I had to, or I’d have done time too. I still might. Some. I don’t know. But I told the Bill all about them, what they had planned, and that I’d had nothing to do with it.’
Jesus. He wasn’t just a low-life juvenile, he was a grass too.
‘OK. So . . . we can make this all right, can’t we?’
‘You must be bloody joking!’ He laughed, a mirthless horrible sound.
‘Well, they’re inside, aren’t they, and—’
‘Sure. They are. But their fucking families ain’t. And now they’re going to track me down and kill me like a dog. Dad’s had threats against me put through the door. And worse. Shit in a bag. A fucking burning rag last night. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Aysh, I got to clear out. Let it all die down.’
Aysha thought of the scorched letterbox downstairs. This was serious. The whole house could have gone up in flames.
‘But you’re skipping bail. Connor will lose his money. The police will be after you too. And the baby . . .’
‘The baby, the baby!’ he mocked her in a high-pitched voice. ‘Christ, listen to yourself! You don’t have a fucking clue about anything, sodding Princess Aysha, spoiled-rotten little rich girl.’
Aysha felt the colour leave her cheeks, felt the room tilt and sway. She clutched at her belly. She was carrying his child, and he was going to leave both her and the baby behind. And for how long? Was she ever going to see her handsome, feckless husband again?
Joey picked up the bag and swung past her out the door, along the landing. Aysha followed, grabbed his arm. ‘Joey, don’t,’ she pleaded.
‘Shut up, Aysh, I’m going,’ he said.
‘No!’ Aysha yanked him back, hard, and he shoved her.
As she tried to regain her balance, Aysha’s foot slipped from under her and then, almost in slow motion, she felt herself tilt sideways. She clawed at the wall, but it was no good. With a faint cry of horror, she toppled down the stairs. She felt a crashing pain in her knee, her elbow, her neck, as the world spun around her. Then blackness grabbed her and everything was gone.
108
The atmosphere in the house was so stifling that Josh escaped to the pub down by the river as soon as he possibly could. He couldn’t stand being around Shauna any more. Couldn’t even bear being under the same roof as her.
Fuck, what a mess.
The kids, the house, everything . . .
What a bloody mess.
He ordered a pint and then stood at the bar drinking it and thinking of Claire so far away. Claire had been good about this, although he could see it troubled and hurt her. She had said, ‘Yes, Josh, of course you have to go, I understand, and don’t worry about a thing. I’ll sort out the removals and get settled in the new place, you come straight there when you get back and I’ll be waiting, OK?’
He couldn’t wait to be with her again. And then . . . when all this muck and fuddle died down with Joey, he was going to sort this properly. Get rid of that cow Shauna. Yes, the kids would be knocked to fuck by it, he knew that. But at least Connor and Aysha were adults now.
‘Josh? That you?’
He turned. Standing there was a short seventyish man with a wrinkled-monkey face. He was smartly dressed, prosperous-looking, with a tan and a shiny bald dome of a head.
Josh h
ad hoped never to see him again. But here he was: Dave Houghton. With less hair and more lines on his face. Instantly into Josh’s mind came the image of Andrew Meredith falling back with his brains spraying out in a crimson fountain. He swallowed hard as bile rose in his throat, and held out a hand. Dave shook it.
‘How are you, Josh? Christ, you look bloody well,’ said Dave with a smile.
‘How are you, Dave?’
‘Nowhere near as good as you. What you on, fuckin’ hormones or something?’ Dave patted Josh’s washboard stomach. ‘Still keeping up the fitness malarkey then?’
‘Sort of,’ said Josh. Yes, he was still fit, and finding Claire again had knocked years off him. He felt like a twenty-year-old when he was with her. Then he came back to England, saw Shauna, and felt a hundred.
‘How’s the family? How’s that lovely Shauna?’ asked Dave. ‘What’ll you have, Josh?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ said Josh. He didn’t want to linger here chatting to Dave. It brought it all back, and he didn’t want that. ‘Shaun’s great,’ he lied.
‘And your kid? Boy, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right. And a girl too. Yours?’
‘Both doing fine. Married now, the eldest is coming to lunch in a mo, you want to join in, you’re welcome.’
‘No, thanks, got things to do,’ said Josh quickly. ‘How’s Philippa?’ He’d hated the woman, thought she was a high-toned bitch, Shauna had been right about that. Took one to know one, he supposed. But he had to be polite.
‘Oh.’ Dave’s face fell. ‘Poor old Phil.’
Josh stared at the man. ‘What?’
‘Well, she died,’ said Dave.
Josh froze in surprise. ‘She what? But she was no age at all. What happened?’
‘It was tragic.’ Dave’s voice was suddenly choked with emotion. ‘Bloody awful, I’m telling you. I went out to work and came home and the house was empty. Kids away at school, Phil would always be home cookin’ the evening meal. Well, opening a bloody packet and shoving it in the microwave, anyway. Hopeless in the kitchen she was, really. But there was nobody there.’
‘So . . .’ prompted Josh.
‘I searched the place from top to bottom. Nothing. Then I went out in the garden and had a look all around. Still nothing. So I goes down by the river and looks there. You know how slippery the banks are, we were always warning the kids about not playing too near. And that’s where I found her.’
‘What, in the river?’ Josh felt his stomach gripped by something. Maybe fear. He was Josh ‘Fearless’ Flynn, but yes, all at once he felt frightened. Like someone had just walked over his grave.
Dave was nodding. ‘Yeah, there she was. All tangled up in the weeds and the willow roots, or the current would have taken her further downstream. Staring right up at me, she was. Drowned, poor old Phil. Dead as toast.’
‘Christ. I’m sorry,’ said Josh.
‘Tragic, yeah? She must have got too near the edge and just lost her balance. I couldn’t get over it for a long while. Shook me right up.’
‘That’s awful.’ Josh was remembering how much Shauna had hated Phil. And now she was dead. ‘When was this?’ he asked, although he really, really didn’t want to know.
‘Late autumn I guess – 1978.’
Now Josh thought of Shauna coming back from lunch with the ‘girls’ and saying, That cow Philippa, Dave Houghton’s wife? She told the others I was a gyppo, the mouthy cow. Christ, I hate her guts.
Then Dave turned a little, elbow on the bar, and his face lit up. ‘Ah, here she is,’ he said, stretching out a welcoming arm.
For a moment, feeling he was in a nightmare, Josh expected to see Phil, white as a bloated maggot and covered in fronds of stinking grey weed, come stumbling on dead legs across the bar toward them.
But the woman who joined them wasn’t Philippa, dead or alive. It was a tiny, pretty young Malaysian woman who looked at Dave with adoration as he slipped his arm around her shoulders.
‘Josh,’ said Dave proudly. ‘This is Wi Lin.’
So not that broken-hearted about poor old Philippa then. Josh wondered if Dave still had male lovers, too. He supposed he did. But what the hell. Who cared?
Josh stayed there for another few minutes, then left Dave and his new love to it.
109
Not wanting to go home yet, Josh went over to his mum’s grave, feeling reluctant to do it but thinking that for once he should pay his respects. He half-hoped he would see Claire’s sister Trace there and have a word. On the night of her mother Eva’s gypsy funeral, she had vanished too quickly for him to talk to her, but maybe today she might stick around.
She wasn’t there.
So he drove back to the camp, near to where Pally had taken him to see off his old lady into the next world. The dogs came out straight away and started barking. Then Pally appeared at the door of his trailer, still looking like death warmed up. He saw Josh and came over. Josh got out of the car. The dogs sniffed around him, then went away.
‘You back? Thought we’d seen the last of you,’ said Pally.
‘I wanted a word with Trace,’ said Josh. ‘She in?’
Trace came out into the trailer doorway. ‘She’s in,’ she called down. ‘What you want, Josh?’
‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘What’s to say?’
‘Please. Five minutes.’
Pally looked between the two of them and then wandered back to the trailer door. Trace came down the steps, passing her dad with a brief pat on his shoulder. She approached Josh and stood there looking at him expectantly.
‘Five minutes then,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk.’
Trace and Josh went out of the camp and down the dell by the line of poplars, toward the wildflower meadow and the disused old church beyond. Two of the lurchers followed, romping around in the long grass playing tag. The sun shone down. It was heaven, like he had once known with Claire.
‘So speak,’ Trace said after a while, halting and turning to look at him with stark dislike.
Josh stopped walking too. Above them, skylarks whirled in the sky, singing – a tinkling waterfall of wild joyous notes. The sun beat down like a blessing. But in his heart there was only darkness.
‘What do you know about Shauna and Jeb Cleaver?’ he asked her.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
Trace was nodding slowly. ‘Didn’t think you knew about that. What’s she told you?’
‘That it was one date, then forgotten.’
Trace rolled her eyes and blew out her cheeks. ‘My arse. They were an item for like, forever. You didn’t notice of course. Besotted, weren’t you – with Claire. I thought at the time – so did Claire – that the whole Jeb Cleaver thing was for your benefit. Make you jealous. Or try to. Didn’t work, did it? You didn’t even bloody notice.’
Josh looked at Trace. She was not pretty. Claire had always been the attractive one. Even now, Claire had kept her looks. But Trace hadn’t and she’d become a plain middle-aged woman, thickening around the middle. ‘What did you think, about Claire vanishing like she did?’
‘Who knows? Maybe they done away with her.’
‘They?’
‘Shauna and Jeb Cleaver.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Maybe. You ought to know what Shauna’s like, she’s your missus, ain’t she. So who knows? Claire’s dog vanished too that night. Blue. Good old dog, he was. Gone like he’d just disappeared into thin air.’ Trace looked at Josh sharply. ‘Shauna’s lot were rotten, you know. Dark and bloody dangerous. They were into curses and black magic, things to do you harm. My Nanny Irene had some powers in that direction too, but all she ever did was help and heal people. She’s dead now, God rest her.’
‘Yeah? I’m sorry to hear it.’ Josh looked over to the little church. His and Claire’s special place. Shauna and that wicked fucking Cleaver bunch had ruined it now, for both of them. He thought about it. He had to say it now.
Claire’s mum and old Nanny had died without knowing, he couldn’t let that happen again. ‘Listen. Trace. I want to tell you something. And I want you to pass it on to Pally. Gently, mind. Careful how you tell him.’
‘What is it?’ Trace was frowning.
‘Claire’s alive. She’s well. I’ve seen her.’ Josh thought then of his promise to Claire. But for fuck’s sake! He couldn’t let poor old Pally go on without knowing she was all right. The man had suffered enough.
‘Where?’ asked Trace.
‘I can’t tell you that. But she’s fine. Tell Pally that.’
Trace nodded and her eyes were full of tears. ‘Jesus! Really?’
‘Really. But keep it between the two of you, OK? No one else must ever know. Promise me.’
‘Yeah. OK. I promise.’
110
When Josh got home, all hell was breaking loose.
‘Christ, where have you been? It’s Aysha,’ said Shauna, shrugging on her coat in the hall as Josh came through the front door. She looked wild with worry.
‘What’s happened?’
Connor came through from the kitchen. ‘She’s had a fall over at the Minghella place,’ he told his father.
‘Shit. Is the baby all right?’
‘We don’t know. They’ve taken her straight to hospital. Come on, I’ll drive.’
At the hospital, they had to wait an hour and a half until they could speak to a doctor. They sat in a grey-painted waiting room in grim silence, while a TV warbled away in a corner and a scrawny mother with a fretful yelling five-year-old sat opposite.
‘Jesus, this is fucking terrible,’ wailed Shauna. ‘Shouldn’t Joey be here? Or that useless bastard, his dad?’
The scrawny mother shot Shauna a look. ‘Can you not talk like that in front of my child?’
‘Shut your cunting face,’ advised Shauna. ‘Or I’ll rip your fucking tits off.’
‘Mr Minghella?’ asked a white-coated blonde woman of middle years, appearing in the open doorway.
Thank God for that, thought Josh, standing up, seeing that World War Three was about to break out between Shauna and the woman with the kid. He stared at his wife with contempt. She might style herself as a society hostess these days, but she could still have a wicked tongue on her, and she wasn’t afraid to use it. Claire wouldn’t talk to a dog the way Shauna spoke to some people.
