Trick of the Dark

by Val McDermid

  And that was how I learned my life was being turned inside out.

  Charlie looked up from the book. 'I tell you, she knows how to keep you reading. She gives you enough to latch on to but not so much detail that you get bogged down. And I suspect she uses a trick that comes up a lot with psychopathic personalities. And politicians. Not that I'm suggesting there's anything in common between those two groups.'

  'What's that?' Maria turned down the volume on the CD player.

  'Managing to give the appearance of candour without actually revealing anything she doesn't want you to know.'

  'We all do that, don't we? We always want to give a good impression of ourselves.'

  'Yes, but with most of us, it's not a consciously constructed process. And it ends up being a bit hit and miss. Sometimes we end up saying or doing something that can give away rather more than we intended. But with this narrative, it's all perfectly calibrated. The charm never slips. Every bad thing Jay has a hand in is somehow transformed into a scenario where she is the heroic victim.'

  'Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Heroic victim?'

  'Not the way Jay writes it. And she's far from alone in that. I've come across a lot of them over the years.'

  'You think she's a psychopath?'

  'I'm not sure. But I do think she has some degree of personality dysfunction. It's not surprising, given her early life. And what I sense is about to unfold now.' Charlie turned back to the book and read on. Jay and her mother were taken to live with a couple attached to the Andreson crusade, the inappropriately named Blythes. Mrs Blythe took Jenna back to the camp the next day to fetch their belongings. Jay was shocked by how little they brought back. Most of her clothes and books had been abandoned. Apparently they were 'inappropriate'.

  Life became a tight little tunnel of school, church, Bible study and bed. The Blythes, it turned out, were members of a Pentecostal sect so restrictive and narrow that they made Andreson's evangelicals look positively liberal. Jay was like a caged animal at first, raging against the constraints and fighting against every curb on her freedom. But it was useless. The more she struggled, the tighter the rules became. And Jenna was no help. She'd found her new drug of choice and she couldn't get enough. The threat that ultimately brought Jay to heel was that she would be sent away to a Christian boarding school where she would be forbidden to have contact with her mother. Jay was tough, but the prospect of losing the only constant in her life was too much. So she buckled down, hating her life with a rage whose fires were never banked down.

  The thought I clung to was that it couldn't last for long. Nothing in my life ever had. Men came and went, friends came and went, the rooms where I fell asleep changed so often I seldom knew my address. Jenna would get bored, or someone would come along with better drugs or a better pitch and it would be all change again. So I believed all I had to do was wait it out.

  It never occurred to me that it could get worse. We'd been with the Blythes about eight months when a new man joined our prayer circle. Picture an ascetic saint in a medieval Italian painting and you'll get a sense of Howard Calder. Only Howard made those holy hermits look like party animals. Pleasure was an invention of the Devil, Howard believed. We were put on earth to dedicate our lives to the greater glory of God. Living among the ungodly was the Lord's way of testing us. I thought he was a royal pain in the arse from the first.

  But Jenna didn't. Like any addict, she was after the pure stuff. And Howard Calder was definitely pure. I didn't cotton on to what was happening at first. My experience of Jenna and courtship was that it generally took a few hours plus some drugs and alcohol. From first shag to him being a fixture was often only a matter of days. So it didn't register that Howard coming round and being polite to my mother was the trailer for the main feature - marriage. When she told me they were getting wed, I didn't believe her at first. When it dawned on me that it was for real, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  I had thought nothing could be more joyless than the Blythes' house. That was before I saw inside Howard's two-up and two-down terrace in Roker. It was like walking into a black-and-white film - no colour anywhere. White walls, beige carpets, beige three-piece suite, white kitchen, white bathroom. Nothing on the walls except Bible texts. I swear the most visually exciting moment was when he turned on the gas fire and flames of blue and red and yellow licked at the discoloured ceramic element. 'This will be your new home,' he announced. 'You will address me as Mr Calder. I'm not your father and I won't have people thinking I am.'

  'Bugger that,' I said.

  I'd never been hit so hard in my life. He punched the side of my head so fast and so brutally that I bit my tongue. I stood there, dazed, my ears ringing and my mouth filling with blood. I'd been smacked before, I'd been in plenty of fights and ended up on the wrong end of bigger kids. But I'd never been assaulted by an adult with such ferocity. And Jenna let him do it without a word.

  'That child has the Devil in her,' he said. 'She needs to be brought to the Lord.'

  And my mother, by now in complete thrall to Jesus and his Heavenly Father, agreed. My mother, who had had the occasional violent man in her life, but who had never tolerated anyone who even threatened to raise a hand to me. My mother, who even in her most drug-addled state had told me I had the right to be my own person, stood back and let this fascist bully punch me in the head.

  I'm a quick learner. I decided I wasn't going to give Howard Calder the excuse to do that to me again. I had better self-preservation skills at ten than most people acquire after a lifetime. And I was still, against all odds, convinced that one day Jenna was going to wake up and go 'What the fuck?' and spirit the pair of us out of there. So I did what I was told. I went to church and didn't laugh at their preposterous pronouncements. I did Bible study till my eyes smarted. I learned to pray and sing their stupid bloody happy-clappy songs.

  My secret refuge was the fiction section of the public library. I was pretty safe there, because the members of the Bethany Pentecostal Church of Jesus Christ the Saviour thought the reading of fiction was like opening the door and inviting the Devil in for tea. There was an alcove at the far end of the fiction shelves with a couple of chairs. I'd sneak down there for half an hour after school and read.The irony was that by the time I went to secondary school I wasn't even reading fiction any more.

  Because I had had so little formal schooling and such an off-kilter experience of life, I was curious about how people lived. So I gravitated to history and sociology, to philosophy and politics. I've always been interested in how things worked and to me there was no real difference between stripping down a VW Beetle engine and figuring out the order of battle at Waterloo. These days it was all forbidden knowledge - all the more appealing because it was an act of defiance.

  As the weeks and the months and the years passed, I could not make sense of my mother's behaviour. Why were we still here? Why was her life revolving round this vile man? What did she do all day? There was only so much time you could devote to cleaning and cooking and washing and ironing. She said she was studying the Bible, but part of me was still sure that this was all part of some complicated scam that was going to leave us sitting pretty for the rest of our lives. I just couldn't see what it was. I fantasised that she was going to kill her husband with some undetectable poison and that we would then get our hands on his secret millions and go and live in Florida.

  It didn't happen. My life remained screwed down tighter than a coffin lid. But just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, my mother dropped a bombshell.

  Charlie snapped the book shut. 'Phew,' she said. 'Another cliffhanger. I've read thrillers with fewer twists than this.'

  'Why are you stopping?'

  'Because it's nearly Fort William and we need to eat. I'll drive after that, if you like.'

  Maria laughed. 'What? And be on tenterhooks all the way to Glasgow? No, that would be cruel. Besides, I'm enjoying it. You can have the boring bit on the motorway. So are you liking her ye
t?'

  'Let me put it this way. I'm conscious of being manipulated. But if I'd come to this with no preconceptions, I think I'd like her a lot. I do hope Magda hasn't read this.' Charlie shook her head. 'If she has, Corinna's going to need a hammer and chisel to separate them.'

  7

  Once she got stuck in again after lunch, Charlie reckoned it had been fair to describe what faced Jay as a bombshell. Her sixteenth birthday fast approaching, Jay had finally accepted her life was not an extended scam. This was how it was and it was up to her if it was going to change. So she'd started to carve out an escape route. In spite of having had no formal education until she was ten, she'd made a success of school. She was bright, she picked things up quickly and she had a good memory. Her teachers encouraged her, so in spite of the complete indifference of Jenna and her husband, Jay was doing well. There were hints she should be thinking of Oxbridge in a year or two.

  Jay knew better than to talk about this at home. She kept her head down and produced school reports that even Howard Calder couldn't find fault with. There were other things she knew better than to talk about, at home and at school. Once she'd made her escape, it would be different. But for now, she'd batten down the hatches about those feelings, just as she rammed everything else well below the surface.

  And then one night, it all went to hell in a handcart.

  I was in my bedroom, doing my maths homework, when Jenna came in. She didn't knock. Neither of them ever did. Well, why would they? There was nothing I was allowed to do that shouldn't be seen by either of them. I was supposed to be modest, to dress and undress either in the bathroom or under the bedclothes, for example. I, of course, always had to knock before entering a room where they were. Even if I was only coming to eat my tea with them in the living room. Just one of the many petty rules that hedged my life round and allowed my stepfather to exert his authority.

  So, there was my mother, standing over me and looking nervous. I was surprised because usually her husband was the only one who ever made her nervous. 'Howard and I have been praying with the congregation for guidance about you.'

  'About me? Why? What am I supposed to have done?'

  'About your future. And we've decided, once you turn sixteen, we'll be arranging for you to meet a suitable young man and get married.'

  I couldn't take it in at first. I felt like I'd fallen through a wormhole in time and landed in a Victorian novel. 'I'm not getting married,' I said. 'And certainly not to somebody Howard thinks is suitable.'

  'You're my daughter and you'll do what you're told,' Jenna said. 'I know you didn't have the benefit of a Christian upbringing from the start, but we can make up for that.'

  'I'm going to university,' I howled. 'I've got plans.'

  That was when my stepfather appeared in the doorway. 'There'll be no university for you,' he said. 'What use is a university education to a wife and mother? You'll be married in the church and devote your life to God and your family.'

  'You can't make me,' I shouted.

  'I think you'll find we can,' he said. 'Come your birthday, you won't have to go to school. We'll keep you here at home till you see sense. I'm amazed at you, Jennifer. You talk about loving your mother and yet here you are, setting out your stall to break her heart.'

  'I'm too young to get married.'

  'Nothing of the sort,' he said. 'You'll do as you're told. You'll either do it the easy way or the hard way. But you'll do it.'

  'You can't force me. I'll shout my head off at the wedding service, you won't get away with it.'

  His smile was evil. 'Pastor Green understands the importance of women being brought under discipline. You'll find dissent cuts no ice with him. Come now, Jenna. Best if we leave Jennifer alone to digest the good news.'

  I watched them go, speechless for once. I didn't know what the hell to do. I'd been surviving them having all the power only because I knew there would come a point where I would be able to walk away and make my own life. But I wanted the life I chose. I wanted my A-levels and my university place. I'd spent too long living on the fringes with Jenna to have any romantic notions about running away from home. I knew that if I did that, Oxbridge would never happen. I'd be one more messed-up street kid. Nothing I dreamed of would ever happen. My life would just be a different shade of shit.

  There wasn't even anyone I could talk to. I didn't really have friends because I wasn't allowed to do anything except church things. And the other teenagers in the church made me want to slit my throat.

  The only thing I could hang on to was that I still had almost three months to go till my birthday. It was a tactical error on my stepfather's part. In his shoes, I'd have waited till the morning after my sixteenth birthday. I'd have stopped me going to school and locked me in the cellar till I saw sense.

  I sometimes wonder if I learned my business ruthlessness from him.

  Charlie gave a low whistle. 'Listen to this,' she said, reading the last couple of paragraphs to Maria. 'She doesn't pull her punches, does she? I think that's one of the standout sentences in the book so far. It's more honest than almost anything else. We can't help ourselves. Even when we're on the alert, the truth slips through.'

  'You think that's a clue to murder?' Maria said, incredulous.

  'Not on its own, no. Obviously. But it's indicative of her response to being challenged and put in a corner. Not only is she thinking of her escape route. She's considering how much better she'd have delivered the threat in the first place. That's someone who relishes working out how to get her own way. And who does not let the world put her in a box.' Charlie turned the page. 'Well, let me rephrase that. This is someone who only lets the world put her in a box so she can have some peace and quiet to figure out how to fuck the lot of them over.'

  'You don't like her now, do you?' Maria teased.

  'Not one bit,' Charlie said. 'But I think she's fascinating. And I can't put this down.'

  Things were pretty strained at home after Jenna's big announcement. I mostly stayed in my room when I wasn't at school. I refused to go to church, which meant I got locked in my room. I can't say I was bothered. I knew there was no point in trying to change my stepfather's mind, but I had a faint hope that a small corner of my mother's heart and mind might have escaped the brainwashing.

  That faint hope grew stronger as the week went by. Jenna's mind was definitely not quite as single track as usual. She burned the breakfast toast on Wednesday and forgot the cabbage for the gammon-and-mash dinner on Thursday. A couple of times I walked in on her standing in the kitchen staring out at nothing when normally she'd be washing dishes or wiping worktops. I had to speak to her more than once to get her attention. She was miles away. I couldn't help believing she was having second thoughts about my stepfather's plans for me.

  I needed to talk to her, I decided. But not in the house or anywhere connected to the church. I wanted it to be somewhere that might even remind her of our old life together. Sure, she'd mostly ignored me, but it had been a benign neglect. Or so it seemed to me then. I racked my brains and then it came to me.

  One of the few things Jenna had stood up to her husband about was food shopping. She was one of the first people I knew who stood out against the onward march of the supermarkets, refusing to buy her fresh food from them. Her husband complained that she was extravagant, that it was cheaper to go to the local ASDA than to drive up to Grainger Market in Newcastle once a week. But my mother was adamant. So on Fridays, he had to take the bus to his job at the local council offices and my mother took the car to the big city.

  I remembered markets from my early childhood. Jenna had worked on markets and she'd loved wandering round as a customer too. I liked them because they were easy to steal food from. If I could find a way to talk to her there, maybe the atmosphere would waken her independence from its long sleep.

  I never had any money, which complicated things. So on Thursday night, I forced myself to stay awake then crept downstairs. There was a collecting box for the church in
the kitchen. My stepfather emptied his loose change into it every night when he came home. I prised open the bottom with a knife and painstakingly counted out enough money for my fares, plus a bit over for emergencies.

  Next morning, I left at the usual time but instead of going to school, I caught a bus into Sunderland then took the Metro into Newcastle. Luckily it was cold, so I was wearing my winter coat which covered up my telltale school uniform. It was scary, because I'd only ever been to Newcastle a few times for church things. But it was also exciting to emerge from the Metro in Central Station. The place was bustling with people, all looking like they knew where they were going.