by Danuta Reah
Jenny was hoping that under the influence of the music, with whatever stimulation it was giving to Nathan’s damaged brain, he would remember. Roz sat quietly as the music poured out its complexities in a multi-layered pattern she could only follow in part. As it wound to a close, she watched Nathan. His eyes were calm, concentrating on the sound. He seemed in contact with the two women in the room, looking at them occasionally, aware of their presence. As the music ended, he seemed to withdraw, but the air of quiet contemplation stayed. And she realized then that Nathan was still there, that the man she had loved and married still existed in a place where she could no longer reach him, and he could no longer reach her.
Then, slowly, the restless movement began again, the frown of bewilderment as he looked at Roz, the repeated questions, the sense of actions begun with intent but aborted before they were realized. Jenny sat motionless in her chair. Then she took Nathan’s hand and drew him out of the room with her. ‘Go and check the garden, Nathan,’ she said. She looked at Roz. ‘He’s calmer in the garden.’ Roz remembered the quiet figure watching the spider spin its web. She couldn’t speak.
Jenny looked at Roz. ‘I have to take him back to the home tomorrow. I dread it. He doesn’t know why I’m taking him there – he doesn’t recognize it. To him, I’m taking him to a place he’s never been before and leaving him with people he’s never seen. And I’ll bring him home next weekend, and he’ll forget he’s ever been away.’
‘I wish…’ Roz didn’t know how to finish her sentence. She didn’t know what she wished for.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Jenny said, ‘that you aren’t doing now. Even if you looked after him sometimes it wouldn’t be any better. He doesn’t know you and he never will.’
‘I could come here sometimes. Look after him here.’ Roz wasn’t sure if she meant this.
Jenny shook her head. ‘It’s easier for him in familiar surroundings, but he’d keep finding a stranger in his house. It could be dangerous. He seems calm now, but he panics. You know what happened before.’ The fist lashing out at her, the frantic grabbing at the banister, the stairs as she tumbled…‘Thank you for coming, Roz,’ Jenny said. ‘We’ve tried. I had to try. You do understand that?’ Roz nodded, not trusting her voice. ‘You don’t have to come back again,’ Jenny went on calmly. ‘You’ll be welcome, of course you will, but it’s probably better if you don’t.’
Roz took a deep breath. ‘You know I’ll always take responsibility if…’
‘If I die?’ Jenny grimaced. ‘They understand Nathan at the home. As long as he can stay there…’
It was so little, in the end, that Jenny Bishop was asking her to do to fulfil the promise she’d made to Nathan. For richer, for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health…I will pay the fees of your nursing home. I’m sorry, she said in her mind, to the memory of Nathan on the day they married. That’s not how I meant it, not then.
It was late by the time she left, almost nine. She declined the offer of a lift. It would have meant subjecting Nathan to the confusion of the car. When she got to the station, she found she had just missed a train and had a three-quarter of an hour wait. She bought herself some coffee from the vending machine, remembering that she was short of cash. She debated walking back into the town centre to look for a cash machine, but the rain had started in earnest now, and she had her ticket. She could get some money from the machines at Sheffield station. She had enough to get her home anyway, as long as she used the bus.
She walked up and down the empty platform, the minutes crawling slowly by, almost welcoming the discomfort of the cold. Her mind was detached, in a kind of limbo, and she wanted it to stay there She didn’t want to think about the day. She wondered what to do when she got back. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to her house, to its empty silence. It would be too late by the time she got back to go out in search of friends, of company, and anyway, there was only one person in the world she wanted to talk to. Luke.
Hull, Saturday evening
Anna, sitting in the dark. She had been daydreaming and the voices pulled her back. For a moment she was confused, then the smell of dust from the blanket reminded her that she was in the attic of the welfare centre. She looked at her wrist, instinctively, but she had lost her watch somewhere in the past few days. She couldn’t remember. What day was it? The recent past swirled round her in a confusion of images.
She felt cold. Her mind seemed to have a sharp clarity that felt strangely detached, as though her head was floating above her. The voices were on the landing below, indistinct. She listened. One voice was a staccato jab, jab, jab. The other was lower, a murmur that responded to the jab, jab of urgency in the other voice.
‘…must go.’ Jab
‘We can’t…on the street.’ Murmur
‘Police…trouble…ask questions…’ Jab
‘…a place. Tomorrow…more day…’ Murmur
She could only get words here and there. It was Nasim and Matthew. They were talking about her. The police. Trouble. She thought about the dark streets and the eyes watching her and…Angel, waiting, somewhere, out there in the night. She felt the tightness of panic in her chest.
‘A few days,’ Matthew had promised. A few days. But Nasim was talking about the police. The police. The police had looked away when the men came. The men had told Anna’s father to leave and he wouldn’t. His friends, his neighbours, he said. This was just bar talk and politics. The trouble wouldn’t come there. It would all blow over like it had in the past. Then the men had taken him while the police looked away.
‘They won’t just send you back, Anna,’ Angel told her. ‘You know what they’ll do, young girl like you. Then they’ll lock you up – you shouldn’t be here and you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. You’re lucky you’ve got me, sugar. I’ll look after you.’
But he hadn’t. And she had hurt, maybe killed, Angel’s friend. She hadn’t told Matthew about that. Angel was looking for her. She had come here and they had helped her. They hadn’t asked questions, they’d given her food and clothes, they’d given her shelter.
And someone was looking for her now. The police were looking for her too. The image of a shower curtain, shadowy, bulging slightly, formed in her mind. She felt the worm of panic inside her and made herself be calm. The strange detachment helped. Her mind seemed to drift away. She needed some money. If she could get some money, quickly, then she could get away. She could go to…She thought about the places she had heard people talking about. She could go to London – she could find work in London easily. All those hotels, pubs, bars, cafés – they would need people. She could find the ones that wouldn’t ask questions. Or she could go to one of the other cities – Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow. All places where one person could vanish below the surface and scratch out a living. But Matthew had said, ‘A few days…You could stay…’
She switched on the light, its heavily shaded bulb casting a dim light round the room. She heard feet on the stairs and then a knock at the door. ‘Yes?’ she said.
Matthew put his head round the door. ‘Anna?’ His voice was a whisper. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes.’ She looked beyond him but there was no one there.
‘Did we wake you? I’m sorry. Nasim’s gone home. She’s a bit worried. We’ve had a visitor.’
‘The police?’ she said.
He sighed and nodded. ‘You heard us. Yes. They’re looking for someone.’ She made an inquiring noise, her throat dry. ‘There’s been a serious crime committed. A killing. I don’t know exactly…’ He was watching her face as he spoke.
Cold. It was cold. ‘Now?’ she said. ‘Killing today?’
He shook his head. ‘Some time ago. I don’t know.’ A killing. A murder. The woman in the bath. Now the shower curtain was pulled back and she could see the broken face and the bruises on the grey flesh. She shivered. ‘Are you all right?’ He was concerned. ‘I’ll get you another blanket.’
He waited
to see if she would say something, then said, ‘You need to talk to someone, Anna. I know some people who won’t let you down. I’ve been looking into your case. I know someone who might help you, but you’ve got to talk to him.’
Staying, with a job and papers and a place to live. It had been a good dream, but it was too late. Murder. It didn’t matter if it was Angel’s friend or if it was the woman in the hotel room. The police thought she had done it. She was a prostitute, she was a thief and she was a killer. It was too late. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
A phone rang downstairs. ‘I’d better get that,’ he said. ‘It could be urgent. Get some more rest. We’ll talk in the morning.’
She lay down again. He hadn’t closed the door properly and it swung open. She could hear his voice drifting up the stairs as he spoke to the person on the phone. She couldn’t make out the words, but his voice sounded calm, as though he was soothing someone’s worries in the middle of the night. She waited after the call had finished. He didn’t come back. She waited until everything was silent again, then slipped off the couch. Her things, what bits she had, were in a carrier bag by the door. She pulled on the clothes Nasim had given her, the jeans, the T-shirt, the socks and shoes. Her jacket was still damp and dirty from her nights on the streets, but it was better than nothing. She bundled it under her arm and listened at the door. Silence.
She crept down the stairs, pausing, listening. The stairs creaked as she reached the bottom and she froze for a moment, but no one came. The door to the downstairs back room was ajar. She edged up to it and peered in. It was empty, but there was a bag on the table. She slipped in and looked inside the bag. Sandwiches. Cheese sandwiches like the other evening. She put the bag into the carrier. One day should be all it would take. She needed a bus ticket to London, but she had to be realistic. She would need a bit of money for food, for shelter. Once she was there, she could survive. No one would find her there.
She slipped out through the door that led to the yard. She remembered Nasim’s face as she watched Anna from the window. Come in out of the cold! She was letting them down, Nasim, Matthew, they wouldn’t understand when they found that she had gone, and she couldn’t explain to them. The yard was pitch-black. The ground felt spongy under her feet as she picked her way cautiously across to the wooden gate she remembered seeing in the wall. Her hands touched the damp brick of the outhouse and she felt her way round it until she was at the wall, then the gate. There were bolts, one at the top and one at the bottom. She had to run her hands across the surface to find them, recoiling a bit from the cobwebs and the flakes of old paint that stuck to her fingers. The bolts themselves were well oiled and moved easily. She pulled the gate firmly shut behind her.
The night was cold, but she felt warm, a sheen of damp breaking out over her skin as she ran down the gennel and into the city night.
Sheffield, Saturday night
Roz’s journey back was bleak and cold and comfortless. The train rattled and shook, the heating wasn’t working and the temperature dropped and dropped. There was no refreshment trolley, so she couldn’t warm herself with a hot drink or console herself with a beer. Her day played itself through and through her mind, mixed with memories of the past that couldn’t bring her anything but pain. If Nathan had died, she might be able to look at these memories now, and be glad of the happiness they’d had, but with Nathan stuck like a fly in amber, pinned to his eternal present, the memories were bitter.
There was just one thing she wanted to do. She wanted to see Luke, she wanted to tell him what had happened today, she wanted him to put his arms round her and talk lightly about penance and guilt, and about astronomy and maths and time and eternity. He would tell her she didn’t need to feel guilty, and he would mean it. He would say things like: ‘What are you planning to do next, Bishop? Walk on water?’ She wasn’t really planning to trail all the way out there when she got back – it was more of a daydream to get her through the nightmare journey – but when she got into Sheffield and started looking for a taxi, she saw the bus to Luke’s pulling in at the stop outside the station. Signs and portents. She ran through the driving rain, her feet splashing in the puddles, and made it on to the bus just as the driver showed signs of preparing to leave. He sat there with exaggerated patience as she dug in her bag for her purse and counted through her change to make up the fare.
Luke lived in one of the suburbs on the edge of the moors, a high and bleak place where the snow tended to drift in the winter and the buses were liable to stop their journey before the last climb. Roz had to press her face against the window as the bus ploughed through the bad weather, trying to spot the landmarks that would tell her where to get off. They were nearly at the terminus now, but she recognized the end of Luke’s road as they went past it, a crescent of older houses set back from the road.
The rain had stopped now, and she hurried down the hill from the bus stop, past the stone walls with dark evergreen shrubs pushing over them and brushing their wet leaves against her face. She reached the corner of Luke’s road, realizing with a hollow feeling that she hadn’t thought this through. It was Saturday night. Luke might be out. Or he might have someone with him. Or…There was no point in wondering. She was here now. The house, which had been converted into four studio flats, was just across the road. Luke’s was on the ground floor to the left of the door.
His window was dark, but the lock-up where he parked his bike was padlocked, so he might be in. She pressed his bell, then, realizing that it probably didn’t work, tapped on his window with her fingers. She didn’t know what she was going to do if he wasn’t there. She hadn’t made any plans. She’d just stepped on the bus outside the station like an automaton. She banged on the door again.
‘OK, OK.’ The light came on, on the other side of the glass and she felt her tension dissolve in relief as she heard his voice. ‘For Christ’s sake, it’s after…’ He flung the door open impatiently. There was a moment’s silence. ‘Roz.’
‘Hello, Luke.’ They looked at each other. ‘Can I come in?’ she said. ‘I know it’s late. I’m sorry.’
He stood back and she stepped into the hallway. The house felt warm after the cold outside. He pushed open the door to his flat and shut the front door behind him. He was wearing jeans and a black jersey, but his feet were bare. She thought she might have woken him up, but there was music playing quietly, a distinctive herbal smell that suggested he’d been smoking, and his computer was switched on – the screen was turned away, but she could see a dark background and pulsing letters. Heavy curtains were drawn across the window, stopping any light from showing outside.
He went over to the machine now and logged off. The screen went dark. Then he leant his hand against the wall and looked at her. ‘So, Roz. What can I do for you?’ He spoke with the bland politeness he used when he was talking to Joanna.
She didn’t know what to say to him. She hadn’t thought. She’d just needed to see him, needed that easy rapport she was used to sharing with him, a tuning into each other’s moods. ‘I just…’ She didn’t know what to say. She had always been able to talk to Luke, but now the words just dried up in her head. She found herself saying, ‘I…wondered if you’d looked at those files – Gemma’s files. If you’d found anything.’
He looked at his watch. ‘It’s commendable enthusiasm, Roz, coming round so late with queries about work. No, is the answer. I didn’t find anything. And the reason I didn’t find anything? There wasn’t anything to find.’
She had forgotten, after the events of the day, how angry he’d been. She wanted to explain, but the expression of polite inquiry on his face made talking, real talking, difficult. She groped around for a subject. She needed to break the ice. ‘Joanna…’ she began.
‘Look, Roz, I’ve had it up to here with Grey. One of the big plusses of my life at the moment is that I don’t have to have anything to do with her. This flat is a Grey-free zone, right? So whatever it is, tell someone else, OK?’
&n
bsp; ‘OK. I thought you might want to know what’s happening. If you don’t, well, fine…’ Her voice tailed off into his silence. ‘What are you doing?’ She nodded at the computer that he’d switched off.
He gave her a long look. ‘Well, Roz, I hadn’t quite decided. I thought I might set up a string of call girls. Or, on the other hand, I thought I might beat someone to death, truss them up like a prize turkey and dump them in a bath somewhere. What do you think?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Luke, stop it!’ She had seen him often enough before switching between coolness and hostility when someone had aroused his anger or his contempt. He would usually rage to her afterwards about the person who had offended him. ‘Christ, Roz, what was it with that arsewipe?’ He just kept looking at her, the hostility more overt now. She thought about the polite incomprehension that had masked the shell of Nathan, about the tears in Jenny’s eyes when she talked about taking him back to the home. She thought about Nathan saying, ‘I don’t know…’ and the flash of terror in his eyes that dissolved into blankness. I’m too tired to play games, Luke!
‘I wanted to say I was sorry.’ She looked at him, trying to gauge his reaction. He didn’t say anything, just stayed where he was, watching her with that look of polite inquiry. ‘I told you, I didn’t know…what had happened to Gemma. I never really believed…But if I had known, I’d have known that you couldn’t…That’s all. If you’d thought about it, you would have realized.’ She felt angry with him now, and the anger made his hostility easier to cope with.
He shrugged. ‘OK. You’ve asked your question about the files. You’ve said you’re sorry. Anything else?’
‘Luke…’ She didn’t want to leave it like this.
