A Beginner’s Guide to Murder

by Rosalind Stopps

  I’m thinking about him tonight and I’m thinking about Dean too, and what I should have done then that I didn’t and what it means to have a second chance.

  ‘What would you do,’ a friend said to me once, ‘if you had a time machine, and you could go back and change history? Where would you go?’

  It was hard to know where to start. Hitler, that’s the easy one, that’s the one everyone thinks of and I’m not saying he wouldn’t be a good choice. But it’s so much more complicated than that. Maybe that guy who thought he was discovering America when it already belonged to a whole other group of folks. Maybe the first person who decided that they could own another person and make them do the work they didn’t want to do, just because their skin was a different colour. History is full of stupid men who should have stayed home and read a book, kept themselves from troubling anyone else. Hundreds, thousands, millions of them.

  If they asked me now, though, I’d have an answer. I’d say the day I left my daughter in Jamaica. I’d bring her with me to England and even if it made no difference, if she still died of some stupid childhood disease, at least she would be with me when it happened. And if I could have two turns, I’d say 12 January 1989, as well. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I wouldn’t kill Dean Smith, not straight away. No, I’d sit down with him and talk to him. I’d ask him why he wanted to do what he did, what it was that had made him that way. I’d ask him and then if the answers weren’t right, if he didn’t explain to my complete satisfaction what he was thinking and why, if he wouldn’t listen when I explained why he couldn’t, then I’d wring his scrawny neck. It might not make the world a better place for everyone, but it would certainly improve things for at least three families.

  Toad man, though, no sitting down and talking for him. No point. He is surely a level of bad I haven’t seen in some time, and I do not want to sit down and talk to him, try to help him through his troubles. No thank you. If that needs to be done then I am not the woman for it.

  Toad man. He’s out there somewhere, doing what he does, hurting who he can. I can’t help looking around my flat as if he might come knocking on the door any time. What would I defend myself with? One of the hundreds of books I should have got rid of by now? There isn’t much else in the living room. Just floor-to-ceiling books, and more piled up on the coffee table and in the corners. I can’t believe how many books there are. It’s a long time since I looked around me. It’s not much of a place for a person who has lived for seventy-five years, not much to show for a life except reading. No photographs, no ornaments. I reckon all the pictures I need are in my head. I chose a quiet life. An empty life, some might say.

  I walk up and down a bit, picking things up and putting them down, opening a book here and there, looking for a clue. I’m not sure that I should have left them, that’s the rub. Meg and Nina. I’m not sure I should have left her to look after that little girl. I check my phone again, to see if they’ve called me. Don’t be stupid, I think, don’t suppose that the world revolves around you. Even while I’m thinking it, I’m putting on my boots, tying my scarf around my neck and zipping up my padded coat. I’m not sure if they need any help, I’m not even sure if they’re still awake, but I have to go. They might have gone to bed by now. I need to check, that’s all. I need to check that everything is OK. I had a chance before to change things, make things better. Twice. Twice I could have altered history, twice I took the easy option. That’s not going to happen any more.

  The lift isn’t working so I walk down the stairs and it’s funny, I can hear Eleanor all the way down. Go on, she says, go on, check it out. She sounds more grown up than I remember her, and her accent has become British. Cockney, even. Eleanor would have loved London. I used to collect things that we could do together, when I was first here. Tower of London, St Paul’s, all the tourist stuff. I used to write her letters about them, with little sketches, always with her in them. Here you are by Buckingham Palace, I wrote. Maybe you’ll live there one day. I wonder now, of course, if the drawings and the descriptions made her sad. If she knew, in some way. If that was why she was such a quiet child, such a thoughtful one.

  It’s only a few minutes’ walk from my flat to Meg’s house. Funny that we’ve lived close all these years and not met. Funny how old age gives you the chance to stop and look around and think, yes, that’s a person I might like to be friendly with. It’s a last chance to change things and if you’re not looking you might miss it. We haven’t missed it, me and the old girls. We haven’t missed it but we might blow it if we’re not careful.

  I’m almost at Meg’s house when I see another person hovering nearby. I’ve done my women’s self-defence classes but the only bit that stuck was the part about how to hold the keys, so I’m gripping them tight, trying to make sure that there’s a bit of metal sticking out between each finger. The person walks away, then walks back again, and as soon as she gets near enough to the streetlight I realise it’s Daphne. No one else would wear a beautiful designer overcoat with a headscarf. Yup, a headscarf, like the Queen used to wear, tied under the chin and like no one ever, ever wears any more. But it suits her.

  We acknowledge each other in an awkward kind of way.

  ‘Hi,’ I whisper, because now we’re almost directly outside Meg’s house.

  There’s one light on upstairs but it’s early morning and I hope they’re both asleep.

  ‘Hi,’ Daphne says, and I think for a moment she’s going to hold her hand out for me to shake. ‘I, erm, I couldn’t sleep and I just thought I’d check, you know.’

  ‘I do know,’ I say. ‘Same here.’

  I’d like to hug her, this nice, quiet, odd woman. Or give one of those special handshakes with different parts that I’ve seen on American TV series. The ones where people jump up, turn around, clap, do little dances, and all in synch. I’ve never thought about them before but right now a secret handshake would fit exactly. We’re in a club, me and Daphne, we’re bound together and I wish I could affirm it in some way.

  I hold my hand out anyway, but then I think better of it and withdraw it in case it’s too weird but she’s noticed, and she holds her hand out just after I’ve put mine back in my pocket. It’s OK though because we both laugh and that breaks the ice.

  ‘Do you think we should knock?’ Daphne says. She’s really quiet, she almost breathes the words into my ear.

  I’m not sure, so I make a pantomime of shrugging my shoulders and scratching my head.

  ‘It seems quiet enough,’ Daphne whispers, ‘but I’m just not sure.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I say.

  I am so close to her ear that I can smell her perfume. Understated and lovely. I’ve no idea what it is but it smells delicious. I’ll tell her later, I think.

  We look at each other in an embarrassed sort of way.

  ‘Maybe I’ll just do a walk past, every now and again,’ she says. ‘I don’t sleep so much these days anyway.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I say. ‘I think maybe I did all my sleeping when I was young and I’ve used up my quota.’

  That isn’t strictly true but the strict truth has never done anyone any good in social situations.

  I’m left with this feeling of wanting to do something special, something to mark the fact that we’re in this, whatever it is, together so I surprise myself. I put my hand on her arm, at the elbow, and I say, ‘Shall we take a turn around the block together?’

  She doesn’t say anything at first and I think, oh, bloody hell, I’ve gone too far, she’ll never trust me now, but then she laughs, and it’s a quiet laugh but a genuine one.

  ‘How funny and nice,’ she says. ‘I feel like I’m back at school.’

  ‘I don’t know what kind of school you went to,’ I whisper as we trundle off down the road, ‘but my school back home never included walks while everyone else slept, or old women keeping the world safe by wandering the streets in the dead of night.’

  That makes her laugh, so I’m glad we’ve moved away fr
om Meg’s house. She laughs a lot.

  ‘Is that what we’re doing?’ she says. ‘I never thought of it that way. I just, you know, sometimes it’s not right to keep quiet, is it? Sometimes things have to be said, and people need to, need to…’

  Daphne tails off as if she isn’t sure of what these people might need to do. I wasn’t sure either, so I said, ‘They most certainly do,’ as if she had made a suggestion.

  It’s dark so I can’t see her reaction but I think she’s grateful. We walk around the streets as though we’re walking around a beautiful park in the summer. I tell her that’s what I’m thinking. I want to hear her laugh again and it works, she laughs like there’s nothing bad in the world, like there’s nothing unusual about what we’re doing. The night is still cold, and the trees are still gaunt and forbidding but she does this whole routine that takes my breath away. She’s fluent, as if it’s been scripted.

  ‘See those white flowers,’ she says, pointing towards a carrier bag that’s got stuck in a spiky bush, ‘what do you think they’re called?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I say, ‘I’ve got a book at home, I’ll look them up later.’

  ‘Can you smell them?’ she says, and she stops and sniffs the air.

  We’re near to a kebab shop and it’s closed now, but the spicy fat smell still lingers. I can still smell that lovely perfume on her so I nod and say, ‘We have a flower just like that in Jamaica.’

  It’s a different side of her. She unfurls, that’s the word. Like watching a bud opening on a speeded-up camera. She seemed so worried this afternoon, so careful not to say anything, not to speak up for herself if she could help it. I’m thinking about that as she chats on about flowers and bushes, still pointing to rubbish and trees that might or might not be dead, and then I realise why. Under cover of dark, that’s when she feels comfortable. What happened to you? I think. What happened to you, Miss Daphne with the strange flappy clothes, what made you feel so insecure that you can only come out of your shell in the dark? I give her arm a squeeze.

  ‘They have such colours back home,’ I say to her, ‘colours you would never see here.’

  I don’t know what makes me say it. It’s not like I usually talk about Jamaica as home, I don’t even think about it that often. Here’s home now, for all its shortcomings. But something about the night and the tiredness and the worry I know we’re both feeling makes me invoke it like a mantra.

  ‘In Australia too,’ she says. ‘Animals like cartoons and flowers like picture book illustrations.’

  She sighs and I can feel a part of her energy, her spark, leave her. I am sure that if I refer to it she will be embarrassed or sad, and then she might clam up and I’d hate that. So I do the only thing I can think of to do. I take over. Gently, so that she doesn’t feel put out, I start pointing to things like she was doing, letting her be quiet for a moment.

  ‘Look at that,’ I say, pointing to some tinsel that has wrapped itself round a lamp-post. ‘It’s trying to stretch Christmas out until spring. It looks sad somehow.’

  ‘Poor tinsel,’ she says. ‘Shall we put it in the bin?’

  It seems like a good idea so we let go of each other’s arms for a moment and pull it off. She’s dignified, as if she grew up pulling tinsel off lamp-posts and she knows the right way to do it. Just thinking that makes me laugh, so I giggle a bit and then she joins in and before we know it we’re doing a silent guffaw that would wake the whole street if we let it out.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, and this time she takes my arm and we walk on back towards the house where they should be sleeping, nervous Meg and that sad, hurt little girl.

  It’s all quiet in the street. No one loitering, no strange cars going past. The light is still on in an upstairs room, Meg’s bedroom, I think, but it looks like a softer light now. As if she’s changed it from an overhead lamp to a bedside one.

  ‘Do you think we should stay a little longer?’ Daphne says.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘I mean, we want to be ready to help and old ladies don’t do well on no sleep at all.’

  ‘It feels like something big, helping that girl,’ Daphne says. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen or when, but I’m getting some energy from somewhere. I feel like I’m gearing up, getting ready. I’m not sure what for.’

  Even in the dark I can see that she looks embarrassed.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I say.

  And I do, in part, it does feel like something big but I’m afraid I haven’t got a rush of energy to meet it. Not yet.

  ‘You go home,’ she says. ‘I think you need sleep more than I do. I’ll wait here. As soon as there’s a flicker of light in the sky I’ll pop home for a quick nap.’

  ‘No,’ I say, before I’ve had a chance to think it through properly. ‘Come back with me and you can get your head down on my sofa for an hour. It’s comfortable and then we can set the alarm and go round early.’

  I don’t tell her that no one has ever slept on my sofa before. I don’t tell her that I normally keep myself to myself. There doesn’t seem to be any need.

  Chapter Nine

  Meg

  Monday night, Tuesday morning, 26 February

  I asked Nina if she’d like me to stay while she slept and she was so relieved that she cried, so I decided that my sleep was not at all important. I sat in the little chair by her bed. A nursing chair, it’s called, little stumpy legs just right for a short person like me. We might as well take that old chair to the dump, Henry used to say, there won’t be any nursing going on here. I loved it though, and I used to sit in it sometimes when he was out and pretend. Pretend I was holding a baby. I haven’t used the chair for a while, apart from the night Henry passed away. I needed the comfort, then.

  I didn’t think of any of that, the first night I knew Nina. I sat still, watching her breathe. She was very restless, and a few times I had to tuck the blankets round her, pat her shoulder so that she went back to sleep. She was a quiet sleeper, no snoring, which was a relief. I had plenty of time to think and I almost didn’t think about Henry at all. He seemed very far away, and I couldn’t quite imagine what he would say about the situation. He wouldn’t like it, that’s for sure. A stranger sleeping in his bed, he’d want to throw the mattress out the next day and get the place fumigated or exorcised or something. It made me laugh, thinking of that, and I accidentally woke her.

  She sat bolt upright as if someone had called her.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘stupid me, I made a noise but you’re OK, there’s nothing happening, you can go back to sleep if you want to.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘sorry, I forgot where I was. This is a nice bed, thank you.’

  I think of Henry’s lectures on the right sort of mattress and I want to giggle again but I don’t. It’s bad enough that she thinks I’m as ancient as some wrinkled old woman in a fairy story, sitting by the fire and darning holes in socks or something. She doesn’t need to think I’m always laughing when there’s clearly nothing funny. I wouldn’t be able to explain about Henry, about how funny he is, especially now he has passed on.

  ‘I don’t need to go back to sleep,’ she says. ‘It’s getting light outside and I’ve had enough rest, thank you.’

  We had set up a WhatsApp group the night before, so it’s easy to message the others to tell them that Nina is awake.

  ‘I thought teenagers needed loads of sleep,’ I said. ‘I heard it on the radio, a Woman’s Hour special on it.’

  ‘Some teenagers maybe,’ she said, ‘but I’ve always been good at getting by on less. Some people don’t like you to sleep in. Especially if you’re a looked-after child.’

  She could tell that I wasn’t sure what she was talking about so she said, ‘That means in care to the local authority.’

  What a way to put it, I thought. This child must be the least looked-after child I’ve ever come across. I didn’t say anything, because she was looking at me in a way t
hat made it perfectly clear that she knew she had given me a big piece of information. It was like a thank you for the night and the sleep she’d had and the fact that I had sat with her, I think, only it made me sad that she might think she had to offer me something in exchange. I wasn’t sure whether to ignore the information, pretend that she hadn’t said it so that she didn’t feel vulnerable, or whether I should acknowledge it and build on it. I only had a split second to decide and I chose to ask her a question about it. I remembered how awful it feels when you tell someone something, hoping they’ll ask more about it, show an interest, and you’re met with a stony silence.

  ‘Have you been in care for long?’ I said.

  ‘Most of my life,’ she said. ‘I was in foster homes and then in a children’s home but it’s not my mum’s fault, she’s got issues.’

  ‘Poor Mum,’ I said without thinking but it seemed to be the right thing because she flashed me a most delightful smile.

  ‘Are you still looked after?’ I said. ‘Is there anyone who needs to know that you’re safe here?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no, there’s no one, I’m almost eighteen now, thank goodness.’

  Eighteen, I thought, eighteen, and don’t we all think we’re grown up when we get to eighteen. Just babies, we are, but you can’t tell a person that. I thought I knew the lot at eighteen. Thought I could arrange my own life just fine.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m going to go and have a shower and I’ll leave you to get ready. There’s some clothes on the chair. Sorry the joggers and jumper are a bit old ladyish but I’m sure they’ll look lovely on you anyway. Do you like porridge?’

  She pulled a face at that and I remembered, of course, young people don’t like porridge. It’s for the oldies.

  I was still chuckling away about the porridge when the doorbell rang. It was the other two, my new best friends, my gang. I wanted to clap, that’s how exciting it was. Daphne and Grace, together and both looking more comfortable than they did the night before. They must have had a proper rest. I marvelled at the technology that had made this work so smoothly, although I was glad Henry and I hadn’t used it much.