The Girl Who Turned a Blind Eye

by Diana Wilkinson

  The Girl Who Turned A Blind Eye

  Diana Wilkinson

  Copyright © 2021 Diana Wilkinson

  The right of Diana Wilkinson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2020 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Print ISBN 978-1-913942-17-5

  Contents

  Love crime, thriller and mystery books?

  Also by Diana Wilkinson

  The Garden Shed

  6 months previously

  Chapter 1

  Present day

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  A note from the publisher

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  Also by Diana Wilkinson

  4 Riverside Close

  You Are Mine

  For Sofia Lyons-O’Sullivan

  An angel at work

  The Garden Shed

  My outward appearance resembles that of a carefully mown and manicured Wimbledon lawn; pristine, clipped and ready for action. Not a weed in sight. Bring on the players. I perfect the look with an air of crisp efficiency. People imagine the foundations, the layers underneath my manufactured guise to be solid and hard-earned. A person of substance. How do I know? Because I’m treated with respect due from such summations. I read people well, but they have no idea who I really am or what lies beneath.

  Below this surface mantle there are no soft silts and sands; no gentle porous foundations. My life has no rich varied layers of experience. Below the smell of freshly cut grass, a giant batholith lies embedded in my core. I was only ten when this black mass of spewing magma exploded through my being, killing off everything in its wake, and it slumbers dangerously close to the surface, threatening to expose itself at any time as life erodes its delicate casing.

  Meanwhile, I pretend. I pretend all is right with the world. I keep the facade firmly in place to fool those around me. I know I mustn’t tell, but I can’t forget.

  I remember. Every detail. It never goes away.

  It’s the pendulous jowls and wet salivating lips. That’s what I see. The thin veneer of sweat coating the fat alabaster face is what I smell. The sweet cloying stench still hangs heavy in the air. It clung to my pores long after the scalding showers scorched my body and I’m still not clean, my nostrils thick with memories.

  The garden shed was coloured a faded apple green. Flakes of paint rained to the ground when the door was yanked open.

  ‘Green snowflakes.’ He laughed. ‘Look.’ His eyes, shrivelled black raisins in a wobbly jelly, glanced briefly down at the ragged chips but he was too eager to get inside. There was no time to linger.

  The inside was kitted out like a 1960s sitting room. A drop-leaf table was pushed tight against the damp rotting slats. It would be opened out once he’d caught his breath; crisps and custard creams blackmailing my silence. A two-seater sofa was wedged between the walls and bolstered up the flimsy structure. There was nowhere else to sit. I willed the walls to crumble, bury the shame.

  Net curtains, stapled in place, sealed us off from the outside world. Thick dirt was so engrained it had solidified and ensured the flimsy material wouldn’t budge. The floral chipped teacups and sugar tongs teased with homeliness and I often wonder where he got his props. The room smelt of urine, sweat and old age; and death.

  Cobwebs decorated the corners with neatly spun gossamer threads. That’s how they looked when I walked in the first time, having been enticed with sweets and treats. But the black hairy arachnids lay in wait; teasing with their silken perfection. That’s the way clever predators operate. They lure the unsuspecting with illusory delights. But the spiders didn’t hang about. They scuttled off, disseminating their pristine homes, when his blubbery white hide appeared and wobbled in excitement.

  It wasn’t long until I began to change my route home from school. Left down Burton Avenue, right into Salisbury Road and third left into Park Lane. At the main road I would scamper across when the lights turned green. I tried not to look panicked in case anyone intervened. I measured my pace. He might be there, sitting on a bench, watching me. ‘Remember. It’s our little secret. You mustn’t tell.’ A waggling admonishing finger kept me quiet.

  Then I would hurry on through the park, not daring to look back. My heart hammered in my chest, beating like a kettle drum. But there was no escape, no matter how fast I ran, or how hard.

  Five more minutes and I’d be home. I counted the numbers backwards from three hundred. That was on a Monday. On Tuesday I took the direct route and avoided the park. Wednesday I spun a coin. Thursday was games afternoon so I got dropped off. On Fridays there was nowhere to run. He only worked a four-day week and would be waiting for me. ‘Fun Friday’ he called it and he was never late.

  He became my stalker. I learnt the word later when it needed no explanation. My anxious alertness turned quickly to fear and then to terror. I became a prisoner in my own skin, the invisible walls impenetrable. He was everywhere, all day and all night; watching and waiting.

  ‘Boo. There you are. I wondered where
you’d gone.’

  The tree trunk wasn’t wide enough; I’d seen him but I wasn’t fast enough. Again it was too late when I walked in and he was chatting to the shopkeeper, soft candy grasped in fat sausage fingers.

  ‘Here, do you fancy some? My treat.’

  But worst of all was the nightmarish anticipation of Fridays. There was one at the end of every week.

  ‘Hi, Snippet. Let me walk you home. I could do with the company.’ He called me Snippet. It was his pet name. It rhymed with whippet, his scrawny breed of dog. We were both thin and wiry and got patted on the head.

  He’d come to school and chat merrily to a teacher, blocking the exit gates. His sweaty palm would grip mine tightly all the way back and he would only let go when he loosened his belt and unzipped his trousers. By then we’d be inside; the door locked behind us.

  It was the stalking that left the scars, the deepest gullies. His death brought a joyous finality to the physical torture, a fleeting release. Outside, through the newly barred windows of the shed, his rheumy watery eyes glistened through a small rip in the curtains. They made a silent unblinking plea; easy to ignore. Instead I smiled back, waved my skinny fingers and skipped away. I was barely thirteen after all, not quite done with skipping.

  But I still look over my shoulder. Sleep eludes me. When I try to eat, my food tastes of vomit mingled with a sticky sweetness. My senses are full; full of sounds, sights and tastes but without the pleasure. The joy of touch eludes me. The flaccid monster that grew and grew in my hand, ‘the big friendly giant’, saw to that.

  I should have told. It was my own fault. Not his death, but the ‘not telling’. But I was only ten when it all began. Who would have listened? My age and innocence flew quickly by, but after his death I learnt to keep the illusion in place, skilfully, and for long enough so that no one would think me capable of murder. It never crossed their minds.

  My stalker was Uncle Chuck Curry; ‘Chuckles’ to his friends; the big, fat, happy clown. He only lived two roads away and was my mother’s stepbrother; the perfect babysitter.

  A wolf in sheep’s clothing. That was Uncle Chuck; the harmless cheerful buffoon. His appearance was his disguise. He nurtured the look with jam and cream doughnuts. What wasn’t to like? And then, of course, he warned me not to tell. If I did, he’d lock me in the shed and throw away the key.

  6 months previously

  1

  I feel as if I’m in an isolation bunker, the chill in the air quite deathly. The flesh along both arms is stippled with pimples. It’s as if the world has come to an end but with foresight, I’ve been clever enough to brick myself in.

  The concrete stairwell is positively empty. I’m not surprised as I pinch my nose against the rank stench of urine. Yellow stains clog up the corners and remnants of rancid hamburger baps exude stale fumes. I shiver, fearful of breathing in the toxic mix. No one else is risking the fallout.

  Tucked neatly behind the swing doors at the top, three flights up, my ears are primed against the slightest noise. Through the thick swing doors I pick up the faintest of buzzing. It’s the office workers moseying around the lifts, talking in hushed voices, waiting for the tin cubicles to ferry them back down to the car park and ground zero. Their laziness plays into my hands because no one bothers to descend on foot. They never do. If I’m right, she’ll be the only one to turn up.

  It’s been roughly three months since I heard about her impending baby. Thinking about it still makes me mad, leaving me unable to unlock my jawline which is clenched, day and night. My fury is sealed within for the whole twenty-four hours of each day.

  Suddenly the swing doors open slightly and my hand shoots out flat against the wall to steady myself, but they close again and no one appears. Retreating voices fade as the clatter of metal heralds the arrival of the lift. Fate has played into my hands as they must have decided against the exercise. My heart threatens to crack its confines and a few seconds pass before I manage a deep breath to slow its rhythm.

  My watch shows it’s still only ten past five. I have six minutes left to wait. She’s that regular. At the end of the working day there are lots of random people who head purposefully towards the underground car park where their vehicles are squeezed into obscenely tight spaces. Random is a good word, it smacks of chance. The coincidental angle needs to be watertight. Today I am just another random person, out and about. Coincidence alone can’t put me in prison.

  Poor Danielle has had her wing mirrors clipped more than once. I’m surprised she doesn’t rein them in. She still refuses to leave her car near the CCTV cameras to find out who is causing the damage and insists on being as close as possible to the stairwell entrance. This suits me fine. Using the lift for her is never an option. She suffers from claustrophobia, avoiding confined spaces, always on the lookout for an escape route.

  Suddenly, at 5.16pm, the steel doors push open again but this time more widely. Quiet as a mouse, prepared to scuttle away once the coast is clear, my ears prick up. Wide eyes devour the spectacle.

  Swollen feet make her waddle like a duck. Her ankles are retaining water; it’s most unattractive, and the baby bump bulges through the tight outline of her sheer blue dress which hangs below her calves. The fact that she’s displaying the bump so blatantly, a boastful statement, hardens my resolve. Her swollen breasts strain provocatively. My anger and loathing make me want to break cover and spit in her face. But I don’t. I watch and wait.

  Like a teetering toddler, she takes a tentative step towards the banister, and extends her right hand to grip the metal. Her left hand is holding firmly on to a soft leather laptop case, but she doesn’t reach the banister. I watch agog as her foot gives way and her tumbling body begins a heavy descent over the cold slabs. Piercing screams follow and my hands automatically reach up to cover my ears.

  Wow. I wasn’t expecting such a display. She looks like a tumbling cheese in one of those country fair competitions, turning over and over until coming to a rest at the bottom of a steep hill. It’s very startling.

  For a moment I’m tempted to run down the stairs and offer help as the squeals are deafening and she seems in so much pain but I can’t alert anyone that I’m close by. That might make the stalking issue a criminal offence and I have no intention of being punished for being an innocent bystander, so I slink away.

  I slide gently through the thick doors and walk quietly towards the lifts, head down. My soft leather pumps don’t make a noise and I melt easily into the waiting queue. All eyes are steeled forward and no one looks in my direction. Strange though that no one seems to hear the screams, but perhaps I’m imagining that they’re still audible as there’s a definite ringing in my ears.

  The lift doors creak open and, swallowed up by office workers, I’m shoved to the back of the tin cubical. We are like sardines in a can. Two young girls step back when someone indicates that the occupancy limit is eight people. Perhaps in their statements, when they come forward as being present on the day of the incident, they will recall how they were asked to wait for the next lift. An obese man, his body sweat engulfing us all with its putrid excretions, insists they wait. I can’t help thinking that if he got out an extra four people could get in. On another day I might have dared to point this out.

  As the doors finally close I find myself crushed between two suited men rapt in serious low-toned conversation, humming with importance, and I close my eyes tight as the lift chugs slowly downwards. I try to think of what I might cook for supper, what I might watch on television. You see, like the tumbling cheese I’m not a fan of enclosed spaces.

  At ground level we all spill out of the lift and head off in different directions, casually walking past paramedics who are already on the scene. They must have been close by. A blue light flashes silently, steadily on top of an ambulance whose back doors are flung wide. A flustered medic is talking into a handset, relaying details of the incident and is ordering a stretcher to be lifted out.

  No one stops and asks what’s ha
ppened, which is strange. If I didn’t already know, I’m sure I would have stopped. However, this works in my favour as no one takes any notice of me either, everyone keeping their eyes down, glad not to be part of an unfolding drama. It’s too late in the working day.

  I weave in and out of the line of all the CCTV cameras like a speeding motorist jumping lanes with aplomb until I’m back out on the street. It is part of a ritual to note where the snooping monitors are placed and I’m adept at avoiding their big brother recordings and today, I’m confident that my image won’t be flagged up.

  Yet, if my face does get captured and I’ve missed one, or someone vaguely remembers me, my testimony will claim coincidence. I happened to be shopping in the vicinity at the time; that’s all. I have several receipts from the adjoining mall stowed away safely in my handbag.