The Game

by Amanda Prowse

  Major Anthony Helm sat awkwardly, rearranging his hands again and again until they were comfortable. He looked like an unwanted guest that knew as much.

  ‘So, what happens now?’ Poppy prompted.

  ‘We’ll assign you an information point of contact that will be in regular touch, keeping you up to date with any developments, no matter how small.’

  ‘Can it be Sergeant Gisby?’ she interrupted him; once again throwing his rehearsed rhetoric into touch.

  ‘Well, I don’t see why not.’

  Sergeant Gisby looked at her. He had one of those bushy moustaches that looked like it must be irritating. She decided that the letters ‘R’ and ‘W’ were the most likely to tickle.

  ‘Please call me Rob. I’d be happy to keep you informed with any news.’

  Poppy counted two tickles.

  ‘Mrs Cricket, we are here to help you in any way that we can. I only wish that our meeting was under different circumstances.’

  She smiled at his comment and thought that if circumstances were different, they would not be meeting in a million years. Their worlds would not have overlapped were it not for this bloody awful situation, and if he had known anything about her he wouldn’t be calling her Mrs Cricket. ‘Thank you. Please call me Poppy. Mrs Cricket always makes me think of Martin’s mother and she’s a right old cow.’

  He nodded, not sure how to respond. Logistics and support were discussed before the military men left quietly and quickly.

  Rob Gisby drove as the major sat in quiet contemplation on the back seat. Rob figured he was feeling as sad for Poppy’s situation as he was. Anthony was preoccupied with Poppy; her lack of ambition and seeming acceptance of her humble circumstances were beyond his comprehension. He wondered if her acceptance was down to low intellect. Thank God he wasn’t similarly afflicted or he might still be living under his mam’s roof. The thought made him shudder. He ran his fingers over the shiny buttons of his tunic, tangible proof that he was an officer, a fact that still delighted and amazed him. Anthony carried with him a furtive air as if at any moment he might get found out. ‘Fortitude Fortunately Forgives’; he mentally practised the sounds that helped eradicate the Geordie accent, banishing it to another time, a different person.

  Anthony Helm was wrong. Poppy’s expectations were small, her horizon within reach and her world navigable by foot; a mere eight hundred metres from her front door in any direction. But she was clever. Not Mensa, PhD, rocket science genius, but more able than most and smart enough to know what made people tick.

  Poppy left school when she was sixteen as realisation dawned that staying on to get qualifications was pointless for someone like her. The standard question was, ‘If she’s so clever, how come she didn’t go to university and gather an armful of degrees to see her on her merry way?’ There was a single response she gave to the teachers, heads of year and careers advisers that she sat in front of on more than one occasion, ‘There’s absolutely no point!’

  They sighed on cue, tapped the rubber-stoppered ends of pencils on their clipboards and looked at her with vexed expressions, imploring her to recognise that they knew better, if not best. She stood her ground because actually they did not know what was best for Poppy Day. She did.

  Poppy’s role in life was to make sure that no one fell out of the net that kept her strange little family snug and safe.

  This, she could never have made the academic hierarchy understand. The simple fact that had she gone off to university, there wouldn’t have been anyone to collect Dorothea’s many and varied prescriptions. No one to make sure she took the daily drugs that stopped her wandering off down the High Street with her knickers on her head. No one to keep the fridge stocked with food and pay the bills. On and on the list went. The demands and responsibilities were endless; Poppy was needed at home several times a day.

  Of course the standard argument was ‘If she went off and got qualified, think medicine or the law, she could then secure a wonderful future for herself and her family.’ This was probably true, but still failed to answer Poppy’s question of who was going to wash her nan’s soiled bed linen, sober her mum up enough to collect her benefit and lock the door every night while she was off securing their future? Poppy was smart enough to know that this was her life and there was naff all she could do about it.

  Her sunny disposition meant she wasn’t bitter. She did sometimes think about a life with a different kind of luck. A life that had seen her born into a circumstance that allowed her the freedom to study and become whatever she wanted! This was not bitterness; try to find one person on the planet who doesn’t also ponder some aspect of their life, a different choice, a different person, a different career that might have kept their husband safe from harm…

  Poppy pulled her knees up under her chin and sat back on the sofa, feeling surprisingly numb. She had expected hysteria or at the very least anger. What she couldn’t have predicted was the anaesthesia that now gripped her. She rubbed the back of her wedding ring with the thumb of the same hand and found herself repeating his name, ‘Mart… Mart…’ She tried to invoke his image with the self-soothing mantra. The room was once again silent, as if the soldiers had never been there.

  Is that what it would be like now for Martin? As if he had never been there at all? The flat was now quiet and empty, without the telly on for background noise and without the two men that had filled the small space only a few minutes before. It had been four years since the space had been home to a family; a rather unconventional one, but a family nonetheless. Death and desertion had seen the group eroded, leading up to that moment, when it was just Poppy, alone.

  Her mum, Cheryl, had never been cruel, intentionally neglectful or deliberately spiteful. Similarly, she had never been affectionate or proud of her little girl. Never glad to see her or interested to know about her day. Never shared an event with her, told her a secret or cleared her clothes from the end of the sofa so that her child could sit down. Never brushed her daughter’s hair if it was ratty or trimmed her nails so she wouldn’t have to bite them. Whether Poppy was fed or not, whether she was in bed asleep or sitting alongside her mother on the settee at eleven o’clock on a school night with no clean uniform, none of these were important to Cheryl, so they had to be important to Poppy.

  Wally, her grandad, was a professional snoozer. His dozing form fascinated Poppy; she wondered what the point of Wally was. He slept all night in his bed and all day in his chair. His skinny frame permanently concertinaed into a snoring ‘z’ shape, a human onomatopoeia. His slumber took precedence over all other household activity; he sat like a queen bee whose activity and lifestyle is supported by all those around her. Wally held court over his kingdom of Somnolence. In this dreary realm, many restrictions were put in place to curb the behaviour of a growing, inquisitive girl: ‘Keep the noise down, Poppy Day, your grandad is sleeping’; or ‘Turn your music off, Poppy Day, your grandad is sleeping’; or ‘Stop hitting the floor with that bloody yo-yo, your grandad is…’

  ‘Yeah, yeah I know… he’s sleeping!’

  Wally’s death was a strange non-event in Poppy’s life; the most memorable consequence being that there was now an empty chair with an indent of his dead arse in it. She felt no sadness at his passing; figuring that Wally must be delighted to be permanently turning up his toes in readiness for the ultimate snooze…

  The main difference for Poppy was that now when her mum or nan wanted her to be quiet they said, ‘Turn that bloody racket off, Poppy Day,’ or ‘Keep quiet, Poppy Day!’ In her head she heard, ‘… your grandad is sleeping’ and had to fight the urge to shout out really loudly, ‘Yes! I know he is sleeping, but my yo-yo banging sure as hell isn’t going to wake him up now!’

  Poppy’s nan, Dorothea, had always been slightly nuts. She watched the tumble dryer instead of the telly, and made jelly with peas in it instead of fruit because it looked nicer; as opposed to now when she was completely crazy, proper full-blown bonkers.

  Poppy liv
ed with her mum and Nan in the flat until her mum went off to the Canaries with her latest beau. There was no discussion concerning the new domestic arrangements, largely because Cheryl made the decision, packed her bags and was Heathrow-bound within a twenty-four-hour period. It was assumed by all that Poppy would continue in her unofficial role as Dorothea’s nursemaid, jailor and confidante. If anything, her life was easier without her mum’s drunken presence and the procession of wastrels that followed in her unsteady wake.

  Dorothea and Poppy plodded along amicably until the old lady’s mental health deteriorated and her behaviour became increasingly odd. Poppy came home one lunchtime to find her sitting on the loo, wearing nearly all of her clothing including coats, hats, scarves and gloves, clutching a rolling pin as a weapon.

  ‘The bloke in the flat upstairs has been crawling through a hole in the ceiling and trying to turn our water off, the bastard!’

  Poppy tried to hide her disbelief. ‘Who, Nan, Mr Bennett? The eighty-four-year-old with the double hip replacement and the Zimmer frame?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. He’s been crawling through a hole in the ceiling and scurrying around the flat while we sleep, trying to turn our water off?’ she needed clarification.

  ‘Yes, Poppy Day, did you not hear me the first time, girl?’

  ‘I heard you, Nan, and I understood, but what I don’t get is why are you sat in the loo wearing all your clothes?’

  Dorothea looked at Poppy, shaking her head slightly as if it was her granddaughter without full understanding. She bent forward conspiratorially. ‘I’m guarding the stopcock.’ She winked at Poppy, who smiled in response.

  Her nan quickly went from being slightly unsettled to quite frightened; at this point, Poppy found it hard to cope. As her nan’s primary carer, it was tough. If Poppy was on top of things, she would find her nan’s little adventures or wanderings funny; but when tired, finding Dorothea at three in the morning sitting in the kitchen, with a full packet of flour, a jar of coffee and three pints of milk tipped into a slippery heap on the floor as she ‘made the Christmas cake’ was very wearing. Especially when it was June, far too early to be thinking about bloody Christmas.

  Poppy could have managed her nan’s decline were it just about her own ability to cope, but it wasn’t, it was about what was best for Dorothea as well. She needed to be somewhere that she could be watched and supported twenty-four hours a day.

  Poppy came home from work one wintery evening to find her sitting in the dark crying and bewildered. She had no way of knowing if Dorothea had been in this state of distress for ten hours or ten minutes; it was a moment of realisation. Not that it made what came next any easier; it was the toughest decision of Poppy’s life, at that point.

  She and Martin found the home after weeks of trawling through brochures and trudging the streets. Some were rejected on price, others on location and one before the front door had even been opened, after hearing expletives bellowed from within.

  Poppy considered the major’s words and thought that she should cry. She tried pushing some tears out, but none came. For some reason this made her giggle; she pictured someone watching her and saying, ‘What are you doing, Poppy? Why are you sat there with your eyes screwed shut, digging your nails into your palms?’

  ‘I’m trying to push some tears out. I thought it might make me feel better because I feel a little bit guilty that I haven’t cried yet, despite those two soldiers watching and expecting me to whilst secretly hoping that I wouldn’t, especially Major Tony Thingy. It’s as if I have read about this story in the paper or seen it on the news. It feels like someone else’s life, not mine, not real. Where are those darn tears when you need ’em?’

  She was sure that whoever she delivered this monologue to would probably shake their head in a kind of ‘she has finally lost the plot, just like her grandma’ way.

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  The heart-wrenching story of one woman’s life after she kills the husband who abused her.

  I will gather up all the little pieces that you have chipped away, hidden in drawers, swept under the carpet and shoved behind cushions and I will rebuild myself. I will become all of the things that I thought I might. All the dreams I considered before you broke me, I will chase them all.

  Ten years ago

  Kathryn Brooker watched the life slip from him, convinced she saw the black spirit snake out of his body and disappear immediately through the floor, spiralling down and down. She sat back in her chair and breathed deeply. She had expected euphoria or at the very least relief. What she couldn’t have predicted was the numbness that now enveloped her. Picturing her children sleeping next door, she closed her eyes and wished for them a deep and peaceful rest, knowing it would be the last they would enjoy for some time. As ever, consideration of what was best for her son and daughter was only a thought away.

  The room felt quite empty despite the blood-soaked body lying centrally on the bed. The atmosphere was peaceful, the temperature just right.

  Kathryn registered the smallest flicker of disappointment; she had expected to feel more.

  Having changed into jeans and a jersey, she calmly stood by the side of the bed on which her husband’s pale corpse lay. With great deliberation and for the first time in her life, she dialled 999. It felt surreal to put into practice the one act that she had mentally rehearsed for as long as she could remember, although in her imagination the emergency had always been a child with a broken leg or a fire in a neighbouring empty building, nothing too dramatic.

  ‘Emergency, which service do you require?’

  ‘Oh, hello, yes, I’m not too sure which service I require.’

  ‘You are not sure?’

  ‘I think probably the police or ambulance, maybe both. Sorry. As I said, I’m not too sure…’

  ‘Can I ask you what it is in connection with, madam?’

  ‘Oh, right, yes, of course. I have just murdered my husband.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you have what? This is a terrible line.’

  ‘Oh, I know. I’m sorry, I’ll try and speak up a bit. It’s always a terrible connection from here, even if I’m phoning someone locally. It’s because I am up in the main bedroom and the reception is very bad. My son thinks it may be because of all the big trees around us; we did cut them right back one year, but I can’t remember if it made any difference. Plus we get interference from the computers in the next building; we’ve been meaning to get it looked at, but that’s by the by. Right, yes. I said, I have murdered my husband.’

  * * *

  Kathryn blinked at the humming strip light that winked overhead; the bulb needed to be replaced. It was a distraction that could easily become annoying.

  ‘Did you do it?’

  Roland Gearing rested his weight on splayed fingers, his hands forming little pyramids that, incredibly, supported his muscular frame as he leant over the table. He lowered his voice an octave; this was the one question he knew he had to ask and yet he was fearful of her response.

  ‘Did I do it?’

  ‘Yes, Kathryn, did you?’

  He held her gaze, hoping to instil trust, trying to tease out the honest answer. He knew a lot about lying and relied on his gut instinct. Years on the job had taught him to monitor the interviewee’s pupils carefully.

  ‘It’s a question that I wouldn’t normally ask quite so early in proceedings, but as your friend – as Mark’s friend too – I feel I have to. Is that okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course. I understand.’

  She gave a fleeting smile as her index finger and thumb looped her hair behind her left ear and then her right.

  Her calm composure rattled him; there was none of the hysteria or fear that usually characterised these encounters. Women in similar situations were often almost insane with terror, rage or the dread of injustice. Kathryn, however, appeared placid.
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  She remembered her husband’s glassy eyes. The way his fingers slipped and missed as they struggled with an invisible tourniquet that stopped the breath in his throat. Her nose wrinkled; her nostrils still carried the faintest trace of the iron stench of Mark’s seeping blood. It had repulsed and comforted her in equal measure. It was as if she could taste it at the back of her throat. She hadn’t sought to ease his discomfort in his dying moments, nor had she offered any words of solace. She had in fact smiled, as though he would manage, was still the strong, capable man who could cut wood, paint walls and raise a hand.

  She may have even hummed, as though she wasn’t hovering, desperate to witness the demise that would mean the end of the whole sordid chapter. When she had spoken, her tone had been nonchalant.

  ‘Take your time. I’ve got hours, nowhere to go and a whole lifetime ahead of me. A promise is a promise.’

  Her flippant pragmatism hid a heart that groaned with relief.

  ‘I haven’t got long.’

  His voice had been a waning whisper. His final words coasted on fragmented last breaths.

  ‘Too slow, painful. You’ll pay.’

  She mentally erased the words before he had finished. She would not share, recount or remember them.

  ‘Oh, Mark, I have already paid.’

  Bending low, with her face inches from his, she breathed the fetid air that he exhaled, sharing the small space where life lingered until the very end. Kathryn marvelled at the capacity for human animals to cling to the ‘now’. It was quite impressive, fascinating even, despite the obvious futility.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did it, Roland. It was me. Me alone.’

  There was a hint of pride in her admission, as if she were commenting on an achievement. Roland found it most disconcerting. He shook his head. Disbelief clouded everything, even after having seen and heard her confession. He looked at the neat, middle-aged woman with the pretty face sitting opposite him. The same woman who had handed him canapés on doily-decorated platters, served him percolated coffee and proffered homemade cake. The facts would simply not compute. She had been married to Mark Brooker, a man that he liked and admired. A man he had trusted with the education of his only daughter.