by Paula Daly
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. I said excuse me, she turned around, and then everything just slipped from her fingers.’
‘How odd,’ says Carrie.
A few minutes later, their order is delivered by another member of staff, a pleasant young woman whom Carrie observed busying herself in the kitchen area when they first arrived. She leaves and as Carrie sips her tea, she can hear the young woman asking Ella if she’s sure she’s OK now, and Ella must whisper her response because it’s inaudible.
Carrie imagines Ella jerking her head repeatedly in Carrie’s direction. ‘That’s her … that’s Pete’s wife.’ And she imagines Ella’s co-worker whispering, ‘Oh my God,’ her hand flying to her mouth in response.
Has she given them something to titter about today?
She really does hope not.
It was not her intention to be an object of ridicule.
Without thinking, Carrie rises from her seat. Mia is studying her phone so Carrie’s movement barely registers. Mia lifts her gaze, lowers it again, goes back to scrolling. Carrie wends her way between the tables and finds Ella standing with her back against the tiled wall of the kitchen area. It’s immediately evident she has not shared Carrie’s identity with her co-worker. The co-worker is happily dealing with a large cabbage; she’s slicing it into thin strips – for coleslaw, Carrie supposes – and she does not look at all perturbed by the sight of Carrie approaching.
Ella, however, looks as though she’s ready to break into two. Her head is dipped and she is shielding her face with her hands. Her skin is a deathly white. It’s as if she’s aged ten years in the space of a few minutes.
‘Ella, would you mind serving this lady, while I finish off here?’ says the young co-worker with the cabbage, and Ella drops her hands, closing her eyes for an extended moment when she sees Carrie.
Ella approaches. ‘What can I get you?’ she asks in a quiet voice. She appears vulnerable and weak. She appears … sorry.
But Carrie has been nice to this girl. When their paths have crossed, she’s even tried to help her. And what has Ella done in return? She’s fucked Carrie’s husband.
‘I’d like you to know that I can come here at any time,’ Carrie says to Ella. Her voice is low and steady. There’s a calmness to her manner that she knows must be unnerving.
Ella’s big eyes are fixed upon Carrie. She does not blink once.
‘I can come here every day if I want to,’ Carrie says, and Ella nods as though she understands. ‘I can come in here – Every. Single. Day.’ Carrie reaches out her hand and brushes her fingertips across Ella’s cheek. Ella remains perfectly still. The only movement is the pulse in her neck.
Carrie drops her hand and smiles. It’s a warm smile. Genuine. And Ella is terrified. ‘Just wanted you to know that … Now, take care of yourself, Ella, won’t you?’
Now
TESS STARES THROUGH the windscreen at the rain that’s begun to fall. Her beige woollen coat will smell like a wet Labrador if she goes out in this, but there’s not a lot of choice. ‘Look lively,’ she says to Avril. Avril, who is not much better prepared herself, wearing as she is a summery mac in pale blue, with large indigo flowers dotted all over it. Tess really should invest in some Gore-Tex. Something waterproof and breathable. But she supposes it’s a bit late for all that now.
She tells Avril to grab the folder with the case notes inside and hands her a carrier bag in which to keep it dry. She has an emergency stock of plastic bags in the pocket behind her seat, because she never knows when someone is going to hand her another thing to cart around.
Avril places the case notes inside and balances the lot on top of her head to keep her hair dry. ‘Don’t you have an umbrella?’ she asks, and Tess doesn’t bother answering because, evidently, if she had one she would be using it.
‘Always visit the site of the murder,’ she tells Avril. ‘It’s rare you’re going to get to see the actual scene, but always visit the property. Visit the street at the very least. Things look different on the ground.’
Tess looks along the street, first one way and then the other. They’re in Torrisholme, which is a small suburb of Morecambe. Ella Muir’s house, or what was Ella Muir’s house, is a neat-looking 1930s semi-detached; Ella lived in the left-hand side of the dwelling. Dividing the front garden is a tall privet hedge, which Tess knows from the crime scene photographs was here, and largely unkept, at the time of Ella’s death. There is also a street lamp outside the house next door, but the front of Ella’s house is largely in darkness.
Tess wipes the rain from her face. ‘Come on,’ she says to Avril, and she sets off, walking diagonally across the road at a brisk pace, Avril trotting behind to keep up.
‘Where are we heading?’ asks Avril.
‘There,’ she says, pointing.
A moment later, Tess stops outside number 53. She turns and looks left towards Ella’s house. ‘Yes,’ she says to herself, ‘this is the one.’
The door is answered by a doddery old gentleman, well into his seventies. He wears a brushed-cotton shirt and a maroon acrylic cardigan, buttoned all the way. His nose hair is almost plaitable, which Tess thinks is a sure sign that he lives alone, and he wears thick-lensed spectacles, behind which his eyes appear to be twice their natural size.
‘Mr Hurst?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Tess Gilroy. We’re from Innocence UK and we’re looking into the murder of Ella Muir. I believe you were a witness for the prosecution?’
‘I was indeed,’ he answers proudly, and doddery old Mr Hurst comes alive at the mention of the murder.
‘I wonder if we could ask you a few questions, if it’s not a bad time?’
‘Come in,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘Come in.’
Mr Hurst is clearly starved of company and purpose as he’s beaming at the two women now standing in his living room, excited by the prospect of what they have to say. He didn’t ask Tess for any identification, and not for the first time Tess is astonished by the unguarded trust exhibited by the elderly. Tess and Avril could tie him up and scarper with his valuables if they were that way inclined.
Tess opens up the case file. She doesn’t need to do this. She knows exactly what the file says, but she senses Mr Hurst will respond favourably to a degree of page-flapping – indicating official business – so she makes quite a meal of it. ‘As I understand it, Mr Hurst, you told the police you saw Carrie Kamara leaving Ella Muir’s house on the evening of the murder?’
‘That’s correct. I saw her. It was definitely her. No doubt in my mind about it.’
‘Would it be a lot of trouble to take me through exactly what you were doing at that moment? It’s not completely clear in these notes and I’d like to get it straight in my head.’
Hurst is way less unsteady on his feet now. He smiles and takes Tess to the front bay window, parts the curtains and gestures in the direction of Ella’s house. ‘She came out there, right by that van, got in her car and drove off in that direction.’
Tess notes he has mistaken her saloon car for a van. How far can he see? she wonders. ‘You’re talking about Carrie Kamara?’ she asks.
‘Aye. It was definitely her. The murderer. I was relieved when they found her guilty. You don’t want a woman like that loose on the streets. Morecambe used to be a safe place.’
‘But you’d never seen Mrs Kamara prior to that, had you? You weren’t familiar with her? You weren’t familiar with how she looked?’
‘No, but I know it was her. Who else could it be?’
Who else indeed.
Tess closes the file as if to suggest she’s all done and dusted. She watches the disappointment register on Mr Hurst’s face. Just as she hoped, he’s desperate to be involved.
Could it have been desperation, Tess thinks, that led Mr Hurst to make his witness statement in the first place? Is he one of those lonely individuals who’ll do anything to be included?
Tess waits for a moment, making s
ure he’s watching, before signalling to Avril with a flick of the head that she’s ready to leave. She says, ‘Right, I think we have everything we need now.’
And again, Mr Hurst’s face drops.
So she smiles.
It’s Tess’s best, most beatific smile. ‘Mr Hurst,’ she says warmly, ‘I have a bit of a crazy idea. How would you feel about helping us with something?’
Tess and Avril are outside what was Ella’s front door. They are hidden from view by the privet hedge, which runs between the neighbouring properties. There’s no one at home, which is just as well because then she’d have to introduce herself, ask the householder if they’d mind them using their front pathway for a time, and there would be questions, lots of questions. A miscarriage of justice! How exciting.
Tess has her phone clamped to her ear. ‘Can you still hear me there, Mr Hurst?’
‘Loud and clear.’
‘OK, I’m going to set off walking along the pathway in a few seconds and I want you to tell me the exact moment I come into view. OK?’
‘I’m ready,’ he says, quite giddy.
Tess nudges Avril and gives her a thumbs up. And Avril, as instructed by Tess, sets off walking at a slow pace along the path towards the road, while Tess remains hidden.
Tess can hear Mr Hurst’s outward breath in her ear. ‘Righto, I can see you now,’ he says. Avril continues towards the car and takes the keys from her pocket. ‘Yep. I’ve got you. I can see you next to the van.’
‘Excellent. And can you make out my beige coat from where you are, Mr Hurst?’ she says loudly.
Avril smiles at Tess and she does a sort of shimmy before turning on the spot as if she’s a runway model, showing off her coat which is of course nothing like Tess’s.
‘Clear as day,’ he says. ‘And I can see your blonde hair.’
‘My blonde hair? Excellent.’
Avril is, of course, brunette.
‘Excellent, Mr Hurst,’ Tess says again. ‘You’ve been such a marvellous help to us.’
‘Not at all,’ he says.
And Tess thinks: Another point to Carrie.
Four Years Ago
THE DAY OF her arrest, Carrie can feel the gusset of her swimsuit riding up as she marches on the spot. ‘Knees nice and high!’ She’d bought the curve-enhancing, body-shaping, essential plunge in size ten, and is now realizing this was a mistake. She should’ve gone for the twelve. She keeps her knees nice and high as she reaches behind and extricates the material from between her buttocks, only for it to slip straight back up there again. She glances around. No one else here seems to be having swimsuit issues. They are all marching, their arms thrust straight out, their eyes fixed on Gavin at the poolside.
Gavin comes highly recommended. He is the best in the area, according to her friend, Helen Carter, whom she lunches with, and Carrie wonders just how many aqua-aerobics instructors there can be competing for that title. Helen insisted Carrie try one of Gavin’s classes when Carrie made a point in passing that her upper arms were beginning to lose their tone. Carrie can see Helen at the front of the class. Her head is bobbing, the muscles between her shoulder blades standing proud as she begins circling her arms enthusiastically. Helen had wanted Carrie to take a place at the front, alongside her, but Carrie made an excuse. ‘Maybe next time,’ she’d mumbled.
Carrie’s arms are beginning to ache. She’s just out of condition, she tells herself, and she grits her teeth and digs deep, as Gavin is telling them to do. He’s in Lycra, of course, and now, as he spreads his feet wide, and he steps from one foot to the other, arms still circling, Carrie has a hard time knowing where to look as his penis bounces jauntily from side to side along with him.
Perhaps she should’ve opted for horse riding instead. She used to enjoy it. As a pre-teen, Carrie would canter along Morecambe’s shore, hair blowing out wildly behind her, jodhpurs soaked in the spray, and she would think that life was pretty wonderful. The horse’s name was Fernando. He was a palomino with a white-blond mane and tail that Carrie would lovingly comb for hours, before plaiting it for his owner in readiness for a show. Fernando had two white socks and a white blaze down his face and if Carrie could’ve married that horse she would have. In fact, thinking about it now, as they punch the air high above them before turning on the spot and clapping twice, Carrie remembers wishing as a twelve-year-old girl that she could actually be a horse.
‘And splash!’ Gavin shouts. ‘Splash those troubles away!’
They are supposed to smack the water in time to Pharrell Williams’s ‘Happy’, but Carrie senses the women on either side of her are not keen to get their hair wet, so she goes easy.
Gavin instructs them to turn a full three-sixty, only this time they are to crouch in the water, using their arms to beat themselves around. ‘Like fins!’ Carrie is late in starting this, concentrating as she is on the swimsuit again, and so when the woman in front of her manoeuvres herself round using an odd sidestroke action, Carrie is still facing front. She recognizes the woman instantly and so her first instinct is to smile – Carrie was brought up to be a friendly sort – but the woman does not return the gesture, and Carrie feels foolish. She drops her smile and is left wearing a kind of dopey expression that she doesn’t quite know how to get rid of. It lingers as she completes her turn.
The woman is Nicki Entwistle. She is short in the leg, with thick arms, no breasts to speak of, and has a pad of fat sitting beneath her lower jaw that she inherited from her mother (her mother used to work as an ice-cream seller on the prom and the children would gobble like turkeys when they cycled past the van). Carrie could describe Nicki’s less alluring features, even if she wasn’t in front of her right now, because, for the last few years, Carrie’s focused on these points whenever she sees her.
Nicki’s daughter, Paige, accused Carrie’s daughter, Mia, of bullying, back in Year Seven. Which was completely hysterical since everyone knew Paige Entwistle had been an atrocious bully all the way through primary school. But Morecambe High wasn’t aware of this, and so Paige’s claims that Mia was bullying her psychologically and emotionally were treated seriously. Carrie and Pete were asked to attend a meeting with the head of year, as well as the deputy head, where they were informed that bullying of any sort would be stamped out before it had a chance to take root, and ‘Paige Entwistle is entitled to a worry-free education’, they were told. Carrie and Pete listened, their mouths gaping, knowing Mia had been set up somehow, but were powerless to argue against it since Paige had got the first word in.
The sense of injustice Carrie felt was all-consuming. Mia had always been so sensitive, a worrier; she got headaches when she had a test looming, she became dizzy if she had an altercation with another girl. But she went ahead and questioned Mia and Mia was also aghast; ‘I’ve never bullied anyone,’ she told Carrie, and even though Carrie hadn’t believed it for one second, she was relieved to hear her say it. ‘I don’t even dare speak to her,’ Mia said. And when Carrie asked why that was, Mia replied, ‘Because she’s Paige.’
She went on to tell Carrie that the only thing she could think of that could have prompted such a lie was an incident that happened during drama class the previous week. A popular boy had mocked Paige’s attempt at an American accent, and ‘I smiled, Mum,’ Mia said, ‘that’s it. I didn’t even think she saw me.’
Carrie didn’t need to hear more. She understood what she needed to do. These powerful girls had made her own high-school experience a living hell, with their mind games and their constant humiliation, and Carrie would not allow Mia to suffer the same fate. So she waited for Paige. She lingered outside school; she knew Nicki had younger children to collect first and so there would be a window of opportunity, fifteen minutes perhaps, when Paige would be alone. She followed Paige to her pick-up point and, once there, she stood beside her.
Carrie didn’t speak. She didn’t demand answers from the girl. She didn’t even warn her away from repeating the trick she’d pulled which had landed Mia i
n isolation for two days and put a black mark against her academic record. She merely waited along with her and when Paige became unnerved, when she became flushed and awkward – sorting through her rucksack repeatedly, draining the last of her drinks container, arranging her hair in a scrunchy and taking it out again – Carrie kept a level gaze on her.
Naturally Carrie expected repercussions. She expected the school to get in touch. In her more paranoid moments, she expected the police to get in touch. She knew she’d overstepped the mark. You weren’t supposed to take matters into your own hands; it was prohibited to approach a student. She knew that. So she marvelled when nothing happened. And again, when nothing happened to Mia either. If anything, Mia reported back, Paige had begun going out of her way to be accommodating – which was unexpected to say the least; and the only real consequence of Carrie’s action was the furious death stare she received from Nicki Entwistle every time their paths crossed.
Did Nicki know Carrie had approached her daughter? Carrie thought not. Nicki was a real bulldog of a woman and had undoubtedly made school hell for many when she was there herself, so Carrie had to assume from Nicki’s lack of retaliation that Paige kept their encounter from her mother, and that the reason for Nicki’s glowering lay entirely in her assumption that Mia really had bullied her precious girl.
‘And march!’ shouts Gavin now, and Carrie lifts her knees up high and swings her arms backwards and forwards, the resistance of the water against her limbs a pleasant distraction from the worry that Nicki Entwistle might turn on the spot again and choose this moment to finally exact retribution.
Then they are sidestepping across the width of the shallow end, arms out at their sides, faster, faster still, as some of the older ladies struggle to keep their balance, and there are honks of laughter and trills of ‘Oops! I’ve lost my footin’’, and Carrie is just thinking that this class is definitely not for her when the music stops. Gavin apologizes for the halt in the proceedings, and adjusts his mic, before saying, ‘Do we have a Carrie Kamara with us today?’
