by P. D. Viner
“Fuck.” She floors the accelerator, the car pitches forward, she brakes hard and the car slides into the street completely out of control and veers sideways into a parked car. She closes her eyes tight as metal crunches into metal.
She sits for a few seconds while her racing heart slows a little. She tries the clutch again, slowly, until it bites and the car creeps forward. Okay. She slowly pulls into the middle of the road and … there’s a snowman. Where the hell did it come from? It has a carrot for a nose and lumps of coal for eyes. Where did someone get coal?
Past Frosty, illuminated in small pools of yellow streetlight, she can see bank after bank of snow—it looks like Narnia. There’s no moon, just oppressive cloud covering the sky. This was never part of the plan. She slowly lets the clutch bite and pushes forward, nudging the snowman in the tummy and then collapsing him. The head lands with a bump on the bonnet of the car and looks at her sadly, before it rolls off as the car swings … steer, steer … the wheels won’t do what she wants and again she lurches into the curb. Crunch.
From somewhere she can hear the clatter of grit being shot at high speed, pinging off metal and concrete. She feels panic building.
“Shit shit shit shit oh shit. Patricia, breathe.”
She has driven this route three times over the last six weeks, each time obeying the speed limit, and it has taken her forty minutes. But today?
“Do not have a panic attack, Patricia. Do not. You have time, you have hours.”
She has no idea if the streets are passable. All she can hear echoing in her head is Dustin Hoffman whining, “I’m an excellent driver.”
She pulls out into the street once more, and immediately feels the car slipping as the wheels slur away from her.
“Steer into the spin, not away.” She remembers that from some TV show or something. “I am an excellent driver, dammit,” she says through gritted teeth.
She gains some control and pulls away again, creeping forward at about two miles an hour. “I have planned this meticulously. I have driven this route; I know it like the back of my hand,” her voice is level but intense. “I have change for the parking meter in a Ziploc bag and I have his blood. I am not letting this fucking weather stop me.”
She winds slowly through the streets. Everywhere there are cars skidded, crashed and abandoned. Some have run into other cars, some into brick walls. She thinks once or twice that she sees heads slumped against windows as drivers sleep in their cars. There will be many, many war stories for people to tell their loved ones when day breaks. In the distance sirens and car alarms wail like babies. Instead of forty minutes it takes two hours to drive the distance to the lab. While she drives the snow falls around her.
She remembers the first time her parents took her into Central London—maybe she was six—to see the Christmas lights shining all the way down Oxford Street. Someone famous turned them on, a singer. She can’t remember his name all these years later, but she does recall how magical it all was.
“I declare these lights …” Flick—from nothing to great beauty, all in a split second. After that, her parents took her for dinner somewhere swanky, or at least to her it felt like a palace. They ordered her spaghetti—it was the first time she’d ever had pasta and it seemed so exotic. Then the biggest treat—the London Palladium to see Peter Pan. When the pirates were on she remembers squirming in her mother’s arms and watching through her fingers, ready to close them tight when it all got too scary. But more than anything she remembers Tinker Bell. She can still feel the tears of her six-year-old self as they run down her cheeks when the fairy drinks poison.
“Save her, Peter!” six-year-old Patricia screams, along with about two thousand other girls.
“We can all save her,” Peter Pan shouts, “if you believe in fairies.”
“I believe, I believe!” Patricia screams, everyone screams and the air is full of fairies, dancing, flying … just like the snowflakes.
Patty brakes, softly at first until she feels the wheels skid and glide. Then she pumps her foot hard. The wheels bite, the car slows and slides until the curb stops it with a little jerk. She looks at her watch. It’s 7:38 a.m. She’s parked directly opposite the main entrance to the testing labs. On previous trips at this time, even before the doors were opened, there were lights on inside, preparation for the day ahead. Now, however, inside it’s black—no glimmer of light. Snow still falls, a fresh blanket to cover the ground. She doubts the Tube will run, maybe some buses. But will any of the lab staff make it to work?
“I need to breathe,” she thinks and slips out of the car into the icy air. On one of her reconnaissance trips she had gone to an all-night cafe for a mug of tea. It was very close by, so she turns to head for it. As she walks away from the car she feels a slight tug—his blood seems to call her.
NINE
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Jim stands by the phone, which sits on the arm of a chair in the living room. He looks at his watch. Almost 9 a.m. He was brought up never to phone anyone before 9 a.m. or after 8 p.m.—that was just how it was.
“What about a movie?” Dani calls from another room.
Jim looks out through the windows as the snow still swirls in the gray light—banked up against the garden fence and the door.
“I can’t see any cinemas being open today. Maybe tonight,” he calls back.
“What about a soup kitchen?”
“To help the homeless?”
“No, I thought you might need some soup, old man,” she says with a smile as she walks in. “I know how hard those dang-fangled ring pulls are to open.”
“You cheeky—”
The phone rings. Jim grabs at it.
“Patty?” He turns his back on Dani.
There is only the sound of someone breathing.
“Patty?” Jim’s desperation oozes into his voice. “Patty?”
“No. No, it isn’t Patty, Jim. It’s Tom. Tom Bevans.”
“Tom?”
“Tom,” Dani echoes his name, though Jim cannot hear her anymore.
“Long time, Jim.” His voice seems to come from far away.
“Has something happened to Patty?”
“Dad.” Dani tries to get his attention, but her voice is suddenly so small. She feels giddy—unreal, like she weighs nothing, is nothing. She starts to feel a little scared.
“No, no, that isn’t why I’m calling.”
“Then why? I don’t underst—”
“We need to talk about Dani. About what happened.”
“I—” Jim’s head pounds.
“Did Patty tell you I saw her?” Tom asks.
“You’ve seen Patty, when?”
“She told me she’d tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
Tom pauses, annoyed—unsure how to proceed. “Dani’s case is being looked at again, potential new evidence but—”
“What are you talking about?”
“That can wait, something else has happened and I need to see y—”
“Dad.” Her voice is so tiny, but Jim hears the fear in it. He turns.
“Oh my God.” He drops the phone.
“Help me, Dad,” she pleads.
His twenty-one-year-old daughter looks as if she has aged a thousand years in seconds.
“I need a hug.” She stretches out her arms.
“You know I can’t.”
“I need you to hold me, Dad.”
“I want to but—”
“I’m begging, Dad.”
“Dani.”
She moves to him, but he pulls away.
“Dad,” she says, with such hurt, and turns her back on him.
“Jim … Jim …” the phone is calling from the floor. Tom desperate to know what has happened. Jim puts the phone back on its cradle and then pulls the little clip out of the socket so the phone is dead. He looks for his daughter—she is gone.
“Dani?”
No reply.
He finds her standing in the ga
rden, her head down. He walks out to join her, bracing himself against the intensity of the wind.
“Come back inside, darling.”
She looks up at him. Her face pale and beautiful again.
“I need someone to hold me—to feel something.” She lifts her arms for snowflakes to fall on them; she longs to feel the bite of cold as the crystals strike and melt.
“I want to feel life again.”
“I’m sorry” is all a father can say to his daughter.
The snowflakes drift through her to strike the ground. They cannot touch her.
“Dani—”
“What is wrong with me, Dad?”
“Nothing, Dani. There’s nothing wrong with you,” he tells his dead daughter.
She looks at the ground, sees his footprints alone in the snow.
INTERMISSION ONE
Tuesday, February 14, 1989
Jim hears them enter the street and walks outside to meet them. He watches the horse-drawn carriage arrive. Black and sleek, the horses shake their heads and flick their tails. The youngest of the funeral directors has a pocket of carrots and Polo mints to keep them in line.
“Say goodbye in style,” the funeral arranger had said, as if there was something to celebrate. So Jim had booked horses. As a girl Dani had loved them; they’d gone to Devon when she was six and she’d ridden a big brown carthorse. She squealed with delight the whole time. So why not get horses? Because he hadn’t thought about the size of them, the smell of them, the rank deposit one of them would make outside the house while they wait. There is no “style” in saying goodbye to Dani.
The funeral director’s mouth moves, but Jim hears nothing. He feels sick, but there’s nothing in there to come out. For the last few days, all he’s taken into his body has been a little water, a few cups of tea and a bottle and a half of cheap Scotch. At six that morning it was just dry heaves.
His back hurts. He spent last night in Dani’s bed. He’d never realized how soft the mattress was. It had seemed a good idea that evening, even though Jacks had warned him. He thought it would be time to say goodbye. Instead he had lain awake all night, hearing her voice, sensing her every time sleep seemed about to claim him. He misses her. He misses his daughter so very much.
The funeral director repeats his words. “It’s time, Mr. Lancing,” he says, waving his plump hands.
Jim goes back into the house. Patricia’s still on the sofa, slumped even further against Tom. She’s so heavily sedated she doesn’t know up from down. Maybe that made it a little easier now, but what would they pay for all this in the end?
In the kitchen Jacks and Ed, their oldest friends, finish the washing up. They’d been there last night. Jacks had slept next to Patty and Ed was on the couch. Thank Christ for friends.
For a second, just for a second, he wishes his mum was there, that she could hold his head in her arms and coo to him like she did when he was a boy. But there’s no one to coo. She’s dead and gone as well. His life has always been about women, his women: Dani, Patty, his mum and long ago his gran—Nanny Lily. He’d always been a mother’s boy; Patty had often taunted him with that but … he liked it. And she did too, really. Patty wasn’t interested in machismo. But as much as he misses his mum, he knows that she’s lucky to be gone. His mum had been mad about Dani and she had adored her gran. If he believed … but he didn’t. He could fantasize about his daughter being greeted into paradise by his mum but that was all it was, fantasy.
“Just get through today. Just today,” he thinks.
He feels Ed’s hand on his shoulder and a whisper in his ear. “Time to go, Jim-boy.”
He nods, thankful for the darkness to be blown away, even for a few moments. Glad to have his best friend there, though anxious about what will happen once Ed and Jacks have gone. Jim and Patty have so few people in their lives. Their parents have gone. No brothers or sisters to lean on, no nieces and nephews to get caught up with. Jim and Patty are only children who had an only child. Why had that happened?
They could all have fitted in one car, but the funeral directors sent two. So Ed and Jacks travel in one long black car and Jim, Patty and Tom in the other. The trinity of the pained. Jim likes the speed the horses move at, slower than slow. He sees drivers fume all around, dying to honk and swerve round the cortège—but unable to cross that Rubicon of disrespect.
The three of them sit in their snail of a car, watching the horses draw the casket forward. All is silent, except for raspy breaths from Patty, a side effect of the sedatives. Jim sneaks a sidelong look at his wife. Her eyes are glassy, her mind trapped somewhere in an amber of Valium and God-knows-what. This fact makes his stomach lurch and anger fizz deep in his empty belly. She was meant to have been off the strongest drugs for today, the doctors had promised him that she would be awake. But this morning there had been “an episode.” That was what the nurse had called it. She’d shot Patty up with something “to calm her.” Zombify her, more like.
“She will hate me for this,” he thinks. He already hates himself. But he doesn’t have the strength to tell everyone to go home. He needs today to break the pressure of the storm that’s built over them. He needs to see others who loved her, Dani’s friends. So many of them have called, written and even knocked on the door. That has moved him so much. And, most important, Jim needs to remember the girl he raised and loved above all others, to remember her how she was. Not as the lifeless, defiled body he saw in the morgue.
When they arrive Reverend Chapman is waiting for them. He has the whitest teeth Jim ever remembers seeing. Jim dislikes him intensely. Reverend Chapman never knew Dani, feels no real sympathy but there aren’t many places where you can bury someone and seat two hundred mourners.
“Hypocrite fuck,” Jim whispers to himself.
He knows Patty would never have let God anywhere near their Dani. But she’s out of it and he had to make the decision. Alone.
Jim gets out of the car. Tom holds Patty until Jim’s ready, then between the two of them, they manhandle her out. Jim shakes the vicar’s hand.
“This is my wife, Patricia.”
“I am so sorry for your loss.” He holds her arm for a second, squeezing—then he lets her go.
“This is Police Constable Thomas Bevans.” Jim pauses for a second. “He was Dani’s boyfriend.”
It’s a kind lie. Tom feels his gut clench and his eyes turn gritty. He takes the clergyman’s hand.
“I am so sorry.” The white teeth gleam.
They walk through the vestry. The walls are covered in photos, snapshots of Dani. Notes pinned to them, flowers and jewelry scattered all over.
“Your daughter was loved.”
Jim nods. Love. He thinks of his mother.
On an easel outside the chapel Jim sees his mother’s photograph, and underneath it reads: GRACE LANCING, 1901–1976. Eight-year-old Dani stands in front of it frowning and asks “Who’s that lady?”
“That’s Gran,” Jim answers.
She looks at him crossly and shakes her head. “That isn’t Gran, we’re at the wrong funeral. That’s some other lady. She isn’t old enough to die.”
Jim looks closely at the photo. It had been taken before he was born—his mother as a young woman, between the wars. She’d been picking hops in the country with her sister. Even in black and white he could see how healthy and fit she looked. Happy.
“It is Gran, just a long time ago, when she was young.”
“Oh. Olden times.” Dani nods sagely. “How old is she there?”
“Nineteen or twenty, I think.”
“Oh yes. That’s much too young to be dead.”
Reverend Chapman leads them out of the vestry and into the church. He nods across to the organist who strikes up “Nearer My God to Thee.” Jim looks across at him angrily; he’d said no hymns, no church music. Chapman does not meet his gaze, instead he leads them into the center aisle and the four of them process toward the front pew.
They walk slowly, like the horse
s, and Jim looks out at the sea of faces. Students from Dani’s university have come by coach from Durham, organized by the students’ union. They sit together in a group. Already tears stream down faces and pretty blonde girls lean against each other, clutching hands and promising to stay in touch their whole lives, no matter what. Jim smiles at them even though he recognizes only two or three. In another group, closer to the front he recognizes most of the sixth form from Dani’s school and in another pew is the entire running team. He’s so deeply proud that Dani had been so popular. He can see them, there in the pews, sharing anecdotes and memories, tears and even some laughter. Halfway down, Jim suddenly realizes he will never lead his daughter down the aisle to be married. He stops dead.
Chapman sees Jim freeze, the color drain from his face and his legs start to shake. He immediately steps back and kindly but firmly takes his arm and leads the three of them down to the front. He deposits them there, in the place of honor, then walks to center stage. He lets his eyes move across the congregation as the final lines of the hymn fall away. Then he walks across and lightly touches the casket, directly above where the head lies. It’s a small ritual of his—a final blessing for those he is about to deliver from this earth. It’s subtle but the families always like it: a little bit of theater that gives them permission to go up and touch the casket later, to say goodbye to the girl they loved. He knows how important that is, to release the grief and to stop any thought of the body inside—of the tests, the prodding and indignities that come with violent death. With rape and murder.
He looks down the aisles and sees the row after row of pretty young women whose thoughts must be so conflicted this morning. Anger, fear, grief and some guilt. Some part of them all must think—it wasn’t me, thank God it wasn’t me. But it was their friend. Toward the back there are men in uniform. Policemen of all rank from low to high. Some are there to support their colleague who has lost his young love. Others are there to be seen, a public act of contrition for their failure to find those responsible. Chapman finds it distasteful—the motives of these men are tainted. They are there for the press not the family. Then behind the uniformed men are the press. Again, a few are there to support a colleague and the mother of the murdered girl, yet most of the others are beasts full of the scent of blood. A photogenic, middle-class “good” girl missing for three weeks and found raped and murdered. Tabloid gold. He hopes they will behave—in church, at least. He looks back to the school friends, and then slowly onto the family.
