by P. D. Viner
She’s not told Jim her plans. Not told him she’s going to Durham or that she’s done something the police couldn’t do: track down the elusive Seb Merchant, Dani’s ex-boyfriend. Secret ex-boyfriend that her parents never met, never heard her mention once. Patty only knows about their relationship from fellow students. His name has come up time and time again. Most of them say he’s trouble.
He was missed by the police in the initial trawl for statements, as he wasn’t a student with Dani—he’d been a student five years before but had dropped out halfway through his second year. He stayed in Durham, and each year he made noises as if he’d start his degree again but he never returned to college. No one knew how he made his money; a few suggested he was independently wealthy. The police had finally put him on the list of people to talk to but they couldn’t find him. Patty has.
She feels something tingle, deep down. This is the breakthrough—she knows it. He has something, something to tell her that will reveal the truth at last. And. And. There is a possibility he is Dani’s killer. And … and …
“What would you do?” asks Alice Bell near the end of that thirty-four minutes.
“I don’t understand,” Patty says coldly.
“You say you are investigating Dani’s death.”
“Murder.”
“Dani’s murder. You are looking for her killer, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So what would you do if you found him?”
Patty is impassive. She watches the woman before her, the soft kind eyes and mouth that twitches a little—sharing the pain. Patty will not answer her, instead they will let the final minutes drain away into nothingness. But she knows her reply.
I will find him. I will kill him by cutting his heart out. I swear.
“Should be a bloody florist,” the young man says, cocking his head toward the pile of bedraggled bouquets swept into a corner of the garden. Jim looks at his own yellow roses lying by her plaque. He will leave them here and they will rot and turn to mush. Who decided flowers were a suitable tribute for the dead?
“Instead of a copper?” Jim asks.
Tom kicks at the gravel, sending a shower pinging against the fountain in the center of the garden.
“More public respect, more useful, better hours.”
“Really.” Jim shakes his head. “No florist is going to find who killed Dani.”
Tom feels himself flush with shame. “No. Not likely.”
The two men stand in silence. Tom knows what Jim wants—some assurance that Dani’s killer will be found. He wishes he were anything but a policeman right now. Both men stand and think of Dani. At some point tears come for them both. They lose all feeling in their feet from the cold, yet neither wants to be the one to suggest leaving. Any connection with the girl they love is better than none.
Finally it’s Jim who makes the move.
“A drink, maybe a bite to eat?” Tom asks, hoping to keep the link alive.
“Maybe another day. I think I should get back to Patty.”
“ ’Course. Yeah.” Tom nods and starts to wiggle the toes he knows are in his shoes somewhere. He wonders if this is the last time he’ll see Jim. Then together they walk to the car, hobbling slightly on their frozen feet.
“Patty,” Jim calls as he walks through the front door. He’s bought an extra large portion of chips from the Sung Lee and two giant pickles. He imagines them sousing them in malt vinegar, sprinkle of salt and then Heinz poured all over. Maybe they could eat on the sofa, in front of the TV—see the New Year in together. A new start, maybe. They could hold each other. Make love in their bed. Wake up in the morning and talk about Dani and love each other again.
“Patty?”
But there’s no reply. He finds a note on the kitchen table.
Gone. Back later. P.
No little x of a kiss. Jim wonders for the thousandth time if his wife can bear to be with him any longer.
“Will you stop staring at me, I feel like I’m on fucking suicide watch,” she’d said just yesterday.
He makes himself a coffee, and sits at the kitchen table, staring deeply into the patina of the wood until it swims before his eyes. He loves this table. He and Patty found it in a junk shop in Chichester soon after they were married. It was a beautiful shape but scuffed and scratched, a piece hacked out of the middle. They bought it for next to nothing and restored it, the two of them, a shared project. They found a piece of wood that was as close as close, its twin, and joined them together. Jim traces his fingertips across the top, following the grain with his hand. Even though he knows where to look for the piece they grafted in, he can barely see it. The scar has healed and the wood bonded.
He remembers how happy they’d been working together, sanding and planing. It’s a beautiful memory and he allows it to wander through his head and warm his thoughts. Then it passes and the cold invades his mind once more.
There is a light knock on the door.
“Are you okay?” a woman calls out.
Patty can’t answer. She sits on the toilet and sobs as the train sways beneath her. In the bowl her bile and small flecks of the little she ate this afternoon swill about and will not flush away. Tears flow freely, splattering down into her lap as she leans forward. It had taken her all this time to find him, months. Sending letters, pestering his family, putting posters around, all to find this Seb Merchant and … and it was such a fucking waste of time and now there is no lead, there is no suspect, there is no hope.
She sits there, on the foul-smelling toilet, and lets the grief and frustration bubble up and die. She’s lost. She’s used up every last favor and dried up the last reserves of goodwill. She knew it was coming, has seen how old colleagues shy away from her or run the other way when they see her. How the Durham students take a step back from her when she tries to question them, thinking they’ve told her every last thing they knew about Dani. She knows how she’s pestered them, but she thought something would give, someone would crack, and allow her a glint of hope. But what happens now?
“Are you okay? I’ll get the guard,” the voice calls through the door once more. Concern mixed with more than a little annoyance.
“I’m …” Patricia begins. “I don’t need the guard.”
She hears the woman grumble and walk off, possibly searching for another toilet. Patricia tries to stand but the nausea sweeps across her once more and she drops back feeling everything unravel. She is so scared, scared that nothing of Dani will remain, even her face is fading in her thoughts. In her bag she keeps a photo. She stares at it every day but she knows that more and more it is the photograph she remembers and not Dani. She can do nothing for her now, all those years of feeding, washing, dressing, encouraging and loving—loving, always loving. But at the end it was all shit, all such shit, all arguments and disappointments and all fucked up. With no goodbye, no time to prepare. That Christmas. Oh God, the Christmas—last Christmas.
“I forced her away.” Patty cramps at the memory. Dani was meant to stay for a week and it was just two days. They argued so bitterly.
“That was what I left her with. She hated me.” The tears will not stop.
“It will get better, time heals all wounds,” Jim had said. Fucking liar. The only thing that will ease the pain is to find the man who did this and …
“How do I do that?” she shouts. “How do I find him?”
The train rattles on.
Finally the river runs dry and she can clean herself up and leave the small cubicle. She sits in the first empty seat she finds where she can be alone. Then she closes down.
It’s dark when Jim looks about him. He must have fallen asleep, curled up in his chair. Again.
“Christ … arrgh.” His leg’s asleep. Pins and needles dance along the sole of his foot and march up his leg. He feels scrunched up, a tall man forced into a box and—the phone. It’s ringing and that’s what’s woken him. He launches himself out of the chair and limps into the hall.
“He
llo?” he tries to keep the urgency out of his voice.
“Have you been watching it all? Dancing on the Berlin Wall, the crumbling ripped-down bloody Berlin Wall, who would have thought it? We won. We’re giving peace a chance.” It isn’t Patty but Ed, sounding a little boozy.
“It’s good to hear from you,” Jim replies. It really is good to hear from his oldest friend. Ed and Jacks have done so much over the last year.
“Well, I watched the moon landing with you, I think this is the next big thing. And it was pretty obvious you’d be at home while the rest of the world celebrates the end of nuclear war. Greenham Pat must be wetting herself.”
Despite himself, Jim smiles at his wife’s old nickname.
“She isn’t here.” He thinks for a second. “I have no idea where she is. What’s the time?”
“It’s ten o’clock. If you’re on your own, get the fuck over here and get drunk with us and forget, just for one night, about this fucking awful year.”
New Year’s Eve, he’d forgotten. He cradles the phone between chin and ear and pulls his sleeve away from his watch. He squints in the near dark. It’s ten past ten. On the table the unopened chip packet has gone cold and soggy. There will be no new start with Patty tonight.
“So come. Jacks wants you to.” In the background there is a snort. “And there’s twenty or so people here that don’t know you’re the most miserable fuck in the world and—”
“I can’t. Patty might be back in time.”
“In time to do what? Give you a kiss to ring in 1990, say, ‘It’ll all be fine next year’? I love …” Ed pauses, thinking he might have gone too far. “Oh, Jim. I’ll come over and get you.”
Jim hears Jacks in the background saying that Ed’s too drunk to drive.
“Thanks, Ed, but I can’t,” Jim cuts in.
“Leave her a note and drive over. You can make it by midnight. Don’t be by yourself. Not tonight.”
“Thanks, Ed. Love to Jacks.”
“You fuc—”
Jim misses the rest as he puts the phone down. The silence in the room seems so profound all of a sudden. He appreciates Ed’s try at getting him over, but he can’t betray Patty. Betrayal? What a strange idea. He just needs to be there for when she needs him, that’s all. Isn’t that love?
He closes his eyes tight and indulges himself in a happy memory: the first time he saw Patricia.
She was looking down reading a story as he walked into the university newspaper offices. He was going there to see Connie Tunstall. She had kept telling him he ought to contribute and he always said he was too busy. But that night he and Connie had arranged to meet to go and see a film and he was half an hour early, so he decided to pick her up at the newspaper office.
So, he walked in. The editor’s office was at the back, overlooking everything, but at that exact moment Patricia was standing at a desk by the door looking over some boy’s shoulder, reading his text. As Jim walked in she looked up for a second and caught him full blast with these eyes. Kapow! “Come to bed eyes” is how he described them to Ed the next day. Hazel with flecks of gold, languid like they couldn’t be bothered to look at you, sexy as hell. And then there was her mouth. Full, soft—perfect. He fell in love with that mouth there and then. He may even have drooled a little. He was immediately drawn into her orbit like a love-struck moon. She was the editor, in her second year reading politics, and by all accounts had turned an unloved, barely read monthly into a must-read weekly and was advising other universities on what to do with their crumbling old titles. As he watched her advising and guiding the cub reporter through his story, he was immediately struck by how she took charge with such a deft touch, getting the best out of him not by domineering but by persuading and suggesting. Jim had already fallen a little in love with her that first night, before he even got to her desk and offered his services as cartoonist.
He flicks on the overhead light, which seems too bright somehow. He hears some thumping music from somewhere close, maybe two doors down. The sounds of the party make him feel even more alone. He wishes he could have a drink but there’s no alcohol in the house. He indulged a little too much in the months after Dani’s death and cut himself off. Maybe for New Year’s Eve … but he doesn’t want to go out in case Patty calls. So the best he can do for a treat is a squashed Quality Street from the back of the sofa.
He turns on the TV but keeps the sound off. The cameras keep flipping between countries where fresh-faced young people smile and dance and look so hopeful. 1990 really is going to be a new world for them all to live in. But how will he live in a world without Dani?
At five minutes to 1990 he switches on the sound and watches while the world calls in to show what an amazing decade the nineties will be. It can’t be worse than the eighties, surely.
Finally it’s time to countdown from Trafalgar Square as Big Ben winds up for the momentous dongs.
The crowd begins its chant.
Ten
The phone rings. Jim grabs it.
“Patty?”
Nine
“Jim,” she sobs.
Eight
“Where are you?”
Seven
“I thought I had him, Jim. Thought I’d found him.”
Six
“Who, Patty?”
Five
“The killer, Dani’s killer.”
Four
“But it wasn’t him?”
Three
“I can’t find him, Jim. I can’t find him.”
Two
“Let’s just let … I love you, Patty.”
One
The crowd roars. Otherwise there is only silence.
INTERMISSION TWO
Monday, June 14, 1982
He cannot take his eyes off her, this lovesick, pale boy. For about another minute that will be fine, watching her is acceptable while she runs. But soon she’ll finish the race, and then he’ll have to stop, peel his eyes off her skin and look elsewhere. She’s coming into the final stretch, miles ahead of the competition, she runs fluidly, seemingly with little effort.
He’s watched her for a long time—years—since they started school together at five years old. His first real recollection of her was as Mary, mother of our Lord. She was chosen to lead the nativity and for a glorious day and a half he was to be her husband, Joseph. Mr. Chinns explained the story to them, and Tom tried to imagine what living with Dani and their child would be like. On the run on a donkey: romance, tragedy and adventure. This was the first time his creative imagination had swung into gear and it flipped a switch in him. They were bonded, and it was strong; a desire to protect and love Danielle Lancing was etched on Thomas Bevans’s young heart.
It was only a day and a half of married bliss. There wasn’t even a rehearsal, so they never got to stand next to each other as husband and wife. Instead, he began to itch, and broke out in red welts that were diagnosed as chicken pox. He missed three weeks of school, had a pretty miserable Christmas, and it was all over. He was lucky—there wasn’t a single scar from the pox. At least, none on the outside. Inside, it felt like there was a tiny little arrow embedded that cut every time he thought about or saw Danielle Lancing.
Despite the dig of pain, he watched her whenever he could. In the eight years following their doomed nativity they barely spoke, even though they continued to be in the same class all the way through primary and into secondary school. Tom was too shy, Dani too popular.
Then at the start of this school year, when they were both assessed and found to be in the top twenty percent of the population in terms of intelligence, they were placed in English Literature One. Together, at the same desk, they were forced to talk about love. John Keats.
She breaks the tape, no one anywhere near her. He claps, watching her swing around the extra bend as she slows, her limbs powering down. He must stop gazing now … now … now! He pulls his head away with some effort, and looks across the stand. Her father’s there; he’s still watching her and c
lapping hard. He seems not to know the decorum of school sports day. A few other parents look at him with some distaste. They believe he’s gloating, although Tom thinks he’s merely a man visibly filled with pride. For a second he wonders what it would be like to have such a father. Then the man, still clapping, looks sideways and sees the boy staring at him. For a second their eyes lock and then the boy holds up both of his thumbs signaling he too is in the Dani Lancing fan club. The man smiles, then turns back to admire his daughter once more. The boy can feel himself turn red. Even at fourteen he knows the double thumbs is juvenile (for a short while Arthur Fonzarelli had made it fashionable, but anybody actually cool knew that time had long gone).
He picks up the briefcase his mother insists he uses, even though he is mocked for it, and walks down the line of seats toward the exit. He’ll not look back at her. He knows that by now she will be surrounded by handsome athletes. He walks away. There’s a kiosk nearby that sells ice cream, cake and drinks. He doesn’t feel like going home just yet, so he heads over and buys a Zoom. He sits on a bench overlooking the bowling green and bites into the cold. He replays the race in his head, watching Dani stretch and—
“Excuse me,” a voice calls out from a little way off.
The boy does not look up, assuming someone else is being called.
“Excuse me … Mr. Briefcase.”
Tom looks up and sees it’s Dani Lancing’s father calling him. The man half-waves, then walks across the bowling green toward him.
“I’m sorry, sorry to shout. I don’t know your name so, Briefcase. Nice case by the way. My grandfather had one just like it.” The older man reaches the younger one and stops. “Jim. Jim Lancing. I’m Danielle’s father.”
“Tom,” the boy says, not standing. Jim holds out his hand and awkwardly they shake.
Though it is still a pretty warm afternoon, Tom can’t help but feel a chill run down his back. Is it obvious, can this man see how Tom feels about his daughter?
