Closer To Home

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Rigby’s eyes drifted across to the bar as though he was trying to remember.

  ‘I’ve tried. I know Jackie Reese is his sister, but I just can’t place him. As I said there were a couple of hundred kids in my year.’

  Kate was just about to ask him again about Ian Hirst when their burgers arrived and they busied themselves with cutlery and ketchup.

  ‘Mmm, that’s much better than I expected,’ Kate mumbled around a huge bite of brioche and beef. ‘I doubt I’ll manage the chips though.’

  They ate in silence for a few minutes before Rigby asked, ‘How’s your Karen? You said she was abroad?’

  Kate nodded, still working on her burger.

  ‘India. She’s been away for a couple of months. It’s what she does. She’ll take a job somewhere for a year or so, save up and then she takes off. She’s been like it for about ten years. She trained as a teacher and she does supply or temporary contracts to earn some money. She sometimes teaches while she’s away to help fund her trip.’

  Rigby raised his eyebrows. ‘Sounds a bit unsettled to me. She not married?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘Came close a couple of times but no. I don’t think she wants to be tied down.’

  Rigby nodded thoughtfully. ‘I thought I’d end up like that. I travelled a lot when I was in the army, couldn’t imagine settling down, but here I am with a job and a house.’

  ‘I don’t suppose anybody’s life turns out exactly like they expected,’ Kate said. ‘I know mine didn’t.’

  Rigby tilted his head to one side quizzically.

  ‘I was going to be a psychiatrist. I did psychology and English at uni. Then life took an unexpected turn and here I am.’

  ‘Unexpected how?’

  Kate sighed, wondering how much to reveal.

  ‘I got married. Had a son. Got divorced and ended up back in Doncaster. Oh, and I’m a copper. Not quite what I’d envisaged.’

  ‘I always expected to be a miner like every other lad in that school,’ Rigby said. ‘Thatcher probably did me a favour when she closed the pits.’

  It wasn’t a sentiment that Kate had heard before, not from a Yorkshireman, and something about it didn’t ring true. It sounded rehearsed.

  ‘So, you were a fan?’

  Rigby nearly spat out the mouthful of bitter that he’d just taken to wash down the last bite of burger.

  ‘Fuck, no! You couldn’t grow up in Thorpe and be a fan of Thatcher. Is your boy in Doncaster with you?’

  ‘No. He’s nineteen now. He’s at Sheffield University studying environmental science. Ironic that his grandfather earned a living from fossil fuels and Ben’ll probably save the world with renewables.’ Rigby smiled and nodded but she could tell that he didn’t think much of her observation.

  Kate glanced at her watch. They’d been in the pub nearly an hour and hadn’t got round to talking about the case. Time to move things along. She took a sip of her wine.

  ‘So, you can’t remember an Ian Hirst at school?’

  Rigby shook his head.

  ‘What about anybody else called Ian?’

  The PCSO stared down at his empty plate.

  ‘There was an Ian Jordan, or Jarvis and an Ian Andrews in my form but I can’t remember any others.’

  Kate picked up a beer mat and peeled one printed side off with her thumbnail to create a blank writing surface.

  ‘Here,’ she passed the beermat and a pen to Rigby. ‘Write those names down. Were there any Hirsts in your year?’

  ‘Not that I remember. Have you tried contacting the school?’

  ‘One of my DCs tried but it’s the holidays. The office staff weren’t very helpful.’

  ‘You know the old school’s been demolished?’ Rigby said with a sudden grin as though he’d done the job himself. ‘It’s a shiny new academy now. All that’s left is the sports hall and the old boiler building. Still gives me the shivers when I see it. Some of my so-called friends locked me in there once for an afternoon. Said it was a joke but it wasn’t funny. When the caretaker let me out I’d wet myself. Lucky for me it was only a couple of weeks before I left. Couldn’t have coped with being called ‘Pisspants’ for a year.’

  Kate had heard about the demolition of the school. She could remember the boiler house with its squat chimney in a corner of the school site that was officially ‘out of bounds’ but was unofficially a shortcut to the local chippy. She hadn’t been near the school on any of her trips to Thorpe so far and she had no intention of passing by out of a sense of nostalgia. Cooper had been informed that the Thorpe Comp records ‘may’ have been stored off site somewhere, possibly with the county council but she couldn’t confirm until the head was back in school. A quick call to the county council had yielded nothing of use but Cooper had the number of an archivist who ‘might be able to help’ after the holidays.

  Rigby drained his second pint.

  ‘Another?’ he asked, waving the glass at her. Kate looked down at her half-drunk wine and shook her head.

  ‘I need to get off. Things to do.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll settle the bill.’

  ‘Do you live locally?’ Rigby asked. ‘It’s getting dark and I don’t mind walking home with you.’

  Kate just smiled and went to the bar. She didn’t need an escort and she resented his suggestion that she did. Unless he was angling for an invitation to her flat. She quickly paid the bill and turned back to the table when an idea struck her and she ordered another pint of bitter.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said as she returned to the table. ‘Have another one. And thanks for the chat. At least I’ve got a couple of names to try.’ She shrugged on her jacket and left before Rigby could protest.

  Kate poured herself a glass of wine and eased herself down on to the sofa. The Shiraz in the pub hadn’t quite hit the spot and she felt the need for another glass before bed. She flipped open her laptop and clicked on her personal email, deliberately avoiding the link to her work server. The case could wait until tomorrow. She needed to try to connect with her sister. She sat for a few minutes, trying to compose an email, something that would sound chatty but wouldn’t mask the seriousness of the need for information.

  Hi Karen,

  I hope you’re having a good time. I don’t know when you’re back from your trek but I just thought I’d drop you a quick line on the off-chance.

  You’ll never guess where I’m spending all my time at the minute. Thorpe! I’ve been back every day for the last week or so. I’ve been back to Crosslands Estate. Nothing’s changed and everything’s changed – does that make sense? I’ve just been to the pub with another Thorpe Comp survivor. He seemed to have had a better time there than either of us.

  Ben’s been in touch. He needs money, big surprise, but we had a decent chat. I think he might be thawing a bit. Garry still rings for a whinge every few days but the answering machine seems able to cope.

  I could use your help with something if you don’t mind. I know you don’t like thinking about Thorpe Comp but there’s a connection between the school and a recent case. I’m trying to trace somebody who was in your year. His name’s Ian Hirst and he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. Does the name ring any bells? His sister died in an accident in the quarry when we were little. Let me know if you remember him.

  Are you okay for money? I’m paying Ben’s rent but if you need anything, I’ll help if I can – just ask.

  Look after yourself.

  Love you.

  Kx

  Kate re-read it twice before hitting ‘send’.

  ‘Come on sis,’ she whispered. ‘You’re all I’ve got at the minute.’

  21

  1984

  Kathy knew something serious was happening as soon as she walked into the kitchen. Her father and sister were sitting at the table, their faces grave. Karen looked up as Kathy threw her school bag onto one of the chairs and sat on a stool to join them. Her first thought was that somebody had died; the situation reminded her of the morning
that her father had sat the two of them down on Kathy’s bed and explained that their mother had gone to heaven. But who could it be this time?

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, looking from her sister to her dad and back again. Her dad looked old. Older than he did when she imagined him or tried to describe him to anybody. His receding hairline had exposed acres of lines on his forehead and the crows’ feet around his grey eyes were deeply etched.

  ‘I need to talk to you both. I need to make a decision and it affects all of us so it’s only right that you two have a say.’

  Karen looked frightened and Kathy wondered if she, too, was reminded of the last serious conversation her dad had had with them both.

  ‘I’ve been offered a new job,’ her dad continued. ‘It’s better pay and it might mean that I can buy a house instead of renting. It would be something for the two of you when I’m not here anymore.’

  ‘Could I have a dog?’ Karen asked, her face breaking into a smile of relief that it wasn’t news of another death in the family.

  ‘I don’t know about that. But it means that we’d have to move to another county.’

  Karen looked dubious. ‘Would I have to change schools?’

  Her dad nodded.

  ‘Great. I hate Thorpe Comp.’

  This was the first that Kathy had heard about her sister not liking school. Apart from her bouts of fake illness, she seemed to enjoy being with her friends and she was good at some subjects.’

  ‘I thought you liked school?’ Kathy said.

  Her sister looked embarrassed; caught out in a lie.

  ‘I used to,’ she said. ‘I had loads of friends when I first started but I hate it now. Everybody picks on me because…’ she glanced up at her dad. ‘Because of dad’s job. They say he’s a scab because he’s not on strike. I know you’re not a scab, Dad, but they don’t believe me and they call me a liar. So now a lot of my friends don’t talk to me anymore and the others don’t seem to like me very much.’ Her lower lip trembled and Kathy had a sudden urge to hug her. She hadn’t realised that her little sister had been going through the same hell that she had. She should have talked to her, or at least got Karen to talk. All the times she’d faked illness with a big smile; all the stories about what she’d done at school. Kathy had thought that Karen had been okay but she’d barely been coping. Seeing her finally give way to tears as the months of torment finally caught up with her was heart-breaking.

  Their father never cried, not even at their mum’s funeral but he looked really upset as he explained again that his job put him in a different union from the other men who worked down the pit and that his union wasn’t on strike. He had to go to work or he wouldn’t get paid and there was nothing he could do about it, no matter what he thought about what was happening. Kathy understood his situation and she had explained it carefully to her sister but it obviously didn’t matter to the bullies at school; the ones who’d seen a chink of weakness and exploited it just as efficiently as miners exploiting natural weaknesses in the rock below ground. It didn’t matter to those kids that there were different unions; different sets of rules.

  It wasn’t their dad’s fault that they were being singled out for torment but Kathy could see his shoulders sagging under the weight of responsibility as he listened to Karen describe some of the bullying. None of it was as bad as the note that had been left in Kathy’s locker but, to a fourteen-year old, it would have seemed insurmountable.

  ‘So, where’s the new job?’ Kathy asked. ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Near Nottingham. There’s a house we can rent but, like I said, we might be able to buy one eventually.’

  ‘What about school?’ Karen wanted to know. It didn’t matter quite so much to Kathy; she’d finished her exams and the results were due in a few weeks and then she’d be going to sixth form anyway where it would all be new. Not many of her classmates were expected to get good enough grades so she’d been seeing it as an escape. For Karen, it would be much more of an upheaval.

  ‘There’s a school in the town where we’d live,’ her dad said. ‘It’s not as big as the one you go to now but everybody says it’s good. Their O-level results are usually excellent and it’s got a sixth form for you, Kathy. I think it might be the best thing for all of us. It’s hard here while this strike’s on and I can’t see an end to it. And even when it’s over nobody knows what’ll be left in the way of jobs. I might have had to move anyway.’

  Kathy could see that he wasn’t being completely truthful. It wouldn’t be the best thing for him. This was his home; this was where his friends were, where his family were from. It was where he belonged. A sudden flash of understanding jolted through her like electricity. This was for her and Karen. It was because of the note.

  ‘I think it sounds great, dad,’ she said, standing up so that she could put her arms round him. She knew that she’d long grown out of hugging him and Karen was the same but she needed to show him that she understood exactly what he’d done for the two of them.

  ‘Thanks, Daddy,’ she whispered as he put his arms round her shoulders and pulled her close.

  ‘Just look after your sister,’ he whispered back. ‘It’ll be hard on her at first.’

  Less than six weeks later, Kathy stood at the gate of her new school daring herself to walk in. Karen had already made friends on the estate and had gone in with them but Kathy had kept herself to herself over the holidays. She’d been helping to get the house organised and making sure that she was ready for school. She’d been given a reading list for her English A-level course and another for history and had decided to spend as much time as possible trawling the library for text books and novels that she would be reading over the next two years. She didn’t want to be a know-it-all, but she needed to make the most of this opportunity. It might be her ticket to university and beyond and she didn’t want to mess it up.

  And then there was her dad. He’d started his new job but he didn’t seem to be very happy and Kathy knew that he felt like her about the move away from their old house. The new house was great, it had a big garden, her bedroom was huge and it was handy for the shops, but it had no memories and that was hard for them all. The old house had bits of her mum woven into the wallpaper and curtains and paintwork. The kitchen walls still showed the brush marks where she’d tried to paint over the mural that her dad had sketched out for a joke. The wallpaper in Kathy’s bedroom hung crookedly around the door where her mum and dad had argued over the right way to paper around the corner and the curtains in the sitting room were ones that Mum had chosen and altered to fit. There was nothing of her mum in the new house except a few framed photographs.

  She glanced across at the students pouring in through the double front doors of the school, a building so completely different from the late Victorian brick monstrosity that she had attended for the last five years. This school was barely three years old and it was all windows and right angles. There was a crest in a concrete panel above the main entrance and a Latin motto that Kathy couldn’t read from where she was standing but which she knew was non scholae sad vitae discuses and translated as something to do with learning for life. The Latin had intimidated her when she’d been to visit with her dad. She’d expected the school to be stuffy like an old grammar but the head of sixth form had been all smiles and there hadn’t been a black gown in sight.

  It had been the start of the summer holidays and Kathy and her father had been with a group of other families new to the area. The parents all seemed eager to please but the students had seemed like a surly bunch and Kathy had been the only one impressed with the library and the sports centre, complete with a full-size swimming pool. The tour also took in the shiny science labs and the fully carpeted classrooms in the sixth-form wing. It was nothing at all like her old school.

  So, now, here she was, first day and she felt like she was a first year again. She shrugged her bag higher up her shoulder and marched down the flagstone path to the door. Most students seemed to have alre
ady dispersed to their various form rooms and the corridor was deserted apart from a group of three stragglers gathered around an open locker. Kathy approached, heart hammering in her chest, to ask her way to G14, her form room for the year.

  The three girls gave her the once over, eyes assessing her from top to toe before the one in the middle of the group answered.

  ‘It’s just down there, second left.’ She turned and pointed. ‘I’m Diane. Are you in Miss Gilchrist’s form?’

  Kathy nodded, trying to weigh up the girls. Diane seemed to be the leader of the group. She was wearing turned-up jeans and a baggy T-shirt with the name of a band that Kathy didn’t recognise emblazoned across the front. Her friends were dressed in a similar manner but one had a bright red T-shirt with black numbers randomly scattered across the front and the other wore a plain white shirt tied at her midriff. All three sported shaggy haircuts, two blonde and one darker. Kathy thought they might pass for Bananarama’s younger sisters.

  ‘I’ll walk with you if you like,’ said one of the blonde girls. ‘I’m Faye. I’m in Miss Gilchrist’s form as well. She’s okay really. She seems a bit strict at first, I had her for English last year, but she sometimes lets it slip a bit and talks to us like we’re adults.’

  She grabbed Kathy’s arm, before she could introduce herself, and began to steer her down the corridor chatting about teachers and subjects and university options without pausing for breath.

  Miss Gilchrist was already at the teacher’s desk when Kathy and Faye entered the room. She scowled at the two girls from beneath a severe fringe of greying hair.

  ‘Good afternoon, can I help you?’

  ‘Sorry we’re late, Miss. I was helping a new girl. She was lost.’

  Miss Gilchrist stared at them both for a few seconds as though considering whether beheading might be too severe a punishment and then her face cracked into a smile which, despite the deep wrinkles it produced, seemed to shave a decade from her.

  ‘Okay, find a seat. I’ll get your timetables in a second. You I know, Faye Whitton. Who’s your friend?’