by Nigel May
The service itself was short yet sweet. Amy had chosen Queen’s ‘Who Wants To Live Forever?’ to be played as Riley’s coffin departed. It was one of his favourite tunes and one that he had admittedly ‘murdered’ many times as he sang it whilst showering. Tears cascading down her face, Amy couldn’t help but hear Riley’s totally tuneless version playing in her mind as she watched the last corner of his coffin disappear from view. She would have given anything to hear him sing it just once more and for him to appear, dripping wet from the shower, his body glowing from the heat of the power jets and glistening with vitality. But it was not to be. Despite what Amy had always believed, Riley was not to live forever.
The cover of the order of service showed two photos. One of a besuited Riley, handsome and strong, looking as he had done on the night of his death, the ultimate businessman. The other showed a younger Riley alongside his mother, a woman who had died of cancer when Riley was in his teens and never had the chance to see what an upstanding man he had become. His mother, named Bianca, was a woman with kind features and a softness to her face. Amy and Riley had talked about Bianca a lot and Riley had shared his memories of what she was like. She was all about family, caring for her son and husband. The protective arm placed across Riley’s teenage shoulders in the photo showed a woman who would do anything to guard her offspring. Amy could feel another onslaught of tears pricking at her eyes as she looked at the photo, wondering if Bianca would have been able to save Riley had she managed to survive the cancer. Would his late father, Cazwell, have been able to save his son either, had he not died? Amy also couldn’t help but wonder if there had been more that she herself could have done to protect her husband. She knew the answer was no but still couldn’t stop her imagination from racing into overdrive and mulling over what ifs.
The tears flowed. Amy watched as one of them tumbled from the end of her nose and fell onto the order of service she was holding in her hands. It landed on the poem that Amy had chosen to include. Death Is Nothing At All by Henry Scott Holland. The words said everything to Amy and served a dual sentimentality as she knew that Riley had insisted that they used it for Bianca’s funeral. It was a poem that she had read many times to a young Riley, during her illness, explaining how death was not to be treated as something so sad, it was merely somebody we loved ‘slipping away into the next room’. Amy hadn’t heard of it before Riley telling her but she found it beautiful and completely befitting now that he himself had slipped away. It was a shining star of beauty in a blackened sky of woe. But as Amy was taxied away from the funeral, her tears still dampening her face, she knew that death wasn’t ‘nothing at all’. Death was seeing her husband’s body on a mortuary slab with his beautiful features blown off beyond recognition. It was an image that would always haunt her.
Night after night following the funeral Amy hardly slept, images of the carnage at the club suffocating her mind. The Kitty Kat that she knew she would have to reopen and soon if she were to try and keep it at the top of its game. But would people go there now, a place where so much badness had happened? It was supposed to be a place of excitement and happiness, one of carefree elation where all worries could be forgotten to the hardcore beat of a clubland tune, not a place where people would whisper ‘that’s the corner where so and so had their face blown off’ or ‘that’s where the owner’s best friend bled to death’. It would be a destination for the macabre and Amy couldn’t bear that. Did anyone ever visit Hollywood’s The Viper Room and not still think ‘this is where River Phoenix breathed his last’, even decades after his untimely death?
Amy had been business-minded enough to keep everybody on the payroll at the Club for the moment. Lily had been brilliant at cancelling all upcoming bookings and DJ residences and generally dealing with everything that needed to be done. There would be a reopening, of that Amy was sure, but that would be a long time into the future. For now, everything was too raw. Amy was too weak. She felt as if she was in the middle of a breakdown, not capable of dealing with the things that life was throwing at her. She’d not even been able to attend Laura’s funeral or indeed that of Winston Curtis. She sent flowers but standing at the graveside of her best friend and staring at her beautiful face on an order of service was not something she could face. Not yet … It would tip her over the edge. Laura had been so important to her yet a piece of her own heart still wasn’t able to take the pain of seeing her best friend buried.
It was about a week after Riley’s funeral that Amy had had to muster up the energy to head to the reading of his will. There was business to be discussed and she needed to be there. Not just for her own interests in the Club but also for the factory. There was nobody to carry on the family business and Amy knew that she would have to step up to the plate to try and make sure that the legacy of Riley, and his father Cazwell before him, lived on.
Tommy and Jemima had been present at the reading of Riley’s will too. That was no surprise to Amy as work matters would doubtless be discussed and Tommy’s attendance had been expected. But there was something about Jemima being there that really irked Amy. She knew that her own brain was still a scribble of emotions from the loss of Riley and Laura, but something unsettled Amy further from the moment she entered the room where Tommy and Jemima were already seated. Amy was immediately struck by how different Jemima looked, her stony face from the funeral somehow erased. She wasn’t exactly cheery but there was definitely an air of smugness about her. As Amy took her seat, she nodded a courteous but automatically cautionary hello to Tommy and his wife. As the reading was about to commence she couldn’t help but spot a dry, sardonic pouting of the lips and a raised eyebrow place itself across Jemima’s stretched face. At the time she wasn’t sure why but as the reading unfurled it became clear. Both Jemima and her husband obviously knew something that Amy didn’t. As the last will and testament of Riley Hart was read aloud to the three people gathered, Amy’s already crumbled life turned into a pile of powder-fine ashes.
‘And to Tommy Hearn and his wife, Jemima, I leave all of my business affairs, including ownership of The Kitty Kat Club.’ The voice, devoid of emotion and matter of fact, had belonged to the executor. It had stunned Amy to the core, the word all smashing into her brain
Amy leapt to her feet, stumbling slightly on the Gucci heels she had chosen to wear for the reading. Having assumed that there would be business to discuss, she had chosen a killer heels and charcoal Calvin Klein business suit combo to give her an air of gravitas. Even if inside she was marshmallow soft. Judging from what she’d just heard she may as well have worn ripped jeans and a food-stained T-shirt.
‘Hang on a minute, The Kitty Kat is my club. Riley and I opened it together. He would never have left it to them.’ She turned to face Tommy and Jemima, pointing an accusatory finger as she did so. She spied that a wry smile had now sneaked its way across Jemima’s lips. It defined smug. Had the formalities of probate somehow been greased? Was there some kind of underground trickery going on?
‘Why would he leave it to you two?’ asked Amy. ‘Riley always knew that The Kitty Kat was my dream.’ Her voice petered out, weakness already taking its toll once again.
Rising to their feet, Tommy and his wife linked their hands, evidently striving for a united front, nodded to the executor and made for the door.
‘Well he has, we’ll leave it at that, shall we?’ was Tommy’s parting shot, not a trace of remorse dotting his voice. ‘It’ll be in good hands, don’t worry.’ Jemima raised her hand and waved mockingly as they exited.
Amy sank into her chair as she watched them leave the room. Disbelief smothered her. That had been the last time she had seen Tommy and Jemima. Within days they had installed themselves at The Kitty Kat, changed the locks, ripped down the pink neon sign outside and employed a team of builders to turn it into a casino. The Kat had been neutered.
Amy would have fought, but there it was, as plain as day on the will. Riley had left it to Tommy and Jemima, along with his factory building. With
in six weeks the Hearns had sold the factory. All that Amy had been left with was the house in Sale. But even that was a poisoned chalice – the mortgage payments were through the roof and with no income coming in, Amy was advised to sell up at a loss and downsize. Her life had gone from flash to trash in just a matter of weeks. Any fight and strength that she had once possessed had been punched from her in the aftermath of Riley's death. With the little money she had that was hers, savings she had managed to build up during her all-too-brief marriage to Riley, she left for London and a new beginning. It may not have been the wisest choice given the cost of living but Amy chose it as she needed to still feel part of something alive when so much around her was dead. London was vibrant and exciting and in the back of her mind she needed to feel that one day maybe she could sample another piece of the action, the glamour that she’d had with the The Kitty Kat Club. There was still a flicker of a dream in the back of her mind. But the dream had become a nightmare. She had rented a small one-bedroom flat and made extra cash by flogging her once prized designer gear on eBay. Needs must when the devil drives and the devil was definitely not driving the kind of car she’d been used to with Riley.
Now the new beginning was looking like it was heading for a U-turn. Riley had mentioned Tommy’s name on the letter and it was clear that Tommy and Jemima had definitely had a lot to gain from Riley’s death, especially if they’d known that Riley was leaving them pretty much everything in his will. But wouldn’t that have been kind of obvious? And surely the police would have investigated that?
The police had gone quiet about the whole investigation almost overnight. At the time Amy had thought that their apparent disinterest in following anything up relating to the murders of her husband and best friend was down to a lack of evidence. Who was she to question? If they had no clues, then all they could be was indeed clueless.
For a while she had chased DI Chapman about it, desperate to know the truth but then she’d been told that he’d moved on. The woman on reception she had spoken to on the phone at the station was evidently a fresh rookie and was seemingly more than a little impressed that she was speaking to the former owner of The Kitty Kat Club. It had made her a little bit more talkative than perhaps a police station worker should be. Amy had no sooner introduced herself than … bam, off she flew.
‘I loved your club, I tried to buy tickets when Jason Derulo did a PA there. And when you had Scott Disick from the Kardashians in town. But I failed miserably both times. Were they nice people? They seem like it?’
Amy was a little bamboozled by the girl’s enthusiasm and tried to cast her mind back to when the two stars had appeared. ‘Er … yes, they were. Especially Jason,’ she fudged.
‘That body of his is off the hook insane. I wouldn’t mind him being arrested and brought in here, I tell you.’ The rookie laughed at her own joke. ‘So, you’re after DI Chapman. You’re out of luck. He’s not here. Can anyone else help?’
‘When will he be back?’ enquired Amy.
There was a pause. And then a hushed reply. ‘Well, to be honest he won’t be, which is such a shame, as he was always one of the fittest blokes in here.’
‘He won’t be back? Are you sure?’ stumbled Amy.
‘He’s moved on. Apparently there was talk of some kind of major promotion to a top earning job at the other end of the country somewhere – not sure where. Such a shame. We’ve all been talking about it.’ She stopped in full flow before heading off on a tangent. ‘So I assume you won’t be opening the club again then? I loved the sound of your theme nights – eighties, gay, hard-house. I wanted to try them all.’
Amy hastily ended the call. She was never told who replaced DI Chapman. At the time she wasn't strong enough to think any more about it and tried to concentrate on her new life. A life without Riley. But now, if he was alive, then she knew that she would have to try and investigate who had attempted to kill him and, more importantly, try to find the man she loved.
She would have to return to Manchester. The letter had come from there. But why would she be able to fare any better than the police? And just six months on from Riley’s supposed death was she really yet strong enough to cope with what she might find?
8
Then, 2001
* * *
‘If you don’t understand something, Amy Barrowman, then you should say so. You’ll never amount to anything if you don’t start asking questions.’
The voice was angry and belonged to Mr Hawker, Amy’s weak-chinned French teacher at the Stephen Hague Comprehensive School in Manchester’s Moss Side, a place where Amy begrudgingly found herself Monday to Friday for most of her teenage life. School was not something she enjoyed, to be honest. There were too many things that needed answers, that warranted questions, that required Amy to engage her brain on subjects that didn’t really interest her and Mr Hawker was right, fourteen-year-old Amy Barrowman didn’t really ask a great deal of questions.
‘Stand up, Barrowman.’ Mr Hawker was waving Amy’s homework at her from the front of the classroom where the rest of the class were eagerly waiting to see what happened next. ‘The homework was to write an essay on the delights of French cuisine, as in the marvellous world of French cooking. I was imagining a report on Flamiche and confit de canard, on cuisses de grenouilles and escargots, not the fact that your kitchen at home has flowery wallpaper and a tiny breakfast bar that won’t fit you and your parents at the same time. What were you thinking?’
Amy watched as a few drops of spittle shot from Mr Hawker’s mouth as he reprimanded her. He was not an attractive man and reminded Amy of Mr Garrison from South Park, one of her TV guilty pleasures that she loved to watch on her small portable in the privacy of her own bedroom at her parents’ council flat back home.
‘I just heard you say cuisine, sir, and I thought you wanted a report on our kitchen at home,’ offered Amy sheepishly. The sound of giggles erupted from her classmates.
‘You thought? You thought? You don’t think further than the end of your nose, Barrowman.’
‘But I didn’t understand what we were supposed to do.’ Amy tried to interject.
‘So you ask me. I set this homework last week. That’s seven days ago, girl. Surely even you might think to ask in that time if you don’t understand something. You can redo it for next lesson. And this time I want to know about the fineries of French food, not flaming Formica worktops. Tu comprends?’
Amy gave a meek ‘oui’ in response and sat down once again as Mr Hawker handed her the essay back, a sea of red pen slashed across it. Her mind drifted off as she stared at the clock at the front of the classroom, willing away the minutes until the end of the lesson and home time.
* * *
‘I thought you’d already completed that French homework,’ said Enid Barrowman, as her daughter bent double over their kitchen breakfast bar writing into her folder, a bank of books and dictionaries spread out either side of her.
‘I did, but I misheard the teacher and ended up writing about the wrong thing, so I have to do it again,’ said Amy without looking up.
‘You never listen, always in a world of your own, aren’t you, young lady?’ I don’t know, what are we going to do with you?’ Enid came and stroked her daughter’s hair, which was a deep shade of brown streaked with blonde hair dye she had bought Amy from the local market. Enid adored her daughter, who reminded her of herself when she was a young teenager. ‘Have you nearly finished? Are you off out tonight? It is Friday so no school tomorrow.’ There was genuine interest in her voice.
‘Five more minutes and I’ll be done.’ Again Amy didn’t look up. ‘Then I’m going to my room. I want to play my music.’
‘What are you locking yourself up for yet again? All you do is sit in your room and play your CDs. You should be out with the other girls, having fun and …’ Enid hesitated before adding ‘… meeting boys.’ Even without Amy looking up, Enid could see her daughter’s cheeks colouring a deep shade of ruby red. The opposite sex was n
ever Amy’s favourite topic of conversation.
‘Right, I’m done.’ Amy slammed her French folder shut before grabbing it with her other books and running off to her room. ‘See you later, Mum.’ Enid sighed as she watched her daughter’s bedroom door slam and heard the first burst of one of Amy’s CDs pulsate through the wall.
‘What’s the racket?’ said Ivor Barrowman, walking into the tiny kitchen about thirty seconds later. ‘I can hear that in the front room. It’s putting me off Mr Bean.’
‘It’s Amy playing her music again. That girls spends too much time in her room.’
* * *
It was true. Amy did spend a lot of time in her room. But it was her favourite place. While other girls her age chose to spend their time meeting boys on graffiti-plastered corners of the council estate she and her parents lived on, she would much rather ensconce herself in her bedroom surrounded by the things that made her truly happy. Her CDs and her DVD player that her mum and dad had saved up for months to buy her for her thirteenth birthday.
Who needed the rough boys on the estate offering her cigarettes, a spliff, a love bite or a quick finger behind the wheelie bins when she could surround herself with the much nicer charms of The Backstreet Boys, Usher and Enrique Iglesias as they stared down from the posters that decorated her bedroom walls? They wouldn’t let her throw her life away with a teen pregnancy and a lifetime of benefits and trips to the job centre to try and make ends meet. Amy had seen it happen to lots of girls on the estate where she lived. It was a tired old tale. She didn’t criticise them, if it made them happy then great, but when she finished her days at school she didn’t want to think that life stopped at the corner shop where she did her paper round.
