They’re scared, like me.
12
WEDNESDAY (TOOTHPASTE WHITE)
Still That Afternoon
The police car doesn’t screech to a halt with its siren blaring bright yellow and pink zigzags outside David Gilbert’s house. The driver slowly reverses into a parking space. A blond woman in a black uniform climbs out, followed by a man. He opens his mouth wide and stretches his arms above his head. To be honest, they’re taking this emergency at a frighteningly leisurely pace.
The policewoman could be the one I saw outside Bee Larkham’s house earlier. I’m not sure. She walks up the path (why isn’t she running?) and knocks dark brown shapes on the front door. After thirty-one seconds, the door opens. A man appears, they talk for forty-four seconds, and she goes inside. Her colleague waits by the car.
I’m not an expert in hostage situations, but shouldn’t she be more careful? She didn’t even have her weapon drawn (if she’s even carrying one) and she’s alone in a stranger’s house, which isn’t a good idea. People have a habit of turning on you when you least expect it. Her colleague can’t help. His finger’s stuck inside his left nostril.
After three minutes and two seconds, the policewoman steps out of the house with two strangers. They all walk down the path and stop on the pavement, next to the second police officer. Their faces turn and look in my direction.
Why isn’t the man in cherry cords wearing handcuffs?
David Gilbert should be locked up in prison. That’s where he belongs.
They walk towards my house. I don’t like this. Why are they coming here when they should be going to the police station? I back away from the window. I can’t hide. There’s no point. They know I’m here. I called 999 on my mobile. Not because I wanted to, because I had to.
No one else stepped in to help.
I’m a reluctant witness, a reluctant helper—the roles I’m used to playing.
One member of this group knocks blobs of light brown with streaks of bitter dark chocolate. I can’t be sure which one, because I’ve moved far away from the window. I’m hiding behind the front door, counting my teeth with my tongue.
“Hello, Jasper,” the policewoman says in viridian blue when I’ve finished my teeth count and opened the door. “My name is P.C. Janet Carter and this is my colleague, P.C. Mark Teedle. I think you recognize your neighbors.”
She gestures to the two men standing behind her. Obviously, she couldn’t be further from the truth if she tried, but I have useful clues to help me. One man is wearing cherry cords and has come from David Gilbert’s house. His dog is barking angry yellow French fries at being left alone in 22 Vincent Gardens. The other guy has black suede shoes, red and black spotty socks, and is clutching half a bag of bird seed.
They’re the kidnapper and his hostage.
The policewoman glances at the men behind her. “We wanted to let you know everything’s OK,” she says. “There hasn’t been a kidnapping or a murder. Your neighbor Mr. Watkins wasn’t forced into Mr. Gilbert’s house. He was paying a friendly visit.”
“It’s true,” Custard Yellow says. “I was about to refill the bird feeders when David asked if I could help shift a piece of furniture in his kitchen. It was too heavy for him to do alone.”
I’m not entirely certain about this turn of events. It’s unexpected and I don’t like unexpected. It’s a waxy, Crayola orange word.
“He had his hand on your shoulder,” I point out, taking a step backwards. “Even X and Y didn’t do that to me earlier. They stood one in front and one behind, but they didn’t touch me because that would have been assault and they’d have been expelled.”
“I went with him willingly, Jasper. It wasn’t a problem. I don’t mind helping out someone who’s in trouble. It’s what neighbors do for each other on this street. That’s what Mum always said.”
I feel a jab of pain in my tummy and the back of my neck is cactus prickly.
“You’d help a neighbor even if you knew he was a serial killer or had helped a serial killer?” I ask.
The policewoman’s mouth widens into an O shape, the way Bee’s did on her first night here. I guess she’s as curious as me to know the answer.
David Gilbert looks at the police officers. “Do you see what I mean? These wild accusations have to stop. The lad’s gone too far this time. He’s a total basket case.”
Like Bee Larkham.
That’s how he described her. When she was alive.
“You’re a bird killer,” I clarify, because that’s only fair as he doesn’t have a defense lawyer with him. “I didn’t accuse you of killing Bee Larkham.”
“I should think not!” he says loudly. “What’s he going on about? What does any of this have to do with Beatrice? She’s going to have a lot to answer for when she finally bloody well shows up again.” He directs his grainy red words at the two uniformed police officers. “I want something done about him. This is victimization. He makes slanderous accusations about me all the time. I have witnesses like Ollie here, who’ll back me up. Isn’t that correct?”
The man standing next to him moves his head and arm. I’m not sure what the gesture means. Is he silently signaling he will back David Gilbert up or is he refusing to? It’s hard to tell.
Instead, I concentrate on victimization. It’s an interesting color, almost translucent with a slight violet hint.
The word builds on the singular victim. You can turn it around and around in your head to mean different things. Perhaps that’s not simple to understand either, who the victim is supposed to be.
“We can deal with this from here on, sir,” P.C. Carter says. “Perhaps you could both go home and we’ll have a chat with Jasper alone?”
Cherry Cords stalks back to his house, to Yellow French Fries, but the other man, Custard Yellow, doesn’t move.
“I can stay with him if you want, since his dad doesn’t seem to be around.” His body shifts in my direction. “Would you like that, Jasper?”
“Bee Larkham hasn’t fed the parakeets since Friday. The bird feeders have been empty all weekend.”
The policewoman turns to him. “It’s best if you leave, sir. We’ll call on you if we need any help.”
“If you’re sure.”
He doesn’t move, which is annoying.
“You can refill the feeders with the bag of seed I gave you, but you’ll have to buy more. You’ll need to keep feeding the parakeets from now on. Twice a day. Also plates of apple and suet. Please don’t forget.”
“Of course. Whatever you say.” He strides away, bag swinging against his thigh.
“Can we talk, Jasper?” P.C. Carter asks.
“In one minute or maybe ninety seconds.” I watch as Custard Yellow returns to his original mission. The plastic bag billows in the breeze as he turns it upside down and empties the seed into the feeders. There’s not enough to go around all six, but at least three have been half topped up.
Job done.
Custard Yellow sticks his thumb in the air and walks back to his mum’s house.
“I’m ready to go to the police station now,” I say, turning to the policewoman. “I have to tell you everything that’s happened. I want to confess.”
“No need for that.” She talks in small viridian blue staccato sentences. “We can talk here. Can we come inside? It’s nothing to worry about. You should have someone with you. You’re on your own, right? Is there someone you want to be here?”
“I want my mum. She’s the only person I want right now.”
“That’s OK. Is she at work? We can call her for you. Have you got her telephone number to hand?”
“You can’t call her. She’s cobalt blue, but the color’s fading.” I burst into tears. I can’t help myself. Truly, I can’t. “That’s all Bee Larkham’s fault. She diluted Mum’s color for Dad, mainly Dad, but me too because I didn’t realize what was happening. By the time I noticed it was too late to do anything about it and I’d lost her.”
“It’s a
ll right, Jasper. Don’t get upset. I’m sorry I upset you. How can we get hold of her?”
“I don’t know how to bring her back. I don’t know how to bring anyone back from the dead.”
“Jasper—”
“I want to bring her back, the baby too. I can’t! I don’t know where the bodies are. Please help me! Help me! I can’t do this. I’m too young. I want to get out of here.”
Her face looms towards me. Then another. I don’t recognize either. A man’s mouthing loud words and unpleasant colors at me, but I don’t know what they are or who he is. I don’t want to study the shades in detail, because I know I’ll hate them. I’ve blocked them out.
His mouth is thin and red, like a gash. It’s opening and closing.
I see ice blue crystals with glittery edges and jagged silver icicles again.
They’re going to hurt me. Hurt my tummy.
I scream and scream until the icicles smash and fall away into tiny pieces.
I see nothing.
Nothing except blackness, all around me, pulling me down.
13
WEDNESDAY (TOOTHPASTE WHITE)
Later That Afternoon
I’m back in my den, entrance sealed shut by the forget-me-not blue blanket, clutching Mum’s cardigan. It was a terrible mistake to leave my safe place, her buttons and rose scent that almost masks the lingering hospital smell in my hair and clothes.
Except that’s another lie. It’s not her perfume. Dad accidentally washed the cardigan after I was sick on it eighteen months ago. He bought another rose perfume from a department store and sprayed it on to help remind me of Mum.
He said it would smell the same.
He was wrong. It doesn’t. It’s almost Mum’s scent, but not quite, like my paintings of her voice. They haven’t captured her accurately, not in the whole.
I run my fingers over the buttons.
Round and round the garden like a teddy bear.
That’s what Mum used to say when I was little. She drew the line over my hand again and again when I lay in bed, looking up at the fluorescent stars she’d stuck on my ceiling.
The buttons are as smooth as her shiny pink nails.
One step, two steps, tickle you under there.
Except Mum never used to tickle me anywhere, because she knew I hated it. She let me tickle her under the chin instead. That used to make us both laugh.
I didn’t stay long in hospital—only until the male doctor finished examining me and the police tracked down Dad. Two hours, maybe three. It’s hard to tell since my watch stopped working when I fell outside the front door and I lost track of time because the clock in the ward was slow.
I know this Important Fact: it was long enough to cause Dad and me a whole stack of trouble. The policewoman panicked after I blacked out and radioed for an ambulance. If I’d been conscious, I’d have stopped her. I wasn’t. I couldn’t. It was out of my control, like a lot of things that have happened to me recently. Dad doesn’t understand.
You shouldn’t have run away from school.
You shouldn’t have dialed 999.
The doctor examined me and saw the hole in my tummy. He fixed it with small pieces of tape because it was too late for surgical stitches. He gave me tablets to stop infection and put on stingy antiseptic cream. I didn’t tell him how I hurt my tummy. I didn’t tell him anything. It made no difference whether I spoke or not, because the policewoman did all the talking for me. She told the man my name, age, and where I live. She had it on record somewhere, probably from Rusty Chrome Orange.
By then, she knew my next of kin was Dad; he was my only living relative and she couldn’t call Mum because she was dead and buried, like the baby parakeet.
Like Nan and Bee Larkham’s mum and Ollie Watkins’s mum.
Another woman appeared at the hospital. She talked to Dad in private when he finally showed up, out of breath and sweaty. He’d been dragged out of an important meeting. She was a social worker. We’ll see her again soon, now the doctor’s had a good look at my tummy, Dad said. We’re probably going to see a child psychologist too, as well as all the police officers.
There’s no point talking to any of them: Rusty Chrome Orange, the viridian blue policewoman who radioed for an ambulance, the social worker, or the child psychologist.
None of them can help me. They hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see, and they still haven’t found Bee, they don’t even listen when I repeatedly try to tell them she’s dead.
I don’t want to speak to Dad either. I can’t tell him about the baby. Bee Larkham’s baby. Not yet. I don’t want to roll the pithy orange baby word around my tongue.
I see grayish green as Dad turns on the radio in the kitchen downstairs. It booms greenish vertical lines that fleck repetitively up and down. The colors wash over me ambivalently. I neither like nor dislike them. I’m neutral. They’re shades I’ll use in pictures if I feel like it, but I won’t be heartbroken if I run out of paint and can’t squeeze enough out of the tube. It wouldn’t be like running out of my favorite blue colors—on a disaster scale of one to ten that would probably be a nine.
Nine point five.
The track changes in midcolor as Dad switches to a new radio station. The colors make me cry. Not with sadness this time, but with joy. Joy at the colors.
It’s Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” except I don’t see diamonds in the sky the way she does. I see exploding stars of gold and silver, rippling and expanding into seas of flamingo and watermelon pink. The pink changes constantly, beautifully, to violet and back again, with underlying yellow lines.
It makes me forget the hospital, Dad, and all the police officers and doctors and social workers. I crawl out of my den and feel the colors embracing me, comforting me. I want to dance. I have to dance, the way Bee Larkham used to.
I throw my arms around. This is how I like to dance, all my limbs moving at once. It’s selfish not to share the colors. I stick my hand beneath the curtains and open the window. I want the parakeets to enjoy the music; they haven’t heard any since Bee Larkham died. They must be missing the colors and tones and shapes.
They need to realize life won’t be the same again, but it does go on. I’ll protect the remaining parakeets. The bird feeders will be refilled again and again by the man who temporarily lives next door to Bee Larkham’s house. They have to feel welcome, otherwise they’ll leave me.
I hadn’t fully understood how much I wanted to hear music again. I peek between the curtains. Have the parakeets heard? Three argue noisily over the serenade.
Deep cornflower blue with yellow hiccups.
More parakeets land in the tree and join in the chorus of bickering. They’re arguing about what’s happened, taking sides.
David Gilbert versus me and Bee Larkham.
Me versus Bee Larkham.
My arms fall back into place, where they belong. My legs stop moving. I stand still as another urge takes hold that is much stronger than the will to dance. I pick up my brush because the need to paint the truth is bright and sparkly like golden Christmas tinsel.
I’m ready.
The parakeets can’t tell anyone about the massacre of their pandemonium. They can’t explain how they fell into the trap.
They need someone to tell their story. I have to pick up from where I left off, because it’s getting close to the day of their arrival.
I pull out a fresh piece of paper and admire the satisfying whiteness. I select my paints: burnt sienna, cadmium red, and yellow, before moving on to my favorite tubes of blue.
It’s time to paint the next scene.
14
January 18, 6:50 A.M.
Marmalade with Cobalt Blue and Crimson Stars on paper
The morning after the Woman with No Name moved in and played loud Martian music, I saw jagged dark orange marmalade.
I jumped out of bed, grabbed my binoculars, and stood at the window. First I checked the oak tree, but the parakeet still steered clear after the unp
rovoked magpie attack. Two pigeons had landed, unaware of the previous ambush.
I scribbled the time in a notebook as my alarm beeped soft pink bubbles across my bedroom as usual. I was definitely going to school.
No arguments.
The pigeons flew off, disturbed by spiky, unnatural shapes.
Another truck arrived with more brutish orangey red colors than the vehicle from the day before. It didn’t take furniture away either. Instead, it unloaded a skip outside 20 Vincent Gardens.
A car beeped its horn, glittery crimson stars, as a man swung open the door of the truck and jumped out without warning. His friend flicked his fingers at the driver, who retaliated with another bright scarlet toot.
The starlings had also arrived in our neighbor’s tree, along with a robin. Its shy trills were light blue wavering lines beneath cocky coral pink. The times are all recorded in my notebook.
The Woman with No Name flew out of the house, barefoot, wearing a shiny blue dressing gown, which made a low V shape. The men opened their mouths to form words. I don’t think anything came out because their lips didn’t change shape. The color of her dressing gown took my breath away too.
Cobalt blue.
Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!!!!!!
I drew a line under those words in my notebook and added six exclamation marks.
It was the exact color of cobalt blue, the color that misled me much later. I have to own up to my error, the first of many to do with Bee Larkham. First impressions can be wrong. I know that now. I wish I didn’t.
When I saw the cobalt blue of the dressing gown, I also heard Mum’s voice in the back of my head.
Love you to the moon and back.
Love you always.
The vividness of Mum’s voice took my breath away. It was bright and loud, as if she stood in the room, looking out for me, even though she’d never lived in this house. I thought I’d lost her forever, that we’d left her behind in the graveyard in Plymouth.
In that fraction of a second I felt an essential truth: Mum had vowed never to leave me.
The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder Page 8
