“But they’re not harmless, are they?” I get up and walk to the window. “What about when she cried rape against those boys—her foster brother and his friend? That could have seriously affected their futures and probably did do some real damage. Enough people still think there’s no smoke without fire.”
When she says nothing, I turn around. Tabitha is looking at me.
“Don’t tell me you actually believe her.”
“Yes, I do.”
I laugh. “Oh, get real. She’s a fantasist! I feel sorry for her, I really do, but she’s clearly mentally ill.”
Tabitha’s expression hardens. “Abuse often leads to mental illness, but does that mean we should never believe a victim? Of course not—although abusers have used it as a defense for years. You must have read reports of the more high-profile cases in the press, bringing up the troubled lives and suicide attempts of abuse victims. It’s done deliberately to trigger doubt in our minds: they’re unstable, their story’s a fabrication. Poor politician or TV presenter or whatever, their lives turned upside down by these twisted liars.”
She pauses to take a breath. “That’s the line those boys’ lawyer pulled. It’s called discrediting the witness, and it should have been made illegal years ago.”
“It’s not discrediting if it’s true.”
“She was covered in bruises. Her vagina was torn.”
“Self-inflicted.”
Tabitha shrugs. “That’s what the judge said. Anyway.”
She gets up, and the dark velvet skirt falls from her wide hips like a theater curtain. I never thought a fat woman could be so beautiful. She is wearing a wedding band and a diamond solitaire engagement ring. I bet her children adore her.
“You know what I’ve often thought?” she says softly. Her eyes are nearly black, with just the merest prick of light at their center. “If I were a rapist, I’d choose someone just like Jody. A self-harmer. A fantasist. Someone no judge in his right mind would believe.” She picks up her tapestry bag and slings it over her shoulder. “Easy meat.”
After she’s gone, I open my first bottle of wine.
Sunday, November 13
29.
Mags
I wake at midday with a pounding headache and a churning stomach that only eases after I’ve made myself sick in the toilet, the sounds of which presumably echo through my neighbors’ pipework.
Every half hour throughout the day, I knock on Jody’s door, but either she’s too scared to answer or she’s managed to slip out without my noticing. Even though I know it’s pointless, that she will just spin me some new line, I have to speak to her. I know she knows more about what happened to Abe than she’s letting on, and I can’t believe the police are letting her get away with flat-out lying to them.
By three, I’m going stir-crazy, so I decide to head to the Food and Wine to stock up on booze for later.
Letting myself out the main door onto the deserted waste ground, I’m suddenly convinced that Tabitha has already spirited Jody out of my clutches, and I go around the side of the building and look up at her window. It reflects the darkening sky. I wouldn’t even know if she was up there looking down at me.
I realize I’m not alone. The junkie from flat 7 is standing behind the bins, smoking. She’s wearing a short black lace dress and patent-leather high heels. Heavy makeup masks the worst ravages of her face, and I suspect whomever she’s waiting for won’t care that the wasted arms protruding from the lace sleeves are track-marked.
Turning to leave, I tread on something slippery and, fervently hoping it’s not a used condom, glance down. The flowers are incongruous among the fast-food wrappers and diapers. Some are still crisp and pink; the others, now brown and dying, must once have been—I catch my breath—white.
They’re the flowers from the tumbler on Abe’s bedside table.
The man who broke in must have thrown them down here on his way out of the building. His reasons for doing this are as mysterious as his reasons for taking them in the first place.
I go back the way I have come, then head across the waste ground toward Gordon Terrace.
Passing the playground, I experience that familiar, unnerving sensation of being watched and turn, expecting to see the cat or the junkie gazing balefully from the corner. But the grass is deserted, and Lula’s curtains are still.
I catch movement from the corner of my eye but am only in time to see a flicker of shadow disappearing down the other side of the building. Just someone on the way to the parking lot, perhaps, but in that case, why didn’t I hear them come out of the building?
Could it be Jody waiting for me to leave so she can creep back home?
I call her name, and my voice sounds lonely and small in the silence.
A minute passes.
Should I go after her? Assuming it is her. Assuming it’s anyone.
No. I turn back and set off quickly for Gordon Terrace, where I’m relieved to see a mother with a double stroller trundling toward the main street. I fall into step behind her.
Coming back from the Food and Wine half an hour later with two clanking blue grocery bags, I see a man waiting outside the main door. On the concrete beside him sits a large Amazon box.
As I come next to him, I see the address label.
M. Ahmeti, Flat 11, St. Jerome’s Church
It must be something for the baby. A flat-packed crib or a baby bath, perhaps. She can’t lug it all the way up the stairs on her own. And I can take the opportunity to thank her for preventing me from murdering Jody.
“I’ll take that up for her,” I say to the delivery man, averting my eyes from the piercings through his cheeks and eyebrow.
“It’s OK,” he says. “She’s on her way.”
“In that case, I’ll wait and help her up with it.”
Opening the front door, I see Mira’s shadow through the frosted glass, coming down the last flight of stairs. After a glance at the piles of mail—no telltale white corners protrude from the pizza menus—I hold the door open for her.
She doesn’t catch my eye as she comes out.
“I’ll help you,” I say loudly and clearly. “With the parcel. Up the stairs.”
“No, no,” she mumbles. “Is OK. I manage.”
She moves past me, wafting the baby-scent of talcum powder, and takes the electronic pen the delivery guy is holding out for her. I didn’t plan to—though I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it—but something makes me glance over her shoulder as she signs the screen.
The man slides the parcel through the doors and then goes. Mira bends to lift it, and I take the other end.
We climb wordlessly. Past the floor of the disabled child and the bitter queen, past the junkie’s flat and the fat man’s, up to our floor. The alcoholic, the fantasist, the poison-pen writer.
She murmurs words of thanks and insists that she will be fine, but I just smile as she fumbles with her key and say nothing. Perhaps she knows what’s coming.
Once she has the door open, she kicks the box through, slides through herself, and tries to close it again.
But I’m too quick for her.
The door twangs against my foot, and I force it open, driving her back. We stand in the darkness of the hallway, both breathing heavily.
She says nothing. She knows why I’m here.
“You saw something, didn’t you? The night my brother died. That’s why you wrote the notes.”
I wait for her to deny it, but she doesn’t. There is a rustle as she leans against the wall and takes a shuddering breath.
“I am a bad person,” she whispers. “I think Loran is having affair with her.”
I sigh, disappointed. I thought she was going to tell me something real. Thought perhaps she might have seen what happened after all. Though Jody has managed to pull the wool over my eyes quite spectacularly, of
one thing I am certain: she only had eyes for my brother. Is it possible that Mira, living right next door, could not have known that?
“I don’t think so. Jody was in love with my brother.”
“I know, I know. I just stupid, imagining things.”
“Like what?”
“What?”
“What were you imagining you saw between Loran and Jody?”
And then, without warning, the door behind us opens, and a man walks in. For a moment, he is just a shape in the darkness, but at once, the whole atmosphere in the room changes.
As the light flicks on, Mira starts, her shadow jumping on the wall.
A big, Eastern European man, dressed in heavy work clothes, his black boots crusted with cement, a rucksack slung over his shoulder. He’s in his early thirties, at a guess, with a broad, flat face and fair hair cropped so short, he is almost bald.
How can he have come up without us hearing? Unless he was trying to be quiet, to catch us doing something wrong.
I glance at Mira. All color has drained from her face.
But when I turn back to the man, I see that he too is as white as a ghost, and he’s staring at me with an intensity that makes my heart pound, his eyes passing down my body, then up to the parka’s fur trim around my neck. Is he going to hit me?
He’s blocking my exit, and there’s nowhere to go but back into the flat. I finger my phone in my pocket.
“What do you want?” His voice is low. The thick accent, so familiar these days, is suddenly threatening.
How much has he heard?
“I was just helping your wife with this heavy box.” My voice is steady, and I force myself to meet his cold gaze. Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem able to hold mine, and his gray eyes flick away. “Can’t be long until the baby comes. You must be very excited.”
He glances at his wife, and she stares back at him with wide, dark eyes. She’s afraid of him. Does the bastard beat her up?
“Thank you, thank you, it was very kind of you,” she gabbles, trying to herd me to the door, but he doesn’t move to let me past. The hands hanging by his side are large and rough.
I straighten my back to let him know that he isn’t scaring me, and the parka rustles softly.
Then something in him gives. His shoulders sink, his head drops, and we both press ourselves into the wall as, without another word, he stalks up the hall, wafting the smell of sweat and dust.
Kicking open the inner door, he crosses the room, dumps his bag on the sofa, and kicks off his boots, sending chunks of cement skittering across the floor. Then, as if I’m not there, he starts undressing, dropping his bomber jacket where he stands, then pulling off his T-shirt before disappearing from sight. A moment later, I hear the characteristic drone of the shower pump kicking in.
“Thank you,” Mira murmurs. “He would be very angry if he knew what I had told you.”
“That’s OK,” I manage, but I’m barely listening. I don’t even glance at Jody’s door as I make my way back across the landing and into the flat, where I close the door and lean against the wood, breathing heavily in the darkness.
I don’t know what it means yet, but I know what I saw.
As Loran undressed, I caught a glimpse of a tattoo just peeping from the waistband of his tracksuit pants. A tattoo of a rearing hoof and the feathery tips of a mane, inked in red.
Loran is Redhorse.
_____________________
The stereo is on too loud for her to hear what they’re saying, so she just gazes out the window at the terraced houses flashing past. Felix’s friend is driving too fast, occasionally slugging from a can of lager. So is Felix, and he already seems drunk, though the other one doesn’t seem to be affected by it. Occasionally, he glances at her in the mirror and waggles his eyebrows. She thinks he’s trying to be funny, so she smiles, but when his eyes go back to the road, she shuffles along the back seat, out of his line of vision. The car’s in a disgusting state: fast-food cartons litter the floor, the upholstery is stained and clotted with mud, and CDs and magazines are scattered on the seat. The front covers of the magazines either feature bare-chested muscular men or almost-naked young women. The lower half of one of these front pages has torn away to reveal an article titled “Potting the Brown—Honest, Love, Me Knob Slipped!” The picture is of a woman’s buttocks in a G-string. It makes her feel sick.
This boy is Felix’s oldest friend. They’d been at nursery school together and only separated when Felix got into the grammar school. The other boy’s parents had sent him to a private boys’ school specializing in sport, but the two of them play rugby every Sunday morning for the local club. He is much bigger than Felix, as if a cursor has been put in the corner of a normal nineteen-year-old and then dragged out a bit.
Today is Monday, and Felix’s parents won’t be back from their long weekend in Whitstable until the following morning, so both boys have skipped school for a bit of fun. They persuaded her to join them, and for a while, she was flattered, but now she just wishes she was at school. Back at the house, they made no attempt to include her in the conversation; in fact, they positively excluded her, whispering and giggling in corners like seven-year-olds.
She gets out her phone to check the time.
“No phones!” the big one barks and thrusts his arm between the seats, beckoning with his fingers for her to hand it over.
She does so automatically and regrets it immediately. She has always been too biddable. To her horror, he throws it straight into Felix’s lap.
“Any dirty selfies?”
“Felix, please.”
She watches helplessly as he scrolls through the shots of the rooftops she took from her bedroom, the dead Red Admiral butterfly, and the unsuccessful attempts to capture the full moon. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits, but when it comes, the explosive jeer makes her start from her seat, and the seat belt snaps tight across her chest.
“What are you, a fucking stalker or something?” Felix shouts over the music.
“She’s probably got a pair of your dirty underwear under her pillow!” the other one bellows.
She makes a dive for the phone, but Felix whisks it out of her grasp. On screen is the close-up of his face that she took when he fell asleep on the sofa.
“Ahh, bless,” the big one coos. “Ook at iddy biddy Fewix!”
“Piss off!”
Her breath is speeding up. In a minute, she will cry, which will either antagonize or encourage them.
But then a worse thing happens. Felix has carried on scrolling through the pictures, and he comes to one she has forgotten she even took.
“Shit,” says Felix, holding the phone out for his friend, who snatches it and stares at it even though he should be concentrating on the road.
“Gross,” he says, tossing the phone back again. “You got some disease or something?”
She had been trying to get a picture of the scars on her buttocks and thighs, to see if they would be visible if she wore boy-leg bikini bottoms instead of the Bermuda shorts she habitually wears on their family trips to the pool on Saturday mornings. They were. They fanned out from the inadequate strip of fabric, still livid purple, despite the doctors’ promises that they would fade to white.
“Self-harmer,” Felix says dismissively.
She is about to correct him—he knows at least some of the things that have happened to her—but changes her mind. Self-harming is something this other boy can get his head around. The other stuff isn’t.
“Wow, you really are fucked up, aren’t you?” he says, craning his bull-neck to try to catch her eye in the mirror.
“Drop me off here,” she says suddenly.
She waits, with her fingers poised on the door handle, for the car to slow, but it does not.
“Let me out,” she says, her voice rising. “Please!”
“Ah, co
me on,” Felix says softly. “Let’s just forget it, mate. Let her out.”
“Keep your hair on,” the friend says, but his tone is gentler. “I’m only messing with you. Look, we’re there.”
And now it’s too late—they’re driving through the gates of the rugby club.
30.
Mags
He was screwing my brother while his wife was pregnant.
And now she’s trying to protect him.
At least, I assume that’s what the notes were for, to deflect attention away from him and onto Jody. And there’s only one reason I can think of that he needs to be protected.
If he pushed Abe.
Mira knew he was having an affair, but she thought it was with Jody. Maybe Abe threatened Loran that he would tell her the truth. A heterosexual affair she might be able to forgive, but a gay one? Especially as she’s a devout Muslim. She would leave him. He would lose his child.
So he pushed Abe over the stairwell to keep him quiet, and Mira saw him do it.
She said he was at the boxing club the night Abe fell, and I rack my brain to think of the name Derbyshire told me.
Stone’s.
I look it up on my phone and find an address. North from here, in the no-man’s-land between Crouch Hill and Hornsey, places I never knew existed. I check my phone app and find a bus that runs from the main street.
Stop. Think.
Do I really want to get into this?
Jody’s one thing—a mentally unstable, rather pathetic young woman, physically weak and easily intimidated. But Loran is something else. If he did push Abe, then he’s capable of anything, and clearly, his wife is scared of him. He could simply kill me and then head back to Albania. Am I prepared to risk that just to find out the truth?
But have I ever risked anything for Abe? Isn’t it about time I did right by him and ensure that whoever hurt him is caught and punished?
The Girlfriend Page 19
