Dead Time

by Anne Cassidy

  He stopped and her eyes stayed on him even though she could hear Joshua and Skeggsie coming out of the B and B behind her. He went up two stairs to the front door of a house across the road. He put his holdall on the ground while he searched through his pockets. Rose remembered his name then – Frank Palmer. She’d seen it on his name tag a number of times. He pulled a key out of his trouser pocket, opened the door and went inside.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Josh said, coming up to her.

  ‘Technician from my school. He must live here.’

  ‘Long way to commute,’ Skeggsie said.

  She shrugged. ‘Got everything you wanted in there?’

  ‘Yeah. She’ll ring me when her boss gets back. Then we can look at those records.’

  ‘Actually, it looked as though you got more than you wanted,’ she said, moving off towards the car.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Joshua said, catching up with her.

  ‘She means the blonde.’

  Joshua made a dismissive gesture with his hand and walked ahead. She caught Skeggsie’s eye and he stepped towards her and spoke in a low voice.

  ‘Shouldn’t bother you, though? You’re his stepsister, right?’

  He walked on and her eyes bored into his back.

  In the car she didn’t take her boots off, she just put them up on the seat. When no one said anything she leant back and closed her eyes and listened to the music. The satnav continued to dictate the direction, the voice sounding like that of a station announcer. She heard Skeggsie and Joshua mumbling from time to time but mostly she just closed her thoughts off and listened to the music.

  She wasn’t jealous of Joshua.

  She just hadn’t pictured him with a girl like Amanda.

  When they were almost home the technician came into her head. It was a long journey to the school from Twickenham; tube and bus rides, she thought. She remembered him at the memorial and wondered if he would go to Emma’s. Did he even know Emma? She blew through her teeth. The Ricky and Emma situation was never far from her thoughts these days.

  They were back in Camden, the familiar streets busy with people heading for the market or the canal or the shops. They carried on past the stalls, inching through the traffic passing through Chalk Farm and heading to Belsize Park. The music had stopped and there was a heavy silence in the car, Even the satnav had stopped, turned off by Skeggsie as soon as they got north of the river.

  ‘You can let me out at the top of my road,’ Rose said, moving her boots off the seat and pulling her bag off the floor.

  ‘Sure?’ Joshua said. ‘Skeggsie doesn’t mind taking you all the way.’

  ‘No, really. The end of the road is fine.’

  When the car pulled over Joshua got out and stood on the pavement. He held his hand out so that she could climb out of the back seat more easily. When she was upright she brushed her wrinkled shirt down.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Rose,’ he said.

  She suddenly felt awkward with him.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘We didn’t get very far but maybe next week …’

  She felt as though she wanted to touch him or give him a hug but held back.

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she said, stepping away from him.

  ‘I’ll email you,’ he said, getting back into the passenger seat.

  ‘Bye, Skeggsie,’ she said, in a sing-song voice.

  A mumbled reply came from the car and she stood until they drove off. She turned off the High Street and up her road. She felt ill at ease. The trip had been uncomfortable and now she didn’t feel natural with Joshua. Was it because she was miffed about the way he had acted in the B and B? Or was it because they had only been together for a couple of weeks and it took longer than that for their familial relationship to re-establish itself? Or because of the play-acting she had forced him to do the previous evening?

  She didn’t know and it made her feel downhearted. All the joy she had felt in the previous weeks, seeing him again and being with him, seemed suddenly fragile, as if Joshua wasn’t her stepbrother but some boy from school who she could easily fall out with and never see again.

  That couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it.

  NINETEEN

  The cafeteria was empty even for a Monday morning. Rose chose a table in a corner not used by many of the kids she knew. She bought a hot chocolate, a croissant and a yoghurt. She’d not had any breakfast because of the row she had just had with Anna. It was early, still twenty minutes to go until classes started. Her first class wasn’t until ten but still she’d rather be here than sitting in the house in Belsize Park. She pulled the croissant apart and put a piece of it in her mouth. She chewed methodically even though she had no appetite. Her throat felt dry and she suddenly didn’t know if she would be able to swallow the chunk of croissant. She took a gulp of the hot chocolate and looked down at the table, feeling her eyes blur at the memory of Anna’s words.

  Her grandmother had been leaning against the work surface when Rose came down for breakfast. Rose went across to the kettle and was puzzled at her presence. Rose usually had the kitchen to herself. Anna didn’t get up early and then spent the day either doing voluntary arts work or saw friends or went to plays or concerts or sometimes did sports activities. Once a week she worked for three hours in the Oxfam charity shop in Highgate.

  So Rose was surprised to see her.

  ‘Do you have an early meeting?’ she said.

  ‘I saw a friend last night who said she’d seen you getting out of a car with two young men in it. On Saturday evening.’

  Rose poured boiling water on her tea bag. She didn’t answer.

  ‘You told me you were spending Saturday afternoon researching in the local library. And then you said you were going to meet a couple of girlfriends for a coffee. That was what you said and now I find that you were lying.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you what I was doing because I knew you’d be upset.’

  ‘You lied to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like the friend you were meeting for coffee on the night you went to St Michael’s Cemetery?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘On top of this I find that you no longer go to violin lessons. You told Miss Popper that you’d found another tutor. And I have been giving you forty pounds a week for these lessons which you have been stealing from me!’

  ‘I …’

  ‘You are a thief and a liar. I am very disappointed in you. I’m not quite sure what I have done to deserve this.’ Her grandmother looked upset, twisting her hands.

  ‘I didn’t take your money. I mean I still have your money. It’s upstairs. It was never about the money. It was about going out without you prying into what I was doing. I just wanted some freedom!’

  ‘And I just wanted to know that you were safe. We may live in a privileged way here, in this house, in this street, but we are not far from rough areas. I have a duty to care for you!’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose felt her voice rising up, ‘but not to guard me. I am seventeen. I need some freedom. I don’t want to have to tell you every time I go out to the shop for a packet of sweets.’

  Anna’s face was calm. She’d obviously thought about this all the previous evening. How typical that she didn’t come straight up to Rose’s room when she came in. Having it out there and then on the landing would have involved too much passion, too much spirit. Anna liked everything just so. Especially her arguments.

  ‘Who were these boys?’ she said briskly, turning away from Rose for a moment to tidy some jars that were already tidy on the work surface. ‘Were they from your school? The same types that have been involved in all this violence?’

  Rose slumped. She couldn’t win. If she told the truth Anna would be upset. If she told a lie she would be scathing with her sarcasm.

  ‘I’m sorry I took the money. It’s all upstairs, every penny. I lied to keep the peace because I knew you wouldn’t want me mixing with people f
rom school.’

  ‘Lies are never good …’

  ‘And I lied also because I’ve been seeing my stepbrother Joshua Johnson and I knew you wouldn’t be happy with that.’

  Her grandmother’s face tensed.

  ‘I was with Joshua and his flatmate on Saturday. We went out to find out …’

  ‘You’ve seen Brendan Johnson’s son?’

  ‘Yes, he contacted me earlier this year by email …’

  ‘You’ve seen him after I expressly told you not to?’

  ‘But that was months ago … When I asked if he could come down to London for a weekend …’

  ‘I said you were not to see him. I remember, here in this room, you said you’d heard he was coming to London to go to university and I told you then that I didn’t want you to make contact with him.’

  ‘No, you said you didn’t want him in this house. That’s what you said. I remember.’

  ‘You knew what I meant. How could you see that boy against my wishes?’

  ‘Because I have a right to see people. You cannot tell me who I can and cannot see! He’s my stepbrother. We were family.’

  ‘How dare you …’ her grandmother said, her face reddening.

  Rose watched with astonishment as Anna started to cry.

  ‘I …’

  Her grandmother was standing rigid, tears slipping down her face. She opened a drawer of the cabinet and pulled out a box of tissues. She plucked three in succession out of the box and buried her nose in them. Rose couldn’t say a word. In five years Anna had never surprised her in the way she was surprising her now. Rose stuttered as she spoke.

  ‘I … I have to make my own relationships. I understand if you don’t want any contact with Josh … Joshua. Well, I don’t really understand that at all but that’s your choice, but I have to be able to make my choices. Don’t I?’

  ‘So you choose to befriend the son of the person who most likely murdered your mother? You choose to do that?’

  Rose gasped. She grabbed the edge of the table.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Brendan Johnson! That man! Your mother lives with him and then they both disappear. Do you not think that’s strange? That two grown-up people should vanish? Much more likely that he killed her and then ran away.’

  ‘No,’ Rose said loudly. ‘NO! The police said …’

  ‘The police had no evidence. Nothing to go on. They didn’t have a clue what had happened to Katherine. Just because this Brendan Johnson was a policeman they chose to believe that something had happened to both of them. What if he had been a bricklayer or an insurance man? Don’t you think the police would have been more suspicious then? Would they have accepted the theory of their disappearance? I don’t think so.’

  ‘They said that mum and Brendan were working on sensitive enquiries. You know that! That most likely some of the people they were investigating wanted them dead. You were here when the inspector said that!’

  Anna was staring at her and Rose realised then that she hadn’t been present during that talk with the inspector. He had seen her on her own in Anna’s drawing room. Had Anna already spoken to him?

  ‘He killed Katherine. That’s my opinion. Now he’s living somewhere with a new identity. I wouldn’t be surprised if that boy, that son of his, knows where he is.’

  ‘No, NO. That’s where you’re wrong. Josh is heartbroken about his dad. He is doing everything he can to find him. He has websites and …’

  ‘Websites!’ she said dismissively. ‘The man is long gone. I still speak to the police, you know. Is there any news about my daughter’s disappearance? I say. No news at the moment, they’ll say. It’s still an ongoing investigation and we will contact you as soon as any new evidence emerges. It’s like a script. One of them, a policeman, kills his girlfriend, runs away and they hush it up.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Rose cried.

  She turned and walked out of the kitchen, her hands in fists. She went straight up to her room and got her stuff ready for school.

  It was a lie, a lie, a lie.

  She shoved everything into her bag and while she was doing it, she remembered the money. She went to her bottom drawer and got out her violin case. She placed it on her bed and opened it. Underneath the violin was a flat black cardboard box, the kind that had once held a necklace. The money was inside, the notes flat. One hundred and sixty pounds. She pulled it out, picked up her coat and bag and walked quickly out of her room and down the stairs.

  When she got into the kitchen her grandmother was sitting at the table and there was a fresh bunch of tissues in her hand. She held the money up to her, a fistful of twenty-pound notes. Then she threw it in the direction of the table. It fluttered down on to the floor.

  ‘My mum was not murdered by Brendan,’ she said in a broken voice and left the house.

  In her heart she wished she never had to go back.

  Now she sipped her hot chocolate. The plate with the croissant had been pushed to the side. There was still the yoghurt to eat. That would be easy to swallow. She took her laptop out of her bag and put it on the table in front of her. She went on to Facebook and then on to some other websites she liked. She opened up her blog Morpho. She hadn’t written on it for days.

  She’d had too many other things on her mind.

  Anna was still in her head. Anna, who never showed her feelings, who had never talked about her own daughter in any positive way. Katherine was only ever mentioned in a row or as an example of how things can go wrong. Katherine wasted her chances. Rose was evidence of this. Katherine rowed with her mother and left home. She changed her name (to Smith of all names). She went to the wrong university, got pregnant and lived all over the place. She joined the police (of all professions, the police) and then got involved with some penniless officer who moved in and offloaded his own son on to her.

  Rose thought of her standing rigid in the kitchen saying those vile things about Brendan and she wanted to hate her. But then she remembered the tears. Had Anna been crying in rage or in sadness?

  She thought for a while then wrote a title for her blog.

  What Anna Doesn’t Know

  We were a family. My mum, Brendan, Joshua and me. Brendan cared for us. He decorated my mum’s study and did it again when she said she didn’t like the way the colour looked. He ironed her blouses when she was late for work and he made pancake batter if we felt like it. We were happy and he had plans that we would all move to a cottage in Norfolk and he would go for long walks with a dog that we would get from a rescue centre.

  I wanted to tell Anna about these things but there’s never been a right time. She knows nothing of this life we had, this life that was planned, the dog that never got to live with us.

  Rose picked up the yoghurt and began to eat it while looking at her emails. She was aware of the noise in the cafeteria and glanced up from time to time to see the number of people increasing. Then the bell went and there was a general exit for the first period. She tapped out an email to Joshua.

  Can I come round after school? Had a row with Anna.

  A reply came almost immediately.

  Come whenever you want. Skeggsie’s cooking.

  The words made her smile.

  ‘Hi!’

  Someone had sat opposite her. She looked up from her laptop and saw Lewis Proctor’s face inches away. She frowned. None of his friends were near but three or four tables away she could see Bee Bee Marshall sitting with some other girls, her back to Rose.

  ‘All right if I sit here a minute?’ he said.

  She’d only come face to face with Lewis twice. The first time he was pretending to stab himself with a plastic knife and the second time was when he was running away from the rose garden after Emma had been killed.

  ‘I wanted to have a word,’ he said.

  She closed her laptop down and stared at him.

  ‘I don’t know you. You’re not in any of my classes and I ain’t seen you around anywhere but still
, people say, you’re the girl to talk to.’

  ‘You have seen me,’ Rose said. ‘You saw me going into the rose garden when you were running out.’

  ‘That’s exactly the stuff I want to talk about.’

  ‘Maybe you’d be better speaking to the police?’

  ‘I’ve been talking to the police non-stop! I’ve been telling them the truth and they just keep on and on. Look, I gets this note from Emma. It’s in her handwriting, right? It says she wants to meet me in the rose garden at six. So I go. I gets there and she’s lying on the ground. At first I’m thinking she’s fainted or something. I get down on my knees and put my hands under her to help her up and there’s all this blood. I just ran.’

  ‘She came to see me and told me that she’d got a note from you. She said she knew it was from you because it was in your handwriting and it had a heart drawn on it.’

  ‘I never sent her a note.’

  ‘Was the note you got definitely from Emma?’

  ‘It was her handwriting. It had these smiley faces on it that she used to put when she sent me notes before. When we were together. I’m thinking, Ricky’s dead, maybe she’s thinking about getting back together. ’Course, I ain’t got the note any more. Bee Bee found it and went ballistic.’