Stay Dead

by Jessie Keane

  ‘They do! Straight into the fucking National Grid,’ persisted Dick, rubbing his ear and grinning.

  ‘It’s a very mild thing,’ said Dolly firmly to Sarah, although she knew different. She had seen her mum brought home after those ‘sessions’, babbling and crying in a state of confusion and vomiting her guts up. Sarah hadn’t seen any of that. ‘It’s hardly a shock at all. And it puts things right in Mum’s brain.’

  But they all knew that the treatment had no long-lasting effect. It was just Mum. She couldn’t help it.

  Dad still had his job on the railways, but he was off the wheeltapping now. They’d made him a shunter, put him in with a new gang of men. He was doing well, so at least they never went hungry.

  Dolly tried to keep the house tidy, but being naturally untidy herself, and hating housework, she found that she just couldn’t manage it.

  So their house was dirty. Often, the kids went unwashed and their clothes were threadbare and filthy. Sandy wet the bed; he was nervous, highly strung like Mum. But so what? None of the families in their street were much different. All around them on the council estate there was junk piled up in front gardens, mange-ridden dogs endlessly barking, grubby kids sitting out on the front step watching the world go by when they should have been at school, studying.

  Nobody around here gave a flying fuck about education, about making a better life for themselves; it was just the way it was. Vera and Lucy were exceptions to the rule. Around here, you knew your place, you didn’t go giving yourself any stupid airs and graces, trying to be all la-di-dah. Try to make something of yourself and you’d get laughed at or beaten up, or both.

  For the boys, the future probably held a job on the railway like Dad. Nigel, the eldest boy, was prudish and formal; he hero-worshipped his little strutting bantam-cock of a father, and was sure to follow in his footsteps. For the girls, there would be marriage and kids.

  But whenever Dolly looked at Mum, she wondered about that. Marriage and kids? It hadn’t done Mum any fucking favours. Everyone was talking about how the actress Grace Kelly had found her prince, like in a fairy tale; she’d married Prince Rainier the Third of Monaco.

  ‘Gawd, innit lovely?’ all the girls were saying.

  It was in all the papers, it was even on the telly, they said, the actual honest-to-God ceremony had been filmed.

  Dolly was pretty sure that she wouldn’t want to go down that road, not now, not ever. She was troubled by her own feelings about it, though. What else could a girl do? Men earned the money, women had the babies. It was set in stone. But the very idea of it turned her stomach.

  7

  Sometimes Dolly thought it started when she was ten, just before she considered running away. But no. Actually, when she really thought, it started a year or so before that, with him giving her little gifts.

  Whenever she thought about it in later life – and mostly she tried not to – she always thought of the story about the frog put into cold water that was heated until it boiled to death. Had it been put in boiling water to start with, it would have jumped out. But death was slow, insidious; it crept up on the frog and lulled it; and that was how Dolly’s downfall came about, too.

  The first time Mum went away to get her ‘treatment’, Dad brought Dolly a box of chocolates.

  ‘Got to spoil my best girl, haven’t I,’ he said gruffly, shoving the gift into her hands. ‘Don’t tell the other kids, they’ll all be wanting stuff, and that’s just for you, because you’re special.’

  Dolly was delighted and flattered. She felt important, because Mum was away and she was in charge of the house, even if she was a lousy cook and an even worse cleaner. She tucked the chocolates away in a recess of the wardrobe in her and Sarah’s room, and ate them whenever the others weren’t around.

  Dad loved her, she thought as she ate the chocolates; she was special. She bunked off big school – no one cared, anyway – and spent more time in the house, trying to hold back the tide of mess and failing. But she was appreciated, she was loved. Missing her mum, she liked that.

  When Mum came home, looking like one of the zombies in those comics Dick loved so much, Dolly was relegated to second place, and Dad didn’t pay her much attention at all. So Dolly began to look forward to Mum going away, because when she did, there was Dad with gifts for his special girl: a tortoiseshell comb, a music box with a twirling ballerina inside, more chocolates.

  And when Mum wasn’t there, when the other kids weren’t around, he cuddled her. She liked that, at first.

  ‘Come and sit on my lap, Doll,’ he’d say, and she would, to be enfolded in a hug scented with Old Holborn and beer-breath, the unwashed bristly skin of his chin nuzzling into her neck. It was lovely, comforting somehow.

  The cuddling became tickling, and play-fighting, and one day down in the sitting room Sam was laughing and Dolly was giggling wildly and they rolled on the grubby carpet, her and her dad, and his hand came to rest on the small barely formed nubbin of her breast. It stayed there, rubbing, and Dolly’s giggles faded in her shock and confusion as she felt her nipple harden.

  ‘They’re getting bigger,’ he said, and she didn’t know where to look or what to say, she was that embarrassed. It felt nice, the pressure of his hand there. Nice, and somehow very wrong. Shameful. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said, and took her hand and placed it over his trousers. She felt something hard there, and jerked her hand away and sat up.

  ‘You know the facts of life, don’t you, Doll?’ he asked, sitting there on the floor staring at her. ‘You started your bleeds yet?’

  Dolly didn’t know what to say. Was he telling her she was going to bleed from somewhere, like a nosebleed maybe? Was that somehow connected to what men and women did, how they had babies? The thought made her shudder.

  Dad put his hand on her shoulder, slid it up to caress her cheek.

  ‘You know what men and women do together, don’t you, Doll?’

  She wanted him to shut up. This was horrible. She thought of the angels in the stained-glass window of the little church, the beauty in them, the goodness. This wasn’t good. This was awful and evil. She knew it somehow, deep in her soul.

  ‘You know the man puts his thing in the lady?’ he said, and he was whispering now, leaning closer, his breath tickling her ear.

  Dolly said nothing. She was frozen there, rigid with disgust and disbelief that her dad was saying these shocking things to her. She wanted to stand up, to run, but she was afraid he’d stop her if she moved. Or touch her again in that bad way.

  ‘He puts his thing right in her, and it feels good,’ he said, and he was touching her hand, grasping it, bringing it back to that strange hardness at his crotch. Cringing, Dolly tried to pull her hand free, but she couldn’t. ‘You’re my best girl,’ he said, and his voice caught as if he was breathless. ‘There. You see? It’s going to be so good for us.’

  So, after Lucy’s birthday tea, Dolly almost ran away. As far as the rec, anyway. But Dad brought her home again, and when she got home there was Mum sitting in her chair at the kitchen table – and Dolly thought that, while Mum was here, she was safe. Dad wouldn’t try to do the man-and-woman thing with her, not while Mum was here.

  8

  Prospect, Barbados, June 1994

  Annie Carter dreamed of him again on the night it all kicked off. Constantine Barolli – the godfather. Him of the all-American tan and the armour-piercing blue eyes, the startling white hair, the sharp suits. It was as if he was there, he was so real. Smiling at her, telling her he loved her.

  Once, long ago, Constantine could make anything right. Could make her feel enfolded, protected in the safe cocoon of his love. She turned over in the bed, her eyes opening to blackness, the last insubstantial filaments of the dream floating away into the air around her. Her and Constantine, walking on the beach at Montauk on Long Island, the millionaires’ playground, hand in hand. She could feel his strong grip on hers, could see the sun on his hair, the crinkling of the lines around h
is eyes . . . but it was fading, fading . . . and then it was gone. He was gone.

  Coming back to full wakefulness, Annie felt the cool blast of the aircon and she shivered, blinking, pulling the sheet over her body. She awoke to blackness, to an empty room, an empty bed. No Max. And now, as the dream ebbed away, as she came back to herself, she thought, No Constantine either.

  Annie sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes, clutched at her temples. Jesus, these dreams. Recently she’d had them over and over again. She was with Constantine – Constantine as he had been so long ago – they were happy, as they had been all those years ago. It was all so real, disturbingly real, and strange – and then she woke up and felt bereft, abandoned, as cold reality crept back in.

  And now Max was gone too.

  Annie hauled herself up in the bed, reached over, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness so that she could see outlines, discern dim shapes. She groped for and found the glass of water on the bedside table, took a sip, and tried not to think about all of it.

  But she did.

  She couldn’t help it. How could she not think about it?

  Twenty-three years ago, it happened. Constantine had been her second husband. Way back then – believing Max to be dead following a gangland hit – she had married Constantine, and was pregnant with his child when it happened. The explosion. And after that? The dreams.

  Ah God, those dreams!

  At first they had not been sweet, happy dreams like those she was experiencing now. They had been hideous dreams, waking nightmares in which Constantine appeared before her in the night, wrecked, smouldering, dead and yet not dead, holding out his ruined arms to her. Those dreams had been terrifying. She had wondered if she was losing her mind.

  Annie flicked on the bedside light. Light flooded the room and drove back the shadows. Nothing sinister here, she reassured herself, looking around and sternly getting a grip on her wayward imagination. There was no mouldering remnant of a man she had once loved, come back to haunt her.

  And Max? What about him?

  Annie frowned, her guts tightening with tension. Max was off in Europe on business. He’d taken off a week ago, without any real explanation. What business, he had refused to discuss with her, even though she had asked. He had just said he had stuff to do, and left.

  Max was a law unto himself. He never explained, never apologized, never kept her in the loop. He had things to do, that was all he’d said, and he’d just . . . gone.

  Leaving her here, alone.

  Which was OK. She was fine on her own, usually. But not this time.

  Because you think he’s having an affair, don’t you? You don’t think he’s doing business at all, you think he’s doing some tart.

  It was true that Max had been cold, distant to her before he left. That had worried her. Usually, if Max had something to say to you, he’d say it to your face, get it off his chest. Not this time, though. This felt different. And now she wasn’t sleeping well, and she was having these fucking dreams. Somehow they made her feel almost that she was the unfaithful one. The one who cheated. The very thought made her frown, made a shaft of uneasiness pierce her gut, hard. She had lost Max once, but found him again, and she was so lucky to have done that, so incredibly lucky to have him back in her life after all they had been through. She knew it. She didn’t want to lose him again.

  But these dreams.

  They were so vivid, so colourful, so convincing in their reality, that when she was asleep she was actually there, once again. In her dreams she was once again Annie Carter-Barolli, a Mafia queen, cosseted and powerful, married to a man whose word was life and death, whose name struck fear in everyone on the streets of New York.

  Sighing restlessly, Annie glanced at the alarm clock. Two in the morning, and she was wide awake. There was no chance she’d get back to sleep. She never did, not after one of the dreams. They churned her up, made her think: What the hell is this, have I got a problem here?

  Do I need to see a shrink or something?

  Around the time of the Montauk explosion, way back in the seventies, she knew she’d had some sort of a breakdown. Was her mind slipping out of her control again, was that what this was all about?

  But everything was good now. She and Max were OK. Weren’t they? Her daughter Layla and Constantine’s son Alberto were cruising the Caribbean islands, touching base rarely, but they were fine. Layla contacted Annie and Max whenever she could, even sometimes arrived unannounced on the doorstep, much to their delight.

  Yeah, everything’s fine, Annie told herself. But there was that niggling sense of trouble looming she couldn’t deny. The dreams. This feeling of something bubbling away under the surface, sending up noxious dirty little plops now and again to her brain – something bad. Max had been so cold to her recently, looking away from her, leaving her without a kiss, without even a single civil word.

  Yeah, you need a shrink, she told herself, almost laughing at such self-indulgent weakness. She was Annie Carter, she was rock-solid, a strong and single-minded woman. So why was she letting her imagination run riot? Yes, she had secrets – guilty secrets. And . . . maybe now he had one too.

  Shut up, you silly cow, she told herself, lying back down, flicking off the light.

  He’s at it and you know it, said the voice in her brain. He’s screwing around. He’s tired of you. And maybe that’s what you deserve because you’ve been keeping secrets from him, bad secrets, and maybe he’s found out.

  That was when the phone started to ring in the living room.

  9

  Sicily, June 1994

  Max Carter was fed up to the back teeth when he flew into Catania. He left his two travelling companions at the airport with a promise that he’d be in touch soon, and picked up his hire car. In a sour mood, he then took the coastal road to Syracuse. He checked into the Grand Hotel Villa Politi, and waited. He waited for over a week, eating fine Sicilian food and drinking a little Strega – not too much, he didn’t want to risk getting pissed and losing focus – and still the woman was dicking him around.

  Bloody women.

  She was capricious, imperious, but he was used to that in women – he was married to Annie Carter, for God’s sake. But this woman was proving even more difficult than Annie. It didn’t surprise him, given the way the two women had clashed in the past over who was the queen bee. It was a game Annie would always win at, hands down.

  First the woman said they would meet in the Politi’s lounge. And she didn’t show up. One of her lackeys phoned, said she was indisposed, so sorry. Then the venue was rearranged to Taormina, a picturesque town set high on Monte Tauro. They would meet for lunch at the Belmond, overlooking the twin bays below. Come alone, they said.

  Max drove there – alone, as agreed – and waited. Another phone call to cancel. She didn’t want to meet there after all, she’d changed her mind. She would prefer to see him somewhere away from prying eyes. Her lackey suggested a place not far outside Syracuse, could he do that?

  Max gritted his teeth, punched the wall, and said yes, that would be fine. It would have to be.

  His senses were alert now. Something was wrong with all this. The woman was dancing around him like a ballerina, and he was wondering why. Maybe she had changed her mind about what she’d said when she’d spoken to Gary Tooley on the phone. Maybe she regretted her actions. Maybe she’d been drunk or drugged at the time and in the clear light of day she’d sobered up, come down off cloud nine and reconsidered.

  Having spoken those words, though, the deed was done. The secret was out. Perhaps she wanted to put it back in its box. And the way to do it? By now he thought he knew the way she might choose. Whatever was going on with her, he meant to find out the truth – and meeting face to face was his best chance of doing that, even if without his back-up he risked ending up dead. If only the devious bitch would actually turn up one of these days.

  In his hotel room on the morning of this new meeting, he got up, showered, called the hotel w
here his men were staying and told them what was going on.

  ‘You need us up there?’ asked the one who picked up.

  ‘No,’ said Max. ‘But be ready. I’ll call. Looks like this is it, finally.’

  He dressed in a cool white linen shirt, cream cords, brown loafers; then he slipped on his gold ring with the lapis lazuli square set into it, added a Rolex and a couple of other items and looked in the mirror, running a hand through his thick, black and slightly too long hair to tame it into shape. He could almost pass for a Sicilian himself; his old mum Queenie had always called him her ‘little Italian’. He was powerfully built and tanned, with a piratical hook of a nose and deep, dark navy-blue eyes.

  The heat was climbing and the sun was pouring molten lava down upon his bare head as he walked out into a perfect Sicilian day and got into his car. Max hated hats. He liked the sun in his eyes and the wind at his back. He started the engine and drove up the dusty track to the agreed meeting-place, passing tiny small-windowed white villas, uniform rows of vines, olive groves. Potato-shaped peasant women dressed in black were sitting outside their doors, lemon trees overhanging the walls of their houses, skinny dogs wandering free in the street.

  He wound down the window and let the hot air blow through, thinking of Annie, who would probably be asleep right now in their villa up near Prospect on Barbados. It was a peaceful place, set above a thin crescent of white sandy beach, away from the luxury hotel complexes and shaded with palms and manchineel trees. They both loved it there. But this was more important. This would have to be addressed before it drove him stark staring mad.

  The suspicions.

  Had his wife betrayed him?