Stephanie began walking again, heading out of the wood towards the open fields, rounding a corner to see a carpet of brilliant blue Gentian flowers spread before her along her path. She knew the legend that if the flowers were brought into the house you could be struck by lightning. That’s how she thought of Daniel. An innocent boy, struck by lightning. Caught up in the seediness of this world, this university world, where everyone was out for each other, where they fought to scramble up the popularity mountain, never caring about the heads and hearts of the people they were standing upon.
Maybe that was it. Maybe Daniel had been struck by lightning. And, if she were truthful to herself, as her profession demanded, maybe she felt a little the same. Stephanie made a noise of assent, gazing at the flowers as they dazzled, a sparkling azure sea in the sunshine.
27
Tuesday 23 May, 4.00 p.m.
The drive to Great Whittington was picturesque. Winding burrows of roads, delving deeper into countryside where hedgerows got higher and higher, brambly tunnels of a journey. It was a softer landscape inland than Martin was used to from her upbringing on the coast. Here, mellow fruitfulness was in abundance, despite the earliness of the season. She turned off the radio, opened the window and enjoyed the drive in wind-rushed silence.
The hire car’s satnav predictably faltered as she drove through a series of tiny villages, hamlets really, leading to her destination. She spotted a local garage on the outskirts of the community and pulled into the forecourt to ask directions to the Brabents’ house. A sun-beaten man, wearing a faded red Diet Coke baseball cap, sat on a stool next to the pumps. As she got out of the car, he said something to her, but she ignored him and went straight into the shop. It was tiny and empty, selling not much more than a few shammy leathers and some de-icer.
Martin emerged from the shop. The man was still sitting on the stool. He gestured to her car, and she realized he was the only employee in the place. He wanted to fill her car. She felt a town-mouse fool and went back towards him, asked him to top up the already nearly full tank. She smiled at him as he began to do so.
‘Do you know where the Old Orchard is?’ she asked casually.
The man nodded, taking off the fuel cap.
‘Two miles down the road. Take a left towards Scratcher’s Farm, signposted for Crowley. You’ll see it on the bend in the road there by the river.’
She shifted, put her hands in her pockets.
‘Do you know the Brabents?’ she asked.
The man nodded again.
‘Moved to Whittington a few years ago. Started coming down on weekends.’ He looked at her from under the peak of his cap. ‘Get a lot of them. Empty in the week. No business for us.’
She smiled encouragingly, jingled her keys in her hand.
‘Must be annoying,’ she said. ‘But they moved here full time?’
‘As I say.’ The man wiped the nozzle of the petrol pump with an old rag and replaced the cap. ‘Got a couple of kids I think.’ He looked at her side-on. ‘Bit odd, if you must know.’
‘Odd? In what way?’ Martin leaned against the car, an expression of relaxation.
The man shrugged. ‘Keep themselves to themselves. They’ve had some parties there. Loud. Disturbs the village.’ He sniffed. ‘City types, I shouldn’t bet. That’ll be five pounds fifty.’
Martin reached into the car for her handbag. ‘But that’s quite normal, isn’t it? Having parties? You said odd. What does that mean?’ she asked, handing over the money. ‘Don’t worry about the change.’
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you anyway? Friends with them, are you? Then you should know.’
Martin took out her ID, showed it to the man.
‘What do you mean? Odd?’ she repeated.
Barely reacting to the ID, the man pocketed the money and sat back on his stool, stretching his legs in front of him.
‘Talk to Nerys. She cleaned for them. Lives up in the village. They’ll point you in the right direction at the post office. She’ll tell you.’
Martin walked round to the other side of the car and opened the door. ‘Thank you,’ she said, before getting in and pointing the car in the direction the man had indicated. She looked in the rear-view mirror as she drove off, the man watching her leave all the way along the road until she was out of sight.
Nerys Hopkins was a cottage loaf of a woman. Her neck rolled into her ample bosom, which rolled into her larger stomach, hooping into a wide skirt, narrowing off slightly into chubby calves and ankles. Her feet were crossed over each other. Prissy, thought Martin. They were sitting in Nerys’ front room, as she called it, beckoning Martin back in there from the kitchen after she’d made a pot of tea and put some digestives on a plate.
‘I wouldn’t say they were odd.’ She put her head on to one side, half-closing her eyes, a biscuit halfway to her mouth, its journey halted by the weight of thought. She opened her eyes to look at Martin. ‘Towny.’ Her biscuit-free hand scrabbled in the air for the words. ‘They were … towny.’
Martin knew what she meant. The Brabents were that stereotypical breed which had marched into the countryside of late, looking for the perfect country pile, searching for the perfect vintage cushion fabric, home-grown tomatoes for chutney to be put in dinky little jars, boozy lunches on striped tablecloths under lemon trees – a photo shoot of glamour, while at the same time pretending to be ever so ordinary. Towny or not, Martin could see how they would have seemed out of place in this little village which still ran on wind-up clock time, where you had to flag down an approaching train at the station.
‘Did you like them?’ she asked, leaning forwards to help herself to a biscuit.
Nerys shrugged. ‘Like or dislike. Don’t mean nothing to me. I’ll clean anyways.’
Martin smiled. ‘I’m sure, Mrs Hopkins. But, what I mean is, were they decent people? Was there anything about them you didn’t like? Thought peculiar, or unlikeable?’
‘Not peculiar,’ she mumbled, crumbs escaping on to her bottom lip as she spoke. ‘She was nice, Mrs Brabents.’ She chewed some more as she considered. ‘Once, though, I remember. I turned up on the Tuesday morning as normal. Nine a.m. sharp it is.’ The way she looked at Martin made her think Nerys’ timekeeping must often be doubtful.
‘And?’ she prompted.
‘And there’d been a kerfuffle, I’d say.’
‘A kerfuffle?’
‘You know,’ her hands scrabbled again, word-searching. ‘A ding-dong. Used to have them with Bob. They hang in the air. You can smell them.’
‘So you sensed there’d been an argument in the Brabents’ house?’
‘More than that, really. There was some broken china in the kitchen on the floor. But it was more that …’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘Well,’ Nerys coughed slightly. ‘I’m sure there was blood in the kitchen sink. And then Mrs Brabents, well, she wouldn’t see me that day. No one was around. Normally she lets me in, makes me a cup. We have a chat, you know. But that day she stayed in her bedroom. Said I didn’t have to clean it, she’d change the bed linen.’
‘Was there anything else you can think of? Any other incidents?’
Nerys looked uncomfortable. ‘Well …’ She faltered.
Martin waited, patient.
‘They had a party once, a year or so ago. Not too big, just a few friends over for lunch in the garden. They asked me to work, to help with the washing up, there was a few of them, you see. Beautiful day it was. We put the table out on the lawn. Not a cloud in the sky.’ Nerys stared off in a reverie. Martin coughed to get her attention.
‘And?’ she prompted.
‘And, it wasn’t nothing much, but you’re asking me for any kind of incident …’
‘Something happened that day?’
Nerys nodded. ‘It was after lunch, everyone was lounging round in the garden, reading the papers in deckchairs. Boiling hot, it was. Mrs Brabents suggested putting on the sprinkler, you know so the children cou
ld run through the water. Everyone laughed, and Mr Brabents said they were too old for that, that was for little ’uns. But by that time, Emily and a girlfriend of hers had run upstairs to get changed, they didn’t hear him say no.’ Nerys looked at Martin.
‘They should have listened?’
The cleaner rubbed her eyes sadly. ‘Her and her friend came down in their bathing costumes. Bikinis or whatnot. And he went mad. Threw his glass on the ground so it smashed. Stormed off into the house and came back with a couple of towels. Grabbed Emily’s arm and threw them at the girls, told them to cover themselves up. They were awful embarrassed. Emily shouted out how she hated her dad, and they went off back into the house.’
‘And what did Mrs Brabents do?’
‘I was in the kitchen, at the sink, watching it through the window. Mrs Brabents, she sort of sank down into one of the deckchairs. So heavy, like, that it ripped right through. She ended up on the grass, awful embarrassed, and Mr Brabents, he shouted at her.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well,’ Nerys sniffed. ‘I don’t like to use the language, but it was something like she was too effing fat and should watch what she ate.’ Nerys shook her head. ‘Made a right atmosphere it did. After that, everyone sort of dribbled off home.’
‘But he wasn’t violent?’ Martin asked. ‘Just shouted?’
‘That’s right,’ Nerys nodded. ‘But I always felt something was … something was …’
‘Something was … ?’ Martin encouraged.
‘Something was wrong. More than wrong. I felt something in that house. It wasn’t fear. I can smell that too.’ She stared at Martin, daring her to argue. Martin said nothing. ‘No. It wasn’t fear. It was –’ she picked at her skirt, fat fingers twisting the material – ‘rage. It was rage.’
28
I didn’t want Emily to see my house. Mother had made some good improvements to it since she’d got the money but, still, I didn’t think Emily would have been impressed. Mum may have been pleased with the new John Lewis curtains and she still couldn’t get over the excitement of the dishwasher, but Emily came from a class apart from this. I imagined her often, over those Christmas holidays. Not just after seeing the video, but in her house in the countryside, sitting around a big pine table with her family, drinking freshly ground coffee, laughing at something Kit had said, her mum lifting a steaming casserole out of the Aga, her dad pouring glasses of Burgundy for everyone.
Seeing them in Hammersmith had altered this image in an uncomfortable way for me. I liked the countryside image. But now I had the one of Mr Brabents pouring fizzy wine into plastic glasses, of Mrs Brabents leaning over the balustrade of the auditorium, her breasts hanging slightly out of a too-revealing top. It sort of made me shudder. I tried to ignore it as much as possible and just focused on Emily, on her being lost. This would be the key, I thought. The key to something good for me.
The next time I saw Emily was at a bar in west London. She was staying with a family friend and had texted me to meet for a drink. Once again, I traversed east to west on the tube and, once again, I was early, standing at the bar with my newspaper when she walked in. She looked different somehow. I compared her in my mind’s eye to our first meeting on the train up to Durham, when, even though she had been crying, she had been something of herself. Now, she seemed a vapour; a fragment of what she had been before.
I bought her a gin and tonic and I had another pint of bitter. We went and sat at a table by the window, a floodlit darkness outside making a film set of the streets. They had an unreal quality about them, I thought. The pub was one of those soulless chains, nothing to it despite the jaunty writing on the mirrors behind the bar and the whitewashed floorboards that would soon be skimmed with detritus from the repulsive footfall within. Emily and I looked at each other across the table. It was weird, but since the gig in Hammersmith, I had felt emboldened with Emily. I knew now that I could ask her about the video. She appeared to me as a vessel, something empty which I could pour into. What I would pour, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.
‘I’ve seen it,’ I said. I leaned back in my chair and smiled a little. My hands encircled my pint glass.
Emily went red and looked down at her own glass, where condensation dribbled down it, wetting her fingers.
‘What were you thinking?’ I asked, a headmasterly question.
She glanced up at me, then looked out of the window, pushing her hair back behind her ears. She had lovely ears. Small with tiny pearl earrings in the lobes.
‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ she said quietly. ‘He told me it was fine. That everyone was doing this kind of thing.’
I laughed in a nasty way. ‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
‘But it’s true,’ she said in earnest. ‘They have these competitions. Even in Sixes. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, you must have missed them. They get girls up on the stage. In T-shirts. And they spray beer at them until …’ She coloured again. ‘Until you can see through their tops.’
I looked at her.
‘You get points, they give you points …’ Her voice tailed off.
‘What else?’ I asked. Something in me was enjoying this. A hint of a devil twisted a knife in my stomach, the feeling you get when the car you’re travelling in takes a fast dip in the road. I have to admit I was excited by it. Watching her mouth describe it.
‘Then there’s the website,’ she said dully. ‘It’s called something stupid like Hot or Not.’ She looked down at her fingernails, chewed on one of them. It made her look like a beaver. For want of a better word. ‘People have to vote. Girls and boys.’ She glanced up at me, as if this made it better. ‘They vote on photos. If you get a thousand “likes”,’ here, she made the sign of inverted commas, ‘you might get spotted. You never know,’ she said, lifting her chin with a flash of her old spirit.
I shifted in my seat and coughed slightly. ‘I’m sorry. What are you saying?’ I wiped my mouth with my thumb and then sipped my drink slowly, letting the liquid calm my burning throat, calm all I wanted to say. ‘You’re saying there’s a website where girls can put up photos of themselves and people – girls and boys …’ I inclined my head towards Emily in acknowledgement of her comfort in this fact, ‘vote on whether the girl is hot or not.’ I laughed, amazed. ‘And girls actually volunteer for this?’
‘It’s about reclaiming our sexuality,’ Emily said as if she was reading from the latest edition of some ridiculous magazine. ‘We’re proud of our bodies. We’re empowered.’ A tear glistened in the corner of her right eye. ‘We are,’ she said more firmly.
I tipped my pint glass to a forty-five-degree angle, watched the brown dregs of the bitter lurch and then settle. I put it down carefully on the table and then leaned forwards, my hands empty now.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You think that by doing these, these competitions, you’re being feminist?’ I couldn’t believe my ears. I had been right all along. The world was nothing like me.
Emily had begun to silently sob.
‘Jesus, Emily,’ I stood up angrily. ‘Is this how you use your vote? To decide on the hotness of other women?’ I stalked off to the bar and ordered another round, although I don’t think Emily had touched hers. She sat there, as I waited to be served, staring at her hands on the table. I turned back and looked at myself in the mirror which ran the length of the wall. There I was, tall, not bad-looking, clever. The barmaid handed me my change without a glance. I existed in the world like a cipher. I wasn’t noticed. I could pass through this life without anybody giving a damn. I had something to give! And in the meantime these disgusting people who were abusing Emily and girls like her were striding across the globe like giants, swinging their dicks in their hands like gods. It made me sick.
I sat down again opposite Emily and pushed another gin and tonic towards her. She half-smiled and looked at her first drink, intact.
‘
It’s just the way it is,’ she said sadly. ‘You have to be like them or they don’t see you. We pretend we don’t care, that our bodies are just that – bodies. We can be naked, flaunt them, shove them in your face,’ she smiled wryly. ‘And none of it matters because we’re the ones in control. We decide to do it. We’re not forced, we’re not,’ she swallowed, ‘raped. We just live in a tough world.’ She looked up at me then. ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it.’ She giggled slightly, putting her first glass to her lips and taking a long drink.
I thought about this. But what about me? I didn’t play sports, I didn’t even join in the ridiculousness of the physics club with Zack. I rued my status as an outsider but I didn’t appear to need to change myself to fit in. Why not, I wondered?
‘It’s like being a member of a club,’ Emily explained, her tongue loosened slightly by the first swallow of gin. ‘If you’re in it, you feel secure. And who doesn’t want attention?’ she asked me, wide-eyed.
I didn’t know how to answer that except to think to myself, I don’t.
‘It’s like being famous, you’re acknowledged, you’re kind of honoured.’
‘Because of your tits,’ I said crassly, causing another blush to creep up Emily’s neck. I leaned forwards, desperate for her to understand, desperate for this devil inside me to be culled. ‘They make you think it’s your choice, but it’s not. It’s the baying of the crowd, nothing more than that. They’re getting titillated by you, for free. And the best part? They don’t even have to feel guilty or ashamed about it, because, according to everyone in that room, or on that website, you’ve done it freely, you have chosen to do it. But why, Emily? Ask yourself why. Why do you need that attention? Why do you need to be liked? By them of all people?’
Emily stared at me, tears fringing her eyelashes, giving her a startled look, adding to her vulnerability. I could see it. I could see why they wanted to hunt her down, capture her for their own. A shadow passed across her face. ‘You’re just the same,’ she snapped. ‘Why do you hang around me? You want to be in it too. Isn’t it better to be in something – rather than outside, on your own?’
Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller) Page 16
