by Frances Vick
Lee gazed at her, very seriously. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
A sudden shyness struck Kirsty then. She gazed at the bright floor tiles, feeling a happy blush spread across her cheeks. From the hallway came a crash, the sound of rolling bottles, and a collective, excited ‘OHHHHH!’
‘Woman down!’ someone shouted gleefully. ‘Vic! Legend!’
Kirsty groaned. ‘That’s my cue.’ She walked into the hall to see her sister pinned to the carpet by one of the heavy gilt mirrors that had fallen from the wall.
Vic struggled like an upturned insect and giggled weakly. ‘My head hurts,’ she said.
There was nobody in the hall Kirsty recognised, they all looked young – like teenagers – and they all thought Vic – or the spectacle of Vic – was hilarious. They stood around smirking as Kirsty struggled to lever the mirror up. Then Lee was there, silently taking it from her, leaning it carefully against the wall while Kirsty picked the glass out of her sister’s hair.
‘What’d you do?’
‘Handstand. She was doing a handstand!’ a giggling girl said. ‘Legend! Lady? You’re a fucking legend!’
‘Don’t put your hands on the floor, there’s glass all over it!’ Kirsty told Vic. ‘Where’s the Hoover?’
‘Where’s the Hooooover?’ mimicked Vic. ‘Where’s the Hooooover?’
‘She’s a legend,’ another girl told her. There was a note of ‘don’t spoil the fun’ aggression in her voice. ‘She’s all right.’
The girl was very young; a teenager – sixteen or seventeen, or maybe fourteen or fifteen behind the skilful make-up. What was she doing here? What were the equally young strangers doing here? Their sly little faces shone with gleeful excitement. Vic must seem impossibly old to them, and her antics as darkly funny as those of a senile relative, while poor Vic obviously felt like she was still one of them.
‘Yeah.’ Vic scrambled up from the floor, tossed her head, shaking an inch-long splinter of glass from her hair. ‘I’m all right.’
‘See?’ The girl was a smug echo. ‘She’s all right.’
‘You’ve cut yourself,’ Kirsty told her. ‘Look, your leg.’
Vic twisted to look at the thin trickle of blood running down her calf. ‘Can’t see anything.’
‘Let me clean it up.’
‘Oh SHUT UP!’ Vic shouted then, with that sudden, drunken hate born of embarrassment. ‘Shut up, will you, I’m FINE.’ And she limped towards the living room, leaving little bloody heel prints on the floorboards.
‘She’s a fucking legend, your sister,’ the giggling girl confided again. ‘Isn’t she? My mum hates her.’
‘What?’
‘My mum? We live in the flat above? Hates her!’
Jesus… Vic was reduced to inviting random teenage neighbours? How much did she not want to grow up? Kirsty closed her eyes, feeling all of her thirty-one years, and Vic’s twenty-four combined.
Then she felt a hand on her elbow. Lee was looking at her with amused sympathy. ‘As my old nan used to say, “Once the blood flows, the party’s peaked.” Fancy a drink? The pub at the end of the street is OK, I think?’
‘I should stay, for Vic,’ she said.
‘Haven’t you heard? Vic’s a fucking legend. She’s FINE.’ Lee smiled. ‘Anyway, she’s Ollie’s responsibility now. Come on. Let’s go and get a drink.’
Kirsty nodded gratefully, grabbed her coat from the bedroom – the bed thankfully not groaning with sexual coupling, the room occupied only with one weary-looking man texting his wife – and together they slipped out into the quiet street. Away from the pulse of music, the shrieks of the guests, and all that determined fun, Kirsty felt her shoulders relax, and her arms, loose, dangled by her sides.
‘Thank god,’ she murmured to herself.
‘D’you remember Lethal Weapon?’ Lee asked her. ‘And Danny Glover? Whenever he escaped from some hostage situation or whatever, he’d always say—’
‘“I’m too old for this shit,”’ Kirsty finished.
‘Well,’ Lee nodded behind them, ‘I’m too old for that shit.’ Then smiled and touched her wrist gently. ‘Thanks for walking my elderly ass out of that place.’
‘You’re not elderly.’
‘I feel it. I’ve reached the stage when I ask for the music to be turned down in pubs. Speaking of which…’ He opened the door to the quiet bar, and steered her towards a booth. ‘What’ll you have?’
The night they met was actually two nights and two days. For the first time ever, Kirsty called in sick to work so she could stay in bed with Lee, cook with Lee, laugh with Lee and have more sex than she’d had in the last five years. She’d never met anyone like him. They drank red wine and talked and she told him more than she’d ever told anyone else about her family, about school, about Lisa and the police and the hate driving them away. Curiously, Lee, whose dad had been in the army, had lived in the same city at the same time, but he was older – five years older – and so they’d never met. There was something comforting in this idea, that they might have passed each other on the street, caught each other’s eye maybe, and now, all these years later…
He remembered the Lisa Cook case, the media scrum, Marlborough House being burned down.
‘It’s a bad town. Of all the places we lived, that was the only one I hated,’ he told her.
‘D’you remember Bryan? Lisa’s brother? He gave me a hard time.’ She tried to keep it matter-of-fact. ‘He seemed to blame me for everything. It was him that gave me this scar.’ She pushed her hair away from her temple to show him the white, twisted line that ran from her hairline to the corner of her left eye. ‘That’s why I still have a fringe like a kid.’
‘I like your fringe.’ Lee stroked the scar. ‘But I hate that this happened to you.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t just that. He’d follow me, chase me, spit at me. He threw things at the house and… it was awful.’ She found that she was crying.
Lee held her hand tight, and he didn’t speak, and his body was hard, and when she looked at him his face was set in painful indignation.
‘Why would he do that?’ he said.
‘He was nuts. And he blamed me for leaving her in the park.’
He shook his head. ‘What, you would have been nine? How was this your fault?’
‘I was ten.’
‘Ten! Well, that makes all the difference! Of course it was your fault!’ He reached for a cigarette, smoked in hard little sucks and blew out the smoke with a kind of rage that she didn’t understand but felt obscurely guilty about. ‘What a nasty little bastard he was.’
‘Did you know him? He was pretty famous around town.’
Lee said nothing.
‘I’m sorry to bring it up. It’s a depressing subject, and—’ Kirsty began.
Lee picked up his drink. ‘You don’t have to do that, you know. You don’t have to apologise.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘I’m a big boy, I can handle depressing subjects.’
‘I know. I didn’t mean… I wasn’t criticising you…’
He took her hand. ‘OK, here’s… I want to say something. And it… it might not be good and it might be the stupidest thing I could say, but…’
Kirsty closed her eyes as if waiting for a blow. Here it comes, she thought. Here come the questions… Why did you leave her… Why didn’t you tell your mum? I bet you didn’t really see Tokki in the park, did you? But he hesitated for such a long time that she opened her eyes again. His face was so pained, so… so sad. He looked close to tears.
‘Lee? Are you OK? Lee?’ She took his hand. His skin was warm.
Just then, the landlord came over, nodding apologetically at the cigarette.
‘Shit, this smoking ban. I always forget… I’ll just nip outside to finish it, is that alright?’ He’d already put on his coat.
Left alone for those few minutes, Kirsty reflected on the horrible start she’d made with such a nice man. Dumping all this on him right away… no wonder
he wanted a break from her so soon. He might not even come back. But he did, and as soon as he sat back down, she apologised again.
He swallowed, moved his head just a little, as if shaking off a cloud of small flies. ‘You have nothing to apologise for.’
‘I don’t advertise it. I don’t even mention it, normally.’
‘But why did you with me?’ Lee asked.
‘I don’t know. I felt safe, I suppose.’
Lee took a deep breath, let it out slowly, nodded to himself and pressed her hand. ‘Good. I’m glad you do, and, Kirsty? You have every right to talk about it but none of this was your fault, yeah? And if I can help, I’d like to. You won’t be burdening me, nothing like that. I want to help you.’
His eyes, hazel, serious, were so beautiful. His brown skin, the web of small lines that fanned out from his eyes when he smiled. The smooth forehead behind which his sharp, courageous mind never slept. She loved him. She loved him right then and there, and knew she always would.
From the very start, Lee possessed that righteous indignation, that defensive anger that Kirsty had never been able to find in herself. Lee was a godsend.
Nine
‘You want to get hold and hang on tight to that one,’ Sarah told her. ‘Not many like him.’
‘I know. I don’t deserve him.’
‘Oh you do. You’re a good catch. Good head on your shoulders, always have.’ She coughed, a long, strangled hack. Kirsty massaged her back until the fit was over and Sarah looked at her tissue judiciously. ‘No blood.’
‘Well you’re getting better, that’s why.’
Sarah smiled crookedly. ‘Maybe you are daft after all.’
‘The doctor’s not said anything about you being worse—’
‘That doctor wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.’ In her last illness, Sarah had embraced swearing with the zeal of a religious convert. ‘I’ve got cancer, Kirsty. That train only goes one way.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk that way.’
‘I know I can with you and you won’t have hysterics. You can take it, not like Vicky. She’s not practical like you are. When I go, you’ll carry on looking out for her, won’t you?’
‘Oh, Mum, you’re not going anywhere—’
‘She’s with Ollie now, and that’s all right, but I can’t help thinking that he’s left one wife and that sets a precedent as far as I’m concerned. Keep an eye on her. Promise.’
‘Promise.’
‘And Lee? Lee! I know you’re outside the door listening so just come in.’ Sarah held out one hand, pale and fluttering as a moth’s wing.
‘I wasn’t listening.’ He took her hand, sat down by the bed. ‘I was just giving you some time.’
‘Aye, well, there’s not much of that left.’
‘Mum, don’t—’
‘Shhh!’ Sarah said sharply. ‘Lee knows what I’m on about. He’s not full of shit, he knows I’m on my way out. Now listen.’ She turned to Lee, all the light of her fading life blazing through those hard, blue eyes. Lee kept her gaze. They looked very seriously at each other. ‘I’m giving Kirsty to you. She’s the best thing I ever made. She’s the best thing anyone ever made, I reckon. But she doesn’t think so. She’s broken up inside and I can’t fix her because maybe I was one of the ones that broke her in the first place. But you can. That’s your job. That’s what I want you to do.’ She gripped his hand very hard then, hard enough that his knuckles went white. ‘Will you do this for me?’
‘I will,’ Lee said solemnly and Sarah gave the smallest, briskest of nods, and let go of his hand. Kirsty watched the blood flow ruddily back into the white.
‘All right. Now, go home now. Both of you, you look tired. Lee? Take her to the cinema or something? Have a nice evening.’ Sarah waved them both off. She was tired now. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Lee had tears in his eyes as they walked down the hospice corridor. Kirsty half expected, half wanted him to say something facetious – something about Sarah having a good grip maybe, but he didn’t, and neither did she. When they were back in the car he said, almost to himself, ‘I’m glad she trusts me with you.’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’
But Lee didn’t answer.
At the funeral a month later, Kirsty thought back to that exchange. Was she really broken? Was she something that could be bestowed, like a gift or a curse? It made her feel uneasy, bitter, and guilty for being both those things, and grateful for Lee for taking her on, damaged as she was. She looked at Lee through her own dry, cried-out eyes as he helped the undertaker’s men lift the coffin, and she made him a silent promise. I’ll fix myself. I’ll get to the bottom of what happened to Lisa and then I’ll be free. I won’t be your burden any more.
But when she showed some of her research to Lee, he didn’t like it.
‘How is this helping?’
‘It’s seeing if I can get to the truth—’
He frowned. ‘I don’t get it. Why do you need this?’
‘I—’
‘I mean, how can going over the same ground again and again help you get over it?’
‘It’s not about getting over it though, it’s about finding out what really happened! Every month more stuff comes to light, like here, look.’ She pointed at a post in Dark Hearts. ‘This is about some boys in the park – they were there a lot that spring apparently, people remember them and there’s even this picture, look,’ someone had posted a picture of the youth club, some grainy figures hanging around the open door, ‘somebody, sometime, will come forward, maybe one of these boys, and maybe they saw something and maybe—’
‘That’s a whole lot of maybes.’
‘Yes, but the whole thing is based on maybes, that’s the problem!’ Kirsty felt energised, excited to share. ‘And look, someone who was at Marlborough House at the same time says he saw Tokki going into the prayer room that day at four thirty.’
Lee peered at the screen. ‘It says “an anonymous source said they saw a man who may have been Toqueer Al-Balushi entering the prayer room at around four thirty”.’ He looked up. ‘That’s not definite at all.’
‘Well, it’s something to research, isn’t it?’ Kirsty felt thwarted, annoyed. ‘The police won’t do it, so—’
‘So you’re going to track down this “anonymous source”, are you? How?’
‘I’m not. But someone else might, there are loads of people interested in this case, Lee! There are loads of people who think Tokki didn’t do it, and there are loads of inconsistencies. Look.’ She clicked on a file marked ‘Evidence’. ‘Here, Lisa’s coat was found a week after she went missing, but it was near the canal, not where I left her. And how did the police miss it for an entire week?’
‘They were incompetent, that’s why.’
‘Well what about those girls? Here…’ She opened another file, this one named ‘Witnesses’, and read aloud: ‘“The teenage girls say they saw Al-Balushi approaching Lisa Cook in the park at approximately four forty-five p.m.” That’s from 1985. I never saw any girls! I know I told the police I did, but they pressured me until I…but I know I didn’t see them! And, look, in 1987 they both say they made it up.’
‘Well, that happens. Kids make things up for attention.’
‘No, but listen to this – this is new: “One of the girls who falsely claimed she saw Al-Balushi in the park now says she was told to lie.”’ Kirsty looked at Lee. The feverish zeal that always took over when she opened her files was impossible to hide. Plus it felt good! It felt good to share it with someone. ‘Why would someone tell her to lie? Maybe they pressured her, like they did with me?’
‘Who told her to lie? The police?’
‘Well, it doesn’t say. But—’
‘Why wouldn’t she say? Why tease people after all these years? Sounds like another attention-seeker to me.’ Lee’s face was closed. His arms were crossed. ‘You can’t believe everything you read—’
‘I’m not believing everything I read!’ Kirsty shoute
d. ‘I’m asking questions, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?’ They were dangerously close to rowing now. ‘People are covering things up, Lee! Someone who might be innocent is in prison and—’
‘And these are the people you’re entrusting with digging up the truth, yeah? These are the intrepid internet sleuths who are going to free an innocent man?’ Lee snatched the mouse and went back to Dark Hearts. ‘Look.’ He pointed to an image of herself, a school photo from when she was ten. A prolific poster named ARKane had labelled it ‘LIL KIRSTY IS NOT SO INNOCENT’. ‘These people are proper dicks, Kirsty. They’re not interested in the truth, they’re just interested in spinning out a story. And you’re part of that story, you’re like the meat in their sandwich. How can going back again and again, revisiting the whole thing, reading all this crap about yourself, help you?’
‘You said I should talk about it,’ Kirsty said in a small voice.
‘I didn’t say you should obsess about it though.’
‘I want to remember, that’s all. I want to remember exactly what happened, and if I do that, then…’
Lee’s voice softened. ‘Baby, what? What will happen then? With the best will in the world, your friend will still be dead, you’ll still have gone through hell. Nothing will change, there’s not like a magic key you’re going to find and bang! You’re made whole again. And memory doesn’t work that way anyway. The further away you get from something, the hazier it gets, that’s just the way it goes. All you’re doing is remembering how you once remembered remembering something.’ He smiled quizzically. ‘And then you’re down the rabbit hole, aren’t you?’ He nodded at the computer. ‘Along with all those trolls.’
‘But people do remember things years later. Repressed memories? Hypnosis can bring them out.’
‘Oh, come on. You know as well as I do that’s nuts. Hypnosis? You can make anyone think anything under hypnosis. People think they’re bloody chickens under hypnosis. Wait—’ He frowned. ‘You’re not messing around with that sort of stuff, are you?’
‘Hypnosis? No.’
