The Hook

by Raffaella Barker

  For supper they tested the latest batch of smoked salmon, Christy hiding her reluctance by pushing pink shreds beneath her bread, and she told her father she was going to London for a few days.

  ‘I might come too,’ he joked. ‘There’s a match at Highbury I’d like to see.’

  ‘We’re going to stay with Aunt Vaughan.’ Christy carefully sliced another slither of marble pink from the fish for Frank, her knife so sharp that the flesh came away like skin.

  He passed his plate over.

  ‘Mick won’t have much fun with her,’ he said. ‘She gave me a real grilling when I first met her and she’s only got worse with age.’

  Aunt Vaughan didn’t much like men or children, or for that matter most women, but she had adored Jessica, and in the absence of Jessica she had taken to adoring Christy. She sent her silk scarves and small bottles of scent with notes scrawled in purple ink encouraging Christy to come and stay with her and be frivolous. Aunt Vaughan lived alone in a small flat where every surface was green, even the sheets. Christy always felt a little unwell staying there, but put it down to the fact that her reflection was tinted by the walls around her when she looked in the bathroom mirror.

  Frank gave Christy fifty pounds as she was leaving for London with Mick. She hugged him tearfully even though she would be back on Sunday evening, and rolled the fifty-pound note up like a cigarette.

  ‘I seem to be seeing a lot of these at the moment.’ She waved the tiny baton in front of Mick’s face as they drove off, and he laughed.

  ‘You could get used to them, couldn’t you, sweetheart. Mind you, don’t get too expensive for me now, will you.’

  Hotspur was draped like a moth-eaten rug across the back seat of the car. Christy noticed him when she turned to put her bag down and scowled.

  ‘I didn’t know you were bringing the dog. I don’t think Aunt Vaughan will let him into the flat.’

  ‘He can sleep in the car. I had to bring him because Lennie’s gone back now and I haven’t a soul to leave him with.’

  Christy was about to ask what the point of Lennie was when she was diverted, hypnotised as she always was driving past the cemetery in Lynton. She craned her head back to try and glimpse Jessica’s grave in the split-second it took to pass the gate. Mick’s car radio was only just on, the windows were all closed against the spitting drizzle of late afternoon, and the upholstery wafted a mild scent of dog and aftershave. Christy was suddenly cocooned in childhood again, driving somewhere with her parents in a state of near trance, with no anxieties or responsibilities to keep her from mindlessly counting the jumping dots on the car ceiling. Jessica wore a scarf over her hair in the car and held her handbag beneath folded hands on her knee. She and Frank talked in tones the children couldn’t quite hear, and although Jessica was the passenger, she stared straight ahead and never looked at Frank or into the back at the children.

  Mick accelerated as they reached the motorway and Christy’s reverie broke into a sweat of fear. She was remembering a winter road, darkness, a sudden blaze of headlights flooding the windscreen, Frank’s voice splintering into rending tyres, the car slewing on its side in an explosion of metal and pulverised glass.

  She searched wildly for something to distract Mick, hoping he would slow down if they talked.

  ‘I’m really worried about Danny. He might have got mixed up with some unpleasant people, I think.’

  The speedometer needle edged up and up; Mick glanced across at her.

  ‘Oh yeah, why are you thinking that, sweetheart?’

  The car was weaving too fast for sense between slower vehicles; it reminded Christy of the careering motion of the printer on her computer when she set it to disgorge the mailing list.

  ‘He was showing off the other night about those bikers you took him to meet. Saying they were really marvellous, and then I found some money in his room. A fifty-pound note.’

  ‘What did you do with it, sweetheart?’

  His voice was soft beneath the roar of the engine and she could hardly hear him. She was glad because it meant she could whisper back.

  ‘Nothing, but I was worried he might have got mixed up in drugs or something.’

  Mick laughed out loud.

  ‘Sweetheart, I don’t think Danny is involved in anything. Those bikers aren’t drug dealers, their lives are all about throttles and engine capacities and all that sort of thing. You wouldn’t be interested and Danny was never in a moment’s danger, I promise you that now, Christy.’ He put his hand on her thigh. ‘I gave him that money, if it’s the same note, which I’m supposing it is, because he wouldn’t be having more than one. It was a private joke between us which we got right into when we were working together. Don’t worry about Danny, he’ll soon tell you if he’s hanging out with the wrong sort of people.’ He seemed to consider the subject closed and returned to a low mumble of compliments for the car.

  Mick had christened this new car Baby and when he drove with Danny in the front and Christy in the back she fumed with irritation as they discussed Baby and her peccadilloes. He usually restrained himself on his own with Christy, but now on the motorway he began a monologue.

  ‘Oh Baby, you’re enjoying this run. You need to let your hair down, don’t you, and it’s such pretty shiny hair you have, Baby, isn’t it?’

  ‘Shut up, Mick, I can’t stand it. If you’re going to carry on driving like this and talking to your stupid car then please let me out and I’ll hitch home.’ Christy was almost sobbing with terror, her feet braced against the floor, her arms nerveless rods holding her up as the car swooped in and out, on and on.

  ‘Sweetheart, you’re not jealous of Baby, are you?’ Mick lounged in the driver’s seat, one hand and forearm curved over the steering wheel, the other hand lolling on the gear stick, as relaxed as if he were at home watching television.

  Christy bit her lip, preparing a wasp-sting retort which was eclipsed by the whine of a police siren. Behind them blue lights slewed beams into the dusk and traffic crept apologetically into the slow lane to allow the police car through.

  ‘Jesus, man, I don’t need this.’ Mick braked hard and pulled over on to the hard shoulder. ‘Just go along with what I say, Chris,’ he whispered, and wound down his window as two policemen approached the car. ‘Good afternoon there, officers,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I was spending too much time looking at my beautiful girlfriend and not enough at the road.’ He got out of the car.

  Blushing, trembling with embarrassment, Christy stared at her feet, trying to ignore Mick and the policeman as they walked round the car. The other officer had gone back to the patrol car and was speaking on a radio, checking the car licence plates. Mick moved away towards the patrol car, and Hotspur, who had been watching, whined and started pushing his head and shoulders out of the window Mick had wound down. Christy grabbed his collar; to have the dog run over or cause an accident would be the last straw. Through the rear-view mirror she could see Mick talking while the policeman wrote notes, slanting his notebook to illuminate the page by the headlights. Mick’s arms were folded, his feet planted far apart, and his hair fell across the scar on his forehead in strands. Even though he was in the wrong, his stance was confident and his presence more assured than that of the uniformed man next to him who shuffled from foot to foot and bobbed his head about in eager response to Mick’s words. In the car Christy fidgeted, biting her nails and making faces at herself in the mirror. Hotspur caught her mood and whined, staring out of the back window, his head cocked to one side waiting for Mick.

  The motorway was pitch dark now in the brief pauses between ribbons of white lights changing to red as cars whipped past. Christy fell into a trance of boredom and didn’t know how long she had been sitting there when Mick reappeared, making her jump. He slammed the door and for once put his seat belt on then sat back and sighed.

  ‘We got through that all right. Now let’s be hitting London, sweetheart.’

  I saw so many witnesses stand in the wooden box an
d take their oath on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. At first it was odd to hear those words spoken by someone real: you associate them with films, not with life. Walking down the street in Lynton on my way to the car from court I looked at the office workers and businessmen, the builders and shoppers, the mothers on the way home with a car full of children, the students with stringy hair. I wondered how many of these ordinary people living steady lives had gone into a witness box and sworn an oath of integrity. I especially wondered about the mothers.

  There was a day in court when I hated Mick. There had been days when I wished I had never met him, days when I looked across the courtroom with pity I hoped he couldn’t see, and days of raw anger. But I thought I couldn’t hate him, it was too late for that, and I had to help him now. I had a lot of time after his arrest to decide whether I would see him through this trial, and I vowed I would because whatever his crimes, the one thing I knew was that nobody had been hurt. Everything was confusing, and I held on to that knowledge like a shield.

  I was late for the afternoon session that day; at lunchtime I had delivered three trays of trout to a new restaurant and they couldn’t fit them in their fridge. In the end we put them all in the bath upstairs where the proprietor lived, banked on ice, their freckles glistening through frost chips. The witness had already been sworn in when I took my seat in the courtroom. She had neat dark hair and the side of her face I could see when she turned towards Tobin was smooth and pretty. From her skin and her voice I guessed she was about thirty-five.

  Tobin was questioning her.

  ‘So, Mrs Jackson, take your time and tell the jury in your own words what happened on the afternoon of June the 25th last year.’

  Mrs Jackson cleared her throat and began.

  ‘I picked Shelly up from playschool at about two o’clock and drove to the car-park in the centre of Melkley.’

  Tobin interrupted.

  ‘That is your local town, Mrs Jackson?’

  ‘Yes, it’s about an hour from here, sir, quite a small town.’

  ‘Very well, carry on, Mrs Jackson.’

  ‘Anyway, I parked and took the children to a news-agent’s for some sweets. Mark was only two then and he’s always a bit naughty shopping, so I bought the sweets to keep him quiet.’

  Tobin again:

  ‘Mark, your son, was in his pushchair, was he?’

  Mrs Jackson nodded.

  ‘Yes, he was in the pushchair and Shelly was holding it with me.’ She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was tiny. ‘I needed to go to the bank before shopping, to pay some money in for my husband.’

  Tobin was gentle but insistent.

  ‘Mrs Jackson, I know this is painful, but I don’t think the jury can hear you; could you try to speak up a little?’

  She threw her head back to continue. My heart thudded; I was terrified of what she was going to say.

  ‘We went into the bank and queued for our turn. Shelly went and sat at a desk near the door because she likes drawing with the bank pens.’ Mrs Jackson was crying now, but she kept going with her story, her hands kneading her handkerchief in and out of my sight. ‘There was a crash suddenly, and I looked round and a man with a mask was in the bank, right next to Shelly, and he locked the door. He had a gun: I don’t know if it was real or not, but I thought it was.’

  ‘And was it from him that the crashing noise had come?’

  ‘No, there was someone else with a mask on behind the counter with the staff. I think he had smashed a window. He had a gun as well.’

  I couldn’t see Mrs Jackson’s face, but the jury could. The two women who liked Mick were dabbing their eyes, the man with the Roman nose had distaste arching his brows and the lines around his mouth. I looked across at Mick, but my eyes blurred tears before he saw me and I turned back to Mrs Jackson. She went on, and from the detail she supplied, I could tell she had gone over this statement a lot, and had rehearsed coming to court, determined to get it over with and say everything.

  ‘He shouted something, the man near Shelly. I don’t know what because Shelly was crying and I had to get her. I ran from the queue towards her but he had already picked her up. I thought . . .’ She faltered.

  Mr Sindall stood up and said, ‘Your Honour, I don’t think the witness need tell us what she thought.’ The Judge nodded.

  ‘Mrs Jackson, tell us what happened next.’

  She gulped.

  ‘I shouted Shelly’s name and the man brought her to me. She was screaming and struggling with her arms reaching out. He gave her to me and said, “Keep your kids out of the way.” I backed away to the corner where I had pushed Mark and I crouched down with the children.’

  Mrs Jackson was trembling. I could see fear through her tidy courtroom clothes; she leant forwards on the witness box. If I had been Tobin I would have finished there. There cannot have been a soul in court unaffected by Mrs Jackson’s evidence.

  But before anyone could gather their thoughts Tobin was probing.

  ‘Mrs Jackson, may I just stop you for a moment? Could you describe either of the men, their clothing, their accents, anything about them?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘The thing I noticed was the gun. Both of them had guns.’

  ‘Can you describe the guns, please, Mrs Jackson.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I have tried to remember more; it was all so fast and yet so slow, I can only remember the children screaming. I had to look after them.’

  I couldn’t listen any longer, I couldn’t go through with this woman’s ordeal. I pushed my way past the two men on the end of my row in the public gallery and out of the courtroom. It would look bad for Mick that I left like this, but I didn’t care. Why should I? He hadn’t cared about Mrs Jackson and her children in the Melkley bank last summer.

  I didn’t go and see him after court that day; I drove home instead and went down to the lake. During the trial it was easy to forget there was a real world dazzling in late spring. I sat on the grass and afternoon sun warmed me to the bone. I watched a family of ducklings scull across the lake, their small feet invisible oars beneath the surface. Trees shimmering in the breeze and a distant mower were all I could hear. It was so peaceful by the lake. I wished I did not have to go back to the court; I wanted to go into the house this afternoon and get on with my life on the trout farm without ever having to think about Mick again. I could do it, he couldn’t stop me, he was locked up. And he trusted me.

  I remembered a visit we’d had before Christmas when he was still on remand. He was smiling and confident; he said he had a present for me. It had to go and be checked by security, but at the end of the visit he was allowed to give it to me. I shut my eyes and the guards brought it round the screen and placed it in my hands. A small pink bear made of felt. It burnt my hands as if it were made of ice.

  ‘I made it,’ he whispered, leaning forwards so our conversation could be private. ‘They’ve got a soft-toy class here, it’s packed out, all the cons love it, but I swapped with someone and got one session so I could make this for you. Keep it on your bed, sweetheart, to remind you of me.’

  The pink bear came home and I put it at the bottom of my bed. I hated it. It glowed with love and it made me cry. I couldn’t bear to think of Mick sewing pink felt ears and paws.

  Chapter 9

  Jessica went to the doctor out of spite. She hoped there was something wrong with her, something to make Frank and Charlie feel guilty. A web of exhaustion smothered her, her eyelids drooped when she was driving, when she was cooking, when she was trying to have a conversation with one of her children through a closed bedroom door. They rarely stayed in a room with her long enough for her to speak, so she had taken to pursuing them around the house until they slammed into their bedrooms. Everything was unsatisfactory and everything was filthy.

  Mrs Edge, the cleaning lady, had decided to move to southern Spain, and now only came to the house to sit with a cup of coffee and regale
Jessica with her plans.

  ‘Ernie’s been out there now for a month and he’s found a very nice new house just behind the car-park. Of course I asked whether there was a garden for the dogs, but Ernie, bless him, he was so excited about the golf, he hadn’t looked. We’ll have a front drive and we might plant some of those evergreen trees. I think they grow in Spain – we don’t want those Spanish-style cactuses or anything.’ On she went, unheeding of Jessica’s set smile or of the sink full of washing up.

  Dust banked beneath beds and sofas and the ironing pile bulged, spewing shirts and pillowcases out of the airing cupboard and across the bathroom where Danny trod mud from his football boots over them. Jessica tried to clear up, but by the time she had done the kitchen after breakfast each morning black spots danced behind her eyes and singing dizziness forced her to sit down and rest. She had stopped going to work for Charlie, and had decided to tell him it was over. But when she saw him her resolve vanished. He was so concerned, so charming and so interested in her. Next time would do.

  She planned to have lunch with him after her doctor’s appointment, to announce her illness, which she imagined would be diagnosed as something Victorian and romantic like a decline.

  But Dr Fellowes was inconclusive.

  ‘I will make an appointment for you at the hospital. We must do some blood tests, Mrs Naylor.’

  A chill descended in his consulting room. Jessica rose.

  ‘I’ve got cancer, haven’t I?’ Dr Fellowes had a prominent jaw muscle – she saw it quiver as he swallowed.

  ‘That is not a conclusion we jump to. Blood tests are routine in a case such as yours. There is no evidence of cancer as yet.’

  Jessica nodded, not even trying to believe him.

  ‘So I will hear from the hospital, will I?’ She pulled her coat tight around her to hide her trembling limbs.

  Dr Fellowes swallowed again; the jaw had a spasm.

  ‘Yes, don’t worry, I must stress that it’s purely routine at this stage.’