Precious Thing

by Mcbeth, Colette

  I looked at DCI Gunn’s face. His square jaw jutting out at a right angle, the line of his nose, so sharp it could spear a fish, his grey skin, starved of sunlight, and those brown eyes, cold and seeking. Gone was the Poacher’s Choice Roger with the flushed face and the sparkle of gossip in his eyes. All the connections we build, the relationships we foster, they count for nothing in the end. Everyone is a stranger.

  The questions kept coming at me, whirling around in the room. One after another, no pause to allow me to answer, no answers to give. I had enough time to kill you, they repeated over and over, I almost began to believe it myself. And did Jonny see what I did to you? Was that why he killed himself?

  I was in the scenes of a detective drama, praying to hear the snap of a clapperboard announcing the end of the take. But it never came. It went on and on. Every minute longer in that room was torture, the grey walls closing in on me, the fear shrinking me.

  I have no idea what time it was when the questions finally stopped. But I remember believing I might die if I didn’t sleep; shards of tiredness pierced deep into my brain, pain radiated from behind my eyeballs.

  And the dirt crawled like lice on my skin. My mouth was dry, my breath rancid from fear and from talking too much, a layer of filth coated me, the kind of feeling that comes from spending too much time in airports, all canned air and body heat, only much much worse. I wanted to step out of the police station and run away and not stop until there were skies and oceans and land between me and you and them.

  Finally DCI Gunn and DS Tomey left Kirstin and me in the room alone. She explained to me as if I was a child that the only evidence they had was circumstantial. ‘It doesn’t look good for them,’ she said in a way which made me think she believed I had done it but it was likely I would get away with it. Fuck you with your circumstantial evidence. I’d seen juries convict on circumstantial evidence; it all boils down to who is the most convincing: the prosecution or the defendant.

  I let out a groan of frustration and let my head slump in my hands. I stayed like that until I heard the door open again and looked up to see DCI Gunn and DS Tomey returning.

  ‘We’re releasing you on bail,’ DS Tomey said, spitting the words out, as if she resented saying them which undoubtedly she did.

  ‘What?’ I asked. I shook my head to clear it of any other thoughts so I could savour her words. But the smile was creeping over my face. I couldn’t contain it. I wanted to cry with relief.

  ‘You are being bailed, that’s all,’ she said, her frown cut through her make-up.

  ‘Thank you.’ I smiled at her.

  The custody sergeant explained the conditions of my bail; I was to return to Brighton police station for questioning in four weeks’ time; if not a warrant would be issued for my arrest, and I was to stay at my flat every evening, which meant no escaping to Jake’s. Then with a smile on his face he handed me back my belongings. I thought he was being kind until he raised his arm and pointed beyond me to the car park.

  ‘Your audience awaits you,’ he said.

  About fifteen metres from the automatic doors of the police station was a wall of photographers, reporters and camera crews. And when they saw me they raised their cameras like a salute, standing to attention, ready to snap their shot. Gathering my things, I patted my hair down (old habits die hard) and caught my reflection in the window. Some kind of ghoulish Halloween version of myself peered back at me. A youngish female producer in a blue fleece who I recognised from Global was lurking by the doors and when she saw me ready to make my move she shouted, ‘Here we go,’ to the crowd as if I was the entertainment, which I suppose I was.

  No one was allowed to film or take photographs on police premises so I had about twenty metres of clear pathway and then there was nowhere to go, just a sea of cameramen (and women) and photographs and reporters shouting my name.

  ‘RACHEL, RACHEL, RACHEL!’

  Click, click, click, the sound of flashbulbs in my face and the TV cameras jostling for space. I held my arm up to my face, not to hide, but to protect myself from being hit by a piece of equipment, from the flashes that were blinding me. I felt my feet being lifted off the ground as I was shoved and pushed in the middle of the scrum.

  ‘Rachel, Rachel,’ they shouted, ‘have you got anything to say? Why were you arrested?’ Different voices and accents competing against each other until they merged together into a cloud of white noise.

  Somehow I picked out one voice that was closer to me, right up against me. ‘Rachel, did you kill your friend?’ I recognised the vowels, the haughtiness that ran through them. I looked up and saw his face. Richard Goldman. He was holding a microphone but it wasn’t pointed at me. Legally he wouldn’t be able to use that question on air. But that wasn’t the point. My own newsroom was now hounding me and Richard wanted me to know it. Sweet revenge.

  I felt someone take my arm and pull me through the crowd. I didn’t look up to see who it was. I was familiar with the grip, I could smell his smell. Jake shepherded me towards a waiting car and it was only when we were far away, away from the vultures and the questions, well on the road to London, that I finally looked at him and said: ‘Thank you.’

  For an hour and a half on the motorway reality was suspended. The traffic jams on the M25 had never been so welcome, delaying my re-entry into the outside world. I knew the camera crews and reporters would be camped outside my flat, for a shot very similar to the one they had just got of me at the police station, all to feed the rolling news machine.

  When we pulled into my street my chest tightened at the sight of them. I thought about telling Jake to turn round and take me away from here, but where? I had to face them sometime. So we parked up outside my house and sat, frozen in horror, as the whole circus awoke from its slumber. Lights snapped on, reporters emerged from cars, cameras ran towards us. The whole thing was fucking ridiculous really, almost comic. You’ll get your fucking shot, you vultures. Not that I was immune to the irony here. A taste of my own medicine, the hounder being hounded, but, you know, my conscience was clear. I went after people who were murderers and rapists and paedophiles, not some woman who’d just lost her boyfriend and had been wrongly accused of murdering her friend.

  But still, I was in trial-by-media territory now and whatever I thought of them I knew I had to play their game. Every word, expression, every move would be watched and analysed. I had to appear emotional but not look guilty, composed but not aloof. I needed people to be on my side and that’s not the easiest thing to achieve when you’re boiling with anger. In the end I just pursed my lips, kept my head down, and felt my way through the crowd to my flat.

  Once inside I headed for the shower. I let the scalding hot water thrash against my skin. So hot it hurt, just the way I like it. I lost myself in the steam and the heat, washing my hair three times over in Ren rosehip oil shampoo, scrubbing my body until I was sure every particle of dirt from the cells had been removed. I didn’t want to leave the shower, I felt so alive under it, so clean. Eventually through the fizz of the water I heard Jake shout that he’d made me something to eat and I emerged dizzy from the heat to steady myself on the towel rail.

  We sat on the sofa eating bacon sandwiches with warm crusty bread he’d found half-baked in the freezer and mugs of tea. I don’t think I have ever tasted a lovelier bacon sandwich or a cup of tea brewed so perfectly before or since. When we were finished we sat back on the sofa and he pulled me close, kissed my head with warm lips and said; ‘You don’t ever have to ask because I do.’

  I sank into him and felt his warmth. With him I was safe; without him there was no one left. But still I had to offer him a get-out.

  ‘I’d understand if you wanted to—’ I started but I felt him place his finger gently over my lips to silence me.

  ‘Sshhh,’ he said and kissed me all the way down my neck sending little shocks right through me. Despite everything else falling down on me I realised I was very lucky to have him.

  He left early evenin
g, reluctantly, finally accepting my assurances that I would be fine on my own. Most of the camera crews and reporters had gone. Jake and I even allowed ourselves a wry laugh at the conversations we overheard outside the living-room window. ‘She’s not going anywhere, and there’s no bulletin until the morning.’ Or, ‘We’ve got two shots of her already, isn’t that enough,’ all code for: I’m fucking freezing out here, it’s edging close to eleven o’clock and I’d really like to go home. Still, we knew a few hardcore snappers might be out in the street and in the PR battle it wouldn’t look good for Jake to stay overnight. I kissed him goodnight and headed to bed, my tired, aching limbs sinking into the duvet, my head desperate for sleep to find me and lift me out of the day.

  You were in my dream, the Clara of old. The Clara who was my friend. We were at a party, drinking fizzy wine, in a house I didn’t recognise, people our age in the background like film extras. But the camera was on us, drinking and dancing and having fun. You were pretending to dance like your dad, who we agreed had the worst dad dance ever. And your laugh filled the room like it had extra bass and was reverberating through my body. I was laughing too. You were so funny sometimes, split-my-sides hilarious, you did that to me. And when you saw me laughing it set you off again. The tears were running down your cheeks; you were hysterical, I didn’t think you could stop. But it went on for so long that after a while I think I wanted you to stop because we had moved from the party now and your laugh was out of place, jarring. Cutting through the silence in the streets. Stop it Clara, enough. It was hurting my head but you still didn’t stop and your face had grown distorted and weird, like a squashed-up version of you.

  I opened my eyes. I was awake but there was no silence. You were still laughing. I couldn’t be dreaming any more, could I? Not unless it was possible to be asleep with my eyes open and sitting up in bed. I began to think I was going mad, that someone inside my brain was laughing. Hesitantly I moved from my bed, flicking the light switch on. Nothing. But the noise hadn’t stopped. My breath was coming too fast, my throat grew tighter. I thought I might choke. Still I moved forward, creeping through the flat. Your laughter louder and louder, bouncing off the walls, thumping through my bones. Then I reached the kitchen and flicked the light switch. For a moment my eyes remained closed; the fear of what I might find had immobilised me. But the laughter was still beating through me, louder than before. I knew I was close and then my eyelids clicked open. An empty room illuminated. You were hiding, you must be hiding somewhere. But I caught sight of a light in the corner, the stereo button on green. I never, ever leave anything switched on. I didn’t understand. Your laughter was coming from the stereo. I shuffled closer to it, unsure, as if it was a dangerous dog to be approached with care. And as I moved closer I realised it was playing on a loop. Someone is here, someone has been here in my flat again. Someone has come in and placed a recording of your laughter in my stereo. My mouth tasted metallic, pure terror. Oh Clara, I wanted to scream, what depths would you stoop to? Where would this sick little game end? My hand hung over the power button, shaking too much to find its target immediately. Then finally I hit it and silenced you.

  I was scared to sleep. I wondered if I would ever sleep again. There was no sanctuary any more, not here in my flat, not in my dreams. In the living room I curled into myself, a bottle of wine and a blanket to warm me. Every light in the flat burning bright. Every door and window checked and checked and checked again. I needed to change tactics. It was no good trying to fend you off, you kept finding a way in. And now you were laughing at me. And then the thought hit me like a slap in the face. Had you been laughing at me all along?

  Chapter Twenty-one

  August 31st 1996

  THE AIR IS heavy with a heat that pricks your skin and dries your throat. It has been for days, maybe weeks now. No one runs any more, they walk, slowly, but no matter, the sweat gathers between your legs, under your arms, a film of city grime melts into your face. The grass is thirsty, luscious green has given way to brown. The streets carry a smell of melting tarmac and rotting food. On the news they’re saying it’s a heatwave and the tabloids say ‘Phew’. We’re hotter than Egypt and Madrid and Istanbul. I long for rain, to smell the moisture in the air, the release. I close my eyes and dream of a summer shower, the kind that falls without warning and soaks you in seconds. But it doesn’t come, not today, the day before your eighteenth birthday.

  Tomorrow is your party proper, organised by your dad for your friends. I’ve been trying to tease information out of him for weeks. ‘Wait and see, Rach,’ he always says with that mischievous glint in his eye which makes me want to ask him all the more. The other day I crept up behind him in your garage and saw him rummaging through of boxes of fairy lights and lanterns. I made him jump, ‘Jesus, Rachel,’ he said and then he laughed. ‘You have to promise you won’t say a thing.’ I nodded and swore on my mother’s life. ‘It can be our secret,’ I said.

  ‘These are going outside,’ he told me, pointing to your huge garden with its trees and bushes. Tomorrow, when night falls and the lights twinkle in the darkness, it will look like an enchanted forest. Your dad wants to create a fairy tale for you. He’s just a big kid himself; he still believes in happy endings.

  But before the big party we have the small matter of a second-rate barbecue Niamh is holding in your honour today. I had hoped you would say no when she offered (or insisted to be more precise). Thanks but no thanks. But you said the opposite. ‘That would be great, Niamh.’ And you gave her a hug, like she is the most generous, kind-hearted person which we know she is not. Anyhow, there’s no going back now, it’s a done deal.

  This is what I don’t understand. The way you get on with my mum better than I do. Or rather, that she likes you more than she likes me. The attention she gives you, the way she lights up when you’re around. She talks to you, Clara, not at you.

  It’s been going on for weeks now. At first I told myself not to be ridiculous, Don’t be so fucking needy, Rach, but it keeps happening. I’ve started to take notes, like a detective gathering evidence. Because one instance alone wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny but add them all together and the cumulative effect is damning.

  For example: last Saturday night when we’d planned to watch Dirty Dancing together (for the tenth time), I went to the corner shop to buy two cans of Tango and a big bag of Maltesers, only when I returned I found you and Niamh dancing and singing and throwing your heads back like rockers to Chrissie Hynde. Chrissie fucking Hynde. And when you saw me come in you just looked up, smiled like an idiot and carried on. You hate that music, Clara. We hate it, but somehow you seemed to have forgotten. I went upstairs and ate the whole bag of Maltesers myself. We never got to watch Dirty Dancing. I don’t think you even noticed.

  It’s always just been the two of us, Clara. Can’t you see Niamh is encroaching on my territory, taking away what is mine? ‘She’s just being thoughtful,’ you said when I asked you (subtly) why she would hold a celebration for you. Niamh is never thoughtful.

  But by far the most astonishing thing is that Niamh stays sober when you’re around. She does that for no one. She uses it to block everyone else out, so that must mean she wants to let you in, and you alone. And it stings because every time you are there you hold a little mirror up, show me the woman who should have been my mother, the one who fusses around you, asks you questions about school, your boyfriends.

  I want to let you know how it’s making me feel, Clara, but I’m having difficulty working it out myself. Maybe if I told you that despite the heat, the fierce, unrelenting sunshine, I go cold when I see you and Niamh together you’d begin to understand. I’m being frozen out and I can’t stand feeling like this; like I’m dead again.

  The first thing I notice about Niamh today is that she is drinking. Not to the detriment of everything else, but she is most definitely drinking. She is getting the sausages out, making pasta salad with bacon and walnuts and grapes – an unsettling combination she insists on – a pot
ato salad and a tomato salad too.

  Three salads for three people. ‘I’m not sure there are enough salads,’ I say.

  She glances up from the chopping board and narrows her eyes as she looks at me. Her gaze stays there for a moment longer than usual and then with the slightest shake of her head, she continues chopping.

  I notice she is humming Bob Marley, ‘Don’t Worry’, which I don’t think was ever meant to be hummed and she is doing it too fast anyway. Slicing cucumber and strawberries for Pimm’s and humming too quickly. ‘Fuck!’ she shouts as she cuts her finger. There is red on the knife and it’s not from the strawberries but she just sucks her finger and carries on. I make a mental note not to drink any Pimm’s. She reaches for the jug and I hear the glug, glug, glug of the liquid, three-quarters Pimm’s, the rest lemonade. She sees me looking. ‘Hardly any alcohol in it, and she will be eighteen after all.’ She pours herself a glass and then tops it up with vodka. I hear the sound of it sloshing in her throat. I hate that sound. She goes to take another mouthful and I’m staring because her hands are shaking more than normal and normally her hands shake a lot. ‘Is there something you want?’ she snarls. I don’t answer because I know it’s not a question. ‘What are you anyway, Rachel, the fun police? Why don’t you do something useful. It’s a party for your friend after all. Put the chairs out in the garden, so it looks nice when she arrives.’ I look at her face and think she should have taken more care of it, stayed out of the sun. It has begun to shrivel around her bones.

  Outside a car horn beeps impatiently at ten-second intervals. The next-door neighbour’s kids are fighting in the garden. I hear her shout: ‘Do it, Rachel. NOW.’

  Leaving the kitchen to go outside, I pick up the watering can, fill it with the hose and take it to my patch of the garden. There are sunflowers and peonies and irises, my lovely irises. The flowers provide the only flash of colour in an otherwise barren space. And they are mine, I think with pride. They exist and stand tall because of the care and attention I give them every day. Niamh must be watching me admiring them because I hear her bellow, so loud the neighbours must hear too, ‘The chairs, Rachel, leave the bloody flowers alone for once and do something useful.’