He grips the bundle of letters in both of his hands. They’re big, his hands. There’s dark hairs growing on his knuckles. His fingers are long and streaked with oil. He’s squeezing the bundle of letters and twisting them around. The paper is crackling and creasing. He’ll never be able to flatten them out.
‘Violet? Are you listening?’ he says.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I say quickly. ‘Dad needs me in the shop.’ I don’t want to be on my own with him. I don’t want to think about his hands squeezing and twisting. I don’t want to breathe the same air as him. I push past him and run along the landing and down the stairs.
Sour Milk
It’s Tuesday morning. Joseph has just left for the garage. At least, he’s taken the pair of oil-stained overalls that he’s been hanging on the back of the kitchen door when he comes home in the evenings. I’d follow him if I could, to catch him out in his lie. He could have got the overalls from anywhere and his oil-streaked hands don’t fool me for a minute. But I’m a prisoner to the shop and Mum’s been watching me like a hawk since Jackie’s murder.
There’s a knock at the back door. It’s the police again. Mum lets them in and then starts flapping because all the breakfast things are still on the table. ‘Violet!’ she hisses. ‘Get those dishes in the sink.’ She pats her hair and adjusts her housecoat and offers Detective Inspector Gordon and Detective Sergeant Jones a cup of tea.
‘Actually, it’s Violet we’ve come to see,’ says Inspector Gordon. ‘Just a quick word with her, if that’s okay?’
I didn’t eat much breakfast. Just a slice of toast. But I have to swallow hard to stop it coming back up. I don’t want to puke in front of a policeman.
‘Just a few questions, if you don’t mind, Violet.’
Mum quickly clears a space at the table and Inspector Gordon makes himself comfortable in Joseph’s chair. ‘You can both stay,’ he says to Mum and Dad. So they sit down too and then we wait for Sergeant Jones to find a pencil. ‘Sorry,’ he laughs. ‘Thought it was in the other pocket.’
‘So, Violet,’ Inspector Gordon begins. ‘You knew Jackie for a long time, didn’t you? Most of her life, in fact?’
I nod. He smells of damp wool and importance.
‘So you probably knew her better than anyone else, apart from her grandmother, maybe?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well. These might seem like strange questions to ask, but anything you can tell us … anything at all, could really help us in finding who … who killed her.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘So, Violet. Would you describe Jackie as a shy person? Was she outgoing? Friendly? Or did she keep herself to herself?’
It’s horrible to think of Jackie like this. Of what she was and not what she is. ‘She was friendly, I suppose. She wasn’t shy, anyway.’
‘Can you think of anyone new Jackie might have come into contact with recently? Did she mention any names to you?’
I shake my head. ‘Only the girls from the sugar factory. And that fella she was with at the Roxy … Colin.’
‘Did she go to the fairground in Battersea Park, do you know? Did she know anyone who worked there?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘We used to go to the fair when we were younger. But I don’t know if she still went there.’ Sergeant Jones is scribbling in his notebook. ‘Do you think the person that killed Joanne Thomas and Pamela Bennett killed Jackie too?’ I ask.
‘We really can’t say,’ says Inspector Gordon. ‘But, is there anything else you can tell us, Violet?’ he asks. ‘Is there anybody else she may have met recently? Any places she liked to go? Anything she liked to do in her spare time? Anything at all. Any little detail, even if it seems stupid and irrelevant.’
I shake my head again. ‘I haven’t seen much of her since we left school. She was … she was busy doing her own thing. The other girls – the girls at the sugar factory. They might know more.’
Now Inspector Gordon shakes his head. ‘We thought, that as you were her oldest friend, she may have confided in you. She may have told you something that she wouldn’t tell anyone else. About boys, for instance? Was there anyone else apart from Colin that she may have been out with?’ He pauses. ‘And, Violet … I’m sorry if this embarrasses you, but do you know if Jackie was a virgin?’
He’s right, I am embarrassed. And angry too. What’s Jackie’s virginity got to do with him? The old perv. And what difference does it make if she was or she wasn’t? Even if she was a virgin, before … before … She’s not any more.
‘Violet?’ he insists, when I don’t reply.
‘She said she was thinking about doing it,’ I mutter.
‘I’m sorry?’ he says.
I raise my voice. ‘She said she was thinking about doing it. And do you know what? I hope she did do it. I hope that at least bloody once she got to know what doing it should really feel like!’
Mum looks like she wants to curl up into a ball and die and Dad doesn’t know where to look.
Inspector Gordon clears his throat. ‘But you don’t know if she did or not?’ he says as gently as I imagine he can.
‘No,’ I say. I feel like I’ve failed some sort of exam. ‘She didn’t tell me.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘And you’re sure there’s nothing else?’
I shake my head.
‘There must be something, Violet,’ Dad cuts in. ‘Something you can think of that’ll help the police.’
‘Yes, Violet,’ says Mum. ‘Come on. Think. There must be something.’
Mum and Dad are glaring at me. It’s like I’m shaming them or something. The useless daughter. She can’t even tell the police what they need to know. But the thing is, there is something I want to tell Inspector Gordon. It’s bursting out of me. The words are filling up my mouth and choking me. All those things that have been chewing away at the edges of my mind.
Have you questioned my brother? I want to say. Have you double checked where he was on the night Jackie was murdered? I saw him walking towards the Roxy, but he told you he was working here and then went to bed. He knows Battersea Park. He met Mum there at least a couple of times, and he’s met someone else there too, by the pump house, where Joanne Thomas and Pamela Bennett were found. He has these letters you see, from a French girl called Arabella. I think it was her he met at the pump house. In the letters she says that Joseph has dark thoughts and in the last letter I read, she said he frightened her. I don’t think she’s written to him since. I think she’s disappeared and I think my brother has something to do with it.
I want to tell Inspector Gordon all of this and I want Sergeant Jones to write it all down in his notebook. I want them to go and find Joseph at the garage and I want them to ask him all the things I can’t ask him. I want them to find out the truth about him. But I can’t say any of it. I swallow hard, my mouth dry. I can’t say any of it, because if I do I’ll break Mum and Dad’s hearts.
‘She liked to go to the café in town,’ I say instead. ‘Ruby’s Café, the one by the Granada. And she saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Granada. You know. That new film with Audrey Hepburn. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.’
Inspector Gordon runs his fingers down the edges of his moustache. ‘Okay, Violet.’ He lowers his eyes and waits. He knows there’s something I’m not telling him. He’s not a Detective Inspector for nothing.
‘Sorry,’ I say again. ‘But like I said, I haven’t seen much of her since we left school.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Well, thank you for your time, anyway.’ He pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. ‘But if something does occur to you, please get in touch.’ He nods to Mum and Dad. ‘Mr and Mrs White.’
Mum hurries to the door to let them out. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ says Inspector Gordon. ‘Thank you, Violet, for bringing Mr Smith to the station on Sunday. It’s always best for people to volunteer information than for us to tease it out of them.’
Mum’s about to close the door when Inspector Gordon stops it wit
h his hand. He pokes his head back into the kitchen. ‘Mr Smith was acquainted with Jackie too, was he?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘He never even met her.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Well, thanks again.’ And then he’s gone and for some reason, I’m left with a bad taste on my tongue, like I’ve just swallowed a mouthful of sour milk.
‘Mr Smith?’ says Mum. ‘Who the hell is Mr Smith?’
‘Just that fella,’ I tell her. ‘You know, the one who brought me home on his motorcycle.’
Mum says something else. But I’m not listening any more, because there’s a rushing feeling in my head, and a panicky shifting in my chest. Why did Inspector Gordon ask if Beau knew Jackie? Like he was double checking something that he didn’t believe.
I know Beau never knew Jackie. Of course he never knew her. He would have said if he did. Wouldn’t he?
I keep waking up at night. It’s like an alarm goes off in my ear and I wake up all hot and shaking between the sheets with my nerves jangling and my heart banging away in my ears. I have to switch the light on just to check there’s nobody in the room.
By nobody, I mean Jackie.
I dream about her every night. She’s always in a rage. She’s always blaming me. You should have stayed with me, Violet, she yells at me furiously. It’s always raining in my dreams. Hard, violent raindrops pounding down on Battersea Park; every drop as sharp as a knife slicing into the ground. And Jackie’s wet through. Her beehive’s collapsed around her face and mascara is running down her cheeks in black rivulets. Don’t leave me here, she cries. Please, Violet. I don’t want to be on my own.
Then she screams and it’s the scream that goes off in my head like an alarm and wakes me up and I have to check that she’s not in my room, standing in the corner dripping water all over the floor. She never is. But it always feels like I’ve just missed her by a breath.
An Orange Sucked Dry
It’s Friday morning, and another grey and miserable day. I don’t think the sun has shone once since Jackie was murdered. But I’m glad. It wouldn’t be right somehow, for there to be blue skies and sunshine when it feels like the world has stopped turning. The week has crawled by, like it’s been too tired to even bother trying. Like me, really. All the juice has been sucked out of me. Like the orange I always get at Christmas and eat in my own special way, poking a hole in it and sucking and squeezing until I’ve sucked out every last drop of juice. When I’ve finished, all that’s left in my hands is a flattened carcass of skin and pith, all empty of sweetness and promises. And, that’s how I feel.
I can’t stop thinking about Beau either. Every time a motorcycle roars past the shop, I remember the smells of burnt oil and leather and how it felt when he kissed me. It makes my heart twist to think of him sleeping in that room just a few streets away, with his legs tangled in his sheets and an empty bottle of beer on the floor beside him. Or to think of him on Chelsea Bridge, surrounded by the other fellas, all leaning proudly against their bikes.
Every day I pray that he’ll come to the shop to find me. I want to look him in the eye and ask him about Jackie. I need him to tell me that he didn’t know her. But he never comes. And I can’t go and find him, because I’m bloody well stuck here.
The day grinds on. It feels like I’m walking through syrup. Every time I turn around, I expect to see a line of sticky footprints behind me. Even the clock on the wall in the back kitchen doesn’t seem to be moving. I wash the floor and scrub the skirting boards and even pick up the threepenny bit from under the work counter. I switch the wireless on to break the silence and Helen Shapiro sings out at me. It used to be my favourite song. I listen to her singing about how the best years of your life are when you are young and how you should run wild and have fun.
The best years of my life? I bloody hope not. I switch it off. It seems a lifetime ago that I last heard that song. Tears fill up my throat. I swallow them down. It was a lifetime ago. Jackie’s lifetime. And all I can think about now is how she was only just beginning. How her best years were just beginning.
Mum comes through to ask me to go to the shops with her. ‘Can’t go out on my own,’ she says. ‘Not until they’ve caught him. It’s not safe.’
I trudge along the High Street, lagging behind Mum as though I’m five years old again. People are hurrying along the pavements as if the shops are about to shut, and its only three o’clock. They look over their shoulders and check their watches. Their eyes dart from side to side, looking out for murderous strangers. Outside the newsagent’s there’s a blown-up picture of Jackie from the papers, pasted on to a hoarding. Whoever pasted it on didn’t do a very good job. There’s a crease running right across her face.
In the butcher’s, Mr Pitchford wraps up some sausages for Mum. ‘Terrible,’ he says under his breath. ‘Such a lovely girl too.’ He doesn’t even look at me. I might as well be invisible.
Mum mumbles something and ushers me out of the shop. Out on the street I notice more people staring. Some of them smile sympathetically at Mum and others look at me in disgust, as though it was me that killed Jackie. It’s the same in every shop. All everybody’s talking about is Jackie. And they’re all talking about her as if they knew her. ‘Beautiful girl. I always thought she could have been a model,’ someone in the greengrocer’s says.
‘She was always so polite and friendly. Tragic. So tragic,’ says someone else.
‘I don’t know how she can show her face,’ I hear someone else mutter.
And in the queue in the bank, they’re all whispering. ‘They haven’t got a clue who the killer is yet, have they?’
‘She was supposed to be her friend. But she left her all alone to be murdered.’
‘I won’t leave the house after dark. Not any more. Not until they catch him.’
Mum virtually drags me home. She’s furious. Her feet are stamping holes in the ground. And I know it’s me she’s angry with. Even she blames me for Jackie’s murder.
There’s a couple walking in front of us with their Labrador, and in the distance are the treetops of Battersea Park. I wonder if anyone takes their dogs there any more. I wonder if anyone would even dare.
Joseph comes home just as Dad is sliding the bolt on the chippie door. He looks like he’s done a day’s work with his greasy overalls and dirty face. I’m relieved. At least that’s one thing he might be telling the truth about. ‘Just going to wash up,’ he says to Mum, and he disappears upstairs just as I have to go through to the shop to start the evening shift.
It’s a busy night. We’re rushed off our feet. Dad says he can’t believe how busy it is. ‘Where are they coming from? All these people?’
They’re queuing outside, right around the corner.
‘Ghouls!’ says Mum, when I run out the back to fetch another bucket of fish. She’s right. All they want to do is stare at me and talk about Jackie.
‘Where did she live?’
‘Just round the corner, isn’t it?’
‘Which house?’
‘Did you know her?’
Dad calls through for Joseph to come and give a hand. His hair’s still wet from the bath and there’s a salmon-pink sticking plaster stretched across the back of his hand. As he throws pieces of fish dripping with batter in the fryer, I can’t help staring at his hand. As the fish sizzles furiously, my brain’s working fast, wondering how he cut himself. Was it an innocent accident at the garage? Or something more sinister?
‘Three girls in a matter of weeks,’ someone says.
‘They’re looking for a serial killer.’
‘Shocking business.’
‘Could be anyone. Could be someone we know.’
A man standing near the front of the queue takes his hands out of his coat pockets and runs them through the slick of black hair on his head. ‘Could be any one of us,’ he says. ‘Any one of us. Standing here. Right now. In this queue.’
That shuts everyone up. The only sound is the loud sizzle of batter crisping in the fryers.
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Then someone else shouts out, ‘Never would have happened if it wasn’t for her.’
Everyone’s eyes are on me.
‘Enough!’ a voice suddenly shouts. I look over my shoulder and Joseph is staring over the counter at the customers, his lips curled in disgust. ‘Any of you want a fish supper, feel free to stay in the queue. But any of you want to continue gossiping about a poor dead girl, then I suggest you go somewhere else.’
‘Well said, son,’ says Dad.
A man and a woman at the back of the shop shuffle out of the door. ‘Charming,’ the man says. ‘I won’t be spoken to like that.’
Nobody speaks for a moment. Then the man with the slick of black hair orders a small cod and chips and the silence is gradually filled as the rest of the customers begin to comment on the weather. There’s a storm due over the weekend, someone says. Just the weather for banking up the fire and staying indoors.
I watch Joseph pass over the parcel of cod and chips. And something slips inside me. No one’s ever stood up for me like that before. And I can’t believe how good it feels. It’s exactly what a big brother should do for his little sister. I glance over at him as he counts some change out, and I remind myself that Joseph isn’t like a normal big brother. He’s a fake and a liar and maybe something even more terrible. The good feeling disappears as I remember that I’ve never had a big brother. And I never will have.
Norma looks awful. ‘I can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘Ever since it happened. I haven’t been able to get a wink.’ We’re all sitting around the table for the usual Friday night supper, but nobody’s touched their food yet.
‘And Raymond can’t change his shifts, so two nights of the week I’m on my own all night. You had to put extra locks on the doors, didn’t you, Raymond?’ Her hair is tugged back into a ponytail and her face is bare. I haven’t seen her without make-up for years. She looks like a tired little girl.
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