Clean Slate

by Andrea Bramhall

  “She stood there looking at you, with that eyebrow arch thing, looking all I-told-you-so. She looks totally femme, skirts and dresses and shit, but I can’t beat her in an arm wrestling match.” Nikki flexed her biceps, and then pointed at Morgan. “Weedy-arty-farty you, with those spindly little arms didn’t stand a chance!”

  “I made a complete arse of myself.” Morgan laughed, trying to cover how uncomfortable she felt. I was a prize idiot.

  “Yep.”

  “So how did we end up together?”

  “She picked that big box up, finished packing her transit van, and told you to get in,” Amy said.

  “What?”

  “Yep, that’s what we said. She said that she wasn’t going to be responsible for you ending up crippled if you’d broken your foot, and that she was going to drop you off at the hospital to get it x-rayed. What you did after that was up to you.” Amy tucked her hair behind her ear.

  “Then what happened?” Morgan glanced between them, not sure she liked the knowing looks, or the shit-eating grin that Nikki was wearing.

  “She helped you hobble to the van and told us we could jump in the back if we wanted to go with you. She still hadn’t even told you her name. You were so used to women falling at your feet with that tortured, brooding artist thing you had going on, it floored you that she wasn’t interested.”

  Morgan tried to picture herself confident with women and used to attention, but it felt wrong. The other Morgan. The one I’ll never know. She shook her head. “So then what happened?”

  “She dropped us all off at the hospital and made sure you booked in, then she left us to it.” Nikki sipped her drink.

  “I still didn’t get her name?”

  “Not for lack of trying.” Nikki laughed. “You tried everything, offered to paint her picture, dinner, drinks, a picnic, walk in the countryside. You might have even offered to have her babies right there and then. I can’t remember. We’d been drinking all night. But she just kept shaking her head and laughing at you. Every time you moved your leg you practically cried. Wuss.”

  “So how did we get together?” Morgan stared at the picture again. It was a strange feeling, listening to her own history, but feeling like it was someone else’s.

  “You stalked her.” Amy smirked.

  “Huh? How? I didn’t even know her name”

  Nikki threw her head back, laughing. “Notice it wasn’t, no, I wouldn’t stalk some poor unsuspecting woman, but how did I stalk some poor unsuspecting woman?”

  Amy laughed. “You followed the band. Every gig they did for months.”

  “And you started lifting weights.” Nikki grinned and pointed to Morgan’s arms.

  “Shush,” Amy said. “Eventually, one of the band members told you her name, and you started showing up with placards, like you were going to some sort of major concert or something. Erin’s the greatest; Erin, I heart you.” She made a heart shape with her fingers. “Erin, will you marry me. God, it was sickening. Funny, but sickening.”

  “The poems were funnier.” Nikki sniggered.

  “You think?”

  Morgan blanched. “Poems?”

  “Yep, you wrote her little love poems and left them with a single rose on her drum kit during the interval.” Amy smiled sweetly.

  “I wrote poems?”

  “Amy uses the word poem very, very loosely. More like…dirty limericks.”

  “Oh God.” She grimaced. “I continued to make an arse of myself.”

  “For months. It was great.”

  “Thanks. What did I finally do to convince her to go out with me?”

  “You apologized to her,” Amy said.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “Well, it turned out that all the time you were pulling your little stunts she had a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, God.” Morgan covered her eyes with one hand.

  “Yep. Course you didn’t know this. But all the band members were talking about your little…okay, big…signs of adoration, and apparently, her girlfriend wasn’t impressed.” Nikki sniggered. “Anyway, long story short, when you found out she had a girlfriend you went pale, and then went and apologized for being an arse.”

  “And then what?”

  “She told you that she broke up with her girlfriend because she was being an arsehole, and asked you if you wanted a drink.”

  Morgan grinned. “Then we got together?”

  “No.” Nikki shook her head. “She still thought you were an arse.”

  “Behave.” Amy rubbed Nikki’s hands. “She did start to hang out with us a bit. She came to the quiz night at the pub and stuff.” Amy wrapped her hands around Nikki’s. “I don’t really know how it happened in the end, but you’d been friends for a few months when you turned up one day and said you’d screwed everything up. That you kissed her.”

  Morgan waited. “And?”

  “Well, obviously you didn’t screw it all up, because that was fifteen years ago and you were together from then on.”

  “Till I screwed it up.”

  Neither of them spoke. They didn’t have to.

  She needed answers to questions she didn’t even know. If knowledge is power, in a game of chess, she wasn’t even a pawn.

  “Amy, can I use the computer?”

  “Sure. Anything I can help with?” Amy saved her work and closed the file before she slid out of her chair and waved Morgan over.

  “Well, I don’t know really. I want to know everything. But I guess I should focus on what’s important.”

  “And that is?”

  “Well, the kids of course.” And Erin. Morgan tapped in her search request and sat back to wait for the results; the almost instant appearance on the screen startled her. “Damn, that’s fast.”

  “Oh yeah. It’s not dial-up anymore, M. Broadband and WiFi now.” Nikki chuckled.

  “Broadband everywhere? I thought it was, like, just big business and stuff that was getting that. What’s WiFi?”

  “Wireless Internet.”

  “So why isn’t it WiI instead of WiFi?”

  Nikki laughed. “I don’t know. It just is. Look it up if you’re so curious.”

  Fuck! Even the Internet’s changed! “Maybe later.”

  Morgan typed in her name and was instantly rewarded with a barrage of results about her attack. Notices of police looking for witnesses and requests for information about persons of interest were dominant, and the grainy black-and-white image of the blonde’s face stared back at her.

  Amy swore under her breath and Morgan turned to face her.

  “You really didn’t know there was someone else?”

  “No.” Amy scowled at her then stared at the picture again. “She does look familiar to me though. I just can’t place her.”

  Nikki joined them. “Common face. Probably seen someone who looks like her.”

  Amy shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not…never mind. If I do know her it’ll come to me.”

  Morgan scrolled down the page, clicking from one to the next until she found an old news report with her name in bold type and her father’s next to it. She hovered the mouse over the link.

  “M, are you sure you want to do that?” Nikki put her hand on Morgan’s shoulder.

  “No. But there’s stuff I need to know.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know anymore. I can tell you what happened if you really want to know.”

  Morgan held her breath for a moment. Did she really want to know? Did she really want to see all the details…feel all the details while Nikki told her? Was that what she needed? She balked at the prospect of reliving those emotions. She didn’t want to feel her mother die again. She didn’t want to know how it felt to see her father murder her. She needed information, facts, pure and simple. She wanted the information in as unemotional a way as possible. If it reads like a car manual, so much the better.

  “I want the facts. Not the emotions that went with it all. You guys were there, you lived it with me, an
d you’re emotionally invested. I need to know it, but not relive it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. But I don’t think that’s really possible.”

  Morgan turned her head to look at her. “Why not?”

  “Because they were your parents.”

  “Yes, but I still won’t see it like I did before.”

  Amy closed her hand over Morgan’s as she gripped the mouse. “Morgan, those newspaper articles weren’t very factual. There were some pretty awful things printed. If you want the facts, and only the facts there is another way.”

  Morgan turned her head. “How?”

  “The transcript from the Crown Court.”

  “You can get those?”

  “Absolutely. We could probably find out online.”

  Morgan relinquished the mouse to Amy and watched her expertly maneuver to the required site. “Your solicitor can apply for the transcript.”

  “I have a solicitor?”

  “Well, we all kinda do.”

  Amy turned to look at her. “Becky?”

  “Her name’s on that approved list. Look.” Nikki pointed at the screen.

  “You call her then. Last time I spoke to her was at your birthday party.” Amy blushed crimson.

  “You haven’t spoken to her for three months? How come, babe?”

  “Erm…she was totally plastered and kept making comments about her intentions toward various people at the party. You being one of them.” Amy shrugged. “I may have told her that you wouldn’t go near her with a ten-foot barge pole, and that you have a little thing called taste.”

  “Oh shit.” Nikki tried to suppress her laughter.

  “She probably doesn’t remember it though. She was drunk.”

  “Maybe we should find another solicitor.”

  “Hey, this is for Morgan. Becky would want to help her.” Amy turned to Morgan. “She’s really your friend anyway.”

  “She is?” Morgan looked between the two of them as Amy nodded. “How do I know her?”

  “You dated her in uni.” Nikki clapped her on the back.

  “I did?” Morgan knew she was blushing when Nikki pointed to her face and laughed.

  “Oh boy. This is going to be fun.” Nikki pulled her mobile from her pocket and crossed the room.

  “Amy? What happened with this Becky and me then?”

  “Oh, it was just a few dates. Nothing major. She’s been a pretty good friend through the years. We’ve always gone to her for legal stuff. You and Erin even had her draw up the adoption papers for the kids.”

  “Why did we need adoption papers?”

  “Well, biologically they are yours and her brother’s. Erin carried them both, but legally that wouldn’t give her any rights as a parent. At the time, the only way around that was for both of you to adopt them after they were born. That gave you both equal rights as parents.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, Becky’s good though. She made it very straightforward.”

  Nikki laughed before she said good-bye and crossed the room again. “Becky says you’re forgiven, babe.” She kissed the top of Amy’s head and smiled at Morgan. “And that it’ll take her a few days, but she’ll have the transcript by the end of the week. She’ll bring it over; she wants to see how you’re doing.”

  “Okay.”

  Amy pointed at the computer. “You want to look at some other stuff?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got twenty years to catch up on.” Morgan took hold of the mouse and started surfing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The air traffic control room was buzzing with activity. Controllers called flight data to the various planes they were in charge of as they traversed the skies over Manchester and landed at the airport. Banks of computer screens were filled with graphic images of planes, most with more than two hundred people aboard, being expertly guided safely around the sky. Erin passed behind one of her controllers and gently tapped him on the shoulder, waited for his nod of acknowledgment, and then moved on, signaling the end of his shift and that his replacement was ready to be briefed to take over. The switch was seamless and the people up in the air were passed safely from one pair of hands to another.

  She looked from screen to screen, deciding where to shift people, who needed a break, and where she needed to be to contain any potential hazards. The huge screen in the middle of the center wall gave her the full overview of their control space.

  “Erin.”

  She turned her head toward Roger without taking her eyes from the screen. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve just finished talking to the police.”

  She clenched her jaw and tried to push away her annoyance. She hated the thought of them intruding into any aspect of her life, but having them in her place of work and talking to her colleagues needled at her far more than she had expected. She shook her head and blew out a heavy breath. “Well, I did warn you that I gave them your name.”

  “No, no, that’s fine. I know you told me. They’ve asked to speak to you.”

  “I’m in the middle of a shift; they can see me later.”

  “They were quite insistent, my dear.”

  She looked away from the screen and met his eyes.

  “Go ahead.” He smiled at her. “I’ll take care of this while you’re busy.”

  She inclined her head at the screen. “You might want to keep an eye on the BA903 flight. Tom doesn’t seem to have it on the right path at the moment. If he doesn’t shift it in the next ninety seconds, we’re gonna have a close call.”

  “I’ve got it. They’re in my office.”

  She pulled off her headset and passed it to him before leaving the control floor. She climbed the stairs to Roger’s office. The door was open, and the two uniformed officers stood and offered their hands as she entered and attempted a smile.

  “PC Lock, PC Ward. What can I do for you today?”

  “Ms. Masters, we won’t keep you long. We just have a couple of questions for you.”

  “Okay.” Erin sat in Roger’s chair and waited.

  PC Lock pulled some papers from under his stab vest. “I have a couple of pictures to show you. If you could tell me if either of these people are known to you, it would be a great help.” He placed the first picture on the desk in front of her.

  She stared at the grainy image; a bald headed, angry man stared back. The angle was awkward, but the snarl marring his features was unmistakable. She tilted her head to one side, unconsciously trying to get a better look at him.

  “No. I don’t recall ever seeing him before.” She pushed the picture back toward him. “Is he the man who attacked Morgan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t you do facial recognition or something?”

  “The image isn’t good enough I’m afraid.” He placed another page on the desk. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  Erin lifted the picture off the desk. Black, white, and gray squares filled the page, making up the cropped image of a blonde with her eyes closed, a look of pleasure on her face. The image cut off below her neck. Which, presumably, was where Morgan was. Her heart pounded against her ribs and her mouth went dry.

  “What does she have to do with Morgan’s attack?” Her hands shook.

  “Do you know her?”

  Erin shook her head, unable to tear her eyes from the picture even though she could no longer focus on it. She placed it back on the desk and pushed it toward him. Every doubt Erin had harbored over the past weeks came flooding back. She no longer doubted; she was sure that Morgan was seeing someone else, and the bitter taste of duplicity turned her stomach.

  “Who is she?”

  “We don’t know. We were hoping you might have some idea.” He put the photographs away.

  “How was she involved?”

  “We have very little information at this point.”

  “Was she seeing Morgan?”

  “We have no idea. Ms. Masters is unable to confirm or deny that.”

  “Of course not.”


  “Well, thank you for your time, Ms. Masters.” They stood and held out their hands for Erin to shake.

  “That’s it?” Manners had her shaking hands with the two men before she even finished asking the question.

  “Yes. If you do think you recognize either of them, please call me. Do you still have my card?” PC Lock patted his pocket as though trying to locate another one.

  “Yes, I do.” She stood as they opened the door.

  “Thank you for your help.”

  Erin closed the door behind them before she sank back into her chair, covered her face with her hands, and let the tears fall. Her heart ached more as every tympanic beat resounded with the deep vibrations of sorrow and loss; the sour notes playing in the symphony of the perfidy against her. The betrayal sliced deeper than she ever thought possible; her soul bled.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The slamming of a car door startled Morgan awake. The TV had been turned down, and a blanket wrapped about her as she dozed in the chair beside the fireplace. Thank you, Amy. Voices in the hallway grew closer to the door. It was easy for her to pick out Amy and Nikki, but the other high-pitched, slightly nasal voice was new to her. The door opened and Nikki led in a tall blonde with striking blue eyes, wearing a sky blue power suit and three-inch heels.

  “Ah, Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” Nikki said before turning back to the blonde. “Coffee?”

  “Love some, thanks.” The woman smiled and sat on the sofa as Nikki left the room. “So how’s the head, M?”

  Morgan frowned, still wondering who the woman was. “Oh, it’s getting better. Fewer headaches, and the dizzy spells are more or less gone now.”

  “Excellent. Any developments with the investigation?” She placed a heavy looking briefcase on the seat next to her and flipped the catches open to remove a thick folio.

  “If there have been, the police haven’t told me.”

  “Right, well, I suppose they don’t have very much to go on.”

  “They have pictures of the guy,” Morgan said, feeling more than a little defensive. “It’s not like I’m deliberately trying to block their investigation.”