The Date

by Louise Jensen

  * * *

  ‘Ali?’ Iris taps on the door. ‘Are you all right?’

  I am scared, lonely, regretful – all of these things and more – but I tell her I am fine and that I’ll be down in two minutes. I pack the birthday cards and my shame tightly in the box where they can’t be seen and, as I cross the hallway, I pass Ben’s old room. The door is ajar and his bed by the window is pooled in moonlight. And although I know it is empty I can almost see him kneeling at the window in his Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas. Ollie on his pillow.

  ‘Same moon?’ He’d point solemnly with his chubby finger at the sky, at his book.

  ‘There’s only one,’ I’d say.

  Hand in hand. His brilliant smile lit up his face as he slipped out of bed, rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. On the edge of the sand. His small hand in mine. They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon. Spinning in circles, pyjama clad and barefooted. They danced by the light of the moon.

  In the kitchen Iris sits at the table. A red knitted cosy covering the teapot. Ben bought her a Tassimo machine for Christmas, and I don’t think she’s ever used it. She picks at a piece of fraying wool as if taking the time to choose her words.

  ‘I’ve something to tell you,’ she says, careful and considered. ‘Show you, I suppose.’

  From out of her apron pocket she pulls a letter and slides it across the table. Despite not seeing the handwriting for years, it’s looping, cursive script instantly triggers an outpouring of guilt, sorrow, rage, and something else.

  Fear.

  30

  Although it has been years since I have seen Dad and my tainted memories are no longer clear and sharp, certain things have stayed with me. His handwriting is one and the sight of it brings other memories to the forefront of my mind. The smell of Polo Mints he always sucked that did little to mask the faint trace of tobacco that clung to him, even though he insisted he had given up smoking, and later, to cover the alcohol he drank when he could no longer cope with the mountains of bills piling up. Sometimes I catch sight of men who, from the back, look like him, dark brown hair brushing against the neck of a black leather jacket. It’s impossible, I know, he’s not free to walk among us and, even if he were, he’d likely be greying now. Balding perhaps. Every now and then my cheek tingles and I raise my palm to it believing I can still feel his scratchy beard as I lean back on his lap, his face close to mine as he enthralls me with yet another tale of handsome princes, beautiful princesses. Until I was twelve, Dad was my absolute hero, who instilled a belief in romance and roses, and happily ever afters. But that belief turned out to be small and slippery and impossible to hold on to. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him; even now there’s an aching in my chest when I think of him. I miss the man he was, not the man he is now, of course, for he is a stranger to me. Try as I might I just can’t equate the dad who used to play horsey, letting me hold onto his ears as I balanced precariously on his back, my knees digging into his ribs – giddy up – long after I grew too big and too heavy, with the dad who stalked into the post office with two others, balaclavas covering their faces, demanding cash – though it wasn’t money they took, but a life. For a long time afterwards, I blamed myself. If I’m honest there are times I still question whether it was my fault. Was I too greedy? Too demanding? Too everything I shouldn’t have been? Although I try to bury it. Ignore it. There’s always a yearning to confront the twelve-year-old girl I was and shake her, hard. Tell her presents don’t matter; who cares whether you have an iPod when your dad can no longer be there to capture the image of you blowing out candles – not that I’ve had a birthday cake since. Not until Chrissy bought me one, and the sight of the frosted icing, the smell as she struck the match, had caused the whole dirty truth to come tumbling out. I’d told her everything I hadn’t talked about since I first fell in love with Matt, and she’d sat in stunned silence as the flames crackled and flickered before the candles burned themselves to darkness, but it didn’t matter. I had long stopped making wishes.

  Mum said it was really nothing to do with my birthday; they’d fallen behind on the mortgage payments and everything had got on top of Dad. It was a chain of circumstances that led him to do something stupid. But stupid is leaving the milk out of the fridge on a hot summer’s day, forgetting what level the car is on in the multistorey. Stupid isn’t armed robbery, even if you are not the one carrying the gun. I don’t know what he was thinking, my sweet and gentle father, and I’ve never asked him. He never came home again after the day I willingly let the police into our home. We’d learned about Judas at school and that is how I felt. How I still feel, if I’m honest. Dad isn’t the only one I’m ashamed of and that’s why I keep it all bottled up inside. Ben was six at the time, too young to remember the details but I’d sat him down when he was older and told him the truth before he found out via Google. We’d both cried as he gripped my hand fiercely and told me it wasn’t my fault, that he’d have let the police in too. Once, as adults, I had wondered aloud whether we should visit Dad, and Ben had looked horrified and I suppose in a way it was like suggesting he visit a stranger.

  Sometimes I try to share childhood stories, wanting to spark Ben’s memory almost so he has some recollection of the before Dad. The Saturday afternoons Dad would wrestle with Ben and always let him win. The Friday nights he’d let me style his hair until it was spiky stiff with gel. Our Sunday swims, Dad diving under the water, nibbling our toes, making us screech with fear and laughter. Ben’s never interested though. ‘If he loved us that much he’d never have done what he did,’ he says, his face closed, but I always think it was because he loved us he did what he did. ‘We had the best mum in the world,’ Ben said, and we both teared up as we remembered Mum, as we always did. ‘She adored us. And that makes up for everything.’ And that’s true, to an extent, but it still pains me to remember my last words to Dad were ‘where are my presents?’ and not ‘I love you’, because I did.

  But now, it’s hard not to hate him. Not to blame him for everything that came after. It’s hard not to think of him at all, but I try; in much the same way as I try not to think of the poor woman who wanted a book of stamps and ended up paying for it with the highest price imaginable. The gun went off accidentally, apparently, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. Even though I wasn’t there at the time, the scene played endlessly in my head every time I closed my eyes. The crack of the gun. The woman crumpling to the floor as her two young children, a boy and a girl, watched. Did they scream, I wondered? Cry. Or were they frozen in shock, splattered with blood and brain and disbelief? Every time I think of them my heart aches. We’d all lost parents as a result of that day, although it’s incomparable, I know. Their loss was through no fault of their own, and mine? My faults are tangled behind a spider web of shattered memories, regret and recrimination. And nightmares. The endless, endless nightmares.

  It started soon after Dad’s arrest, the blame, and I think in a way we invited it. Felt we deserved it. The bricks through the window. The graffiti etched into the paintwork of our car, sprayed on the garage door. The hate campaign grew, as did the media coverage. Two children had witnessed their mother’s murder, and the local news tirelessly reported it. Ben and I were children too, but we didn’t seem to matter. Emotions ran high and the nationals picked the story up. Dad and his accomplices a perfect representation of all that was wrong with Britain. After Dad’s prosecution we thought it would die down. Dad’s sentence was harsh. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he was made an example of nonetheless; we were still spat at in the street, had dog shit pushed through the letterbox. Eventually, after someone set our garden shed on fire while we slept, Mum told us we had to leave Tanmoor. She packed her Portmerion, Dad’s vinyls and the fragments of our shattered childhood into boxes and we drove silently away from the house where I was born for the very last time. My throat was thick with tears as I gazed sadly out of the back window, whispering goodbyes to my princess canopied bed in my past
el pink bedroom, my tree house, and my name. Mum let me pick a new one and I’d always liked Ali. She let me choose Ben’s name too and, in a way, it felt like an adventure. A fresh start. Except it wasn’t. Things were about to get a whole lot worse and, although Mum told me over and over it wasn’t my fault, somehow it felt like it was. I blamed myself for it all, and sometimes I wonder whether Dad blamed me too. Whether afterwards he hated me as much as I hated myself. And I sometimes wonder if I could go back to that day, with Melanie streaking my nails blue, Mum shaking frozen chips onto a baking tray, the smell of garlic and anticipation as I waited for Dad to come home, if I could go back and save Dad, knowing a woman had died, two children had been left motherless, would I still have opened the door? Let the police in? It pains me to know that I would.

  For some moments I am lost between past and present, unable to anchor myself in either as I stare blankly at the envelope but only seeing the images in my head that tumble together, blurring at the edges, one fading only to be replaced by another: the snapping of handcuffs onto Dad’s wrists; the look of blind panic in his eyes; the policeman’s hand resting on the top of Dad’s head as he climbed into the police car; Dad tossing pancakes so high they almost stuck to the ceiling; the way he met my eyes with such love as he drizzled maple syrup over my breakfast. The look the policeman gave as they found him cowering behind the sofa; disappointment, disgust, triumph. That’s one face I wouldn’t mind forgetting.

  I try to push the letter back to Iris. ‘I can’t.’

  She covers my hand with hers.

  ‘You need to see it, Ali,’ she says firmly.

  I don’t want to.

  I’m scared of what it might say. I’m scared of how I might feel. Nevertheless, my trembling hand pulls the paper from the envelope and I begin to read.

  31

  Dear Iris,

  This is a difficult letter to write. But then I’m sure it’s a difficult letter to read. You’ve probably already guessed from the absence of the prison postmark that I’m out. It’s been six months and I really should have contacted you before, but I wanted to have something positive to tell you, to offer, other than empty promises and the thousand apologies you’ve heard before. My Prison Welfare Officer urged me to get in touch before I was released, family support is vital she said in keeping prisoners on the straight and narrow. It gives us something to live for apparently, stops us reoffending, but there’s no chance of that. It was a one-off. A stupid, stupid mistake. The first, the only, illegal thing I’ve ever done and somehow, even as I stood in the dock, I thought the judge would see who I really was inside, let me go.

  Strange, but I think it’s only since I’ve been handed back my freedom I’ve started to think of myself as a criminal rather than a victim. The extra time I had added on to my sentence for being involved in an incident where another prisoner was set on fire and killed felt horribly unfair; after all I was trying to prevent it, not take part, and I was terrified I was a target too. But now I understand. Every action has a reaction. If I hadn’t done wrong in the first place I’d never have been in that position. I have hurt people. And now I’m out it seems realer than it ever did inside. People look at ex-cons a certain way. Treat us differently. And the world is a very different place to the one I left. I wasn’t the victim at all, was I? I tried not to be bitter about my sentence. I tried not to let it change me, but it has. It was inevitable it would. I want to build a new life. A good life. A month before I was released I wrote to Sharon’s family, the woman who died. Who we murdered, I suppose. I might not have pulled the trigger, but I’ve got blood on my hands nevertheless. Everyone involved has and we’ve all paid the price. We’re still paying the price. I wasn’t allowed their address but the prison said they’d post it on for me and I had hoped they’d reply before I was released. They didn’t. I told her family how sorry I was. How sorry I am. I told them I was getting out and promised I’d spend the rest of my life trying to put right all the wrongs I had caused.

  My probation officer found me a room in a halfway house, a job in a factory. It’s odd that, before I had no job and couldn’t pay the mortgage, now I’ve work and cash in my pocket. The first day off I had I took the bus back to Tanmoor. The post office now a Tesco Extra, the maternity wing the babies were born in is now a Costa Coffee. But the house. The house is exactly as I remembered it. There was one of those Little Tikes red and yellow plastic cars in the front garden and a swing around the back, and it broke my heart that I couldn’t slip my key in the door to find Marsha weighing raisins for spotted dick or hear the theme from Scooby Doo. Do you remember the New Year’s party we had when I popped the cork from the champagne and it dented the coving? Marsha and me would always laugh about that afterwards. Cuddle on the sofa in the evenings and say ‘do you remember the day we raised the roof’. I cupped my hands and peered through the lounge window to see if that coving was still there. It isn’t. Everything has changed, hasn’t it? Everything important, gone.

  Even now I can’t get my head around what happened to my darling Marsha and that is my biggest regret. That I wasn’t there for her. Part of me wants to ask if you blame me but it doesn’t really matter. I will always blame myself. A man is supposed to protect his family, isn’t he? Instead, I destroyed mine. Thank God she had you, Iris. And the kiddies. I don’t know what would have happened to those poor little mites otherwise. Taken into care, I expect. I wasn’t there, and I should have been and for that I am truly remorseful.

  I want to see them, George and Sarah, although I suppose I should call them Ben and Ali, shouldn’t I? They’re different people now though, aren’t they? They’ve been through so much but finally I can hold my head up and say I’ve a job, a roof over my head. Somewhere they can visit. I don’t suppose Ben remembers me really. All those nights I spent driving him around in the van, in the dark, until he was asleep. Carrying him inside and laying him in his cot. He’d always wake as I had one foot out the door, little bugger. I’m a stranger to him now. And Ali, my precious girl. Every time I close my eyes I see her look of horror as the police dragged me out the door, and I can’t imagine how that felt knowing she was the one who let them in. I want to see her face-to-face. To find out how she really feels. To let her know how I feel. I asked Marsha not to bring them in, to move on, to forget about me, but now it feels like the wrong decision. Of course I didn’t know what was to come. I didn’t know that she wouldn’t be able to take them anywhere. My poor, darling wife. But the children. I want to know who they are. I want them to know who I am.

  I want them to remember.

  Yours

  Justin

  It isn’t until Iris squeaks her chair across the kitchen floor next to mine and presses a tissue into my hand that I am conscious I am crying. After I’ve wiped my eyes and blown my nose I remember Iris asking me when I arrived whether Ben had told me to come. I ask if he is aware of the letter I am still clutching tightly in one hand, almost afraid if I loosen my grip it will slip through my fingers and it will be like losing Dad all over again. Over the years I’ve tried to convince myself that I don’t care, that I’m better off without him, but the hot searing pain in my chest tells a different story entirely. My feelings are conflicted. On the one hand I want nothing to do with him; a woman died, and I can’t look him in the eye knowing that he was at least partly responsible. But there is another part of me unfurling that is desperate to see him once more.

  ‘I told Ben when he rang last night,’ Iris says. ‘We’ve talked it through and he’s decided he doesn’t want to see him.’ Ben has always been closer to Iris than I have, ringing her without fail twice a week and visiting at weekends. He was such a sensitive child, distraught once Mum had gone, and I convinced myself I was the one who had to be brave. The eldest. Ben needed a mother more than I did, he was only nine and I was fifteen, but that was a lie I told myself, because it doesn’t matter how old we get, how big we grow, we all need a mum, don’t we? But now, with the soft hum of the fridge behind us,
my head resting on Iris’s shoulder, I feel for the first time I can have that bond with her too. She brushes my fringe away from my forehead, soft fingers stroking my skin, and I realise how much she loves us.

  Later, after we’ve eaten something unidentifiable out of the freezer I call a cab. I’d love to stay but I have to get back for Branwell. As we hug goodbye it feels real and solid and, for once, I am not the one to pull away.

  * * *

  Once home, I climb out of the taxi half-expecting to see the windows ablaze with lights. Chrissy back, ironing a blouse, getting ready to return to work in the morning, but the house is shrouded in darkness. Cloud blankets the sky and it’s pitch-black as I trudge up the path, my legs leaden with the emotion of the day. The outside light doesn’t come on and I feel a sense of foreboding. Hurriedly, I switch on the torch of my phone. The light illuminates the door and instantly my heart jumps into my mouth.

  Blood.

  Crimson letters spread across my door.

  MURDERER

  MONDAY

  32

  ‘Thanks for helping me,’ I say again to James. My hands are pink and raw in the bitter morning air, stinging from the turps that is seeping into the cracks in my dry skin. I’d scrubbed at the door late last night, but ‘murderer’ had been sprayed in paint, not blood, and hot, soapy water couldn’t wash it off.

  After a restless, disturbed sleep I’d woken from a nightmare at 5 a.m., pyjamas drenched in sweat. I’d switched on my light to reassure myself blood wasn’t streaming down my walls, as it had in The Amityville Horror I watched last year through splayed fingers, Matt’s arm heavy and reassuring around my shoulders. I’d made a mug of hot chocolate and huddled back under the duvet, Branwell at my feet, the photo of Mum on my lap. Her face my anchor in this unfamiliar world I’ve tumbled in to. I’d traced her features and tried to second-guess what she’d have thought of Dad’s letter. His release. Would she have forgiven him?