Keep Your Friends Close

by Paula Daly

  I move my foot off the brake, about to pull the wheel to the right, and, without warning, I’m filled with hatred.

  It’s as if all the thoughts, all the misery, of the past few days come crashing to the forefront, and I have to grip the wheel just to try to keep hold, to stop myself from what I am about to do.

  But it’s no use.

  I see red, and the primal recklessness I didn’t know existed until now rises within me. There’s a whooshing sound in my ears, like a flying shuttle across a loom, and my vision is occluded, the peripheral zone gone. It’s as if I’m staring through the sights of an air rifle.

  I hear Eve’s words inside my head: Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself, Natty.

  Eve straightens in her seat, checks her appearance in the mirror and spots me behind.

  So I hit the accelerator.

  There’s not enough space to gain any real speed, but I’m in a tank and she’s in the shag magnet.

  I slam into her. Hard. I am braced for the impact and it feels good. Christ, it feels unbelievable.

  I don’t wait to see what happens next, I don’t wait to see if she’s injured. I’m reversing fast. I must be off centre, though, as I scrape the side of my car on the railing of the trolley park as I back up.

  I ignore it and within seconds I’m ready to go again.

  Flooring it, I slam into her, and this time I see her body jolt as I hit.

  So I go again. And again.

  12

  DETECTIVE CONSTABLE JOANNE Aspinall pops home for a bite to eat rather than waste money on a pre-packed sandwich. Her Auntie Jackie must have had the same idea because as Joanne enters the hallway she can hear Jackie slamming around in the dining room.

  Jackie’s standing on the weighing scales in her bra and knickers. In an untidy pile on the table are her carer’s uniform, clogs, watch and tights. Joanne stays in the doorway, saying nothing, as Jackie picks up the scales and moves them to another spot over by the kitchen.

  ‘They’re wrong, these,’ she says to Joanne. ‘I’m two pounds heavier over here.’

  ‘You had any lunch?’ Joanne asks.

  ‘I’m not eatin’. Diet Club this afternoon and they shout out how much weight you’ve lost to everyone. It’s embarrassing if you’ve gone up.’

  Joanne nods and goes into the kitchen at the back of the house. Squatting in front of the fridge she picks up some smoked turkey that’s curling around the edges and gives it a sniff. ‘You didn’t say you’d joined,’ she calls through to Jackie.

  ‘First rule of Diet Club is: You do not talk about Diet Club.’

  Joanne smiles and stands, spotting some minestrone Cup-a-Soups next to the sink. She reaches for the box and goes into the dining room, where she finds Jackie back on the scales, now over by the gas fire. ‘Can I have one of these?’ she asks.

  ‘Help yourself. I don’t like ’em. They taste of soil.’

  ‘You weigh any less over there?’ Joanne asks.

  ‘Don’t know. It’s saying “Error” now.’

  Jackie picks up the scales and fiddles underneath. There’s a switch that changes the reading from stones to kilograms to pounds. Jackie flicks it backwards and forwards a few times before placing the scales on the floor again and stepping on.

  ‘How’s the romance coming along?’ Joanne asks her. ‘Is he up to much with those bad knees?’

  ‘They’re not bad knees, they’re new knees. And he’s too much of a gentleman for any of that yet.’

  ‘Must be a novelty having you around then.’

  As Jackie gets dressed Joanne disappears to make her soup and sandwich. She’s due back at the station for in-service training on a new computer system; it starts at 2 p.m. so she needs to get a move on. And it’s Ron Quigley’s last day before his wisdom teeth op, so they want to get the training done as quickly as possible to get out for a drink.

  Joanne pours hot water on to the dried-soup mix and gives it a stir. Jackie’s right. It does smell like soil. When she goes through to the dining room Jackie’s back in her tights, pushing her arms inside her tunic.

  ‘Where’s it held?’ Joanne asks her.

  ‘Diet Club? The Methodist church. The women there drive me mad, listing every single thing they’ve had to eat for the past week. Like anyone’s going to be interested.’

  Joanne doesn’t comment, as Jackie has that exact same habit.

  ‘Have you lost much?’ Joanne asks.

  ‘A bit,’ Jackie says. ‘Put it back on again, though, when I ate all those pork pies at Margaret Hughes’s funeral.’

  Jackie fastens the remaining press studs at the top of her tunic and primps her hair a little in the mirror above the fireplace. Dissatisfied, she pulls a fine-toothed comb from her handbag and starts backcombing the crown, to make it look fuller. ‘I saw his daughter this morning,’ she says.

  ‘Whose? Ken’s?’ asks Joanne.

  Jackie nods. ‘Husband walked out on her. He’d been sleeping with her friend while she was in France nursing their daughter back to health. She’s in a right mess. I tried talking some sense into her, but she wouldn’t have it.’

  Joanne winces. ‘Bet she loved you for that.’

  ‘He’ll take her to the cleaners if she doesn’t sort herself out. Kenneth’s worried sick. He doesn’t know what to do for the best. He wants to talk to the husband, but she won’t let him.’

  ‘I thought Ken couldn’t get out of the house.’

  ‘He can’t,’ Jackie says, ‘but you know what I mean. He wants to help. He knows she still loves him and he wants to see if he can get him to come back.’

  ‘What happened to the wife?’

  ‘Kenneth’s wife?’ she asks, and Joanne nods. ‘Car crash twenty years ago. She came off the road on a patch of ice going over Shap Fell. On her way back from Christmas shopping in Carlisle, I believe.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ says Joanne. ‘Has his daughter got any kids?’

  ‘Two girls. They’re good kids, Kenneth says, but spoilt rotten. Private school, dance lessons, music lessons, horse riding, skiing . . .’

  ‘Who pays for all that?’

  ‘They do. They’ve got Lakeshore Lodge down on the Newby Bridge road. She’s the one paying for us to look after Kenneth. She’s too busy with the hotel to do it herself.’

  Joanne pushes the last of the turkey sandwich into her mouth. ‘What does she make of you getting it together with her dad?’

  ‘We’ve not said owt yet.’

  Joanne imagines Ken’s daughter will not be completely happy when she’s informed. People who don’t know Jackie very well think she can be a bit volatile. Those that do know her tend to be of the same opinion.

  Joanne dusts breadcrumbs from the table on to her plate. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘isn’t there some kind of rule against heavy petting with the invalids?’

  And Jackie swipes the top of Joanne’s head with her hand in response. ‘He’s no invalid,’ she replies, slipping on her jacket and grabbing her handbag.

  ‘Right then,’ she says. ‘I’m off. I’ve got to meet the district nurse at Irene Slater’s before I go and get weighed. Her husband wants her catheter whipping out again.’ She shivers at the thought. ‘Filthy bugger gets us to take it out once a week so he can have sex.’

  As it turns out, Joanne rushes back to work for nothing. The training is cancelled because the instructor can’t get across the Yorkshire Dales from Skipton – she’s driven her car through a flooded patch of road and it’s gone and died. The region is littered with discarded cars at the moment. People daft enough to think they can make it through a foot of water, wrecking their engines in the process.

  Joanne spends the afternoon writing up a final report instead. Two months ago Cameron Cox, a businessman from Kirkby Lonsdale, twenty miles south-east of Windermere, put a shotgun in his mouth and redecorated his conference room. Joanne hadn’t attended the scene, but she’d been called in shortly afterwards, as his wife – one Serena Cox – was making allegations t
hat her husband was murdered by a woman he’d been having an affair with.

  However, after lengthy investigation, they weren’t able to trace the mystery femme fatale, and it ended up looking more like a case of investments gone wrong, a business on the brink. His poor wife had no idea of the mounting debts and seemed delusional to the last, claiming he’d been shafted by a leggy blonde who’d scarpered with all his money.

  Joanne submits the report and is about to grab her parka and head out to the pub to meet Ron Quigley and the others when DI McAleese asks her to step inside his office.

  ‘Something’s just come in for you, Joanne,’ he says gruffly.

  When Joanne asked if she could return to work early after her abandoned breast surgery McAleese had stuttered and stammered on the phone, telling Joanne that she could come back straight away, if that’s what she wanted.

  She’s not exactly sure what’s happened to him, but since his separation from his wife a few months ago, DI McAleese has not quite been himself around women. It’s as if he suddenly doubts his competence. As if he’s not sure who he is any more, and his normal unflappable demeanour has been replaced by something quite different. The man in front of Joanne now is anxious, edgy.

  ‘There’s been a problem at Booths’ car park, Windermere,’ he tells her officiously, shuffling papers on his desk. ‘Not many details yet. Appears to be a case of a wife’s revenge.’

  ‘What’s the name?’ she asks.

  ‘Natasha Wainwright. She rammed her Porsche Cayenne repeatedly into the back of a Maserati.’

  Joanne sucks in her breath as a long whistle, but McAleese doesn’t react, doesn’t even look at her, and she’s left feeling a small stab of embarrassment, as if she’s responded inappropriately. She’s beginning to think McAleese is particularly abrupt with her, more so than with the other female detectives in the department, and she doesn’t know why this should be.

  ‘It was her husband’s car that Natasha Wainwright smashed into,’ he says, ‘only he wasn’t driving it, his girlfriend was behind the wheel. Eve Dalladay was the once close friend of Mrs Wainwright, and she’s been smashed up pretty bad, apparently. Anyway, she’s pressing charges.’

  ‘Section 20 assault?’

  ‘I reckon so. We’ve got no witness statements as yet, we need the CCTV, and we need to get a look at her car because—’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ says Joanne. ‘This Mrs Wainwright’s not from Lakeshore Lodge, is she? The hotel in Bowness?’

  ‘Yes. Why, do you know her?’

  Joanne shakes her head. ‘Not directly.’

  There’s a moment of silence as DI McAleese looks up and holds her gaze. It seems as if he’s about to say something more. The tips of his ears colour red and he takes a breath in, then clears his throat. ‘Joanne, I was wondering if maybe you . . .’ And he pauses.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he says quickly. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  He pushes a slip of paper across the table. ‘I want you to go and talk to her – this Mrs Wainwright. That’s the address. Check out the car, because we’ve only got Eve Dalladay’s word it was her . . . but she’s got previous.’

  ‘Who has? Natasha Wainwright?’ Joanne is surprised; it’s not what she was expecting to hear.

  ‘Yes,’ he answers. ‘Bit of a turn-up. It sounds unlikely, but Mrs Wainwright got herself a six-month suspended prison sentence, back in 1998.’

  13

  I WATCH THE RAIN pelt the kitchen windows as my mobile vibrates inside my pocket. No point in checking who it is. I know who it is. Sean has been calling and texting all afternoon, but I am yet to answer. Sitting at the table with my feet tapping the floor tiles beneath, I chew on my bottom lip feverishly.

  Felicity comes in to make herself a hot chocolate. ‘How come you’re sitting in here on your own?’ she asks me. She’s up and about quite a lot now, says she might like to return to school sooner rather than later. I think watching daytime TV is not as much fun as she first thought – especially with her dad gone and her mum hanging on to her sanity by a thread. I’m not sure she’s ready, though. She tires easily and I still see her wince as she rises from a chair.

  ‘Just needed some space to think,’ I answer, and she asks if I’d like a cup of Earl Grey. ‘Please,’ I say, trying to force a smile. ‘That’d be great.’

  I’ve chewed the skin down the side of my thumbnail and it’s stinging terribly. I try sucking it but the heat from my mouth intensifies the pain so I blow on the area a couple of times instead.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay, Mum?’ Felicity asks.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘You seem worried. Is it Dad?’ She takes a coaster and places it in front of me before setting down the tea, spilling it a little as she does so. Ordinarily, I would complain at this. I’d ask her to pass a cloth from the sink to wipe the base of the cup, stop it from dripping on my clothes, the floor. Today I refrain from my usual chiding. ‘Only a little worried over you two,’ I tell her. ‘About how all this is going to work out with your dad and Eve.’

  ‘We’ll be okay,’ she says tenderly.

  Trouble is, Felicity has no idea if she will be okay or not. None of us does. She’s telling me we’ll be fine because that’s what she’s seen kind, thoughtful, teenagers say on Hollyoaks or Glee. She has no experience of divorce. The only couple she knows who have split are her granny and grandad – and that wasn’t exactly straightforward. Sean’s dad had a nervous breakdown five years ago and his mother, Penny, had no alternative but to file for divorce.

  At least, that’s the official version.

  The other version, the version we never ever talk about in Penny’s presence, is that David left Penny for another woman.

  After deciding he’d been putting lipstick on the pig for long enough, David fled and shacked up with a young redhead from Elterwater. He had his vasectomy reversed and went on to have a couple more kids. (I’m told the youngest is a real handful.)

  People mock Penny in secret when she refers to David’s ‘mental breakdown’, but she really does believe that’s what happened. As in, What other reason could there possibly be? And misguided though this is, I can’t help but admire her attitude on the matter, because it certainly saved her a lot of heartache in the long run. She completely avoided the appalling period of self-examination that comes in the aftermath of a split, the period where you ask yourself: What did I do wrong?

  Alice comes in and regards Felicity, says in the offhand way she reserves for her sister, ‘Made yourself a nice cup of selfish, have you?’

  Felicity gives me a look. ‘What would you like?’ she asks Alice. ‘I’ve made hot chocolate, but there’s no cream left.’

  ‘Hot Vimto, please. I’ve got a sore throat . . . Mummy, where is that ear thermometer thingy? I feel hot and I have a headache.’

  ‘In the first-aid box in the cupboard beside the wine rack. Let me feel your head.’

  Alice sits down beside me, sighing dramatically. ‘I told my English teacher about Dad today,’ she says as I lay my palm across her brow.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m just not with it. I can’t concentrate at all, and when she asked me to read aloud from Of Mice and Men, I couldn’t do it. And some idiot boy had written “Lenny dies” on the first page, so that didn’t help. I wanted to cry.’

  ‘You do feel a bit warm,’ I tell her, now feeling the back of her neck. ‘It might be best to have a bath and go straight to bed.’

  ‘I’ve too much revision to do,’ she says.

  ‘What did your teacher say?’ I ask.

  ‘She told me to go to her any time I needed to talk.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say softly, masking my hurt and annoyance, because I really don’t want a twenty-something English graduate giving life advice to my daughter, no matter how well-meaning she is.

  ‘What did you go and tell her for?’ Felicity asks her sister.

  ‘Because I needed to,’ Alice flares. ‘I needed so
meone to understand what we’re going through here.’

  ‘Needed attention, more like,’ says Felicity. ‘I can’t stand Miss Bellamy, she’s such a fraud.’

  ‘She is not a fraud,’ Alice replies. ‘You’re just jealous because she only teaches the top sets.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘Girls, stop,’ I plead, but it falls on deaf ears.

  ‘Miss Bellamy always teaches the top set in each year,’ Alice says, spitting her words at Felicity. ‘You’re doing the classic stupid-kid thing of being in denial. Poppy Ferguson is always claiming she’s top set in English. It’s totally tragic. You don’t want to be like her, Felicity, it’s embarrassing.’

  Felicity rolls her eyes. ‘Who was it thought Stephen Hawking was American again? Oh, yes, Alice, that was you.’

  Alice goes to get the thermometer out of the cupboard. ‘I don’t know why you’re always bringing that up. It’s so lame. Is that, like, the only argument you have . . . it’s not as if I’m the only person in the entire world who didn’t know he was English. If you weren’t such a—’

  The doorbell rings and my heart stutters. I stare at the table. ‘Don’t answer that,’ I say quietly. ‘I don’t want to see anyone today.’

  But Alice is off. ‘Mum, we can’t hide for ever. It’s probably Granny. She said she was calling in to talk to you. She’s bringing some of her yellow pea and ham soup.’

  A moment later I hear Alice’s words coming from the hallway: ‘Yes, she is, come in,’ her pitch an octave higher than usual. ‘She’s in here . . . Mummy? There’s a lady here to see you, a police officer.’

  Alice returns to the kitchen. For a second I’m confused, because the woman following her is not wearing a police uniform, she’s dressed in a cheap navy suit that doesn’t fit properly.