by Jessica Moor
When they reminisced about those early days after a drink or two, Jennifer would laugh at how crap it all sounded, what a miser her dad had been.
‘Couldn’t just do a google in those days,’ he’d told her indignantly, but she’d just laughed harder.
It hadn’t felt so ridiculous at the time, but the shame had kicked in as soon as their daughter started to laugh. Perhaps Maureen remembered the whole thing rather differently than he did. She’d probably say so now.
He thought about calling her. Let her know she shouldn’t expect him home that night. There was a time when he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Hearing her voice used to be the bright spot in a long evening at his desk or on the beat. An opportunity to remember that nothing could beat chatting to her as she scraped away the remnants of Jennifer’s fish fingers and the two of them settled down in front of the telly with their feet just touching on the leatherette ottoman.
In the end he texted her.
Won’t be home this evening. Working late. Love to Jen.
He imagined his wife picking up her phone, reading the text. Maybe she would consider replying, but most likely she wouldn’t bother, not now that there was so little to say between them.
In such a long relationship there was passion and contempt and every emotion that could possibly exist in between. Though he’d never hit her, it would be a lie to say he hadn’t felt like it once or twice.
His phone buzzed.
Okay see you in the morning x
There was a group of girls on the set of seats next to Whitworth, five of them cramming their narrow behinds into the space for four people. The spindly bodies still suggested childhood, though breasts and hips were forming almost before Whitworth’s eyes, and their faces had been carved into the ageless, blank perfection all the girls seemed to have these days, courtesy of enormous quantities of makeup. They were talking, laughing loudly, looking around the way teenage girls did to make sure that they were making an impact. It was as if they had arranged themselves into a photograph, facing outwards into the train carriage, with only scraps of Lycra to stave off their adolescent nudity.
Off for a night out in Manchester, Whitworth thought. Younger than his daughter, he would have guessed. One of them seemed to catch Whitworth looking, picking up his gaze and holding it in a way that made the father in him twist and turn away. The girl had blue eyes that she had dirtied with some smudgy black stuff, and Whitworth couldn’t work out if her look was a challenge or an invitation. He had half a mind to demand to see these girls’ IDs, to point out their inevitable fakeness and send them back to whichever small, quiet town they’d come from, back to their parents, who could cover them up and keep them safe from the stares of men Whitworth’s age.
That was what Jennifer didn’t understand when he told her to change her clothes.
I should be able to wear whatever I want.
Of course you should, love, he thought. You should be able to leave your drink unattended and dance the night away. You should be able to get into a minicab off the street, too. You should be able to get the night bus rather than the taxis I insist you get, which I’ll go without anything for myself to pay for.
He leaned his forehead against the grubby glass of the train window. But the world isn’t a should. If it was a should, then you’d waltz through life naked as the day you were born without a single filthy eye hooking into you.
Whitworth knew you had to do all you could. You could never stop being diligent, never let your guard down, never gamble your life on an abstraction. Or if not your life, then something worse.
Whitworth had seen what women looked like after they were raped. Properly raped, that was, not when they had had a few too many and decided they regretted it afterwards.
The train pulled into Piccadilly.
* * *
• • •
Whitworth had an idea of the homeless and drug-dealing topography of Manchester. The problem was, that gave him plenty of places to start looking.
He made for Piccadilly Gardens, with the idea of moving towards the Northern Quarter, where he knew there were plenty of crevices for a creature like Jenny to pick up and to be picked up.
He seemed to see her around every corner, but perhaps that was because there were so many blank-looking homeless people scattered around the streets, like the bleached components of a skeleton.
He began to doubt he would even recognize her if he saw her. The photo they had of her in the police system was taken when she was much younger, when her features had been more defined, when the pigment hadn’t evaporated from her and left only that oily mess of bones and eyes. When she had been more sharply drawn, perhaps less afraid.
But there was no Jenny like that left.
As far as he could see, Manchester was a city planned for wretchedness. The wretchedness of the majority, that is, for the comfort of a few.
The centre was dominated by the great hotels. The Midland, the Principal. The moulded intricacies of brown terracotta seemed to invite the weary to rest in the shelter of a doorway, only to be evicted by men dressed in stiff coats like Victorian footmen. All the red arches of the railway lines, the secret places to crawl, the network of canals, the bold sweep of potential bed space around Piccadilly Gardens were carpeted by swathes of cardboard that would never make the ground any softer.
There was one man lying face down and spreadeagled outside Superdrug. A pool of vomit, slackened by the rain, was starting to run away from his face and slide across the pavement. A security guard was looking down at him with weary disregard. Whitworth didn’t envy whatever young PC would end up scraping the drunk off the floor and taking him back to the station to sober up.
To say that it was raining that night would have felt trivial. The rain battered. It violated. It deadened. It soaked those little cardboard homesteads and old sleeping bags which, on a lucky night, might have kept a person warm, or at least kept the idea of warmth alive. It was exactly the kind of place for someone like Jenny, which is what made someone like Jenny so impossible to find.
He asked a group of likely-looking smackheads, showing Jenny’s photograph to several of the homeless around Piccadilly Gardens. He wasn’t in uniform and most of them would have been too out of it to notice even if he had been, so they stayed still long enough to look blankly at the photo and shake their heads. He showed it to a local beat cop, who gave him a brotherly shrug and said with what was probably a smile, ‘She could be anyone, mate. But I’ll keep an eye out.’
The light was failing and Whitworth didn’t have his glasses with him.
After an hour or so of drifting he caught something in the corner of his eye. He marched straight up to a woman sitting on the ground, convinced that it was Jenny.
But it was just someone who looked like her, who was like her.
The woman looked up in interest for a second. Thinking he might have wanted to buy . . . something . . . from her, but once that chemical rush of hope had cleared away she reverted to her unfocused expression, picking at the cardboard edge of the sign she was holding, which insisted that she wasn’t on drugs, she just needed a bed for the night.
He tried to focus on the things that made Jenny resemble a person. He thought about those tubes of cheap lipstick on her dressing table, remembered the hideousness of her face when it split into deep thought. Tried to think his way into what a person like Jenny would do, as was his training, as was his instinct.
But his training and his instinct and the feeling of the rain on his skin pointed him towards just one thing, and that was heroin. And the problem was, that didn’t point him in any particular direction.
Then his phone rang.
34.
Then
Katie is packing a bag.
For her mother.
Possibly the last bag her mother will ever need.
But you can’t
think about it like that.
Notions float through her head like stingrays. She has to repel them, watch their boneless motion as they drift away.
She finds one of her own sweaters in the dresser where her mother’s clothes live. It’s the sort of mistake that is often made in their home. They’re not sticklers about that sort of thing.
Automatically, she packs it.
Soft wool. Bright blue. The colour is too bright. Siren- bright.
Her mother won’t need it. She has a fever. That’s the whole point.
She closes her eyes, but the colour stays, flashing.
Then she stands up and carries the overnight bag into the next room. The bag contains her mother’s face cream, her mother’s nightdress, her mother’s pills.
But the sweater belongs to her.
She adds pairs of her own knickers, counting them. One two three four five six seven.
Enough for the week.
What week? Any week. Any lifetime starts with one week.
Knickers. Passport. Those are the things you really need.
She almost forgets to add her wallet. She doesn’t carry it much these days, and there’s nothing in her current account, anyway. Hasn’t been for a while, not since she left her job.
But there’s money. Left by her father, in an account she labelled ‘grown-up savings’ when she set it up online, with vague ideations of mortgages. Maybe a mortgage with Jamie.
‘Katie?’
A stinging bolt. He’s calling her name.
She drops the bag and hurries down the stairs. She always hurries for him.
‘Are you nearly ready with that bag?’
He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen with his car keys in his hand, shrugging on his jacket. It’s well cut across the shoulders, with the strong lines of an anchor.
‘Nearly,’ she says. ‘Hang on a minute. I’m nearly ready.’
She glances over to the sofa, where her mother is sitting. She’s holding a cup of tea they all know she won’t drink, but Jamie made it, anyway, for something to do.
That’s the brutal shame of it.
They’re all just trying to do something. To change something. They don’t even know what it is they’re trying to change.
Katie walks up the stairs, the tempo of her steps slow. Steady. Predictable.
She takes out knickers. Passport. Wallet.
She takes out the sweater, too.
She carries the bag back into her mother’s room and fills it with an armful of nighties. Her mother didn’t use to wear nighties, but she does now. Slippers, too, and a dressing gown.
Another stingray thought drifts across her mind. She doesn’t look at it.
She throws a book on top of the jumble, for optimism’s sake. Zips the thing up and carries it downstairs.
Jamie is waiting for her at the bottom. He reaches up an arm towards her, pulls her close. Kisses the top of her head. She leans into him for a second. For a moment, she can abdicate responsibility for holding herself upright.
‘I know how hard this is for you,’ he says.
He knows. He knows it all.
Jamie drives. Katie sits in the front, next to him. Her mother’s in the back, her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the window. Her cheeks are flushed.
Katie doesn’t say anything. She wonders how many times her parents sat side by side like this, alone but for the vast presence of their shared responsibility in the back seat. In those moments, she now understood, it didn’t do to ask yourself any questions about love or fear.
35.
Now
Death?
Seen him. Loads of times.
Death’s just a bloke.
Average height. Brownish hair. Couldn’t tell you what colour his eyes are, but I can tell you he’s nothing special to look at.
He doesn’t look angry or sad or evil. Just . . . a bit bored.
But at the end of the day he’s a guy with a job to do. So what he does is he comes up to you and he opens your mouth and he just pulls the life out of you.
Tell you what it’s like. It’s like a dentist pulling out a tooth.
Imagine that.
Then he turns around and he shrugs like he’s saying I don’t make the rules and he takes out his little machine he carries and logs the life into his system.
And then he walks off to the next job. And that’s that.
He’s been hanging about.
He’s been trying to look in the windows. Leaving gates open.
Messing with cameras.
Left a note. I FOUND YOU.
But then I found it.
Didn’t give it to anyone. Lay on it like a grenade.
Bang.
Rains all the fucking time here. Always has.
So I scrunch myself into the smallest space.
I think he’s looking for me.
I know the fucker’s looking for me.
Just stay still Jenny.
Just keep your head
Down.
Yeah, I talk to myself. Keeps people away. Makes me a risk no one’s willing to take.
I haven’t picked up yet, which you wouldn’t think, but you should be able to tell cos I’m rattling like you wouldn’t believe, but I tell you what, it’s true, swear to God.
What a good little junkie.
I’m saving it. Saving up the best feeling in the world because, once you’ve spent it, it’s gone.
I’m not waiting for business. I’m not waiting to be wanted. I’m just saving the feeling up like a kid with their last sweet.
It’s starting to rain.
So I fly away. Above the rain to where it’s warm and dry.
I learned to fly when I was small in the Home. I learned to look down on myself from a safe height.
Best thing I ever learned.
Fuck knows no one believes me when I say shit like this, but I’m telling you I saw Death getting out of his car and going up to Katie and taking her in his arms and making her disappear.
You can call it what you want and blame whoever, but when Death comes calling there’s nothing you can do.
She caught my eye just for a second, Katie did, and I tried to be brave and smile for her because, at the end of the day, it’s just a guy and he’s going to do what he’s going to do, same as the rest of them.
I did think about it for a second when the detective was talking to me.
Honest to God, I thought to myself I could be the kind of person who talks to the coppers and tells them what’s what. I could be the little helping hand to bring the whole bastard thing crashing down.
I could tell that cop what happened, and how it happened, and why.
He’d get nasty, of course.
But maybe then he’d believe me, in the end, when everything else is washed away.
But Death gets everywhere.
I want to say that was when I knew I couldn’t do it. But maybe I already knew it. Knew it from the start. I was never going to do it, never going to come through for Katie, never going to be that brave.
Never going to be that stupid.
Death speaks to me. He says Now Jenny, I just want to talk.
And I say I’ve heard that one before mate.
He says Jenny, what did you see? and I want to say get my name out of your filthy mouth, but I don’t.
Too smart for a thing like that, me.
What did you see, Jenny? he says again and I say I saw Death, because Death’s not stupid, he knows if you’re lying to him.
Supposed to be a fucking refuge. But he got inside.
I look him right in his fucking dead frog eyes and for a good few seconds the brave in me comes back and I think I’ve got you mate, I see you, you’re nothing, and you want to be something an
d you thought you’d feel like a big old something if you did what you did to that girl.
It was only a tiny splash.
Been in refuges before. Been in hospitals before. Been in hostels before. Been in Homes before.
Most of the rooms I’ve slept in have had someone just like me behind the wall to my left. Someone just like me behind the wall to my right.
You take it in turns to cry at night. Can’t all fall apart at the same time.
I’m good at that institutional shit. Got to learn to play the game. Got to learn to dance to the creaking and the crying and the tap-tap-tapping, got to learn that there’s more to a refuge than four walls and a front door, got to learn that as long as you toe the line and stay off the gear – ha! – and put the milk back in the fridge and don’t argue about the telly and say yes please no thank you . . .
Then you’re safe. No one comes into your room at night.
Got to learn that.
Until the fucking police show up, that is.
Until a girl turns up dead.
Until you’re the only one who understands why she’s dead and there’s no one there who understands the world like you do.
That’s when those four walls come down – crash crash crash crash. Now there’s nothing left but you and that big sky.
That’s when you’ve got to open that front door and walk down that old cracked path and down the road to the station and get on the train and get as far away from the wreckage as you can, far enough away that you can’t hear the crumbling sound any more, can’t hear Katie asking why why why am I dead?
Because you know why. And you really don’t want to be the one to tell her.
I kissed Nazia before I left because I could tell she’d never been kissed and I felt sorry for her. It’s nice to give presents when you haven’t got anything left to give.
I could tell she wanted more but I told her no. Not with me.
What’re you going to do? she said and I shrugged and said Same as always. What about you?
