by Jessica Moor
Don’t know. Her eyes got this charged look and she said Maybe I’ll do what you do.
I kissed her again. Light. But that’s the best kind of kiss.
Don’t do that, I said. Fucking hard to stop once you’ve started.
She didn’t look like she believed me. But I know.
Then I said another thing that I knew she wouldn’t believe me about, because you might as well keep talking when people have given up on you. Makes no difference to them.
I said Katie didn’t kill herself. Not like you think.
I told her what I saw. There aren’t many people who’ve clocked it like me, who can see it so clearly. I tried to tell her the truth that started at the beginning of time and ended with this poor sad dead girl.
I don’t know if she got it. She just said Okay Jenny.
And I told her other things and she didn’t look like she believed them either.
That’s okay.
At the end of the day I did my job. I passed it on, the little seed.
I didn’t tell Val about Katie.
Who’s left to care, anyway? Not me.
When I was stood on the platform waiting for the train to Manchester I could see her looking at me with that Val expression of hers and saying Well then Jenny, if you don’t care what happens then why are you running away?
And I say Mind your own business you daft cow and she rolls her eyes and shrugs but I can see she’s giving me that little smile.
I love Val. In a funny way. There aren’t many people that I love, but I love that woman. When you do business you have to judge people quick – you’ve got like four seconds to decide if you’re going to take a job or not. I took Val, and I love her.
I’ve loved her ever since she turned up on the corner of our street with a plastic bag full of condoms and chocolate and sandwiches and big soft jumpers.
She sat down next to me on the wall and I pretended not to see her until I realized she wasn’t going anywhere.
She sat up all night with me, talking on that bloody wall. Nobody sent her, nobody knew she was there, and if she hadn’t gone home that night, then nobody would have known. It’s true it was mostly shite she talked, and she knew I thought so, but she still came back the next night, and the next night.
And when the punters pulled over, she let me go and do what I had to do. I knew it was hard for her to give up on me and then take me back over and over again, but she kept doing it.
Maybe she’ll get nasty, too, in the end, but she hasn’t yet.
She’ll do it again. She always takes people back. Can’t help herself.
I’m going to be honest with you now, like dead honest (dead honest!). This is the stone-cold truth, and everyone always says Don’t listen to Jenny she’s a fucking liar but for fuck’s sake what’ve I got to lie about?
To be honest with you, I followed Katie home that night. First to the meeting. Sat outside the church and wondered about God. Then after. Followed her after.
Not all the way home because she didn’t get all the way home before it happened.
But I did it because I wanted to tell her that I could see she was like me, and I thought if I said it, it might make her feel better.
Fuck knows why I thought that.
I saw it.
I saw something.
Val would call it one thing, and that copper would call it another. And Katie would say What the fuck does it matter?
I’m dead either way.
36.
Then
Jamie has taken her to a funfair on the nearby green for her birthday. She hates funfairs. Or at least, she used to. She’s more open-minded now.
She doesn’t remember deciding to go, but she’s so forgetful these days.
They walk through the fairground with clouds of candyfloss. A firework display. Smashes of beauty against the night. A gloved hand in hers, the sharpening feeling of a wind-nipped cheek.
These are the things, she knows, that relationships are made of. Memories to fold away and store up in tissue paper and mothballs and keep for the bad times to come, near and far. To be kind and to love. To not be alone, to not have solitude silhouetted against that craze of stars. To be with Jamie, to weather his storms, to see that gunpowder look in his eyes and know that it’s for her.
Because soon, cancer could eat away any organ; soon, some fold of steel might circumvent one of those stab vests he now wears every day and stop Jamie from existing.
The very idea makes her feel like someone has plucked a string deep inside her.
She’s so swayed by the sensation she hardly notices the way he’s looking at her.
Then he says it.
She frowns. She can’t hear him.
So many sounds clamouring for attention.
Whatever it is, he says it again.
‘Katie Bradley, will you marry me?’
* * *
• • •
There are people all around, smiling. Cooing like a jury of pigeons.
Jamie is still kneeling down, his hands spread out in supplication, a great smile carved on to his face. He looks wonderful in the golden light of the fairground.
‘I can’t, Jamie.’
The syllables don’t sound to her like words, but like the crack you hear when a bone is breaking.
Jamie’s face is a theatre of surprise.
‘But I want to be with you,’ he says.
It’s a child’s logic.
She wants to tell him yes.
She can see their wedding now, her mother still well enough, perhaps even in a miracle of remission. She sees herself, an indistinct shape bleached bone-white. Jamie looking handsome in a suit or a formal uniform and smiling – oh, smiling – the kind of smiling that seems like there couldn’t ever be otherwise, because he loves her and needs her and that means she deserves to be loved and needed.
He is standing up again now.
She isn’t ready for the moment that his eyes draw level with hers.
Everything is smashed now. There is something trickling down the side of her face – maybe a tear?
* * *
• • •
She is pretty sure he’s gone out.
It’s never certain, because Jamie always moves so quietly. But she hasn’t heard anything from downstairs for a long time since the door slammed.
Before that, on the drive home, the silence ached with his hurt.
She said she had a headache. So they didn’t have to talk.
She calls her mother. She doesn’t think, she just calls. She tells herself she’ll let it ring five times then hang up. Any more would be unfair on the rest of the ward.
Her mother won’t be awake, she tells herself. Even if she is, she probably won’t be up to talking.
She answers on the sixth ring.
‘Katie.’
She has somehow lost the ability to intonate her words, even though the things she says are the same things she always says.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
Surely her mother can’t hear how her voice is shaking. Not with so many dimming drugs in her bloodstream.
‘I just wanted to call for a chat.’
‘Chat away, lovely.’
A soft, rustling sound. Settling back into blankets.
‘I’m listening.’
‘We went to the fair today,’ Katie says. The phone makes a noise that is probably a laugh.
‘Since when did you like fairs?’
‘I like fairs.’
‘Okay.’
‘And I’ve got some . . . well, it’s not exactly news . . .’
‘News?’
‘Not exactly news.’
‘You’ve got some not-news?’
‘Jamie asked me to marry him.’
There is a long pause. Long enough to read anything into it you want. Joy. Anger. Morphine.
‘Well, that sounds like news to me.’
‘But . . . I don’t know. I think maybe he’s being a bit . . . eager? I’m too young to get married.’
Another gentle rustle.
‘Oh, Katie . . .’
‘What?’ She says it loudly and sharply, loud enough that she can imagine her mother wincing.
‘Sorry . . . I mean . . . what do you want to say?’
‘I just think . . . with you young girls these days . . .’ Her mother gives the softest little chuckle. ‘You’ve got so many choices. You expect so much out of one person.’
‘I don’t expect too much,’ Katie says, more out of habit of contradiction than because she really believes it’s true.
‘And I think . . . although what would I know . . .’ Her mother gives a dry little laugh. ‘But for whatever it’s worth, I think . . . I think the most you can really ask for is someone who’ll be kind to you.’
‘And Jamie is kind.’
‘Jamie’s kind.’ A breath in. A breath out. ‘And you’re not as young as you think you are.’
‘Right.’
‘Oh . . .’ An intake of breath that would have been sharp once. ‘No, Katie. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant . . .’ Another long breath. ‘I meant you’ve been through so much. And I’m very glad you’ve found someone who takes good care of you.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ A little laugh. ‘That’s what I’ve learned, if nothing else.’
‘You mean it?’
Katie knows she should get off the phone. That it isn’t fair to make her mother use up whatever strength she has on repeating herself.
She wants to say, Just stay on the phone with me. But that isn’t the kind of thing they ever say to each other. Instead, she says, ‘You really mean it?’
‘I really do.’
‘Okay, then, I’ll let you go.’
‘Oh, no . . .’ She could hear her mother trying her best to insist. ‘Oh, no, you’re all right.’
‘I’ll let you sleep now, Mum.’
‘Are you sure?’
Just a blurry collection of rasps from a thirsty tongue. Are. You. Sure.
‘Yes. Sleep well, Mum.’
‘You, too, my darling.’
‘Have you got some water, Mum?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘Have some water, okay?’
‘I will.’
‘Now?’
‘Good night, Katie.’
Katie puts down the phone and looks towards the door. There has been no noise, but some section of the light is blocked away. Enough for two feet standing outside. She can hear sharp, contained breaths but she doesn’t know if they’re coming from Jamie or herself.
She crosses to the threshold and opens their bedroom door to see him standing on the landing, motionless. A glass of water in one hand, the other cupped.
‘Brought you some aspirin.’
He puts down the glass. Holds out his hand.
‘Here you go.’
She doesn’t really register taking the pills, but suddenly they’re gone and he’s sitting next to her on the bed.
‘Who were you talking to?’ he says.
‘My mum.’
She knows it’s always the most sensible thing to tell him the truth. He shrugs slightly.
‘You shouldn’t be bothering her,’ he says. ‘She’s ill.’
‘I know,’ Katie says.
He nods.
But she says it again, not knowing why.
‘I know that, Jamie. She’s my mum.’
‘I’m just telling you.’
‘But I already know. I know.’
* * *
• • •
She lies in bed. She’s never felt so tired in her whole life. Every part of her aches, not just her head, to the point that her body has become one unified ache.
Jamie has left the room. After he kissed her forehead and told her to go to sleep. After she muttered, ‘But I already know, I know.’
37.
Now
Whitworth put the phone down.
He stood, frozen for a good thirty seconds, in the middle of Piccadilly Gardens. People swerved around him – office workers, girls like those on the train, heading out for their share of sin.
The rain was churning into the mud. Whitworth found himself able to focus on nothing but the slick, distorted glaze it cast over the ground.
Then he wheeled around – sharply, trying to gather his bearings – and cursed himself for not having come by car.
As it turned out, they didn’t need to find Lynne Ward.
The first responders had contacted Brookes almost as soon as he had made inquiries at the Wards’ address. They were already there, they said.
Frank Ward had called the police at three minutes past nine. In a controlled voice, he’d told them that they needed to send an ambulance. When the paramedics arrived, Frank was sitting on the front wall of his garden, a calm, drained look on his face and a flower of blood blooming across his shirt.
Inside, they had found Lynne’s tiny, slender body stretched out on the sofa, as if she were posing for an editorial photoshoot. Her daughter was standing next to her, her little hand on her mother’s cheek, like in a Victorian painting.
As the paramedics entered and the child was scooped away from the body in reflexive horror, she murmured, ‘My daddy cut my mummy.’
38.
Then
A door slams, thudding through a larger silence.
Did Katie dream the noise, or did the noise take her from her dreams?
She half wakes, smelling smoke. Her sleep is thick and chemical.
She sees, illuminated by the light of the street lamps, the little curls of smoke entering around the edges of the door. In the spaces between those drowsy seconds it seems that they are supposed to be there. Phantom fingers seem to wrap around her hair and gently pull her head back towards the pillow; a soft hiss that might come from within or without tells her that there is nothing to worry about.
Jamie is there. This is the exact sort of situation that makes her love him so. The moments when he takes control.
Her eyes close again.
* * *
• • •
A car alarm jolts her awake. She is coughing, coughing.
There is no chance of catching her breath.
Smoke is pouring frantically under the door with the urgency of waves on a beach in a storm. She can hear fire – the vengeance and bloodlust of its low, crackling bellow.
She can hear all the things they have put together, Jamie and she, ravaging and turning to ash.
She can’t breathe.
Her lungs won’t fill.
It would have been panic if the smoke hadn’t made her mind too dull for panic. Rather, she knows, and distantly understands, that she is going to die.
39.
Now
Nobody had moved the body, even though Whitworth didn't arrive at the Ward family home until nearly midnight.
Forensics were still snapping photographs from every angle, the sweep of blonde hair spread out on the sofa catching the light from the cameras’ flashes. Patches of her powder-blue cashmere jumper still peeped out between heavy, wet bloodstains.
Her face was untouched, her outlined eyes closed. Whitworth wondered if Frank Ward had closed them himself – the effect was so picturesque he was sure it was the work of some theatrical hand.
‘You all right?’ Whitworth sat down heavily next to Brookes on the low stone wall of the Wards’ front garden. He looked shaken. Probably never seen a homicide before, Whitworth thought.
‘Fine.’
It wasn’t true. There were tear-tracks down Brookes’s face. But Whitworth felt he owed it to someone – maybe to himself – to pretend not to see them.
‘I know it’s a bit of a shock when you see stuff like that.’
‘I’m not shocked.’ Brookes’s voice was tight and flat. ‘What’s there to be shocked about? Wife-beaters. No self-control. It’s pathetic.’
Whitworth had to disagree. It seemed to him that Frank Ward had shown remarkable self-control. The bruises the ambulance team had found were almost too many to count, as it was difficult to ascertain where one trauma ended and the other began. Yet her hands, neck and face were untouched. Nothing an elegant crewneck couldn’t cover.
‘I’ve seen enough of that, you know?’ Brookes said. ‘On the beat. Not murders, but all the stuff that happens around murders.’ He stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing one ankle in front of the other. ‘The stuff that becomes murders. It makes you realize, that stuff. Some people just aren’t like you and me.’
Whitworth didn’t know what to say, but it seemed he should let Brookes talk. He probably needed it.
‘There’s something missing in them. Call it whatever you want. Maybe their mummy didn’t love them enough. Whatever it is, I don’t care. That kid’s never going to grow up normal, and it’s all the parents’ fault.’
Whitworth let the silence rest for a few seconds.
‘Do you think anyone’s capable of murder?’
His voice in the darkness sounded shaky, unsure. Whitworth knew it was the kind of question that Brookes should be asking and he should be answering. He was the more experienced officer, after all.
Maybe it really was time to retire.
Brookes didn’t hesitate. ‘I think anyone’s capable of having their buttons pushed.’
* * *
• • •
Frank Ward had been very helpful when they took his confession.
He had explained that Lynne had come back with Peony. There had been a row of some kind. Lynne had flown at him in a rage, he said. He had the scratch marks on his face to prove it. She had grabbed a knife from the kitchen and had threatened to kill both him and Peony.
