by B P Walter
I swipe at the screen to show more of their exchange:
JESSICA: Hmm. Tempting, Mr Kelley. Tempting.
* * *
MICHAEL: 7 Calatava Road, Southend, Essex. Want the postcode for your satnav if you’re driving? ;)
* * *
JESSICA: I don’t have a satnav. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s illegal for 16-year-olds to drive.
* * *
MICHAEL: Excuses, excuses.
I stare at the address and feel a swell of excitement within me. I now know where he lives. Exactly where he lives, right down to the house number.
I spend most of the night imagining scenarios where I deface his house with red paint or smash up his parents’ car or maybe just send him anonymous letters simply saying MURDERER, with the characters cut out from newspaper and magazine clippings. All of this sounds highly satisfying to me, but a niggling voice at the back of my head knows it wouldn’t be enough. Because, in the depths of the night, I think I realise something. All my life, I’ve tried to sweep things under the carpet. Pretend they haven’t happened. The horrible situation I left behind me in Australia. The truth about my father’s death. And more recently, the behaviour of my husband. Things I’ve done. Secrets, lies, regret – all of it. I’ve had a cerebral clear-desk policy. Never allow it to stay on the surface, always bury it underneath the fabric of everyday life. It hasn’t worked. It’s never really worked. So this is my chance. My chance to confront a problem, follow the mystery through to the end and do something about it. And that something has to involve finding that boy. He needs to know, without a shadow of a doubt, what he has done. To recognise it. To face up to it. And, in some way, to pay for it.
By the time the clock shows 6am, I know what I have to do.
Chapter Twelve
The Mother
May. Three months after the attack.
I leave the house at 6am. I don’t say anything to Alec as I pass what used to be a guest bedroom but has now become his general living area. I leave him sleeping, taking care not to make a noise. I don’t take anything with me other than my handbag, purse, the two iPhones – mine and Jessica’s – and some books – two light romances and an Agatha Christie mystery. Never go anywhere without a book, an old English teacher used to say to me. I’ve stuck rigidly to this rule all my life, through good times and bad. If I haven’t got one in my bag, there’s usually one in the car, hidden in the dashboard to avoid light-damage to its cover.
Once seated behind the wheel of the Range Rover, I enter the postcode into the built-in satnav and watch it plot a course from Kent to Southend. It estimates about an hour and ten minutes, so long as I don’t run into heavy traffic.
As it happens, there is a hold-up – a rather nasty crash on the A13 makes the final leg of the journey crawl by, quite literally. I come to a complete standstill at one point, with no sign of any movement up ahead. Sighing with frustration, I reach for my copy of A Murder is Announced and start to read, becoming quickly caught up in the story of a group of slightly eccentric villagers finding an advertisement in their local paper saying a murder will be committed at their friend’s home later that evening.
Eventually an angry lorry driver behind me beeping his horn tears me out of the 1950s and back into the present day. The traffic is moving and I’m back on my way to Southend-on-Sea.
There’s precious little water on the seafront as I drive down the Western Esplanade, passing shabby-looking guest-houses that wouldn’t look out of place in an Agatha Christie novel themselves, mingled together with more modern-looking flats. To my left, a large expanse of grey-black mud stretches out, with only a slim line of water in the distance lapping against the end of the long pleasure pier. Memories of coming here with my parents once or twice during occasional visits to the UK float into my head, the most prominent one involving me chipping a front tooth on a stick of rock bought from one of the little tuck-shop huts. Most of them are gone now, with large sections of the space given over to more upmarket seafood restaurants or incorporated into the Adventure Island fairground.
I turn right to go up a steep hill and within minutes I’m plunged back into the depths of suburbia. Like the seafront, it’s a strange mixture of the privileged mingled with the downright shabby. Large, beautifully designed detached houses with big four-by-fours parked outside jostle for space, practically opposite poorly maintained council properties and old-fashioned townhouses. Eventually I come to a stop outside a particularly grim stretch of what I presume to be council houses, some with upturned overflowing recycling bins, discarded rusting bikes and, in one instance, a sofa with half its stuffing pulled off, as if a pack of wild dogs had been set upon it. The house I’m looking for is next door to this one and I park my car in a vacant space opposite and turn off the engine, silencing the satnav now that it’s told me at least three times that I’ve reached my destination.
I stare over at the house: the grimy gutters that need a good servicing; the rubbish in the tiny little front garden; the weeds poking out of the concrete on the front step. Can the boy Jessica seemed so committed to really come from a place like this? If one of my friends had said such a thing aloud about one of their children’s potential love interests, I would have admonished them for their snobbery, but I can’t help it – I’m genuinely shocked at what I’ve discovered. Where the hell did she meet this boy? How could a girl from a completely different world become so attached, at least over Facebook Messenger, to someone who lives here?
Without really knowing what I’m doing, I get out of the car and start to cross the road. I have a half-baked notion of pretending to be a Jehovah’s Witness or from the local church or something – just an everyday irritating cold caller –in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. Michael Kelley. The boy who abandoned my little girl. On the doorstep, however, I find myself faltering. What am I playing at? Why am I here? My hand, outstretched for the doorbell, pulls back and I have to steady myself slightly so as not to fall. Tears prick my eyes and I walk back into the road, not bothering to look. ‘This is insane,’ I say out loud to myself as I make contact with the car and pull open the door, grappling with the handle and then crawling across to the driver’s seat. My tiredness is catching up with me now. I probably had about one hour’s sleep during the night, if that, most of it spent plotting and fantasising about finding that boy – the boy who lives in the house merely metres from me now – and making him feel all my pain, throwing it at him like it’s a force, a physical force, and knocking him down with his own shame.
I take the car out of its parking space a little too quickly, hearing the tyres screech as I go zooming down the road. When I get to a junction, I realise I’m in no fit state to drive. I need to sleep. I think about pulling into a side-street and having a kip in the car, but it’s broad daylight and the temperature is already soaring. Even with the air-con on, the thought of trying to sleep in this light repulses me. I need peace and quiet and darkness.
I’ll go to a hotel, I think to myself. One of the nicer ones I passed on the way here. I’ll get a room, just for the day, and sleep. Then I’ll decide what to do.
Slowing to a more responsible speed, I turn the car around and drive carefully back towards the sea.
Chapter Thirteen
The Boy
It’s brought it all back. Piccadilly. I can’t really say I’ve been coping. I’ve just sort of been existing these past few months. Drifting through school, not really paying attention, not caring that my grades are getting shitter as the year goes on. Part of me wonders what it would be like having a family that cared. Having a mother with enough interest in my grades to ground me or demand to know why I’m now getting Ds and Es rather than Bs and Cs. Why I’m staying out for hours and missing meals, if there are any meals to have, of course.
‘Have you heard about Piccadilly?’ Mum says as I walk through the door. She’s sitting in the lounge with Tony and Mark, two weed-dealing loansharks in their early thirties who are dressed lik
e football hooligans. They hang around the same betting shop as her, hoping to score a bit of business. She owed them money once and then suddenly her debts seemed to vanish overnight. It wasn’t the only thing that had happened overnight. The next morning I found Mark, dressed only in The Simpsons themed underpants, rummaging around our kitchen for cereals and a clean bowl to use. He just gave me a smirk and winked, then went back upstairs to Mum’s room. I tried not to think about what Mum had done in order to wipe away half a grand in owed cash. Or how many bags of the stuff they may have sold her in the meantime.
Right now she’s looking at me, waiting for a response, chewing a mouthful of popcorn, one hand stuck in the bumper Butterkist bag, the other slung over the inner thigh of Tony.
‘Yes, I did,’ I say blankly. I don’t want to talk about it with her. I wish I could. I wish I could go to her, hug her like I used to, when she was fun and smiled more. But she was never good with ‘heavy stuff’, she told me. She wouldn’t listen. She’d just reach for the nearest bottle, then a spliff. Then sank into a half-sleep.
‘Police have fucked up, should’ve stopped it,’ says Mark, and then nods thoughtfully as if he’s made an intelligent comment. I want to hit him.
‘Should stop paying our fucking taxes,’ Tony contributes.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ I say, turning away. I didn’t want to stay and listen to this. ‘Is there anything for tea?’
‘Your mum isn’t your fucking slave,’ Tony says. ‘Get your own sodding food. We’re busy.’ He edges to the side, bringing out from behind his back a see-through bag with something dark green inside it. I see him wink at Mum, and she returns the wink and starts touching his thigh. I decide to leave.
‘Fish and chips,’ Mum calls after me, ‘if you go and get it, obviously.’
‘Maybe,’ I call back.
‘Hey, shut the fucking door,’ one of the dickheads barks.
I don’t reply, but slam the door and run upstairs.
Upstairs in my room, I log on and try to read the BBC News updates about the Piccadilly bombing, but find I can’t. My head is swimming and I keep being taken back to the night of the Stratford attacks. I’m determined not to be sick and grip hard to my desk chair, trying to steady myself. Then, when that doesn’t work, I try gipping my legs, digging my fingernails into my thighs, liking the pain and feeling them dig in through my trousers into my flesh. It works. It steadies me. I transfer from the desk to my bed, taking off my clothes and getting under the covers. I must have fallen asleep for an hour or two because when I open my eyes it’s much darker, the warm glow of the evening sun poking through the blinds. Slowly pulling myself out of bed, I look down and see the red marks. Scratch marks, some of them deep. Did I press that hard earlier? Or did I do it in my sleep? I touch the raw skin on the side of my right leg, feeling it tense as I lay my hand on it. It feels good. Comforting, almost, to feel something sting, feel something harsh and real.
I get dressed and go out onto the landing. My stomach is tight from hunger. I can’t be bothered to leave the house and get fish and chips and I hope, even though it’s pointless, that there’s something in the fridge I can warm through in the microwave.
The silence stops me. I’m on the stairs, poised, trying to listen. Silence isn’t good. I go down the final few stairs so I’m in front of the closed door to the lounge. I walk down the corridor to the kitchen, which opens out onto the lounge, hidden from view round the corner from anyone sitting on the sofas in the TV area. As I walk in, the tiles cool my feet, and I start to hear their breathing. And, at last, a sound. Like a quiet, dull moan, or weird singing without any beat or tune. I suddenly feel afraid. Afraid of what I might find. I’m not sure whether to take a look then leave, or go straight back to bed. I decide to go in. Twisting my head around the side of the fridge, I can see into the main part of the lounge without making myself too obvious.
Mum is lying on the sofa, up against Mark. She’s on her side, he’s in a sitting position. Mark looks completely asleep, his breath coming slow, causing his Ben Sherman shirt to crease slightly, in and out.
Mum’s the one making the strange sound. A little, childlike sound, and when I get closer I realise she’s half singing, half muttering, ‘Row, row, row your boat…’ Her eyes are closed and she shows no sign of noticing I’m there. And then I notice three things. First, a strange smell, mingled with the regular one of weed – a smell like burning metal or something chemical. Second, the fact that Tony and Mark both have their sleeves rolled up. And lastly, among all the half-eaten bags of popcorn and empty pizza boxes on the table, there’s an ashtray filled with the ends of spliffs… and three syringes. Mum’s slow, sad song is going round on a loop, and I can see a line of saliva trailing down her cheek. I’m about to go and nudge her, try to get her to wake up, but then I hear a noise behind me that makes me jump.
My brother’s standing there, in the doorway. He too looks as if he’s been asleep, dressed in pyjama bottoms and a Superman T-shirt. He stands in the doorway, giving me a weird look. Eventually he says, not bothering to lower his voice, ‘How long have they been…?’
I just shrug. ‘I’ve only just come downstairs. Was having a nap. I thought they were just smoking today. But apparently they brought more than just weed.’ There’s something in the way he’s looking at Mum that’s making me feel uneasy. Like he’s repulsed. As if he doesn’t know her at all.
‘It’s getting worse,’ he says simply. And turns and walks away, back upstairs.
Chapter Fourteen
December. Two months to go.
MICHAEL: Can’t sleep. Assume you can’t either?
* * *
JESSICA: Been doing essay work. I seem to be a bit of a night owl these days.
* * *
MICHAEL: Essay work at 3am?
* * *
JESSICA: Yeah, I know, don’t judge. My mum does enough of that.
* * *
MICHAEL: I thought you get on well with your mum?
* * *
JESSICA: When did I say that?
* * *
MICHAEL: It just sounded like you did. Sorry if I got it wrong.
* * *
JESSICA: Sorry – me and her are, well, let’s just say complicated.
* * *
MICHAEL: I know all about complicated. My mum and I would have some serious things to talk about if she wasn’t stoned for long enough to actually listen.
* * *
JESSICA: Does she smoke weed a lot? Sorry, I think I always just presumed it was alcohol.
* * *
MICHAEL: She does both. The alcohol is usually when she’s feeling sad. She cries a lot when she’s drinking. The weed is fairly constant. It makes her grumpy most of the time and at other times she gets weird. Sometimes she thinks we’ve been out telling social services what a bad mum she is, sometimes she accuses us of being friends with cops and how me and my brother want to get her into prison for being a bad mum.
* * *
JESSICA: Oh my God. I’m probably naïve, but I’ve always thought of it as harmless. Everyone does it, don’t they?
* * *
MICHAEL: Whenever people say it’s harmless, I always want them to come and stay at my house for a week. They literally have no idea. My clothes always smell of the stuff, too, and teachers keep giving me leaflets on it or accusing me of smoking it myself.
* * *
JESSICA: Do you not use it?
* * *
MICHAEL: My mind’s already fucked enough without messing it up even more.
* * *
JESSICA: Sorry, that was a stupid question.
* * *
MICHAEL: It’s OK. Anyway, just remember, if things with your mum get bad, at least she’s not off her head 24/7.
* * *
JESSICA: She’s just weak. There’s so much to her I can’t talk to her about. And the worst thing – one of the worst – is that she’s known for years what my dad’s been doing.
* * *
>
MICHAEL: What’s your dad been doing?
* * *
MICHAEL: You still there? I don’t mind if you want to talk in the morning.
* * *
JESSICA: He’s been fucking other women.
* * *
MICHAEL: Oh.
* * *
JESSICA: Yes, oh.
* * *
MICHAEL: You’ve never thought he might be?
* * *
JESSICA: Never. I knew my mum would piss him off, and maybe he flirted a bit with people, but I never thought he’d actually go off and cheat on Mum. But he has. I heard him.
