Strangers

by C. L. Taylor

  ‘Yes?’ Alice tries to read her body language. Most shoplifters are harmless – they want to get in and out without being spotted. But there’s another, more dangerous, breed: feisty and desperate women who’ll threaten anyone who gets too close with a dirty syringe. This woman doesn’t look like a druggy but there’s an edgy vibe to her that puts Alice on her guard.

  ‘There’s a man over there who’s trying to get your attention.’ The shoplifter raises a long arm and points over Alice’s head.

  Standing near the cash desk, shifting awkwardly from side to side with an enormous bouquet of flowers in his hands, is Simon. Lynne, still behind the counter, catches Alice’s eye and pulls a face as if to say, ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Alice abandons the shoplifter and hurries across the shop towards Simon. He clears his throat as she draws closer, the base of his neck flushed red.

  ‘I … um … sorry, this is probably a bit weird but I … er … I’ve been wrestling with what happened earlier. I can’t help but feel that I should have stepped in or done something and I really didn’t help matters by chasing you down the street so um …’ He thrusts the bouquet of lilies and roses at her. ‘These are to say sorry. For what you went through and me …’ he clears his throat again ‘… being a bit crap.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ Alice feels herself flush as she takes the flowers. She buries her face in the blooms, sniffing to give herself a couple of seconds thinking time. She can’t remember the last time someone gave her flowers. Peter was never much of a romantic; she was lucky to get a card on Valentine’s Day and she’d always receive something functional and lacking in romance on her birthday.

  ‘My … um …’ Simon taps the cellophane wrapper. ‘I wrote my number on the florist’s card. Just in case you changed your mind about talking to the police.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Alice raises her eyes to meet his. ‘You really didn’t have to do this. But it’s very kind of you.’

  He smiles awkwardly, one side of his mouth lifting more than the other. He’s not an attractive man per se – it’s not just his mouth that’s asymmetrical; there’s something about the balance of his face that’s a little bit off – but his grey eyes are soft and warm and his voice is deep and melodic.

  ‘Okay then.’ He shrugs and half-turns to go.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Alice says.

  Simon stops walking and looks back at her, surprise registering on his pale, freckled face.

  ‘About the police,’ she clarifies. ‘I’m going to ring them when I get home.’

  ‘Of course.’ He gives a small sharp nod, his eyes flicking towards the hulking woman who slips between him and Larry and trots out of the shop, arms folded tightly over her bulky coat.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Lynne breathes from behind Alice. ‘She’s nicked something else.’

  Chapter 7

  Gareth

  Gareth is still fizzing with irritation as he parks up outside the house he shares with his mother. How dare William Mackesy scare his mum with a message like that? She suffers from dementia – something Mackesy knows perfectly well – and a comment about Gareth being in danger could easily make her have one of her turns. It wouldn’t just be a momentary upset either; she could be unsettled for days. It was a ridiculous thing to say. Of course he’s at risk from harm. He’s a security guard: there’s always the possibility that someone he apprehends could be carrying a weapon. Hell, just the other day he read about an ASDA guard stabbed in the arm and leg trying to stop a shoplifter.

  Bloody William Mackesy with his weasely little face, dark, shiny ball-bearing eyes and balding comb-over. He’s only met the man twice – once when he accompanied his mum to one of the ‘services’ at the church and once when he returned home from work to find him sitting in his armchair and drinking out of his mug. Gareth’s mother Joan, a book-keeper pre-retirement, had always pooh-poohed religion but she’d been talked into going to the spiritualist church by a friend (some time before she developed dementia). She’d find some comfort, the friend said, in knowing there was an afterlife, even if she didn’t get a message. Gareth tried to talk his mum out of it but somehow found himself going along too.

  It was mostly women in the small, packed room, their coats and bags gathered onto their laps, their eyes fixed on the slight, slim man who stalked back and forth at the front of the room, pausing whenever he received a message ‘from the other side’, one hand pressed to the side of his head, his eyes raised to the polystyrene ceiling tiles. Gareth had braced himself for a miserable experience, for the weight of sadness and loss to pin him to his plastic seat, but there was a palpable excitement in the room. All the attendees were sitting up straight in their chairs, alert and ready, desperate for a message from their loved ones.

  ‘I’ve got a man here,’ William Mackesy announced, his gaze sweeping the audience, ‘and he’s shivering.’

  Sitting beside him, Gareth’s mum gasped softly and Mackesy zoomed in on her like a heat-seeking missile dressed in shiny Littlewoods trousers.

  ‘I’m so cold.’ He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, shivering dramatically. ‘That’s what he’s telling me. I’m so, so cold.’

  Joan nodded, lips pressed tightly together.

  ‘I’m getting a … Marvin …’ Joan gently slumped. ‘No … no, that’s someone else trying to come through. Wait your turn please, Marvin!’ The audience tittered. ‘Now I’m hearing from a Jeffery …’ Gareth felt his mum stiffen at the ‘J’ sound. William Mackesy obviously noticed too. ‘Or is it John … yes, it’s John. A John and he’s …’ he tilted his head to one side ‘… he’s calling for you. He’s asking you to help him. Is that ringing any bells, love?’

  His mother’s croaked, heartbroken ‘yes’ was so painful it was all Gareth could do not to storm up the aisle and punch Mackesy straight in the face. Instead he reached for his mum’s hand, squeezed it and stared at the floor. An excruciating minute or two later, Mackesy finally moved on to someone else.

  ‘Do you think it was really him?’ his mother whispered when they filed out of the room forty-five minutes later. ‘Do you think it was Dad?’

  ‘There’s no way Dad would send you a message via a cock like that,’ Gareth wanted to reply. Instead he said, ‘If it brings you peace, Mum.’

  She gave him a long look. ‘I won’t find peace until I see him again.’

  As Gareth gets out of his car and opens the gate his thoughts switch from William Mackesy to his dad. It’s been twenty years since he went missing whilst hiking on Scafell Pike. A huge search and rescue effort was mounted but his dad was never found. They’d always assumed, and the police had agreed, that his dad had suffered some kind of accident while hiking alone on the mountain, and his body had fallen or rolled somewhere he couldn’t be spotted by the search and rescue helicopter or the on-foot search teams. When the police interviewed Gareth and his mother and they’d asked about his dad’s mental health his mum was quick to dismiss suicide as a possibility. They were a happy family and John was enjoying his retirement. He had a sturdy constitution – physically and mentally – and rarely visited the doctor.

  Gareth agreed. His had been a happy childhood, without the arguments and stony silences that seemed to punctuate so many of his friends’ memories. Life became more difficult when Gareth entered his teens. Almost overnight he seemed to morph from ‘my little man’ to ‘you don’t know what side your bread is buttered’. Looking back now he understands why his dad had such a heavy hand when it came to school and homework – he wanted Gareth to achieve more than he had – but it still stings, remembering his father walking out of the kitchen in silence when Gareth’s O Level results arrived. Years later his dad made no secret of the fact that he was bitterly disappointed with Gareth’s decision to become a security guard. ‘A job for a failed policeman,’ was how he dismissed it. But Gareth wasn’t a failed policeman. He was a man who’d failed to get into the police. Regardless of the distinction, the criticism was still the
re and it hurt.

  He glances up, sensing movement at one of the windows in the house next door. He catches a glimpse of Georgia, the thirteen-year-old who lives with her mum Kath, but the curtain is drawn swiftly across the window before he can raise his hand in hello.

  Gareth sniffs as he steps into the dark hallway and turns on the light. An eggy, carbon smell floods his nostrils. What’s she burnt this time?

  ‘Mum!’ he calls as he runs towards the kitchen, but there’s no sign of his dumpy mother in her sheepskin slippers and Dad’s oversized navy-blue cardigan in the tiny smoke-filled kitchen. There’s a pan holding two incinerated boiled eggs smouldering on a gas ring. Covering his mouth with his sleeve, Gareth grabs a tea towel from the drawer, yanks the billowing saucepan off the cooker top, and drops it into the sink. It fizzes against the cold metal as he throws open the back door and turns on the extractor fan.

  ‘Mum!’ He pushes through the living room door. ‘You know you nearly burnt the house down!’

  His mother, sitting in complete darkness save for the flickering television in the corner of the room, turns and looks at his feet. ‘You’ve still got your work boots on. Take them off; you’re traipsing mud into the fitted carpets.’

  Gareth unlaces his boots and places them by the front door.

  ‘Can’t you smell that?’ he asks as he walks back in and pulls the cord on the standard lamp behind his armchair. ‘That burning smell?’

  His mum wrinkles her nose. ‘Maybe, a little bit. Are next door having a bonfire?’

  ‘No, Mum.’ He pulls the curtains shut. ‘You just incinerated two boiled eggs and nearly burnt the house down.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She moves to stand up but Gareth waves her back down.

  ‘It’s fine. I’ve sorted it. But I think you’re going to have to stop cooking, Mum. This is the third time it’s happened.’

  ‘But I like cooking.’

  ‘Then we’ll cook together.’

  ‘But …’ she glances at the clock ‘… you always get home so late and I was hungry.’

  ‘Didn’t Yvonne make a snack before she left?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Yvonne, your carer. She texted me to say you’d had fruitcake and an apple. And Sally made you a sandwich for lunch.’

  ‘Did she?’ His mum waves a dismissive hand in his direction. ‘Stop talking please. I’m trying to watch EastEnders and you’re spoiling it.’

  As Gareth settles back into his armchair he thinks guiltily of the fifteen minutes he spent parked up in McDonald’s car park enjoying a Veggie Deluxe burger and large fries, washed down with a vanilla milkshake. He’s going to have to give that up and get home earlier to cook supper for his mum. Not that he knows one end of a saucepan from the other. He’s going to have to get some recipe books and teach himself. Or maybe he could ask someone to teach him. He thinks idly of Kath next door and the nice smells that emanate from her kitchen when he’s out in the back garden hanging up his work shirts. He imagines a different life, making dinner with her after work. He’d chop and she’d organise. They’d talk about their days and they’d laugh about the stupid stuff they’d seen or heard and then—

  Out of the corner of his eye he spots something unusual on the side table and snatches it up. It’s a postcard, of a man and woman dancing cheek to cheek. It’s all very 1950s. He’s in an army uniform and she’s got bright red lips and hair that’s smooth and rolled around her face. He flips it over, reaches into his pocket for his reading glasses then peers at the familiar handwriting on the back. There’s his mother’s name and address on the right and five words on the left.

  I love you, Joan.

  John

  x

  He smiles to himself at the simple romantic gesture and places it back on the table. Sally or Yvonne have obviously been through Mum’s memory box with her again, encouraging her to chat about her life. They must have forgotten to pack it all away. He gets up and retrieves the large wooden box from the dresser on the right of the TV then settles back in the armchair and opens the lid.

  ‘Mum,’ he says as he picks up the postcard, ‘how do you fancy scrambled eggs on toast, or maybe—’

  He breaks off, frowning at the stamp in the corner of the postcard. It shows a Christmas scene but there’s something about the image that doesn’t look right. There’s a bright red post box with a bustling snowy shopping scene behind it but it’s not that that catches his eye. It’s the postwoman in a neon orange reflective jacket crouching down to retrieve the mail. A postwoman? In a reflective jacket? It’s far too modern an image for when his mum and dad were courting. He holds the postcard at arm’s length, squinting to make out the date in the blurred mark beside the wavy grey lines that cover the left side of the stamp. He turns to stare at his mother.

  His father went missing twenty years ago and the postmark shows yesterday’s date.

  Chapter 8

  @sammypammy99:

  OMG. Apparently another man went missing on the Harbourside.

  @NotMobiledriver:

  Yeah, I heard. Just disappeared around 3 a.m.

  @sammypammy99:

  Probably drunk, coming out of a club and fell into the water.

  @MotobkeBob:

  Clubbing on a Monday?

  @elbowframe15:

  People do do that you know.

  @MotobkeBob:

  Not if they’re over thirty.

  @elbowframe15:

  Well I’m over thirty and I’ve been known to go clubbing after a work do on a weekday.

  @dopeydons:

  Poor bloke. I’m guessing they’ll be fishing him out of the water in a few days.

  @lisaharte101:

  Fishing him out of the water? Nice. Imagine it was your son or brother who was missing?

  @sammypammy99:

  Actually the first man to go missing hasn’t been found yet.

  @gemzy9:

  OMG. We’re all assuming they fell in the Avon but what if a serial killer’s hiding them in his basement or something?

  @MotobkeBob:

  Yeah, because that’s likely.

  Chapter 9

  Ursula

  Ursula parks up outside number fifteen William Street, flips down the sun visor and scrutinises her refection in the mirror. Her cheeks are flushed, her eye make-up is a little smudged and her bottom lip is chapped but she looks presentable. Presentable-ish. She rakes her fingers through her fringe then sniffs at her armpits and wrinkles her nose. She takes a deodorant can from the glovebox and applies it liberally. 5.58 p.m. Time to meet her new landlord.

  After Charlotte and Matt kicked her out she burned through her deliveries, forgoing chats with her regulars to try and make up time. A visit to the shopping centre was the carrot at the end of her shift and, after she’d delivered her last parcel, she’d driven to the Meads with her shoulders hunched, a pain in her chest and her forearms knotted tight.

  Don’t, said a voice in the back of her head. Don’t do it. It’s what got you in this mess in the first place. But her legs had ignored the frantic pleading of her mind and carried her out of the car park, across the forecourt and through the glass doors of Mirage Fashions. The shop was empty apart from two assistants and the bored-looking security guard. That made it risky, more risky than normal, but she didn’t turn back. Instead she headed towards the back of the shop as adrenaline coursed through her, quickening her reflexes and sweeping her anxiety away. There was no plan, no item she particularly wanted or needed, but the urge to steal crawled from her forearms to her fingertips, like ants under her skin. She’d feel better once she’d taken something, when it was in her hand or under her jacket or shoved deep into her bag; the tension knotting her shoulders would vanish and she’d be able to breathe deeply again. She searched the rows of clothes like a magpie, her heart thumping in her chest. She felt a spark of irritation as the shop manager drew closer, pretending to sort one of the racks.

  Spotting the man with the bunch of flowers, gesturing for he
r to get the shop manager’s attention, had been a godsend. The moment the manager set off across the store, Ursula had whipped the sparkly dress from the hanger and shoved it into her jacket. The security guard hadn’t given her so much as a second look as she’d marched through the glass double doors. Her high had lasted for all of the four or five minutes it took her to leave the Meads, enter the car park and open the door to her van. Then the shame set in and her mind filled with noise: discordant voices shouting over each other, telling her she was fat, a failure, unlovable, unliked and unwanted.

  ‘You’re a freak.’

  ‘What’s the weather like up there, Mount Ursula?’

  ‘You scared the children. You need to get help.’

  ‘You’ll never amount to anything.’

  She shoved the dress under the passenger seat, squishing it up against cutlery she’d stolen from restaurants, plastic pot plants she taken from McDonald’s, a cushion she’d nabbed from a café, make-up she’d swiped from Debenhams and lots and lots of clothes and jewellery with the tags still on. Then she started the engine, pressed play on her CD player and blasted out George Michael, turning the volume louder and louder until her eardrums throbbed.

  Now, she opens the door to the van, walks up the path to the small terraced house in Totterdown and knocks on the door. Unlike the other houses on the narrow, car-lined street there’s no light on beyond the bay window and no television screen flickering from between the gaps in the blinds. Ursula raises her eyes to the first floor. No light on in the bedroom either. She checks her watch. 6.03 p.m.

  She knocks again, then jolts as the door is wrenched open, leaving her curled fist hanging in the air. Even with the step up into the house the man in the doorway is still several inches shorter than her. His gaze flicks from her face to her battered trainers and then back again and she braces herself for the inevitable comment about her height.