by S K Sharp
‘I know. Mum said. But’ – and this is why I came back, because Mrs Clarke was never one to throw things away – ‘I was wondering, did you keep the negatives?’
‘I …’
‘Did the police take them?’
‘Oh.’ A strange look flits across her face. ‘No. I didn’t think …’
‘So you do still have them?’
‘I suppose. Yes, I suppose I do.’
Mentally, I whoop and punch the air. ‘Could you check? And could I see them, please?’
Mrs Clarke lifts herself from the sofa. I remember her so much younger, Kat’s mum, full of energy. She’s not even twenty years older than me and yet she seems as fragile as a shadow. Is this what I have waiting for me, when I grow old? I suppose it is. I thought I was OK with that but now I’m not so sure.
She leaves the lounge and I hear her upstairs, rummaging in Kat’s old bedroom. I’ve been in this room so many times. The earliest I can remember, I must have been five, I think. It does blur a little, going back that far. But, yes, five. It all seemed so big and strange and different and a bit frightening. I remember the smell, how strange it was, not like home at all. It smelled of other people, not my people. Mum gave me a book to read while she and Dad talked to Mrs Clarke. I remember Mum and Dad sitting on the sofa next to each other. I remember how they were constantly in contact, touching each other, little gestures of affection.
Mrs Clarke comes back. She puts a shoebox on the table.
‘It’s all here.’ Inside are dozens of envelopes, dated and labelled. I catch a few words: Kat’s graduation, July 1991. Brittany, summer 1982. I remember that Brittany trip. Kat came back so brown that I thought she must have gone to Egypt or India or something. It was her last holiday before her dad left.
She passes me an envelope labelled Arthur Robbins’ fiftieth, June 1985. There are four packets of negatives inside.
‘Do you mind if I take these? I’ll bring them right back. I just want some copies of my own.’
‘Oh.’ She looks surprised and not at all keen. ‘Can you still do that? Isn’t everything pixels these days?’
‘Boots will do it!’ At least I think they will.
‘I should really give them to the police, don’t you think?’
‘I can do that for you if you like,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to talk to them again anyway.’
She holds the envelope, weighing up a choice I don’t quite understand, and I have a sense that I’m seeing who she really is for the very first time; not Mrs Clarke or Kat’s mum, but a person who existed before Kat or I was ever born. I see the way her nervous eyes cling to the envelope of negatives and wonder how many of those dreams survived. I know she was seventeen when she had Kat. I know Kat never met her real father, Daniel Robbins, and that the man Kat called ‘Dad’ walked out when she was fourteen. I never thought about it when I was young, but it strikes me how they never had any children of their own. I wonder whose choice that was and I want to ask, but it’s not my business, and Mum always taught me it was rude to pry.
I think I understand why she hesitates. The past is important to Chloe Clarke. Maybe more so than the present. Something we have in common.
‘I’ll make a second set for you, too,’ I say. ‘Then you don’t have to worry about getting the others back. And I promise I’ll look after them.’
‘It’s just …’
‘I know. They’re what you have left of people.’
Her anxiety dissolves into gratitude. ‘You’re an angel.’ She hands me the envelope and reaches for her handbag. ‘I’ll pay for them, of course.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ I stuff the envelope into my bag and look at her and smile. ‘I’ll take care of them. I promise.’
Her eyes glisten. ‘Kat says you remember everything. Is that right? Like you have a photograph of every moment in your head?’
‘That’s not a bad way of putting it. Unfortunately including all the things I’d rather forget.’ I see, from the way her eyes dart, that she’s got a few of those moments too. Then her look settles back on the envelope in my hand and I see the question she wants to ask, even before the words come out.
‘Nicky, if you’re carrying around a set of photographs in your head, why do you need mine?’
‘I wasn’t in the Shelley for long that night,’ I say. ‘I remember what I saw but … it’s not enough. I know Declan didn’t kill his dad. I know it, but I need to see more if I’m going to prove it’s the truth. I need another … point of view. Mrs Clarke – Chloe – were you at the Shelley for the whole time that night?’
‘From start to finish, yes.’
‘And you didn’t see anything? Anything that seemed … unusual? About Arty?’
She shakes her head. ‘Only what you already know: that row he had with Susan. I’d think that was quite enough, wouldn’t you? As far as I remember, he left quite soon after. I don’t think I saw him again at all.’
‘Mum said he was having an affair.’ I watch closely, but Chloe Clarke doesn’t bat an eyelid.
‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘I need to ask you about … something else. About Mum and Dave. Was there something going on between them back then?’
Her guard snaps up. She looks away, which seems an answer all on its own. I’m about to thank her for the tea and leave, but then she looks back at me.
‘I don’t … think so.’
Her words are slow and careful. I wait. Sometimes a silence is all you need.
‘Nicola, you did know that David and your mother were together before your dad came on the scene?’
I blink. ‘No!’ Not just didn’t know; I never had the first suspicion.
‘She told me the story, once. Your dad was David’s friend, and he whisked Susan off her feet and that was that, but … They were always close, all three of them, so I suppose I could be wrong, but no, I don’t think so.’ She licks her lips. ‘I know things were tense between your mum and dad that summer. Mr Robbins disappearing like that, it … rubbed everyone up the wrong way, but honestly? If something had happened between your mum and David, I think I’d know.’ She smiles and I see a hint of the mischief I remember: the Mrs Clarke of thirty-five years ago. ‘Susan was always far too clever to give anything away, but David … He was never very good at keeping secrets, bless him.’
Mr Robbins? Not Arty? It seems oddly formal between two people having an affair.
‘I … I need to ask you something else. Something … I’m sorry. It’s a bit rude of me, really.’ But I saw Arty Robbins sneaking out of Kat’s mum’s house. I saw it and I heard what he said. Is it possible to be in love with a monster and not see him for what he is? Maybe it is. They say love makes you blind, after all. ‘Are you sure you didn’t see Arty Robbins again that night – after the thing with Mum?’
Chloe shakes her head. ‘After I took that picture of him with Vincent? No. At least, if I did, I don’t remember.’
‘Didn’t it seem strange that he’d just leave? Without saying anything to you?’
‘Why would he say anything to me?’
‘Weren’t you and Arty Robbins …?’ I leave the question hanging.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Back then, I sort of thought … you and Dec’s dad were – well, I thought there was something going on between you. If you know what I mean.’
She gawps at me. From the shock on her face, I might as well have called her a Nazi. ‘Good heavens! Where on earth did you get that idea?’
But why else was he sneaking around the back of her house? I heard him. I saw him.
‘You didn’t see him the night before the party?’
‘Well, I suppose he might have come into the Shelley.’
‘Not at the Shelley. Here.’
‘Here?’ Mrs Clarke raises her eyebrows so high they almost fall off her head. ‘Love, it was a long time ago and I don’t really remember, but you’re talking about a Saturday night, so I’m sure I would have been working. We
had the party to get ready for, as well as the regular crowd.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Really.’
Mrs Clarke either doesn’t hear or doesn’t listen. She gets up and leaves the lounge, and I hear her creak up the stairs back into Kat’s old room. I feel stupid for bringing up this poor woman’s past. I wanted to ask about Mum and Dave, about Declan, about the photos, that’s all.
There they are, right in front of me. Another set of photographs. Nicky and Dec wedding. I should know better but I can’t help myself. I take the packet and open it and look inside. There are no pictures, only the negatives, but it doesn’t make any difference: she gave the pictures to Declan afterwards and we looked through them together, so now they’re all in my head. I see him. I see us. We look so radiant. So young and so happy—
Mrs Clarke comes back with another dusty shoebox. She opens it and pulls out an old diary from 1985. For all I know, Arty Robbins treated her as badly as he treated everyone else; but I see from her face that she’s determined to prove her memory is as good as mine.
‘I kept diaries after Stephen walked out so I didn’t end up promising to do an early shift when it was parents’ evening or a school play, or things like that. It was so complicated, suddenly doing everything on my own. There you go.’ She thrusts the diary at me, open at the page for Saturday 8th June.
Shelley 3–12. Party prep!
‘I had a shift at the Shelley from three in the afternoon until midnight.’
I scan the page. She was at the Shelley every night that week except the Tuesday.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘My mistake.’ I should leave this. It’s not why I’m here. Maybe she had a last-minute change of shifts that night, or maybe she skipped out for a bit. It’s not exactly far from here to the Shelley. But … why would she hide it, after all these years?
Chloe puts the diary down and takes my empty teacup. ‘Do you want another one?’
‘Yes … yes, please.’
She goes and then calls out from the kitchen, ‘I know you girls all thought I was some sort of party animal, but really? Me and Arthur Robbins? One Robbins was quite enough, thank you, and Arty was a married man! And Vincent … can you imagine? The Shelley was all I had, and I’d spent quite enough time living off benefits and the kindness of strangers. I didn’t much like Arty, to be honest. I suppose I shouldn’t say that, but after the way his brother never even acknowledged that Kat was his daughter … Poor Vincent. He wasn’t so bad, not really. I think it broke him when Arty disappeared.’
But I know I heard Arthur Robbins talking to someone at the back door of this house on the Saturday night before the party. I know I saw him from the bathroom window the week before, and the week before that, coming up from the alley, all furtive and in a hurry. I know I heard someone let him in. I remember all these things with the same perfect clarity as I remember everything in between and everything since.
The truth hits me like a thunderclap.
I skim through Chloe Clarke’s diary. Three visits. Three dates. And on all three of them, Kat’s mum’s diary says she was working. But if it wasn’t Kat’s mum letting Arty in …
Kat.
Jesus Christ! Kat and Arty Robbins.
I don’t wait for Chloe Clarke to come back. I can’t. I run outside and stab a number into my phone, hopping from one foot to the other until a voice at the other end picks up.
‘Hello?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
13
Monday 10th June 1985
I sit through assembly, impatient for the day to finish. My morning exam is geography and so I stare at the page, trying to make myself think about the water cycle and mountains and rivers and the effects of glaciation, but all I can think about is seeing Dec after school and whether I’m the only girl in my year who isn’t a virgin or whether I’m the last to lose it. I know it’s all completely stupid even as I’m thinking it, but that doesn’t stop it from happening. Ann Cox reckons she’s done it with Mark Clatcher in the second-year sixth, which is rubbish, but Alice Cook and Tracy Watson have been going steady with boys from the sixth form for months; and after this morning, I’m pretty sure that Kat’s already done it, too.
Am I the last? I can’t be, but who even cares. And oh my God, Nicky Walker, concentrate!
I do the question on map-reading, which is easy because all you have to do is remember what the symbols mean. Then straight back to last night with Dec, and then this morning with Mum in the kitchen; and then back to the policeman at our house, and what on earth happened at the Shelley last night?
‘Fifteen minutes.’ Mr Houghton prowls between the desks like a hungry panther, scowling eyes roving for people with tiny secret diagrams of the nitrogen cycle drawn on the palm of their hands like they’re members of some secret geography society, even though that would be about the lamest secret society ever. Thinking about last night somehow spirals into a fantasy of Dec coming to live with us, which is completely preposterous because the only way that would ever happen is if Mum got hit by a bus and Dad spontaneously exploded …
A glance at the paper in front of me reminds me that the only people I ought to be thinking about are the children Bob Geldof is trying to save with his Band Aid thing, all over the news and dying of starvation because of desertification; and that I’ll be the one who’s dead if I don’t get at least a B in this exam. Or grounded, which is as close to dead as makes no difference. I draw a labelled diagram of the water cycle exactly as Mrs Spare drew it on the blackboard eight months ago. I don’t have to think about it really; the diagram is there in my head like I’m back in the classroom, complete with its soundtrack of Giles Friedrich, the biggest jerk in our year, whispering to Gordon Wills, who back then I quite fancied. I can only make out half of what they’re saying but I hear Katie Spencer’s name, which makes it immediately far more interesting than whatever Mrs Spare has to offer about the formation of clouds.
‘You have five minutes.’
I force myself to focus and write out Mrs Spare’s summary of the effects of desertification from memory, word-for-word, and wonder if anyone will notice. Probably not. I suppose if anyone thinks I cheated then I’ll just do it again, right there in front of them, and prove that I wasn’t.
The buzzer sounds. Mr Houghton collects our papers. After lunch is double history, aka double revision, aka double staring into space. I’m thinking of Dec, and I have that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of excitement and trepidation and a sort of hunger – the one that comes when you’re nerving yourself for something really scary. It feels like the time Kat and I went up onto the top diving board at the swimming pool because Kat’s friend Liz, who can do somersaults and stuff and still hit the water straight, said it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked; so we went up and discovered that Liz was right, it wasn’t as bad, it was actually a lot, lot worse and from the top it looked like we were about a mile above the water. That’s the feeling I have, thinking about seeing Dec after school.
I head right out when the bell goes, skipping detention. I’ll go and see Mr Wallace first thing tomorrow morning and be all contrite, and I’ll get away with it because I’m one of the ‘good’ girls who does well in her exams. I’ll get an extra detention but I don’t mind. Dec’s waiting for me. His face breaks into a huge grin as soon as he sees me and, the next thing I know, I’m kissing him. I hear whistles and hoots and I know everyone is staring and I don’t care …
‘I love you, Nicky Walker,’ he says when we come up for air.
I drink him in like he’s a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s day. I can’t stop thinking about last night. I feel unstoppable, like I can do anything.
Over his shoulder, I see Kat coming towards me.
‘You can walk with us if you like,’ I say as she arrives, disentangling myself from Dec.
She shakes her head and nudges me. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ and then she pokes Dec gently in the ribs. ‘And, Dec, if you’re going to take her home again,
better check under the bed first, next time.’
She heads away and we watch her go, too shocked to speak.
‘You bloody told her!’ Dec’s all horror on the surface but I feel something else underneath. Pride, is it? Anticipation? Or is it straight-up lust? I think it’s all of them, and I love him so much I might burst.
We cross the park and I tell him about the policeman in the lounge when I got home, and he tells me how he and his mum stayed at the Shelley last night.
‘Sort of wish I’d stayed at home,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what happened last night after we left but something did. Some big bust-up. You saw what Dad was like. Anyway, that policeman of yours was at the Shelley, too. Apparently. I mean, he was gone before I got back there, but that’s what I heard. Something about a fight, I think. Mum was a mess.’ He takes a deep breath and then lets out a long, heavy sigh. ‘You see why I just want to get away from this place?’
After what I saw last night, he really doesn’t need to say more. I remember the bruise on his mum’s face when I knocked on the door yesterday and she hadn’t had time to hide it under her make-up. And it’s hard not to tell Dec what I know, but I made a promise to Kat last night never to say a word about Arty Robbins and Kat’s mum.
‘Was she …? Did he …?’
‘Did he hit her again? Is that what you mean?’ Dec turns to look me squarely in the face and I can’t help staring at his black eye and his swollen nose and the bruises on his cheek and his busted lip. ‘No.’ He shrugs. ‘Got it out of his system on me this time.’
I shiver. What I saw last night – I would never have imagined it.
‘What … what’s going to happen now?’ What’s going to happen to us is what I mean. Is Dec going to move away, like he said?
‘Don’t know. Dad didn’t come home last night. Got the house to ourselves, if we want it.’ He smiles, only half serious.
‘What if your dad comes back while we’re there?’
‘Your place then?’
I make a strangled-badger noise. I should probably tell him how Mum has guessed about us having sex, so there’s a good chance she’s hired an international hit man or something. ‘Best not. Mum went mental this morning about me getting back so late. Also, she thinks I’m in detention.’