by A K Reynolds
My mother’s face reddened. ‘You bloody what?’ she asked, advancing on me with her hand raised. I prepared myself for a crack which would send me flying, the mother of all cracks.
‘Nothing,’ I said, although I knew it was too late. The cat was well and truly out of the bag – and it wasn’t any tame domestic kitty, it was a snarling, man-eating brute.
‘You accused my brother of fathering your child. That wasn’t nothing.’
‘He raped me,’ I said.
Then I watched as she deflated like a balloon, and wished I’d let her just take my money without saying anything. Her face was no longer red. With hunched shoulders she silently sloped off downstairs, leaving me to ponder on what would happen next. Probably she would speak to my dad, there’d be ructions – to put it mildly – with her brother, she’d have a nervous breakdown, and life would never be the same again.
I sat on my bed with my head in my hands. My stomach was churning so much I felt as if my entire body might rotate with it.
Later when I went downstairs, my mother was in the kitchen cooking one of her ghastly stews, and there was steam everywhere. Joshua was in his carry-cot next to the kitchen table, gurgling happily. I picked him up right in front of her, something I wouldn’t have dared to do an hour before.
She looked at me and I stared her right in the eye, daring her to say something. After a few seconds she turned her attentions to a bubbling pan on the hob, stirring the contents with a wooden spoon. I carried Joshua to the front room.
‘You’re my son, not my brother, Josh,’ I told him. ‘It’s all out in the open now.’
But it wasn’t. The pretence had to continue to the outside world, and even to Josh. We couldn’t expect a young boy to keep our dark secret. I made a promise to myself that one day, when he was old enough, I’d tell him everything.
When I went to my bedroom to read, I heard my mum on the telephone so I sneaked downstairs to eavesdrop.
‘How could you?’ she was asking. ‘How could you?’
My uncle was obviously on the other end of the line, and I got the impression he was denying everything but my mother accepted my version of events. I peeped round the door just in time to see her hang up. Tears were coursing down her flabby cheeks. She wiped them with her hands and retreated to the kitchen, while I returned to my bedroom.
My dad came home an hour later and I heard raised voices which I found unsettling. My parents were in the kitchen out of earshot so I sneaked downstairs to eavesdrop, but by the time I got close enough to hear them, they’d stopped talking. Likely they were whispering to prevent me from overhearing. With a fast-beating heart I went back upstairs.
In the evening we ate together as normal, even though our world had suffered a massive perturbation. The only difference to usual was that me and my mother were both in poor appetite. When my dad finished eating he said, ‘I’m going out.’
My mum turned down the corners of her mouth and began clearing away the dishes. I helped her. My dad returned much later. We never saw or heard from my uncle again.
Later I went into the bathroom, bolted the door, and took off all my clothes. Then I looked at myself in the mirror, studying every tiny detail of what made me uniquely me.
My hair was dark brown, unstylish, and a bit lank, if truth be told. I took a bobble from my pocket and tied it up into a rough bun, with straggly bits sticking out. It made the bony nature of my face more apparent. I had cheekbones – just – and was pretty, apart from having a nose which was too big and pointy. My lips just about passed muster, although they could’ve been fuller and more luscious. My chin was small and childlike.
My breasts were pert, but not as big as I’d have liked them to have been. Waist and stomach: still suffering the effects of having carried a baby, but almost back to normal. Hips: probably too boyish and narrow. Legs: definitely good. Feet: a size too big, but okay in the right shoes.
Why was I conducting this audit? It was because something had changed, and I wanted to know if it was obvious to all, or if only I would know about it.
I faced the mirror, then turned three-quarters-on, and finally side-on, examining my profile via the corner of my eye.
I fully expected to see something leap out at me which said: this is a changed woman. But nothing did. I sighed and put my clothes back on, then went outside with my mobile, so there would be no chance of anyone overhearing me, and rang Tony.
‘Have you got a minute?’ I said.
‘For you, always.’
‘I want to tell you something. I think I can do it now.’
There was a tangible silence which must’ve lasted five seconds, or even ten. Then he said, ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you get it? Do I have to spell it out for you?’ I asked, unable to supress the surprise in my voice. I’d assumed that even though my change wasn’t visible, it would somehow be manifest in my tone of voice and demeanour.
‘Sorry, I don’t get it. What’re you on about?’
‘I think I’m ready to have sex with you.’
There was another tangible silence. Then he said, ‘Sorry about the silence. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Then don’t say anything.’
‘Okay, great, I’m just surprised, that’s all.’
‘Meet you tomorrow in the park after school?’
‘Sure.’
The next day Tony was sitting on a swing waiting for me.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the house to myself again.’
‘And?’
‘And I could show you a good time.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ I said, laughing.
He got off the swing and we took one of the tarmac paths which led through the trees to the exit nearest his home.
‘Cigarette?’ he asked.
‘It would be rude not to.’
He took a pack of Embassy Regal from his pocket and handed me one, putting a second between his lips. We stopped and he took a pack of Swan Vestas matches from his other pocket and lit them both. Then we casually smoked as we sauntered along the path.
When our cigarettes were finished we made sure to put them out properly, and threw them in a bin at the side of the path. After that, it was as if we both had ESP, and both of us knew what the other was thinking. He lowered his face to mine and we kissed, and for a few moments we were all that mattered to each other. We were caught in a spell in which the world beyond us had ceased to exist.
The spell was broken by the sound of a hostile voice.
‘There he is, and look who he’s with.’
Then I felt myself being manhandled and my head exploded with a million painful stars, and I was on the ground, on my hands and knees, staring down at the surface of the tarmac path. None of it made any sense. I raised my head and saw five young men with two young women.
Lying at their feet was Tony, who wasn’t moving. My instincts told me he was well and truly dead. I realised then I was on my hands and knees because I’d been hit on the head.
I looked closely at the ones who’d done it, the people responsible.
They were: Seth Delaney, Charlie Duggan, Mike Stone, Stuart Foss, Danny Scott, Kylie Wood, and Jasmine Black.
8
Here and Now
When I finished showering I selected a clean outfit for the day. I was able to choose from virtually every item I owned, thanks to my cleaning frenzy. I selected a maroon sweater and mid-blue stonewashed jeans with a tear at both knees which the manufacturer had inserted in the interests of fashion.
Once dressed, I headed for the kitchen, grabbed a couple of paracetamol, and rinsed them down with a glass of water. Afterwards I glanced at the calendar: it was Wednesday, April 4, 2018.
I made a coffee, strong and black, no sugar, went to the front room, and switched on the TV. My stomach was churning with the panic all alcoholics feel when they’re not liquored up to the eyeballs, and on top of that was the p
anic which comes of being a hit-and-run driver, and on top of that was the additional panic which comes of being part of a cover-up of a murder that took place a long time ago, and knowing someone is out to get you because of it.
That’s a pretty stiff cocktail of panic, and it took everything I had to not head straight back to the kitchen, grab a bottle of wine, open it, and demolish it in record time. Maybe the fact I could resist it – if only for a while – was a sign I wasn’t an alcoholic after all. I hoped so.
My thoughts were interrupted by my mobile phone. As I picked up, the thought occurred to me that I ought to change the noise it made, possibly to something more funereal. I glanced at the screen before answering. It was Kylie – not the most welcome person in my life. It was only 9am Why would she be calling me so early?
‘Hi, Kylie,’ I said with what little enthusiasm I could muster.
‘Jaz, have you heard the news?’ She sounded concerned, scared even.
‘What news?’
‘Stuart’s dead.’
I already knew this. Hearing it again wasn’t as painful as receiving the information the first time around – but it still made me shudder.
‘That’s awful, Kylie.’
‘I need to see you.’
This was odd. We never saw each other, except occasionally during the run up to a school reunion. As I didn’t feel any need to see her, I prevaricated. ‘Can’t you tell me what you want to say over the telephone?’
‘I’d rather do it in person.’
My heart sank. While my relations with Kylie weren’t anything like as bad as those with Seth, they hadn’t been good in a long while. She wasn’t someone I relished spending time with.
‘When?’
‘Twelve noon at TNQ.’
I was still groggy from my night’s drinking. There was no telling how long it’d take my system to get shot of the alcohol I’d poured into it. I must’ve had a lot – waking up with Jake next to me was proof enough of that. I couldn’t risk driving. I’d have to take a train to TNQ.
‘Okay,’ I said reluctantly, ‘I’ll see you there.’
When I got to TNQ Kylie was already ensconced at a table for two in a dark corner. She looked sad, almost tearful.
It suddenly occurred to me that Seth might be using Kylie to wipe out the rest of us. They’d always been close, and she’d done some of his dirty work for him, like organising the reunions and making sure the rest of us showed up. I made a mental note to keep my eyes on my food and drink, and on Kylie herself. Whatever else she was going to do today, she wasn’t going to poison me.
‘Very intimate,’ I said as I sat opposite her. She gave me a rueful grin, more of an exposure of her pristine teeth than anything else.
‘Isn’t it? Let’s get ordered.’
She looked as if she was bursting to tell me something. I was tempted to ask her what, but decided instead to let her get to it in her own good time.
She waved her arm to attract the attention of a waitress who came over with a notepad and pen and took our orders. Kylie scanned the menu for a minute, struggling to make up her mind. ‘I’m not really hungry today,’ she said, then added: ‘I’ll just have a small salad, please, the smallest you’ve got. And a coffee, an Americano.’
This meant for once I’d be eating a more expensive meal than her.
‘Bad news about Stuart,’ I said. I couldn’t think of anything more original. Death is like that. It leaves you with little scope for originality and you end up falling back on tired clichés like the old ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ – which wasn’t really appropriate in our situation, though we were both truly sorry. It’s just that we were sorry for ourselves rather more than for Stuart.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she said.
In an attempt to show concern, even though I’d never really liked Stuart, not since the business with Charlotte, anyway, I said, ‘How did he die?’
She got this look on her face I’d never seen before, sort of like a rabbit trapped in the headlights. ‘They’re saying it’s a drug overdose.’
That struck me as eminently possible. Stuart, I knew, had worked for Seth. Seth had been an entrepreneur since school – and his line of work wasn’t one you’d want your son or daughter to enter. He dealt in drugs. Few people at St Benedict’s had known this because he was discreet about it, and he had a policy he adhered to quite strictly.
‘Never shit on your own doorstep,’ he used to say.
After leaving school he continued in the same line of work but he wasn’t your conventional gangster-style back-street drug overlord. He dressed like a stockbroker and dealt strictly with professionals and even a few low-end celebs. By going upmarket he avoided, for the most part, the turf wars gangster-types have to contend with. Mind you, if anyone trod on his toes, they didn’t do it twice.
Because of his work for Seth, Stuart would’ve had access to every recreational drug going, at least those that bankers and the like use. It was possible he’d developed a habit which had killed him.
However, I was willing to bet someone had poisoned him. I wondered whether Kylie had come to the same conclusion. I didn’t want to influence her views, so I avoided putting it to her directly. ‘Well, he did deal in drugs,’ I said, ‘so it’s none too surprising he died of them.’
She shook her head, her golden hair shimmering as it caught a beam of light shafting in from a distant window. ‘He might’ve been a dealer, but he didn’t take anything. He was clean. Stuart didn’t even drink much.’
I couldn’t argue with that. I hardly knew the guy. I only ever spoke to him at the reunions. It was fully eighteen years since I’d last had a meaningful conversation with him. Kylie knew him far better than I did.
‘What are you saying, Kylie?’
I knew exactly what she was saying. It was what, deep down, I’d known, but hadn’t wanted to believe.
‘I’m saying he wouldn’t have overdosed himself. He didn’t do drugs, and even if he had done, he wasn’t that stupid.’ My stomach lurched. I knew what was coming. ‘Someone killed him.’
‘Probably one of Seth’s business rivals,’ I said.
It was the sort of remark which would normally have drawn denials from her. Before today, she would never have admitted Seth was anything other than a respectable businessman, and the people who worked for him were business associates. But now Stuart was dead, she didn’t try to put a gloss on what he did.
‘Sometimes I think so,’ she replied. ‘But other times I think: first Charlie, then Stuart. Two members of our old gang – it can’t be coincidence. How long will it be before they come for you and me and the rest of us?’
The answer was all too obvious.
‘It’s already happening,’ I said softly.
Her eyes widened just as our food arrived. The waitress probably assumed from her big eyes that Kylie was impressed by what she saw on her plate. At any rate she looked pleased, perhaps anticipating a generous tip, and went smiling to the next table.
‘What do you mean?’ Kylie asked, picking at her salad without much real appetite.
‘I mean they’ve sent me a sign they’re out to get me – whoever they are. A baseball bat. I take it you haven’t had one yet.’
She opened her bag and took an e-cigarette from it, put it between her lips with shaking fingers, then, remembering e-smoking wasn’t allowed in TNQ, returned it to her bag and picked at her food again.
‘No, I haven’t. A baseball bat. That’s always been Seth’s trademark.’ She was being unusually frank with me.
‘Why would his enemies target us? They can’t think we’re part of his operation, surely?’ I asked.
I could practically see the blood draining from her face. ‘I am,’ she said. Then she corrected herself. ‘I was part of Seth’s business. I used my interior design work to get contacts for him.’
She was being honest for once about helping Seth – and she’d just let me know she wasn’t helping him any longer. They’d
always been so close. I wondered what had come between them, and whether she was ready to consider what to me seemed obvious – it could all be Seth’s doing. He could be behind it, orchestrating the murder of everyone who’d been mixed up in things to make damn sure no-one would ever grass him up.
‘But why Charlie and Stuart, and why me?’ I asked, setting it up so she could work through the logic of it and arrive at the same conclusion I was fast coming to, namely, the love of her life was the culprit.
She didn’t answer, she just looked pensive, so I tucked into my duck liver parfait. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew my erratic habits had made me unhealthy, and I ought to try to eat better.
‘There’s something I have to – have to – tell you,’ she said, and as the words left her mouth she burst into tears. I’d only ever seen her like that twice before, both times at school. The first time was when she thought Seth was messing her about, and the second time was when he got badly hurt and had a spell in hospital.
‘What do you have to tell me, Kylie?’ I asked gently.
By then she’d taken a pack of tissues from her handbag and was loudly blowing her nose and wiping her face, which was pink and blotchy, like the face of a small child that’s just cried its heart out.
‘I wanted to tell you this before but I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t risk getting the words out because I knew it’d choke me up.’ She sounded so upset that I felt uneasy about the unknown revelation she was going to spring on me.
She lowered the tissue. ‘It’s Seth,’ she said. ‘He’s dead.’
With that she burst into a fresh bout of sobbing and there was no consoling her for at least the next ten minutes.
While she cried herself out I tried to come to terms with this latest news. It had shocked me to the core. If there was one person I would’ve said was un-killable, it would have been Seth. But now he was dead, which meant he couldn’t be responsible for the murders. So who was, and what was the motive?
Was it, as I’d theorised, a business rival who was in the process of retiring Seth and his team from their enterprise? Had I got caught in the crossfire?