In The Dark

by Vikki Patis

  ‘She rang you?’ I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice. ‘Why?’

  ‘She wants us to drop the case.’

  I stare at her as the words sink in. ‘Drop it? But surely… You’re not going to, are you?’

  PC Willis sighs. ‘There’s very little to go on. We haven’t identified where the photo originated from, and Izzy won’t tell us who she sent it to.’

  ‘But surely you can see who has shared it? It’s everywhere.’

  ‘The trouble with these things is that they spread far and wide, quickly, like wildfire, and it’s difficult to pin anything down. Plus,’ she says, a wariness entering her eyes, ‘the only person we know for certain shared it is Izzy herself.’

  I feel my jaw clench at her words. ‘She shared a photo of herself.’

  ‘A minor.’ PC Willis sighs again. ‘I know, believe me. I know how difficult this is. But the fact is that anyone sharing graphic images of a minor has broken the law, even if the image is of themselves.’

  ‘This isn’t fair!’ I shout, my anger suddenly outweighing the need to be polite. ‘They are still harassing her, even though she’s moved away. Why won’t you do something?’

  ‘Izzy has explicitly asked me to drop it,’ she says, and I want to rip my daughter’s name from her mouth. She fixes me with her gaze. ‘I understand how you must be feeling, I do, but if the victim does not support police action, and there is insufficient evidence to identify those responsible, my hands are tied.’

  ‘What about her drink being spiked a few months ago, at Sian’s party?’ I demand. ‘Have you even spoken to her?’

  ‘We have, but Sian denied any involvement, and Izzy didn’t report it herself.’

  ‘Of course she bloody denied it! Who would admit to spiking someone else’s drink?’

  ‘There was no evidence to suggest that Izzy was spiked,’ PC Willis says calmly. ‘And it is entirely separate to this investigation.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ I run my hand through my hair, my nails digging into my scalp. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. My daughter is spiked, bullied, harassed, and then a nude photo of her is circulated around social media and you’re telling me there’s nothing you can do?’

  ‘Caitlyn,’ she says, her voice soft. ‘It is Izzy’s decision not to proceed. There must be a reason for that.’

  ‘She’s a fifteen-year-old girl! Of course she doesn’t want to proceed. She wants to be liked, like every other teenager.’ I drop my arms, trying to control my breathing. ‘She tried to kill herself.’ The words catch in my throat, my eyes burning with tears. ‘She slit her wrists and took an overdose because she couldn’t stand it anymore.’

  ‘I know.’ I am surprised by the touch of PC Willis’s hand on my arm. She gives a sympathetic smile. ‘Believe me, I know. I was a teenager more recently than you were. I remember what it was like. Kids can be cruel. But Izzy will find a way through.’

  I tear my arm out of her grip, hot tears spilling down my cheeks. ‘How do you know that?’ I hiss. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  PC Willis stands, her eyes still fixed on mine. ‘Because if I can do it, anyone can.’

  40

  Liv

  I open the front door, breathing heavily as I carry the shopping bags into the house. I am soaked from the sudden downpour that started just as I reached the top of the hill, and the plastic handles are cutting into my fingers. The first thing I notice is a doll lying at the bottom of the stairs, Paige’s favourite with the long blonde plaits. And then I hear it, the strike of flesh against flesh.

  I drop the bags and shove open the living room door, my heart beating wildly in my chest. Harry is gripping Paige’s arm with one hand, his other raised, ready to come down on her bare legs. Her face is streaked with tears, her mouth open in a silent sob. And then the red mist descends, and I am across the room in an instant, my arms around my daughter, pulling her away, pushing her behind me. Harry’s fury is like a beast rising up before me, but mine is just as fierce, and for the first time since we’ve been married, I hit him first. I put all of my strength into it and he stumbles back, surprised. His foot catches on something – a toy train left out of its box – and then he is falling, his head cracking against the mantelpiece. And then he is silent, blood pooling across the floor.

  I wake, gasping for breath. My forehead is slick with sweat, my mouth parched. I lean over and grab the glass of water from the bedside table, guzzle it down as I wait for my heart to stop pounding. I haven’t dreamed of the day Harry died in years.

  Paige was seven when I decided enough was enough. He had been hitting me since the day we married. After the wedding, he took me back to our new home, the house I have never left, and accused me of flirting with his best man during the reception. From that day I lived in fear, the life I pictured lying in tatters each time he grabbed me, his face contorted with rage. Until I walked in on him hitting Paige, and I saw red.

  The early days of our marriage sound like something from the 1950s, when the men went out to work and the women had fewer opportunities to be anything more than a wife and mother. I married Harry in the spring of 1987, when a woman was prime minister, the first black woman was elected as an MP, and Women’s Lib had been fighting against inequality in the workplace and at home. But I didn’t really know anything about that. I knew that my teachers had pushed me towards home economics and away from chemistry. I knew that the boys could pinch bums and lift skirts, and the girls would be hauled in front of the headmaster to explain why they had been distracting their male classmates. I knew that my mother had never pursued a career, and though her sister went to university and became a psychology lecturer, the only time her name was mentioned was when they wanted to discuss whether or not she was a lesbian. I knew that if a nice young man was interested in me, I should be grateful and look forward to the life he could give me, not the life I could build for myself. And so I was never taught that I could have it all, only that this, marriage and children and baking and cleaning and a bottle of gin hidden behind the washing powder, was all I could have.

  I stayed at home, looking after my daughter, making sure there was a healthy meal on the table by the time my husband got home from work. The house was tastefully decorated and kept clean and tidy. I would serve tea to visitors in the china set I found in a charity shop, with the teapot that had a tiny fracture beneath the handle. I swept the front porch and kept the hedges trimmed and planted beautiful flowers that would attract the bees to visit. I took the old bird bath from my childhood garden, which had been all but hidden beneath the overgrown shrubbery, vines twisting around the legs, and placed it beneath a tree at the end of our small garden. I saved my crusts and threw them out onto the grass, and watched the visiting birds from the patio, a cup of tea warming my fingers. I took care of my appearance, using minimal make-up and making sure my clothes were always ironed and neat. This was my life, from the age of sixteen, and I had never known any different.

  Harry and I were married on a bright morning in late February. It was a Wednesday, because it was cheaper during the week than at the weekend, and the weather was unseasonably warm. My shoes pinched my feet, and sweat began to gather beneath my armpits as we neared the building which I had walked past a thousand times on my way to and from town. Harry was waiting for me at the front of the room, grinning at his best man beside him. His parents were in the front row, his mother in a stylish navy dress that stopped mid-calf, his father in a smart suit. ‘You’d think this was a funeral, not a wedding,’ Mum whispered too loudly, and I closed my eyes, hoping the music had drowned her out.

  It was, I suppose, a lovely day. I sometimes look back at the photo albums, grimacing at Mum’s garish red dress which had never seen an iron, smiling at my one and only bridesmaid’s perm. Back then, I didn’t see the darkness in Harry’s eyes. It wasn’t until later that I started to recognise it in those wedding photos, the shadow lurking behind his loving gaze. Back then, I was a glowing bride, thr
ee months pregnant and utterly in love.

  It didn’t take long for the bubble to burst.

  I remember again that time I turned up on my mother’s doorstep, my left eye sunken and bruised, my ribs aching, Paige screaming, screaming, as if she could feel my pain every time her father hit me.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I sobbed, tears running down my face. ‘She doesn’t want to sleep. She doesn’t want to eat. She only wants to cry.’

  ‘Where’s Harry?’ Mum asked, lighting a cigarette and leaning against the door frame. She glanced at her granddaughter, who was still bawling, before looking at me. She didn’t invite us in, and I didn’t answer her question. I went home. I went home to a bunch of flowers sitting in the sink, a Sorry, H x scrawled on the card. And I did the only thing I could do. I filled a vase with water and carefully arranged the flowers, placing them in the middle of the dining table so Harry would see them when he got home, and would know that he was forgiven. Until the next time.

  Mum never brought it up again, not when Harry’s fist left purple bruises on my arms and stomach, not when he knocked out one of my teeth, not when he broke my wrist. My mother could never be accused of being soft-hearted. Despite never preparing me for anything else, she had warned me against this marriage, had even suggested we ‘deal with’ the pregnancy so I could ‘have a proper life’. But at the time, I didn’t know there was any alternative. I was following in her footsteps, being a wife and mother when I was still a child myself, and now I understand her disappointment that I hadn’t chosen a different path. She had been seventeen when she married my father, and they’d experienced several miscarriages before I came along, by which point my mother had almost given up. She is one of those people who should never have had children, who would have been happier without them, without the lifelong responsibility and burden. Now it is she who is the burden, and here I am taking responsibility for her, forgiving her cruel words, desperate for the love and approval that I fear will never come.

  You are a fool, Liv, I think as I close my eyes, hoping for sleep that will not come. A stupid, old fool.

  I hear floorboards creaking, the sound of Seb’s door opening, and I hold my breath, my eyes flying open. The clock on the bedside table reads 02:41. I listen to him creep down the stairs, picture him pausing to slip on his shoes, listening for any sign that I am awake, before the door closes gently behind him.

  Where is he going at this hour? I do not want to know. I do not want to think of what he might be doing, and how I am losing him. Instead I picture the mantelpiece in the living room, the bloodstain covered up by a fox statue pinched from my mother’s garden. Tim from down the road ripped it out for me a few years ago, after I got his daughter a Saturday job at the petrol station. He plastered and painted the wall, and that was that. The final memory of Harry, gone.

  Instead of worrying about Seb, I think of those days after my husband died, when it was just Paige and me. I started working at the petrol station while Paige was at school and, although money was tight, we had never been particularly well off, even with Harry working. We received a small payout from his firm after his death and with my wages, we managed well enough. I would make us ‘eggy soldiers’ every Sunday, and then we would go for a walk, rain or shine. I couldn’t drive back then, so we stayed close, wandering around Panshanger or down to Hartham, following the river into town or even as far as Ware, a picnic packed into my bag. Sometimes she would swim in the pool which no longer exists, or we would feed the ducks along the river with the crusts we’d saved over the week. Sundays were our special days, with no school, no work, no outside distractions. And I lived for them. My daughter was my world, and with Harry gone, I could be the mother I’d always wanted to be.

  It is impossible for me to think of Paige without thinking of how she died. I suppose I am not so unlike Brad after all, I realise with a jolt. Who am I to keep him from his son? Who am I to blame him for Seb going down the wrong path? It was me who started it. The sins of the mother, this time.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Paige told the police officers who came later, after Harry’s body had been taken away. ‘Daddy tripped over my train and fell.’

  And that’s how I got away with it.

  41

  Seb

  The night air is surprisingly warm as Seb walks. A fingernail moon hangs in the sky, wisps of grey clouds passing over an inky backdrop studded with bright stars. His footsteps beat a tattoo against the pavement, one he cannot hear over the music in his ears. It is his father’s music, loud and angry and righteous, music which speaks to him now in a way it has never done before.

  He meets Jodie on the outskirts of town. She is leaning against a lamp post, smoking, staring up at the sky. It is quiet when he takes out his earphones, the odd car passing by on the dual carriageway beyond. They do not speak. Jodie pushes off the lamp post, dropping her cigarette butt down a drain as they head off. Towards the house Seb has chosen, the friend he has offered up as a sacrifice.

  Sian lives in a new townhouse that was being advertised for seven hundred thousand on a huge sign which hung from the railings outside. Her mother runs a salon in town which she calls a boutique and charges almost double what others do, and her dad works in the city, something to do with banking, and he is, according to his social media, a firm Tory supporter. Seb doesn’t understand politics, but he remembers the Labour sticker Liv stuck on the kitchen window during the last general election, her nodding along whenever Jeremy Corbyn was on the TV. He remembers the look on Liv’s face when the results came in, her disappointment palpable.

  Sian is an only child, and, he remembers from her party last year, was given the bedroom at the very top of the house, which features a large rounded window at the end. It stands out, even in the black of night, when not even the street lamps light their way. They go round the back, hopping over the gate into the secure car park. There is only a small courtyard garden, the fence low enough for Seb to easily reach over and unlock. As Jodie begins to pick the lock on the back door, he wonders what he is doing. He considers the divide between the haves and the have-nots, and knows which category he is firmly in, but does it give him the right to take what does not belong to him?

  But it isn’t for me, he reminds himself. It’s for Olly and his brother, for people who deserve better. And besides, Sian does not deserve what she has. He remembers the way Izzy had snarled at him that Sian had spiked her drink, and why didn’t he believe her? But he did. He does. He knows that those girls can be nasty, that they have contributed to the erosion of Izzy’s self-esteem. And so who better to seek retribution from? Who better to pay this price? Someone who can afford it, he decides. Someone who has more than they need while others struggle through life.

  The door clicks and swings open, soundless on oiled hinges. Jodie turns towards him and grins, her nose ring flashing in the dark, and they go inside, one careful step at a time, led by the torch on Jodie’s phone. They are in a small utility room, with an archway leading into a large open-plan kitchen diner. The cupboards gleam wetly in the dark, the appliances modern and pristine. Seb almost bumps into the island, sees four leather stools lined up on one side. He tries to remember the layout from that party, the one Seb had persuaded Izzy to go to, and feels the familiar guilt flood through him. He has been too passive, always trying to stay out of things, never choosing a side. He knows now that it is because he wanted to be liked, wanted to fit in. He had been trying to mould himself into a shape that was unrecognisable, become someone he is not. But that time is over. Things are going to change.

  ‘Through here,’ he whispers, lifting an arm towards the door and the hallway beyond. To the right is the front door, the stairs at the other end, and opposite is a closed door. Seb pushes the handle down and steps inside.

  A large desk sits against one wall, white with copper hairpin legs. On top are two monitors, screens dark, and several storage boxes lined up on a shelf above. Sian’s father’s office, where he works from home when he is
n’t in the city. Seb wonders what it is like, never having to worry about money, being able to work without leaving the house, without even getting dressed or spending money on a commute. It is the modern world, but Seb can think only of his nan and her long walk to the petrol station five, sometimes six days a week, her feet sore, her back aching, all for a pittance. He thinks of his parents then, the way his father was put into a box since he was a child, the same box Seb is starting to feel close in around him. Young, poor, black. Dangerous. Why not own it? he thinks. Make it mine.

  Jodie gives a low whistle, breaking him out of his thoughts. ‘Nice place,’ she whispers. ‘Didn’t you say there was a safe?’

  ‘Under the desk.’ He crouches, opening a door and revealing a small rectangular safe. He reaches in for it, his gloved hands disappearing into the dark.

  ‘Isn’t it bolted down?’ Jodie asks, her breath tickling his ear. He shakes his head, remembering Lew playing around with it at that party, pretending to steal it away and staggering under its weight, and she snorts. ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  Seb lifts it from the cupboard with both hands. It is heavy, and he moves slowly so it doesn’t scrape. And then it is out, held tightly against his chest.

  ‘What do you think’s in it?’

  ‘A laptop at least, I can’t see it anywhere else. Maybe some money.’

  Jodie nods. ‘I can work with that.’

  He wants to ask what she is going to do with whatever they find, how she is going to turn a laptop or other tech into cash, but he decides he’d rather not know. He follows her out into the hall, where she stops, looking at the stairs. ‘Let’s go,’ he says, jerking his head towards the back door.

  ‘I just wanna look,’ she whispers. ‘There might be more. Jewellery and shit.’