Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  And that had been it. She’d spent her days patrolling the squat’s sour walls, terrified to leave in case a messenger came and she missed it, barely talking to anyone else, marking time in aches and kicks. Her relationship with Mark, she began to realize, had cushioned her from the rest of them, kept her separate; meant now that, since Xanthe had left and Clio was barely there any more, she had almost nothing to say to these people. She hadn’t really even bothered to get to know Fran’s new animal rights pals who were holing up in the copy room. It was Spider, gentle, grubby Spider, who heard her crying in bed one day and sat down beside her mattress.

  ‘What’s wrong here, matey?’

  ‘I’m fine. I just need to sleep.’

  ‘Are you sure about that then? Because I don’t think you’re doing fine, Sam.’

  ‘I would be. I would be if I could just sleep on a proper fucking bed with legs, and clean sheets! Clean sheets. Just for once.’

  ‘Matey. Matey. I don’t think you should be here. I’ve been wanting to say this for a while now. You need to get yourself back to your mum’s. We’re not going to be able to give you the help you need here.’

  ‘I have to stay here, Spider. He said I had to, to get the letters. To know how to contact him.’

  ‘This is Mark, yeh? He said you had to stay here, in this squat? This fucking rat trap? When you’s what, six month pregnant? With his kid?’

  She nodded and collapsed in on his open arms, let her snot ooze on to his shoulder. He rubbed her back.

  ‘Here. Here. Right, matey. I’m going to tell you something you need to hear. What Mark did to you was … well, it wasn’t good, was it. He’s left you pretty much unsupported, in a place that ain’t right for no baby to be born in. I never said it to Xanthe, matey, but this ain’t no place for a kid. Right now you needs you mum, I reckon.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I can’t go back there. She’ll – she’ll—’

  ‘She’ll probably give you a right telling off, innit. And you’ll have to take that, darlin. But then she’ll also keep you clean and warm and well and she’ll love that baby. Ain’t no mother going to turn her lickle girl away with a baby in her.’

  ‘But Mark—’

  ‘Well now, I don’t know what’s going on with Mark. But I’m gonna tell you this, matey. If he comes back, he’s getting a punch in the nose from me for this little disappearing stunt. This ain’t no way to treat your missus, know what I’m saying? It’s gonna be hard to hear this, love, but I think for now you’ve got to be going about your life like he ain’t coming back. Even if he does. Right now, you need to look after yourself and your baby. An I’m gonna be right here, so if he comes back I’ll tell him where you are. Once I’ve bopped him one.’

  Avril, to her credit and Sam’s everlasting surprise, had opened the door late in the night to a pregnant, crying, prodigal daughter, and asked no questions beyond the due date and the last time she had eaten. While Sammi wept and raged against the man who’d left her, Avril made food and stroked her hair. When Sammi screamed that she couldn’t do it, Avril held her wrists and told her to stop fooling, because she was going to do it and she wouldn’t be alone. Her mother had met her with so much fierce love and protection that she’d felt ashamed of the mean caricature she’d made of Avril in her head. And in time Deborah had pushed her way into the world, pissed-off and lanky, with aristocratically high cheekbones; just another baby with a missing father and a mother who didn’t want to talk about him.

  Brixton, 2009

  Was that Mark, in the picture Clio had sent? Sam only had one photo of him, and he was in the background, squinting. Like many of her acquaintances from that time, he was paranoid about cameras; she’d seen him go so far as to rip up a portrait shot Fran had taken unawares and developed in her makeshift darkroom in the other toilet. She’d tried to recreate him over the years, mainly from occasional fleeting expressions on Debbie’s face that had shocked her into momentary recognition. Then she’d tried to bury it down again.

  ‘Your daddy couldn’t be with us, baby. So that’s why I’ve got to love you extra hard for the both of us. You hear me?’

  What would he look like aged fifty or so? Carrying extra weight under his chin, balding, wearing a suit rather than a ratty sweatshirt?

  Hi Clio,

  Good to hear from you! It’s been a long time. Hope everything’s well with you.

  It’s certainly a shock to see this picture. It’s been years and I don’t have anything to really compare it to, but on balance, yes, I think that could be Mark. Or at least his long-lost twin brother.

  What have you been doing with yourself, anyway?

  Samantha

  The response was almost instant, even though she’d written at half-one in the morning.

  SAMMI THIS IS A POLICEMAN. HE’S CALLED DECTECTIVE INSPECTOR MICHAEL CARRINGTON. IF ITS MARK THEN HE WAS SPYING ON ALL OF US!!!!!!

  Sam hadn’t known what to do with that. After half an hour of staring at the screen, she climbed back into bed beside Dale’s snoring bulk and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. Paranoid, she kept muttering to herself. They’d all been paranoid in the squat, and it was something she was sure got worse with age. Look at Clio’s message. The caps lock. The unhinged rush of words. She hadn’t even been sure it was Mark.

  It was Mark, wasn’t it.

  She threw the covers off, wrapped her fluffy dressing gown back round her bump and walked back into the kitchen. She loaded up the photo and zoomed in as far as she could go.

  It was Mark.

  She didn’t reply to Clio for two days. She was quiet in the house, tried not to look into Debbie’s beautiful face and have anything at all confirmed, watched her run off to school with that gangling lope she certainly hadn’t got from anyone in Sam’s family and ached for her girl and for the time when it was just them, no one else in the world.

  SAMMI WE NEED TO TALK R U STILL IN BRIXTON???

  What did it mean, if Mark had been a policeman? She tried to think back thirteen years to the experience of being with him. She remembered the warmth of him in bed and the smell of the sleeping space, the tone of his raised voice in a crowded room. It felt hazy; it could have been something she’d dreamed or a film she’d caught on telly years ago.

  She remembered the feeling of watching a man talk, of him not knowing you were watching him, of catching your breath at how beautiful he was. Wanting to see him so badly on the days and sometimes weeks he was away, visiting his mother. She remembered being nineteen and twenty and sick to her stomach with the strength of a feeling. It was one of the hardest, strongest emotions she’d ever had at that point. But the person who’d made her feel that was – what? An actor? A shadow? Not ever really there?

  She’d been sitting in front of the same open case file, not moving, for a very long time. The phone on her desk rang. It was Bev at reception. ‘Sam, there’s a woman here to see you. Won’t give her name but says you’re old friends. Red hair.’

  Clio was in the café across the road Sam had asked her to go to, hunched over a cup of tea. She looked up and smiled.

  ‘Hello, pal. Long time, eh?’

  The words she’d been storing in two days’ silence fell out of Sam’s mouth.

  ‘Clio. You can’t just show up at someone’s work. You can’t. How did you even find me? I’ve got – I’ve got a busy day today. You need to ask these things in advance. People work. Normal people work.’

  ‘You put your job on Facebook. You want to be careful about what you’re putting out there, love. Don’t trust the Internet, you know.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got ten minutes then I’ve got to get back. And I’m clock-watching.’

  ‘OK. Here you go. How do we nail this bastard?’

  Sam eased her pregnant bulk into the chair opposite and studied Clio’s face as it moved.

  Clio did not seem to have changed much, although Sam wasn’t sure if she would still call her beautiful. She had lost something girlish and delicate; she lo
oked harder and flushed. Something frazzled about her. The nail polish on her fingers was chipped. Still magnificent, though. Still queening it up over this skanky little caff.

  ‘I’m not letting him get away with this,’ she was saying. ‘It’s rape, what he did to you, Sammi. What they did to you. State-approved rape. I mean, you had his fucking kid, didn’t you? It’s obscene. This isn’t fucking Russia or somewhere! We allegedly live in a democracy and yet the government can send its operatives in to rape women because they don’t trust their political beliefs? No. Not fucking standing for it, darlin.’

  Their table, Sam noticed, had two salt shakers. Not a salt and pepper. She stared down the pair of pinprick S’s. Better to look there.

  ‘What do you think? We need to channel this anger, right? Take it to the press. I’ve got contacts. We are going to raise a STINK. I’m talking massive compensation, all that. Sammi. You all right, love?’

  Sam was crying. She knew that because her cheeks were hot and wet. She could hear Clio talking from somewhere far away.

  ‘Hey. Hey. Come on now. Sorry, this was a lot to spring on you, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.’

  Warm, rough guitar-player’s fingers wrapped round her fist.

  ‘OK,’ she heard herself say. ‘Let’s get him. Let’s get them all.’

  Dale was late to the clinic, came bursting into the room as she was hoiking her skirt down and the sonographer was warming the jelly.

  ‘Sorry! Sorry. Here now. Carl was just being a dick and I—’

  Sam held up her hand to him, and he nodded, sat himself down by her side and grabbed it. She felt the warm pressure of his thumbnail in the fleshy bit of her palm. The second calloused hand to have held hers today. The sonographer was pressing quite hard and she found herself catching her breath.

  ‘Oh, and there we go. That’s a little foot. Right there. Can you see?’

  Dale cried out. ‘Sam. Sam, oh my God.’

  ‘Now, I’m just going to go on a little trip right round the area, and we’ll check this little baba out from all angles, shall we? There’s the heart, beating away there, can you see it?’

  There was a tiny flicker on the screen. Sam felt a high-pitched noise rising in her eardrums, a rushing of blood.

  ‘And those are the lungs, there, and here we’ve got vertebrae, all looking very good. Oh! The baby’s waving at us!’

  ‘Hello, darling!’ Dale’s voice was a croak, and his eyes were teary.

  ‘What a little beauty. Everything’s looking wonderful here. Now, did you want to find out the sex?’

  Why were neither of them bothered by that noise? It was a scream, a weird, mechanical scream, getting louder and louder.

  ‘Samantha?’

  ‘Sam? Sam, babe, you all right?’

  And just like that, it cut off.

  ‘Oh, it’s stopped,’ she said. They were looking at her.

  ‘Samantha, would you like to find out the baby’s sex?’

  ‘Can I have a glass of water please?’

  ‘Are you all right, baby? What’s going on? Talk to me.’ His big reassuring face, close to hers. He’d treated her like porcelain from the minute that test had been positive.

  She’d never had any of this, the last time. With Debbie, it had been Avril to hold her hand, and Avril had just thanked God the baby was healthy. Poor Debbie had never had anyone but Sam to marvel at her tiny toes in utero.

  The nurse helped her sit up slightly and handed her a plastic cup of water, the screen going blank as the sonogram wand scrolled off.

  ‘I imagine you’ll burst if you have any more to drink!’ said the sonographer, trying to make them all smile. ‘Ready to continue, yes?’

  Sam wriggled down and the wand went back on. Dale’s head was flicking between her and the screen almost comically fast, with a very worried look.

  ‘Yes, we’d like to find out the sex, please,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you said you wasn’t sure?’ Dale asked.

  ‘I’m sure. I need to know this.’

  ‘Ooh, there we go. Hello there. Ho ho! No doubt about that one, is there? Meat and veg! You’re having a lovely baby boy.’

  ‘Thank fuck,’ said Sam.

  She told Dale, later on that night as they cleared the kitchen, while Debbie did her homework and blasted Rinse FM from her room.

  ‘Listen. Here’s what’s been up with me. You know how I got pregnant with Debbie while I was living in a squat?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, my lickle crusty gal—’ She couldn’t bear the smile on his face. She almost wanted to slap it off, that beautiful, happy smile full of love and trust, for what was going to happen to it.

  ‘Well, here’s the thing, love. It’s about Debbie’s dad.’

  And she laid it out there, in only a few words.

  Dale had big hands, and she watched them snap a wooden spoon he was drying in half without even realizing it. The stalk splintered through the dishcloth and pierced his finger; blood began to seep through the tartan pattern. They stopped everything for a few minutes while he sucked his finger and swore and she dabbed at it, applied a plaster. Then he pulled her to him, tight to his chest, and bent his head over hers.

  ‘Gross,’ said Debbie, wandering into the kitchen and sticking her head into the fridge.

  And then they all came spilling back into her life. Fran, disappearing from view like a fading picture, somehow even more insubstantial and wispy now. Gaz, now also a dad, shaven-headed and into mountain biking. Spider, wizened in a ratty hoody. Xanthe hadn’t answered anyone’s messages, was presumably still in Greece. They met in Clio’s flat in Homerton, each of them advised to stagger their arrivals, although Fran, Spider and Sam ended up getting there at the same time. A very young South Asian guy let them in with a nod; he was distractingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful and she realized she’d been staring at his eyelashes for longer than was polite.

  ‘This is Hamza,’ Clio said, coming up behind him and wrapping an arm round his neck in a show of ownership. ‘He’s going now.’

  ‘Bye, ladies, gents.’ He winked as he left.

  There was nowhere really to sit: a couple of beanbags on the floor or a low bed. There was no way she’d be able to get herself up from either of them again. Samantha did maths in her head and realized that Clio must be about forty now; even in the squat they’d had skip-stolen armchairs. She leaned awkwardly against the wall for a bit until Gaz noticed her, and stopped the general catch-up chat to pull her in a bar stool from the tiny kitchen.

  ‘How many weeks are you?’ he murmured, rubbing her back a little as he helped her into place. ‘Bout twenty, yeah? Halfway there. My missus was big with it too. Bit achy, innit? This seat OK for you?’

  She hadn’t thought about Gaz at all in the last thirteen years, but if she had, he would have been the last person in this group she would have expected kindness from. Elevated above them, she swung her legs and listened to the conversation without really joining in. Which was just like it had always been.

  Clio officiated, waving a mug of coffee, not offering anyone else a drink. She brought them to order, her voice rising impatiently over the general babble.

  ‘So. Everyone knows why we’re here, yeah? To discuss the highly intrusive and illegal state surveillance on our lives during the years 1995 and 1996, by the person we knew as Mark Carr.’

  ‘Right right right. We need to backtrack a bit, Clio.’ Gaz was holding up a hand. ‘We ain’t got proof yet. You’ve sent us all that one photo, and we’ve all agreed it looks a bit like him—’

  ‘Bloody spitting image, matey. Come on,’ muttered Spider.

  ‘But we can’t just – what? What you thinking? We all just roll up at his police HQ or whatever and start pointing the finger? I mean, what if it’s just a coincidence? Posh blokes all look a bit alike, don’t they? Now, it’s all right for most of you here, but me and Sammi, we got responsibilities, int we? We got families to think of. We can’t afford to get hit with
some sort of defamation lawsuit or whatever they’re called. We need to be sure about this.’

  ‘I don’t see what your ability to reproduce or not has to do with anything,’ Fran said, drawing herself up tall from the beanbag slump. ‘There are risks for all of us in this. For me, and Spider maybe the most. Mark actually witnessed us committing crimes.’

  ‘And yet have any of you done time for them? No.’

  ‘Well, Fran was arrested, matey,’ Spider said, his voice a gentle wheeze. ‘The McDonald’s thing. And a lot of them lot that really led the Greater London ALF was picked up just before he disappeared.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Clio. ‘We weren’t necessarily his direct targets, but he was using us as cover. Excellent cover. We lived with him, we vouched for him to other activists, we brought him into our networks and made him look real. Not least his relationship with Sammi here.’

  All eyes swivelled up to the bar stool. Sam grinned at them all and waved a sheepish hand.

  ‘Y’all right?’

  Having illustrated her point, Clio carried on. ‘I mean, this is what we’re really going to get him on. It was rape. He raped this woman when she was nineteen bloody years old – he raped me, Xanthe; also you I think, Fran? Did any of us consent to having sex with a man called Michael Carrington? With a police officer? No, we did not. He got Sammi pregnant, and he fucked off. Back to where? The Home Counties and the expensive-looking Tory wife I saw him with at that Burns Night party? Listen, he clocked me from the stage. I’d thought it was him when I came in, but we were seated at different ends of the hall. I got my pal to take a picture because I didn’t want him to see me just in case there was something dodgy going on – didn’t even realize at the time he was police, did I? I just thought, oh, that’ll be Mark, wonder what the hell happened to him. But then I was announced and got up on the stage and he jumped straight out his bloody seat, I’ll tell you. He avoided my eye during my set, kept his head right down, and then him and the blonde had slipped out while I was getting the guitar unplugged. That’s when I asked the organizer, oh, who was that. Detective Inspector Michael Carrington, says she. The Met. He buys a table every year. He was taken unwell, I think. Unwell my fucking arse. You weren’t there. It was him. If I wasn’t sure when I saw him, I reckon his behaviour confirms it. That’s not an innocent man there, is it? I was a last-minute cover for a friend who’d dropped out. If he’d known I was on the bill, he wouldn’t have bought that fucking table, I’ll tell you that.’