The Unravelling: Children can be very very cruel (A gripping domestic noir thriller)

by Thorne Moore

  Charlie was delighted. ‘This is great, isn’t it?’

  ‘You shouldn’t be seeing clients on a Sunday,’ I said.

  She laughed, reaching for the dessert menu. ‘Yes, but you’re not just a client, are you? You’re a friend.’

  ‘Is that allowed? Aren’t you supposed to keep us at a professional distance?’

  ‘Not at the weekend. What about crème brûlée?’

  ‘Sounds nice.’

  ‘Good. You’re looking great, Karen. I’m so pleased. I think, this time, you’re really getting things together.’

  Yes, things were coming together. Like two express trains, possibly, but there was no stopping them now.

  By Monday morning, I had decided on my plan of campaign. Ruth hadn’t wanted to see me and when I cornered her, she threw me out. There was a good chance that Barbara Fulbright would do the same, if I simply phoned and invited myself for a chat. But she was a solicitor. She had an office. She had appointments. She could hardly refuse to see me if I turned up as a client.

  I phoned her firm in Carlisle. ‘Could I make an appointment to see Barbara Fulbright please? It’s a domestic issue.’

  ‘Could you hold the line please?’ Brief consultation in the background. ‘Hello? I’m very sorry, she’s not expected in the office all this week. She’s on leave, a family bereavement. Can another of our partners help? Ms Fulbright doesn’t actually take many family cases, but our legal team has specialists in all—’

  ‘No, it’s Ms Fulbright I need to see. I don’t mind waiting. When she’s returned to work, that’ll be fine.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll check her diary. Yes, I can make an appointment for Thursday fortnight. 10:30. Would that be all right?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘And your name?’

  ‘Karen…’ Even as I started to say it, I realised it would be a mistake. ‘Garnet. Mrs Garnet.’ There must be a million Karens in the world. The Christian name might not alert her, but Rothwell would. I could have used Charlie’s name, Freeman, but there was probably a law about trying to pass yourself off as a social worker, so I borrowed Malcolm’s instead. He wouldn’t mind.

  I was late into work as a result of the phone call. Charlie was waiting for me. It wasn’t the first time I’d been late and complaints had been made.

  ‘I thought you were doing so well, Karen. But late this morning, and apparently you’ve been messing them around for the last couple of weeks, not turning up, not doing anything. They’re a nice bunch here, Karen. Not like in accounts, but you’ve really exhausted their patience. Now, are you going to settle down and at least turn up at the office?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I promised. Charlie had gone to such lengths, pulled so many strings, to turn me into a fully functioning, working woman. But none of it was relevant any more.

  I explained it to Malcolm as I tidied the shelves at Gem’s for him, while he plotted where to pin my monster sketches. ‘It’s so pointless, turning up at an office, typing gobbledegook, coming home again, just so that they can tick a box to say they’ve employed their quota of loonies and cripples. Mandy feels the same. She’s got a maths degree and just because she’s in a wheelchair, they treat her like an idiot, a patronised dogsbody, taken on to tick a box. It’s meaningless. I can’t do it anymore. Here.’ I pulled out a handful of books. ‘These should be under philosophy, not travel.’

  He glanced at them, while pinning a dragon on the shelf end. ‘Quite right.’

  ‘I should make an effort, for Charlie, shouldn’t I? At least pretend to be normal and sane. But I can’t. I’ve got this thing hanging over me, like a sort of grief that I never worked through properly and until I do, I can’t settle. Until I know what really happened, what I should have said or done, I can’t just sit there every day, typing pointless lists. But I’ve got to, for another whole fortnight. Why did I let Carlisle put me off for a fortnight? They could have given me Barbara’s address, and let me find her for myself. It didn’t really have to be in her office.’

  ‘Well, for a start, they would never have given you her private address. And didn’t you say she was on compassionate leave? She’s lost someone. You’re not really going to turn up on her doorstep when she’s just back from a family funeral and start cross-examining her about a murder, are you?’

  I wanted to say yes. ‘No, of course not. But I can’t keep going into that office all day, pretending to work while I wait.’

  ‘Well, I’d say…’ Malcolm stood on tiptoe to pin up three sketches in a row. ‘The solution is to hand in your notice and come and work here, instead.’

  ‘Don’t talk tripe.’

  ‘I’m not talking tripe. You spend half your time here, anyway. The place would go to pot if I didn’t have an assistant. And I know you’ve got this Serena tragedy on your mind. I understand how it’s eating into you. But it doesn’t stop you getting things right here, does it?’ He tapped the philosophy books I was still holding. ‘And I need your artistic talents for this promotion… Straight?’

  I looked at the three sketches. Yes, they were straight, but did they work? Three elfin warriors. ‘I’m not sure about those. I meant to make them look noble, but they’re more like homicidal maniacs.’

  ‘No, they’re fine. Elves are homicidal maniacs. It’s well known. So what do you think? About working here. How about I have a word with Charlotte? I’ll get an assistant and she’ll get a gold star for moving you into the real commercial world. No need to tell anyone this isn’t the real commercial world, is there?’

  I was reluctant, sensing well-meaning charity. Which it probably was. Malcolm was religious. Sort of. He didn’t make a fuss about it and I don’t think I ever heard him mention God, but I knew he regularly attended services, the sort that let you sit and contemplate infinity, instead of requiring loud and busy commitment, so once or twice I’d gone with him. A cathedral choir is always balm to the nerves.

  I certainly didn’t begrudge Malcolm his religious comforts. He’d had a miserable marriage, I think, and it would probably have ended in separation if she hadn’t developed a brain tumour and died. I could understand the guilt and other emotional complexities surrounding the death of someone you really didn’t like very much. He could have his cathedral services, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be one of his good works.

  But then I wanted to continue working in the council offices even less, so I just smiled and said nothing when he proposed the move to a delighted Charlie.

  The council didn’t even ask me to work out my notice. Can’t think why. And Charlie explained that Malcolm could claim a subsidy for taking me on, which made me feel less guilty about the whole thing. I wasn’t going to be doing any more in the shop, really, than I had been doing for years without taking his money, and I didn’t want him to be out of pocket.

  It was odd, he was quite right, I could continue to obsess about Serena and still function efficiently at Gem’s Books. I could enter data on his computer and type up labels without a single mistake. In the office, I’d rarely managed a complete sentence that didn’t have to be corrected, word by word. So I was fine. Mostly.

  Fine, because of the medication and because of the driving sense of purpose. In the shop, I shared sandwiches with Malcolm. At home, I couldn’t face food. I think Malcolm knew I wasn’t quite as securely on the sunny uplands as I tried to appear, but he made allowances for me. He’d seen me at my worst.

  He probably guessed that when I disappeared into dark corners of the shop, or into the overflowing book den I called home, the obsession would settle quietly at my side, ready to grab me with its ice cold fingers of panic whenever I thought of making a run for it. I’d forget for a moment and sink into a novel, and there she would be, turning to look at me.

  Serena.

  ‘Tell them, Karen. Do it for me. Just tell them.’

  — 9 —

  ‘You’re to come and play with us.’ Barbara Fulbright is standing in front of me, blocking my way.

&nbs
p; ‘All right.’ I turn obediently towards the corner of the playground where Serena and her friends are waiting.

  ‘Just you,’ says Barbara.

  She’s a big girl and lives in one of the big houses on the edge of the estate beyond the Methodist chapel, and her father has a big car and drives to work, wearing a suit. Her mother wears a suit too, when she comes to the school – a tweedy one – and a hat, not like most of the mothers who wear housecoats and keep their curlers in. She looks more like a gran, really, but maybe she’s just old fashioned. Barbara wears a gymslip in the winter. She’s the only girl in school who does, and I don’t think she likes it, but she never says so.

  She’s very clever. She always comes top of the class except when Serena does. They take it in turns. Perhaps that’s why they’re best friends. We’re in pairs in Serena’s group. People are always in pairs – Mummy and Daddy, Armand and Michaela Denis, Hans and Lotte Hass, America and Russia, the Lone Ranger and Tonto. It makes everything balance. So we’re in pairs too. Serena and Barbara, Denise and Angela, and it used to be Ruth and Teresa, but now it’s Ruth and me.

  Ruth isn’t really interested in me, and Denise and Angela don’t much care, but we all pretend, even Barbara, who doesn’t like me at all. That’s all right, though, because I don’t much like her. If she weren’t always following Serena around, and trying to be nice to people because Serena says so, she’d be a bully. The first years are afraid of her. But none of it matters, as long as Serena likes all of us.

  Oh, the ecstasy of knowing that Serena likes me.

  ‘Got her!’ Barbara hurries off to Serena’s side as soon as we reach the group, to show that’s where she belongs. She takes Serena’s hand. I’d never dare do that yet.

  Ruth sidles up to stand beside me, because that’s where she belongs now. Angela gives me a quick wave, too busy jumping up and down to do more. Denise looks impatient because I’ve taken so long to get there.

  None of them really want me there, but it doesn’t matter.

  It doesn’t matter, because Serena is smiling at me, even if Barbara is the only one to hold her hand.

  *

  I sat staring out of the train window, wondering what Barbara Fulbright would be like now. Not a bitter, nervous wreck like Mrs Smellie, that was certain. Probably still hard and clever and she still wouldn’t like me. But it didn’t matter, because she’d tell me everything. Barbara was a girl who never held back from telling you what was what, even if you wouldn’t like it. Especially if you wouldn’t like it.

  Now she was a solicitor. I knew two solicitors. One was Mr Wylie who’d dealt with my mother’s affairs when she’d died. He was very ancient, very deaf, half blind, and did a lot of mumbling into papers. The other one was Jim, who worked for the council, lounged around the offices and was what the more generous girls called frisky, and what the less generous ones called a menace who needed castrating. I couldn’t pair my image of Barbara with either model. But I’d find out what she was like soon enough.

  A crack of dawn journey, one change, long enough normally for me to get lost in a book. I had an Ursula Le Guin to occupy me, but I couldn’t read it. For years I had lived in books, but these days my concentration was shot. So instead of reading, I stared out of the window, hypnotised by the wheeze and whine of the train and the images flashing past, blurring, one into another.

  Towns, stations, fields, hills ‒ Marsh Green, Serena picking herself up, tears welling in her eyes, such big, dark eyes. Kenneth Dexter, his grey skin turning white as paper, that dumbstruck look of denial…

  Kenneth Dexter, laughing, pointing, mocking. ‘Ginger. Hello, Ginger.’

  Kenneth Dexter, frowning, jaw jutting. ‘You watch it! I’ll have you!’

  I saw him. He blurred. I saw him again. What was this? Why was I seeing him? I didn’t mind Serena’s face continuously materialising in my head, but I didn’t want Kenneth Dexter there. What was he doing?

  So quick to threaten. ‘I’ll have you!’ Supposing…supposing he’d killed Serena, and I’d witnessed it. Or seen something, a clue, and I’d been too frightened to speak because he’d threatened me.

  But he’d looked so mortified when he’d accidentally knocked into her. He couldn’t have done it.

  Except that she had been murdered, and there was only one person I knew who had it in him to be a killer. Everyone said he was a born thug.

  Doomed to be a thug, I suppose. The sink child of a sink world.

  *

  The Dexter house, on Austen Road, is dark and grimy.

  ‘Bloody disgrace,’ says Mr Treece who lives two doors down, and Mrs Treece pokes him and says, ‘Language!’

  Mr Treece stops using language but he grunts as he pokes the rubbish that spills out from the Dexters’ garden. It’s a jungle of long grass and rusting metal. There’s always a patched-up old pram by the door because Mrs Dexter’s always having babies. There’s a Mr Dexter too, but he’s nearly always inside. I don’t know what that means. He’s not inside the house, because I never see him there, but he’s inside somewhere.

  ‘See Jack Dexter’s inside again.’ Parents, at the school gates, sniff and nod and look knowing. ‘Don’t know why they bother letting him out.’

  They don’t say it near the house though, because mostly they keep away from it. ‘This way, hold my hand, we’ll cross to the other side of the street.’ They wrinkle up their noses as they steer their children clear. It’s because Mr Dexter’s ‘inside’ and because Mrs Dexter keeps having babies.

  I heard Mrs Bryant whisper to Mrs Philpot. ‘She has men. Shameless. The council should do something. The vicar tried to have a word with her and she swore at him!’

  The Dexters’ house is just as dark and grimy inside. Full of rubbish, newspapers, broken chairs. Never much food or warm bedding, though, or toys. Mrs Dexter doesn’t do much fussing round the house like Mummy. She’s always very nice to me, though. Sort of. Just acts as if I’m one of her own. Maybe she thinks I am. It must be difficult for her to keep count. I think it’s funny that she swore at the vicar. It was probably because she was drunk. She sways a lot in the street.

  ‘Drunk!’ says Mummy, pursing her lips.

  ‘Not surprised, with so many babies,’ says Daddy.

  There are a lot of them. Kenneth is just one of the middle ones. There’s a baby called Baby and Clive with the funny legs and Susan with one eye that looks the wrong way and…

  *

  My stomach was twisting. Why was I remembering it at all? Why had I ever visited the home of Kenneth Dexter? He may have chased and threatened the rest of the civilised world, but I couldn’t recall him ever doing worse to me than call me Ginger. I wasn’t worth terrorising. Maybe I was imagining it. But real or imaginary, I needed to get my head out of that house.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, dug my nails into my palms and forced myself to look out and focus on the real world. Fields, hills, valleys, smoke.

  Black pall of smoke, hanging in the air, billowing. Another in the distance. Then a third. I saw an elderly couple, further down my carriage, look out, then look at each other, shaking their heads, wordless.

  The present crashed into my thoughts of the past. Foot-and-mouth. It had been there, a constant droning litany, day after day, along with the eternal diet of atrocities, corruptions and earthquakes. All those TV and radio news bulletins that I had drowned out with thoughts of Serena and this interminable quest. News was never good news, was it? Shut it out.

  But now, there it was, reality, death, destruction, grief, horror, walking hand in hand with my elusive haunting. There was no escape. I was looking through glass at black smoke that mirrored the smoke in my head. I couldn’t cope with both, not at the same time.

  I couldn’t cope.

  No. Not now, please. I needed to cope. But there it was, that rising tide of panic at not being able to face anything. It was the start. I knew I was beginning to unravel again. Hold on. A bit longer. Long enough for me to find the truth and be able to
finish with this thing…

  Carlisle. Never been there before. I’ll probably never go there again. I wasn’t in the best position to appreciate whatever it has to offer, which may be a great deal. All I could see was an urban mass that was hiding my Grail, somewhere in its dark heart. I emerged from a grand station into rain, and wandered with a street map in my hand, ineptly reading it. I nearly finished up in a castle, then realised I was going the wrong way. Barbara probably had a posh house, but not a posh castle.

  I wound my way through a terraced maze of Victorian brick and northern stone, as my map soaked up the rain and began to disintegrate at the folds. At last, I found myself dripping at the reception desk of Barbara Fulbright’s office, twenty minutes ahead of schedule. The girls at the desk got on with their work busily, smiling at me occasionally. Phones kept ringing, and I grew tenser each time. Doors kept opening and my heart would race faster.

  I’d left too early to think about taking my medication.

  ‘Mrs Garnet?’

  I sat there blankly, forgetting the name I’d chosen, until one of the receptionists emerged from behind the desk and stood in front of me. She was summing me up as a pathetically troubled soul. Can’t imagine where she got that idea.

  ‘I’ll take you to Ms Fulbright’s office, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ I rose, dropped my coat, dropped my bag and we both crouched to retrieve them, almost knocking heads. I could feel the silent sigh.

  ‘Come in,’ said a voice behind a door as the receptionist knocked. A calm, authoritative voice. Barbara Fulbright rose from her desk as I was ushered in, and offered me her hand. ‘Mrs Garnet? Sit down. Please. What can I do for you?’

  She didn’t recognise me. Of course not. She had no reason to suspect anything. I hadn’t phoned and blurted out my name as I had with Ruth. Barbara Fulbright probably saw a dozen clients a day and I was just one more sad little woman who’d got mixed up with life’s complications.