by K. L. Slater
Tom had told me about Jill’s home-made lasagne and garlic bread on the day of his release, and I’d decided to pull out all the stops to show her how a meal should be done. This was the first time my culinary skills had been properly on show to Tom. I knew how health-conscious he’d become in prison, training at the gym and eating only vegetarian food in an effort to preserve the fitness he’d worked so hard to build as a boxer before he began his sentence. He was also interested in converting to a plant-based diet, so I was hoping to wow him with my vegan menu. If nothing else, Jill would realise she wasn’t the only person capable of keeping her precious son happy!
In front of me, Tom stopped dead in the hallway. Ellis sat in the living room, next to the windows that overlooked the garden. His profile, the way the light fell on his face … for a moment he looked just like Jesse, and I felt a stinging pang of loss. Ellis glanced up, saw Tom staring and went back to his game.
My heart soared. I’d telephoned Coral earlier and although it rankled, I’d swallowed my pride and asked if she’d consider letting me see Ellis before the weekend. Now he was here.
‘I suppose Ellis could come over for his tea today,’ she’d said craftily. ‘I’m a bit tight this month and there’s not much in.’ Stupid she was not when it came to money.
‘Bring him over after school,’ I’d said. ‘And I’ll put a hundred quid in your account to tide you over.’ If money was what it took to have Ellis around more then so be it.
‘Hello, Ellis,’ Tom said, putting down the bags in the hall and walking over to him. ‘I didn’t know you were coming over.’
Ellis didn’t look up.
‘Hello you,’ I said, hoping to smooth over our recent snappy little exchange. ‘How long have you been here on your own?’ He was earlier than I’d expected, but I didn’t care.
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘About thirty minutes, I think. Mum let me in and went into town to meet her friend for a drink.’
So much for counting the pennies! I thought. And the last time I’d looked, she didn’t have any friends. I walked into the kitchen and tossed the car keys on the side. Tom followed me.
‘Coral has a key?’ he asked in a hushed voice. ‘Sounds like she comes and goes as she pleases.’
It had slipped my mind, but I did give her a spare key when I first moved in. We’d always done that with each other for ease of access. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but that was going to have to be reviewed now Tom was living here.
‘Can I have some juice, Nan?’ Ellis called.
‘One second.’ I kicked off my shoes and slid my feet into my Ugg slippers before heading for the fridge. ‘Ellis, say hi to Tom.’
‘It’s fine.’ Tom shook his head and dropped his voice. ‘Don’t make a thing of it.’ He took the carton of juice from me and poured some into a glass, then took it over to Ellis.
‘There we go, buddy. Playing anything good?’
Calling Ellis ‘buddy’ like that wasn’t going to go down well. I held my breath.
‘Animal Crossing,’ Ellis replied shortly, taking the glass.
‘Never heard of that one,’ Tom said. ‘You know, I was thinking of getting a PlayStation and connecting it to the big TV here.’
Ellis looked up. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Trouble is, I’m totally out of touch with the games that are out now. I don’t suppose you … Nah, doesn’t matter.’
Ellis put his glass on the coffee table and sat up a bit straighter. ‘What?’
I leaned forward on the worktop, listening.
‘I wondered if you’d be interested in helping choose some games and then maybe playing a few together. You know, to get me into it again.’
‘I know all the good games,’ Ellis said, putting the device down on the seat cushion next to him. ‘I mean, Call of Duty’s the obvious choice, but there are loads of other good games, too. Marvel, FIFA, stuff like that.’
‘Call of Duty? That’s an 18 rating, isn’t it?’ I chipped in.
‘It’s 17,’ Ellis said quickly. ‘But Mum lets me watch films that are 18. I’m not a baby.’
‘I bet a good action film has about the same amount of blood and gore in it,’ Tom remarked.
Ellis nodded. ‘It’s not real life, Nan. I’m not going to suddenly go out and kill someone …’ His voice petered out as he realised what he’d said.
Tom jumped in right away. ‘Tell you what, then. I’ve promised your nan I’ll put some flat-pack shelves up now, but next time you’re over, we’ll look at the PlayStation stuff online together. OK?’
‘OK.’ Ellis picked up his game again. Then he looked up at Tom and said grudgingly, ‘Thanks for the juice.’
Tom looked over and winked at me. This man was certainly full of surprises.
Twenty-One
Jill
On the day of the dinner at Tom and Bridget’s house, I was completely incapable of concentrating on my book or watching daytime television. I’d already checked Bridget’s social media half a dozen times and there was nothing new. I was going to drive myself crazy, so I decided to start weeding the borders in the garden.
I used to garden regularly, loving the birds, the different seasons, the fresh air. When Tom was small, he’d sit with a sketchpad and pencil and painstakingly draw a flower or a ladybird. He’d focus and apply himself without me having to coerce him.
It had been a long time since I’d taken pleasure in the garden. Robert tended to put off the mowing until the lawn was an inch off resembling a jungle, but I didn’t have the drive for it these days.
For the first ten minutes of tidying the borders, I wanted to go back inside. It was bright but cold and I hadn’t really dressed warmly enough, but I kept at it. My back made its discomfort known, but I felt freer out here then I had felt for ages. I began to wish I’d turned to the garden, rather than away from it, during my most difficult times.
For the first five or six years of Tom’s sentence, I had found it virtually impossible to avoid scrolling through Bridget’s social media. Her Young Men Matter Facebook feed and the regular reposts of newspaper articles and magazine interviews she’d done, headlines such as:
When beauty dies – a mother’s meditation on the loss of her son
Learning to live without Jesse – Bridget Wilson reflects, five years after the manslaughter of her son
Jesse. Jesse. Jesse. Thrill-seeker, boy racer and promiscuous risk-taker. That had been the truth that had never made the headlines, the unpalatable facts that no one ever spoke about, least of all Bridget.
Startled by a noise behind me, I turned around to see Robert hovering.
‘Keeping busy, are we?’ he said in that patronising way of his that I’d made excuses for during most of our married life.
‘Somebody’s got to tackle this mess,’ I said coldly. ‘Might as well be me.’
‘Seeing as I’m working and struggling to pay the bills, I’ll let you take over the Monty Don mantle, if that’s all right.’
I stopped weeding and straightened up, massaging my lower back as it twinged in protest. ‘And why is that? Why are we short of money and struggling to pay the bills?’
‘The bills are high. It’s a big house and—’
‘But it’s always been a big house,’ I said, shaking clods of clammy dark earth from the trowel. ‘I can’t recall there being a problem before.’
He laughed. ‘I can’t recall you ever asking.’
‘You know, if you can’t think of anything constructive to say, may I suggest you bugger off back inside?’
‘There’s no need for that!’ he said, taken aback. ‘Look, Jill, this is not the outcome you expected, I know that. It’s not the fresh start you’d planned for Tom.’
Not we, but you. I was done skirting around the issue.
‘He’s your son too, or have you forgotten that?’ I knocked over the bucket as I stepped back, and the limp, dying weeds spilled out onto the grass. ‘You’re probably just glad he’ll be out of your hair.’
‘That’s hardly fair,’ Robert said, his eyes widening with surprise.
I bent forward and righted the bucket. ‘The prison service is to blame for this as much as anyone. Filling his head with this retentive justice nonsense when he’s so vulnerable.’
‘It’s called restorative justice,’ Robert remarked, stepping forward and surveying my handiwork. ‘Very fashionable in liberal circles at the moment, I understand.’
‘How can anything ever be restored to what it was?’ I demanded. ‘What happened happened. Sadly, Jesse died and Tom paid the price. The past can’t be airbrushed away or moulded into something else. It can’t be restored in any way at all.’
‘I’m not entirely sure that’s the concept behind it,’ Robert said, amused. ‘It’s more about forgiveness, about both sides moving on and healing.’
‘I keep coming back to the same question. What does a forty-eight-year-old woman want with a twenty-eight-year-old man?’
‘Aside from the obvious, you mean?’
‘The obvious?’
‘He’s fit, good-looking, ripe for the picking, or hadn’t you noticed that?’ Robert smirked. ‘Caged for all those years, I’m sure he must be like a frustrated stallion in the sack.’
‘Stop it.’ Bile rose in my throat. ‘I’m not talking about anything as simple or crude as that, Robert. I’m talking about something much darker.’
He looked baffled. ‘Such as?’
‘Revenge for Jesse’s death, for goodness’ sake! Think about it. Jesse’s gone for good, but Tom has done his time and now has a chance at building a good life. She can’t stand that and she’s planned to get close to him so that she’s well placed to destroy him.’
‘Honestly.’ Robert snorted and turned back to the house. ‘This is all getting a bit “TV thriller”, Jill. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘OK, so answer this. Why would Tom want her? That’s what I really don’t get.’
‘Well, he’s never had much luck with girls his own age, has he?’
‘You mean he was a bit shy?’
Robert pulled a face.
‘People around here know that what happened that night. It wasn’t straightforward and in time, they’d forgive him.’
‘Nevertheless, Jesse did die,’ Robert said smoothly. ‘The judge sent him down for ten years for manslaughter, and that’s what you still can’t accept.’
Twenty-Two
Nottinghamshire Police
2009
Aside from the usual teenage antisocial behaviour at the park and the odd drunkard causing trouble in a late bar, it was rare that anything really serious happened in Mansfield or the surrounding area.
So when DS Irma Barrington got the call from her boss, DI Marcus Fernwood, at 2.45 a.m., she was surprised to say the least.
‘Hope I’ve not caught you at a bad time,’ he said drily. ‘Serious assault outside Movers nightclub in town. Victim unconscious with suspect still at the scene.’
Irma’s interest was instantly piqued. ‘Sounds interesting.’
‘You can drive. Pick me up on the way through.’
Irma said, ‘See you in ten.’
She’d fallen asleep on the sofa for the third night running, and the single advantage of that was that she was still fully dressed. She popped her head around the spare bedroom door and saw that her dad was still out for the count. She’d be back home in a couple of hours and he’d be none the wiser. It was the second time this month he’d turned up just before midnight ratted out of his skull, and it couldn’t keep happening. But she’d worry about that later.
She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and, closing the front door quietly behind her, padded out to the car. The street light outside the small front garden lit her path. She pointed the fob at the car, and the corresponding beep seemed loud enough to wake the whole street.
It was cold, and she wished she’d grabbed her warmer coat before leaving the house, but once the car heater had got going and started to belt out a bit of warmth, she instantly felt better.
She picked up Marcus from his smart townhouse in Oak Tree Lane and they drove towards the centre of town via Nottingham Road. Marcus wasn’t very talkative; in fact, when she glanced over, she saw his head was slumped against the window and his eyes were closed.
She navigated around the one-way system, passing the Four Seasons shopping centre, and turned into a side street that would lead her to Movers nightclub. In contrast to the deserted roads she’d driven through, the area outside the club was rammed with a large crowd of people.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘Haven’t folks got beds to go to?’
Marcus shook himself and looked around. ‘This lot have obviously piled out of the club and found themselves some late-night entertainment.’
They got out of the car and pushed their way through the clamour of bodies, walking down the side of the building to the back entrance. It was a particularly cold night, and most of the crowd were underdressed. Irma pulled her jacket tighter and cursed herself for not remembering her scarf.
A man of around twenty lay prostrate in the quiet road that ran behind the club. He wore jeans and a white Lacoste T-shirt. His arms were wiry and his head had twisted at an awkward angle, his eyes closed. There was no obvious injury and Irma spotted shallow movement from his chest.
Marcus held up his ID and addressed the uniformed officer.
‘What’s the situation?’
‘His name is Jesse Wilson, sir,’ the young officer said, standing a little straighter. ‘He’s a local lad. The guy who punched him is over there. Says he’s his best friend.’ He handed Irma the victim’s ID.
‘With friends like that …’ Marcus murmured.
The detectives turned to see a stocky young man standing with a female police officer. He had dark hair and wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, the short sleeves straining around his muscular biceps. He stared at his boots and did not glance up.
‘Sounds like they had some kind of disagreement outside the club,’ the officer continued. ‘His mate over there reckoned he only punched the victim once, but Jesse slipped and fell, hit his head on the concrete. Ambulance is on its … Ah, looks like it’s just arrived.’
The crowd parted and fell away to let the emergency vehicle through. Irma glanced at the details on the ID in her hand, then dropped to her haunches and studied the face of Jesse Wilson, eighteen years old. He was a good-looking lad, in a rocker sort of way. The kind of bad boy her teenage niece would no doubt go weak at the knees for.
With the absence of any visible injuries, he looked deeply asleep, as if he’d simply had too much to drink and had passed out in the road.
She stood up and met the eyes of the young man the officer had said was Jesse’s best friend. She took in his naturally assertive stance, the look of dread on his face, and let out a small sigh.
He looked like a decent young man who’d come out for a good night and found himself in a whole lot of trouble.
Twenty-Three
Tom Billinghurst sat quietly in the back of the car as Irma drove him to the station with Marcus.
She watched him in the rear-view mirror but he would not meet her eyes. He stared out of the window at the deserted streets. It was almost 4 a.m. now; soon daybreak would arrive. Another day would start, very different to the one this young man – an amateur boxer, Marcus had since told her – had experienced yesterday.
Today, with a single, solitary punch, his whole life had taken a hairpin bend.
Before they’d got into the car, the paramedics had informed Marcus that Jesse’s prognosis did not look good. ‘They said there were signs of internal brain trauma when they got him into the ambulance,’ he told her. ‘They’ll be sending him directly for a CT scan when he gets to hospital.’
Irma had heard of one-punch deaths before. Freak accidents. Particularly lethal when administered by a trained boxer, as seemed to have happened in this case.
‘The doorman insists t
here was nobody else involved,’ Irma had reported after she’d spoken briefly with the security manager. ‘He told me they were arguing about something inside the club. One minute they were nice and relaxed, talking over a pint, the next he said Jesse was acting weird and there was some pushing and shoving taking place.’
‘CCTV?’
Irma shook her head. ‘Went on the blink last week.’
Luckily, Tom Billinghurst had been the epitome of helpful, summoning an ambulance himself. ‘Strangely, the operator told him that one was already on its way, so we need to follow up on exactly who called the emergency services when there appear to be no witnesses.’ Marcus had frowned. ‘When uniformed officers arrived, he immediately admitted to hitting Jesse, and was arrested at the scene.’
At the station, while Billinghurst got booked in by the desk clerk, Irma and Marcus grabbed a coffee and had a quick chat about how they intended to handle the interview.
‘It looks fairly straightforward. On the face of it, he’s taking full responsibility,’ Marcus said. ‘Let’s not overcomplicate matters. Billinghurst hit him, the victim slipped and hit his head. He may not realise it, but because he’s a trained boxer, the CPS will come down on him like a ton of bricks if Wilson has serious brain trauma.’
When the interview room was ready, one of the uniformed officers provided Billinghurst with some water and he sat quietly opposite the two detectives. Irma explained the proceedings to him for the benefit of the recording, and Marcus kicked proceedings off.
‘Tom, can you tell us in your own words exactly what happened tonight? Start with how you happened to be in the club and take us through how things escalated.’
Irma was struck by how tired and anxious the young man looked. It was difficult to believe he had an ounce of aggression in him.
‘It was Jesse’s idea to go out, as usual,’ he said.
‘As usual?’
‘He always wants to go out. Hates a night stuck in.’