by Mark Tufo
‘And that’s when—?’
‘That’s when we found the girl, lying in a flowerbed, with blood all over the place and her cunt torn open. Okay?’
Michelle choked back a startled sob. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So we phoned the police and waited a fucking age for them to turn up. It’s not like Redditch here. I get the impression there’s only half a dozen of them, and they didn’t know their arses from their elbows. Took for-fucking-ever to get everything done, so that’s why I’m back so late. Oh, and I’ve still got a job, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘Of course it’s not. I don’t care about the bloody job. I’m just interested in you.’
‘Nothing to worry about. Think about it logically – this girl gets sliced up and Potter goes missing the exact same time. He probably did that body in the woods we saw on the news too.’
‘You think?’
‘One of the coppers practically said as much.’
‘So who was he?’
‘Ex-school teacher. Bit of a bastard from what I hear. Bit of a sick fuck, actually...’
‘Why did you have to be the one who found her?’
He looked at her, surprised. ‘Luck of the draw? What does it matter? I didn’t do it. It’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘I know that, but people here don’t know us, do they? They don’t know anything about us other than the fact we’re new to the area. I’ve had enough of people whispering behind my back. We came here to get away from all that.’
‘This is different.’
‘It sounds like everyone knew this Potter guy.’
‘They all know each other, fucking inbreds. Anyway, they didn’t know him like they thought they did, did they? Fuck’s sake, he carved up a girl in his back garden...’
‘We just have to make sure they don’t start pointing fingers.’
‘Why would they?’
She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘Sometimes you can be a bit aggressive, Scott. You can fly off the handle.’
‘Only if I’m pushed.’
‘I just don’t want you doing anything you’ll regret. Anything we’ll regret.’
‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’ he demanded. Michelle swallowed hard. Nervous. Scared.
‘My husband. Look, Scott, you know I love you and I’ll always support you...’
‘Is there a but coming here?’
Another deep breath. She didn’t know how he was going to react, but she had to say this. More to the point, he needed to hear it. ‘We’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices for this family, and we don’t have a lot left to give. Personally, love, I’ve got nothing left. I know what happened today was out of your control, but we have to deal with it in the right way and not alienate ourselves. There’s nowhere left for us to go now.’
‘What’s going on?’ Tammy asked. Scott and Michelle both looked up. They hadn’t noticed her standing in the doorway.
‘How long have you been listening?’ Scott yelled.
‘Few minutes.’
‘And what did you hear?’
‘Not enough by the sounds of things.’ She turned and faced her mother directly. ‘What’s going on, Mom?’
‘It’s nothing. Just give us some space, Tam.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Tammy, watch your language.’
‘Don’t speak to your mother like that,’ Scott said, staring straight at her.
‘Why not? You do,’ she said, staring straight back. She flinched when he pushed his chair back and went to stand up, but she stood her ground. Michelle put her hand on his arm.
‘Tammy, please,’ she said. ‘Just leave it. It’s none of your business.’
‘It is though, isn’t it? How can it not be?’
‘Look, Scott had some trouble at work and—’
‘Already? You’ve only been there two days, Scott.’
‘It wasn’t his fault.’
‘You always say that. You always defend him.’
‘It’s true.’
‘You always say that too. We’ve been down this road before, Mum, remember? You kept telling me then that everything was fine and there was nothing going on, then you put the house on the market.’
‘Tam, leave it...’
‘No, I won’t. It’s him again, isn’t it?’ she said, nodding at Scott but unable to bring herself to even say his name. ‘Everything was fine until he got home. He’s back for five minutes and you’re shouting at me and treating me like a kid again and—’
‘Do what your mother says,’ Scott warned. ‘Leave it. Go back to bed.’
‘I’m sick of this,’ Tammy continued, clearly in no mood to do either. ‘I’m sick of the way you keep messing with our lives. You think you’re the only one who matters.’
‘I’m the only one who keeps this family functioning,’ he told her.
‘You’re the one who ruined everything. You screwed things up for all of us. It’s your fault we’re here, your fault I had to leave everything that mattered to me.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you silly little bitch.’
‘Scott, don’t...’ Michelle protested.
‘Did you hear what he called me? Mum, did you hear what he just called me?’
Scott leapt up and sprung at her, grabbing one arm and pinning her up against the wall. ‘I’ll call you a lot worse if you don’t shut up. Now take a hint and keep your bloody nose out of things that are none of your business.’
Michelle pulled her husband away from her daughter, squeezing into the gap between them. She turned around and gently pushed Scott back into the kitchen, not wanting to wind him up more than he already was. She looked back over her shoulder at Tammy who remained pressed up against the wall, tears rolling down her face, more through anger than fear.
‘Go, Tammy,’ she mouthed. And Tammy didn’t want to, but she did.
Chapter 57
Michelle’s heart sank when she woke up next morning and remembered everything that had happened the night before. All she wanted was to close her eyes and go back to sleep for another few hours, maybe even a day, perhaps a month or more. She’d gone to bed after she and Scott had finished talking – shouting – and he hadn’t said a word when he’d come in hours later. Then he’d got up this morning and it was like nothing had happened. She’d expected that. She’d grown used to his mood-swings and tempers. Strange to think that she’d actually found his volatility attractive when they’d first got together. It had been a stark contrast to Jeremy with his steady caution and dreary predictability. It had been exciting for a time. It had made her feel alive. Not anymore.
She worked like a bloody trooper first thing; washed and dressed before the others were even awake, and she’d had the house cleaned and breakfast on the table before the first of them had made it downstairs. Normally she liked to be up first, to make the most of the quiet before the usual domestic storm, but today there were things she needed to think through. What exactly had happened at that man’s house yesterday? Why was it always Scott?
Once the kids were downstairs she was distracted. She refereed a couple of minor skirmishes between the girls, helped George with his porridge, and kept all three of them out of Scott’s way. It was a delicate balancing act. She thought she deserved a bloody medal but her efforts went unnoticed as usual. All they had to think about was themselves, she was the one who kept it all together. She stared out of the kitchen window, eating a piece of toast she didn’t want but thought she’d better have, watching birds turn impossible angles in the grey sky. She envied their freedom, their manoeuvrability.
She dropped Scott at work then took the girls to school. Then, with the three of them out of the way for the day, she turned around and looked at George strapped in his travel seat behind her. ‘So what do you reckon, sunshine? Shall we go see if there’s anything for a big man like you to do in Thussock?’
Chores first. She had a list of them. This was the la
st one.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember my postcode,’ she said to the woman behind the counter. ‘I’ve not been there a week yet.’
‘Well without your postcode, madam, we can’t register you and your family as patients here. I’m a receptionist, not an address look-up service.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. People call it the grey house, you know it?’
‘Oh, I know it all right, Willy was a patient here.’
‘Can’t you check his old records then? Get the postcode from there?’
‘That’d be a breach of customer confidentiality, I couldn’t possibly do that.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he? I don’t reckon he’d be too bothered.’
‘Hardly the point now, is it?’ The sour-faced woman just smiled, the knowing smile of someone sitting behind safety glass who couldn’t be throttled or punched. ‘Why not take the forms with you and bring them back when we’re less busy.’
Michelle looked over her shoulder. The spacious waiting room was empty but for two patients, one reading a dog-eared magazine, the other coughing and wheezing constantly. She turned back and eyed-up the ice maiden behind the counter again, knowing this was a battle she wasn’t going to win. More to the point, it was a silly, trivial fight she didn’t need. She picked up the five forms. ‘Thanks for nothing. I’ll be back.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ the receptionist said. Michelle was on her way out when the woman called her back. She was holding up five plastic phials. ‘Oh, and the doctor’ll need urine samples with each form, and he’ll need to see all of you in person before he agrees to take any of you on as patients. That all clear?’
‘As crystal. Thanks again for all your help.’
Michelle took the phials and walked away. With the forms, the phials, the car keys, her handbag and George, she was struggling. Unsighted, she crashed into a man coming the other way and managed to drop everything but her son. The man, late fifties, short with grey hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a close trimmed beard, quickly picked everything up for her. ‘New patient?’ he asked.
‘Hopefully. How can you tell?’
‘The forms and the piss-pots,’ he said, grinning. He folded the papers and dropped the phials into her open bag. ‘I’m Doctor Kerr. Nice to meet you.’
‘Nice to meet you, too,’ she replied, trying to juggle everything so she could shake his hand.
‘Alice give you a warm welcome, did she?’
‘Alice?’
‘My charming receptionist.’
‘No, not really.’
‘True to form,’ he sighed, then he leant a little closer. ‘She’s very efficient and remarkably thorough, but her interpersonal skills are bloody awful.’
‘I’d noticed.’
‘I inherited her from my predecessor. She’s been here longer than this building. I think they built it around her.’
Michelle laughed. ‘I can believe that.’
The doctor tapped her arm, ruffled George’s hair, then walked on. ‘Be seeing you soon, then.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
‘Alice, the light of my life, how are you this morning?’ she heard him say at the top of his voice. She didn’t hear Alice’s response.
‘See, George,’ she said as she carried him back out to the car, ‘they’re not all complete aliens here. Most, maybe, but not all of them.’
The Thussock Community Hall was a one-storey rectangular wooden building with a flat roof, situated on the outermost edge of a grassy recreation area close to the main housing estate. Probably the only park in Thussock, the recreation area itself was little more than a large, odd-shaped field with a rectangle of tarmac dropped right in the middle, upon which sat a slide, a roundabout, and a row of three swings. One of the swings didn’t have a seat, and the graffiti-covered slide had seen better days.
Michelle had spotted the play area from the road first and she’d figured that if she hoped to meet like-minded parents with kids of a similar age to George at this time of the day, this place was as good as any to find them. She’d felt like a weirdo, loitering and looking for kids. Fortunately she discovered that a parent and toddler group was in session in the hall next door. Going into the timber-clad building felt unexpectedly daunting, like she was stepping into the lion’s den, but she was getting used to it. If she was honest with herself, she hadn’t felt completely comfortable since she’d left Redditch.
A wide entrance corridor ran from the front door into the main hall. Off it were several more doors: a half-empty storeroom, a small kitchen, and male and female toilets. A particularly gruff-looking woman headed Michelle off before she could get through. Michelle tried to make conversation but received only the most cursory of replies. The woman’s responses were little more than a bullet-point list of dos and don’ts: the times, the rules, the cost. She wasn’t as bad as the doctor’s receptionist, Michelle thought, but she wasn’t far off.
Michelle paused and took a deep breath before going into the hall. She felt self-conscious... on edge. There were chairs around the edge of the room and in the centre a group of between fifteen and twenty children (they didn’t stay still long enough to count) were playing with, and occasionally fighting over, a mass of well-worn toys. She let go of George’s hand and gave him a gentle nudge. Unsure at first, he gravitated towards a sit-in car similar to one he had at home and climbed inside. Within minutes he was settled – already playing with several other kids. Michelle sat by herself on a wooden bench at the side of the room and watched him. She almost envied him. Nothing matters to kids, she thought. Who you are, the things you’ve done, what you’ve been through... none of it counts for anything much. They see someone roughly the same shape and size as them and they play, simple as that.
The same definitely couldn’t be said for adults. It wasn’t a problem specific to Thussock, of course, but it seemed particularly prevalent here. There were plenty of other parents in the room, almost exclusively mothers and (she presumed) grandmothers, but none of them seemed particularly keen to welcome a stranger. No one was going out of their way to be rude – plenty of folk had acknowledged her when she’d arrived – but those nods and mumbled hellos were the full extent of their interaction. There had been a roughly equal number of people sitting on all sides of this room at first. Not now. Now, apart from a couple of other stragglers, there were two larger groups of women on either side of the kitchen serving hatch, leaving Michelle on her own at the other end of the hall.
You’re just paranoid. It’s perfectly natural. You’re the new girl. It’s up to you to make the first move.
Clutching her purse, she walked up to the hatch. ‘Could I have a cup of tea, please?’ she asked the first lady she made eye contact with.
‘What’s that?’
‘A cup of tea, please.’
‘It’s your accent,’ the woman grunted as she poured Michelle’s drink.
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Fifty pence.’
Michelle gave her a pound. ‘Keep the change for the funds. Can I take a biscuit for my boy?’
‘That’ll be twenty pence.’
Michelle gave her another fifty, despite having already overpaid. Keep trying, she told herself over and over. ‘We’re new here. Just moved here from Redditch.’
‘Thought we’d not seen you before.’
The woman was almost monosyllabic, as if small-talk in Thussock was taxed.
‘Nice hall you have here.’
‘It does the job.’
‘Do you meet here every day?’
‘Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, Thursday afternoons.’
Michelle just nodded, her questions now beginning to sound as forced as the woman’s replies. The door into the kitchen opened, and another woman put her head through. ‘Do we have more fruit juice in the stores, Sylvia? I can’t find any.’
Sylvia – the woman Michelle had been talking to – appeared to visibly relax when she talked to her friend. ‘I’v
e not seen any. I thought Bryan was supposed to keep everything stocked up. He’s bloody useless, that one. I can see why Betty’s the way she is.’
‘Don’t get me started on Betty, love. You’ll never believe what she’s gone and done now...’
They moved out of earshot. Michelle stopped listening but kept watching. Sylvia was unrecognisable now, all the frostiness and reticence gone. She was laughing and joking with her friend and Michelle couldn’t help wondering, are they laughing at me? She picked up her tea and George’s biscuit and walked away.
She was getting better with the accent, but people were still occasionally hard to understand. She was sure she’d just heard someone mention Ken Potter’s name. Wasn’t that the man whose house Scott had been delivering to yesterday? The man who...? She stopped herself from jumping to conclusions. They might know him. Her ears better attuned now, she listened in. ‘S’terrible,’ a young mum cradling a new-born was saying to three friends gathered around her. ‘We were just saying this morning how we’d seen him in town at the weekend, carrying on like he owned the place as always.’
‘Funny bugger,’ one of the other girls said. ‘I always said there was sumthin’ wrong about him.’
‘You say that about all the blokes in Thussock.’
‘Aye, that’s ’cause they’re all no good!’ a third girl joked. The women laughed, and Michelle sidled a little closer, sipping her piss-weak tea.
‘Terrible business, that,’ she said. She half-expected the entire room to fall silent and for everyone, even the kids, to stop and stare at her, like a clichéd scene from a horror movie. But they didn’t. Instead, one of the women acknowledged her with a subdued ‘aye’, then turned back and continued talking to her friends. She closed the circle, moving ever-so-slightly to her left, positioning herself so she had her back to Michelle, preventing her from edging into their group. The snub was subtle but definite. Their conversation continued, the accents a little stronger than before, harder to make out. Michelle couldn’t clearly hear what they were saying, but she managed to pick out a few choice phrases amongst the mutterings. ‘No one else’s business... Folks should mind their own...’