by Deborah Bee
‘That’s very understandable,’ she says. ‘And does that make you angry at all?’
‘No, not really. Not angry.’
‘You haven’t threatened anyone here.’
‘No!’
‘Perhaps, overreacted to something harmless?’
‘No! I don’t think I’ve even really spoken to anyone.’
‘Kitty, for example. Did you have a misunderstanding with Kitty?’
‘Kitty? No! Why, what’d she say?’
‘She said that you invited her into your flat and then threatened her.’
‘She had a key. She broke in.’
‘Why did she break in if she had a key?’
‘No, you don’t understand, she had a key but then she . . .’
‘The details of it don’t matter, Clare. What matters is whether you got angry and threatened her.’
‘I asked her to leave, yes! But I wasn’t threatening. Did she say I was threatening? Did she?’
‘She said that you frightened her. She wants your verbal abuse recorded. On file.’
‘Fucking bitch!’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You people! Why do you think I say that? She just totally made that up.’
‘Did she, Clare?’
‘Yes, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Or do you think you just remember it differently to her?’
‘You people!’
Is she just trying to wind me up?
Because she is.
This is exactly what Gareth used to do to me.
I need to get out of here.’
‘Do you often find you’re unable to control your anger?’ says Emma, quietly.
You’re the fucking mental ones.
My glass shatters as it hits the wall behind her.
Twenty-Nine
Sally
She didn’t eat much of the pizza, Clare didn’t, barely touched it, and I’d ordered a Vegerama one, which, let me tell you, is a bloody long way from a Meat Feast with extra jalapeños. What is the point of artichokes on a pizza?
If I’d known she weren’t going to eat anything . . . Anyway, she’s gone for a lie-down, and she looks like she needs a lie-down.
‘You want anything from Tesco?’ asks Prashi. She’s got the girls all bundled up in their anoraks and scarves, and they’re arguing about who gets to wear the pink scarf.
‘Why don’t I look for another pink scarf while you’re out?’ I say. ‘Maybe I can find you another one.’
‘I want a new one,’ says the older girl, taking off the pink scarf she’d tied around her neck and throwing it at her sister.
‘I want a new one,’ says the shorter girl, throwing the scarf on the floor.
And that’s why I didn’t have children.
The garment wardrobe is a room off the main hall, next to the noticeboard and it’s jammed with rails, like a jumble sale, filled with women’s and children’s clothes and then there’s plastic storage boxes underneath with badly spelled name tags; SCARFS, SOCKS AND TIGHTS, PANTS AND NICKERS.
Kitty comes in, quiet as a mouse, silently closing the door behind her like she’s a cat burglar or something.
‘Didn’t see you there,’ she says, looking at me as if I shouldn’t be in the room. ‘I’m looking for some leg warmers.’
‘Didn’t they go out of fashion in the eighties?’ I say, smiling, trying to be nice. I mean, she can’t help it, can she, if she’s mental?
‘I wasn’t even born in the eighties,’ she says without smiling, as though she thinks time didn’t exist before she did.
‘Something like this?’ I say, showing her a pair of over-the-knee lurex socks. ‘You could cut the feet off?’
‘Are they new?’ she says. ‘I don’t want them if they’re second-hand.’
‘Everything in here is second-hand.’ I laugh, because honestly, where does she think she is, Harvey Nichols?
‘Some of it was given by the shops. Old stock,’ she goes. ‘That’s what Mrs H said.’
‘Well, you can look,’ I say.
‘I wouldn’t wanna wear dead people’s clothes, would I?’ she says, shivering at the thought.
‘I draw the line at pants,’ I say, more as a joke than anything.
‘You’re kidding, right? There are pants here? Oh my God, I wouldn’t wear dead people’s pants, not even if you paid me.’
‘I know what you mean, but I guess the pants are just pants and they don’t know they used to belong to someone dead.’
*
I feel sick.
I’m supposed to meet Jane, the solicitor, about the exclusion order, because apparently there’s no sign of Terry anywhere so they can’t actually tell him about the injunction. This means it’s not actually legal yet, and because he’s not got the stupid device thing on, he’s in breach of his release conditions or something. Anyway, he’s not at his mother’s or at any of his mates, and he’s not been round mine again, so they say – although I doubt they’re sitting outside my flat day and night, right?
Sue sent me a text and said I should talk to Jane, but she wants to talk to me too, cos there’s some photofits she wants me to look at of Terry’s brothers. And on the one hand she says she doesn’t want me coming out of here unless it’s absolutely necessary, for my own safety and everything, and then on the other she wants me down at the station so I can talk to her about Clare, because she also doesn’t want to be seen talking to me, in case Clare sees us, you know, or that other mental cow, Kitty. She says she’ll send me a car with blacked-out windows, like I’m a gangster or the sodding Queen. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I wasn’t snitching on Clare; I mean, I don’t even know why Sue thinks she’s not telling the truth.
She’s kind of counting on me, I think, just too much. I mean, I’ve got enough on my plate, and Clare, she’s just a young girl, a kid really, and let’s face it, she’s been through a right traumatic time. The police should talk to her directly ’stead of coming through me all the time.
‘You might change your mind about that,’ Sue says, when I tell her that later back at the police station, after I’ve signed more forms at the solicitors. ‘It’s just not adding up,’ she says.
‘What’s not?’ We’re back in the community room. ‘Cos it’s not like you don’t have physical proof. You only had to take one look at that girl to realise that she was a DV.’
‘It’s the house,’ she says, leafing through my file at the same time. ‘She thought she heard Gareth smashing it up. That after he’d poured paraffin on her he’d lost it. That he was drunk.’
‘Yeah?’ I say, wondering if any of this has to do with me.
‘The house was spotless. Like a show house.’
‘Really? Spotless? And no sign of Gareth?’
‘No, we even checked with the neighbours. They said he’s a nice guy, really charming. They say they haven’t seen much of either of them for months. Him out in the car a bit. But not her.’
‘And didn’t you say that same neighbour thought he was doing DIY in the middle of the night?’
‘Clare said he was trashing the place.’
‘Well I guess, if she thought he was off his head, she’d have thought DIY noises were trashing-the-joint noises. It’s possible.’
‘ “Used to hear a bit of arguing but not so much recently”,’ Sue read from Halsall’s notes from the neighbour.
‘So he’s not there and the house is tidy; maybe he cleaned up before he buggered off to live in Cuba or something.’
‘Well, OK, here’s the other thing. All the stuff you would expect someone to take? Laptop, keys, phone? All still there. No one goes away anywhere without their phone, right?’
‘Maybe he left in a hurry. Soon as he saw she’d escaped, he’d have guessed she was going to go straight to the police and he’d have scarpered, fast as he could.’
‘Exactly. So, he wouldn’t redecorate the laundry room.’
‘What?’
‘She told m
e that he’d regularly lock her in the laundry room and that she had scratched how many times she’s been in there, on the wall, in the plaster.’
‘Right?’
‘It’s newly-painted.’
‘You got the right house, yeah?’ I say, giving her a bit of a look.
‘Course I got the right house! I’m seeing Clare tomorrow but you’ll talk to her too, right?’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I say. ‘But I’m not promising you anything; it’s up to her what she says. I’m not the prying type – and that Emma gave her a hard time yesterday; sounds like she was tough on her.’
‘She’s a mental health expert. She was just doing her job. Clare has a bit of a habit of hating people she thinks are giving her a hard time.’
‘Perhaps Clare just remembers it differently.’
‘She has a habit for that too. Seems to me Clare remembers an awful lot of things differently.’
‘Seems to me you’ve made up your mind,’ I say.
Sue ignores me.
‘And watch out for that Kitty Bryers,’ she goes.
‘What, our Kitty? The blonde bimbo? I don’t think we need to worry about her.’
‘She was sectioned last year. Only out because it was a children’s unit. Kept crying rape and then she actually was raped.’
‘Sectioned for what?’
‘APD. Anti-social personality disorder.’
‘Bloody hell, there’s a personality disorder for everything these days.’
‘Kitty’s trouble. She definitely told you she’s not married, right?’
‘What! Kitty’s married?’
‘No, I’m talking about Clare.’
‘Oh, Clare. Yeah, she said that he just pretended they were married so that other men didn’t go after her, so that he owned her.’
‘That’s what she said to me too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s a bloody great big wedding photo over the fireplace.’
*
When I get back, there’s a problem.
Prashi had been gone since two and was only booked out until four, and now it is six. That’s what you do, you book out so people know when to expect you back. I’d only been back myself for about five minutes when PC Chapman races through the front door to get the details from Mrs H.
‘Can you give me a description of what the girls were wearing?’ she’s saying to Mrs H in the hallway. There’s a group of women standing around her. One of the other Indian ladies is holding her hands together tightly and keeps looking at her watch.
‘They had on those purple anoraks,’ I say. ‘But it’s quite a warm day. They might have taken them off.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’ asks Chapman.
‘Just to Burger King in Parkway. The girls are collecting the trolls you get in Happy Meals,’ says Abigail.
‘That’s McDonalds,’ says Sian. ‘They do the Happy Meals, not Burger King.’
‘So, it’s just Prashi and the two girls who are missing, no one else was with them?’ says Chapman. ‘Let me go down to Parkway now. I’ve got backup coming.’
Clare’s standing still, looking pale.
Everyone there’s imagining it was them, that’s why they all look so shit-scared. Everyone dreads being ‘found’.
‘Her ex is from Bradford. How’s he going to find her down here?’ says Sian.
‘Exes do have a nasty habit of turning up,’ says Abigail.
‘Did she know not to use Facebook?’ asks Sian.
‘What’s wrong with using Facebook?’ says Sarah.
‘Of course, you can’t use Facebook, you mong! He’d be able to trace her. You totally do my head in,’ says Big Debbie.
‘I don’t know why you always say things like that,’ says Sarah. ‘I used to be head of human resources at a very big company. I was in charge of eight and a half thousand staff.’ She stomps off.
‘And your husband is an out-of-work brickie who tried to rearrange your facial features with his fist,’ Big Debbie calls after her. ‘Frankly, I can totally see why.’
‘Can I speak to you, Debbie? Please, in my office?’ says Mrs H.
‘What! I only said mong. Everyone says mong . Doesn’t everyone say mong?’ Big Debbie says to everyone.
‘I’ve not heard mong,’ says Clare, walking into the kitchen.
‘It’s not a good word. It’s a bit like the C word. You don’t go there,’ I say, following behind.
‘What is a mong, though?’ she says.
‘I’m not sure. Since political correctness went apeshit, don’t know anymore. Let’s just say it’s someone who’s from Mongolia.’
‘Mongolia? Is Sarah from Mongolia? Is she?’
Big Debbie is trudging up the hall with her head hung in shame.
‘Definitely,’ she says, under her breath.
‘I’m making chicken,’ Clare says to me. ‘You want some?’
‘I’d love some,’ I say, thinking it’s good she’s eating. ‘I had to see the solicitor about the injunction, Terry has gone AWOL.’
Kitty is in the kitchen making toast. The timer is ticking and she’s jumped onto the stainless steel worktop and tucked her feet under her crossed knees, like you do in yoga, or like little kids do in assembly. The butter and knife are waiting and she’s playing with her multi-coloured gem rings and woven thread bracelets, not nervous, you understand, just like she doesn’t give an actual shit. She doesn’t even register that we’re in the room.
‘Why’d you say I threatened you?’ says Clare, out of the blue.
‘What, me?’ I say.
‘No, her. Kitty. Why’d you say I threatened you?’
‘Cos, you did,’ she says, not even looking at Clare.
‘You know I didn’t,’ she goes. ‘You know I didn’t.’
‘Maybe we just remember it differently.’ Kitty’s still twiddling with her bracelets, not even bothered.
‘You broke into our room!’ says Clare.
‘You’re not remembering it right.’
‘Why are you so weird?’ says Clare.
‘You’re the self-harmer,’ responds Kitty.
‘What the—’ starts Clare, but the front buzzer goes and everybody runs into the hallway, including Mrs H and Big Debbie, to see Prashi and the girls being herded in by PC Chapman, and they all have ice lollies, including Chapman, and the girls have orange lolly stains down their chins, and their T-shirts.
‘I’m so sorry, we lost track of time!’ says Prashi. ‘We worried you! I’m sorry.’ The girls are beaming, happy to be the centre of attention, enjoying the hugs.
It’s a bit of a Jesus moment, if you know what I mean, everybody cooing over the kids and putting their arms around Prashi as though she’s been rescued from the arms of the devil, even though they’d only been in the park. And Mrs H looks dead proud to be head of a group of women so kind, supportive, all those things a women’s refuge is supposed to be.
‘They were by the zoo,’ says Chapman.
‘False alarm,’ says Mrs H, smiling.
The smoke detector goes off in the kitchen, at almost exactly the same time as she says false alarm.
‘Chicken!’ shrieks Clare, laughing, and I run after her. The chicken in the oven is actually on fire, and Clare’s jumping from one foot to the other, holding the baking tray with the oven gloves, the half chicken filling the kitchen and hall with clouds of grey smoke.
I turn on the tap and shove the whole tray into the sink, where it sizzles and goes out. By now there’s a crowd standing at the door, including Prashi and the girls, all screaming with laughter.
‘Errrr, Hellllooooo,’ says Mrs H to the girls. ‘Enough excitement for one day. Here’s the takeaway menu, Clare. They only take twenty minutes. Let me know what you want. Prashi, get those girls into bed.’
Clare picks up the burnt chicken from the bottom of the sink and flips open the top of the bin as I pull my specs off the top of my head and start to read through the takeaway menu
. Kitty is still sitting on the side, finishing her toast. She hasn’t moved since she began eating it, feet still tucked under, playing with her bracelets, not giving a shit about Prashi and her kids or the chicken being on fire, not interested in anything but her toast. She didn’t even seem to notice the smoke.
Thirty
DS Clarke
DS Clarke is on autopilot, taking her usual route to work from her one-bedroom flat in Belsize Park, a sixties concrete block that wouldn’t get past the planning these days. She snakes around Primrose Hill, down into Regent’s Park Road then takes a right off Parkway to the back car park. On a good day it takes her twenty minutes. On a bad day, forty. On a bad day she could walk it faster.
DS Clarke never listens to the radio in her car. She keeps the ear out for local police reports, sure, but driving down the back roads of North London, she takes time to think. It’s her form of meditation, she tells herself, although she’s not emptying her mind as much as focusing it. She likes to call it ‘finding holes’.
The hole that she is wrestling with today? Who tidied up the house? She admonishes and immediately forgives herself for her sexist attitude, because, frankly, she can’t help but think that it would take a woman to clean a house to that degree. Or a gay man. She bites her lip. Now she’s worried she’s being homophobic.
But if it wasn’t Gareth, then it must have been Clare. Unless there was someone else involved . . .
But who?
Why would Clare say the house was a mess if it wasn’t? Why would Clare clear up the house, then say that it was a mess?
To cast doubt on Gareth – he’s the mad one?
To implicate Gareth – he had something to hide?
DS Clarke needs her white board.
At 8.04 the children (that’s how she thinks of her junior team), are beginning to slope in. Frankly, it wouldn’t have surprised her to see their mums standing at the gate handing over plastic lunch boxes.
What adds up? It might be easier to say what doesn’t.
She divides the board into two.
On the left – FACT. On the right – CONJECTURE.
Under FACT she writes:
Clare is injured.
Gareth is missing.
Clare is in the Regent’s Park Road Refuge.
They both lived at 289 Oval Road.