The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  Around the edges were written names, some with little comments: Murray, Hattie (no!), Steve (too dishy), Jody (too stupid), Molly, Cleodie, Miss Fortune (demented), Mrs Paxton. Some had been circled, or linked up to other scribbled notes with arrows or squiggly lines.

  But in the middle of it all was a stick figure with stiletto heels specially coloured in with neon-green highlighter, and its hands on its hips:

  GRETEL: BITCH EXTRAORDINAIRE. CHIEF SUSPECT

  Gretel stood for a moment, her hands on her hips in an unconscious mirroring of her stick-figure likeness. She made a sound that was halfway between a huff and a bitter laugh.

  ‘I see now,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re some kind of mental nutter. I am going to take your son away.’

  She drew her phone out of her pocket and photographed the easel. ‘You’re an incapable mother,’ she said as she drew nearer to the skull post-it on the fridge and leaned in to photograph that too.

  ‘On what basis?’ I snapped. ‘Because I don’t like you? Get over yourself, Gretel. Pip is fed and clothed and warm and happy. He’s doing well at nursery—’

  ‘Oh yeah – fed on jam sandwiches. Warm because Murray’s paying for a roof over your heads. Doing well at the nursery which Murray pays for. Take away Murray’s money and you are nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘Murray’s his father. I’m entitled to financial support.’

  ‘Where are the furking salopettes? I need to get going.’

  ‘I told you he doesn’t have any.’

  ‘Another pair of trousers then.’ With a toss of her blonde mane, she marched out of the kitchen into the hall and Pip’s bedroom.

  And when I saw what was in there I closed my eyes and then opened them again, unable to process what I was seeing because it didn’t make sense. Hattie and I hadn’t even come in here last night.

  But Gretel nodded, because she’d got what she needed now. This battle, or whatever it was, was surely all but over.

  Because there was an object lying in Pip’s cot, its black metal claw resting on the pillow, in the little hollow left by his head.

  A hammer.

  41

  Janey

  ‘It was awful,’ I said to Steve later that night. ‘She just looked at me and said, “I am going to take. You. Down.” ’

  I was lying in bed, face flushed, naked under the crumpled sheets. After a day of arguments, and frantic phone calls, and more locksmiths, I’d simply walked straight into Steve’s arms when he’d arrived at my door. And this time our coming together had been different again. He’d soothed me, settled me, stroked away my nerves, quietened me with his hands and his lips and the movement of his body. Now, he’d made tea and brought chocolate digestives in, which I was eating from the packet.

  ‘Dear oh dear.’ He winced. ‘Fighting talk. You’ll have to take her down.’ He aimed an imaginary gun at the door and pulled the trigger. ‘P-ching.’

  ‘Since there was only one glass on the table, she clearly thought I’d drunk three bottles of wine myself, and drawn the incident-room diagram on my own. And the hammer . . . God, Steve.’

  She’d dialled Murray’s number and spoken to him as though I wasn’t even there. Like two lawyers discussing some troublesome case. ‘Time for a change of tack,’ she’d said. ‘We’ve clear grounds to go down the social services route now.’

  ‘I had to make up some story. I had to say that I’d been hammering a nail into the wall to hang up a picture, and that Pip must have got hold of the hammer and thought it was a toy. It doesn’t say much for my parenting skills but the alternative explanations look a lot worse.’

  Intruders. Ghosts. Psychosis.

  Steve shrugged. ‘Maybe he did put it there. Maybe he did think it was a toy.’

  ‘It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there when we left the house yesterday morning.’

  But had it been? Could I be absolutely sure about that? I rubbed the heels of my hands against my forehead, trying to remember.

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Do you think I’m going mad?’

  ‘Course not. Could it have been Hattie? If you were both falling around drunk, she might’ve done it as a joke.’

  ‘No. No, Steve, honestly. And Hattie doesn’t even know about . . . the hammer dream, and everything.’

  ‘Well, who does know?’

  I looked at him, stroked him down the side of his face.

  ‘Just you.’

  He sighed, took hold of my hand and kissed it.

  ‘I must have done it in my sleep. It’s the only explanation. You know, I grabbed the phone off Gretel this morning, and pleaded with Murray to stop her phoning social services, but maybe I should have let them go ahead.’

  ‘Jay . . .’ His voice was soft now. ‘You’d never hurt Pip. And she can’t take him away from you.’

  ‘She said she’s going to request a court hearing. A children’s welfare hearing or something. To decide who gets custody of Pip and everything.’

  ‘That’s not up to her.’

  ‘Murray said he thought it would be a good idea! A good alternative to the social services route.’

  It was a good, middle-class alternative that was safely in his lawyerly comfort zone. And hers. She’d played him so cleverly . . . he thought he’d talked her down, but she’d got her own way.

  ‘No judge would take Pip away from you.’

  ‘They might if they thought I was a “mental nutter”.’

  ‘But you’re not.’ He ran a hand down the side of my body, trailing his fingers into the dip of my waist. ‘You’re the perfect mum to Pip. You manage it all so well. He has a lovely life here with you.’

  ‘Only because Murray’s bankrolling everything. If he wasn’t, if I had to work full-time, and pay for childcare, all the bills, everything . . . I have no idea how I’d manage.’

  ‘He’d have to contribute. There’d be benefits and things. Tax credits and all that stuff. You’re getting way ahead of yourself.’

  ‘If she manages to sour things between me and Murray then it’s bad news. One way or another, it’ll be bad, bad news.’

  I imagined myself, alone in the flat, night after night, seeing Pip only once a week, or every second weekend. Or maybe – because who knew where this would end – in some bleak room somewhere in the social work department, under official supervision.

  ‘I hate it here without him,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t even feel like home.’

  ‘How about I take you out tonight. Away from this place. Anywhere you want to go. We could go for a drive. We could go for cocktails. We could go dancing.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Anywhere at all?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I want you to take me to your flat. You promised to show it to me. No more excuses. I’m starting to think you’re married, or a serial killer or something.’

  He groaned and flopped onto the pillows. ‘I told you, you’ll need to give me warning so I can hide the body parts down the back of the sofa.’

  ‘I could just wait outside while you do that.’

  ‘And I’ll have to do something with the buckets of blood in the fridge.’

  ‘You said anywhere.’ I elbowed him out of bed and threw his clothes at him.

  *

  I’d imagined his flat to be a light, airy studio with soaring ceilings, with boldly painted canvases vying for space on the walls, or standing half-finished on easels. I’d imagined having to step over the paint-covered sheets strewn across the floor, paintbrushes standing in jam jars.

  So I was surprised when he took me to a compact box of a flat, six floors up in a modern apartment block right on the Shore, as he’d said.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable.’ He swung open the door and snapped on the lights. ‘Back in a mo.’

  I stepped from the hallway into a large rectangular room with a kitchen at the near end and a living area towards the back. It was empty other than two white sofas, a blue-glass coffee table and a flat screen TV set into the wall. A large picture
window looked out across the river, over to the hills in the distance, black lumps against a duller black sky.

  The walls were blank.

  ‘Nice place,’ I said when he came back, minus the leather jacket and wearing a different shirt. ‘I like your blue coffee table.’

  ‘Want some food?’

  ‘Uh-oh . . .’ I said. ‘What will it be, caper sandwiches and beer?’

  ‘Venison pâté and oatcakes? And I’ve got a nice hunk of Isle of Mull Cheddar.’

  He poured me a glass of juice which I sipped as he set out the food on the pristine, granite-effect melamine worktop. I was trying to remember if a man had ever fed me. Murray certainly hadn’t, that drunken night at Gleneagles. He’d fallen asleep straight afterwards, crossways on the oversized bed, and I’d raided the minibar for a little mouse meal of chocolate and nuts.

  Steve and I ate at the breakfast bar, teetering on high stools. It felt like we’d sneaked into a show flat to have a picnic.

  ‘So where are your paintings?’ I asked.

  ‘Most of my work’s at the college.’

  ‘Being such a visual person, though . . . I was surprised to see the blank walls.’

  He shrugged. ‘Haven’t been here that long. I’ll need to put something up.’

  ‘When did you move in?’

  ‘Two years or so.’

  ‘Oh. Oh well. Best to get these things right first time, I s’pose. You wouldn’t want to leave holes in the walls if you changed your mind. Not when they’re so nice and . . . white.’

  Nice and white?

  He spread some of the coarse pink pâté onto an oatcake, and it gave into two pieces with a soft, cracking sound.

  ‘It’s awfully quiet here.’

  ‘It’s a quiet block. It’s half empty.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They built this place at the end of the property boom, and lots of the flats never sold. The four floors above this one are all empty; they never got finished.’

  ‘It’s nice . . . I still think you should put up some of your paintings, though. We could hire a van and—’

  ‘Janey.’ He held his non-oatcake hand up in a stop gesture. ‘Please. I haven’t painted anything for a couple of years.’

  ‘What? But—’

  ‘Other than bits and pieces for work. Teaching keeps me busy enough for now.’

  ‘Why aren’t you doing your own stuff?’

  He stared down at the worktop between us, silent for so long that I thought he’d ignored my question.

  ‘Calum.’ He put down his oatcake and brushed the crumbs off his hands. ‘After Calum, I couldn’t.’

  I moved carefully off the wobby stool and round the breakfast bar to him. I pulled him close, cradling his head into my chest.

  He stood up and pulled my hips towards his, pressing against me all the way down. With a long, shaky breath, he tugged my jeans down, finding me with his fingers. Then he lifted me onto the cheap melamine worktop, closed his eyes and pushed himself into me with a sound that was almost like a sob.

  *

  Later that night, lying in the cloudy white sheets of Steve’s bed, in his empty white room, I found myself telling him about the baby I’d lost. He held me, my head against his chest, stroking my hair.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, the words humming through his chest wall into my ear. ‘I’m so, so sorry that happened to you.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ I said. ‘About the baby.’

  His ribcage rose and fell. Rose and fell again. I closed my eyes and it was like drifting. Drifting away.

  ‘I always thought there was something. Something in your past that was very painful. Very current for you. I’m glad you could tell me. Whenever you’re sad, tell me, and I’ll hold you.’

  I felt tears run down my face into the hair of his chest.

  They weren’t tears of sadness though, this time, but tears of wonder that I’d found him.

  I twisted round, propped myself up on one elbow. I needed to look into his eyes to see that he felt it too – this channel of perfect communication that had opened up between us.

  He reached up and cupped my cheek, wiping a tear away with the flat of his thumb.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can say. But I’m here.’

  And for a moment I was a child again, standing in the stream at Glen Eddle as the water rushed past, washing me pure and clean and cool.

  *

  I woke with a start. Steve was sitting beside me on the bed, watching me as though he’d been waiting for me to wake up.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just after one,’ he said gently.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ My thoughts flew to Pip again. Some kind of disaster had happened . . .

  He reached for my hand and held it. My pinkie twitched against the grip of his fingers.

  ‘I need to talk to you about something, and it’s going to be hard for you. It’s going to hurt you.’

  ‘What?’ Was it about Calum? Katya? Had he decided, somehow over the last two hours, while I’d been sleeping, that he was going back to them? I shouldn’t have gone to sleep. I shouldn’t.

  ‘I know your Miss Fortune. I know Esme.’

  What?

  ‘How?’

  ‘She taught me piano,’ he said.

  I wriggled further up onto the pillows. This wasn’t such a big deal. He could just explain quickly and we could get back to sleep.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  He pressed his big, bony hands more tightly over mine, as though he was trying to transfer strength to me. His face looked vulnerable, exposed without the glasses, his eyes black and fathomless in the half light of the room.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Because you first mentioned her in the art session. I felt it wasn’t appropriate to say anything.’

  I shook my head slowly. ‘But the other things that happened were appropriate?’

  You held me. You held me. You held me.

  ‘No. I know they weren’t. I was overwhelmed. There was this massive connection with you. Your life had been . . . been shaped by her, too. It was obvious I couldn’t be detached any more. I couldn’t stay in the tutor role. It’s why I had to say you couldn’t come to the sessions.’

  I pushed him out of the way, swung my legs out of bed, tried to stand up, but the floor seemed to sway. Maybe the whole, sad empty tower block was swaying, bending, in the wind that blew in from the sea.

  ‘Janey? What’s up?’

  ‘I need some water.’

  He followed me through to the kitchen, poured me water, cold from the tap. Then he poured himself a measure of whisky in a crystal glass and sat down on the sofa. I perched on the edge, the leather cold against my legs. I was only wearing a long T-shirt, one of his.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me later?’

  ‘It felt too late to tell you. And it’s not something I find easy to talk about. Oh God Janey, I don’t know. I should have. I should have and I didn’t.’

  ‘How did she shape your life?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does. You can’t be a . . . a blank any more. You have to tell me about yourself. Or I’ll have to go.’ I shook my head, and repeated it more softly. ‘I’ll have to go, Steve.’

  He sighed. Stared into the whisky, tilting the glass so that it caught the light.

  ‘I started lessons when I was ten,’ he said. ‘They were offered as part of the bursary thing. My parents would never have paid for something like that. Dad didn’t even want me to do them. He said I was “arty farty” enough already. But I liked the idea of the lessons because the heating at home didn’t come on until seven, when my mum got home from work.’

  And it had always been warm at Miss Fortune’s.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, seeing my expression. ‘There were lots of latchkey kids in the 1980s. Not so much at St Simon’s, but hey. My pare
nts weren’t bad parents, they were just . . .’

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘Yep.’ He shrugged. ‘They were busy trying to keep the bills paid, and they just kind of assumed I’d be okay. They used to laugh about St Simon’s all the time, because the day they’d gone to look round they’d seen “smoked-salmon terrine” on the lunch menu. They put on posh voices – which they thought were hilarious – whenever they mentioned the school. They didn’t know that the boys took the piss out of my accent whenever they deigned to speak to me.’

  ‘I love your accent,’ I said softly.

  ‘I tried to lose it for a while, but the boys’ private school accent never took. Maybe because I never felt like I belonged there. I always wished we’d move back to Sheffield, and I could go back to my old school and my old friends. My parents didn’t realise. They didn’t ever ask if I was, you know, okay. They never noticed my hands.’

  ‘Your hands?’

  ‘They were a mess. Hand washing and so on. It was OCD, probably, or some kind of anxiety disorder.’ His voice was dismissive. Colder than I’d ever heard it.

  I hesitated. ‘Were you—’

  ‘I was nothing special at the piano. But I think that worked for both of us. I only played for fun, and she never pushed me. I was eleven when she suggested I should stay for my tea. It was snowing, and she said I should wait until it had stopped, as the buses would all be backed up. So I stayed. A nursery tea, she called it. Toast soldiers, and egg-in-a-cup. Orange squash.’

  ‘C-custard creams for afters?’

  ‘You cold?’ He slipped his arm round me and pulled my rigid body against him. I could feel the cage of his ribs down the length of my upper arm.

  ‘It was an arrangement that just kind of stuck. Miss Fortune said I could walk straight to hers from school on a Thursday, and do my homework in the kitchen until it was time for my lesson to start. She got cream for my hands. She said it was important for pianists to look after their skin.’

  ‘Cream.’ I remembered the smell of Vaseline Intensive Care filling the air in the music room, and again my heart lurched into understanding.

  ‘And then – it must have been a year or so later – it snowed again one afternoon. She wanted to listen to some piece by Debussy and she said we could go into her room, and lie down on her bed, as it was right by the window and we’d be able to watch the snow falling. I remember looking down at her feet as she kicked off her shoes. Her tights were inside out, and I was repulsed, totally, by the seam: the dark seam snaking over her toes. There was a counterpane thing on the bed, this heavy pink fabric, and it smelt damp when we stretched out on top of it. We lay there, watching the snow and listening to the music. The flakes were enormous, so slow, twisting as they fell. And they kept coming, coming and coming and coming, like the sky was made of nothing but snow, and it would never stop. It felt like everything would be buried soon, just buried and no one would ever know.’