November, 1990
At five minutes past 11 a.m. on the seventh of November, a tall, muscular man with a shaved back-and-sides Afro threw a pint of orange juice in my face.
I had been curled up, as usual on non-lecture days, in the big squashy armchair at the back of the college bar, beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the college playing fields. I would sit in there, comforted by the smell of stale smoke, spilt alcohol and musty carpet, and read.
Until that moment, I thought I was safe, I thought no one knew where I was or who I was. I thought my shame had been buried and I could cautiously, carefully, start again, two hundred miles from the scene of my alleged crime.
But the splash of liquid on my face, hair and books told me otherwise. Told me to run before things got worse. People had spat at me in the street before, had written me hate mail, had crossed the road to avoid me, had threatened me with violence . . . and now it was starting up again. I leapt out of the chair and grabbed my belongings – my textbooks, room keys and purse – spread like a pack of splayed cards on the table, and ran. Not before I said, ‘Sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry.’ Not before I let him know that I wasn’t enjoying myself, I hadn’t forgotten, I hadn’t really left it all behind.
‘Wait!’ I heard him call as I crossed the threshold. But I did not wait. I did not want to make it easy for him to finish off what he started.
Down the corridor, around the corner, out into the wide, paved courtyard, I ran. ‘Please! Miss! Wait!’ he called again but I sprinted on, heading for the safety of my room. I could hear his footsteps behind me, gaining on me, and I pushed myself harder, desperate to get to my room, desperate to shut and lock the door, to climb into bed and hide under the covers until he got bored and left me alone.
At the door to my halls, I worked as fast as I could to type in the five-digit code but as I hit the last number, his hand came down on my forearm, stopping me from turning the handle.
I tried to scream, but it was swollen and bloated from my run and stuck in my throat; then became firmly lodged into place by the fear of what was about to come.
‘My God you can run,’ he said, his chest heaving. ‘Are you OK?’ He pointed over his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry about back there.’ He paused to catch his breath a little more. ‘Whoa! Mad run! I thought . . . I’m sorry. I was coming over to see if you wanted a drink. I think of you as my reading partner because I always see you in there reading like I do. Thought I’d make contact. Turned into the wrong kind of contact, if you know what I mean.’
‘You didn’t do it on purpose?’ I replied.
‘Why would I do it on purpose?’ he asked. ‘What sort of sick person would do that on purpose?’
‘You don’t know who I am?’ I searched his face for an answer that might be different from the one coming out of his mouth.
‘Should I?’ he asked with raised eyebrows.
‘You don’t know who I am,’ I stated. I relaxed into that sentence, enjoying exactly what it meant: safety, anonymity.
‘Tell me who you are, then, if I should know.’
‘I’m nobody,’ I said.
‘Ri-ght,’ he said carefully. ‘So, are we cool? You’re OK?’
I nodded at him. ‘I’m OK.’
‘Good. I can go back to my reading and not worry that I’ve traumatised you, yeah?’
I nodded again. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good. That’s good.’ He took a couple of steps away then said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Oh, um, well . . . um . . .’
‘You don’t know your own name?’
‘I was just trying to work out if I should tell you my real name.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘It’s Serena.’
‘OK, Serena, I’ll see you then.’
‘Yeah, I’ll see you.’
He’d walked a little distance away when he called over his shoulder: ‘Oh, by the way, I’m Evan.’
‘Bye, Evan,’ I called. Under my breath I added, ‘And thank you. Thank you so, so much.’
I tug the paper out of the door, knowing I should be grateful that the paperboy managed to get it into the door this time, mostly he stands at the gate and chucks it in the general direction of the door.
I go back to the kitchen, flicking through the paper even though Evan hates it when I do that. He likes to come to it afresh, without the pages mussed up by my fingers. On some level, that’s probably why I do it: he tells me not to do something – asks, really – asks me not to do something and my brain tells me it wants to do nothing else but that thing. I can’t help it. It’s the same reason I’ve never been any good at diets – tell me I can’t have a food and I want nothing but that food.
I’m halfway through the paper, flicking through the pages, when my eyes are dragged to the headline of the small pictureless square at the bottom of page five: SWEET TASTE OF FREEDOM FOR THE ICE CREAM GIRL. I lift the paper closer to my nose to be sure, to double-check I am really reading those words.
I stop in my tracks as ice-cold fingers with razorblade fingernails begin clawing at my heart, lungs and stomach. This is what it feels like when the past crops up unawares, when it will not stay dead and buried as it should be.
I read the words that go with the headline, and the tearing and ripping at my insides intensifies. This is what a heart attack feels like: what happens when your heart is overwhelmed by the secrets it carries and wants to let them out, hurting you in the process.
I read those words again and again and again. Life is all about scales, checks and balances, I sometimes think: every time something good happens, something awful will come along to even it out, to stop me being completely and blithely happy. I finally got my yearned-for proposal, so now she is back to haunt me.
Creak! of the top step sounds through the house, signalling the imminent arrival of someone I love and who does not know.
I can’t be caught reading this. Even though there’s no picture, there are two words that connect me to this, that would give me away and would unleash hell upon our small, ordinary lives.
I scrunch the paper in my hands and then run to the bin, hit the pedal and shove it in, down where it will not do any damage, down, down out of sight. I’ll have to tell Evan the paperboy didn’t deliver it or something; I’ll have to go back on my promise to never lie – not to others, not to myself. But if it’s a choice between a small white lie or the end of everything, I have to lie. Show me a person who wouldn’t and I’ll show you someone who has never lived through hell.
The weight of the tread of the footsteps tells me it’s Evan. I pick up the stainless steel kettle, dash to the sink, and manage to turn on the tap before he wanders into the kitchen.
‘Morning, wife-to-be-again,’ he says. I’m sure he’s smiling but I cannot turn to check, I cannot face him until I have composed myself, rearranged my expression so he can’t tell something is wrong.
‘Morning, you,’ I say, bright and breezy. There is an extra forced note of happiness in my voice, but if he notices, he doesn’t mention it. ‘Ready for another day at the coalface?’
He sucks in his breath. ‘Ooooh, not quite. Coffee, toast, smoothie. Then I might consider it.’ I hear him rub the slight paunch that appears whenever he sits down or slouches. ‘Actually, I could murder cheese on toast.’
Murder. The word echoes and pulsates in my mind and in the deepest recesses of my chest. Murder, murder, murder.
‘Really thin slices of cheese. Dash of Worcester sauce.’
‘You know where toaster is,’ I say, playing for time. Knives. Where are the knives? Where?
‘Sez?’
‘Yes?’ I reply.
‘Look at me, please.’
I take an extra deep breath and turn to face my husband. He is a year older than me, on his way to forty, but with very few wrinkles to show for it, because, I often tell him, he’s lived an easy life. His eyes are fringed by long black eyelashes, while his mouth is almost always ready with a
smile. He has smooth, dark brown skin and has been through more hairstyles than me until settling on a close-cut shave all over. Once, Conrad convinced him to get an ‘E’ shaved into the back of his head. Our son, seven at the time, had thought it pretty cool, while I’d been amazed he’d done it. He was actually going to keep it until I reminded him that most people don’t expect their GPs to be walking adverts for dance drugs. The pair of them had looked at me as if I had named the drug ecstasy just to stop Evan being really cool and ‘down with the kids’.
‘Yes, how can I help you?’ I ask him.
‘Where are the knives?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I need to make cheese on toast; where are the knives?’
‘They’re um . . .’ I stop speaking in the hope something else will take over and speak for me, that God will send an angel to put the right words in my mouth.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ he says, as he observes me. I imagine that several patients who have tried to pull a fast one have wilted under the pressure of that look.
I sigh. Tut. Shake my head. All the while praying that something will come to me. Or something will happen to rescue me. ‘They’re . . .’
Creak! at the top of the stairs interrupts me.
‘Oh, is that the kids?’ I say happily.
Evan’s right eyebrow rises at me. ‘Saved by the creak, huh?’ he says.
Con wanders into the kitchen, rubbing one eye and tugging at the bottom of his red and blue pyjama top. My eight-year-old is usually a bundle of energy, constantly needing reminding to slow down. To look at him now, you’d be forgiven for thinking he spends most of his time asleep or slumped in front of the goggle box.
‘Vee woke me up,’ he complains as he rests his head on my stomach. ‘She’s singing. She’s always singing, Mum. Make her stop.’
‘I’ll try, sweetie,’ I say, running my hand over the smooth bristles of his shaved hair. It’s good to hold him, to be able to anchor myself in the present with him. He is real. He is here. The soft shapes of him – his slender limbs and lean body – tell me this is my life, this is who I am. I am here, everything else is not.
‘Your mother was just about to tell me where the knives are,’ Evan informs our son.
Con lifts his head and rests his chin on my solar plexus so he can gaze up at me with eyes that are almost identical to Evan’s. When he was a baby, people used to comment on the size of his eyes and the length of his lashes wherever we went. They are beautiful and large and open. Honest. ‘Did you lose them again, Mum? Is Dad going to shout at you?’
‘Noooo, Dad’s not going to shout at me because I didn’t lose them,’ I say with a defiant look at my husband.
‘So, where are they?’ Evan counters.
‘They’re . . .’
Another creak sounds at the top of the stairs, this time followed by the skipping sounds of Verity coming to join us.
She has been unusually chipper these days. Skipping, singing, cheerily doing her kitchen chores – even offering to help Con with his. I suspect there’s a boy involved, which does not make me feel good. Or happy. I’m waiting for the right time to broach the matter with her because she is too young for boys. She’s not allowed to wear make-up, to stay out late, to go away with her friends, to have an email address that we don’t have access to, to have a mobile phone number she can give to friends. But still, somehow . . .
The three of us watch her coming through the kitchen doorway, tall and slender, hair pulled back into three connected ponytails that go from her forehead to the nape of her neck, wearing her pink dressing gown tied-up and nothing on her feet.
‘What?’ She stops just over the threshold. ‘What have I done now?’ she asks, aggrieved. ‘Nothing, that’s what. So why are you all staring at me like I’ve done something?’
‘You haven’t done a thing, sweetheart,’ Evan says. ‘We were just marvelling at how your arrival has stopped your mother telling us where the knives are.’
Verity’s large brown eyes swing dramatically to me. ‘Oh, Mum, you didn’t!’
‘Didn’t what?’ I ask.
‘Forget where you put the knives, a–gain!’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘So, where be they?’ Evan asks.
‘They’re . . . They’re . . .’
‘OH MY GOD!’ Verity suddenly screeches. ‘WHAT IS THAT?!’
We are trying to recover from the first screech when she continues, ‘ON YOUR FINGER, MUM! WHAT IS THAT?’
Verity’s screeches are up in the realms of dog whistles, and really quite painful to someone who is tired, hungover and under a serious amount of pressure.
‘Oh, my engagement ring. Do you like it?’ I hold out my hand for her to take a closer look. ‘Your father asked me to marry him again last night and I said yes.’
‘I was thinking we could do it on the twenty-fifth of June,’ Evan says.
‘Ah, so only one anniversary to remember? Yeah, good one,’ I say to him. ‘I’ll still expect two cards and two presents, you cheapskate.’
‘Wait, you’re actually going to get married? With a ceremony and everything?’ Verity asks.
‘Of course,’ Evan and I say at the same time.
‘It’s going to be huge,’ Evan continues. ‘Wedding dress, coordinated bridesmaids outfits, big cars . . . the lot.’
Verity rolls her eyes. ‘Why can’t you just be like other people’s parents? They don’t do this sort of thing.’
‘Other people’s parents clearly don’t love each other as much as we do,’ I explain, hoping she leaves it there, that she doesn’t go over to the dark side of teenage stroppiness because she will be opening up a whole world of trouble for herself.
‘You’ll just show me up in front of everyone,’ she says. ‘Why can’t this family just be normal for once?’
I feel Evan bristle a second or two after me.
‘And that’s the end of Verity Gillmare’s performance of “Sulky Teen”,’ I say. ‘We’re going to get nice, polite Verity back now. And she’s going to apologise for all the things she’s just said.’ I smile at my daughter. She knows that I’ve just stopped her from having her iPod taken away for a week, or having limited access to the computer. Evan has a zero-tolerance policy on backchat and rudeness, and I do not want the day to start with a battle between them. I just want this day to go back to being the lovely day after I was proposed to.
Verity stares down at her bare feet and starts to wriggle her toes as the atmosphere in the kitchen grows ever-thicker and more tense. Conrad has stopped breathing while his little heart is racing against my body. He’s scared that if Verity is banned from television, has her computer taken away or is sent to bed as soon as she comes home from school, it’ll mean the same for him; he’ll be a victim of the fallout she caused.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbles.
‘What was that? Did the little mouse speak? I can’t hear her if she did,’ I joke. ‘Come on little mouse, squeak up.’
Despite herself, she smiles a little as she looks up and says, ‘Sorry Mum, sorry Dad.’
‘Good girl,’ I say. ‘Now come on all of you, sit down. We need breakfast and then to get this show on the road.’
‘Knives?’ Evan asks.
‘Living room magazine rack,’ I say without thinking. That was the problem all along, of course – thinking too much.
Almost imperceptibly, Evan’s mouth and left eyebrow twitch.
He is thinking that Con could have found them, played with them, hurt himself.
‘Before you say anything, the magazine rack is on top of the cupboard in the spare bedroom.’
‘Of course,’ he says and shakes his head in despair. ‘Where else would they be? I’ll go get them, shall I?’
‘Right, so what do you want for breakfast?’ I ask. ‘Your dad will probably drop you off today on his way in.’ I cannot leave the house to do my normal things for fear of someone seeing me and remembering. Those sorts of incidental news items in the pap
er are the things that jog people’s minds; make them realise that you don’t just ‘have one of those faces’, they really do remember you from somewhere. And that somewhere is somewhere you’d rather they forgot. ‘And you can buy your lunches today, but no sugary or sweet stuff.’
‘Mum, it’s Saturday,’ Conrad says.
Saturday? That’s news to me. ‘Oh,’ I say.
‘You did know that, didn’t you?’ Verity asks, her voice and attitude no longer surly, more incredulous and concerned.
‘Course I did, just trying to keep you on your toes.’ I give Con a quick squeeze. ‘Come on, sweetheart, sit down at the table while I start breakfast. Dad’s doing Saturday morning surgery.’
I turn back to the sink and try to calm myself. Forgetting the day of the week is normal after the heavy session of last night. Everyone knows I can’t drink very much. So this . . . this memory lapse means nothing. It’s not like before. That was then, this is now and this is nothing like then. All of us forget things every now and again.
All of us do it.
poppy
KILLER SMILE?
Poppy Carlisle, one of the teenagers currently known as The Ice Cream Girls, is to give evidence today at her trial for her part in the murder of teacher Marcus Halnsley.
Carlisle, 18, who gained her nickname after she appeared scantily clad, smiling and eating ice cream with her codefendant Serena Gorringe, denies killing her former lover, Mr Halnsley. She and Gorringe allege there had been an accident following a fight that left Mr Halnsley with what they thought was a fatal wound. However, police revealed evidence that Mr Halnsley had several cuts to his torso, possibly the result of torture, and that he ultimately died from being stabbed in the heart.
Although Carlisle’s fingerprints were found on the knife, she denies murder and is expected to claim, while in the witness box, that Gorringe returned to Mr Halnsley’s house and killed him to frame her.
The Ice Cream Girls Page 2