by S. E. Lynes
‘I can’t see anything,’ she said.
‘It’s up at the top of that grass verge,’ I said. ‘Behind the trees. You can’t see it from here.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s just a bench beside a little pond. In the summer, it’s very pretty, and you can feed the ducks. I used to take our Polly and our Kie… vin there. But in the evenings no one ever goes there. Well, except me, of course. And the dog.’
She peered in again, her head craning forward. Something deep within her, some restless core, yearned to see the secluded place even though she knew she should be getting to her friend’s house.
‘I just climb over,’ I said. ‘Or you can go around. No one bothers. I climb over and walk up and sit on the bench. I call it my bench and I have a little smoke, sometimes a little cry if I’m upset, and I just step off the world for five minutes. I’d go now only I’ve left my ciggies at home.’
Ciggies my foot. I don’t smoke, as you know.
‘I’ve got some,’ she almost cried, her developing crush on me taking full flight. I was so much calmer, so much kinder than her own skinny, Lycra-clad, neurotic mother who wanted only academic success from her so she could bathe in that reflected glory and somehow make up for her own failed promise. I was soft and warm, my promise had never failed because it had never been made, and I didn’t give a monkey’s about her degree, only about her, what made her heart ache, her soul sing. Meanwhile she wanted to stand beneath the spread of my arms and shelter there and be loved.
And there was me with all this love going spare.
I gave her a sideways glance. ‘What’re you thinking, missy?’
She smirked. ‘We could go and see your secret place,’ she said, her voice thin. ‘And I’ll roll you one of mine.’
I smiled at her. ‘Well, I don’t normally share my secret place with anyone. But as it’s you…’
She was excited; I felt the burn of it in my chest, although now, like the hunger, I’m wondering if the excitement was my own. She also really did need a fag but hadn’t wanted to make me stop and wait while she rolled one. I put one hand on the railing. She hesitated.
‘I can only stop for a minute, by the way,’ I said. ‘Literally a couple of minutes. My husband’s expecting me back before half nine.’
Before I could say anything else, she’d climbed over. That put me in a spot. I never climb over the railings; I follow the hedge to the end, where you can just walk into the gardens. But I was here now, caught in my own lie. I had to pick up the dog and hand him to her. She didn’t question how I usually did this on my own; she was too busy laughing at me stuck with one leg one either side of the fence.
‘Can I help you?’ She took my hand and pulled me towards her.
I almost fell onto her and we both laughed.
‘What are we like?’ I said, leading the way up the grass verge to where the trees huddled, whispering in a dark amorphous clump. I was panting a bit by now, because the lawns are on a slope and the walking hadn’t yet got my fitness up.
We reached the trees and I led the way to the pond. It was dark in there, but the moon bleached the tiny path, yellowed the edge of the pond where the water sliced the reeds. And the bench.
‘Shame you lost your phone,’ I said. ‘We could have used it for a torch. Still, we’ve got the moon.’
She pulled a tin from her jacket pocket and sat down. She’d gone quiet. Now we were here, I sensed that she’d begun to ask herself what the heck she was doing, and to feel afraid. But beneath her apprehension she was enjoying herself, enjoying the pull of the fear, the danger. There was some nugget of rebellion in there for her. Oh, I remembered my own youth as if it were the week before. That urge to do something reckless. I remembered a lad with a motorbike offering me a ride one night after we’d been clubbing at Mr Smith’s. No, I’d said, when what I’d wanted but not dared to say was yes. I remembered summer nights roaming the streets with Lisa and our other mates in drunken noisy packs. I remembered a stranger’s face blurring on the dance floor late at night in some seedy dive as it loomed in for a thick-tongued kiss. Wanting to do things we shouldn’t is as old as time.
We sat together on the bench. I waited while she rolled me a cigarette. She handed it to me, rolled one for herself. She lit first mine, then hers. I didn’t inhale, but even so, I coughed.
‘Not used to roll-ups,’ I said.
‘I prefer them.’
Oh, Jo, you funny little soul, with your millennial worries and your self-sabotaging ways. Nothing matters, I wanted to tell her. But it’ll take you until you’re my age to realise that, and then you’ll be free to not give a—
‘It’s nice here,’ she said. ‘Peaceful.’
I took another puff and coughed again. I was enjoying her cigarette more than mine, if that makes sense. She pulled hard; the nicotine relaxed her shoulders a fraction, down from her ears, lowering my stress levels with them. I almost understood smoking in that moment.
I moulded into the bench, stretched out across the back. I wanted her to relax against my arm so that I could comfort her little bird-like frame, but at the same time I feared the connection might be too strong. It might electrocute me. It was exactly like a bond between mother and daughter. That closeness. Affinity. It’s what I’d had once with Katie.
Jo stood and wandered over to the pond. The orange glow of her cigarette tip pulsed in the dimness. I was thinking about what it would be like to drown myself in that pond, how cold the water would feel on my face. Except I wasn’t thinking that; she was. Christ on a bike, the way she stared. The longing was written into her body as sure as ink on a page. I tied Archie to the leg of the bench and went to join her. I stood close, felt the pull towards that black mirror. If I pushed her in now, I could drown her – I knew that. I was bigger than her, stronger, and I had the advantage of surprise. All these years I’d existed as water flowing around my loved ones, fluid around their needs, keeping them afloat; now I was water once again and she was a drop, a drop ready to lose its meniscus, to become part of the whole, part of me. That was the ultimate connection: drops together with other drops lost all boundaries, became water. Cohesion, that was the word I wanted. In her death, it was possible I’d experience cohesion. Or at least something real, something important. I didn’t know how that would be, only that I wanted it.
I placed my hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. I could just—
She turned to look at me, stepped back.
‘What do you do with your fag butt?’ she asked, throwing hers down but crouching to pick it up once she’d ground it out with her boot.
I staggered backwards, almost fell. ‘I just put it out like you’re doing.’ I wondered if she could hear the change in my voice. I barely had the breath to say the words. ‘I pick it up and either find a bin or take it home. Doesn’t do to litter, does it? I can’t stand people who litter.’
‘I’d better get to my friend’s,’ she said.
‘Yes. Let’s get going.’
I look up to find Blue Eyes studying me. Intent is how you’d describe her expression.
‘And that’s the last you remember?’ she asks. ‘She left you in the gardens?’
‘No, we walked back down. I helped her over the railings. Passed her the dog. I asked her if she wanted me to walk her the rest of the way and she said no. We parted company on Boston Avenue, just along from… from where she was found.’
12
Rachel
‘So you remember nothing after saying goodbye?’
‘No. Next thing I was back home, hanging up the dog lead and my coat. I remember having a shower and getting into bed and I remember how cold I was, which was weird because I’m always so hot these days. I had to get up and put my dressing gown on. Trembling from head to toe I was, flipping like one of those fortune-telling fish you put on the palm of your hand. I remember Mark climbing into bed later. He was warm, always is. I used to call him my hot-water bottle. I can remember spooning aga
inst him, trying to get some warmth. That’s the last I remember.’
I’m lying, but the rest is none of her beeswax. I was in the mood, to put it bluntly. That conversation with Jo had lit something inside me. Obviously I had no idea what had already happened to her by then; all I knew was that the connection between us had made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t for a long time. I circled my arm around Mark’s waist, thinking how a year ago he’d had too much of a belly for me to reach round him but how now, despite him drinking more, I could almost touch my fingers to the mattress on the other side. I kissed the warm hollow between his shoulders, smelled his skin, stroked him, pushed my hands through the hair on his chest. But nothing stirred. After a minute, he grumbled, lifting my hand away as if it were an object he needed to put to one side. A moment later he was snoring and I was lying on my back closing my eyes tight against the sting of rejection, opening them again, making kaleidoscopes. Another moment and heat was climbing the walls of me, shortening my breath. Sweat ran in trickles into my hair. I kicked the covers off and wrestled myself out of my dressing gown. I was boiling, literally, boiling like a kettle.
And more. I can’t explain it; it was like I was carrying all the anger of the world in that moment. All the anger of women. You see, they talk about hormones and they talk about the change, but sometimes I think we’re angry for a reason. I was full of rage, full of it. I couldn’t separate what was my body and what was my mind. Because reasons, real reasons, kept coming and coming at me in the darkness, the man I’d married and loved snoring next to me. I was stuck in this thankless no-woman’s-land between kids and parents. I had put and put and put into this land: blood and tears and scars and milk and flesh and love and the unacknowledged woman-hours that didn’t count, never counted, like man-hours did, and love, and love again – measureless, infinite quantities of it. I had volunteered my body to give us our two children. I had given the very bones and skin of myself in service as gladly as you’d give a cardigan to a friend when the evening turns chilly – here, have this – only for them to take it home and wash it on the wrong setting, return it misshapen, no longer fitting. Ruined. I had donated my body and my life to love. My body and my life had repaid me with nothing, frankly. After all the bleeding and the baring and beating of my mother’s heart on the sidelines of the football pitch and the ballet classes and the nativity plays and the broccoli on the fork, come on, eat it, love, it’s good for you, it’s a tree, pretend it’s a tree and you’re the giant come to eat a whole tree… For what? For what? Ashes. Ashes from a tree left black and standing after a forest fire, a tree that’s dead but doesn’t know it yet.
And now, when my body had tried to reclaim some interest on all that love, there was none. Mark did not see his body as something of service, certainly not to me. He had never had to give it whether he wanted to or not. There were no wars on; he’d never had to volunteer to fight. Maybe women don’t make wars because we’ve already got a war going on every single day of our lives: our own bodies, fighting against us. The world telling us that we’re beautiful as we are while it sells us diets and clothes that would only ever look good on a twig, telling us that it’s fair, that it’s equal, when it isn’t, like one big gaslighting god.
Whatever, thoughts like that rolled in as I tried to get the boiling water inside me under control, mop up rivers of sweat with the tissues from the box beside the bed, fetch a towel from the bathroom to lie on. There were more thoughts but I’ve forgotten them; more rage but it burned itself out eventually. The bottom line was that Mark and I hadn’t done anything in getting on for a year. He didn’t see me that way anymore. He didn’t see me at all.
We ground through Sunday. I didn’t check the news sites that day. I was a zombie, living in a zombie state. Roast chicken dinner I spent two hours preparing eaten in near silence. Pass the gravy. I walked out with Archie but headed up Halton Brow, so I didn’t see the flickering black and yellow tape on the corner of Boston Avenue, the police van, the officer with his clipboard asking passers-by if they’d seen anything. It was only when I was trawling through the online local news at five thirty on the Monday morning that I saw the article.
Girl critical after random knife attack.
I sipped my tea and read on, a pain building in my gut.
A young woman was found bleeding and unconscious at the corner of Boston Avenue and Festival Way late on Saturday night.
Boston Avenue. The pain tightened. My throat closed. I put my mug down on the table.
Customers of the Red Admiral pub were on their way home from an evening out when they saw the girl lying on the pavement.
‘We thought someone had been fly-tipping,’ said Mr Simon Kitchener, a resident of Festival Way. ‘But when we saw it was a girl, we called 999 straight away.’
The woman was taken by ambulance to Halton General Hospital, where she was given an emergency splenectomy and a blood transfusion. She had sustained two knife wounds to the ribs and a contusion to the back of the head. A spokesperson for the hospital described her condition this morning as critical. The woman was carrying no identification on her person but was later identified by a friend who had reported her missing as Joanna Weatherall, from Hampshire. Police are appealing for anyone who might know the victim or think they saw anything suspicious to come forward.
My heart was battering by now. Hands to my knees, I made myself breathe.
‘Oh God,’ I whispered to no one. ‘Oh my God oh my God oh my God.’
A flash: a knife tip pressed against skin. Breakthrough, the sudden pooling of red blood, the soft plunge of blade into warm flesh.
I knew it was her. Jo. Joanna. She hadn’t told me her last name, but I knew. My leg shook. I planted my foot down flat to stop it. Read the whole article again before sending it to the printer. I tried to sip my tea, but I hadn’t the strength in my hands to lift the mug. After a few minutes, I walked at the speed of a pall-bearer into the living room and pulled the article from the printer tray. I didn’t read it again. Only the headline. Back in the kitchen, I fetched my clip file from the dresser, slid the article into a clear plastic sleeve and clipped Jo inside with the other stories before sitting down again. My head was in my hands but I had no memory of putting it there. I was shaking from head to toe, crying, but it seemed to me that I’d been crying for a while. It was her. Who else could it be?
‘I’m so sorry, Jo,’ I whimpered. ‘I’m so, so sorry, love.’
13
Ingrid
Transcript of recorded interview with Ingrid Taylor (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
HS: Ms Taylor, can you tell us how you first came to be in Rachel Edwards’ house?
IT: I’d just moved into the close. I couldn’t find the teabags so I asked if she had any spare. She invited me in.
HS: Is there any reason why you asked Rachel Edwards specifically?
IT: It was early. I could see that her lights were on. That she was up. Awake, I mean.
HS: And what about Mr Edwards?
IT: Mark? He was there that morning. (Pause) Look, can I just say that the only reason I’ve ended up getting involved in this stuff is because my ex left me practically penniless. Without that, I’d never have had to move and I’d never have asked Mark about a job. Honestly, apart from him, I wish I’d never met that family.
HS: So you have no income other than your salary from your clerical job at ICI?
IT: A pittance. Yes. What’s that got to do with anything?
HS: Nothing, just building up a picture. And that’s the job that you get a lift with Mr Edwards to each day, is that right?
IT: Yes.
HS: How would you describe your relationship with Mr Edwards now?
IT: Mark and I are… well, we’re close. You know, we get on really well. We make each other laugh. We just… clicked, I suppose. But that’s it. He was really kind to me, he’s so sweet. He practically got me that job and I guess on our car trips together I r
ealised he needed someone to talk to, you know with Rachel being as she was. I could have driven in my own car obviously but that would have been a waste with us going to the same place every day, and I suppose I felt like I could pay him back by offering a sympathetic ear. I mean, I think he wanted more. You get a sixth sense for these things as a woman, but we were just friends. We are friends still, I hope. I mean, I’m not a husband stealer or anything. I’m not some sort of Jezebel home wrecker. I’m a feminist.
HS: Ms Taylor, if we could go back to the evening of Saturday the twenty-ninth of June this year, the night Joanna Weatherall was attacked. Did you have any suspicions with regard to your neighbour, Mrs Edwards?
IT: Well, obviously I’d seen Rachel’s weird file by then, but I didn’t leap to any conclusions other than perhaps having doubts about her mental health. I knew she went out every night. I would see her sometimes from my front window, either with the dog or coming home with a takeaway of some sort. So many takeaways. I used to wonder why people got them. I mean, why not go out for a meal? Be civilised instead of troughing down luminous MSG in your jogging pants? Sorry, I don’t mean to sound flippant; I’m not like that, and since my change in circumstances, I understand it. It’s cheaper, basically. I hadn’t thought about that. So, to answer your question, I might have seen her go out that night, I might not have – I couldn’t possibly pin down the date.