Sudden Death

by Phil Kurthausen

  ‘I’m at the match.’

  ‘Yeah, I told you it would be a good game. Wayne’s just scored the goal of the season apparently.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’

  There was an exasperated sigh from Pete.

  ‘Jesus, are you sure you should live in Liverpool?’

  ‘Is there a purpose to this call?’

  If Pete was offended by Erasmus’s exasperation he didn’t show it.

  ‘Two-fold. One, Debs says your diet is disgusting and you should come round tomorrow for some real food and wine instead of a takeaway and that pretentious Japanese whisky you drink, and secondly, I’ve got some interesting news about our Rebecca.’

  ‘I’ve got some interesting news myself. I’ll see you tomorrow. What time?’

  Pete gave Erasmus the details. It crossed Erasmus’s mind to take Karen with him. But then he remembered she was still only a client and Debs, well, Debs hated her for what she had done to Erasmus. No plus one then, he decided.

  CHAPTER 22

  Louise hadn’t been sure at first. Quite frankly it was the type of thing she wouldn’t ever have imagined herself doing, but Jenny had been insistent and, well, although she didn’t like to admit it she had been lonely recently.

  The kettle clicked off and Louise poured the boiling hot water into the new flask that she had purchased yesterday just for the occasion. Jenny had said she liked her coffee with lots of sugar, it gave her energy, so she was careful to add a couple of teaspoons more sugar than she thought sensible. Louise giggled with nervous excitement. She wasn’t being herself and she liked it.

  She hoped the wicker basket wasn’t too much. Given the time of year she supposed they might have to have an indoor picnic but Louise loved it. It was a present from her ex-husband and one of the few things from him that she hadn’t thrown away or burnt.

  In it she placed tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches that she had carefully wrapped in baking paper, sliced pork pies and a tupperware containing strawberries covered in melted chocolate, the good kind.

  She closed the lid of the picnic basket and looked up at the kitchen clock. Jenny would be here to pick her up in five minutes. Louise hadn’t felt up to driving all the way up to the Lakes. She could drive, of course, it was just her confidence had taken a knock when Chris left her, and she hadn’t quite got back into doing a lot of the things that she used to take for granted.

  That counsellor her doctor had sent her to – fat lot of good he had been – had suggested that she might be having a breakdown, whatever that was. She had had to explain to her that yes she was sad that Chris had left but that it was for the best and things would work out over time. And wasn’t it true that they had? Work had been very understanding at first and let her have some time off. The sleeping hadn’t become easier but once she, and work, had decided that it would be better if she took a longer period off work, she hadn’t needed to be so alert in the daytime and the lack of sleep hadn’t been such an issue.

  And now with the internet there just wasn’t the same need to leave the house as there had been in the past. You could do everything online: order food, buy clothes, do your bills, email your friends, and even make new friends like Jenny, people who took an interest in you for who you are, not who you were or weren’t married too and whether you had any children.

  She had met Jenny on one of those sites reuniting old school friends. It had been a bit embarrassing at first when she received the email, because she couldn’t quite remember Jenny. She hadn’t pretended to know her, that would have been dishonest, but she hadn’t told her she didn’t remember exactly either. Not that it mattered. School hadn’t been a particularly happy time for Louise and it was all a long time ago. Jenny had eventually explained that she was in the year below Louise and that they had only spoken a couple of times so that explained her memory problems. The truth was her memory was suffering, maybe it was the insomnia or maybe it was the dreams – so much worse than the insomnia – that terrorised her nights. Dreams of blood and a child hanging from a rafter. She shook her head violently. Nasty thoughts needed to be shaken away.

  Had she just thought that or said it out loud? Sometimes she couldn’t tell which it was. It was easy to make that mistake when you lived on your own.

  She patted Milligan. He was so excited to be going out for a walk. It had been such a long time since he had had a proper walk. He licked her hand. She must remember to feed him properly before they set off so he wouldn’t be tired and hungry halfway through their walk.

  ‘A waterproof coat is absolutely essential. Make sure you’ve got it on when I pick you up. I want to see it.’ That’s what Jenny had said. Louise had had to buy a new one online, of course. It had come two days ago. It was bright orange and she had hung it over the back of one of the chairs at her kitchen table. She slipped it on now and pulled up the zipper to her neck. Cosy. She giggled again.

  The doorbell rang. Louise’s tummy span with excitement. She was looking forward to the walk, anxious about leaving the house, of course, but excited about meeting Jenny, Jenny who seemed to understand her more than anyone else had done in a long time, perhaps for the first time.

  She walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Behind the thick, obscured glass she could see a dark figure waiting on the doorstep.

  In her excitement she tripped on the boots she had bought online and left in the hallway. Jenny had said that they would need stout walking boots. Stout walking boots! As if she possessed such things!

  She hesitated at the door, her hand on the latch. She took a breath, composed herself and then opened the door.

  She started to smile and then felt the smile was dragged down by the weight of a thousand screams that would never come.

  ‘I know you, you’re not Jenny,’ she heard a voice say from a million miles away.

  ‘No, no I’m not.’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  A crooked smile like the crudely sewn on grin of a scarecrow appeared on her visitor’s face.

  ‘That makes this so much easier for both of us then.’

  The door slammed shut.

  CHAPTER 23

  Erasmus didn’t like schools. This school, unlike the one he had gone to as a child, was new, but the atmosphere was the same: barely restrained violence of children growing up.

  The corridors were glass and steel as opposed to the dusty, green tiled passages of his school, a place that still held a terror in his mind, equal to, if not more so, than some of the battlefields he had fought upon.

  He straightened his tie before knocking on the maple wood door to Rebecca’s form room.

  The door swung open immediately. Greeting him was a petite girl in her mid twenties maybe, wearing a plaid shirt and with one of the most welcoming and beautiful smiles he had seen in some time. Her hair was cut into a bob and she looked to Erasmus like she had stepped straight out of Central Casting for a Sorbonne student circa 1968.

  ‘You must be Erasmus?’

  Erasmus stuck out his hand, which she took straight away, shaking it with enthusiasm.

  ‘Catherine Snow? Rebecca’s mother, Karen, called you?’

  ‘Yes, come in.’

  Erasmus walked into the classroom. Apart from the computer terminals that lined three walls of the classroom it was the same as the ones he remembered: a desk for the teacher and then a series of desks that filled the rest of the classroom. He shuddered involuntarily.

  Catherine eyed him curiously. She sat down on top of one of the kid’s desks and invited Erasmus to sit on one opposite.

  ‘It’s Cat, by the way, not Catherine. Only my sis ever calls me Catherine.’

  Erasmus looked at the desk. His immediate instinct was to sit behind it on one of the chairs. But that was just too weird. On the other hand the informality of sitting on the desk reminded him a little too much of that slightly forced breaking down of barriers so favoured by drama teachers in his day. He decided to remain standing.

  ‘Thanks f
or seeing me after school Mi– Cat.’ He caught himself just before he said ‘Miss’.

  Her wide mouth opened slightly and then the corners of her lips turned up, causing little dimples to appear in each cheek.

  ‘Not at all. I had a pile of marking to do anyway and I take the well being of my students very seriously.’

  Erasmus noticed the battered looking textbook on her desk: The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot. He smiled.

  ‘That takes me back. Are the kids studying it?’

  Cat leant back, resting her palms on the desk.

  ‘No actually. Modern poetry is Simon Armitage. He’s good but Eliot has always spoken to me.’

  Erasmus nodded.

  ‘So it’s a personal thing?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Indeed it is. So you wanted to talk about Rebecca. I have to admit this is the first time that I have spoken with a child’s lawyer before. Things are getting like the States. I guess it was only a matter of time. I thought I would at least get the chance to hit one of the little buggers first!’

  She was smiling again and her pale blue eyes sparkled with amusement. She was testing him.

  Erasmus couldn’t help but smile back.

  ‘I know Karen from way back and she has asked me to speak to you because she is concerned about Rebecca.’ He held his hands up. ‘I’m not here in any official capacity and having been one of the little buggers I feel your pain.’

  Cat’s smile disappeared and her elfin features became serious.

  ‘We are all concerned about Rebecca. She’s having a tough adolescence. Her father left her a couple of years ago, as I’m sure you know. It’s a difficult time for a young girl.’

  ‘Yes. It must be tough on a kid when that happens.’

  Cat nodded.

  ‘It can be but I think the teenage years are like the beginning of the obstacle course: that first hurdle can be the hardest of all to overcome.’ She bit her lip and then pulled a mock guilty expression. ‘Do you smoke, Erasmus?

  ‘I do, well I sort of do, I’m trying – ’

  ‘ – To give up,’ she finished the sentence for him. ‘Aren’t we all?’ She hopped off the desk and opened a window.

  ‘A teacher smoking in the classroom? I always suspected you all did.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not smoking. I just like to be around smokers. It’s like an antidote to this eternal life fantasy the kids have all swallowed from their parents. You won’t believe what puritans they have all become. Very different from my time. I could smell the tobacco on you. Go on, light up.’

  Erasmus instantly warmed to her. Karen had told her that she was one of highest rated teachers in the school and yet here she was encouraging him to smoke. In any event, Erasmus did want a cigarette and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to smoke in school. Even if he had given up he would be having one now.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s strictly against the rules but the kids have gone home and trying to be an example all day leaves you with a rebellion deficit.’ She chuckled and hopped back on the desk.

  ‘Karen has told you that Rebecca is cutting herself. Do you have any idea why?’ he asked.

  ‘Straight to business, eh? Why does anybody cut? Teenage angst, and the pointlessness of it all. You know how strong your feelings are at that age. I’ve seen it happen a few times unfortunately. Adolescence is full of hidden traps and dangers.’

  Erasmus let out a stream of smoke, it writhed for a second and then the cold winter air took it away.

  ‘Karen thinks that Rebecca is having some sort of relationship, probably just virtual, with a boy. I know you weren’t aware of any relationship but if you could think of who that could be it may be helpful. Karen thinks that he may be influencing her to cut.’

  Erasmus caught himself just before he told her that they had been monitoring Rebecca’s computer. He had a feeling that ethically she might be obliged to go to the police if she was aware they were breaching Rebecca’s right to privacy.

  Cat nodded and then noticed that the ash on Erasmus’s cigarette was about to fall on the floor. She leapt down off the desk and grabbed a pencil organiser from her desk and offered it to him. Gratefully, he tapped the end of his cigarette into the bright blue receptacle.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She remained standing close to him. He could smell her perfume, a delicate fragrance mixed with a deeper, sexier, feminine smell all of her own.

  ‘When I was at school, and it seems another lifetime away but it was only, what, nine years ago, there was a story about a group called The Black Rose at another local school. It was never clear where the other school was, and I suspect the story isn’t true but we all believed it when we were kids. The story goes that there was a girl, fourteen or fifteen, and she was very much in love with this guy – let’s call him Romeo for our story. Anyway this girl – let’s call her Juliet – loved him very much and she thought that Romeo loved her. She was a grade A student, attractive but no beauty. She had always said no to having sex but her plan was to give herself to him on their prom night. It’s coming up to the prom and, of course, she expects that they will go together. She receives her invitation from him, or so she thinks, but when she opens it all that is inside is a pressed black rose with a note telling her she is dumped for being “not fit enough”. He had only gone out with her as a bet or other such charming words to that effect. His first love letter to her had contained a pressed red rose, a sign of his love. Well, you don’t need to be a genius to work out the symbolism of the black rose. Her world ends. She was in love and it was everything. She withdraws completely, she won’t see her friends, she stops eating; the usual teenage girl reaction to the first time your heart is broken.’

  Cat had come closer now, inside his personal space and she was almost whispering.

  ‘No one sees her for weeks. She doesn’t go to school and after a while even her friends start to forget about her. And then the evening of the prom arrives and everyone goes, all dressed up in their finery. Romeo takes his new girlfriend – let’s call her Lady Macbeth. Romeo and Lady Macbeth make the prettiest, most attractive couple at the dance and even Juliet’s friends can’t help gasping at their beauty and voting for them as the dance’s king and queen. Sure enough they win the competition and are presented with their crowns. But can you guess who shows up just before they are placed on their pretty heads?’

  ‘Juliet.’

  Cat was looking directly into Erasmus’s eyes now, holding his gaze.

  ‘Juliet. Dressed in her prom gown, one that she had bought six months earlier, a beautiful sleeveless silk dress in emerald green. And as she walks in, the room falls silent as one by one people recognise her. And I say recognise because it is not easy. It’s not the scars that trace, vivid, white, lumpy lines across her arms like the trail of some malevolent, cutting snail that obscure her identity. Now all that remains of her face are the eyes and the remnants of her lips. Where her nose used to be is a black hole, and only when they stare in horror from their vantage point on the stage do Romeo and Lady Macbeth see that the absent centre of her face forms the heart of a black rose, the petals etched into her face with a craft knife, the scars so new that are black, bloody and sticky. The petals of the rose.’

  Erasmus found that he was tightly gripping the desk behind him, a mixture of horror at the story and arousal at Cat’s proximity.

  Cat laughed a laugh without mirth and then wheeled around and jumped back on the desk.

  ‘Of course, that never happened. It’s an urban myth, a mixture of Carrie and Great Expectations. But when you’re at that age myths are often indistinguishable from truth. It’s solace for the geeks, the nerds, the unpopular, the heartbroken, and, of course, for the lonely, which we all are at that age.’

  Erasmus stared into her pale blue eyes that twinkled like arctic summer ice.

  ‘The point I am making is that at that age we are vulnerable to stories, to myths, to being led. The kids at this school for inst
ance, they think that every year at exam time some poor kid throws themself off Thor’s Rock at Helsby Hill.’

  ‘And do they?’

  ‘Not while I’ve been here. Kids will always cut themselves, obsess about suicide. I am not downplaying it, but I’m just saying it comes with the territory.’

  ‘How can we stop her, can the school, I don’t know, can social services, help?’

  Cat shrugged.

  ‘“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create.”’

  ‘What?’ said Erasmus.

  ‘It’s Eliot. I mean that these kids wear a thousand different faces a day. They are working out who they are. Sure it may seem like they are egging each other on, maybe Rebecca and some others are cutting themselves but it’s something they will grow out of, when they decide who they are.’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  Cat held his gaze and without hesitation rolled up the right sleeve of her blouse. She turned her forearm towards Erasmus. There he could see the white spidery lines of old scars.

  ‘It’s part of life, realising that one pain doesn’t take away another. They will come through it. Rebecca will come through it but if makes you feel better I will have a word with Rebecca but my advice is to ride with it, give her love and hope for the best.’

  Erasmus didn’t know what to say. That this bright, confident, sexy woman would have once taken a knife to herself in torment seemed almost impossible. He realised his lips were moving but no words were coming out. He recovered himself.

  ‘That would be really great, thank you. Karen is very worried.’

  Cat looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking but are you and Karen, romantically linked, as the lower order of tabloids like to say? This doesn’t really seem like a job for a lawyer?’

  This question floored Erasmus. He started to give an answer and then stopped.

  Cat laughed.

  ‘Don’t sweat it, Erasmus. I see how it is.’

  He was saved further embarrassment by the door of the classroom suddenly swinging open. A tall, balding man wearing a jumper a size too small and corduroy slacks walked into the room. He brought to mind the stick insects his sister had kept when she was a kid. He looked surprised to see Erasmus.