by Jan Harvey
the seven letters
jan harvey
Copyright © 2017 Jan Harvey
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 9781785898051
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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To Paul, for everything
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Chapter Fifty Five
Chapter Fifty Six
Chapter Fifty Seven
Chapter Fifty Eight
Chapter Fifty Nine
Chapter Sixty
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
The old woman’s shrew face tightened above mean, thin lips. She was so close I could feel her hot sour breath on my face. She held up a pair of heavy black scissors and wrapped a twist of my hair around her fingers. Then she pulled the strands towards her and the blades took hold, the softness trapped in the sharpened metal. She chopped and spliced until my hair fell in defeated heaps around me. A razor was dragged across my scalp, it nicked at the skin, slices of pain. If I raised my head even slightly I could see leering faces, four of them, so I kept my eyes fixed on the cracked tiles beneath me. When it was done I was trembling.
‘Get her up, make her stand.’ It was easy enough, I was thin and sapped of strength. Their eyes bulged, eager with excitement and anticipation. The words were hissed in my ear; ‘Strip her!’ I saw only her flat, dirty shoes. They didn’t stop to undo buttons but ripped and pulled apart my dress. Then, with a single slice of a blade, my bra was cut off so that my breasts were naked.
‘Go on!’ It was the oldest woman, the one in the widow’s weeds, her eyes glazed blue with cataracts. ‘Do it.’ They pulled off my knickers. The thin fabric tore away easily.
A fifth one, in the shadows behind me, grasped at my buttocks, her dirty nails scratching the skin. The others howled with laughter. ‘Give her the child. Fetch him!’
I snapped out of my trance, the whole room was suddenly loud and real and they reeked of old, rotted things.
‘No! Not him.’ I cried. ‘Do what you will with me, but please not him.’
‘Whore, whore, whore…’ they chanted, ignoring my pleas. The door opened and I saw his little face grubby with the tell-tale marks of tears on his sweet cheeks.
The old man who carried him in sneered at my nudity, taking in the swell of my breasts with a lecherous grin. Yes, I thought, for all that I am a whore you too would have me right now, right here. He shoved the boy into my arms with a crude roughness, just as he might have treated a sack of kittens to be drowned. The child smelt foul, of dirt and grease and other people’s sweat. He had passed the stage of crying. Spent of tears, he sought me for comfort and nestled his face into my neck, his thin arms clinging on for all he was worth. I clung to him too, covering his face with my hand, as if it were possible in some way to shield him from what was to come. What hope was there of that?
They opened the door and the noise from outside swelled. It was a dull late summer’s day, the branches of the plane trees stretched towards a colourless sky. Perhaps if I kept looking up towards the sky I would not see what was coming. Perhaps, I thought, even now God would look on me and take pity, but He wasn’t there for me, I knew it.
The crowd mocked as the women pushed me forward into the street, their screeching exciting more animal noises from the mob. Someone was braying like a donkey and the man, his face melted from eye to chin, spat on me - a globule of green phlegm landed on my shoulder. I felt the blow of a missile as it hit the small of my back and trickled red down the inside of my legs. The remains landed between my feet, a blackened tomato. Then something else struck me on the forehead and I saw a rotten windfall apple on the road, the brown, dead skin oozing a slash of rotten flesh.
We were both shivering with fear; I could hear a low animal moan running through him. I pressed his face to mine; his thin shirt and shorts were all that was between him and my cold flesh.
I set my eyes forward as I took cold, hesitant steps along the wet road. I had no way of protecting myself from the things they hurled at me and there were hundreds of them lining the way. They were catcalling, howling and calling me a whore over and over again, until the sound was a wall around me.
I desperately searched the crowd for his face, just one glimpse, just to know he had found out, that he had tried to do something to save me, but he was not there.
Then I saw Pollo. Her hair was gone, her body was covered in red welts so, like me, she was pathetic. A large man h
auled up her limp body, her head was lolling to one side, her once beautiful face distorted. Another man, his sleeves rolled back, turned towards her holding a long piece of metal, steam rising from the end of it. There was a smell of fire, burning metal and a glow of bright red.
Someone in the crowd barged at me, making me stumble so that I lost sight of her for a moment, then the mob roared and when I saw her again I realised what they had done. The smell of burning flesh seared through the wet air.
They had branded her.
Why didn’t she react? Why didn’t she scream? I couldn’t see. There were people crowding round her, spitting on her, but I could do nothing, except offer a prayer to God that she was already dead. I asked if he would take me too, kill me here on this cold, sodden street in Paris, but spare an innocent child who should live without blemish, despite all that I have done.
Spare him, I cried from the depths of my heart. Please God, spare him!
Chapter One
When I saw him on the bridge my first instinct was to call and attract his attention, but I was going to work, my laptop bag slung over my shoulder, the train due any minute. I sighed because talking to Freddy would have been far preferable to slogging into London on such a beautiful day. I stood and observed him fondly for a second, wondering where he was going.
He was looking across the cricket pitch towards the ragged line of houses on the escarpment. In the cloudless blue sky above, a red kite wheeled soundlessly on a thermal. It was a bright, clean summer’s day, Oxfordshire at its best.
The train’s horn sounded as it approached the station. By now it would be curving around the embankment, the low rumble of its wheels on the metal tracks, heading towards the bridge and the station. He was wearing his famous mustard cords and brown checked shirt, his mop of wiry hair more white than grey these days.
Then, as I watched, he raised a shaky foot onto the lower ledge of crumbling masonry. His limbs were stiff, making his movements jerky and awkward. He missed his footing but tried again, determined. Before I could take it in he was standing on the flat top stones of the parapet, swaying back and forth. The dull hum of the diesel engine switched to a sharp squealing of brakes and then a hollow engulfing roar – and he was gone.
Just like that.
The sky remained high and blue. The kite was still turning lazy circles in the air and behind me two horses nibbled the balding grass in their field, as if nothing had happened, but where Freddy had been there was an empty space.
For a moment everything was suspended, unreal. Then I began to run. I dumped my bag and hurtled across the road. A horn blared and a van swerved around me, but I could only focus on the bridge. When I reached it my breath was clawing inside my lungs, I could barely breathe. A walker was there too, long hiking sticks in his hands; he was peering over the flat stones. ‘Did you see that? A man, he – he just jumped off there.’
The metal-ridged roof of the train snaked back to the bend and beyond. Red doors broke the line of its blue flanks and at each one baffled faces were appearing, straining to see what had happened. Brakes hissed and there were echoes of voices from under the bridge.
It took me a few moments to register the long slash of blood on the westbound track as if a giant finger had swept red ink across the sleepers and the chippings. Then I vomited, a hot brown liquid splashed across the pavement. The walker backed away as I retched uncontrollably. He was keeping his distance, a look of revulsion on his face.
‘What the hell were you playing at?’ The man striding towards me was bald, a tattoo on his thick neck. He was wearing red overalls streaked with oil. His fists were balled tight and his broad shoulders blocked out the sun. I could feel the heat of his breath on my face. ‘I almost killed you, you stupid woman!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly.
‘Hold on mate!’ It was the walker stepping between us. ‘She’s just seen something horrible, a man’s just jumped.’ All at once it felt like I was being pulled down to the footpath and the air was too thick and warm to breathe. A pair of strong arms hoisted me up and I felt myself being half carried, half walked on jelly legs until I felt damp grass under me and I was lying against a low stone wall.
The hand that passed me the bottle of water belonged to another man wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He placed my bag at my side, against my leg.
‘Here, take a swig and then a nice deep breath,’ he said gently. He had kind brown eyes. I nodded gratefully. My insides had spasmed into a hard, angular pain. I couldn’t speak. He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘Take it easy, that’s it …take a deep breath. I guess you knew him?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. I clutched my hand to my stomach, trying to stave off the pain. ‘He’s my friend.’ Tears welled up and caught in my mascara, little black blobs of water blurring my vision.
Other commuters had gathered in huddles around us, a forest of legs. Everywhere heads were being shaken in disbelief and frustration. Watches were checked and checked again, phones were pressed to ears and they spoke in short staccato sentences. The walker was still there in my peripheral vision talking on his phone: ‘Old man, yes, jumped, definitely dead, no doubt.’
In the distance I could hear sirens, then blue lights were flashing between houses and hedges, weaving down through the town. Passing cars were slowing and curious faces peered out from them. A child in a school cap, eyes round in his freckled face, stared at me. Other people dressed smartly in suits for work were coming up the slope looking first at me and then over the parapet at the stationary train, asking each other what had happened, who had seen what?
I took another sip of water. The man with the kind brown eyes was still there crouching next to me and I noticed how worn the leather was at the end of his sleeves, it was a well-loved jacket.
‘Can you stand up?’ he asked as people began to loom over us, too close. I nodded and took his hand. My trousers were wet with dew and I felt them peeling away from my skin as I struggled to my feet. He led me to an old black Discovery parked on the verge across the road. Its tailgate was open and inside I could see camera bags, lights and tripods.
He took a tin foil blanket out of a First Aid kit and unwrapped it; ‘Here, put this around your shoulders, you’ve had a bloody awful shock, you need to keep warm.’ He placed my bag next to me on the sill of the boot. I could see my folder of meeting notes was crushed under my MacBook. I didn’t care.
‘I was coming down the hill,’ he told me. ‘I saw you screaming. You ran into the road and that man over there nearly hit you.’
I began to shiver and pulled the thin foil around me. I couldn’t remember screaming. I felt numb, nothing seemed to make sense and suddenly I felt overwhelmingly grateful to him for being there.
‘I’m Connie,’ I told him as my teeth began to chatter. ‘Thank you for stopping to help me, I don’t know how I…’
‘Matt,’ he said. ‘It’s no problem, anyone would have done the same.’
At that moment a police car pulled up beside us. A young, fresh-faced officer climbed out, placing his cap over spiky hair.
‘Are you all right, madam?’ he asked.
‘This lady saw it,’ Matt told him. ‘She’s called Connie and she’s a friend…of…’
The policeman nodded, seasoned to it all. ‘Are you hurt at all, Connie?’ I shook my head. ‘Shocked, eh, looks like you’ve been a bit faint?’ He put a hand on my arm. ‘Does the gentleman concerned have any relatives?’
I felt a great sob heave through my body, it was a moment before I could speak. ‘He has a housekeeper, Harriet, Hat. They are very close.’ I gave him the number.
‘Thank you, Connie. You take it easy and we’ll be back to sort you out in a few minutes.’ His colleague walked past us with a large roll of incident tape in his hand and the two of them talked together, organizing a cordon.
Things h
ad begun, the separating of Freddy’s existence from our own, a thin line of formality that would become a solid, impenetrable wall.
Matt sat down beside me and we watched in silence as people were herded away. ‘For one horrible moment, when I saw you running, I thought you were his daughter,’ he said.
‘No, he was my friend. I met him the day I moved here. He insisted I called in for afternoon tea the next Sunday, and I did. He was eccentric and complex and sometimes hard to know, but none of that mattered…’
My voice trailed away, everything suddenly felt so bleak and hollow. How could I describe the relationship I had with Freddy? How do you relate the long conversations and the hilarious laughter when he was on form?
Matt and I sat side-by-side in a deep empty silence; the reality was becoming relentlessly awful. In front of us the blue and white incident tape was quivering in the breeze, making a soft burring noise. When eventually he spoke, I knew he was trying to be kind, to keep my mind off it all.
‘It is beautiful here. I love the river and the way the town is built up the hill. I’ve only lived here a few months, but I already feel at home.’
I followed his gaze. The town fanned up from behind the station, its reassuring honey-stoned cottages and tall, colourful Georgian buildings set cheek by jowl. There was such a long history in this one place and so many lives lived. At the top of the hill, crowning it, was a row of tall red-bricked chimneys, Freddy’s house clearly visible in the morning sun.
I was suddenly overcome with the reality of it all. His house was still there but he was below us on the track surrounded by complete strangers. Officials and medics and people who were angry about late trains and inconvenience. They were people who didn’t know him, who would think he was just another anonymous dead person, and there was nothing I could do to explain that he was special.
I even tried to tell myself that despite what I’d seen with my own eyes it couldn’t be Freddy, not Freddy, not after all this time.