Afraid

by Mandasue Heller

  ‘Wait,’ Kathy said when he turned to leave. ‘What did you want?’

  Dean hesitated. This felt so disrespectful under the circumstances, but they were both curious to know why he was here and he didn’t want to leave them worrying on a day like this. So, turning back, he said, ‘Skye’s dad mentioned that Hayley gave her a necklace.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Kathy nodded. ‘For her birthday. What about it?’

  ‘I wondered if I might ask her to take a look at a photograph,’ said Dean. ‘It should only take a second, and it would be really helpful to our investigation.’

  Kathy bit down hard on her lip as tears immediately flooded her already swollen eyes, and Dean’s heart sank when he suddenly realised whose funeral this was. He had no idea why, considering some of the untimely deaths he’d seen in his line of work, but he automatically thought of old people whenever he saw a funeral procession and he had assumed that the deceased must be one of the couple’s parents. But, now that he thought about it, he supposed he really ought to have guessed, because Hayley had been unwell when he and Jones had visited that time to ask if Skye had ever mentioned anything about her father abusing her, and her mother had asked them to leave because she was concerned that the child might get worse if they upset her too much.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I had no idea.’

  Kathy sensed his distress and shook her head. ‘You weren’t to know,’ she said kindly. ‘It was leukaemia, but we didn’t find out until it was too late so we’ve just been hanging on day by day, minute by minute. Anyway, she’s out of pain now, and that’s all that matters,’ she finished, raising her chin in an effort to show that she was coping, although she clearly wasn’t. ‘So, what was this photograph you wanted to show her?’

  Dean could really have done with the ground opening up and swallowing him right about now. But he held the photograph out, saying, ‘Would you know if this is the necklace?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Kathy affirmed, smiling sadly as she gazed at it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Dean asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I was with her when she bought it. Such a pretty little thing. The lady who sold it to us said it was the only one she had left, so Hayley just had to have it. You know, I actually think she knew she was dying even then, and wanted Skye to have something nice to remember her by,’ she went on wistfully. ‘She never actually said it, but it’s just a feeling I’ve got.’

  Kathy’s husband had been peering intently at the photograph as they spoke. ‘Is that blood?’ he asked.

  Dean had forgotten about that, and he quickly withdrew the picture and rolled it up.

  ‘Blood?’ Kathy repeated, genuine concern leaping into her eyes as she peered at Dean. ‘Oh, no,’ she moaned when he didn’t confirm or deny it. ‘Please don’t tell me that was her they were talking about on the news last night? The body they found by the canal in Worsley?’

  ‘We don’t have a positive identification as yet,’ Dean told her truthfully. ‘But this necklace was found at the scene.’

  ‘Poor baby,’ Kathy sobbed, pulling a tissue out of her pocket as her husband put his arm around her. ‘Hayley would have been heartbroken; she loved Skye so much. They were more like sisters than friends, and she never stopped checking her Facebook page for messages. And Skye’s poor dad must be in agony,’ she went on guiltily. ‘I was so horrible to him last time I saw him. Please tell him I’m sorry, and if there’s anything I can ever do he’s more than welcome to come round.’

  Dean nodded, and said, ‘I’ll tell him.’ Then, stepping aside when the funeral director came back and told the couple that it was time to start thinking about setting off, he said goodbye and rushed up the road.

  ‘What’s up?’ Jones asked when he climbed quickly into the car.

  ‘Just drive,’ Dean muttered, afraid that he might fall apart if he had to watch the coffin being brought out of the house. ‘For God’s sake just get me out of here. I’ll explain on the way.’

  Dean explained the procedure as Jones drove them over to the mortuary a short time later, but nothing could have prepared Jeff for the overwhelming pain he felt when the technician drew back the curtain and he saw the girl’s body on the other side of the window.

  At first it didn’t seem real, and he almost felt as if he were watching a scene out of some TV show. But then he saw the wispy blonde hair that Skye had inherited from her mother, and tears clouded his eyes as he forced his gaze down to her face. Her poor battered, bloodied, just about recognisable face.

  ‘It’s her,’ he sobbed. ‘That’s my Skye.’

  Jones put a comforting hand on Jeff’s shoulder as the façade of strength that he’d been trying so desperately to maintain crumbled.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Unable to answer in words, Jeff nodded, and then turned from the window and sank to his knees with his face in his hands.

  26

  Skye’s funeral was held three weeks later. The sky was dark and overcast, as if a storm was brewing. It felt apt to Jeff because it wouldn’t have seemed right to say goodbye to his daughter in bright sunlight, with the sound of children’s laughter floating into the cemetery from the park across the road and the peal of ice-cream vans creating a farcical backdrop to the vicar’s sombre words.

  Jeff had barely slept a wink the night before, and was dressed and waiting several hours before he saw the hearse and funeral car pull up outside the B and B where he and Andrea had been staying while they waited for the council to find them somewhere permanent. It was a low-end place that felt more like a war zone than a safe refuge. Fights were constantly kicking off in the surrounding rooms, drunks argued loudly throughout the night, and the stench of neglect hung over the entire place like a damp blanket.

  Andrea hated it there, but Jeff couldn’t have cared less where he was living right now. Time seemed to have stood still as a multitude of emotions dominated his every waking moment. Grief, guilt, anger, rage, guilt again, and always grief … It was never-ending, and he couldn’t see the faintest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. He’d had it all, and now he had nothing.

  Andrea was back on her meds, and they had stabilised her to the point where she was no longer flipping from high to low every few minutes. Now she was just sad, and Jeff was drained from having constantly to comfort her without getting any comfort himself. It wasn’t easy after everything she’d done and, as hard as he tried, he just couldn’t shake off the niggling suspicion that she was a little more sad about the fact that she knew he no longer felt the same way about her than she was about losing Skye.

  But he was determined not to allow those thoughts to cloud his mind today. For Skye’s sake, he just wanted to get through this with as much dignity as he could muster.

  The chapel service was mercifully short, and Jeff was glad of the chance to have a few moments of privacy on the short drive to the cemetery afterwards. The hearse had arrived a few minutes before them, and Jeff could see as they made their way along the path that Skye’s coffin had already been placed on the supports over the grave. In a bitter-sweet twist, her plot was on the same row as Hayley’s and he gazed with sadness at the flowers still adorning Skye’s friend’s grave as they traipsed slowly past. Two young lives, gone in the blink of an eye. It was so very wrong. But at least they were as close to each other in death as they had been in life, so that was some small comfort.

  The few members of Jeff’s family who had turned up had been keeping a respectful distance throughout the day, afraid of upsetting Andrea who had made it clear as soon as she saw them that they weren’t welcome. None of her side had even been informed about Skye’s passing, much less invited to the funeral, so the rest of the mourners were mainly made up of a scattering of old neighbours and some of Skye’s old school friends – who were all crying as if she had been the most popular girl in school.

  Jeff found the girls’ emotional wailings a little hard to swallow since Hayley’s mum had told him about
the bullying that both of their daughters had suffered, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He was determined not to do anything to make this already bad day worse.

  The social worker, Val Dunn, had turned up at the end of the service, and Jeff had struggled to contain his anger when she’d come over to offer her condolences as he and Andrea left the chapel. He had wanted to scream at her that this was her fault; that Skye would never have run away and ended up getting murdered if Val hadn’t gone back on her promise and dumped her in that children’s home instead of placing her with a nice family. But, again, he had kept his mouth shut.

  Jones and Dean had both come along to pay their last respects, and Jeff was touched that they had taken the time out to support him and Andrea when they had both done so much already. In the weeks since that awful viewing of Skye’s body, not a day had gone by when Jones hadn’t rung, if not actually called round to the B and B to ask if there was anything they needed, anything he could do. But what Jeff was most grateful for was the money that the two officers had raised from their colleagues at the station to put towards the funeral. They had called round yesterday to give him the cheque, and he had been totally blown away by their kindness.

  When at last they reached the graveside, Andrea broke down at the sight of the coffin and fell to her knees in a sobbing heap. Battling his own breaking heart, Jeff pulled her firmly back up to her feet and held her close, whispering, ‘It’s all right, she’s at peace now. Let’s just get through this last bit, then it’ll all be over.’

  As the vicar blessed Skye’s soul and prayed over the coffin as it was lowered into the ground, a verger made his way through the mourners with a box of earth for them to throw into the grave. But just as Andrea had thrown her handful in, she spotted Shirley standing to the back of the crowd and screamed, ‘What’s she doing here? She’s got no right! Tell her to go, Jeff! Tell her to go! I don’t want her here!’

  Jeff hadn’t noticed that Shirley was there, so he didn’t immediately know who Andrea was talking about. But when he glanced round and saw Jones approaching her, his stomach did a little flip. Shirley and Jeff hadn’t spoken since he and Andrea had left her place that day and gone to the B and B, but Andrea had been quizzing him about her ever since. Desperate to keep his wife on an even keel so that they could bury Skye without drama, Jeff had adamantly denied that anything had happened, but he knew that Andrea didn’t believe him. And he supposed it hadn’t helped that he’d been making excuses whenever Andrea tried to get him to have sex with her, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Too much had happened, and the scars of what he’d been through were still too raw.

  When Shirley nodded her agreement to whatever Jones had said and walked away, Jeff sighed and turned back to the grave to throw his handful of dirt in. Jones had obviously asked her to leave and, respectful woman that she was, Shirley had gone without questioning why she wasn’t welcome after everything she had done for Jeff and Andrea. But that was her all over: always putting others before herself – whether or not they deserved her consideration.

  When it was all over, Andrea declared that she wanted to go straight back to the B and B. Jeff would have preferred to go to the pub to get slaughtered, but no amount of alcohol was going to shift the cloud of gloom that had been hovering over his head for the past few months. And now that he didn’t even have the hope that Skye would be found and brought home to hold onto, the future held no joy for him.

  As the mourners said their farewells and began to drift away, and the gravediggers began to shovel the dirt back into the grave, Jeff stared down at the coffin one last time and whispered, ‘Goodnight, God bless, sweetheart,’ before leading Andrea back to the car.

  27

  ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘What?’ Confused by Tom’s words, Skye stared up at him from her seat at the kitchen table.

  ‘I said you’re dead,’ Tom repeated, grinning as he slapped a photograph down on the table in front of her. He’d cut it from the front page of the Manchester Evening News after seeing the headline on a newspaper stand on his way home from work, and he’d been dying to show it to her.

  Skye stared down blankly at the picture, unsure at first what she was looking at. But her stomach gave a sickening lurch when she gazed at the headline: Murdered Local Girl Laid To Rest. And when she then saw the face of the man and woman who were standing beside the grave, her heart started to pound so hard in her chest that she feared it might explode.

  ‘That’s my mum and dad,’ she gasped, gazing back up at Tom with shock in her eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ he said, squatting down beside her with a strange little smile on his lips. ‘They’ve given up on you.’

  ‘But there’s a coffin,’ Skye croaked. ‘How can they have a coffin if I’m not there?’

  ‘It’s what they call a mock funeral,’ Tom explained. ‘People do that when someone’s gone missing and they’re fed up of waiting for them to come back. They want to get their own lives back on track, so they bury an empty box to tie up the loose ends. They probably took out life insurance on you after you first went missing,’ he went on. ‘But they wouldn’t have been able to claim on it until they buried you.’

  ‘But they can’t bury me if I’m not there,’ Skye protested, horrified to think that her parents had written her off like this.

  ‘It’s perfectly legal,’ Tom told her. ‘After so long, the law lets you declare someone as dead so you can get on with your own life. But this is good,’ he went on, taking her hand in his. ‘Now we don’t have to worry about anyone recognising you, because they all think you’re dead.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ Skye said plaintively as tears began to slide down her cheeks. ‘And why did they have to say I’d been murdered? That’s just horrible.’

  ‘They always say that when they haven’t got a body,’ said Tom. ‘It makes it look better in the news. And gets them more sympathy,’ he added scathingly.

  ‘But I don’t want them to think I’m dead,’ Skye moaned. ‘That makes it feel like I’m never going to see them again.’

  The smile slid from Tom’s lips, and the expression in his eyes hardened as he peered into hers. ‘Why are you still thinking about seeing them again after everything they’ve done? Have you forgotten that they tried to frame you for attempted murder?’

  ‘No,’ Skye sobbed. ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing,’ snapped Tom. ‘They never loved you. They said you were the child from hell and they wished you’d never been born. Why do you think they didn’t bother looking for you after you ran away? They only tried to find you after the police got involved, so they could have you locked up instead of your mum and get you out of their lives once and for all. Does that sound like love to you?’

  Skye shook her head and looked down at the floor.

  ‘I’m the only one who’s ever loved you,’ Tom went on bitterly, ‘but nothing I do is ever good enough for you, is it? I gave you that ring and bought you all those lovely clothes; I even got rid of Chloe for you. But you haven’t changed. You’re still an ungrateful little bitch.’

  ‘I’m not ungrateful,’ Skye croaked, shocked by how fast his mood had turned. ‘I’m just sad.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got no reason to be.’ Tom dropped her hand and pushed himself back up to his feet. ‘This could have been the start of a whole new life for us, but if all you’re going to do is cry about the past, what’s the point? If you’d rather be with them, you might as well just go. See how sad you feel when they chuck you in prison and leave you to rot.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Skye cried, her chest heaving.

  ‘Why not? It’s true,’ said Tom. ‘But then, you’re too stupid to accept the truth, aren’t you?’ he went on nastily. ‘You just want to lie around like a beached whale, taking, taking, taking. You make me sick – do you know that? I mean, look at you.’ He drew his head back and sneered at her. ‘Fat, ugly, and stupid. Who would ever put up with you, apart fro
m me? Your mum and dad already hate you, so how do you think they’d react if you turned up looking like that?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Skye sobbed, rocking to and fro on her chair as he ranted. ‘You’re scaring me.’

  ‘You deserve it,’ spat Tom. ‘After everything I’ve done for you, I can’t believe you can betray me like this.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ Skye protested.

  ‘You didn’t need to,’ Tom hissed. ‘Your reaction to that picture said it all. I thought you’d be happy, but now I know you don’t really care about me, I can’t even bear to look at you.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Skye asked when he snatched his keys off the ledge and stalked towards the door.

  ‘Don’t question me,’ he barked over his shoulder. Then, hesitating before opening the door, he turned and glared at her, saying, ‘You’ve had it too easy for too long, that’s your trouble. I’ve gone easy on you lately, but it’s time I started putting my foot down, seeing that’s the only time I ever get any respect round here. Things are going to change from now on, so you’d better get ready.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Skye asked, unnerved by the intensity in his eyes as he spoke.

  Tom walked out without answering, and she jumped when he slammed the door so hard that it rattled the shelves and caused the clock in which she kept her secret key to fall over. Tears still rolling down her cheeks, she couldn’t even muster up the energy to stroke Bernie when he came over and rested his head on her thigh after Tom’s car had screeched away from the house. Everything just felt too painful right now.

  Sobbing again when the all too familiar taste of bile flooded her mouth, she got up and ran to the bathroom. She’d been sick for weeks, and anything and everything set her off. The smell of Tom’s cigarettes, food, drink – everything. Tom said she must have picked up a stomach bug, and had been buying all sorts of foul-tasting medicines for her to take. None of them worked, and some even made her feel worse, because they gave her stomach cramps as well as the relentless nausea.