by Anne Cassidy
She turned on the bedside lamp and it gave the room a dull yellow glow. It was a double bed and Joshua was slumped on one edge of it. Rose picked his feet up and laid him out. Then, putting the flats of her hands under his waist, she pushed him so he rolled over and lay on his side in the middle of the bed. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, tired with the effort. Maybe she’d drunk a little too much red wine herself.
‘Thaks, Rosie,’ she heard him whisper from behind her.
Her shoulders relaxed and she let herself flop back down on the bed. It was only for a moment. She could hear the television from downstairs and she knew she had to turn everything off and let Poppy out into the garden before she went to bed herself. She lifted her feet off the floor. She turned to the side. Joshua was completely still beside her. She lay quietly for a while then put her arm around him so that her hand was on his chest. She felt his ribs move up and down.
His T-shirt had risen up. She saw the edge of his tattoo. Like hers it was of a butterfly. She pushed her sleeve up to expose her own. They both had the same tattoos; it seemed like a private link between them.
Joshua stirred. She stiffened, thinking she ought to move before he woke up and found her there. She lifted her arm gently and went to turn away but Joshua’s hand covered hers and pulled her back. He seemed to hold her there.
‘Josh?’ she whispered.
There was no answer. He was still asleep. She should move and yet his hand was warm over hers and she had curled herself into the crook of his back. She closed her eyes for just a moment, feeling her chest against him. The wine was taking its toll and she was feeling tired. Joshua was so still, as if all the worries of the last few days had left him. She let her face sink into his neck, his hair tickling her nose. He smelled of shampoo and soap and whisky.
He moved her hand a little.
Was he asleep?
‘Rosie,’ he seemed to say.
He had her fingers tightly in his and he moved them upwards until they reached his face. Then he kissed her wrist, slowly, softly, his tongue on her skin.
A feeling of yearning flooded through her. Hardly breathing, she put her mouth on his shoulder and kissed it, brushing it lightly, her lips like the touch of a feather. They lay still for a while then he seemed to drop her hand and become heavier, slumped, moving a little away from her. She edged back.
‘Night, Josh,’ she whispered.
She closed his door. She walked quickly to the box room and sat down on the bed, her arms hugging her chest. Her skin was tingling with desire.
What was going on? Did Joshua want her?
She wished she knew.
TEN
Christmas Eve brought snow.
Rose looked out of her bedroom window to see if the SUV was there and she was faced with a white scene. Snowflakes were floating down but not quite settling on the ground. She was relieved to see that the silver car was not in the street. She got dressed and went downstairs to let Poppy out into the garden. The cold air poured in and she shut the door quickly after the dog. She was thirsty and poured herself a glass of water and drank most of it down. It was just after nine thirty and there was no sound of movement from Joshua’s room. She put the kettle on and got out some bread.
There was a knock at the front door.
She opened it to find a man of about fifty holding a cardboard box, the kind people used when they were moving house.
‘Is Joshua Johnson in?’
She nodded.
‘I’m Donald Bishop, the head teacher of Kirbymoore Academy where Stuart Johnson teaches history. Sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve but I wanted to get this stuff to Stuart in case any of it was needed over the holidays.’
‘Oh.’
‘May I come in?’ he said, looking up at the falling snow.
‘Of course.’ She held the door back.
Donald Bishop walked in. She pointed towards the kitchen.
‘If you go in there I’ll tell Josh that you’re here.’
‘Thank you, dear.’
Rose ran up the stairs. She knocked on Joshua’s door. She heard a mumble from inside the room. She opened it a fraction.
‘Josh, Stu’s head teacher is here. He’s downstairs in the kitchen. He wants to see you.’
Joshua was completely covered by the duvet. He groaned.
‘I’ll make him a drink and tell him you’re coming.’
She went downstairs. The dog was yapping at the back door. She let her in and she wagged her tail at Donald Bishop then ran out of the room and up the stairs.
‘Please sit down. Josh will be five minutes.’
‘I am rather early,’ Donald Bishop said, ‘but being Christmas Eve I had a few other errands to run. And you are?’
‘I’m Rose, Josh’s stepsister. Sort of.’
‘You’re looking after the lad, after this business. We heard about the accident on the last day of term and there was considerable upset among his classes.’
There was movement from upstairs, footsteps, doors opening and closing. Poppy had managed to get Joshua up. Rose was relieved.
‘Let me make you a hot drink,’ she said.
‘That’s very kind of you. Strong tea please with milk and two sugars.’
Moments later Joshua appeared at the kitchen door. He was dressed but looked unwell. Rose noticed the whisky bottle on the side. She quickly tucked it away in the cupboard as Donald Bishop began to speak to Joshua, saying more or less the same thing that he’d said to her earlier. She made Joshua a drink – milky coffee. Then she slipped out and went upstairs, leaving them to talk alone.
She paused at Joshua’s room. His duvet was half hanging on to the floor. Just the previous evening she’d been lying on the bed beside him. Had he even known she was there? Or had he simply been in a drunken stupor?
She walked back to her room. From downstairs she could hear the mumble of voices coming from the kitchen. She felt tired and out of sorts. Maybe she also had a hangover.
In the corner of the small bedroom was the rucksack she had brought with her. It was a mess – clothes half pulled out of it, her toiletries scattered. She unzipped it entirely and tipped the contents on to the bed. She sorted through the myriad of stuff that fell out and found, in the middle, the gift that Anna had bought her for Christmas. She sat down on the single bed and opened it. It was a book and Anna had filled it with pictures of her mother. There was a folded piece of notepaper inside. I found these among your mother’s things. I thought you might like them. Rose looked at them with a creeping sense of pleasure. There were about twenty. She flicked through them; family shots as well as photos of Kathy in her work clothes and with friends. There was even a picture of Kathy and Brendan standing together by a car.
She cleared her things from the bed and lay on her side and looked through the album.
She focused on the family shots. There were a couple of Christmas photos where her mother had a paper hat on. Then some of Rose and her mother in the garden at Brewster Road. She knew it was there because the garden had always been a bit of a jungle and they mostly used the top half of it where there was a stone patio. She kept thumbing through the pages, coming back to one picture in particular. Rose and her mother were sitting side by side on garden chairs. Her mother had an arm around Rose’s shoulder. She was wearing dark glasses and was showing all her teeth in a cheesy grin as though someone, probably Brendan, had ordered her to smile. Rose looked closely at her own image. She was probably going on for twelve. The photo must have been taken during that last summer. Rose had left primary school and had spent time in the holidays shopping for her new uniform. During one of those shopping trips her mum had bought her a pair of cut-off jeans that had sequins sewn along the pockets and round the hem. Cool jeans, Joshua had said. Brendan had called her a fashionista. She was wearing them in the photo. She’d worn them every day for weeks. Every morning she got up and put them on pushing her feet into plimsolls or slip-ons. She loved them and wouldn’t wear anything else,
sitting around in her pyjama bottoms if her mum insisted on washing them. As soon as they were dry they went straight back on. Putting on the school uniform in September had been like a punishment. She’d kept the jeans in her drawer for the following summer but in between her family disintegrated and she ended up living at her grandmother’s. The jeans had been folded among all her stuff, unpacked by Anna’s cleaner and placed in her new chest of drawers. When she discovered them there weeks later it felt as though her chest would split apart with sadness. She marched downstairs and threw them into the dustbin at the side of the house. She couldn’t bear the sight of them.
Rose turned the page, not wanting to become emotional. Some work photos showed Kathy with colleagues. Rose’s eyes swept across them. She might have known some of them at the time. They might have been the people who rang up to speak to her mum or who came round for dinner parties clutching a bottle of wine. But it was so long ago that none of the faces rang any bells. She focused on one picture which she was sure must have been taken by Brendan although she couldn’t explain why. Her mum was wearing a dark suit and her hair was pulled back at the base of her neck. She had make-up on and her glasses were straight and neat. There was only a hint of a smile on her lips as if she were doing her best to look serious. She was a police officer. She worked on cold cases. She was important and professional.
She looked from one to another, her mother’s face smiling out from the past. For a few moments she felt all the pleasure of seeing her so close, like an unexpected meeting, a surprise reunion, and then there was the slow agonising awareness that this was just a mirage, that her mother was as far away from her as she had been for the last five years and more. The photos were just a cruel reminder of what she had once had.
Just then she heard the head teacher walking along the hallway downstairs. He was talking loudly like teachers do. Joshua’s voice was just a whisper underneath it. The front door opened and closed. Rose went downstairs and found Joshua sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.
‘I don’t feel well,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you go back to bed for a few hours?’
He nodded.
‘That’s Stu’s stuff from his locker at school,’ he said, pointing at the cardboard box which was now on the floor. ‘They’re having building work or something and lockers had to be cleared.’
‘I’ll put it away,’ Rose said.
Joshua went out of the room. After having some breakfast Rose carried the box up to Stuart’s room. She went quietly so as not to wake Joshua. The room was untidy and Rose remembered that Joshua had searched it the previous day. There were piles of papers on the floor around Stuart’s desk and the duvet was rumpled and crooked. She placed the box on top of the bed. She decided to unpack it. There were clothes and boots as well as books and files. She put them on the bed. She picked out two football team mugs and placed them on the bedside table. Underneath was a games console and a couple of chargers and some connection leads entangled. There were also a couple of clip frames with pictures of Joshua.
At the very bottom was a money box.
It felt like it was made from steel and was the size of a hardback book. She wondered if it was full of money, notes perhaps. It was locked but not heavy. She upended it and something moved inside. A single item slid from one end to the other. It didn’t sound like cash. She placed it on the bed.
Then she went out on to the landing. There was silence from Joshua’s room. She was feeling tired and a bit chilly. She picked up the single duvet from her bed and went down, to the living room. She put on the television and lay on the sofa, covering herself up with the duvet. She gazed at the programmes, not really paying much attention. Every now and again she glanced over at the window and saw the snow drifting lazily down.
She dozed off to sleep.
‘Rose, wake up, Rose!’
She jerked awake and saw Joshua standing in front of her holding something.
‘I found this! Look, I found this in Stu’s things.’
She sat up, her head ringing slightly. She glanced at the clock. It was almost midday. She’d slept for nearly two hours. Joshua was dressed and was holding the cash box she’d found earlier. It had its lid up.
‘Look,’ Joshua said, sitting down beside her. ‘There was a key in Stu’s desk that opened this.’
Inside the money box was a mobile phone. It was old-fashioned. It looked like pay as you go and Rose wondered what the fuss was about. Stu had an old mobile that he kept at school. So what?
‘The battery was dead. I found a charger in among the other things you’d unpacked. Once I plugged it in I was able to access the data!’
Joshua was excited, running at full speed, but Rose was still heavy with sleep and dazed by being woken up in the middle of it. She took the mobile and looked at the screen. It showed Call History. There was a list of phone numbers, a couple of them the same but mostly they were different. She scrolled down it and saw that it went back to the previous January.
‘Look at the dates!’
Each call was made on the same date. The twenty-fourth of every month – the same dates that were ringed in the diary that she had found. Except in December when there had been three extra calls.
‘This is a phone that Stu kept locked away at work. There was no way I could stumble on this. He kept this phone for a single call that he got every month.’
‘From different numbers.’
‘Mostly.’
‘Why don’t you ring the numbers?’
‘I was thinking that,’ Joshua said, reaching for the mobile.
‘Not on this phone. The number will show up.’
‘You’re right. I’ll get my mobile.’
He went off. She heard him run up the stairs. Fully awake now, she threw the duvet back and put the mobile on the coffee table. She stretched her arms up and moved her shoulders.
It was twelve o’clock.
Suddenly the mobile rang. It startled her. The ringtone was like an old-fashioned telephone. She watched it for a second and then snatched it up.
‘It’s ringing,’ she shouted.
There was no reply from upstairs and she let it ring another couple of times before pressing the receive button and putting the phone to her ear. She didn’t speak.
‘Stu, it’s me,’ a man’s voice said. ‘Stu, I’m sorry about the other night. I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment.’
Rose felt her mouth go dry. She heard Joshua’s footsteps come down the stairs. The man’s voice continued.
‘Stu, don’t be pissed off. I’ll try and sort some money out. I told you I wouldn’t let you down.’
Joshua was in the room. He was looking at her quizzically.
‘I thought we weren’t going to make the calls on that phone?’ he said.
Rose tried to block out Joshua’s words. She turned away from him to concentrate on what was being said.
‘For God’s sake, Stu, grow up!’
‘Who is this?’ Rose said. ‘Who’s speaking?’
The phone went dead. She took it away from her ear.
‘What?’ Josh said.
But she couldn’t speak to him. She had to write down what had been said before it went out of her head.
‘I need a pen.’
In the kitchen she pulled the drawer open and scrabbled round to find a pen. Then she grabbed a junk mail envelope that was on the side. She started to write on it.
‘What’s going on, Rose?’
‘Don’t speak to me. Just for a minute. Don’t say a word!’
She wrote the lines as she remembered them. Four times he spoke with gaps in between. Four lines. It wasn’t verbatim but it was as clear as she could remember.
‘Rose, WHAT?’ Joshua said, looking angry.
‘The phone rang at twelve o’clock. It was Brendan speaking.’
‘Dad?’
‘I’d swear to it. It was his voice, Josh. I’m sure it was. This is what he said. He must have t
hought it was Stuart who answered. Here’s what he said. I wrote the words down as best I could.’
‘My dad, on the phone? My dad spoke on that phone?’
‘He did. He thought he was speaking to Stu.’
‘What’s the number? Read out the number to me. If I use a different phone he might answer.’
She read out the number on the screen.
Joshua punched it into his mobile and held it to his ear. His face was rapt, his shoulders tensed, rounded with anticipation. He was hoping to hear his dad’s voice. She held her breath while he had the phone clamped to his ear. Then he lowered it. He seemed to deflate.
‘No answer.’
‘It was Brendan’s voice. I know it was,’ she said.
‘I wish I could have heard it,’ he whispered.
ELEVEN
An hour later Skeggsie came round. Rose was watching for him out of the window. For once she’d been the one to summon him. He’d been going out somewhere with his dad, he’d said, and would come later but she’d insisted. You have to come now! This is important!
She opened the door, relieved to see him. He had his hood up and shook off loose snow on to the doorstep before stepping into the hall.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said.
Joshua was upstairs in his uncle’s study. They could hear drawers opening and shutting. Earlier she’d followed him up there and tried to talk to him but he seemed frenetic, determined to search again, to take the place apart. She’d put her hand on his arm and said that they should sit down, have a hot drink, something to eat, think it through. But he shrugged her off and continued, dumping stuff on the floor, making piles of paper from places he’d already looked through.
It made her unhappy to see him like that.
That’s why she had rung Skeggsie.