by Wade, Calvin
Last Sunday, our six weeks were up, we had a Sunday afternoon flight back from Palma to Manchester with Dan Air. It was a great flight, just a little bumpy once we began our descent, as it was raining in Manchester. Paula picked us up. Paula has been living on her own for the last three years, since her and Gerry divorced and I worry about her. She’s thirty eight now and I doubt very that she’ll have children now, at that age. It’s very sad.
Wally had not wanted Paula coming all that way from Ormskirk, to pick us up. He wanted us to leave the car at the airport, but once I told him how much car parking would have cost for six weeks, he quickly changed his mind! Paula is a safer driver than Wally now anyway, his reactions are not what they were. She was there five o’clock, on the dot, just like we asked. She’s marvellous, our Paula!
Paula did not break the news to us until halfway home. The first half of the journey was just filled with the normal chit-chat, how were the cats, did we eat at Friar Tucks much and how was Puerto Portals getting along and were there bigger and better boats there this year? Had we seen anyone famous? Just Nigel Kennedy, we told her. Only when we were half way home did Paula break the sensational news about next door.
“You know what I completely forgot to tell you on the phone, Mum?”
“What?”
“Your noisy neighbour…”
“Don’t tell me she’s been fighting again! We saw a police car there the morning we left to go to Majorca and I said to Wally, ‘I bet that woman’s been up to her old tricks again!’ Didn’t I, Wally?”
Wally nodded.
“She died, Mum!”
“She died! When?”
“It must have been that Saturday night, when you went to Majorca on the Sunday. That will have been why the police car was there. It was in the Ormskirk Advertiser. She fell down the stairs, probably drunk, one of her daughters was woken up by the noise and when she went to look, she found her. Dead.”
When your next door neighbour dies, you should feel sadness, shouldn’t you? I should have felt awful, but I had been praying to God that she would move away and now, in a way, she had. I thought back. The mother and the eldest daughter were always arguing, Wally and I could often not hear Corrie because of the din through the walls. Often we had to turn the volume up. We felt sorry for the youngest one, she was a sweet, beautiful young thing, but it must have been dreadful for her, living in that house, with her mother and sister screaming at each other the whole time.
“We heard them rowing that night, didn’t we Wally? As per usual, the mother stumbled in drunk and her and the oldest girl had a right row again, didn’t they?”
Paula did not believe me at first.
“It couldn’t have been that night, Mum. It said in the Advertiser the girls were asleep. They only woke up when she fell down the stairs.”
Wally backed me up.
“The local rag have got it wrong, Paula. They woke us up, about one o’clock, didn’t they, Rita? Your mother was in a right state saying they had ruined her holiday already, as they just had no consideration and she went on and on about how she was going to be jetlagged for the first few days of the holiday, because of next door. If your mother had not been with me the whole time, Paula, I would not have been surprised if she had gone round to next door and pushed that woman down the stairs!”
“Wally!”
“It’s true though Rita, isn’t it? You were fuming, weren’t you?”
Wally was right.
“Well, Wal, she has made our life a misery every since they started renting that place.”
“I know she has, dear.”
This conversation seemed to concern Paula. I could not help but notice that she was frowning. It was the same troubled frown she had when she discovered that Gerry had been having an affair with Holly, the Avon lady.
“Mum, Dad, are you 100% sure about this? It was definitely that Saturday night?”
“Paula,” I said, “we are old, but we aren’t senile! It was definitely that Saturday night. The day before our holidays. We were already upset because of what had happened to all those poor people at Hillsborough, then the foghorn came in and that was it, pandemonium, as per usual!”
“Could you make out what they were saying?”
I am not good with details like that. Luckily, Wally is.
“Can you remember what they were saying, Wally?”
Wally scratched his head like he was trying to get to his brain, to tap into his memory banks.
“The two girls were arguing at first, in the bedroom. Remember, Rita, we woke up when the older one shouted “GET OUT!” at the younger one. Then the older girl and the mother were arguing for ages, about a knife, I think. Remember Rita, the older girl said something like,
‘Run, mother!’ and then the mother said something like, ‘No chance!’ then there was an argument about backing off and not backing off and then someone screamed, then there was a load of banging, then it went quiet. Didn’t it, Rita?”
Wally’s attention to detail is just first rate. When he was describing it to Paula, I could just picture the two of us lying there, listening, as if it was yesterday, not six weeks ago. I wish my mind was still as sharp as that. “That was it, Paula. Exactly like that.”
Wally continued.
“After it went quiet, I got up, went for a wee, I am a slave to my prostate these days, Paula, I really am. Went for a wee, then I went downstairs, made your mother and I a drink of water, then we went to sleep. The following morning, we were up at five and we headed off to Majorca.”
“Did you not think of ringing the police?”
Wally and I laughed a little, Wally explained.
“The police! We tried that when she first moved in, but it didn’t stop her. The police would have been around here pretty much every night if we had reported that woman every time she rose her voice! Bloody nightmare she is!”
“Bloody nightmare she was!” Paula corrected him.
“Well, we’re going to have to contact the police now.” Paula stated.
“Why love?” I asked. Admittedly I am not always the quickest to appreciate the significance of certain things. Petrocelli, Columbo, Murder, She Wrote…I would never get the murderer, never.
“Because Mum, by the sounds of it, you and Dad may very well have witnessed a murder!”
Wally did not see Paula’s logic either.
“Those girls won’t have killed their mother,” he said, “they haven’t got it in them.”
“Dad, that’s not for us to decide. Let’s ring the police, tell them what you heard and let them decide what to make of it. You might be right, it might be nothing, but why would the girls say they were fast asleep, if they were awake the whole time? I think they will have some serious explaining to do, at the very least.”
Kelly
As long as it’s not raining, market days in Ormskirk are always busy. If the sun comes out, it can be like a mass gathering for a Val Doonican concert. On this particular sunny day in early June, it was total bedlam.
Having passed my GCSEs, I had taken a year out of Further Education, to help contribute to the household bills, but also to save some money, so I could go back to school and fund myself the following year. Jemma was helping too. She worked at the bank and I was getting as many hours in as I could at the Woolworths in Aughton Street. I started there as a Saturday girl at fourteen, then after my GCSEs, I did Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays before stepping it up to full-time after Mum’s death. For this, I was paid £105 per week, by no means a fortune, but enough to put a bit away, as well as helping Jemma with the rent.
My supervisor, Kathryn, had pinched first lunch that day, as she wanted to nip down to ‘The Buck I’Th Vine’ for a celebratory drink with her boyfriend, Gaz, as it was her 21st birthday the following day, so I was left in the CD department on my own for a crazy hour and a quarter. Barry Manilow and Dolly Parton had new albums out, so the older generations were buying them, whilst all the rockers were buying the Sepult
ura album “Beneath The Remains”, so it was a bizarre looking queue!
By the time Kathryn returned, a little giddy for booze at quarter past one, I was tired and hungry. Every day at lunchtime, I would walk the hundred metres up the Aughton Street slope to the Middlelands Bank, to see if Jemma was around, to share my lunch hour with, but when I ventured into the branch that day, Jemma was not there but Ray was, looking like someone had forced a stick of dynamite up his bum and lit the fuse. He was ready to explode. He was striding around the front office, apologising to a snake like queue, twenty deep, for their delay. The cashiers looked harassed. I gently tapped his shoulder as he was about to brush past me, oblivious to my presence.
“Is Jemma not about, Ray?” I asked in cheery tones.
“No, she bloody isn’t! She’s the cause of this chaos! Twelve o’clock she went on her lunch and she’s twenty minutes late already. I’ve had to get Margaret to go on the tills and Margaret isn’t a cashier, she’s a current account adviser. It’s slowed the whole thing down. Look at the size of the bloody queue! If my Regional Manager stepped in here now, I could forget any plans of promotion. If you see her, Kelly, wandering around the shops merrily, can you send her back, straight away. She’s dumped us right in the shit!”
Ray whispered the last sentence so the irritated pensioners in the queue did not overhear.
“OK. I’ll tell her.”
Jemma had a tendency to be late for things. I was always the punctual one. I knew five or ten minutes was the norm with Jemma, but twenty minutes was taking the mickey! I was dazzled by sunshine as soon as I left the bank. The weather, on the whole, was promising a decent summer and I wanted to enjoy my hour before the chaos continued at Woolworths in the afternoon. I headed up Burscough Street and decided to treat myself to a portion of fish and chips, then headed over to Coronation Park to sit on a bench and eat my dinner under blue skies.
When I arrived at Coronation Park, I found an empty bench almost straight away which was a right result, as pensioners out on sunny days normally seek out the benches to rest their weary legs. There were hundreds of people in the park and they were not all pensioners, there were mothers and fathers pushing children on swings in the play area, teenage boys with their tops off displaying their skinny, milk-bottled, hairless torsos and shop workers and office workers mingling with shoppers, sitting on picnic rugs having lunch.
As I ate my lunch, I scoured the masses, looking for a familiar face. I was popping my last chip into my hungry mouth, when I spotted Jemma in the distance, sat on the grass. Spontaneously, I stood up and headed towards her to warn her that she needed to head back to the bank, as Ray was fuming.
Within a few strides of setting off, I relaxed a little. I could see that she was sat with Ray, they were cross-legged, holding hands and she was lovingly touching his face. They were deep in conversation. Ray had obviously calmed down a lot since I had seen him in the bank. As I took a few further steps, it dawned on me that although it was definitely Jemma, it was definitely not Ray! Jemma’s lawn companion hung his head so it was difficult to make out features, but he was too thick set to be Ray. No doubt he was too good looking to be Ray too, but I was unable to confirm this from such a distance. This was beginning to amuse me! No wonder Jemma was not rushing back to work!
I instinctively took a few steps back, re-tracing my footsteps, not wanting to intrude. If Jemma had another man in her life, was this my business? After everything that we had been through together, it did seem bizarre that she had not let me know about this development in her personal life, as we had always confided in each other about everything.
As the man re-adjusted his posture and straightened, I caught sight of him more clearly. My body sagged in desperation. I forced my eyes to blink over and over again, anticipating proper clarity, willing my brain to remove this mirage. Surely, I was mistaken. I forced myself to look again. Jemma was stroking the cheeks of a handsome man, then kissing him softly. I started to pace forward now, angrily. As I advanced, what I hoped was an apparition continued to remain real and constant. It was Richie. My Richie. The man I had spent eighteen months with. MY BOYFRIEND! How could this be happening? He was with MY sister. Despite everything.
Richie had never had a decent word to say about Jemma. Not one. The whole incident at the Birch’s party, that had driven a wedge between us for so long, that I had dismissed as a simple case of mistaken identity, no longer appeared to be just that. I had been hoodwinked, but for what purpose? Why had I become embroiled in this? I wanted answers.
I suddenly found myself within touching distance of Richie and Jemma, having come at them from an angle to avoid detection, from over their shoulders. They looked like they were re-enacting the Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush video for “Don’t Give Up”. A seated version anyway.
Jemma caught sight of me first. “Kelly!”
Cowardice was not a word I would use lightly when applying it to Jemma. For every single day of my life up until that point, it was a word that was the polar opposite to how I perceived Jemma. She had not shirked her responsibility in any matter, ever, and truthfully, a lot of the problems that Jemma had encountered in her life, were more down to an abundance of bravery rather than a lack of it. This was different though. My eyes bored into her, filled with hatred. Jemma averted my stare, turning to Richie to resolve an uncomfortable position. They let go of each other and stood up.
“Richie!” she begged. “Tell Kelly what’s going on. She needs to know.”
Richie was immediately tearful which struck me as a little pathetic.
“I can’t, Jemma! Not after everything that’s happened. I can’t!”
“Just tell her, Richie, or I will.”
To give Jemma some credit, her cowardice was temporary. Not that she deserved much credit, I had just caught her kissing my boyfriend!
“No!” he refused.
Six weeks earlier, a short burst of bravery on my part had been responsible for our mother’s death. I think that moment had sapped away any steely determination that I had within me. The last thing I wanted to do now was stand in front of the only two people in the world that I loved, sobbing my heart out, as they attempted to make their peace with me about their betrayal. Before the tears began to flow, I managed to cry out,
“How could you do this to me!”
Then I turned and ran.
I heard Jemma shouting after me, “Kelly! Wait! Please wait! Let me explain.”
I did not receive that explanation. I ran determinedly towards home.
I could not bear to hear their excuses. That “the only thing we did wrong was fall in love” excuse. I needed to clear my head first. I needed to try in some way to rationalise this and decide how I would go forward in life without Jemma and Richie’s love.
I ran from the park into Ormskirk town centre, past the crowds in Aughton Street, checking out the market stalls, past Woolworth’s (there was no way I was heading back to work in this state) to the clock tower then headed right into Moor Street, constantly running, all the way out of town and up to Wigan Road. I only broke into a walk when I spotted the police van outside our house. As I crossed over, to the opposite side, I noticed the van was actually not outside our house, but outside next doors. The adjoining house. Mr. and Mrs. McGordon lived there. They were a sweet couple in their seventies, they had had a few run ins with Mum, but then who hadn’t and if I had retired, the last place I would want to live, as I saw out my days, was next to us. Both of them were standing at their door, speaking to two male police officers. One was the guy who had dropped me off at Richie’s on that miserable night. Their garden, like ours, sloped up to their front door. The volume of traffic meant that I was too far away to hear their conversation. When I reached a point that I was parallel to the police van, I knew I was out of sight. The police officers had their backs to me anyway, but I had visions of Mr. and Mrs. McGordon pointing at me and shouting,
“There she is, Constable! Get her!”
I was
under no illusion that the police were visiting the McGordon’s to invite them to a social evening at the Civic Hall. They had been away and now they were back and the police were no doubt checking if they had heard anything when Mum toppled to her unsavoury end. Unless they were both deaf or very heavy sleepers, our statements would be blown out the water. I crossed back over, hiding behind the police van at first, then crawling on all fours under it and keeping horizontal below the wall at the end of their garden. I could now pick up their conversation.
“Would it be possible we could come in Mr. & Mrs. McGordon? Just to take some further details, perhaps?”
“Of course, please come in.”
Everything was collapsing around me. I knew exactly what was happening. This was God’s way of punishing me. I had ended a life and he was making sure my sins would find me out. I was getting what I deserved. Jemma and Richie were obviously in love, that was evident from the tenderness they were displaying, I was just an unwanted obstacle in that love triangle now and if I didn’t act quickly, it looked like I would soon be heading to jail for my mother’s murder. Next door must have heard me screaming as I ran at my Mum and then the sickening thud that followed when she hit the tiled floor. They were probably telling the police officers that right now.
With the McGordon’s door closed behind them, I gathered myself up from my cowering position, ran up our path, went in through the front door, up to my room, threw as many random objects of clothing as I could into a bag, dug out my passport, Yorkshire Building Society passbook and any cash I could find, stuffed them into the side pocket of the bag and bundled the bag down the stairs. I crept out the front door, checked that no-one was emerging from the McGordon’s and then shuffled along in a lopsided run, down the path and all the way down to Ormskirk train station. The Merseyrail train to Liverpool was already on the platform when I arrived. I bought a single ticket to Central, rushed on board, avoiding the smoking carriage and bade Ormskirk farewell.
My stay in Liverpool was a short one. I decided to get off the train at Moorfields, went across to the Yorkshire Building Society in Castle Street and closed my account, withdrawing every penny I had. I then went to the bottom end of Lord Street, re-investing some of my cash in a flight to Amsterdam. I wanted to go that evening from Manchester Airport, but there were no flights out of Manchester that I could book on to that night other than to Arecife and Palma and now was not the time for a suntan, so I ended up booking a flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam. It was an ideal destination, as I knew you had access to most other airports in the world from there. Having booked my flight, I walked up to Lime Street station and booked myself on to a train to Euston. From there, I went on the tube, taking the Southbound Victoria line to Green Park and then swopping on to the Piccadilly line, westwards, all the way to Heathrow. By 10.30pm, I was in Amsterdam. My life as a fugitive had begun.