How to Play Dead

by Jacqueline Ward

  I realised long ago that I am just torturing myself because, like Al says when we have an argument, ‘You signed up for it. You knew there was no going back.’ But I was so young and I didn’t know anything. I thought I did. I thought I was so clever. An older boyfriend. With a car. All the other girls, even her, were at the disco. They were laughing until they cried, a bit like Jade and Karla now, and kissing other boys. Dancing. I miss dancing.

  I don’t know what I thought would happen. Actually, I do. I thought that I had won. I thought by going with him I had finally got him away from her. But I was wrong. He has never admitted it. But I know that all the times he stays out all night, all the times I am left completely alone here, he is with her.

  That’s where he would have been last night. I see all the signs. He is stressed, then chipper, then stressed again, then he stays out. A couple of times he hasn’t come back for a whole weekend. I smell perfume and I see him preening, his hair cut differently. I used to shout and scream but I soon learned not to. Because those were the worst times.

  I’d heard the shower go on this morning and I’d crept down to the kitchen. I opened the washer, listening for the water flow in the pipes. I’d pulled out the shirt and sniffed it. His aftershave and a hint of perfume. I put it back and tiptoed back upstairs. And here I am now, sitting in the shower base writing this. I won’t be able to mention it. I will have to act as if nothing is wrong at all. As if I have slept all night and not even known he was gone.

  It gets harder every time. I will have to get ready for work, get in the car and be as bright and breezy as possible. I don’t know if I can do it. But I know the consequences if I don’t.

  Chapter Eleven

  Day 19

  Last night was the very opposite of the day. Donelle had cooked a curry and when I got home I couldn’t help but smile when Jennifer proudly presented me with a blue T-shirt with the Superwoman logo on it.

  ‘You can wear it for work, Mummy!’

  ‘I laughed and it felt good.

  ‘Yeah, I’m practically famous.’

  She grimaces. ‘God, you know what that makes Danny, don’t you? That makes him a Bah. Boyfriends and husbands.’

  She makes a sheep noise and we collapse into laughter. It’s exactly what I need, and when she suggests a bottle of wine and a chat I switch off the cheap phone and put it on the mantelpiece.

  In the morning I do the breakfast routine and I kiss the kids outside school. I fret the whole way to work that he knows all about me, about my kids, where their school is. Watching me. But he could have been watching me for ages, I reason with myself, and he is not going to do anything in the open. No. He isn’t, I convince myself. I could be scanning every inch of the road, every car, every person for someone watching. Someone I recognise. But fuck that. I have a job to do.

  I go straight round to Sheila’s flat. It’s her day today and she’s waiting at the window for me and when she opens the door, she doesn’t smile. I hug her and she hugs me back, hard and tight like she doesn’t want to let me go.

  ‘OK, Sheila? Everything all right?’

  She sits down on the low sofa and shakes her head. The flat smells strongly of cigarettes, much stronger than usual. Her ashtray is full to overflowing and she is wringing her hands.

  ‘Oh, you know, lovey. You know.’

  She sits in silence with a packet of Garibaldi biscuits for Marks & Spencer on the arm of her chair. I take my cue.

  ‘Been into town, have you?’

  She eyes the new boxes in the corner, stacked on top of the ones she collected last week.

  ‘Yeah. I called in on the way back. From the house. I went to get more stuff. And before you bloody start, he wasn’t there.’

  I stare at her as she sucks deeply on a Benson & Hedges. She’s wearing a huge, jangly charm bracelet – gold, naturally – that I haven’t seen before.

  ‘That bracelet’s lovely. But you know, you’re taking a big risk every time you go back there.’

  Her face sets and she looks away from me.

  ‘A charm for every year me and Frank have been together.’ She takes a biscuit and crunches it. She turns to face me. ‘There are some things in that house I need to have with me. I need to fetch them myself.’

  I wonder what could be more important than broken bones, but she’s already up, getting the boxes and bringing them over. She opens the top one and I gasp. It’s a hat, pink and purple velour in a flapper style, pure 1930s. It is encrusted with red and purple stones. I catch my breath.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Sheila.’

  ‘It was my mother’s. All I have left of her. Everything else is … gone.’ She passes it to me. ‘Put it on, lovey. Try it.’

  I pull my hair out of its regulation Day-Glo bobble and pull on the hat. The inside is silk and it feels lovely.

  ‘Suits you, lovey. You could make more of yourself, you know. You’re a lovely woman.’

  I feel tears well and give her the hat back.

  ‘Thank you, Sheila. I don’t always feel lovely. But none of us do, do we?’

  She shakes her head sadly, her blonde beehive shuddering. She closes the box and opens another one and just looks into it. I can see knitting needles with something half-finished on them.

  ‘Oh, how lovely. More knitting!’

  She looks at me, her eyes watery.

  ‘I wasn’t knitting the other day. I was watching.’

  ‘But you can knit. So …’

  She picks up the needles and the white ribbing. Underneath are several strands of ribbon. Sheila had never struck me as a maker. I had imagined that she spent most of her time with Frank, in the house or out at social events. All the pictures of them were in pubs and clubs. I peer into the box. There are more needles and some sea pearls, dressmaker’s pins and a beautiful silver thimble. Sheila is holding the knitting very still.

  ‘I can knit. Oh, I can. But this was the last time I knitted – thirty-nine years ago.’

  I quickly calculate. She would have been twenty-four. She picks out a photograph.

  ‘Me and Frank at Blackpool on the beach. That’s when we found out. When we got back.’ The black-and-white photograph shows them on deckchairs, arms and legs intertwined. They are in shorts and T-shirts, but in the background are what appear to be two men in suits. She points to them.

  ‘Tony and Knob. Gone now, both of ’em.’

  They look younger than Frank and Sheila.

  ‘Oh. What happened?’

  She stares at me, a desolate stare that I have never seen before from her.

  ‘Late for something. Frank thought they were grassing him up. A few things, Then …’

  She shakes her head almost imperceptibly and her eyes tell a story of such deep sorrow that I finally understand the horrors this woman has seen. Who Frank James really is. She reaches down into the box and pulls out a tiny box with a clear cellophane lid containing a tiny gold bracelet.

  ‘This was his. Bobby’s. Frank gave it to me when I was three month. He knew it would be a boy. Told me he was calling him after Bobby Charlton. Bloody United mad, he is.’

  She takes out the bangle, turning it over and over in her hands. I can see she has done this often.

  ‘What happened, Sheila? What happened to Bobby?’

  She cannot meet my eyes.

  ‘It was about seven months and I was in the lounge with my feet up. I’d had some belly ache but the midwife came and said it was nothing. Just pressure. So Frank went out and when he came back, I was rough. Being sick and very weak. We went to bed and I woke up with the bed full of blood. The midwife came back but it was too late. I’d had him. Tiny, he was.’

  I take her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sheila. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well, turned out I couldn’t have any more. I’d already had seven early miscarriages. Somat wrong with me. That’s what Frank told everybody who’d listen. Somat wrong with me. So you see, it was my fault.’

  ‘No, Sheila, lo
ve, it wasn’t. It must have been terrible for you, but it wasn’t your fault. These things never are.’

  She is shaking and fumbling for her lighter. I help her and flick the flame up to the tip of her cigarette.

  ‘It were. It were punishment for what I did. With them men.’

  I feel my anger rise.

  ‘Did Frank tell you that?’

  ‘No. He didn’t have to. I could see it in all their faces. All the other fancy wives. All of them with kiddies. Just me and Frank without. So I deserved it. Like I deserve this. You always say that none of this is my fault but, in Frank’s eyes, I’m a failure.’

  She rustles in the box and, right at the bottom, is a blue rabbit.

  ‘I used to sleep with this under my pillow. He’d keep throwing it in the bin and I’d get it out again. Bobby’s rabbit. Have you got kiddies, love?’

  I almost feel guilty telling her.

  ‘Yes. A boy and a girl. At school now.’

  She glances at my hand.

  ‘You’re married?’

  ‘Yeah. I am.’

  She looks hard at me.

  ‘Funny. You don’t look the type. Not being funny but you don’t keep yourself nice for him, do you?’

  I smile. Danny’s face if I turned up at home all dressed up complete with jewellery and make-up. But I do make an effort in my own way. We both do. We like nice smells and soft skin.

  ‘He likes me just how I am. He’s not one for going out so …’

  She tries a smile. ‘Well, you’re a lucky girl. I hope it all stays fine for you. We had a proper funeral for Bobby, you know. A priest and everything. He’s got a headstone up at Hollinwood Cemetery. Big do afterwards. Then back to an empty house. That’s what all this is about. He’s never forgiven me. He said I had been gaddin’ about while he were out at council meetings, but I’d just been in bed. I keep going over it, over and over again, to see if I could have done any different, but I did everything right. Everything.’

  She’s crying now and so am I.

  ‘It’s all right, Sheila. It’ll all be all right.’

  She pushes my hand away. ‘No. It won’t. Him in that house on his own. Me here. Bobby up there in the cemetery. When we should all be together. But I feel like I’ve got Bobby now. That’s why I had to go back. To fetch him here.’

  I breathe out. For one awful second I thought that she was going to say she was going back to Frank. Instead, she puts everything back in the box and sets it aside. I wait a moment.

  ‘Are you OK? Sheila? Are you going to be all right? You can come back with me if you want. And bring anything you want.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. I can’t smoke in there. And it’s all I’ve got left.’

  I take the tray through to the kitchen. Poor Sheila. I am so glad she is opening up but it is absolutely tragic. The poor woman had been brainwashed. I go and sit back down.

  ‘I know that this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but none of this is your fault. No one has any right to punish you for anything, except a court of law. And you’ve done nothing illegal. You’ve just been human.’

  She nods and wipes her eyes. ‘Maybe I will come back with you for a bit. I can help Janice clean up. Lovely girl. You both are.’ Then she is serious. ‘But the reason I’m telling you all this, love, is to tell you what Frank’s like. He’ll stop at nothing, you know. You need to watch out.’

  I look at her.

  ‘So do you, love.’ I stare at the vase of flowers on the window sill. ‘Those don’t mean anything. They don’t mean he’s stopped.’

  She frowns. ‘Oh. Them. They’re not from Frank. They’re from your friend. That nice man who knows you. Said you’d know what they were for.’

  I want to shake her and demand to know who it was. What did he look like? But I can check the CCTV. Yes. I can check. She puts her hand on my arm. I feel her fingers tighten and I feel like crying into her bouclé cardigan. But we need to go so we walk round to SafeMe, red-eyed and emotional, and she steadies herself on me until we get there.

  When Sheila is settled I go to my office. I check the CCTV but this guy knows what he’s doing. He keeps his hoodie up, head turned. It’s grainy, anyway. And old system. I don’t even know if it’s him. It could be a delivery bloke. It could be fucking anyone. My insides churn.

  He’s not going to get to me. I write all the incidents in my diary. I feel more in control and I settle in my chair and read a text from Danny.

  Hey babe. Baaaaaahhh Day 19 on the deposit countdown And 20 days to go to D-Day. Deposit Day, that is. I love you x Always.

  I imagine his delighted face when he thought of D-Day and smile. He’s obviously spoken to Donelle. Sheila is right, I am very lucky. I sit down at my computer and think about Shelia’s lost child. I think about my own children and open my emails. I type an overdue email to the headmistress of Simon and Jennifer’s school.

  Dear Mrs Hatherton,

  Just a note to ask you to not allow anyone except myself, Danny Taylor (father), Donelle Taylor (Aunt) and Vi Taylor (Grandmother) to collect Simon and Jennifer from school. This is without exception.

  Thank you

  Ria Taylor

  I press ‘send’ and this begins my campaign to protect my family while I do what I have to do to deal with this fucking psychopath. Stay one step ahead.

  When I get home Donelle is cooking. She has made tower burgers and chips. They are her speciality and I swear that they are better than any burger chain or restaurant. The kids love them and I manage about half of one as I am full of fear.

  ‘Come on. Eat up. We’re going out.’

  Every other Friday night me and Danny go out with Janice and her husband. Cheap-as-chips pub with a live band, back at eleven to relieve the babysitter. I would normally be over the moon, happy to shake off the week with a boogie with Danny, but I suddenly feel isolated. He’s not here and I don’t want to leave the kids.

  ‘I don’t know, Don …’

  She laughs. ‘Rubbish! Come on. It’ll do you good. And I’m at a loose end. Anyway, I already asked Terri to sit with the kids.’

  This makes me feel a little better.

  ‘Oh! What’s happened to lover boy then?’

  She shakes her head and laughs.

  ‘Previous engagement. But that’s fine. Don’t want to be in each other’s pockets, do we?’

  But her eyes aren’t smiling. I make a mental note to talk to her later when the alcohol has taken effect. I text Janice and tell her we’ll meet her at the pub.

  Janice is my best mate out of work and in. Even though we work together, we still have a lot of fun. We’ve laughed ourselves stupid on Friday nights to chase away the horrors that lie underneath the everyday at SafeMe. Tonight will be no different. I drag the straighteners through my split ends and finish with big curls, eyeliner and a lot of mascara. I walk into the kitchen and Donelle approves.

  ‘Wow. You look amazing.’ Terri is outside smoking and when she comes in she nods and does a RuPaul.

  ‘Girl, you too good for the local. Don – take the lady into town.’

  I laugh and Donelle pulls on her jacket. But I can’t help myself. I turn to Terri.

  ‘Keep the doors locked. And don’t answer the door.’

  She frowns. ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Just some crime reports in the area. And it’s Friday. You know?’

  She nods and glances at Donelle and I wonder if I see them exchange concerned looks about a shared worry. About me. Donelle is quiet in the taxi on the way there and by the time we arrive I am on edge. But she isn’t someone who will fuck with me so before we go into the bar she pulls me to one side.

  ‘Ri, Ri, Ri, Ri. What’s the matter?’

  I look into her eyes. My sister-in-law. She, like Danny, has stood at my side for twelve years, while I fight the good fight. She made me family the moment I met her and I pause for long enough for her to know there is something. Her face clouds with concern.

  ‘Oh my God. You�
�re not ill, are you?’

  I shake my head. I will have to tell her. Part of it, at least. ‘No. It’s just … Just this guy. Sending me unsolicited texts.’

  Unsolicited texts. I almost laugh at the lengths I will go to not say the word ‘stalker’. She fumes.

  ‘Someone from work? One of them? Not happy with just hurting their own woman?’

  ‘You know the score, Don. I’ve told legals and the police. It’ll be dealt with.’

  She hugs me tight. ‘It better be, because if it isn’t …’

  I nod. ‘It’s OK. Really. I’ll sort it.’

  She nods. ‘Look, you’ve lost weight and you’ve got a frown line.’ She runs her hand over my forehead. ‘I’m not surprised with what you have to deal with, but this is different.’

  It is fucking different. It is me. And now it’s affecting my family. This is how it creeps up.

  ‘I’ll deal with it, Don.’

  She hugs me and we go in. I grab Janice immediately and go to the bar. She starts to tell me about her brother’s break-up and we’re back in the moment.

  I smile and carry our drinks over, just as the band starts. It’s a Blues Brothers tribute band and Donelle pulls me on to the dance floor. We shake a tail feather and laugh and drink until I almost feel myself again. Almost. Because, as I sit down again I glance in the flashing blue light on the phone in my bag and can’t help myself. And there it is: a picture of the back of my head taken seconds before. Whoever it is, they are right here, right behind me.

  Tanya

  Diary Entry: Friday

  This is why I think I am going mad. He took me to work on Thursday and picked me up as normal. Then he just sat in his study all Thursday night while I sat on the other side of the door, trembling and wondering what the hell was going on. Wondering if I should ask him where he was. I had washed the shirt and pressed it. Hung it back in his wardrobe.