by Jane Casey
I slipped into a heavy, dreamless sleep near dawn, and woke up long after my usual getting-up time with gritty eyes, a sore throat and a face that felt as if it had been snipped off with pinking shears and stapled back on in a fairly approximate way. I had, I discovered as I walked to the bathroom, a limp. My knee was stiff and protested when I bent it. It was pulpy with swelling and bruised, but wasn’t as extravagantly lurid as my shoulder. I still couldn’t lift my arm above my shoulder and both were vibrant with colour, shading from purple to bluey-black at the most tender point. The bruising extended down my arm to about halfway between my shoulder and elbow, like a longshoreman’s tattoo, and it was exquisitely painful. My face in the mirror was grim. I felt exhausted; I was too shattered to think of going to school.
I padded unevenly downstairs to the phone and called the school office, expecting Janet, and got Elaine. I had to stumble through my excuse, hoping that it didn’t sound too much like a lie, knowing that Elaine was a tough audience and wouldn’t believe it in any event. I sold the terrible, blinding headache, I really don’t think I can make it in today line like my life depended on it. She harrumphed. Something told me that I wasn’t the only one calling in sick. I upped the pathetic quaver in my voice as I elaborated on the nausea I had also been experiencing, and got a grudging assent out of her.
‘But I will need you to come to St Michael’s tonight. There’s going to be a prayer service in memory of Jenny Shepherd, and I want all the teachers to attend.’
‘What time does it start?’
‘Six o’clock. I do hope that your headache will have gone by then.’
Choosing to ignore the sarcasm in her voice, I promised to be there and hung up, wondering how on earth I was going to make myself presentable in a mere ten hours. More sleep seemed like the best option. I wrote a note for Mum, explaining that I hadn’t had to go to work and could I not be disturbed, please, and tiptoed into the living room. She was still there, curled up on the sofa, and didn’t stir. The room was sour with night-breath and alcohol, dark and hot. I left the note in a prominent place and slid out again.
The stairs seemed longer and steeper than usual and I dragged myself up, holding on to the banister. My limbs ached and every joint complained. I felt as if I had acquired a bad case of the flu along with my bruises, and the only thing that gave me the strength to get back to my bedroom was the prospect of peace, cool sheets and solitude for the next few hours. I clambered back into bed. Falling asleep was as easy – and as sudden – as falling off a cliff.
It was the rain that woke me in the end. The weather broke mid-afternoon, the first fragile warmth of summer subdued by a soggy low pressure that swept in from the Atlantic, pushing a clutch of heavy showers before it. I had left my window ajar and opened my eyes to dark spots on the pink carpet and a dappling of water across my desk from fat raindrops that had landed on the windowsill and exploded like tiny grenades. I got up, fuzzy-headed from sleep, and reached out with my left hand to shut the window. My arm thrilled with electric pain and I gasped, wondering how I could have forgotten. I switched hands and drew the window down, leaving an inch-wide gap so the pure, rain-washed air could flow in. The rain rattled like drumbeats on the roof and hung in an almost solid sheet in front of the houses across the road, turning them into faded, softened approximations of themselves, watercolours painted with dirty water. I watched idly for a few minutes as the rainwater leaped off the road surface and ran in rivers down the pavement. There was something fascinating about the heavy rain, hypnotic. Especially if you didn’t have to go out in it.
It came as something of a shock to remember that I did have to go out, and moreover that I had to walk. I was far too frightened of Elaine to be a no-show at the prayer service. I checked my watch, wincing at the discovery that it was half past four. My only hope was to ring Jules. I had her telephone number; it was in last year’s diary. She had written it herself, with big looping writing that took up two lines at a time. I hopped back downstairs to the phone, hoping grimly that the guy who had nicked my bag was enjoying the use of my Nokia. It would have been so much more convenient if he’d left me my phone. And my keys. And my wallet. But then it wouldn’t have been much of a mugging.
‘Hello?’
‘Jules, it’s me, Sarah.’
‘Sarah! I didn’t recognise the number. God, I nearly didn’t bother to answer it. How are you?’
‘I’m OK,’ I said quickly. ‘Listen, I’m having car trouble. Could you possibly pick me up on your way to St Michael’s for the prayer service?’
‘The what?’ Jules sounded vague. ‘Oh, that. Sorry, sweetie, I’m not going.’
‘I thought we had to go.’
‘Not my kind of thing. I told Elaine I had a family commitment that I couldn’t get out of.’
‘Right,’ I said, wishing I’d thought of something similar. ‘Good for you.’
‘Elaine was fee-urious. Not that I care. She can’t fire me for not being there. I’m really sorry, though. Are you going to be able to manage?’
It wasn’t far, really – just a couple of miles. Without the bruised knee, I wouldn’t have thought twice about walking. I laughed. ‘Of course. I was being lazy because of the rain.’
‘I’ve just had my hair done,’ Jules said in a small voice. ‘By the time I get to the pub, it’s going to be totally ruined.’
‘Is that where the family commitment is, then?’ I asked, grinning as Jules said something extremely rude in return before hanging up.
As I put the phone down, my smile faded. It was all very well laughing, but there was no one else I could ask. If I wanted to get there, I’d have to walk, and in my present state I wasn’t altogether sure I would make it.
By a miracle, I got there on time, and as it turned out I was quite grateful for the bad weather. There were cameras massed on the far side of the road from the church, filming people as they filed in, but under my umbrella I was safely anonymous. The umbrella shielded my face from anyone who might just spot the bruising high on my cheekbone, even though I had coated it in layers of foundation.
Leaving my umbrella to drip in a stand in the porch along with a forest of others, I crept into the church and looked around. I hadn’t been inside it for a long time. The foundations of St Michael’s went back hundreds of years, but the church wore its history lightly. Along the walls, antique brasses and monuments to long-forgotten parishioners fought for space with posters about Christian charity and poverty in the developing world. A lurid stained-glass window had been added some time in the seventies, incongruous against the old grey stone that surrounded it. Part of the left side-aisle had been glassed in at some point to corral noisy children and their suffering parents during services. But the old box pews were satisfyingly unaltered and my footsteps sounded muffled on the worn stone floor, polished over the centuries by the feet of the faithful, as I limped into the side-aisle on the right in search of an unobtrusive place to sit. It wasn’t going to be easy. There was still a quarter of an hour to go before the service was due to start, but the pews were almost full.
I recognised parents from the school and Jenny’s classmates in the congregation, but scuttled past before they noticed me, quick in spite of my new hop-and-step style of walking. I had prepared a story in case anyone asked why I was limping, but I didn’t want to expose it or myself to too much scrutiny. The rain had dulled the light outside to the point that it seemed more like a winter evening than early summer, and the church wasn’t well lit. It was a gift. I slipped into a pew near the front, beside a pair of old ladies who were deep in conversation. They shuffled along to make room for me, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. Perfect.
Looking around, I saw a little group of my colleagues sitting together in the middle of the nave, talking among themselves. They looked tired and unhappy, more because they were there on duty than because they were grief-stricken, I felt. From where I sat, I could see them looking at their watches, foreheads wrinkled wi
th indignation.
Elaine herself was sitting in the front row of the church beside the deputy head, who had dug out a tie for the occasion. Elaine had had her hair done and was wearing lipstick; she was definitely thinking of this as an opportunity to impress. The little old lady next to me was holding an order of service, a single piece of A4 paper; I had missed out on picking one up on my way into the church. I wondered if poor Janet had had to do all of the copying and folding herself. By dint of squinting, I could just about read it. Elaine was doing a reading and the school choir was performing.
On the way into the church I had seen a polite notice asking the media to respect the community’s privacy, discouraging them from attending the service. At least one of them had ignored the notice, although I had to acknowledge that she had the excuse of being part of the community too. Carol Shapley was sitting two rows from the front of the church, right behind the pew that had been reserved for the Shepherds themselves. She had her arms around two teenage children, presumably her own, and looked totally harmless, but I could see that she was taking in every detail of the church and congregation. Her head swivelled on her neck like an owl’s. She would miss nothing, that woman, and the local paper would get an exclusive.
A low rumble of conversation came from the back of the church. I craned my neck to see what was going on and realised that the police had arrived, along with the Shepherds. DCI Vickers led the procession up the aisle, as unlikely a bride as you ever saw. He filed into the pew in front of the journalist, who caught his eye as he did so. She dropped her head and a flush swept up her face. I didn’t think that he had spoken to her; perhaps he hadn’t needed to.
The Shepherds weren’t far behind, walking in the company of the vicar. Diane Shepherd didn’t seem to know where she was, looking around her with a little half-smile frozen on her face. Her husband walked heavily, his head down. He had lost a lot of weight in the days since Jenny disappeared and his clothes hung on his frame. The collar of his shirt was loose, but he was smartly dressed; this was a man for whom appearance mattered, and even in his grief he was conscious of dressing appropriately. Valerie walked behind them, her self-important strut only slightly muted by the circumstances. And at the back of the church, Blake. Of course he was there. He took up a position by the door, flanked by a couple of colleagues. Their backs were to the wall, hands clasped in front of them in the classic footballer’s pose. They looked remote, as if what was going on had nothing to do with them, but their eyes swept over the congregation. I wondered what they were looking for, and at that moment Blake caught my eye. He raised one eyebrow a millimetre and I whipped around to face the front of the church, embarrassed at being caught staring, as the young vicar launched into his opening prayer. It evolved into a bit of a sermon, which apparently came as a surprise to him as well as everyone else. His Adam’s apple shuttled up and down his neck in between phrases that led nowhere. Fatally off the point, he plunged about, getting more and more lost.
‘For without God, where can there be comfort? But with God, what can there be but comfort, the comfort that is of God and from God. That comfort that … who is the one true God. And Jennifer is with God, in the sanctity of heaven, one of his children as we all are … and for her family, that must console. That must console, because …’
He shuffled papers, looking in them for the answer and, finding neither a conclusion to his train of thought nor a new one to follow, gave up and rather lamely introduced the school choir. They launched into a hymn, a loud and enthusiastic rendition of ‘Be Thou My Vision’. I gazed sightlessly at the hymnal in front of me, not reading the words, wondering if Jenny had prayed before she died, and if her prayers had been heard.
To say that my attention wandered during the service would be an understatement. Elaine’s voice rang out, the words of a suitable bit of Ecclesiastes delivered in measured cadences, and I drifted, contemplating the fine vaulted ceiling above my head and the gothic arch that led to the transept. Thoughts slid into my mind and I let them float there, not really focusing.
But someone was focusing on me. As I rose to my feet along with the rest of the congregation to sing ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’, I looked around idly and found myself looking straight at Geoff, who was staring back. As soon as he made eye contact with me, he raised his hand, cupping it around an invisible glass, and tilted it – the universal sign for ‘do you fancy a drink?’ I frowned discouragingly and bent my head to the hymnal as though I had never read the words of the psalm before.
When the last notes from the organ had died away, the vicar bent down and wrestled the microphone from its stand. It issued short barks of static and feedback as the stony-faced congregation watched him struggle. He launched into another endless, rambling prayer delivered off the cuff, apparently without any forethought, and I found my attention wandering again.
‘I’ll now invite the rest of Jennifer’s class to come up onto the altar to sing the final hymn,’ he intoned breathily at last and waited while girls came from all over the church, looking self-conscious and hanging back so as not to arrive on the altar first. Some of them had shot up to their adult height already, looking years older than their classmates in their outfits and demeanour – all straightened hair and emo-eyeliner. But there were those who held on to childish prettiness and fragility, as Jenny had done, small-framed girls with babyish faces. They all shared the same expression: frozen confusion.
‘If you’d all just hold hands …’ the vicar suggested and Jenny’s classmates linked hands obediently. The school choir mistress stepped delicately in front of the altar and gave a nod to the organist. A long-held note resolved itself into the opening bars of ‘Amazing Grace’. The girls were word perfect. They had learned it for a school concert a couple of months earlier. I wondered what their parents were feeling, watching them. Sick with fear at the thought that it might have been their daughter who was missing from the line-up? Secretly giving thanks that it wasn’t? Who could blame them for that?
While the singing was still going on, Vickers and Valerie marched the Shepherds out before anyone else in the congregation had a chance to stir. I found myself wondering who, exactly, the service had been intended to help. The Shepherds looked just as stunned and heartsick going out as they had when they came in.
A tug at my sleeve turned out to be the little old ladies wanting to escape, and I got up so the three of us could slide away. It was a fine plan, but two things served to sabotage it. One, my knee gave way almost as soon as I tried to walk on it and I ended up leaning against a pillar, waiting for the world to stop whirling. Two, Geoff had been waiting for his opportunity, and while I was standing there, he swooped.
‘Hey you,’ he murmured, coming much too close. I felt like the weakest animal in the herd, defenceless and vulnerable; it was as if he could sense it. He wrapped his arms around me for a too-enthusiastic hug. The pressure on my arm sent shooting pains from my shoulder up to my neck and I gasped. Geoff looked down, assessing me. ‘Was it a bit much for you? All the emotion?’
‘I’m OK,’ I gritted, peeling myself off the pillar and starting to make for the door. Every other punter in the congregation had had the same thought by now, though, so I was forced to stand and wait while the crowd trickled through the double doors agonisingly slowly, like cattle at a mart. Geoff followed, of course, and stood behind me, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. I edged forwards into a non-existent gap, pushing through the crowd to put some distance between us.
‘I think what you need is a drink,’ he said into my ear, shuffling forwards too. Net gain to me: nil. ‘Come on. We’ll find somewhere nice.’
‘No thanks. I’m going to go home.’ My knee was aching and I felt sick. Even if I had wanted to go out for a drink – even in the exceptionally unlikely circumstances that I might have considered going out for that drink with Geoff – I really, truly didn’t feel up to it. The next minute, I nearly jumped out of my skin as two heavy hands landed on my shoulders and
started kneading them. It was as if he was irresistibly attracted to the place that would cause me the most pain and I ducked free of him before whipping around, one hand protectively guarding my shoulder in case he tried again. ‘Geoff, for God’s sake!’
‘You’re so tense,’ he whispered. ‘Calm down.’
‘Stop mauling me!’
He held his hands up. ‘OK, you win. What’s the problem? Have you done something to your back?’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, noticing that we were attracting strange looks from others in the crowd. ‘Forget it.’
We were at the doorway by now. Heavy raindrops splashing on the path beyond the porch reminded me to retrieve my umbrella. I manoeuvred across to where I had left it, to discover that the umbrella stand was empty. Someone had taken it already. I stood there, looking stupidly at where it should have been, until a man shouldered past me with a tut of irritation.
‘No umbrella?’ Geoff sounded sympathetic. ‘How far away is your car?’
‘At home,’ I said, without thinking. It was going to be a long walk back, given my ever-stiffer leg and the thundery rain that showed no sign of slackening off. The puddles that had been collecting on the pavements earlier would be lakes by now.
‘You can’t walk in this,’ Geoff said firmly, taking my arm and drawing me out of the way. ‘Let me drive you.’
I was just about to say no when I saw Blake coming towards us, a look of concern on his face. Of all the ways I would have chosen to meet him again, this was absolutely not one of them.
‘You’re limping,’ he said without preamble. ‘What happened?’