Dead Time

by Anne Cassidy

  Rose stared at him asleep on her sofa. She’d told him about her garden studio in her emails. When she had texted saying she couldn’t meet, he must have come to her. The thought made her smile. She looked him up and down. He was tall, his legs and plimsolls hanging over the end of the chair. His hair was curly and there was a shadow on his jaw as if he hadn’t shaved.

  He moved and groaned as he did so. His head turned back so that he seemed to be looking up at the ceiling. She remembered again the other boy she had seen lying down that evening. He had been on his front, his face flat against the cold concrete of the walkway, his blood spreading out from under him. Rose wondered what it would be like to be someone in Ricky Harris’s family. To have a policeman come to the front door and announce that their son, their brother (maybe even their stepbrother) was dead. She looked at Joshua and felt the loss keenly. She who had already lost her mother and Brendan. How awful it would be if it had been Joshua lying on that bridge. How dark the world would be then.

  The tears finally came. Tears for that stupid idiot Ricky Harris who called her posh bird and kept on and on at her in school. Why was she crying for him? A boy who had been nasty to her, who had taken every opportunity to make fun of her. Her form teacher had spoken to him several times and even one of the IT technicians had told him to lay off. He had had a girlfriend, she remembered. A thin pale girl with hair extensions. She seemed to walk after him everywhere like a puppy.

  Here’s your train, posh bird! were the last words he spoke before encountering an argument on a bridge, a fight and a fatal wound.

  She pulled a tissue out of her pyjama pocket, half aware that Joshua had moved and was looking around the room.

  ‘Rosie?’ he said, sitting up.

  She dabbed her eyes.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said, smiling. ‘Am I that big a disappointment?’

  She shook her head and he got up and came across to her. He squatted down in front of her and grabbed her hands.

  ‘Hey, sis? What’s up?’

  ‘I’m not your sister,’ she said, the crying getting worse instead of better.

  ‘Stepsister, then.’ He was grinning.

  ‘Not even a stepsister. Not really.’

  ‘Well, then, what’s up? Why the tears?’

  ‘I saw someone get killed tonight, that’s all,’ she hiccupped out the words.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, standing up, taking her hand, pulling her up and hugging her. ‘Is that all it is?’

  She sat on the sofa next to him and told him all about it.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, when she’d finished.

  ‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘It’s just like being witness to a car accident. It’s being there at that moment, pure bad luck. Bad luck that Ricky Harris walked across the bridge and got into a row with this guy and one thing led to another …’

  ‘Awful.’

  ‘And it’s made me think about Mum all over again.’

  She meant Mum and Brendan but hadn’t said it.

  ‘Dad’s never out of my mind,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t mean that! Mum’s always in my mind! Of course she is!’

  She was instantly irritated and moved away from him further along the old sofa, her shoulders stiffening.

  ‘I know that. I …’

  ‘I think about her all the time. What I meant was I started to think about the things that happened over those days. The police …’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She couldn’t speak. Her jaw felt tight.

  ‘Hey!’ Joshua said. ‘Is this our first argument? I’ve only been here for ten minutes!’

  ‘I’m just upset,’ she said, staring at the wall.

  ‘Course you are. Anyone would be!’

  Joshua put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

  ‘Your bones have got right angles,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been injured.’

  She turned to him, her face breaking into a smile.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Josh. It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Have I changed?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re still as annoying as you were five years ago.’

  ‘What have you done to your arm?’ he said, reaching across her front and lifting her wrist. She looked down and saw the scab mark along the edge of her pyjama sleeve.

  ‘Just a scrape,’ she said, not wanting to show the tattoo until it was healed. ‘How did you get in here? The back gate is locked.’

  ‘I climbed over it.’

  ‘What’s that for?’ she said, pointing at the screwdriver.

  ‘I had it in my pocket. I must have left it there after fixing something.’

  Rose shook her head. She had a sudden memory of Joshua’s tools scattered around the house in Brewster Road. A hacksaw by the fruit bowl, a claw hammer by the shoe rack.

  The sound of music playing loudly broke into her thoughts.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘It sounds like you’ve got an orchestra playing in your garden!’

  Rose could hear it. Anna’s music. It was as if she’d turned the volume up. But it wasn’t that. Anna had opened the back doors of her drawing room. She was out in the garden. She was coming down to the studio for some reason.

  ‘You have to hide. If she sees you here it will cause a lot of trouble.’

  She looked round the tiny space. He met her eyes and gave a hopeless shrug. The studio was a square room. There were no alcoves or cupboards. There was no screen to step behind and the only big thing, the sofa was too heavy to be moved easily.

  There was nowhere for Joshua to hide.

  ‘She’ll be here in a minute!’ Rose said, panicking.

  ‘I’ll face up to her! She can’t tell you who to see and who not to see!’

  ‘No, you don’t get it. She’ll make things difficult. Quick.’

  Rose grabbed Joshua’s arm and pushed him against the wall adjacent to the door. She looked round hurriedly and picked up his jacket, his keys and screwdriver and shoved them at him seconds before the door swung open and Anna was standing there.

  ‘Rose! I’ve just had a call from the police. What are you doing down here? It’s almost midnight. Come back into the house,’ Anna said, stepping away from the door, ‘It’s cold out here and we need to talk.’

  ‘I’ll just get my things.’

  Without looking at the open door and Joshua’s plimsolls sticking out, Rose picked up the water and cheese and her rucksack.

  ‘Just putting my boots on!’

  ‘The police said you were a witness to a murder, Rose. Why on earth didn’t you come and tell me?’

  Rose moved behind the door to push her feet into her boots. She mouthed Sorry at Joshua. He smiled at her as she backed away, carrying her things.

  ‘Hurry up, Rose.’

  She pulled the door to and Joshua moved out from behind it. She paused by the light switch. With her back to Anna she grinned back at Joshua. Then she turned the light off and closed the door tightly.

  She followed her grandmother up the lawn. All the way to the house she felt Joshua’s eyes on her back.

  FOUR

  School was uncomfortable for the next few days.

  ‘Are you the girl who saw Ricky get killed?’

  ‘Are you Rose someone? Who was there when Harris got stabbed?’

  ‘Did you see the stabbing?’

  ‘Did you see who did it?’

  ‘Are you the kid who used to go boarding school? You saw Harris get it? Is that right?’

  Rose didn’t like it. People thrusting their faces into her space. She was used to being anonymous, left alone. She liked the sense of wandering through this alien world unnoticed. She had come from a small girls’ boarding school in the middle of the countryside into this huge mixed high school, where students walked in battalions and took no prisoners. She liked to sit on a seat in the cafeteria and just watch it all happening around her. Girls and boys eyeing each other
up; boys standing in groups talking and shouting and shoving and practising football with an invisible ball; girls sitting round tables whispering or, shrieking, looking at their phones. Then there were the studious types, in twos and threes out of the way, looking at handouts or books, the wires of their iPods mingling with their hair.

  There was noise all day long. Rose was used to the hushed tones of the corridors of Mary Linton School for Girls. Only soft shoes were allowed inside the building so the sound of three hundred plus girls walking around was negligible. When lessons were on there was quiet, just the sound of a tuba or violin playing or the tinkling of a piano. In the high school the noise was like a wall; it got lower at certain points but it was always there. Fifteen hundred seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds moving round. Then there was the tannoy and the lesson buzzers and the traffic from the busy road that ran along one side of the building.

  Rose had spent the last few weeks being a silent spectator of this. Sometimes she sat with Maggie and Sara in the cafeteria but the rest of the time she was on her own, walking along the edges of the corridors, sitting in the private study area in the library or on one of the benches that were dotted around the outside of the building.

  When she was sitting down she liked to have her laptop open and go on to social networking sites. It was easy to contact girls from her old school and find out what was going on. She found it easy to swap small talk with people whom she hardly ever saw. She also liked to go on sites about books or art, movies or music, and she often left comments. Rose, who was shy and stand-offish with real people, found social interaction easy in the virtual world. Then she had her blog, Morpho. It was somewhere for her to write about things that were happening in her life.

  But now people were seeking her out. She had to look up from her laptop, log off and close the lid. When they got her attention they eyed her with suspicion.

  ‘How come you were there when Ricky Harris got stabbed?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘What form are you in? Were you friends with Ricky Harris?’

  She was polite but short and firm.

  ‘I was a witness. I saw him get into an argument with someone on the bridge and that was it. I never saw the actual stabbing. Don’t ask me anything else because I don’t know.’

  Three days after it happened she had the words off pat and the number of people who had only just heard had dwindled to a trickle. Just after lunch when she was sitting thinking about seeing Joshua after class an odd-looking girl charged up to her. She was tall with orange red hair which was cut asymmetrically. She was wearing what looked like a man’s jumper over tight-legged jeans. She had glitter lipstick on. Next to Rose, who was wearing her customary black and white clothes, the girl looked like a clown.

  ‘Someone wants to see you,’ she said, without making eye contact.

  Rose felt weary. She’d said as much as she cared to say about what happened to Ricky Harris.

  ‘I’m busy,’ she said curtly.

  ‘You’re not busy. You’re just sitting here,’ the girl said, looking Rose in the eye.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Rose said.

  ‘Is it right what people say about you? That you’re a stuck-up cow?’

  ‘I’m just minding my own business!’

  ‘Were you minding your own business on Tuesday night when Ricky got killed?’

  Rose opened her mouth to speak but what was the point? Was this garish girl suggesting that in some way she had something to do with what happened to Ricky? It wasn’t worth the breath a reply would take. She stood up so that she could walk away but the big girl moved to the side and blocked the way. Rose felt her temper ignite. Was she going to have to be physical with this girl? How would that work? The girl was a head taller than Rose.

  Just then a small thin girl emerged from a nearby doorway.

  ‘Leave it, Sherry,’ she called out.

  Sherry turned and tutted, saying things under her breath. The girl walked forward and Rose knew her immediately. It was Ricky Harris’s girlfriend. She had no make-up on and her face looked white, her eyes sunken. Her hair was tied back and she had gold hoops in her ears that seemed to drag the lobes down.

  ‘I just want to have a word,’ she said.

  ‘I never saw anything, not really,’ Rose said, her voice a little softer.

  ‘I’m Emma and this is my stepsister Sherry.’

  ‘Stepsister?’ Rose said, smiling, thinking of Joshua.

  ‘Something funny about it?’ Sherry said.

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘It’s just I have a stepbrother. Well not in law as such. My mother wasn’t married to his father but we lived together as a family.’

  Sherry looked puzzled. Emma smiled.

  ‘You’re not that different to us. Bits and bobs of families,’ she said, slipping a stick-like arm through Sherry’s. ‘I just want to talk to you about what happened to Ricky. That’s all.’

  ‘All right,’ Rose said.

  ‘Not here, though. Come in to my form room. It’s quiet there.’

  Emma and Rose sat opposite each other as though they were working as a pair in the lesson. The table between them was bare except for a pink mobile phone that Emma had placed there. The rest of the room was empty and Sherry was standing by the closed door to stop anyone barging in.

  Rose told the story again the way she had on the first night and then to Joshua and her grandmother and then at the police station the following day when she made her statement. She told it slowly and tried to be less unpleasant about Ricky Harris. She left out the part where Ricky had asked her whether her mother had been murdered. In fact, she’d left that bit out every time she told it.

  ‘And he said Change of plans and went off up the stairs just as the train was coming in. He’d just got a phone call.’

  ‘Was it from a girl?’ Emma said in a kind of whisper.

  ‘I can’t say. I walked away. He talked for a short while and then said Change of plans! He seemed really happy.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘In a good mood. At first he seemed a bit off but then, when the call came, it seemed to lift his mood and he went trotting up the stairs. He even called out to me, Here’s your train, posh bird. In a jokey way.’

  ‘But you saw him on the bridge?’

  Rose nodded.

  ‘And this guy stabbed Ricky?’

  Emma’s eyes were looking glassy. It seemed like it was an effort to hold them open. Her face was reddening. After a moment she blinked and looked down and Rose saw her use the crook of her finger to wipe away a tear.

  ‘I think he must have. I didn’t actually see the … attack. I just saw the scuffle and then the guy just did an about-turn and walked away. I mean when he walked away he seemed to be like bouncing along.’

  ‘Bouncing? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sherry said.

  ‘I mean the way he was walking, well, sometimes you just know, don’t you? When someone’s got their back to you, you can just tell?’

  ‘Tell what?’ Emma said, using a tissue that had been folded up to blot her eyelids.

  ‘I think he was smiling. That’s what it seemed like from behind.’

  Sherry swore.

  ‘Did you see his face?’ Emma said.

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘Just the back of his head.’

  ‘But if you saw him again, the guy on the bridge, you might recognise something about him? You know you said about the way he walked …’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Negative or what!’ Sherry said.

  ‘I’m not being …’

  ‘Just come with us for five minutes,’ Emma pleaded. ‘That’s all I’m asking. Just for a short walk. To look at someone.’

  Emma stood up. Rose was hesitant. She didn’t want to be involved in this. She wanted to put it behind her.

  ‘Please,’ Emma said.

  Rose reluctantly stood up. She followed Sherry and Emma out of the classroom and along t
he corridor, sidestepping crowds of kids. Some of them knew Emma and were clearly aware of what had happened to her, their voices dropping in a kind of reverence as she passed. They walked towards the cafeteria. Official lunch hour was over but the cafeteria was still serving drinks and snacks and there were a couple of hundred kids in there, some of them on free study periods and others just avoiding their classes. Emma wove through the tables followed by Sherry and then Rose. When she got to the far corner she gestured for Rose and Sherry to sit down. Rose put her stuff down on one chair and sat on the other. The table in front of her was littered with polystyrene cups and curls of cellophane and plastic knives and forks. She sat a bit back from the table and looked round. It was a corner of the cafeteria she never used. It was a place where a lot of the loud kids hung out. It was known as somewhere you could pick up dope and other stuff.

  ‘You’ll see him in a minute,’ Emma said.

  Sherry had a mirror out and was pulling one side of her hair into a hook around her face.

  ‘Who is it you want me to see?’ Rose said, feeling the hopelessness of the situation. All she had seen was the back of someone’s head inside a hood. What use could she be?

  ‘Lewis Proctor.’

  Rose didn’t comment. It was not a name she recognised. Why should she? She’d only been at the school for a short while. She hadn’t been to the schools these students had come from and neither did she live in the nearby streets or estates.

  ‘Here he is,’ Sherry said, without looking away from the mirror.

  A tall white boy walked towards their corner of the cafeteria. There were others in the group but Rose had a feeling that this was the boy Emma had brought her to see. He was wearing black jeans and T-shirt, and over the top a hooded sweatshirt, the hood down. His very short dark hair was spiked up on the top. He noticed Emma straight away and came towards them. A few metres away he stopped but didn’t speak until his mates were around him.

  ‘Any news on who did your boy?’ he said.

  Emma didn’t answer. She shook her head silently.

  A dark-haired girl emerged from the group and put her hand on Lewis Proctor’s shoulder. She was tall and thin and one wrist was heavy with silver bangles. Rose looked her up and down. She had silver boots on and her feet were poised as if she was a ballet dancer.