by Claire Askew
It began to rain, and Ishbel went inside. There were pews, like in a real church, and off to one side there was a raised wooden platform with mechanical rollers embedded into its top. A cheap velvet curtain hung beside it: this was where the coffin would sit. Ishbel took the seat nearest that platform, at the extreme front left of the chapel space. She wanted to be able to reach up, if she had to, and put her hand against the coffin’s varnished side.
She sat for a while, wondering if she ought to try and pray – but no, she thought. Nothing lives here. The jewelled cross on the altar was made of plastic, she could see that from fifteen feet away. The space smelled like Febreze and radiator singe. Whatever god there might be, it didn’t live here. Abigail wouldn’t be bundled up out of the flames, and taken to some better realm – not from this place. Here, she was just dead. Ishbel chugged up thick, ugly sobs.
People began to shuffle in. Pauline came first, sat down next to Ishbel, and took her hand.
‘Aidan told me everything, hen,’ she said. Ishbel looked down at her mother-in-law’s hand: grey, and roped with veins. ‘I’m so sorry. You poor lass. And that reporter, how it’s all come out today – that man should be locked up, the things he’s writing.’
Pauline was looking earnestly into Ishbel’s face – seeing, Ishbel presumed, how pale it was, the blueish puffed skin around the eyes. Seeing the unwashed, unbrushed hair, the unironed jacket dragged from the back of the wardrobe. Ishbel could think of nothing to say, so she turned her head to look back up the chapel’s aisle at the handful of people who’d gathered.
The first person she saw was Greg – he’d placed himself in an empty pew about halfway back, as though he’d ranked himself in order of importance. As though lots more people might arrive, who’d need to be seated closer to the front. He raised a hand in greeting and smiled a serious kind of smile. Ishbel felt surprise open in her like a bloom, and realised no one had smiled at her in two whole weeks. For some reason, she found herself thinking of Greg’s late wife, Lisa, and imagining their life together, from the first time Lisa saw that smile to the last, at the end of her long illness. Ishbel shook herself, summoned a watery, mechanical smile back, and then let her eyes move on. But now she was remembering that day a fortnight ago, Greg leading her down one hospital corridor, then another, the whole building ringing with shouts and footsteps. Into a little room they went, a little room with sofas and scatter cushions and a box of tissues – a room intended to be cosy, but everything was still stripped and clinical somehow. In that room he told her, Abigail is dead. She died at the scene. There was nothing anyone could do. And Ishbel remembered thinking, Why are you telling me this? What about my daughter? And Greg had taken hold of her by the shoulders and said, Ishbel, sweetheart, do you understand what I am telling you? Ishbel frowned. How long had it been since Lisa had died? How long since she’d even thought of her? I’ll ask Aidan later, she thought, what year it was. But then she realised that no, she wouldn’t. Thinking of Aidan felt like stepping into deep shade, a place the sun never touched.
A few pews in front of Greg were a trio of staff members from Three Rivers College – Ishbel recognised the college principal, having seen her speaking on TV news. There were also some young women – five or six, sitting together, talking quietly. A few of them Ishbel recognised, though she couldn’t dredge up their names. Friends of Abigail’s. From college, or from the football club. I ought to remember them, Ishbel thought, but she couldn’t.
Near to the girls sat a few people Ishbel also vaguely knew from somewhere, but couldn’t initially place. She allowed herself to stare, eyebrows knitted, until she realised – it was the Kesson family. They’d been at the gathering that night at Fettes police station. Their daughter was Evie Kesson, another of the girls killed. Ishbel realised she ought to feel grateful to them for coming, but instead she felt a twang of anxiety. When was their daughter’s funeral? Had she missed it? If not, would she be required to go to it, now? She turned her face away.
Rehan had seated himself in the pew behind Ishbel, over at the opposite end, nearest the aisle. He looked tired, she thought, and for the first time, she wondered about his life. Did he have children at home? What was he missing, working these long hours, babying her and Aidan through their grief?
Pauline was also looking backwards, and she gave Ishbel’s hand a hard squeeze.
‘Here she is,’ she whispered.
The coffin was being carried into the chapel, led by a man in a plain black and white church robe. The doors had been propped open and Ishbel could hear the rain outside, spattering down now onto the flat perspex roof that the hearse was parked under. She turned away, not wanting to see the expensive box as it plodded aloft up the aisle. But all too soon it arrived at the front of the chapel, and she was forced to look. Two undertakers carried the coffin’s front end: one of them was a woman around Ishbel’s age, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a tight, streaked bun. At the back corner nearest Ishbel, Aidan stooped his large frame to keep the coffin level. He seemed to be shuddering; the single small flower wreath, provided by the undertakers, shivered on the coffin’s lid. Ishbel realised he was crying, and beside her, Pauline was crying too. She felt a spike of anger that she couldn’t explain. Aidan was almost within touching distance, the bruise on his cheek as damning as a Grant Lockley headline.
The robed man – vicar? Minister? Aidan had told her, but she couldn’t remember – stopped at one corner of the altar with its tacky plastic cross, and turned to face the room. The coffin bearers manoeuvred the box onto the platform, and stood back. It’s so small, Ishbel thought. Surely she can’t actually be in there. For the first time, Ishbel could clearly see the fourth person who’d steadied her daughter’s body down the aisle. Without thinking, she rose to her feet: one long, involuntary movement.
‘You.’
Her voice was loud in the chapel’s emptiness. She was dimly aware that everyone was looking at her, then at the man in front of her, then back, like a crowd at a tennis game, collective breath held, waiting for the mistake.
‘How dare you come here?’
Ishbel felt Pauline stand up, and put a hand on her arm. Aidan had raised his hands, and now dragged them down his damp, haggard face and said, ‘Bel.’
‘What is he doing here, Aidan? What is this . . .’
The young man stepped forward, closing the gap between them to a foot. Ishbel blinked. He was tall – almost as tall as Aidan – slim, with dark curly hair that had been recently cut, and trendy glasses with tortoiseshell frames. He held out a hand.
‘Mrs Hodgekiss,’ he said. ‘I’m Jack Egan.’
His hand was elegant, long-fingered, groomed. When she didn’t take it, he tried a smile.
‘I know who you are.’ Her voice was the snarl of a cornered animal. ‘You’re the one who spoke to that reporter. You’re the one who made up lies about Abigail, and let him print them. You’re the one who took his money. How dare you. How dare you show up here?’
Ishbel heard her own vowel sounds echo off the chapel’s walls. Everyone was on their feet now: Pauline was clinging with both hands to Ishbel’s arm, making shushing sounds, trying to drag her back down into her seat. Rehan, she was dimly aware, had moved along the pew and was behind her now, saying her name like a chant: Ish-bel. Ish-bel. Ish-bel. Greg and the others were huddled in the aisle, speaking in low voices.
Aidan stepped into her line of sight.
‘Bel,’ he said. ‘You knew Jack was coming. I told you. When we talked about the list of names.’
Ishbel stared up at her husband.
‘How can you be okay with this?’ She was shouting, and her face was hot.
Aidan put his face close to hers.
‘Bel. I asked you to keep it together, for one morning. Can’t you even do that? Can’t you just, for once, do what you’re asked?’
Ishbel looked past Aidan’s face – so close that she couldn’t quite focus on it – at the boy standing behind him. The navy suit he
was wearing looked made for him. The smile he’d flashed her was like a bright light turning on. So this is my daughter’s boyfriend. He looked like a male model, blinking his long-lashed eyes at her now. She could see how Abigail had been taken in.
‘You have to leave,’ she said, over Aidan’s shoulder. ‘Aidan. He has to leave.’
The boy’s beautiful face hardened, his mouth a sudden, thin line. Ishbel recalled the only other time she’d ever seen him – stretched out, gasping, on a hospital gurney. She remembered his white torso daubed with blood, his shirt cut away by paramedics. She remembered Grant Lockley, materialising in the waiting room and leaning over the prone, bloodied body to take a photograph. How could this boy possibly collude with a man who did such a thing, in such a moment?
‘Abi was right about you.’ Jack Egan was speaking, his good teeth bared now. ‘You are an uptight bitch.’
A collective gasp went through the room. Aidan put a hand out towards the boy.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘That’s out of order, sunshine.’
Jack looked Aidan up and down, as though sizing up his chances in a fight.
‘Fuck that,’ he spat. ‘You two need to take a look at yourselves.’
Ishbel could feel tears on her face again.
‘Please,’ she said, and the word was a hoarse whisper. ‘Please leave now. Don’t be a monster.’
But the boy was still talking.
‘You two were the ones making her miserable. You need to look around. I didn’t kill her! I got shot too, remember? Instead of raging on me, maybe you should rage on Ryan Summers! Or his fucking mother, now he’s dead.’
Ishbel thought she saw something happen in Aidan’s face – a flinch, like a shadow had passed over him – as the boy mentioned Summers’ mother. But she didn’t have time to really register it: Jack had stepped sideways, into the aisle, and was now looking right at her.
‘Ask yourself,’ he said, throwing a small nod backwards – at the coffin? At her? She couldn’t tell. ‘Who’s the real monster?’
There was a pause: the people around her seemed enraptured, as though this were a play.
‘That’s enough, now.’
Ishbel jumped. It wasn’t Aidan who’d spoken, but someone standing behind her. She turned, aware that her movements were mirrored by Jack Egan’s as he also looked in the direction of the voice. Barry Kesson had stepped forward and was standing in the middle of the aisle, both his fists balled.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ he said, ‘speaking to this poor lady that way.’
He was looking Jack up and down. Not as though sizing him up for a fight, Ishbel realised later – Jack was by far the taller man – but as though appraising his glossy exterior, and finding it wanting.
Behind her, Ishbel felt Aidan flinch: a movement in the air around him that probably only she noticed. She felt his anger before he spoke, like the crackle in the atmosphere before thunder.
‘I’ll deal with this,’ Aidan said, after the slightest pause. Ishbel knew him well enough to know that he’d caught himself just in time: said a moderated version of what he might have liked to say. Beside her, Pauline made a deflating noise, her hand now slack on Ishbel’s arm.
Barry Kesson’s face hardened. Something to prove, Ishbel wondered, from the last time he and Aidan had tangled?
‘Your wife is right,’ he said. His own wife – Ishbel realised she didn’t know Mrs Kesson’s first name – wore no expression on her face. She was the woman who, at the police gathering, had stared evenly ahead at the same spot while others talked around her, as if she were a statue. She was, Ishbel realised now, likely medicated.
Barry Kesson was still speaking, whether to Aidan or to Jack, it wasn’t clear. It didn’t really matter.
‘This intrusion is totally inappropriate. I don’t know what you were thinking.’
Ishbel braced every muscle in her body. She was grateful to this man for his support, but now she was also frightened. Barry Kesson didn’t know Aidan, didn’t know how readily a hot flame could leap out of the smouldering coals of his anger. Jack’s presence in the room stung like a brand. She hadn’t realised it was possible to feel so many sharp, urgent things at once. She felt Pauline waiting, too, waiting for her son’s outburst.
But the outburst, when it came, was from Jack.
‘Fuck all you people.’ The last of his slick exterior slid off. Underneath, Ishbel glimpsed Jack’s years-ago self: a picked-on little boy building the slow, vibrating hive of a grudge against the whole world. ‘I loved Abi. More than any of you ever did. She belonged to me.’
In the hideous quiet that followed, the boy fixed his gaze on the open doors at the back of the chapel. Ishbel twisted around, slowly, painfully, so she could watch him stride back down the aisle, under the clattering perspex porch, and out into the rain.
28 May, 10.00 a.m.
She was following her son through a deserted car park. She was close to him: close enough to see that his hair needed a cut, the back of it grown out into a chewy line. The stray thought This is wrong came to her – it shouldn’t be deserted, there ought to be lots of cars, and people. But Ryan walked out across empty tarmac, striding over the white checkerboard lines, and she followed.
In, through a grey swing door that was heavy – she watched him put the full weight of his torso against it. The long corridor inside was lit only by what light came in through windows of the rooms off it. It was colourless light, like very early dawn. In the gloom, she followed the back of Ryan’s neck: one white flash visible between black cloth and that jagged edge of hair.
Halfway along he stopped, as though listening, as though he knew she was there. But instead of turning to face her, he elbowed open a door to his right. A strip-light guttered on. In the wall of mirrors, she saw his face – the face that had sold a million tabloid papers. She couldn’t see herself.
She watched him assemble his act. He didn’t look at his own hands; instead, he watched the mirror version of himself, the way he’d clearly practised. The bathroom had mirrors on both sides. If she angled herself right, she could see him reflected back and back and back into nothing, each copy a little smaller than the last. Thousands of him, all about to step out of this bleached room with its dripping sinks, and do the exact same thing.
He walked the rest of the corridor slowly. His hearing was muffled now, she knew, so he had to be careful. He walked in the upright pose of a person trying to remain calm.
Get in front of him, someone said. Do something. But she did nothing. In his back pocket, she could see the outline of his mobile phone. In the secret pouch behind his ear, the gold-plated back of a stud earring glinted. He stopped at the end of the corridor, at a double fire door with a porthole window in either side. For a moment he stood, looking through at the bright scene beyond, and she thought that anyone on the other side would be able to see his strange, white face, criss-crossed by the tiny threads in the reinforced glass. He pressed one palm against the door, ready to shove his way in, and she saw the shredded cuticle on his thumb, the nail bitten down. She realised his breath was fast and shaggy, like he’d run here from a long way away. Or was he laughing? Or crying? Touch him, the voice said. But he already had one shoulder through the door.
Moira woke up. Someone was ringing the doorbell – had been ringing the doorbell for a while, something told her. She sat up. In the corner, the TV was still on. Her room was still in that thrown-back-together state of disarray, still as she’d found it nearly two weeks ago. She was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, her skirt twisted partly around. On the bedside table was an empty wine bottle. She’d gone downstairs to get a drink in the middle of the night, having woken up filled with a terror she couldn’t shake. The thick ache behind her eyes reminded her. This was becoming a habit.
As she tottered down the stairs, the ringing became a banging against the glass partition of the front door. Beyond its frosted pattern, she could see three vague figures: the neon-coated policeman
, and two others, with dark clothing and hair. She pressed herself against the wall, not wanting to see anyone, and not wanting to be seen. There was something at the back of her mind, like a forgotten name, something she didn’t want to think about. As she reached the bottom step, she remembered, the way she remembered every morning, and her knees almost gave way: Ryan is dead.
The people on the other side of the door were speaking in hushed tones, but now she was in the hall, she could hear them.
‘She’s in there,’ a man’s voice said – the neon man. He banged once again on the door with a closed fist. ‘She can’t have left without being seen. It’s not possible.’
‘In that case, I need you to break down the door.’ That was Amy. Moira felt a surge of relief. It was only Amy, and her uniformed friend.
The scene guard in the neon get-up snorted.
‘We can’t just go breaking down doors,’ he said. ‘What about those vultures out there? You want a photo of me breaking this door down on the front page of all the rags tomorrow?’
Amy hesitated.