Kiss Her Goodbye

by Susan Gee

  I have to stop myself from stepping forwards to hug him and he looks back as though he understands. When he smiles, it feels like I’m home. There are three sharp knocks at the door and I get up without hesitating. It’s an urgent knock: a knock that demands to be answered and I know that it’s them. Mike yawns and I notice the bags under his eyes and the paleness of his skin. He’s a different man from the one she brought to live here all those months ago. There are a hundred things I want to tell him before they take me away, but I don’t say a word. There’s a louder knock on the door and I walk towards it as though I’m in a trance.

  I glance back over my shoulder, but I know there’s no point in trying to run. If they’re here, then they’re here. For the first time in ages there are butterflies in my belly and I feel sick and alive at the same time. I stare at the door and take a deep breath as I open it, noticing the smear on the glass where Mum hasn’t cleaned it properly.

  I turn to Mike one last time and smile. I take a deep breath and open the door with a sense of relief that it’s finally over. As they push their way inside I wait for them to grab me, but they don’t. Three men run past and I see the police car outside Stefan’s, through the gap in the open door. Another one stands next to me and I wonder where the rest of them have gone, until I hear the sound of Mike’s gasp and their raised voices.

  ‘Michael Lancaster, we are arresting you for the murder of Maxine Turner. You do not have to say anything if you do not wish to do so, but anything you do say may be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand the charges against you?’

  When I hear the words, I turn to the policeman next to me so that he can tell me that this is a joke, but his expression doesn’t change. I take a step towards the living room and he puts out his hand to stop me.

  ‘Stay here, miss.’

  I hear Mike stutter and when they bring him past me he’s in handcuffs looking confused. He opens his mouth and I stare forwards as though he isn’t there. I can’t believe what’s happening. I bite my lips together, because I’m worried I’m about to smile, and as I do it his face changes. It’s as though something falls into place and in that second, he knows. Maybe he always knew. He’s the only one that ever tried to understand me, after all. He tries to talk, but they push him past.

  ‘Hayley!’ is all that he says as they take him outside. The policeman turns to look at me as if expecting me to run after him, but I don’t. I just wait.

  ‘You’re arresting him?’ I ask.

  I didn’t notice her at first, but Beverley Samuels walks past. ‘It’s OK now. We’ve got him,’ she says.

  ‘Hayley, tell them!’ he shouts from outside and I want to slide down the wall to her feet, but I stand there, as still and straight as a heron in the water, and don’t move.

  That’s meant to be me in the handcuffs and not him. I’ve imagined it enough times and I can’t help feel that he’s taken something that’s mine. It doesn’t make sense. It feels like a sick joke that they’re all playing.

  ‘When’s your mum due back?’ she asks, and I just stare back without answering. ‘Make sure she’s OK,’ she tells the policeman.

  Beverley Samuels goes outside with Mike and the policeman stays with me. As I try to make sense of it all, I realise that they’ve found the photographs and they’re only arresting him because he took them in. As soon as they look at them properly, it will be me in the police car instead. I stand in the doorway and watch as the policeman places a hand on Mike’s head and eases him into the back seat, while the neighbours watch from their windows. As the police car drives away I turn to the man in the hall. I want to tell him that he’s the biggest idiot ever, because he’s just arrested the wrong person.

  ‘Cup of tea, then?’ I say, instead. I don’t know why. It just seems like the only thing I can say.

  He’s so rigid that I wouldn’t be surprised if he answered, ‘Affirmative,’ but he nods. ‘Black. No sugar.’

  When I don’t go straight away, he says, ‘I’ll give you a hand. You’re in shock.’

  He’s right, but he has no idea why. It does take me a minute to get my head together.

  ‘I can manage a cup of tea,’ I tell him, but he comes anyway and takes over, as though I’m hopeless.

  When my mother gets home, they take her into the living room and she cries out when they tell her what’s happened. As they try to reassure her, I go upstairs and put New Order on, with the stereo turned up high. Even though I know they’ll be able to hear the floorboards creaking, when ‘Sub-Culture’ starts I have to dance and, once I start, I can’t stop. The lyrics could be about Mike and me and I dance until my back is wet with sweat and I can hardly breathe.

  *

  I stay off college until we break up for Christmas. It’s easier to stay in and not see anyone. I don’t see anything of Kirsten either and it makes me wonder if she’s finally happy. One morning, when I wake up, the sheets are so tight around me that I feel like one of the mummies from the museum and I wonder if she’s been in the night and tucked me in. The thought of it makes me feel weird, but not scared, and I hold her Relax tee shirt to my chest in a hug. I’ve moved through the days as though they’ve been happening to someone else. At first, I waited for them to come and get me, but when they didn’t I just ate my breakfast and felt glad of another day. Every day I wake up, I realise that another night has passed without a visit from Kirsten.

  I think about Mike, beneath a tiny barred window, and try to imagine how it would feel to be locked up: to no longer hear the creak of branches or the rustle of leaves in the wind. Despite it being a short time, I’ve got used to the idea of him being there instead of me. I no longer panic when a car pulls up outside and I wonder if he prefers the prison to living with us. He’s just one of many that left and it doesn’t take us long to readjust. There were a lot of phone calls at the house at first, but Mum just lets it ring out and eventually they stop. Even the reporter that used to wait outside has left for another story.

  After a week, Beverley Samuels comes round. Mum sits in the living room next to her and they both stare at me. I wait for her to tell me that she’s going to arrest me, but she talks about the heavy rain we’ve been having and asks if college have been sending me work through. I imagine that she wants to do things without a fuss and I understand. It doesn’t matter. She’s trying to make me calm so that I’ll go with her. She’s seen the pictures. She’s had them blown them up and my face is reflected on the flats of the shallows. Mum’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday and stares at her as though she’s there, but not there – same as always.

  I notice Beverly Samuels glance at the card on the sideboard. On the front it says: ‘thinking of you’. It’s from college and even Barbara has signed it. It’s covered in kisses and smiley faces as though they like me. It’s ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.

  ‘How are things?’ Beverley Samuels asks, with a glance at the empty space where the Christmas tree used to be. Mum dragged it out into the garden and threw it on the patio after Mike got arrested, lights, tinsel, baubles and all. All that’s left are a few pine needles stuck in the edges of the carpet.

  Mum puts her hands over her face and I wonder what they aren’t telling me. I wish she’d just get it over with, but I stay quiet. I’m an animal caught in a trap and if I struggle it will only get worse.

  ‘Yeah, great,’ I answer.

  ‘I know how hard this has been, but we need to ask you a few more questions at the station. Both of you.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Mum says, ‘what now? I’ve already told you everything.’

  I look down. ‘Will Mike be there?’

  Beverley Samuels leans in closer to me. Her breath is sweet like apple juice.

  ‘You’ve nothing to be scared about. He won’t even be in the same building. There are just a few things we want to chat about.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘You’re safe, don’t worry.’

  I’m not worried, I’m just in
terested in where they’ve taken him, but she doesn’t understand. I wait for her to tell me to stop playing games and arrest me, but she just sits there and gets on my nerves.

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve been brave. You just need to be a bit braver,’ she replies, and I look to see if she’s being sarcastic, but I don’t think she is. I close my eyes so that she’ll go. After a while, she says my name, but when I don’t answer she talks to Mum instead.

  ‘Has one of our counsellors been in touch?’

  Mum blows her nose. ‘People keep phoning.’

  ‘I hate to do this to you so close to Christmas.’

  She glances over at the copy of the Radio Times on the coffee table. Mum went through it up to Boxing Day with a highlighter pen and then stopped.

  Mum sighs.

  ‘I realise this is difficult for you,’ Beverley Samuels tells her.

  I don’t know what’s so difficult. She’s got all the attention that she’s always wanted and Mike was going to leave her anyway. She must already know that. Beverley Samuels has no idea what she’s like and I’m not seeing any counsellor.

  Mum makes a sound as if she’s crying.

  ‘I knew something wasn’t right the first time I came to your house.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Mum says, ‘we were all fooled, not just you. I can’t even listen to that Feargal Sharkey song any more. He’s ruined everything.’

  She’s such an idiot. I glance over at Beverley Samuels, but she nods as though she understands. The pair of them are as bad as each other.

  ‘He’s been making accusations.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mum asks.

  I know what he’s been saying. It’s time.

  ‘We just have a few questions. The sooner we go, the sooner we can have you back,’ she replies.

  *

  They take us to the police station and ask me if I know anything about the negatives and I tell them that I don’t. They want to know if I ever used Mike’s camera and I know that he’s told them I took the pictures. It was never going to take long. Mike’s not stupid. I tell them that I was with him by the river and he took me there a lot when Mum was out. They want to know about the pictures he took on the beach in Wales and we talk about it so much that I can almost taste the salty air. The more I talk, the more I believe it myself.

  When they start to ask me if Mike ever acted inappropriately, I pretend to be embarrassed. I know that they’ll have seen the picture I took of myself through the bedroom door, because it was on the same film. Mum starts to shake as she tells them we had to change the bathroom locks to stop him coming in on me and as she says the words she looks at the floor so she doesn’t have to make eye contact with anyone.

  They take my camera as well as Mike’s and all the negatives that we’ve got in the kitchen drawer waiting to be processed. I’m worried that I won’t get my photographs of the birds back. There’s a picture of a nuthatch that I took on the back fence, which will be good, if it’s in focus properly. I was going to show it to Dad, if I ever see him again, and as I tell the policeman about it he looks out of the window as though he’s bored.

  Nobody sees anything important. The police left Kirsten’s Frankie Goes to Hollywood tee shirt on my bed as though it meant nothing when they searched the house. They found the newspaper article about her that I cut out, but they cared more about the note from Mike. As they ask me more questions, I remember what Daz Granger said about his uncle questioning Stephen Morris at the police station, years ago. I pretend that I’m innocent, just as he was, and say the lyrics of every New Order song like a chant in my head until I’m calm. As they ask me about the warehouse, I go through my albums – ‘Low-Life’, ‘Power, Corruption and Lies’ and ‘Movement’ – until I can stare at them without looking worried. I repeat the names of the people who matter to me – Gillian Gilbert, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris – in a loop. I say their names over and over and think about the tracks on every album, until my eyes reveal nothing. They help me get through it, as always.

  When they get out the itemised phone bill, I realise how many calls I made to Maxine. They’re there in black and white. Call, after call, after call.

  ‘Was she a friend of yours?’ they ask, and I tell them she wasn’t. When they look at Mum, she shakes her head too.

  ‘Did you ever telephone her?’ they repeat, and I say no.

  ‘Not even on the day she went missing?’ they continue.

  When they ask if there was any sign of Mike having an affair, Mum starts to cry and I realise that they’ve decided Mike was Maxine’s secret boyfriend. I don’t have to tell them what happened with me that night that Dad came back, because they know already. Leila told them that Mike had slept with me and Dr Tibbs typed up all the bad things I made up, but I shake my head and refuse to talk about it. All my lies come back in waves. As they talk to me, I look from one face to another and wonder which one of them has my box of special things.

  There’s no talk of jail, even though Mike must have told them that I took the pictures. They keep asking about cameras and photographs and I tell them about the kingfishers and nothing else. I don’t have to lie about Maxine. I didn’t know her. She was nothing to me. I didn’t know Kirsten either really. She didn’t give me the chance. I thought she liked me, but she didn’t tell anyone about our chats by the river. They meant more to me than they ever must have done to her. We were just strangers after all and that’s what I tell them. We didn’t know each other. Mum sniffs and doesn’t answer their questions properly. She starts to cry when they show her Mike’s workbag that had my special things in and then they send us home.

  *

  Outside, the air is so fresh that I feel every breath. A plane goes overhead and the sun shines over the police station, making the windscreens glint and shine on the cars outside. It feels surreal, as if none of it is real.

  ‘There’s a taxi rank over here,’ she says.

  I glance down at her white trainers. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask, and she squeezes her hand into a tight fist. She never wears flat shoes and I know she isn’t.

  ‘This will do,’ she says as she puts her hand out for a black cab that comes around the corner.

  She sniffs and speaks as though she’s about to cry again. ‘I think Shakin’ Stevens will be number one, don’t you? He hates that song.’

  I look at her sideways, but she could be talking to someone else. She stares into space as if she’s in a trance. ‘Maybe he didn’t go to Tommy Ducks with work. Maybe he was meeting her. I don’t know what’s true any more.’

  I don’t answer and we drive back in silence. Mum tells the taxi driver to go to Manchester and takes us in a loop past the pubs. She’s got an odd look on her face as we drive. Manchester’s busy with people doing their last-minute Christmas shopping and the taxi driver sighs as he takes us back through Albert Square and past the art gallery. There’s a Waterhouse painting on a banner outside – pale-skinned girls in a pond reaching out to a man on the bank. In seconds it’s gone.

  I glimpse the reds and greens of Chinatown down one of the streets, and as we go over the canal I don’t even look for Kirsten. The world blurs past and the taxi driver complains about the roadworks. At the traffic lights, a pregnant woman crosses the road in front of us, cigarette hanging from her lips, and we watch as she goes towards the estate.

  By the time we get home, the taxi has cost Mum a fortune.

  ‘I needed that,’ she says, and I realise that she was avoiding coming back here.

  At the house, instead of Mike’s car in the drive, there’s just an empty space of cracked concrete paving and it looks as if something is missing. The police took that too. All along the street, the Christmas tree lights flicker and glow from the neighbour’s houses as though this is a nice place to live.

  As we walk down the drive a couple of flakes of snow start to fall. I look up to the sky as it starts to come down fast like a swarm. It sticks to the pavements
and the roofs in fat white lumps and in a second the world has altered. As a snowflake lands on my cheeks in a frozen kiss, it has never felt better to be free.

  ‘That’s all we need,’ Mum says as she hurries me inside.

  The house smells of Jif and everything is immaculately tidy as I go in and sit on the sofa.

  ‘When’s he coming out, do you think?’ I ask.

  ‘They told me it will be a few months before the trial. You don’t have to worry. You’re safe now.’

  I wish everyone would stop saying that.

  ‘You think he did it?’

  I wait for her to laugh, but she doesn’t. On the sofa is a newspaper with his face on the front and I realise that she believes it. Out of all the things I’ve told her, this is what she thinks is the truth.

  ‘What was all that about today? Asking us all those questions?’

  ‘He’s just trying to get out of there.’

  She walks away. ‘He’s a twat.’

  From the kitchen, comes the sound of glass against glass, followed by the steady glug from a bottle, and I stare at Mike’s photograph, knowing that it’s only a matter of time before they see my face reflected in the water and let him go.

  Mum comes back in with a glass of cordial.

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ I say, with his face looking back at me from the newspaper.

  She takes the paper and drops it on the carpet.

  ‘That policeman asked if we’d ever used his camera. Us? As if we were involved in his sick carryings-on.’

  ‘Where are the photographs?’ I ask, and she looks at the walls.

  ‘I didn’t put them up again. Has he been trying to blame us for all of this? Is that what they were getting at?’

  She looks as if she’s about to cry, but doesn’t.

  ‘They’ll let him go soon. It’s all stupid.’

  ‘I’m the stupid one,’ she replies, and I don’t answer, even though it’s tempting. She sniffs. ‘I would’ve married him.’

  She comes over and sits next to me and I pretend not to mind. Her leg feels strange touching mine, but I don’t move away.