by Louise Voss
She broke off for a moment as we reached the gate, away from the silent somnolent trees, back into the roar of traffic and the grey poison of exhaust.
‘I suppose I just wanted to say, Em, that you kept me going then. You always have. And even though I was pissed off with you for threatening to storm down there and ram a till-roll up Daphne’s bum after they finally fired me - well, I suppose I did appreciate that you were angry on my behalf.’
I grinned. ‘Have you still got that newspaper cutting?’
Stella smiled back at me. ‘You bet. I keep meaning to frame it and put it on the wall as a reminder to keep the faith: “Daphne McVicar, 49, convicted for stealing over £11,000 from the tills at Sainsbury's, where she was a supervisor….” Fantastic.’
I stopped to rub the handle of my racquet down my left leg, scratching an itch where I appeared to have been bitten by a mosquito, and was nearly crashed into by a weary-looking father who was pushing a tiny screaming baby along in a three-wheeled buggy.
‘See?’ I said, dodging the buggy. ‘It all turns out OK in the end, if you just hang in there long enough.’
‘But what about you? It didn’t turn out OK for you finding your mother, did it?’
‘Yes it did. I met Ruth and Evie. You could argue that it was the search which brought me closer to Denise and Greg too – if you and I hadn’t had that scene in their garden at Christmas, I wouldn’t have stayed up talking to them for so long. Then I helped Mack with his documentary. And best of all, I met Robert, and all because I got off my ass and went to look for Ann Paramor.’ I had a sudden fantasy that one day Robert would be the dad pushing the buggy containing our own baby, and couldn’t help turning to stare after the other father. Stella stopped, too, and I faced her.
‘Just because I didn’t find her doesn’t mean I’m any worse off than I was before. I was depressed before. I’m not now. Ann Paramor gave me a life – literally, gave birth to me; and now it’s like she has again.’
‘But don’t you mind that you didn’t find her?’
I sighed. ‘Well, of course I’m disappointed. Gutted, if I let myself think about it too hard. But I’ve got to tell myself that maybe it’s better never to know – and maybe that’s true. I mean, it could quite easily have turned out badly, and she could have been someone like Mack’s birthmother. I always vowed that if I didn’t find her within a few months then I wasn’t going to keep trying, and that’s what’s happened. I can live with that.’
We walked on, turning the corner past the shops at the end of our road, which was when I heard the familiar throaty chug of the Harley slowing to a stop behind us. I turned to see Gavin taking off his helmet, revealing a broad grin on his disgustingly brown and healthy looking face. Less hair than the last time I’d seen him, though.
‘Anyone for tennis?’ he said, glancing lustfully at mine and Stella’s bare legs in shorts, as he climbed off the bike and kicked the stand forwards. He advanced towards me but I remained still, my arms at my sides. What a weasel he looked in comparison to Robert, I thought coldly.
‘Have you missed me?’
I shot a look at Stella, who was intently tracing a whorl of lichen on top of a low garden wall. ‘Actually, no, I haven’t.’
Gavin was a little taken aback. ‘All right, Stell?’ he said in her direction.
She ignored him. ‘Well, I think I’ll go on home and let you two talk,’ she said to me.
‘You’re not walking home on your own!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Emma, you can see the house from here. I’ll be fine.’ She marched away, and I saw Gavin’s eyes slide surreptitiously across her bottom as she walked. Curiosity got the better of me.
‘Where have you been for the last six months, Gavin? Obviously not in prison, by the looks of that tan.’
Gavin hooked his helmet over his forearm - like Little Red Riding Hood’s basket appropriated by the big bad wolf - put his hands on either side of my waist and tried to look into my eyes, but I shook him off.
‘I’ve been in Goa. I just had to get away for a while, lie low. There was some deep shit going down - I’m really sorry. But I’m back now, and I was kind of hoping we could carry on where we left off, what do you think? You knew I was away, right? You got my message?’
I snorted, looking away to watch Stella walk towards the house, swinging her racquet between her thumb and middle finger with each stride. She was walking slightly oddly, as if she were drunk; her feet in their big trainers seeming to be doing a small subtle dance on the pavement. I knew that she was probably just trying to avoid the cracks. She used to do that, often, when under stress.
I didn’t even feel the old, tired urge to ask Gavin if they had a postal system in Goa, and if so, why he hadn’t taken advantage of it. ‘A lot’s changed since then, Gav. More than you could imagine.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? Did you find your mother then, or what?’
Stella turned right into our front garden, out of sight, and I opened my mouth to blurt out my rehearsed speech.
‘Gavin,’ I began. But I was interrupted by a truncated scream coming from outside our house.
Chapter 37
‘Shit! Stella!’ I screamed back, ripping myself into a flat out run, pounding the pavement, skidding round the corner and onto our front path. Stella was there, by the bamboo plant we’d given up for dead but which had finally started sprouting tiny new bright green leaves and furled spears of shoot, but she wasn’t alone.
She was clamped against Charlie’s broad chest, face outwards, in a way very similar to the way he’d held her at Yehudi’s party, except that now there was an empty wine bottle held tightly against her throat, and her terrified face was the sickly greyish-white of a prawn cracker.
I stopped at the gate, barely able to breathe. ‘What are you doing?’
I was trying to make my voice sound schoolmistressy and in control – this had once worked in a similar situation when Stella and I, walking alone in a dodgy part of East London, had been accosted by a hollow-eyed thirteen year old wielding a knife. He’d said ‘Give me your money,’ and I had somehow managed to give him a withering look and say, pompously, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Come along, Stella,’ as we brushed past him and on our way, unscathed.
But this time it didn’t work, and my words came out in a mangled kind of shriek. I accidentally bit my tongue with panic, too - it tasted metallic; the taste of blood and fear. Charlie was a lot more intimidating than a skinny adolescent in a mangy parka with a flick knife. I gripped my racquet, wondering if I could bash him over the head with the handle.
‘This little slut has ruined my life,’ Charlie said, almost conversationally, his words thick and slurred into Stella’s ear. I could smell the alcohol coming from him, pumping like toxic emissions into the air with his mingled rage and adrenalin. He pulled the bottle harder and Stella gagged and whimpered against the thick green glass. She was trying to say something, but at first I could not work out what. I couldn’t help thinking: how typical, that it was a wine bottle, and not Scotch or vodka – what was worse than a psycho but an upper class psycho? I couldn’t see the label, but it was probably vintage.
Charlie, I thought, had doubtless gone to some minor public school where he’d been ritually humiliated, bullied, and beaten, leading to a lifelong inferiority complex and a desire to subjugate what he thought of as the weaker sex, but at that moment I hated him in a way that I’d never hated anybody in my entire life. It was a strange, new, unpleasant emotion - but one which was quickly submerged again underneath the great stormy waves of my fear. I finally realised what Stella was repeating, like an invocation;
‘But I dropped the charges; I dropped the charges; I dropped the charges.’
She was trying to scream it, but she wasn’t able to raise her voice above a literally strangled mantra.
I glanced to my right, but there was no sign of Gavin. Oh God, please don’t let Gavin desert us now, I prayed, regretting the times I’d denou
nced him as a feckless flake, just in case it would somehow psychically count against us when we needed him most.
I was just deciding that it would be better to try and aim the racquet handle into Charlie’s already - hopefully permanently – impaired groin, when there was a blur of movement behind him, and Gavin appeared, in flight, leaping dramatically off the low wall dividing our building with next door. He was shouting fearsomely, and landed an impressive punch to the side of Charlie’s head which knocked him sideways and made him drop the bottle, releasing Stella. When I re-lived that moment later, it occurred to me that Gavin had probably really enjoyed it - it was the sort of Jackie Chan movement that Mack would have spent ages setting up, rehearsing and then shooting.
Charlie yelped with pain, and the bottle smashed on the ground. I dashed forwards and grabbed Stella, fumbling with trembling hands in my pockets for my keys, as Gavin and Charlie grappled one another on our narrow front path, locked together. With a small glimmer of satisfaction, I noticed that they were both rolling over the ornamental triangles of tile tips which formed the edge of the path.
They weren’t far away from the broken glass, either, and satisfaction rapidly turned to anxiety at the thought of Gavin’s back being ripped to shreds. However antipathetic I felt towards him, I didn’t want to see him really hurt, especially not when he was leaping – literally – to Stella’s rescue.
Gavin managed to roll on top and struggled to his feet, first pushing Charlie’s chin backwards with the heel of his hand, and then kicking him as hard as he could in the ribs and chest and back. His formative years as a Bristol boot-boy had obviously not gone to waste. It made a horrible dull thumping sound.
‘Quick, get inside,’ I said to Stella, pulling her sleeve and trying to make her look away from where she was standing, transfixed with horror. As my unsteady right hand jiggled to try and get the key into the lock, I pressed Ruth’s door buzzer with my left, praying that it wouldn’t choose this opportunity to be temperamental. But she answered immediately and I howled into the intercom, ‘Call the police, Ruth, now, there’s a fight!’
I just couldn’t get the damn key in. Gavin was still attacking Charlie, but Charlie had at least a two stone advantage and although very drunk, was much fitter. With a growl of pain he pushed Gavin away and lunged for the broken bottle neck.
I wanted to scream at them both, terrified that one of them would get killed, but it was as if all my energy had been used up. I opened my mouth, but nothing happened.
Squealing as if she was stamping on a large predatory spider, Stella rushed forwards before I could prevent her, and jumped hard on Charlie’s hand, making him release the bottle, before scuttling back to join me on the front door step.
‘Hurry up,’ she moaned, fidgeting and pressing herself against the door, just as Ruth opened it, causing Stella to almost knock her over. I threw myself inside after her.
‘I heard all the noise - what the hell’s going on?’ said Ruth, aghast, taking in the grunting and rolling around of the two men outside, and then the sight of us, like a couple of facsimiles of Edouard Munch’s The Scream. She was in her white towelling dressing gown, and her hair had a freshly-washed wave and sheen to it. I felt unutterably hot and grubby in contrast.
‘Gavin, Emma’s ex,’ Stella croaked as Ruth shut the door on them. Stella and I both slid down the wall and sat on the hall floor, hugging each other and quivering with adrenaline and a sort of sickened astonishment, as the sound of a siren wailed in the distance.
Immediately afterwards we heard Gavin shout, ‘And if you EVER come near her AGAIN, you’re a DEAD MAN, do you UNDERSTAND?’ There was a loud crack, then a thud, and then a frenzied hammering on the door. The letterbox creaked open and I saw Gavin’s eye peering frantically through, looking as wild as a bullock about to be slaughtered.
‘It’s me, Gav; let me in, Emma, quick.’ His voice sounded disembodied, like he was all eye and voice and violence.
I hauled myself up, renewed terror giving me back my own voice. ‘I don’t want Charlie in here!’ I screeched at him through the slot.
‘He’s out for the count. I nutted him. Please, Em, before the Old Bill gets here!’
Cautiously, I began to open the door, and as soon as I did, Gavin had hurled himself inside and slammed the door behind us. He had a cut on his forehead, grazes on his knuckles, his eye was already beginning to swell, and he was breathing heavily. He bent down, palms on knees, to try and recover himself. We all stared at him as if he’d just beamed down from another planet.
‘I don’t want to talk to the police. Let me out the back door, baby, OK? I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll have dinner.’
On cue, an eerie blue light swept around the hallway through the skylight above the door, and we heard the sound of car doors slamming.
I ushered Gavin down the hall and began unbolting the back door, pausing to look him full in the face. It seemed a bizarre way to formally end a long-dead relationship but, really, considering that it was Gavin, not very surprising.
‘Thanks, Gav, I really appreciate your help; thank God you were there,’ I gabbled, aware that I didn’t have the luxury of time on my side. ‘But the truth is….. I’ve met someone else. We’ve been together since you left, and we’re really happy. I wish you all the best – but I don’t ever want to see you again.’
For a moment he looked utterly flabbergasted, and I felt offended that he appeared to be so amazed that anyone else might fancy me. Then he shrugged, ruefully. ‘So I’ve blown it, then. Well, can’t say I blame you, after all this time. I haven’t exactly been Boyfriend of the Year. Be happy, sweetheart.’
As I opened the door, he leaned forward and kissed me, briefly but very tenderly, on the lips. He smelled of sweat and the gristle of a fight, but nonetheless I caught a glimpse of the old, irresistible Gavin.
There was a heavy knock at the front door and the sound of a distant doorbell, and Gavin hared out into the night. My last sight of him was as he crashed across Percy’s regimented rows of geraniums and over the back wall, like Peter Rabbit trying to escape from Mr. McGregor’s garden. I knew I was never likely to see him again.
I hastily shut and bolted the back door, ran back up the hallway and hissed to Ruth and Stella, ‘Don’t let on we knew who Gavin was’, before nodding at Ruth to open the front door.
There were the inevitable two officers in peak caps, a young and slightly nervous-looking woman police constable, and her partner, a lanky, skinny male one. I had a sudden feeling that the male one might have been the same as the one who turned up after Percy died, but then I wondered if policemen’s faces had all just blended together for me, into one shiny brass and dark serge amalgam of bad news. He was bending over the unconscious Charlie, pressing his ear against Charlie’s chest, which was claret-coloured from the stream of blood swirling slowly out of his nose and down his face and neck. Ruth, Stella and I all goggled out, horrified, at his prone form.
When the PC straightened up, he had blood on the side of his own cheek. The WPC silently handed him a handkerchief, tapping a forefinger on the side of her face to indicate the problem, and the PC wiped himself down before stuffing the blood-speckled handkerchief back into his own pocket.
‘I’ll have that back when you’ve washed it,’ the WPC muttered to him, flicking open her notebook and dropping her chin down to order an ambulance into the walkie talkie at her shoulder.
‘What do you know about this man?’ The policeman finally addressed us, jerking a thumb back to the prone Charlie. ‘We’ll need to take statements from whoever saw what happened. Who did this to him?’ It couldn’t be the same constable after all, for surely he’d have mentioned meeting us before.
‘Why don’t we all go up to my flat?’ said Ruth. ‘Only I think these two are a bit shocked, and I’d like to make them some tea or something. Plus my baby is upstairs on her own, and I want to get back to her to make sure she hasn’t woken up.’
‘Right you are. I’ll wait f
or the ambulance, if you want to start on the statements upstairs,’ said the WPC to her colleague.
Another ambulance, I thought wearily; more police statements. I felt like offering the Met our spare room, so we could have our very own PC as a lodger, to save them the cost of petrol and the little bulbs to swirl in their blue sirens.
I was beginning to feel more than a little unwell, actually, what with the earlier gory sight of Charlie, and then the discomfiting prospect of lying to the police about Gavin. Despite their by-now familiarity, the mere presence of the police still unnerved me – however friendly they were, I never seemed to get used to the strangeness of their uniforms and all the intimidating bits and bobs at their waists. The way they crackled constantly. They didn’t seem like ‘normal’ people. I tried to imagine those two down the pub on a Friday night, in mufti, smoking fags and drinking bottled lager, but failed miserably. All I could see was a nine year old Stella, sewing and watching Fantasia with Ffyfield on her lap, still unaware that her life was ruined whilst PC whatever-his-name-had-been lurked in the hall outside
We trudged upstairs with the constable, Stella and I on legs of jelly. In the mercifully calm sanctuary of Ruth’s flat he took us, one by one, through the by-now familiar rigmarole of the statement. It felt like being called to the headmaster’s study as he closed the living room door behind us individually, and we in turn gabbled and stuttered, gesticulated and hesitated, me hoping fervently Stella had managed not to drop Gavin’s name into the proceedings.
When he had finally done both of us, Stella was white with the effort of not crying, and I was red with the same effort - but at least it was over. We all reconvened in the kitchen while the PC finished his notes.