The Witness

by Jane Bidder

  Right now, Paul Black was looking at her intently. He had very blue eyes, she noticed irrelevantly. So blue, they should surely belong to a woman. His hair matched his name. At any other time, she’d have found this intriguing.

  “I’ve been told that you might be a possible witness in the park case,” he said. His voice was gravelly-deep and reassuring; rather like an articulate presenter she secretly admired on the radio whom her husband despised for his political beliefs. He also had the kind of weather-beaten skin, she noticed, that suggested a man who surfed or walked a lot. An explorer with a strong, rugby nose rather than a policeman.

  There was a similarity too with a dark-haired Steve McQueen crossed with one of the old Bonds. And there was something about those almost boyish features, despite his age (forty-something at a guess) which reminded her of Gordon.

  “Rubbish,” snorted Daniel. “she didn’t see anything. Did you, Alice?”

  No, she was about to say. But then those blue eyes fixed on hers and there was something about them – so clear and penetrating – that the only possible answer was to tell the truth.

  “Yes,” she said, with a clarity that reminded her of the day she had said her wedding vows to Daniel. Her voice had rung out in the stone church, in direct comparison with her groom’s quiet measured reply.

  His face had been steady then. Trusting. Ready to shoulder the responsibilities that marriage would bring. Ignorant of the emotional baggage that his new wife was bringing with her. Now, however, Daniel’s eyes registered shock. His forehead was wrinkled with disbelief. His hands, she suddenly noticed, were clenched at his side. Small, even though he was quite a tall man. Neat. Confused.

  “You told me you hadn’t seen anything,” he said, in a steely tone.

  Mungo, as if sensing his distress, got out of his basket and plodded across the kitchen floor, eyes fixed on his master as if to say: “I’m on your side here”.

  Alice found herself picking up the cup she had been mending, putting it down again, and then picking it up again. The repair was almost invisible; only she and its owner would know the crack was there unless an expert was present.

  Just like her body.

  “I was embarrassed,” she said at last. “That sort of thing makes me …”

  She stopped, aware of Daniel’s tight expression. An image of their two separate beds, pushed together to look as though they were one but each with their own tucked in sheets, came into her head.

  “That sort of thing makes me feel rather awkward,” she continued lamely. The policeman’s clear blue eyes seemed to flicker momentarily. Sympathy perhaps? Or curiosity. Or maybe nothing. Perhaps she’d just imagined it. What had he said his name was? Paul Black. That was it. It sounded clean cut. Memorable. Able to tell right from wrong even if those around him fudged the boundaries.

  “How did you know?” Alice asked, leaning against the Aga for its warmth. She began to shake, despite the fact that it was unusually hot. Hadn’t she been complaining for weeks that the Aga made the kitchen stuffy and that they really ought to get a conventional oven as well, just for the summer months?

  “Someone saw you.” The policeman glanced down at his notes. “A bike rider who thought she recognised you.”

  What bad luck. “Then she’s a witness too.”

  “Unfortunately not. She, like you, was embarrassed about coming forward but it turns out that she didn’t actually see what …”

  He paused for a minute.

  “… See what happened. But she did think, from your location, that you might have witnessed more.”

  Location? The use of such a distant, official word, disappointed her. Such official jargon didn’t seem to marry with those sky-blue eyes which were pinning hers down again, as though seeing right through her.

  “So it was this woman who reported it then?”

  “Not exactly.” PC Black gave a wry half shake of the head. “We had an anonymous tip-off about ten minutes earlier. However, the caller used a pay as you go and we can’t trace it.” Those blue eyes were fixed on hers again. If this had been a social situation, Alice might have imagined he was attracted to her. If only he knew.

  “So you see, Mrs Honeybun, you are our only witness.”

  There was a pause during which Alice almost wanted to giggle. When she’d first met Daniel and he’d told her what his surname was, she had shot him a ‘you can’t be serious’ grin. Later, when he’d proposed, she actually wondered if she could bring herself to live with such a name (so quaintly old-fashioned and yet suggestive at the same time) for the rest of her life.

  Now, more than ever, it seemed highly inappropriate.

  “I can’t tell you how important that is,” continued PC Black. “The man in question, Mrs Honeybun …”

  Spontaneously, she interrupted. “Please. Call me Alice.”

  Daniel’s eyebrows rose but she didn’t care. She was in too deep now.

  “The suspect, Alice, is a well-known character around here. He preys on young girls – usually rather naive ones – by giving them drugs so he can take advantage of them. Slippery sort. Until now, we’ve never had a witness.”

  He shrugged. “We can’t force you to give a statement. But I would urge you to give it serious thought.” His eyes glanced at the pictures of Garth on the kitchen dresser, studded amongst china cups and plates and hand-written invitations to dinner which now seemed inconsequential. “I don’t know if you have a daughter but, if you do, imagine what it would be like if she had been taken advantage of …”

  “That’s quite enough.” Daniel’s voice cut in. “This is emotional blackmail. If my wife doesn’t want to give evidence, that’s up to her. Besides, I’m not at all sure you ought to be telling us all this. Isn’t it confidential?”

  A daughter. If she had a daughter …

  Alice’s mind went back to the day Garth had been born. How grateful she had been at the time that he hadn’t been a girl. Thank God, she had breathed to himself. A boy would never, ever, have to go through what she had.

  So why did she still occasionally yearn for a daughter who would have the guts to defend herself? To do what she had failed to do. She could have taught her. Trained her. Made her strong. Victoria. A daughter who would be everything she wasn’t.

  “It’s all right,” she heard herself say before Paul Black could say any more. Instinctively, she knew that he probably shouldn’t have told them about the man and the drugs and the underage girl. But equally, she could see why he had done it.

  This was her chance now, Alice told herself. To stand up and be counted. To claim back what was rightfully the girl’s. Innocence. Not in terms of sex because that was too late. But to take the moral high ground. The earth that had been ripped from between her own feet all those years ago.

  “If I do give a statement,” she asked, deliberately not looking at Daniel, “will you give me protection? I don’t want a brick through our window.”

  She tried to make it sound like a joke but secretly hoped this man would understand what she really meant. I don’t want someone leaping on top of me in the dark and trying to rape or kill me.

  He was nodding. “We will.”

  “How can you say that?” demanded Daniel angrily. “If my wife has to go to court to give evidence, this man will see her from the dock. He and his friends might track her down. And all in defence of some slut.”

  Alice’s legs turned to jelly. Gripping the back of the kitchen chair to steady herself, she forced herself to look at Paul Black’s face. It was tight with anger.

  “I’m sorry you think that way. Regarding your concerns over security, it is possible that your wife would not have to go to court at all if we are able to tell the defence we have a witness. The hope is that the man in question will then plead guilty.”

  If. Maybe. Do this and you will be all right. Refuse and I will tell your parents you’ve been a bad girl. Slut … slut …

  “I’ll do it.” Alice’s voice sliced through the taunting
words in her head. “Would you like me to come down to the station with you?”

  There was a brief flicker of surprise. After what he’d just said, he seemed more like a Paul Black than a PC Black. More human. He knew, she thought gratefully. He knew she was different from her husband.

  “We could take the statement here, if you like.” He glanced at the Victorian pine kitchen table with its turned legs and aged knots that spoke of an earlier time when wars had been waging; long before her own.

  Here? Amidst the green and cream trays, each neatly laid for a TV fish pie supper? Not of course, that she had an appetite any more: a feeling which she suspected that her husband shared from the look of distaste on his face. Slut … slut. She knew it. Despite his words through the years, that was really what he thought of her too.

  But Paul Black was already taking out a pile of papers and pen from his briefcase. Somehow she hadn’t expected a policeman to carry a bag that looked more like a civil servant’s. “Mind if we sit down? I’d like to start at the beginning. What did you see first?”

  She could remember as if it had happened that morning. “They were sitting on the bench. A young girl with long wavy, auburn hair. I noticed that because it stood out. Rather pre-Raphaelite if you know what I mean.”

  “One of my favourite periods, actually.” So he understood art too! The discovery gave her confidence. It was always easier to talk to people who liked the same things. Just as it was easy to grow a wall between you and someone who didn’t.

  “The man,” she continued, “appeared a bit older.”

  “What colour hair?”

  “Black. I think.” Alice felt hot with confusion and embarrassment. “Then the girl stood up and moved as if in slow motion to a hedge. He followed her. She … she bent down. I … I thought she was putting a plaster on his knee …”

  Sweating, she glanced up at her husband. Daniel’s face was dark. “You don’t have to do this, Alice.”

  The policeman’s hand stopped. Disappointed. As though she’d personally let him down.

  “You want to do this, Alice.” That’s what the other man had said to her all those years ago. “ I can tell. You want to do this.”

  “I want to do it,” she said. Quietly. Firmly. “Please Daniel. Do you mind leaving us alone for a bit?”

  Chapter Four

  The steps outside the shopping centre were cold to sit on. Hard too. Her bottom would have ached if it hadn’t been so numb. Funny really. When Kayleigh had been younger, she’d rather fancied the idea of going camping like those clean, smiley families you saw on telly adverts. But now, after spending her whole first night outside, without any shelter apart from a bit of the shopping centre roof overhead, she’d gone well off the idea.

  “Ought to be here in the bleeding winter,” sniffed a girl on the step below, poking her head out from a ripped sleeping bag. Kayleigh had been eying the latter with envy all night. It seemed like the height of luxury. Yet only three nights ago, she’d had her own bed. Even the thin wall dividing her from the ‘No, Ron’ sounds now seemed preferable to this.

  Kayleigh’s stomach began to rumble. So loud that the girl on the steps below, with the pink hair and black baggy combat trousers, heard it. “Hungry, are yer? Have to wait a bit till breakfast, you will.”

  She began to feel more hopeful. “Does someone bring something round then?”

  The girl began to laugh so raucously that it turned into a throaty cough; exacerbated perhaps by the fag she had in her hand. (‘Exacerbated’ was a word she’d used in the essay for Mr Brown that would probably, she realised with a pang, never get handed to him now.) “You’re a right one, aren’t you? But in a way, I suppose you’re right. Play your cards right and someone will give you summat to eat but you’ve got to wait until this place opens.”

  She jerked her patchily shaved head up towards the shopping centre. “Fridays are a good day. You get a lot of women here. The posh sort. They’re the best. I got a fiver from one last week. Better than the bitch who palmed me off with a bleeding chocolate croissant.”

  “Didn’t you want the food?” asked Kayleigh, puzzled. She’d give anything right now to have a bite of a chocolate croissant. The very thought made her drool with hunger.

  The girl snorted with derision. “It can’t bloody well buy you gear, can it?” Then her face seemed to soften slightly. “Here.” She handed up the tail-end of her cigarette. “Take a drag if you like. Make you feel a bit better.”

  Kayleigh, hesitated but only for a minute. When Callum had given her a fag years ago, she hadn’t been able to stop choking. “No thanks.”

  The girl’s face hardened. “Suit yourself. You’re new, aren’t you?” She gave a hollow laugh, followed by another coughing fit. “You’ll soon learn.”

  Learn? The only place where Kayleigh wanted to learn was school. This time last week, she’d been getting ready for school; eager to see Mr Brown and finish her poetry essay. How was it possible, wondered Kayleigh, wrapping her thin arms around her knees and rocking back and forth to try and get some heat pulsing through her veins, for life to change so fast?

  Closing her eyes, she allowed the events of the last few days to run through her mind. It was how some writers wrote, Mr Brown said. They saw their lives as a film. One scene after the other. The trick was to mix the good with the bad. That way, you got your reader hooked.

  It had hurt quite a bit, like Marlene had said. But it had felt really cool at the same time. “I’ll look after you,” Frankie had said just before he had got on top of her.

  The grass felt soft. Softer than her own mattress at home. His lips were soft too. Much softer than she had imagined.

  Her body was floating. Kayleigh had never learned to swim. Mum had always said there was no bloody need when you lived in a tower block. But she felt as though she was swimming now. And the lights! They were everywhere. Blue and pink, silver and gold. Bursting like fireworks all around.

  It had been like that ever since Frankie had given her that tablet. Were the two connected? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the lights were in her head because she was finally having sex.

  “Is it wrong to have it off, sir, when you’re not yet sixteen?” a girl in her English class had asked Mr Brown a few weeks ago.

  There had been a general titter but it hadn’t been a totally daft question, Kayleigh had thought. They were doing Romeo and Juliet after all and the heroine (not to be confused with ‘heroin’, as one of the boys had suggested), was still really young.

  “Legally, it is.” Joey Brown was looking out of the window when he spoke. But then he turned and looked at her. She could swear it, even though it was the other girl that had asked the question. “But some people would argue differently if they were really in love.”

  Right now, on the grass, Mr Brown didn’t seem so important. It was Frankie, she wanted. Frankie who was moving up and down inside her and telling her that she was beautiful. Beautiful? With her ginger hair and freckles? It made her feel like a princess.

  It would be all right, now. Kayleigh knew that for a certainty. He wouldn’t let Ron try it on again. He’d tell Mum what a scumbag her bloke was. And if Mum wouldn’t have her back home, she and Frankie could set up their own place together. Maybe one day, they might even be able to afford one of those amazing houses on the side of the park with proper drives for a car.

  The thought struck her, through the lights and the music – which had come from nowhere – that she didn’t know what kind of job Frankie had. When she’d asked, in the car on the way over, the others had roared with laughter as though she’d said something really funny but stupid at the same time.

  Kayleigh hadn’t liked that. It was one of the reasons why she’d taken the tablet that Frankie had offered on the bench. She hadn’t wanted to look daft. It was also why she’d done what he had told her to by the hedge. And she’d been right, hadn’t she? Look at Frankie now, gasping and calling out. She’d got him. Kayleigh felt a wonderful sense of power spreadi
ng through her.

  The music got louder. Slowly, Kayleigh realised it wasn’t music at all. It was a siren. God knows how she could have got that wrong. You heard it enough times every day on the estate. The fireworks were beginning to die down in her head now. As for Frankie, he was pulling himself out of her and scrambling into his jeans.

  “Where are you going?” she called out, suddenly frightened.

  “Leg it.”

  For a minute, she thought he was asking her to do something with her legs again.

  “Show me.”

  Frankie threw her a look she hadn’t seen before. It was like the glance Mum gave her when she didn’t want her around. “You having me on? For fuck’s sake, Kayleigh. Just leg it.”

  Then she realised. Run. He wanted her to run. But why? Hadn’t she just been giving him a good time? Her heart sank. Maybe she’d been hopeless after all. Marlene always said that the first time wasn’t much cop. You had to practise.

  “You were my first, Frankie,” she called out as he began to run. “I’m sorry. It will be better for you next time, I promise.”

  But he was off. Skimming over the grass, hanging on to his shoes, past a woman with a bike who was staring at them. Nosy cow, just like the other woman with the dog. Miserably, Kayleigh looked around for her clothes. Where had they gone? Then she became aware of someone standing over her. Bleeding hell, it was a cop. With pink lipstick.

  “Put this round you.” She was holding out a blanket. “Go on. Cover yourself up. Quickly, before someone sees you.”

  Her voice was thin and scratchy, like the blanket. She was speaking into a machine hanging from her pocket now. Despite her blurred state, Kayleigh wondered if it was a Dictaphone. Mr Brown had one of those. They were great for writers, he said, if you wanted to remember something when you were walking along. Mr Brown was writing a novel. He had told her that once, when she’d gone into school early one day and found him scribbling away at his desk.