by June Taylor
Karin dropped onto her hands and knees in case the knife had shot under the fridge, or got wedged in some other small gap beneath the units. Behind the fridge maybe? She couldn’t shift its glossy designer bulk on her own. Hot and frantic, she resorted to going round the kitchen opening cupboards, drawers, pulling cookbooks off the shelves. It was hopeless. The best she could hope for was that Aaron had scooped the knife up and disposed of it in the disused quarry.
Along with Louie.
Karin shuddered at such an appalling thought.
Forcing herself to put everything back in its proper place, she collapsed onto the floor and began weeping all over again. The tiles were still wet, and the bleach filled her lungs with toxic breaths, making her cough and choke.
She deserved it.
An insistent ringing of the doorbell forced her to get up again. Surely not Aaron, back so soon. He couldn’t have burned a body in that time, it wasn’t possible. And besides, he had a key to his own apartment; she had seen him take it.
Unless there was a problem? Maybe it was the police.
A thick, bleachy-red liquid sloshed over the side of the bucket when she dropped the mop too carelessly into it. Grabbing a tea towel she wiped up the mess, wafting the air with it to get rid of the smell. Without thinking, Karin also used it to rub the sting out of her eyes, making it worse, yelling in silent agony and cursing her own stupidity. Tossing the tea towel into the bucket, trying to blink away the caustic sting as she carried it into the hallway, she was careful not to slosh any more of the red liquid over the side and shoved the bucket into the cupboard, reminding herself to empty it later.
The doorbell went again.
‘I’m coming,’ she shouted.
Her voice sounded different under pressure, like a train passing through a tunnel. As she scurried to the door she noticed damp patches under her armpits and suddenly got a whiff of herself. Which prompted her to check for more tell-tale signs on her clothing. Blood stains. It was blood that would give her away.
She couldn’t see any.
Karin peered through the spyhole, not recognizing the man standing there. He didn’t look like a policeman but could be in plain clothes. Perhaps it was a neighbour, heard noises earlier, come to ask if everything was okay.
She opened the door, and the man asked for Aaron.
Karin swallowed her fear as best she could, trying to exude calm. ‘I’m sorry, he’s not here just now. Can I pass on a message? Or have you tried his mobile?’ She hoped that he hadn’t, or wouldn’t, in fact, and instantly regretted that suggestion.
‘It’s okay, I’ve already left him a message,’ he replied.
Who the hell are you anyway? she wanted to scream.
‘I was just in town and thought I might be able to drop a few things off. I know I’m not supposed to be here yet.’
‘Oh. Erm. Sorry, your name is—?’
‘Russell. I’m the new tenant. Are you the old one? Or maybe the cleaner?’ He sniffed the air, getting the bleach smell.
Get the fuck out of here.
‘I see,’ she said, confused and still in shock.
He must have registered her uncertainty because he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a rental contract with Aaron’s signature on it. Karin had had one of those herself, so she knew it was genuine.
‘Right. Well I suppose you can leave stuff in the hallway then,’ she said, blocking him from coming in too far.
‘If you’re sure.’
Karin stood guard as he brought in four large storage boxes. He felt the need to make polite conversation in between each one, which set her even more on edge. Asked if she was intending to leave Leeds. She said she wasn’t sure yet. When he was finally done, he wished her well at her next place, wherever she ended up, and left.
It prompted Karin to question whether she ought to be making plans of her own, instead of waiting for Aaron to come back. Was he even going to come back? Like ever?
Why should he?
They hadn’t recovered the money from Louie; it was still sitting in her account like sunken treasure under the sea.
Karin decided to take a hot shower. Put on clean clothes.
Fresh clothes, fresh start.
Who was she kidding?
But it did help to wash away at least some trace of what had happened here tonight. Afterwards, she swept her hands over the rest of her things hanging in the wardrobe – a row of multiple Karins – dragging them down until they were a frenzied heap on the floor. Then began stuffing everything into the extra-large suitcase that she had brought over when Aaron suggested she should spend more time here.
Karin looked round for the remainder of her possessions: jewellery, books, toiletries. If the new tenant was moving in soon then she had to be out. With or without Aaron.
You’re a survivor, Karin. You’ve lived on the streets. You’re a fighter. Rely on yourself. Everyone lets you down in the end.
Think.
Without Will, without Louie, her world was shrinking rapidly. Even so, she refused to write Aaron off completely. She told herself that she was just getting prepared. For anything.
And she wasn’t alone in any of this.
Call Mel.
‘Please come over, Mel. Something terrible has happened.’
‘Okay. Calm down, Karin. I’ll have to get a cab because I’ve had a drink now, but I’m on my way.’
47
Karin
Karin lay on the bed waiting for Mel to arrive. She was seriously beginning to wonder now if Aaron was ever coming back, although his things were still here and she had even checked that his passport was in its usual place, which it was.
Why was Mel taking so long?
Waiting. Karin was used to this. Waiting for someone to find out, waiting for something to happen. First her stepdad: rope around his neck, head loose, tongue lolling to one side. Then Will: blue face, hollow eyes, clothes dripping from the River Aire. And now Louie: knife in the stomach, leaving pools of blood wherever she went.
All three, passing through the walls, day and night.
The apartment was in darkness, seeping into every room, but Karin didn’t want any light to get in. It wasn’t yet midnight and already she feared the sun coming up, bullying her into a new day. Suddenly she remembered Louie’s painting under the bed. It was shoved there out of the way because neither of them had wanted to look at it and they hadn’t decided what to do with it yet.
Karin switched on the bedside light and pulled out the canvas, blowing off a thin layer of dust that had already settled. She managed to lever it onto its side, noticing the tiny seahorse that Louie had drawn on the back in one corner. Running her fingers over it made the sadness wash over her again. She managed to twist the frame around, and with a good deal of huffing and panting, rocked it onto the bed. Then she climbed on top of it and lay down.
The hard canvas dug into her spine. She must have been on the edge of sleep though, because when she heard a key turn in the door, it seemed to wake her.
Karin sprang up and ran out into the hallway.
It was Aaron. He reeked of smoke.
‘Thank God you’re okay,’ she said, pulling up before she quite got to him. The boxes were in the way but that wasn’t the reason she had stopped.
Aaron was staring at his hands. They looked like he had tried to wash them, but the dirt-filled scratches and blackened fingernails were a giveaway.
‘I’ve been worried sick about you. Did it go – all right?’
‘That’s something I never want to have to do again,’ he said. He was holding a tin out for her. ‘Your souvenir,’ he added.
It rattled when she took it from him and she had to swallow hard because she had asked for Louie’s ashes. Nevertheless, this needed some kind of acknowledgement.
‘I erm – I never doubted you, Aaron,’ she said, after a deep silence had set in.
He looked at her, as if to say: if only that were true.
<
br /> ‘Right, well, I’m going for a shower,’ he announced.
Karin had no time to process anything because, just as Aaron was disappearing into the bedroom, Mel suddenly arrived in the hallway, pulling a large suitcase that she left by the door. The hall was getting cluttered with all the stuff that was being dumped in it.
‘Oh you poor thing,’ said Mel, rushing to Karin. ‘Don’t worry, I’m up to speed. I bumped into Aaron in the lift. Should we go and sit down? You look terrible.’
Karin allowed Mel to steer her into the kitchen, resting her head on Mel’s shoulder as they went.
‘Wow,’ said Mel, wafting the air. ‘Strong smell of bleach in here.’
They sat down at the table, and Mel took a bottle of whisky out of her bag, tossing her head back to drink some. She offered the bottle to Karin, wiping drips off her chin, but Karin declined.
Karin was too busy staring at the tin. It was on the table in front of her. She pushed it away and it rattled again.
She noticed Mel smirking.
‘Is that the crazy lesbian in there?’
‘Don’t call her that, Mel. She’s dead!’
Karin detected a strangeness to Mel’s mood. She was pretty drunk.
‘You think I give a shit?’ said Mel. ‘Stupid bitch won’t be bothering me again, that’s all I care about.’
Mel grabbed the tin, and before Karin could stop her she had removed the lid. Karin pressed her hands to her mouth in horror.
‘Hm. I guess these don’t burn.’ Mel shook the bones against the sides.
One brief glance was enough for Karin. To see that they were brittle, crumbly and charred was more than enough and she grabbed the lid back off Mel, replacing it with her eyes half-closed, needing several attempts until it slotted into place. As she did so, she pictured Louie’s contorted body, burning and shrivelling in an oil drum somewhere, under a charcoal sky.
Karin felt like she was inside that tin. And wanted to be. She wanted to be with Louie.
‘Listen,’ said Mel, giving herself another swig of whisky, ‘you have to know something, Karin.’
‘Oh-kaay.’ Karin took her eyes off the tin, slowly, and looked up at Mel, sensing that she wanted her full attention. ‘What is it I need to know?’
‘Well.’ She wiped her hand across her lips then licked them thoroughly before continuing. ‘My dad committed suicide too.’
‘Oh.’
Karin had assumed it would be something about Louie. This seemed too much of a leap and she heard herself jabbering out a reply. ‘God. Did he? I didn’t know that. I’m really sorry.’ She remembered Mel telling her that both her parents had died but didn’t think she had ever said how. She switched seats to be next to her, to offer some comfort, but Mel didn’t seem to want it and batted her away.
‘Well why didn’t you say?’ asked Karin. ‘It would’ve been okay to tell me, you know. Obviously, I know what that’s like.’
Mel gave her a strange sort of a look, which Karin wasn’t able to interpret. The silence between them began to ice over. Until Mel shattered it again, her tone of voice at odds with the words she was delivering.
‘Well anyway,’ she said, ‘he hanged himself. Just like your stepdad.’
Karin was getting a bad feeling about this now. ‘God, that’s truly awful. So what happened? Have you any idea why?’
She really didn’t think she wanted to know.
48
Mel
Mel took another gulp of whisky, offering the bottle to Karin again, but she still declined.
‘Oh I didn’t care about my dad at all,’ said Mel, enjoying the look of impending dread on Karin’s face. ‘I hated him. He’d been seeing another woman for years and my mum always covered for him, making excuses. Ever since I can remember in fact. My dad worked away a lot, gone for months on end sometimes. I knew they weren’t married, he and my mum, but turns out he was leading a double life.’
‘What a bastard.’
‘This woman was rich apparently, Swedish.’ She gave Karin a leer. ‘So I suppose that was the attraction. We never saw a penny of what she gave him though, and hardly anything from what he earned either. My mum wasn’t able to work, so it was pretty grim. I had to look after her. We couldn’t even afford to put the heating on for more than an hour in the winter, and I remember feeling constantly hungry. You know that gnarling you get in your stomach? ’Course you do, you went hobo for a while. Well anyway, when this woman’s husband died, my dad just abandoned us completely. He couldn’t get out of the door quick enough. As soon as the bloke’s body was in the ground, they got married. I’ve no idea why he hanged himself though, Karin.’ She leaned closer. ‘Have you?’
Karin made out that she needed to dislodge something in her chest. It was probably the truth that had got stuck there. Mel let her finish coughing before she carried on. She didn’t really expect Karin to answer.
Not just yet.
‘So maybe he thought his life would be hell with her after all,’ Mel continued. ‘I mean, your dad wasn’t happy, was he? Or maybe the bitch decided she didn’t want him any more? Whatever. He just didn’t seem the hanging type to me though, somehow. What do you think?’
Karin was rubbing her temples. Mel hoped the pain was the worst it had ever been.
‘I hardly even knew my stepdad,’ she replied. ‘You know that, Mel.’
It seemed like she was pleading with her to stop, but Mel had nowhere near finished.
‘Your mother never offered us a penny in compensation. She stole our lives for all of those years and not a shred of compassion. I asked her at my dad’s funeral for some help. Pretty much begged her. Where were you by the way?’
She could see that Karin was still trying to catch up. Mel gave her a moment or two; it was a lot to take in. But this was all part of the fun to see Karin struggle. In the past Mel had always had to conceal her enjoyment. Now she could revel in it.
‘Well we’d already fallen out by then,’ said Karin, mumbling. ‘I’d left home. My mother wasn’t interested in where I’d gone.’
‘Hm. Well she told me you were back at school. Anyway, I went to your house a few days after the funeral to see her. Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the place. I told her my mum was sick, that she wasn’t able to work – gave her the full sob story. Every word of it was true, of course, but she still wouldn’t hear of it. So then I thought about going to the newspapers, expose and shame her that way, but my own mum didn’t want the humiliation. She said that would finish her off. That’s why she’d tolerated it for all those years, I suppose.’
Karin looked broken.
Mel gave her a smile.
‘But how did you know where to find me?’ she asked. ‘I was living rough.’
‘First I went to your school. Fuck me, that’s posh as well. But nobody claimed to know where you’d gone, and then one girl remembered you once mentioned Morecambe. Some connection with your dad. So I went there, but couldn’t find you.’
She could see Karin frantically trying to slot this piece of the jigsaw into place.
‘No, I didn’t go there right away. I’d-I’d already quit school, but my bereavement counsellor let me sleep on her couch for a few months. I had to lie low so that she didn’t get the sack. It was only later I actually decided on Morecambe. My dad was born there, so it just seemed right. For what I had to do.’
Her voice was thin and petered out at the end. Karin had got completely sunk in her memory. Mel ignored that and carried on.
‘Well I gave up looking for you at that point. I always knew I’d figure out a way of finding you one day though. And then, hey, there you are, right under my nose in the creepy Dark Arches of Leeds, of all places. There was something about you, I knew immediately it was you. I’d seen a photo at your mother’s place, spotted your red hair hiding under that stupid hood of your parka.’
Mel recognized the longing in Karin’s eyes. A pitiful sight. She wanted to ask about that photo. Where did her mother k
eep it? Which photo was it? Did she throw darts at it? Or was it on display somewhere prominent?
The photo wasn’t the only thing Mel had seen that day. When Birgitta’s phone started to ring, she said that she had to take it and began parading up and down her huge kitchen, barking out orders to whoever was on the end of the call. In the meantime, Mel looked around, her eyes immediately drawn to an email that was open on Birgitta’s laptop. She even had time to read some of it. It was to her accountant, stating that her daughter was to receive £957,000 when she turned twenty-two.
At that point, Mel made up her mind. She would find that spoilt little bitch and take the money from her. Somehow. Get revenge on the family that had completely destroyed hers. She would find a way.
Karin was staring at her. It brought Mel back into the present moment. This moment. That she had waited so long to relish.
And Karin looked like she was seeing Mel for the very first time.
Mel grinned back, nodding.
‘So we’re-we’re stepsisters then?’
‘Yup. Afraid so.’ Mel took another large gulp of whisky, swilling it round her mouth, waiting for the burn when she swallowed it. ‘But don’t get any ideas. I’ve been doing nicey-nicey for far too long now and it was a fuck of a wait till you turned twenty-two, so if you think I’m going to see that money go to waste after all of that—’
Mel broke off to enjoy the hurt spreading across Karin’s face.
She deserved it. Every bit of it.
‘You had everything I didn’t, growing up,’ Mel went on. ‘Yet you were such an ungrateful cow. Weren’t you?’
‘No! You know how unhappy I was. You know my mother sent me away when I was only eight years old, and there was no love in my childhood. Not ever. She was always in complete control and I was miserable. I missed my dad, and then he died. I ended up on the streets. You know all of this.’