by Emmy Ellis
She sipped her tea, pondering how to put the next bit. She supposed she ought to give a nod to Sharon, seeing as she’d been in on The Life from the start, but what the woman had to understand, if she had a cob on, was times changed and she couldn’t dictate what Cassie should do, something Cassie herself had mumbled at the funeral. Was there bad blood between them? Sharon would be a fool if she tried to boss Cassie. Everyone knew she’d barb you as soon as look at you if you put a foot wrong.
Michelle’s tummy rolled over. She’d have to be careful herself. Think before she spoke. Word everything carefully so Cassie didn’t get the wrong end of the stick with regards to certain things. Michelle couldn’t be doing with finding a gun to her head for taking matters into her own hands, or that barbed-wire menace of a weapon flicked at her or, God forbid, standing in front of that Marlene, waiting to be killed. No, Michelle wanted to be friends with the murdering nutbag, not someone to be erased from the Barrington.
She needed Marlene to do a job for her.
She sipped some tea, pondering, then got back to work.
Thank you to Sharon for holding the fort alone after Karen relocated up north. It’s very much appreciated by everyone, I’m sure.
Sadly, we must move on to more upsetting things. As many of you already know, Francis Grafton was shot at Doreen and Lou’s joint funeral today. Cassie is conducting a murder inquiry alongside the police, obviously, so if anyone knows anything, or if they saw anything at the funeral and have been too afraid to say, now’s the time to contact her. We must all band together to root out the terrible person who did this.
In other news… A Life has already gone out about this, but it bears repeating. Now Sculptor’s Field isn’t a crime scene — RIP Doreen — Cassie has organised for the original February Fayre to take place on Saturday (so that’s the 20th March). All stalls will be up and running bar Lou’s jam and pies (unless anyone else wants to step forward to do that). Joe Wilson won’t be manning the meat stall for the factory as he’s still understandably grieving, but Marcus James will be there instead.
As usual, the pot for the homeless fund will be on Sharon Barnett’s face-painting stall. For some reason, Cassie can’t get in contact with Clive the Clown, something about him going back to Yorkshire, so if any of you fancy dressing up and sticking a red nose and makeup on to entertain the kids, please let me know. Cassie would like a clown to hand out free helium balloons to all the children.
Hot Dog Herman is doing a BOGOF on his burgers in memory of Francis, and a new stall will be present, operated by yours truly, where I’ll be selling my unique cross-stitch, something you won’t find in regular shops, wording like ‘Fuck You’ with a picture of a hand beneath it, two fingers up (amongst other non-charming sayings). Call it a hobby I started after I was let go from the newspaper. We all need an outlet for the unfairness in life, don’t we.
That’s it for now, so stay safe out there, and remember, any information about Francis, you know what to do.
Email me at: michelle_amazing-journo @ foxymail.co.uk
Michelle smiled, happy with what she’d written, and sent the file off to Sharon. But her cheer soon slipped at the rumble of Fangs growling in the kitchen. What on earth was the matter? She got up and walked out of her little office beside the living room, down the hallway, and into the kitchen-diner with its cheerful yellow-painted walls, shiny white cabinets, and one of her favourite cross-stiches on the wall, a phoenix and the words: It’s not the end but the beginning.
Fangs sat in front of a door, sniffing the handle.
“What’s up, boy?” She strutted over and bent to listen through the keyhole. Cold air came out to settle on her earlobe. Shuffling sounded, and she stood upright, cocking her head. “That’s not good, is it.”
She took the key out of the little wooden box on the wall beside her larder fridge and inserted it in the lock.
“You wait there,” she said to her doggy. “I’ll call if I need you.”
She opened the door, propping it with a rubber stopper wedged beneath, and flicked the light on. The concrete stairs led to a wine cellar, something her father had installed many moons ago. Sometimes, mice paraded down there as if they had the right, but Fangs soon caught them. Anyone would think he were a cat.
Down she went, the key in her pocket, and rounded the newel at the bottom. She stared ahead at the back wall, the metal rings screwed to it, the chains coming down, attached to tight manacles around wrists so spindly they could only belong to one person.
“What’s all the fuss about?” she asked. “Why have you set my Fangs off?”
The man didn’t answer, which made a change, but she was being cruel there. He couldn’t answer. She’d stuffed a cloth in his ugly mouth. He tugged at the chains then stopped, wincing. His wrists were sore, red.
“No point doing that, they won’t come free.” She bustled over to give him a quick kick in the nuts.
While he wailed, she sang a song about all things being bright and beautiful, hands clasped like she’d been taught in Sunday school, sending up a prayer that this fucker would just…shut…up.
He ceased his inconsiderate noise and stared at her with the glassy eyes she used to look into, trying to read them to see if he’d accept her latest story for The Moorbury Times or whether he’d send her off to write something else instead. More often than not he’d used her copy, stating his own name as the byline, something she’d never forgiven him for.
“I have a new job as a journalist,” she said. “A much better paper than your shitty rag—and it pays more. Just so you know, no one has been wondering where you are, and that’s all down to your philandering arse. Everyone knows you’ve been playing away with Valerie Prentiss, and with her moving to Blackpool, folks think you followed her. There’s already a new chief editor at The Times, so it’s like you don’t matter, something I’m glad about because that’s how you treated me, like I didn’t matter.”
He mumbled at her and, so sick of his silly little grunts, she punched him in the nose. His head smacked back into the breeze-block wall, and she laughed so hard at his expression she all but wet herself.
Her hilarity ended quickly, a switch being flicked.
“You’re pathetic,” she snarled. “Do you know, when you sacked me in favour of Miss Firm Tits, I thought it was the end of my life, but then I had this idea and realised no, it’s not the end but the beginning.” She thought of her cross-stitch on the wall and puffed her chest out: she was a magnificent phoenix. “Your garden’s overgrown. The neighbours will be complaining to each other soon, as they do, moaning and turning their noses up at the weeds. I expect those on New Barrington, snobs that they are, can’t bear a lawn over an inch high. I’ll get someone to go over and mow it. A gardener. Cash left under your flowerpot, an anonymous request over the phone. It’ll keep up the illusion that nowt’s wrong, won’t it. I’ll tell him if anyone asks that you got hold of him from Blackpool to do it.” She smiled to herself, a devious plan forming. “I might even pretend to be a man, talk like one on the phone. I’ll say…” She prepared herself to lower her voice. “I’ll say: I’ll leave t’money under t’flowerpot, lad. That sounded like you, didn’t it?”
He mumbled again.
So Michelle called Fangs and gave him the order to bite off her former employer’s other ear.
Yes, life was indeed looking good.
Chapter Three
Six-year-old Francis didn’t like the man who came to the house every Sunday morning while her mammy went to church to sing hymns and read from the Bible. He was Daddy’s friend, Lionel, and he didn’t seem to wash, always smelling of sweat and beer, his skin sticky. He was supposed to watch Francis while Daddy went to Worksop—well, the outskirts, where there was a huge market. Mammy preferred the veg from there, saying it always lasted the week, unlike the stuff from the supermarket.
Daddy wasn’t religious, he didn’t hold with ‘all that God rubbish’, and he’d put his foot down, saying Francis coul
d wait until she was older to go, make her own mind up about Jesus, his wine, and those ‘bloody stale wafers’, whatever they were.
Francis wished she could go to church now, sit on a cold pew beside Mammy, and hold her hand tight while everyone sang, praising the Lord who seemed to have let Francis fall through the ever-widening cracks when it came to keeping her safe. God was supposed to see everything, so what did he think when he watched Lionel looking after her? Why didn’t he do something about it?
She wasn’t allowed to the market either, Daddy saying he was quicker on his own, but she was to lie and say she’d been there. He was always gone a couple of hours, and Lionel had said Daddy had a ‘fancy piece’ who let him in for a ‘quickie’. Francis didn’t know what one of those was, but she wasn’t allowed to tell Mammy about it—it was a secret, just like the one she shared with Lionel—nor could she say Lionel babysat.
He said little girls could do the things she did with him, but they must never talk about it to others, else God would smite her because some people considered it a sin. Smite wasn’t a word Francis knew either, and neither was the one Mammy had used—she’d said sinners were ‘absolved’ if they went to confession, so Francis was confused. Especially when Lionel put his willy in her mouth.
He’d taken it out now but hadn’t put it away. It hung limply through his open zip. He stood by the living room window and stared through the nets. He did that a lot in the short gaps between their Sunday Sins—his name for them—saying if Mammy or Daddy caught them, they’d be in so much trouble. The police would come and everything. Lionel said Mammy would cry and Daddy would be angry.
Francis didn’t like the police. They’d scared her ever since she’d seen someone arrested at The Donny. A man had punched a woman, and Mammy told Francis to look down at her plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding until the police had gone away.
She’d be eating a roast again soon. They always did after Mammy and Daddy got back, Daddy arriving first to shoo Lionel out so Mammy didn’t know he’d been there—“I don’t believe the crap they’re saying, Lionel, but the wife, she does…”—and off they’d go for the weekly treat, something they scrimped for out of their wages. Other kids at school said Francis was posh if they ate out of a Sunday, but that wasn’t true. They ‘just got by’ as Mammy put it, adding something about the skin of their teeth, another thing Francis didn’t understand.
What she hadn’t understood was, if they just got by, why spend extra at the pub? She’d asked Lionel once, and he said as adults you had to have something to look forward to, otherwise you’d go mad, which was why he looked forward to sinning with her. Mammy and Daddy likely scrimped on other things in order to take their daughter out for lunch: “Like your dad not coming to the pub with me of an evening for a bevvy or two, so you should be grateful you get that roast, you little bitch.”
Lionel shouted some mean things, his face scrunched up as if he hated her, but other times he was nice. It was as if his body contained two people. Maybe that was why he was so big; they’d both squashed themselves inside his skin.
“Oh shit.” He shoved his willy away, drawing up the zip, and threw himself onto an armchair that creaked under his weight. “Your mam’s back. Fuck.”
Francis glanced at the clock. Mammy was an hour and ten minutes early. Was something wrong? She never left church until it finished, and even then it was well after because she liked to chat outside with all the people.
Mammy’s high heels tapped on the garden path, fast beats that meant she hurried. The key slid in the lock, and Francis looked over to the door, peering into the hallway. Mammy stood by the telephone table, her back to Francis, shaking her umbrella then laying it on the bristly mat. She took her mac off, hung it on the free-standing rack, then removed her headscarf, the purple paisley one that matched the colour of her T-bar shoes. She patted her hair then spun and caught sight of Francis.
“Oh. What are you doing here? Didn’t you and Daddy go to the market because of the weather?” Mammy came into the living room and knelt in front of Francis, touching her forehead. “Are you poorly or something?”
Francis shook her head. “How come you’re home?”
“Oh, someone had a funny turn, and an ambulance had to be called. The vicar thought it best we all leave. There’s always next week.”
Francis glanced over at Lionel.
Mammy did the same. “Oh. It’s you.”
Her face went all funny, same as Mrs Weston’s down the road did: soured milk, Mammy always said, and Daddy’s version: A bulldog chewing a wasp.
“Why are you here?” Mammy demanded, hands on hips.
Lionel stood, his big belly shivering. Was his nasty person squirming in there? “It’s the rain. He didn’t want to take her out in it so asked me to babysit. Not a problem for me, I don’t do owt of a Sunday, and Fran’s a lovely little lass, no trouble.”
Mammy rose and seemed to be taller than usual. “Leave.”
Lionel frowned. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t want you here.”
He appeared annoyed, like he did when Francis didn’t stay still properly. Maybe his nasty person wanted to come out. “No need to be off with me, is there?”
“I have every need if the rumours are to be believed.”
Lionel sighed. “Don’t go listening that lot in The Donny. They all make stuff up. They see something and get the wrong idea.”
“There’s no smoke without fire. Out. Now.” Mammy pointed, her finger shaking, and she moved to the windowsill, picking up the phone. She held the receiver by her ear and tilted her head.
Lionel smoothed his ruffled hair. “I get the message. You want to put your faith in Chinese whispers instead of God. Never mind that I’ve been your old man’s friend for years.” He walked from the room, his head bent, and at the front door, he stared through at Francis. Put a finger to his lips, the one with the extra-ragged nail. Nodded. Then he kicked Mammy’s brolly out of the way and left, slamming the door behind him.
Mammy put the phone back in the cradle, the wiggly wire falling to drape against the wall. “What did…what did you do while he was here, my duck?”
Francis shrugged. Thought about what Lionel had told her to say if Daddy ever asked what they got up to. “I did some colouring in; Lionel bought me a book and some crayons. We watched the telly.” The lies hurt.
“Owt else?”
“No.” Francis got up and gripped her teddy, Wilbur, by its hand. He was always with her when… “Can I go upstairs?”
Mammy nodded, looking at her oddly. “So long as you’re sure you’re all right.”
Francis wasn’t, but she couldn’t tell Mammy that.
Lionel said not to.
* * * *
It had been three years since Mammy had shown Lionel out, and Daddy had taken Francis to the market then left her in the car outside a house where he ‘went to see a man about a dog’ but ‘don’t tell Mammy as the dog’s a surprise’. The dog hadn’t come home with them at any point; Daddy had eventually stopped going to see it, saying it wasn’t such a good idea to have a pet after all, they caused trouble and he didn’t need the hassle.
It hadn’t stopped Francis having to see Lionel. He met her after school instead of the Sunday Sin visits, saying he’d walk home with her and they were to take a different route on the days he was there. Days he could ‘nip out from work, like’.
Francis wished Mammy still came to collect her instead of saying she was big enough now to do it by herself.
He always chose the woods, which she’d once thought were pretty until he’d ruined them for her. There were bluebells and small white flowers she didn’t know the name of, and squirrels scampered out of their hiding spots if they were too noisy, dashing off elsewhere. The ground was always cold on her back in the winter and damp in summer. Lionel said it was the shade that did it, the sun unable to get through the leaves to warm the trails and grass.
It was gloomy in the place he took her, visi
bility low, especially near the hedges on what he called the perimeter, rich with yellow blooms that appeared cream in the murk. Francis wondered how they grew without much light, but they did, they struggled on, much like she tried to do.
Mammy always wanted to know why Francis had moss or grass on her bum and in her hair. She lied, like Lionel said, saying she’d gone through the woods with a friend and they’d had a rest. In truth, no kids walked this way, it was a longer route home, and Lionel was safe to sin behind the big fat trunk of the great oak—he’d told her that’s what it was—its roots gripping deep inside the earth on an incline, bushes either side creating the perfect shield.
Francis usually scrunched her eyes shut, the strands of grass cold in her tight fists, and prayed someone would come past with their dog again. It had happened before, and Lionel had pressed his salty-skinned palm over her mouth to keep her quiet. The woman had her puppy on a lead, so it hadn’t been free to come and find Francis, exposing who Lionel was and what he was doing. Maybe one day a dog would be roaming free, running over to bark at the hedges, its owner investigating the racket. Francis had been disabused of that wish with Lionel whispering in her ear that if she made a noise, the police would find out and come for her. Still being so young, she’d believed him, imagining being locked in a children’s prison, no Mammy or Daddy visiting.
Lionel said they wouldn’t be allowed. He also said that kids who’d been to such a place didn’t ever go home. Once they’d completed their sentence, they were sent to a big house with loads of other naughty boys and girls, where they were fed lumpy porridge for every meal, and no teddies like Wilbur were allowed either. Some kids were picked by people like Lionel and taken to their homes, fostered, so if Francis knew what was good for her, she’d keep their secret.