by Emmy Ellis
Because she couldn’t let him do this to anyone else. Out there was his next target, he’d probably already chosen her, the little one unaware of his leering gaze, his debauched thoughts, much like Francis had been (she could hardly remember herself back then; did that side of her ever really exist?). Perhaps he’d already twirled the new one’s golden or coal-black hair around his finger, told her she was as pretty as a picture, and if Daddy said it was all right, he’d buy her a dolly next time he saw her.
Francis had Wilbur, her teddy. She’d keep him as a reminder of how to stay strong, how to rise from the ashes, his fur matted from her tears.
Lionel would follow the same path with the newbie—why not, it’d worked this time around—and before anyone knew it, the target would be corrupted, her dreams forever tainted by him, her world so changed she planned murder, same as Francis.
No, it couldn’t happen.
He pushed through a gap in the hedges a few metres down from the oak, leaves and prickles snagging on his jumper, the blue-and-red-striped one with little bobbles on it where he’d worn it so much. She followed, tailing him along the incline, one foot lower than the other, a ditch at the bottom where she’d shove that fucker in a few minutes.
His familiar stale sweat stench flew back at her on a breeze so robust it pushed the skin on her face, and she narrowed her eyes against it in case they watered. She didn’t want him thinking she was crying because it was their last time: “You’re fourteen right up until the second before your mam gave birth to you, so we’ll meet Wednesday and that’s the end of it, Fran. Five-thirty in the afternoon you were born, so we have plenty of time for the last hurrah.”
He stopped at the oak, which had given the ground a coating of burnt-orange and mustard-yellow leaves, all wet and shiny from a recent downpour. Francis didn’t intend being down there long, the water seeping through her coat, her trousers. Mam had long stopped asking why Francis was damp—“It’s not good for you and your friend to be rolling about in those woods in this weather. You’ll catch your death of cold.”
Someone would catch their death, but it wouldn’t be her.
“Down you get then.” Lionel pointed to the ground with fingers that resembled half a packet of Wall’s sausages.
Francis unzipped her backpack without him taking much notice, just a few inches so she could get her hand inside the gap. In the school loos after the home bell had rung, she’d placed her school things beneath her little weapon stash, and so long as the top item hadn’t slid down, she could whip it out within seconds. She took her gloves from her pocket, pulled them on, citing the cold, and got down on the leaves. Bag beside her thigh, the hole pointing her way, she closed her eyes, his weight lowering onto her.
His head was to the right of hers, his cheek on the leaves, the back of his greasy hair tickling her nose. He liked to rock at first, fully clothed, so with him busy, she dipped her hand into the hole. Clutched the handle of something she’d nicked from school two months ago, one of two paring knives from Home Economics, a class she didn’t take, therefore, no one had suspected her of stealing it. The furore of it going missing had already died down, as was her intention.
It stuck in the back of his neck easier than she’d thought it would with the right amount of swing, the right amount of strength behind it. His movement stopped, and he went stock-still, then brought one hand to the back of his neck. She wrenched the knife free, and he let out a strangled scream, one that hadn’t quite gained permission to fly—or the knife had done some damage to his vocal cords. It had gone in almost to the hilt.
His weight got heavier, and he slumped.
Panting from the crush to her lungs, she tossed the blade aside, it didn’t matter where it landed, and took on the task of shuffling out from beneath him, a struggle she hadn’t realised the enormity of until now. Time seemed to take on a stretched quality, and she’d swear it took her five minutes to extricate herself. On her knees, she stared at him. Lionel rested on his front, still breathing—each exhalation puffed up a leaf that wasn’t soggy, and she’d always associate death with its colour, red, to match the blood seeping over layers of other leaves, gravity enticing it down the incline from a swollen puddle into a single thin line.
Apart from his rasping breaths, the silence weaved with birdsong was a comfort.
Francis had until five, then she’d have to get back if she didn’t want Mam coming in from work and spotting any blood that might have splashed on her. She’d stick her clothes and coat in the machine, say she’d made an angel in the leaves on the ground in the woods, and Mam may or not remember that comment later when Lionel was found. She may or may not wonder, just for a moment, whether all these years he had been messing with her child, a little girl who’d gone from happy to withdrawn, smiling to scowling a while before the time Mam had come back early from church. But Francis’ tales over the years of messing about with her friend would hold her in good stead, and Mam would hopefully think nowt of it.
All that was irrelevant if Francis made it home in time.
“Fr…Fra…Fran-cis,” he wheezed.
“What?” She smiled. He sounded so afraid, and that was beautiful.
“Hel…help…me.”
“No.”
She checked her watch, clicking the button on the side for the light.
Ten to four.
“Please… I’m sorry…”
She barely heard him, the wind whipping at his words. “If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.” She came off so calm, and she supposed she was. Her blood didn’t thrum with the excitement of what she’d done, she wasn’t scared of someone coming by (she had a story ready for that: “He…he attacked me on my way h-h-home!”), she didn’t feel much of owt, which confused her because all of her imaginings had shown her dancing with happiness. This wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning, so she’d inspect her feelings the next few times she killed someone, see how she reacted in the future. Maybe she was in shock or she’d shifted into that alternate reality she’d learnt to inhabit. Or maybe she just didn’t care, her emotions all dried up.
A void sat inside her chest where her heart should be, an empty chasm that echoed with a steady beat, not the flickering thud of fast-paced fear, nor were there skips where she was frightened. She laughed quietly at his low-toned sobs and thought about her prepared speech.
“I stabbed you in the cervical cord, that’s why you can’t move—or maybe you’re just numb; I might not have got it in the right place, so that blade could have been a whisker away from you being paralysed. I listen in class, see, take it all in.”
“Yes, numb…”
“Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon.” If there wasn’t blood, she’d have tried asphyxiation then bringing him back to life—wouldn’t mind giving his fleshy lips a kiss then—but there was, so one day soon she’d see what it was like, she’d make sure of it. “You’ll probably choke on all that blood.”
She laughed again, a strange little titter that belonged to an old lady, someone like Mrs Weston down the road with her warty chin and leather skin. Mam would be horrified at what Francis had become, but she’d never know, not until Francis finally told her. Francis was strong, she could cope with this by herself until she’d made up her mind what to do regarding…other things. What was the next few years keeping her sins to herself when she’d already done it for so long?
It was second nature now.
She stared over the way at the field, how the brown-black earth met with the Grim Reaper’s dark handshake that crept through the sky towards them. It was coming for Lionel, ready to wring his fat neck and, at last, Francis felt something, an elastic band strung taut then let go. A rush of excitement filled that void in her chest, butterflies dancing, and she watched Death’s fingers slither ever closer in the form of an ebony cloud, a stiff breeze shunting the leaves and trying to tunnel through her hair, a tight bun that wasn’t having any of it.
The birds stopped sing
ing.
Lionel gave a weak cough. Francis checked her watch again. Four o’clock. He was taking his sweet time dying, but then the blackness of storm clouds descended, crouching on the edge of the semi-naked oak branches, and he sighed. She listened for more breaths, but he must have bled out by now, because there was nowt but the shush-swish of the leaves then the pitter-patter of heavy raindrops, the kind that created princess crowns in puddles.
Francis got up, collected her bag, glad she had no need of the other items in it. She walked around the top of him to his face, crouching away from the blood waterfall that was nowt but a sable patch in the gloom, and listened.
Stared.
His eyeballs were mini boiled eggs, his face a pale dinner plate, but he was gone, or if he wasn’t, he soon would be. With the weather about to turn nasty, no one would venture this way, so there was perhaps hours for him to slowly fall into oblivion undisturbed. She didn’t bother kicking him into the ditch, a freedom flowing inside her at being able to make that decision, hers alone, no one else’s. She stood, walked away, farther along the incline instead of squeezing back through the bush. The heavens opened, but some trees that didn’t shed provided an awning, and at the end of the hedgerow, where a lonely track gave her privacy, she stepped out and let the rain coat her. She held her hands up so any blood on her gloves was washed away, or as clean as nature could get them anyroad.
Francis stood like that for a long time, until a glimpse of her watch told her to go home. She trudged around the perimeter of the woods and onto the Barrington, a drenched rat when she reached her front door.
Mam’s perfect Lord and Mother Nature had given Francis the ideal excuse to strip in the kitchen and wash her clothes, her coat, her shoes. Mam would go spare at the shoes being in her new top-loader machine, but Francis could handle that.
She could handle owt now he was gone.
A bath later, pyjamas on, she curled up on her bed with Wilbur, safe for the first time since she was a little girl.
His fur got wet again.
Chapter Seven
Shirl was a nervous sort by nature, always had been, a square peg in a round hole, so Mam always said. “You’d jump at your own shadow” and “You’ll have kittens if you’re not careful, lass.” Shirl knew why most things got her jumping, why anxiety scuttled through her on spidery legs the moment owt became uncomfortable. Cassie well frightened Shirl. Who wouldn’t be scared of Lenny Grafton’s daughter? Shirl had grown up listening to stories about him and had twinned Cassie with the patch leader by association, and it was weird to think she’d been in her home last night, sharing a Chinese. Shirl had looked on her as someone to be wary of for as long as she could remember, but now she’d seen a different side to her.
How weird life was.
Cassie had an air about her that let off some kind of warning, one Shirl had picked up on right from when they’d been younger. Shirl had avoided her in school, tried not to look at her so she wasn’t infected with the blue stare—and that was all it took, that stare, to get Shirl on edge. Now she knew why Cassie behaved that way, Shirl could sympathise with her—Jimmy had explained a bit but hadn’t gone into massive detail. If Jimmy said Cassie was all right deep down and only had to act that way to keep the Barrington on track, then that was what Shirl would believe.
Jimmy was the only person who didn’t boil her nerves or send her scurrying to safety. He had a soothing influence, and maybe that was why Cassie had calmed down a bit in Shirl’s presence last night. He’d seen a lot of their boss since Doreen and Lou had been killed, getting to grips with his new role. Shirl couldn’t take it in when Jimmy had said he was Cassie’s right hand now—Jimmy, a hardman? That didn’t gel with the fella she knew and loved, but he’d been seeing Glen Maddock, getting lessons, and already his confidence level had risen.
Shirl was proud of him but felt sorry for what he’d have to see and do in the future. Jimmy wasn’t a killer, he didn’t like hurting people, but he’d be doing it before long, explaining that Glen had taught him how to cope.
Shirl would be there for Jimmy if he broke down. She’d piece him back together and make everything okay again, like he did for her. Until the next time. Like he’d said, the new house, the car, and the money would make up for the bad shit. She couldn’t believe she lived in such a stylish place now, on New Barrington, for Pete’s sake, and Jimmy had given her a few grand to tart it up, get new furniture and whatnot.
Life had got better in that respect, but the stuff he had to do for it didn’t bear thinking about. So she didn’t. She’d continue to be Cassie’s ears for the five hundred a week, be Jimmy’s shoulder to cry on, and try to help their boss as much as she could.
It would stop her from thinking about other things, like those wicked cornfields in her dreams.
Shirl sighed and walked up Nan’s path. It was nice of Cassie to want to write a eulogy that showed all aspects of Francis. Nan would know a few stories, and even if they were stitched together by the murky thread of Chinese whispers, it’d give Cassie an idea of who her mother used to be.
Using her key, Shirl let herself in. Esther Parsons was half the size of her former self, a skeleton rather than the figure she’d had in her younger days—hourglass, people called it. She’d be sitting in the living room, head cocked, a starling in wait, wondering who was coming in—Shirl or Mam, or Shirl’s brother, Abel. Or maybe even Mrs Cox down the road, a nice woman who kept an eye out when no one else could, getting shopping in or hanging the washing out.
“Who’s that?” Nan called, her voice strident. Her body may have changed, but that certainly hadn’t. Foghorn on legs, that one.
“It’s me, Nan.” Shirl smiled to herself and closed the door. “Shall I stick the kettle on?”
“You can do. You’re a good girl, our Shirley.”
Shirl warmed inside. Nan had always been her favourite person, someone she should have confided in years ago but hadn’t.
Shirl popped her handbag down by the coat stand and slipped her shoes off. “I’ve bought you some flowers and those chocolates you like.”
“The balls?”
Shirl laughed. “Yes, the balls.”
Nan loved Lindor. “Which flavour? Them strawberry efforts gave my stomach gyp last week. I had the shits for three days, then my piles played up because of the strain.”
Bloody hell, Nan, TMI. “Mint.” Shirl walked into the living room and handed over her gifts.
Nan tucked the chocolate box inside her knitting basket down the side of the recliner and examined the wrapping on the roses, her grey hair done up in a bouffant from her youth, if a bit wonky where she’d had trouble doing it herself. She’d applied bright-blue eyeshadow right to the bottoms of her brows and had attempted kohl wings, her lips a garish red. She rammed her nose into the pink petals and sniffed. “Since when could you afford the likes of this bunch from Blooms? Liz doesn’t sell them cheap, not like Betty used to.”
“Since I got a better job.” Shirl waited for it…
“Doing what?”
And there it was, time for the truth. She cringed. “Working for Cassie.”
“Grafton?”
“Yep.”
Nan strangled the flower stems. “I wondered why you didn’t stink of fish from that factory. Fuck me, Shirl, I never thought I’d see the day. When did that come about?”
She shrugged. “Been doing it for a while now.”
Nan’s rheumy eyes bulged. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Didn’t think I had to ask your permission.”
Nan smiled. “That’s the spirit. Getting some balls, are you?”
“Maybe I am.”
“It’s about time.” Nan handed the bouquet over. “Stick them in a vase, will you, love, and bugger off and make that tea. Me bloody throat’s parched.”
Shirl did as she was told and soon had the tea brewed and the roses in a glass vase. She carried two cups in one hand and the flowers in the other. “Where do you want
these?”
Nan wafted her arthritic fingers. “On the windowsill. Right in the middle so I can see them, like. Bloody gorgeous, they are, and they’ll last a good while. Cassie must be paying you well if you can shell out like that.”
Shirl placed the vase down then gave Nan her tea. “She is.”
“Sit your arse down and tell me all about it.”
Shirl chose the spare armchair and settled back, legs tucked to one side. “Listening, that’s all. Gossip, you know.”
“Hmm. Her ears. Lenny used to have those. Grasses, we called them. ’Ere, what’s this rumour I heard from Mrs Cox about your Jimmy?”
Here we go. “What about him?”
“That he’s Cassie’s right hand now—or he will be once he’s finished training.” Nan laughed. “That’s like asking a featherweight to fight a heavy. He’ll be on the canvas in no time. Glen Maddock’s only got to breathe on him and he’ll be on his arse. Cor, I fancy him. He was a bit of all right was Glen.”
Shirl was a tad offended on Jimmy’s behalf and winced at the thought of Nan fancying anyone. “He’s been going to the gym and all sorts.”
“He’ll need to with the shit he’ll have in his future. She’ll want him thumping every Tom, Dick, and Harry for her, you’ll see.”
And the rest, although she’s good at it all by herself. “He knows that. She pays him well enough.”
“I’ll bet she bloody well does.” Nan slurped some tea. Let out an “Ah!” with her eyes closed. Drank some more. “You always make it just how I prefer it. Like I said, a good girl.” She sniffed, her signal that the niceties were at an end and she had something else to discuss. “So, Francis.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you think about that then? I was convinced Mrs Cox was pulling my ruddy leg when she told me, although I’m not surprised someone wanted that cow six feet under.”
Cow? Francis was a hard woman, but whenever Shirl had had dealings with her, it’d been pleasant. As she’d grown up, it was Lenny you had to fear, not his wife. What did Nan know? Was this what Cassie had meant about skeletons?