Life Sentence

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Perfectly reasonable in their terms,’ she snapped back. More gently, reflectively, she continued, ‘But you have a point about loving them differently. In a sense, I’m probably in mourning for people who had died years ago. When had they stopped being the carers and become so utterly dependent on me? Was there a day, a week, a year when I lost them? Or was the change as seamless as it was inexorable?’

  He could hardly speak, so tried to bluster, ‘Perfectly reasonable! Like your driving two hundred and twenty miles and back every weekend? And twice today! Fran, when you’re not so tired, you’re going to have to start thinking the unthinkable. Don’t flare up. Have another biscuit instead.’ He got up to offer her the tin, deliberately changing the mood. ‘And tell me how you got on with Elise.’

  Perhaps she recognised his fear, or couldn’t confront her own. After a sharp blink, she took the biscuit and gave him a terse account of her morning.

  ‘I spent the afternoon looking through some of the evidence bags. Her clothes. And the doctor was right. Everything she had on, right down to her bra, was new. Marks and Spencer bra and slip – they never found her pants. Viyella suit and shirt. Middle-price range. The doctor might have sneered that it wasn’t your actual designer gear (I thought hospital doctors were supposed to be underpaid!) but it was the sort of thing I wore to court until I got the last promotion.’

  ‘Any theories?’

  ‘CID tried all the obvious ones first time round.’

  ‘Try the left-brain ones, then.’ It was so much easier to talk shop.

  ‘New everything, Mark. Even the soles of her shoes were still shiny,’ she recalled. ‘It’s the sort of fantasy I sometimes have when I have to go down to Devon. That instead of going there I’ll take another turning, go to a place I’ve never been and take on a new identity.’

  ‘I should imagine that the temptation must have been equally great on the return journey, when you had to battle into work and attempt to fit eight days’ duties into five working days.’

  ‘That’s much easier, thanks to you and this new case.’ She bit her lip. ‘This is so hard, Mark. I’ve never shared feelings like these before with anyone in the job.’

  ‘Is it the culture of the stiff upper lip or—’

  ‘That and – something in me. Anyway, now I’ve confessed I really can’t do a runner, can I?’ Her tone was far too bright.

  He tried to respond in kind. ‘Hardly worth trying these days: we could trace you through your credit cards, your mobile phone, the anti-theft tracking device in your car. Not a good time to disappear, Fran.’

  ‘It was for Elise.’

  ‘Whose damn tune I seem to hear wherever I go these days. Famous pianists on Classic FM, tinny music while I wait for my bank to deign to answer my call, even mobile phone tones. Damn Beethoven and his little friend. De dah de dah de dah de dum, da di dum,’ he sang, infusing a savage irony into the melody. ‘“Für Elise”.’

  ‘Or in our case, poor Elise.’

  They both used the German pronunciation, sounding the final e.

  His phone rang. As he lifted the handset, he covered it: ‘What time are you leaving?’ he mouthed.

  ‘Five minutes.’

  What a pity. He’d meant to suggest a drink and some pasta at his place. And after that… He resigned himself to his phone call, flapping a hand in farewell.

  Having failed to get a hair appointment, at least Fran had talked her way into her GP’s surgery. She stared at Dr Jennings in disbelief. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she told the young woman, who was hardly older than Kilvert. She too was a steady size six, neatly compact rather than bony. She looked as if she had yet to experience the menarche, let alone the menopause, though the receptionist said she’d just returned from her second maternity leave. ‘I hot flush for England,’ Fran continued. ‘I can’t sleep; I can’t concentrate; there are days I’m not so much depressed as despairing and you say I’m not a candidate for HRT.’

  ‘Surely, Miss Harman, you read the papers. HRT is hardly without side effects. I would suggest that breast cancer is likely to cause you more sleepless nights than a few flushes.’

  ‘Indeed, Dr Jennings, I do read the papers, enough to know that statistically my chances of getting breast cancer are negligibly increased if I take HRT for a short period. Which is all I want it for. To enable myself to do my fairly taxing job as a senior police officer properly until I retire in a few months’ time.’

  ‘You’re retiring?’ Suddenly she appeared interested.

  ‘To look after my elderly parents.’

  She was distinctly alert. ‘Does either of them have osteoporosis?’

  ‘Pa’s shaped like a question mark and Ma’s broken both wrists and her pelvis. I’d have thought that a very good reason on its own for me to take oestrogen for a bit.’

  ‘When you’re in your sixties, maybe. Meantime, you should take load-bearing exercise at least twenty minutes a day. Every day. There are plenty of excellent calcium supplements. And some people believe that alternative therapies can offer some assistance to your other symptoms, though in my opinion they’re little more than placebos. In any case, your symptoms shouldn’t last more than a year, two at most.’

  A fresh flush burnt its way up her chest and neck. ‘So you can offer me advice and placebos but nothing else.’

  ‘Correct. I wouldn’t want your death on my conscience, Miss Harman. Of course, if you’d had a couple of children and breastfed them for twelve months each, things might be different.’

  ‘What a shame my forward planning wasn’t as good as yours,’ Fran snapped. ‘I have to tell you that I’m far more at risk of having a car crash when I fall asleep at the wheel than of any sort of cancer.’

  ‘In that case,’ Jennings said, smiling sweetly and getting to her feet, ‘shouldn’t you be travelling by train?’

  Mark was there in the car park again at eight the following morning. What a good job Fran had rejected the impulse to return to the duvet and sleep out her sleep. And Mark was surely waiting. He was studying a file, so he couldn’t simply by coincidence have arrived a moment before she did. He was definitely waiting. And he had offered her a lift to Devon. So was he waiting for her?

  This time it was she who walked to his driver’s door, and he who looked up with a grin. Perhaps he’d been there longer than he’d ever admit: it was he who winced and staggered as he unfolded himself. He wasn’t old. In her book he was scarcely middle-aged. After all, he was her exact contemporary. But he had given an intimation of his mortality and, when she inevitably sweated, this time it was with fright. This was a friend, someone who might be more than a friend. It was bad enough when her own back seized up but she’d always kid herself with explanations that were probably no more than excuses – the long drive, the heavy gardening, the hours on her feet. But it was worse to see someone else in trouble. To be specific, it was worse to see Mark in trouble.

  He quickly righted himself, grabbing the hand she’d extended and clasping it, as she clasped his, a moment longer than necessary. But the sound of an approaching car sprung them apart, and both were ready with charm and dignity to greet the Chief Constable. She effaced herself while the two men strode hierarchically in together. But she wasn’t surprised when Mark mouthed over his shoulder, ‘Breakfast at eight-thirty?’ or that his face lit up as she nodded.

  The breakfast conversation, however, was devoted to the Elise case: the Chief was interested in what she was doing and wanted to be brought up to date over his muesli and green tea. Fran eyed his food with interest but not surprise. To have been promoted so far so young meant you had to take care of both body and brain. His muscles told her that some time in the week he found time for regular exercise, too, the sort the doctor had told her to take. Perhaps he balanced reports on the handlebars of his exercise bike.

  ‘Now I’ve seen the poor woman and spoken to those who treated her on her arrival in A and E,’ she said, ‘I’ve gone back to the original paperwork to see if
anything sparks any good ideas.’

  ‘And to check for sins of omission and commission,’ observed the Chief, earning a dutiful laugh. He peeled an underripe banana to slice on his muesli. ‘Good for the heart.’

  Fran had better add them to her shopping list.

  ‘I’m not expecting many of either. It’s just the fresh eyes syndrome. The other thing I want to do is talk to the man who often visits her. But there’s no regular pattern to his visits, and the hospital aren’t notably cooperative about letting me know if he turns up.’

  ‘We’re perilously short of manpower with the Royal Visit coming up,’ the Chief said warningly. ‘But if you think he’s a threat—’

  ‘A threat? It’d be a moot point if he could kill someone who’s brain dead. But I’d certainly like to eliminate him from our enquiries in a fairly low-profile way. Maybe I should take a file or two over and simply sit by Elise. Like a visitor. But even that might put him off.’

  ‘And I’m sure your skills could be put to considerably better use.’ The Chief eyed her shrewdly. ‘I must confess to finding it very hard to accept that you should be dedicating yourself to a single case, however important that may be. With your management and investigative experience you should be employed on wider projects. I know Mark says this is a special case – and I concede, that it’s better to have you sorting out a very tricky situation than taking endless unpaid leave and being no use to us at all – but surely you should be managing others, not acting as common gumshoe.’

  Mark compressed his lips till they were white, avoiding Fran’s gaze. She guessed the Chief had said as much and more when Mark was cajoling him into this course of action. Anyone would be embarrassed at being caught out in special pleading, she told herself. As for herself, she objected strongly to having all this rehearsed in the staff canteen: the pros and cons of her appointment should surely have been discussed in the privacy of one or other of their offices.

  ‘With respect, sir,’ she said, aware as always that the two words always meant the opposite, ‘though I’d be happy to have a team at my disposal, it was a large and experienced team that failed to find both Elise’s identity and her assailant’s first time round. I think finding the first will lead to the second. And at this stage, sniffing round on my own, an unthreatening middle-aged woman, I might just get the breakthrough we need. Then it’ll be time to bring in the full panoply of policing skills. Nor will I hesitate to do so. Miss Marple I am not.’

  Apparently unaware of the edge in her voice, the bright eyes met hers. ‘I can’t ever imagine you sitting quietly by the fire entranced by conversations about the church flowers, Fran. Nor, to be honest, can I imagine you arranging the said flowers, though I’m sure you’d do it admirably. No, when Mark told me that looking after your parents was what you had in mind I told him he couldn’t be serious. Nor can you, Fran. You’re a high-flying career woman. It would be the worst thing in the world for you, and pretty well the worst for your parents.’

  ‘That’s not how they see it, sir.’ Surely he would realise how he was offending her.

  ‘My son’s doing King Lear as one of his A Level texts at the moment. There’s a bit in there about a child’s duty to its parents. Let’s see: You have begot me, bred me, lov’d me; I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you and most honour you. Which sounds as if she ought to be devoting herself entirely to him. But then she adds, Haply, when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty.’

  Half of her marvelled at his recall and indeed his delivery, not to mention the fact that in his frantic week he still found time to be a good father. The other half seethed at the bland assumption that he could preach like this. Fran shrugged – he might see it as apologetically; Mark, knowing her so much better, would sense the anger and irony. ‘The trouble is, sir, I never had a lord to take my hand. A husband and a couple of kids would have been the answer,’ she continued ironically. To her parents and her GP alike.

  He shook his head. ‘As I told my son, the lord’s hand in marriage can be a metaphor – remember those from your schooldays, Fran? – for a woman’s career. In my experience, you can’t go back, ever.’

  She felt like a child with her contradiction. ‘It wouldn’t be going back, sir. It would be to a new town, a new county, a new set of – of occupations,’ she concluded.

  ‘Let me offer you Shakespeare again. Who is it that goes to pieces in Othello when he loses his job – when his occupation’s gone? My own A level this time,’ he added with a totally disarming smile. ‘Which is why I can’t remember the quotation.’ Folding the banana skin neatly in the muesli bowl, he drank his tea in one medicinal-looking draught. ‘Revolting!’

  Neither Fran nor Mark bothered to argue.

  ‘They say it’s good for you,’ he grimaced, ‘mopping up free radicals.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were still any at large after this Home Secretary’s legislation,’ Fran observed.

  She enjoyed the Chief’s expression until she got as far as the ladies’ loo, when yet another flush assailed her.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I can’t stay long today, Elise. I wish I could. I fully intended to, in fact, but that male nurse, the bearded one who blows hot and cold so you don’t know where you are with him, he gave me a very funny look as I came in. No, I must be imagining it. Why should anyone look at me? Perhaps he just thought it strange that I should come in before lunch.

  ‘Perhaps, heaven forbid, he fancies me. That’s the term my students use. I always thought there might be a touch of the DH Lawrence and the latent homosexuality about him. Maybe more than a touch with Michael. Not that he’d experience major difficulties these days, at least in the public arena. I sometimes think our department’s run by the Gay Mafia. And then I realise they’d be very unpleasant people whatever their sexual orientation. Take our union representative, now. When I was passed over for promotion I asked him to accompany me to discuss the business with my head of department. Did he back me? Not one iota! It seems he had his eye on the job for himself. What do you think about that? Not very moral? Quite. The pay off is this. Within a month, a little month; or ere those shoes were old in which he used to pace the corridors of power, he wangled a job in the media and left without notice. Just like that. All those students untaught and untutored, so long as he could get the job he wanted. The media. Isn’t it amazing how people have forgotten it’s the plural form of the word. I even have students writing about medias, these days, God bless us all. Criteria; phenomena; bacteria: people get those completely confused. Which reminds me, I hope your nursing staff wash their hands. One hears so much about MRSA these days. I always take the precaution of washing mine, both before and after my visit. Now, I really have a very busy day ahead of me, and I absolutely do not wish to be caught up in protracted conversation with Michael. So I shall love you and leave you, if you’ll forgive the cliché. Goodbye, my dear. Remember, it really is essential that you return instanter to your senses.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  What had happened to her youth? A more accurate question might be why she had wasted her youth. It tormented her through the morning, despite the pile of information she’d set herself to absorb.

  Fran sat at her new desk, in her new chair, chewing the end of a new pencil in a very old gesture. Things might have been different if she had gone to university when she was eighteen, of course. Then in her twenties she could have been building on her degree, developing her career with sensible stratagems, marrying and having a family. But there hadn’t been enough money. She’d have had a grant in those days, of course, and would certainly have worked during vacations to keep herself. So why wouldn’t there have been enough money? There had been for Hazel, who’d also started an MA but had given up and settled for a teaching qualification. There’d also been plenty of money for Hazel’s first wedding, a far from sober affair, quite unlike her second, to Grant. She remembered
– she must have been eighteen, waiting for her A Level results – her father eyeing the growing collection of empty Asti bottles on the hotel terrace, sighing with relief and saying he was glad that one daughter wasn’t the marrying sort. After all, she wouldn’t get far in the police if she went and fell for some man who wouldn’t understand shift work.

  ‘You’re both good girls and we’re proud of you both,’ Ma had added, adjusting the brim of her hat and mopping perspiration. Perhaps Ma had been menopausal then, come to think of it. ‘And if you can’t be pretty, like Hazel, at least you can be dignified in that uniform of yours. Look at her, isn’t she a picture?’

  And Hazel had been, her colouring brought out by the creamy silk of her wedding gown. The green she’d chosen for her bridesmaids had made them look like candidates for their own funerals, but that was every bride’s prerogative. And no, Fran would never have been a belle. If anything, age had improved her. As a singleton, she’d been able to afford the best cosmetics, the best clothes, the best hair care. Her job required her to keep fit, and pleasure and determination had made her a fearsome badminton player, so her figure would have drawn sidelong glances of envy from many women twenty years her junior. She’d once been hoping – in the words of the silver cliché – to grow old disgracefully.

  But now she was to look after her parents.

  Had their brainwashing that she was not the marrying sort been intentional? Or simply the natural thing to do thirty years ago, an insurance policy for their old age? Leaning her head against the cold window of her office, Fran couldn’t be sure she could exonerate them.