I hail a cab and am back at St Jerome’s by midday. Letting myself into the main door I glance at the piles of post. There’s another sheaf of leaflets for Abe, fastened with an elastic band. But peeping from the garish yellows and reds of the takeaway menus is a corner of white that might be a personal letter. I slide it out.
A blank white envelope. Probably another flyer.
I open it and unfold the single piece of paper.
For a moment I just stare at it. Then somewhere above me a door opens. I screw the paper into my pocket and pass through the inner door, ducking my head as I hurry up the stairs, not pausing until I am inside the flat with the door securely closed behind me.
Written on the paper are just three words.
She is lying
17. Jody
Our English teacher used to say that cavemen had invented stories to make sense of a brutal and chaotic world. She said that was where God came from. I don’t believe that – I have faith – but I do believe stories are important to make sense of things we can’t understand. Like dreams.
Dreams can come true.
That was another song from my childhood. I would lie on my bed in Abbot’s Manor, eyes closed, dreaming of the future I would make for myself. The past wasn’t the truth; it wasn’t even a dream. It was nothing, gone, forgotten; only real if I let it be. Like the fairies in Peter Pan who die when you stop believing in them.
Today at the hospital I believed so hard that you were going to wake up – and then your eyes opened! Just for a moment, but it showed me that all I have to do is believe harder and I can make it happen. Like us. I believed we would be together and now we are.
You’ll open your eyes again, and this time your beautiful brown irises will drift over to my face. It will take a moment for you to recognise me. At first you’ll think I’m just part of the strange dream you have been dreaming for weeks. Then you’ll remember. Or perhaps you won’t. Perhaps you’ll just understand in your heart that I love you, that you’re safe, that I’ll never leave you.
When I get back from the hospital I draw a picture of you, in the hospital bed, but I draw your eyes open, and when I get to your mouth I make your lips parted, as if they are just about to speak my name.
Jody? Is that you?
It’s not very good, even though I’m copying it from a photograph, but it doesn’t have to be. I know your face so well that I can picture it happening. I can hear the crack in your voice because it’s been so long since you’ve spoken, the whisper of your hair against the pillow as you turn your head to look at me.
But just then, as if she’s doing it deliberately to ruin my perfect moment, my phone rings. Though I deleted her number long ago, I still recognise it at once. I let it ring and ring until I can’t stand it, and press my hands over my ears and scream silently. Then abruptly it stops, leaving echoes like the waves of pain after you stub your toe.
I stare at the phone for what feels like ages, but still jump when it lights up with a message. I can’t delete it until I’ve listened to three seconds of it.
‘Hello, Jody. I’ve got a birthday present for you, but it won’t fit through the letterbox so I thought I’d drop—’
Message deleted.
Why won’t she leave me alone? Why must she force herself back into my life every year, like tearing open the scar of a freshly healed wound? I don’t want to think about her, about any of them. I try to push them away by thinking about you, but I can feel the dark waters rising and rising, and then I can’t stop them and they break over me.
18. Mags
What does it mean?
Is the she Jody? Or the junkie? Or could it be Mira?
And what are they supposed to be lying about? Abe’s fall?
But then what possible reason would this writer have for sending a note to me rather than going to the police?
I pick up my phone to call PC Derbyshire, then change my mind.
I’m living in a church full of the damaged and mentally ill. Perhaps this is just malice, or delusion, or plain old racism. Someone with a grudge against one of these women. A jealous lover? Before I go to the police and stir up any trouble for them I need to at least make an attempt to get to the bottom of who sent it.
The handwriting is neat – possibly female? – but there’s no full stop, which could suggest the writer is poorly educated.
There was no name on the front of the envelope, which suggests that the person who wrote it slipped it inside the rest of his post. This means either they managed to get into St Jerome’s to do so, or they were already in. A resident. Letting myself quietly out of the flat I go back downstairs and out of the main door. Huddled against the wind that races around the building I study the entry panel of names. None of the handwriting seems to match the note, but some of the labels are printed, and others might have been written by partners. It occurs to me that I’ve never seen Mira’s husband, only heard their door shutting quietly late at night. She must be very lonely.
Lonely enough to seek comfort with my brother? Surely not right on Jody’s doorstep – literally. Plus she’s married and, judging by her dress, a devout Muslim. Get a grip, Mags.
As I trudge back upstairs it occurs to me that perhaps the note wasn’t intended for me at all, but for Abe. Could there be others?
Back in the flat I forage through the chaotic box of papers but find nothing aside from bank statements, bills and receipts. Then I notice the laptop, tucked on top of a stack of shoeboxes, its charger still plugged into the socket at the back of the cupboard. Green. Fully charged. And when I open the lid the screen springs into life.
A stroke of luck, but also more evidence that he didn’t intend to commit suicide? Unless there’s a note, or email.
His email account is open and I find an inbox stuffed with junk and mailings from theatres and listings magazines. There are a few messages from Sunnydale reminding him about time sheets and a drug recall, but not much else, certainly no suicide note and, weirdly, nothing at all from Jody. When I’m seeing someone I seem to spend half my time composing clever texts and emails. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Jody didn’t even have a computer. Abe’s is a pretty battered old Dell model. Maybe she can’t afford one. The phone would have been more revealing – I know she has one of those – but it’s locked and I can’t exactly ask to look over her sweet nothings.
Minimising the email I notice that his wallpaper is a picture of a Disney-style castle against a background of misty lilac hills. It seems oddly impersonal. Mine features me and Jackson knocking back tequila shots with a movie star friend of a client.
Then it hits me: the castle is called Eilean Donan. Abe and I went there on a school trip. The whole of the lower school went, seventy-five of us, in two coaches. My best friend was sick and so I agreed to let Abe sit next to me on the bus, mainly because my other girlfriends thought he was adorable. This meant that though he was in the year below they still fancied him, but had to pretend they only wanted to mother him.
We travelled north, skirting endless stretches of dark loch, studded by tiny islands that held a single tree or ruined bothy. Abe gazed out of the window. When we went under an avenue of trees his reflection swam up into the glass, dark eyes meeting mine, then looking away. He answered their questions but never offered any of his own thoughts.
We riffled through his packed lunch and took the bits we wanted, leaving him our cheese triangles and pieces of fruit, which he took without complaint.
It must have been autumn or spring because the sun glared through the bus windows, reddening our faces, but when we finally got out in the car park we stamped our feet and swore and wished we hadn’t been too vain to bring our coats. My girlfriends carried on complaining as we traipsed out of the carpark and the weary teachers allowed them to go straight to the visitor centre.
But I didn’t go with them.
I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life as that castle shimmering into view out of the loch mist.
I followed the younger kids on the tour, through tartan rooms filled with antlers and thirteenth-century books, and then out to the battlements.
When everyone else had gone off to eat their packed lunches I was still standing there, looking out to the western sky, shot with red as the early sunset crept across the hills.
I became aware of Abe standing beside me. Just the two of us beneath that vast, uncaring sky.
We stood in silence until the sun started going down behind the hills and the cold seeped into my bones.
When I turned to leave I saw he was crying.
The tears had been caught by the setting sun and turned to little droplets of blood on his cheek. Something about the place, its beauty and stillness and silence, loosened my heart just a little bit and I put my arm around him. I had never done it before, and I never did it again, but for a few minutes before the sun disappeared behind the hills and the air grew numbingly cold, we stood together as brother and sister, realising, perhaps for the first time, that the world was beautiful.
How could I have forgotten?
Then we got back on the coach and went home. Thinking about it now, I wonder if that trip was the moment things changed, when we stopped trying to get the other one into trouble, started lying for one another, warning each other when our father was on the warpath.
Perhaps. It all seems so long ago.
When I try to blow it up the image pixelates into meaningless blocks of colour.
Then I spot a folder in the corner of the screen, called People. I click on it.
It’s divided up into five subfolders and each filename is a surname: Bridger, Khan, Okeke, Perkins, Lyons. I click on the first and a word document comes up entitled Freddie Bridger. He’s eighty-three, with diabetes and early-stage dementia. There’s a photograph of a slack-jawed, bald man in a tank top, alongside an address and a list of dates Abe visited and the medicines he administered. I close it and glance through the other five folders. Aroon Khan: sixty-five, prostate cancer and Parkinson’s. Kone Okeke: seventy-nine, diabetes and deafness. Molly Perkins: sixty-eight, arthritis and incontinence. Lula Lyons: ninety, rheumatism, heart disease and high blood pressure. Lula’s photo must have been taken in the fifties. She has flame-red hair and scarlet lips and wide green eyes framed by impossibly long lashes. God knows what she must look like now.
Then I see her address.
Flat One, St Jerome’s Church, N19.
The creepy old lady from downstairs. And according to the file he visited her twice a week, sometimes spending more than two hours with her. She must have known him very well. Well enough to be able to tell me more about his state of mind?
Then I notice, in the corner of the screen, another folder. This one with a more unusual surname: Redhorse.
I double click.
Instead of word documents, this folder contains a series of jpegs. I click one.
It is an image of two men. They are naked. The man standing is big and muscular, his skin whitish pink and glistening with perspiration, his pubic hair dark blond. On his hip is a tattoo of a red horse.
The man kneeling in front of him, elegant fingers splayed around the other’s buttocks, mouth stretched wide to receive his cock, is my brother.
19. Jody
The panic attack goes on for an hour. I try to be as quiet as possible, but I can hear the church listening.
Afterwards my stomach aches with the pain of crying so hard, but also with hunger. I haven’t eaten all day. I should go out and get something. Tabby always says it’s important for me to eat properly because blood sugar affects your mood, but if I went out now I’d have to cross the grass in the dark.
If I still had your keys I could make myself a sandwich with some of the seeded bread you keep in the freezer. It’s half finished so I know you’ve touched it. I think of what I would order if we were going to Cosmo tonight, of what you would have, the wine you would choose, the way we would clink glasses, looking over the rims at one another. How we would come home together, helping each other up the stairs, a little bit tired and giggly from the wine.
Looking out of the spyhole I can almost see us, your arm around me as you let us into your flat.
Then your door opens. For a moment – for the split second until I remember what has happened – I’m paralysed, my breath frozen in my throat as I expect you to walk out onto the landing.
And then you do.
My heart stutters to a halt.
But of course it’s not you. It’s your sister, in a manly black suit, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. It’s a hard look, the sort that would put most men off. Her eyes are so smoky that from the shadows of my doorway they look like deep black holes in her face. Her lips are red like a vampire’s.
Where is she going?
She glances over then and I’m pinned down by her dark eyes, the pupils catching a splinter of light from the main entrance far below. Then she starts descending the stairs, her heels clicking.
Where is she going? When will she be back?
She asks so many questions. They’re like fingers picking at the edges of my life, trying to peel away the layers to get to the tender part beneath. I daren’t go out until she comes back, in case I bump into her.
I wait by the door and eventually fall asleep on the hall chair. I’m woken by laughter and stumbling footsteps on the stairs, and then a white glare slashes under my door as the landing light goes on.
‘Shhh,’ Mags whispers, giggling, ‘they can hear everything here.’
‘Not this, they can’t,’ says a man’s voice.
I creep to the spyhole. The man is tall and broad, his blond hair cropped tight. He’s grinning as he grabs her around the waist and jerks her into him. My body goes rigid as I wait to see if she will be able to get away. But she doesn’t try to. Instead, her arm slides down and disappears between their bodies. He gasps, then gives a breathless laugh.
A trill of repulsion passes through me as she leans into him and their mouths press together.
Wet snuffles and rustles echo through the stairwell. I wonder what time it is, that they can be so brazen, so unafraid that someone will come out of their flat or hear the noise and look through their spyhole. It’s long after pub closing time so the man next door will be back soon.
He’s kissing her so roughly that she stumbles back, coming up sharply against the banister: a hand slams down to steady herself, making the metal ring. But it doesn’t make them stop. She raises her knee high up his thigh and slides her hand under his shirt, exposing a ridge of fat above his waistband.
One hand supporting herself, the other pulling his head down, she arches her back as he buries his face in her chest, like an animal at a feeding trough.
And then, in a flash, it is you bent over the banister like that, gripping the arms that held you, and I open my mouth to scream at him to stop, STOP!
But then it’s her again.
Just when I think she’s going to overbalance and fall backwards, she lunges forward to bite his neck and they lurch away from the banister. Her legs are around his waist now and he’s supporting her whole weight. I wait for him to slam her against the wall and force himself into her, but he doesn’t. They stay where they are in the middle of the landing, just kissing. I move closer to the door to listen for the words: words that have always sounded more like hate than love – you want it, you whore, you dirty bitch, you slut – but there aren’t any. They kiss in silence.
My breath steams up the spyhole and I move away to clear it, squatting in the darkness, trying to keep my breath shallow and quiet. Cold air trickles under my door. The scent of perfume mingled with that smell all men have at the end of an evening – sweat and alcohol and harsh medicinal deodorant. It makes the muscles between my legs contract. When I return to the spyhole he has her up against your door and his trousers are around his thighs. His naked buttocks clench as he pushes himself into her. Her black ankle boots, so small around his broad hips, twitch at every thrust and her
hands grip his back as if she is in pain.
And then the light flicks off and I can just hear rustling, animal grunts, and a soft knocking, as if someone is trying to get into your flat.
It goes on and on and then suddenly there is a sharp intake of breath, as if he has hurt her properly. The rustling rises in pitch, the knocking gets louder, the man pants like a dog. I should go out and help her, Abe. Like I should have helped you, but I’m scared. Not as scared as I was that night, but so scared that it takes me several seconds to pluck up the courage to reach for the door latch.
But as my fingers close around the cold brass, the rustling and grunting abruptly ceases and there is a beat of absolute silence.
Then Mags speaks.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ she says, in a loud clear voice that echoes through the darkness.
The classroom is warm. She’s trying to concentrate on what Miss Jarvis is saying, but she keeps falling asleep, her chin slipping off her hand to jerk her awake, producing titters from her classmates.
‘So, somebody tell me one way we can use an apostrophe.’
Zoe Hill puts up her hand. ‘When we shorten something, like “that’s” instead of “that is”. The apostrophe goes before the “s”.’
She frowns, trying to understand, but her head is muzzy and the pain in her back is distracting. She shifts in her seat, making the wood creak, and Miss Jarvis’s eyes flick towards the sound. When she realises where it’s coming from the teacher gives her a ghost of a smile, then looks away. Sometimes, when the teachers do this – offer her some sign of friendship or sympathy – she feels like a zoo animal, a chimp behind a glass wall. The visitors who walk by feel so sorry for her being trapped in there; they make sad faces at her and shake their heads, then they move on.
She shifts again and the pain in her back makes her gasp.
Behind her, Emily Bright mimics the sound. She and Emily used to be friends, but then Emily’s mum told her they weren’t allowed to play together. Emily told everyone that she was dirty and her parents were criminals and that she and her brother did things with each other after bedtime. Emily got into serious trouble for that one, so she keeps quiet now, only tripping the little girl up when no teachers are looking, bumping her tray at lunch so her food falls on the floor, or scribbling over her best drawings, the ones she keeps in her desk to look at when she’s feeling sad. Her favourite one was of an angel sitting beside a little girl in a field of pink flowers. She’d done the sky really well, shading in the whole area above the flowers, instead of just putting a blue line at the top like some of the others did. But Emily drew a big brown blob coming out of the angel’s mouth that was obviously supposed to be poo, and she drew cuts and purple bruises all over the little girl. It makes her feel sad to look at it now, sad and scared, and when the teacher isn’t watching she will throw it away.
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