Tattletale

by Sarah J. Naughton

  Jody’s latch lies on the floor, the wood splintered where it was torn out. She must be strong, this woman, though she is as slight as her brother. Perhaps she would not be so easily hurt.

  I creep over the threshold, cupping my belly as if a comforting hand will somehow make up for the pounding of my heart and the rushing of my blood. The baby will feel my fear and be afraid too. I am unworthy of him.

  As I pass up the landing, the shouting goes on.

  I reach the open door.

  I have never seen inside this flat before. It is as shabby and poor as ours, but the walls are covered in pictures. They are, I think, supposed to be drawings of Abe. In the middle of the room is a table. A pair of scissors lie open.

  The sister stands at the table, her face as white as sultjash as she snatches up scraps of paper and hurls them to the floor, shouting all the while. Jody is pressed against the wall, sobbing.

  It does not seem that the sister plans to hurt her. I could go. They haven’t seen me.

  The sudden silence when the shouting ends is almost shocking. My ears ring with it and my pulse pounds in my head. The baby is so still inside me. Have I frightened him to death?

  Abe’s mild eyes look down at us from the pencil drawings.

  She picks up the last piece of paper – or two pieces taped together. I cannot make out the image and I think she is going to toss it to the floor with the rest, but she doesn’t. The next words she says are so cold and clear that I understand them perfectly.

  ‘You were never his fiancée. You were his stalker.’

  Now, with a curl of her lip, she brings both hands up to the top of the paper and starts to twist her thumbs. She is going to tear it in two.

  Jody screams then. ‘No, no, no!’

  And before I can do anything, she lunges for the scissors.

  She sits quietly, her homework on her lap, pencil poised, head bent as if she is reading it. But she isn’t. She can’t concentrate. Her brain is throwing off pulses of warmth that fizzle through her blood, making her fingertips and the ends of her toes tingle.

  Her brother sits beside her. It’s a double bed so there’s plenty of room, but still they sit close – well, she sits close to him, close enough to feel his chest rise and fall at every sigh and every impatient jerk of his pencil, as if the movements were made by her own body.

  The duvet is soft under her bare thighs. And so clean! They change the sheets every single week and pour a thick blue liquid into the tray of the machine that makes them smell like flowers. The carpets are a sort of fudgey beige and most of the furniture is white. Their father drinks lots of coffee from an expensive stainless steel machine, and so, from breakfast onwards, the house is filled with its rich musk. Their mother bakes. From scratch. Using free-range organic eggs with bright orange yolks. She has promised to teach her how to make a lemon drizzle cake. Which is easy, apparently.

  Her brother huffs and drops his head back onto the headboard.

  ‘Bollocking hell.’

  She smiles. She would like to be able to help him, but though they are the same age, he is working at a far higher level. She is dyslexic. Not thick and useless and a waste of space, but dyslexic. Her new parents suspected it and the teachers tested her. That is why she’s so creative, they have told her. Dyslexic people are more imaginative than other people. They call it ‘having an imagination’, not lying, and she doesn’t feel the need to lie any more. There is nothing to hide. Nothing to be ashamed of, they have told her. Nothing.

  ‘Wanna play Grand Theft Auto?’

  She screws up her nose. She promised their mother that she wouldn’t let him distract her. She has been making good progress. She can read Harry Potter, now. She is on a special programme at school called Soundbites, and that has helped her with her spelling.

  ‘Come on. I can’t be arsed with this.’

  He slides off the bed, scratching his lower back, making the T-shirt ride up. The skin on his back is completely smooth and blemish-free. His deodorant has a pleasant minty smell, and sometimes after a match he smells of sweat. But not the stale, fetid reek of poor hygiene: a fresh, young smell, that you could bottle and sell as a perfume. She can feel love creeping up on her, warming her up from deep inside all the way to her fingertips. But she’s not afraid. This is not a love born of desperation, but one she can rely on forever. Her brother will always be there for her. They will grow old together. He will be a doting uncle to her children. She will have children. They’ve told her that she still can, despite everything.

  He swigs from the litre bottle of Coke on the bedside table, the muscles in his throat rippling as the liquid passes through. When he has finished he hurls the empty bottle at the waste paper basket and misses, then wipes his arm across his mouth.

  ‘Come on, dopey. What are you staring at?’

  ‘What if Mum comes up?’

  He snorts. ‘Mother wouldn’t dare come in here without asking. I might be wanking!’

  He gives a barking laugh and she smiles.

  They play the game for more than an hour and she is glad when he announces that he is hungry and tosses the controller onto the carpet. He stands and stretches. His stomach is muscley and a line of dark hair runs from his belly button into the low waistband of his sweatpants. Suddenly, for no reason at all, her throat tightens.

  ‘I’ll go and make you a sandwich,’ she says quickly. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Bacon. Loads of ketchup. Microwave the bread first so the butter melts. Oh, and a cup of tea, please, Sisterella.’

  ‘Coming right up!’ She smiles and tries to haul herself out of the beanbag, but it’s too low and she stumbles back. He sniggers and grasps her arm, yanking her up so forcefully she stumbles into his chest. It is rock-hard from all the exercise he does. She can feel his blue eyes on her face but she doesn’t meet his gaze.

  ‘What do you fancy?’ he says. His breath is sour from all the Coke.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You should eat more. Look at you. Flat as a pancake.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He smacks her bum as she goes out of the room.

  24. Mags

  I sit alone in a squalid little interview room. The table is pocked with cigarette burns, little black scoops I can just fit my fingertips into. I’ve been doing this for three quarters of an hour, waiting for PC Derbyshire to come and take my statement, all the time resisting calling Daniel, who is probably on date night with Donna.

  Jody’s attempt to murder me was laughable. The hand holding the scissors shook so much the light bounced off the blades like a disco ball. I leaped at her and snatched them from her hands and I might very well have used them on her if weren’t for the sudden entrance of Mira. She thrust herself between the two of us, waving her hands and crying, ‘Ndal! Ndal!’

  It was the sheer melodrama of the scene as much as anything else that chastened me, and I sat down at the table while she called the police and Jody wailed like a child and tried to gather up her papers.

  There were several letters from Abe, asking her to stop, warning her that he’d speak to Peter Selby, letters she had cut words out of to make new ones that said what she wanted them to. My Jody … I love you … I will be yours always …

  The walls of her flat were covered in awful pencil drawings of Abe. Abe smiling. Abe sleeping. Abe gazing into the distance, a Pierrot tear on his cheek. Laughable if they weren’t so pathetic.

  There were a few photographs too, that I assume she stole from his flat after the accident. One had been grainily enlarged on a copier and clumsily spliced together with a picture of her. Full-size it was obvious, but she had managed to shrink it down – perhaps at the Internet café – to create something vaguely convincing, if you didn’t look too hard. I’d been convinced. It had been sitting there on the bedside table all that time and I hadn’t given it a thought.

  My cruel impulse to tear it to pieces in front of her eyes was what triggered her pitiful attack,
but I’m glad it stopped me. This was evidence after all. Evidence that she was a psychopath who had stalked my brother and pushed him to his death when he rejected her advances.

  How could I have been so stupid to believe all her stories? They might as well have been about fairies and unicorns.

  The door finally opens and PC Derbyshire enters. ‘Miss Mackenzie.’ Her voice is clipped and professional. Hopefully she’s feeling rather foolish for all that not every tragedy is a crime stuff.

  ‘I’ve written out my statement,’ I say, pushing the paper across to her.

  It takes her a long time to read it. Finally she looks up at me. ‘You seem convinced Miss Currie attempted to murder your brother.’

  ‘Of course she did. And it won’t be attempted murder when I have to switch his machine off.’

  She shifts in her seat, making the swivel mechanism squeal, then places both hands palm down on the table. I wonder if this is in the police handbook under placating gestures.

  ‘Miss Currie denies having anything to do with your brother’s accident.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s an accident now? You do know she’s a notorious liar? You told me she wasn’t known to you in a criminal capacity. That’s bullshit, though, isn’t it? Eight years ago she was done for crying rape.’

  ‘Charges were never brought, and I didn’t feel it was relevant to this case.’

  ‘Not relevant that she’s a liar? You believed her story without making any attempt to investigate.’

  Derbyshire inhales and exhales before she speaks again. ‘The unfortunate fact is that there were no witnesses to your brother’s fall, and the evidence is circumstantial at best. Aside from the caution over the rape claim, Miss Currie has never been in trouble before, she never threatened your brother with violence, and your brother never complained to us that he felt in danger. Plus I don’t think she’d have the physical strength to overpower him.’

  I fold my arms. ‘Don’t they call stalking “murder in slow motion”?’

  She blinks her porcine eyes, the lashes clogged with brown mascara. ‘Your brother never reported a stalking incident to us. It seems to me that Miss Currie just had a very strong, unrequited attachment to him – and she does have a history of forming these powerful crushes.’

  ‘What sort of history?’

  ‘The boy she accused of rape – the foster brother – she had, by all accounts, developed a bit of a thing for him too.’

  ‘A bit of a thing?’ I stare at her. ‘She accused him of rape when he rejected her. And now my brother rejects her and, lo and behold, he ends up brain-dead. You can’t see any sort of connection there?’

  ‘Shall I help you out?’

  Her square cheeks are reddening now as she tries to stop herself saying the things she really wants to. She’s not silly. She knows I’m a lawyer, can probably guess that I’m recording all this with my phone.

  ‘Crying rape and murder are very different crimes, with very different criminal pathologies.’

  ‘That boy turned to drugs because of her. A good life ruined.’ I remember how cold I was to his mother, Helen, and guilt only fuels my anger. ‘She should have gone to prison.’

  The policewoman sighs. ‘Jody Currie has only ever been a danger to herself, Miss Mackenzie. There’s not enough evidence for us to charge her with your brother’s attempted murder.’

  ‘I want to see your superior officer.’

  She breathes deeply, gathering herself. ‘Your brother was a strong, fit young man. He’d been a member of Stone’s Boxing Club for five years.’

  I open my mouth to protest that this is the first I’ve heard of it, but remember in time that everything Jody told me about my brother is a lie.

  ‘We’ve spoken to the manager, who said that though he was lean he was a very powerful fighter. Apparently he had been the victim of homophobic attacks as a teenager and had learned to defend himself.’

  An angry flush rises to my cheek. ‘You knew my brother was gay and you never thought to mention it to me? You just let me believe that crazy bitch all along.’

  She looks at me steadily. ‘People’s private lives are complicated, Miss Mackenzie. It only becomes our business when a crime has been committed.’

  ‘Like pushing someone over a stairwell?’

  ‘As I was saying, it’s very unlikely Miss Currie would have the physical strength to overpower your brother.’

  ‘She could have caught him off-balance.’

  ‘If there had been a fight or argument someone in the building would have heard something.’

  I snort. ‘Those crazies?’

  ‘We’ve spoken to her social worker who agrees that she is not a violent person. In her statement Miss Currie says that she came out of her flat after hearing a strange noise – sound carries in that place, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It was then that she saw your brother lying on the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairwell. She went down to see if she could help him, then called 999 on her mobile. I can play you the recording if you like. She’s hysterical.’

  ‘So she’s a good actress. She had her mobile with her, so either she’d just been out and was coming in or she was just about to go out, right?’

  ‘Some people keep their mobiles in their pockets all the time. Or she looked over the stairwell, saw what had happened, and ran back inside to get it before she went down to Abe.’

  I stare at her. Useless bloody British police. I could pursue a civil case: the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong.

  ‘You are at least going to prosecute her for wasting police time, right? All the lies about him being depressed?’

  ‘We’ve cautioned her.’

  ‘Another caution? After everything she’s done?’

  ‘I accept you must feel that she made a fool of you, but injuring someone’s pride is not a crime.’

  I hesitate before answering, to make sure my voice is steady. ‘So, if you’re so convinced this psycho had nothing to do with it, how do you think my brother fell?’

  There is a long beat of silence.

  The policewoman’s lipstick is seeping through the wrinkles around her mouth. Why do they do it, these women in positions of power? Why do they cling to these outdated conventions of femininity? She looks like an aging air stewardess.

  ‘I still think he might have been depressed,’ she says, and her voice is human again. ‘I believe there’s a history of mental illness in your family.’

  I stiffen.

  ‘We spoke to his GP in Scotland. As you probably know, Abe was treated for depression when he was fifteen.’ She’s carefully avoiding my gaze. ‘He was working extremely hard and his employers admitted he was under a lot of pressure. I think he jumped, Mary,’ she says gently.

  I breathe slowly, tempted to correct her – It’s Miss Mackenzie to you – but what’s the point?

  She gets up from the table, taking my statement, with all its allegations about Jody, and tells me I can stay in the room as long as I need to.

  When she’s gone I stare at the pale blue wall, with its single claw mark gouged into the plaster.

  It’s not my fault. I was a child, the same as Abe. We both did what we had to to survive. I’m not surprised he was depressed. He medicated with Prozac while I did so with booze and casual sex. The former cry for help always inspires more sympathy than the latter, of course.

  In the silence I hear muffled voices and doors banging, the occasional laugh. Is she here? Have they finished with her already? Sent her home to spin some new tale in which I am the wicked sister who poisoned Abe’s mind against her, or killed him to prevent them being together?

  I could just go home. Back to my old life. Back to Jackson for some no-strings distraction. Leave Abe’s future in the hands of the doctors. Leave Daniel to Donna.

  I close my eyes and push my fingertips back into the scorch marks. The room smells of stale smoke. They can’t have changed the carpets since the ban came in.

  My phone, on silent, buzzes ang
rily in my bag. I force myself not to look, but can’t repress the childish hope that it might be Daniel.

  Perhaps Derbyshire is right. Maybe Abe jumped. He was overworked and exhausted. Jody was on his case the whole time, so he must have dreaded coming home. Perhaps the relationship with Redhorse came to a bitter end and left him heartbroken.

  And yet the picture Lula painted of my brother was not of a depressive. He might have been as a closeted gay teenager, but now? The novel on his bedside table was half finished; I came to the page he had turned down, just after the plot twist when everything was thrown up in the air. It sounds silly, but wouldn’t you find out what happened before you jumped? Unless it was on impulse. On the way back from a lonely night drowning his sorrows? Except that he hadn’t drunk anything. And it happened early evening, only an hour or so after he’d got back from work.

  I think of the bruises on Jody’s clavicles and Abe’s torn shirt, both signs of a struggle.

  The fact that Abe was not wearing his jacket with his wallet in the pocket, as if someone had knocked on the door of the flat and called him outside for a moment.

  I think about the fact that she was prepared to destroy the life of the last man who rejected her.

  She did it, I’m sure of it, but with so little evidence what can I do?

  Getting up from the table my legs feel like lead. I pick up my bag and walk back through the corridors of the police station, then ask to be buzzed out into the main reception area.

  The woman who visited Jody on her birthday is there, speaking quietly to the duty officer. She breaks off when she sees me.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss Mackenzie. My name’s Tabitha Obodom. I’m Jody Currie’s social worker. Could I—?’

  I push past her. I don’t want to hear whatever sob story she’s going to concoct to make me drop my accusations. I’m done with stories.