by Stef Penney
“But you don’t know that it is her, do you? You don’t know anything yet.”
“No.”
“It could be anyone. Someone . . . else.”
“Yes.”
“When will you know?”
“They can’t say.”
“Oh.”
She pulls herself together and glares at me.
“You can’t leave me with this. I don’t know what to do. You have to go and tell them as soon as possible. I can’t have this on my mind. I can’t.”
“All right. I’ll go tomorrow. I’ll tell them.”
“First thing. Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
It’s not what I planned, but then, why not? After all, what else can I do, other than wait?
“As I said, we don’t know anything for sure. The . . . remains could have been there twenty years, not six. It could be anyone.”
“But it could be her. That’s what you think.”
The sadness I feel now is as acute as the happiness I felt on the London Road a few hours earlier. All around us, the other diners seem to feel it and bow their heads, crushed under the weight of my fumbling, stupid melancholy. The waiters are hushed and mournful, gliding about with downcast eyes. The crêpe suzette wilts on our plates. It knows it wasn’t wanted. As we’re waiting for the bill, I gather the nerve for one more outrage. After all, I probably won’t get another chance. I don’t think I have anything left to lose.
“Can I ask you something?”
She squints at me over the cigarette she is in the process of lighting. “Isn’t that always a stupid question?”
“Yes. You don’t have to answer. Are you happy with him?”
She sucks in some smoke, waits for a minute, then it reappears slowly, transformed, like magic, like smoke from her fiery core. How I envy smokers; they have built-in excuses for stalling. Her eyes are far, far away—in the past? In the future? With him? Then they snap back to me.
“You’ve got a fucking nerve.”
Outside the restaurant, she says, apparently genuinely curious, “What brought on this . . . honesty? I don’t remember what I said.”
“Lying hurts people.”
“The truth hurts people, too, I assure you.”
I asked for that.
“Okay, yes . . . but . . . only when it follows lies. Lying does the damage. At least . . . it did to me.”
“Oh. Hence the divorce?”
“I suppose so. My ex-wife lied to me. She had her reasons, I know, but . . . it nearly killed me.”
“Really?”
She peers at me with a wary, sardonic interest, as if I am a new, pathetic species of creature, unfit for this harsh world.
“My ex-husband lied to me. I nearly killed him.”
37.
JJ
I’ve never spent even one night locked up in bricks and mortar like this. It’s horrible. It makes me want to scream. Okay, so there was the stable, but it wasn’t like a proper building. It still felt thin; noises and air and the smells of rain and earth passed in and out. Not like a house. Not like this hospital, with its endless corridors and double-glazed windows that look like they never open—like being sealed inside a giant vacuum that’s running out of air.
It’s as hot as buggery: a stinking, stifling heat that’s like death breathing in your face. That awful smell of sickness and bog cleaner that I smelled the night we took Christo to casualty. Now I’m stuck in it, surrounded by it. I probably smell of it. The air’s so dry and artificial I can’t breathe properly. And there’s a constant buzzing noise, coming from God knows where. If it was up to me I’d walk out now, but since last night it’s not up to me.
There’s a tube with a needle on the end going right into my arm, Sellotaped on so it can’t fall out. They could put anything inside you and you wouldn’t even know. That’s my right arm. The left one is all bandaged up, so I can’t see how swollen it is, or how red it is, but I know it’s both—it’s a blast furnace of heat and throbbing like an engine. My fingers—the only bit poking out that I can see—are swollen and stiff like sausages and strangely red. I woke up earlier, feeling awful: ill and hot and stupid, but like I didn’t much care about anything. I had vague memories of the council leader and Mrs. Williams bringing me to the hospital—she was lovely, not cross at all but kind and concerned. She kept stroking my hair. I think she was really worried how I was. She kept saying, “John, how could they?”; “John” being, I suppose, the name of the council leader. Obviously, he didn’t know how they could.
But can that be right? Surely she wouldn’t have left Katie on her own. Maybe she did the stroking at the house and then he brought me here on his own. I really can’t remember. I wonder if Katie got into trouble for hiding me in her stable. I wonder if she lied and said she didn’t know. I wonder what she’s doing right now. Actually, truth is, I don’t care.
I’m wearing a sort of paper smock. I don’t know where my clothes are or anything. I wonder if any of my family know I’m even here. I suppose it’s only a matter of time. I mean, Katie will tell them what she knows, she won’t dare not now, and the council leader dropped me off near the site that time, so it won’t take them that long to find Mum and tell her. I haven’t told them anything, though. I’m not going to make it too easy. She’ll only be cross. Actually, I wonder whether she’ll even come and see me. Maybe she’ll be too angry after our fight the other night—I can’t remember exactly what I said now, but I remember feeling vaguely ashamed of myself. What did she say to me? I can’t remember that either.
I wish she would come. I really do.
“Cheer up, James.”
This is the nurse. I remember her from last night, I think. She’s nice. She’s quite pretty, too. And quite young. She bends over and smiles at me, putting her hand on my forehead. It feels nice when someone does that—as long as the hand’s not sweaty, of course. Hers is warm but dry.
“Ooh, I think your temperature’s gone down already. Let’s see, shall we?” She takes a thermometer from somewhere near my head and shakes it. I open my mouth obediently—funny how you do that automatically. Being in the hospital makes you feel like a baby.
“Do you want the bedpan?”
I shake my head, mortified. I hope I’m not blushing, but I suspect I am. Actually, I do need to go, but I’m not going to tell her that. There are limits. It means I’ll have to wait till one of the scary old nurses is around. Or the male one with ginger hair and moles and the pale blue overalls.
“Okay . . . Yes, you’re down a bit. Excellent. Great to be young, isn’t it? Last night you were delirious. And now look at you.”
She smiles again. It’s nice having someone like her around. It’s . . . restful. Although I don’t want to get carried away. I got a bit carried away with Katie, I think, and look what happened. There is one advantage to feeling so ill: I can think about how nice this nurse is, about her smooth blond hair that looks like it would be slippery and silky to touch, pulled back in a ponytail—all that kind of thing—while lying here in nothing but a paper smock, with a thin sheet over me, and I don’t even get an erection. Miracle.
At nine o’clock in the evening, Mum turns up. Visiting hours are nearly over—I already know about visiting hours—but they’ve obviously given her special permission, seeing as she’s my mum and I’ve been on my own here for nearly twenty-four hours. Her face is blotchy with crying; all red around the eyes and nose. But she doesn’t look like a stranger—she looks like Mum again.
“Oh, JJ . . .”
She practically throws herself on me to give me a hug, knocking my arm painfully in the process, but I restrain myself from going “ow.” I’m so happy to see her I think I’m going to cry myself, but I manage not to.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Sweetheart. You stupid bugger . . .”
She strokes my face.
“Ohh.”
She hugs me again, then pulls herself together before anyone sees her being too so
ppy.
“I should give you a right bollocking for what you did. Scaring me like that. What were you thinking?”
What was I thinking? Has she decided to forget all about our fight?
“I dunno.”
“And going to those people? Who are they, anyway? This man came round to tell me about you, looking down his nose at everything. How do you know them, anyway?”
“I don’t know him. Katie’s in my class.”
“Hm.”
She can’t be too disapproving; she’s always been so keen on that school.
“He’s on the council.”
“Hm. Is he indeed?”
This is a rhetorical question. If Mum is asking rhetorical questions, then I reckon she can’t be too cross with me.
“What on earth did you do to yourself? They said you’ve got blood poisoning!”
“Um . . . When I ran off, I tripped on the road in the dark . . . and there was some glass.”
Mum tuts. She doesn’t seem to find it unlikely that I would do such a spazzy thing.
“But that was on Friday. Where’ve you been since then?”
I sigh. I don’t want to tell her everything. But I don’t know how much she already knows.
“I . . . um . . . Katie’s got a horse. I hid in its stable.”
Mum shakes her head.
“What are you like? You know what they think of us now? That we’re bloody barbarians letting you run off like that. And to run to gorjios . . .”
“I wasn’t running to gorjios. I was just . . .”
Running away. But I can’t explain to her exactly why I had to run away from our family. I shut my eyes, hoping she’ll leave it.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry . . . How are they treating you in here?”
She has dropped her voice, as though I’m about to rat on them.
“All right. Fine.”
“And the food? Is it awful? I’ll bring something in for you tomorrow.”
“It’s okay. Really. You don’t have to.”
She will anyway. She has this deep distrust of gorjio catering. School lunches are bad enough.
She touches my bandaged arm.
“You herbert. I’m always telling you to look out for glass.”
“I know.”
She’s smiling now. Maybe I could forget about the other night. Pretend it didn’t happen. Because what do I do about it? What can I do?
“Sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to . . . make you worried. Just sometimes, you know?”
“I’m sorry, too, sweetheart. It’s all forgotten, yeah?”
I smile a bit. I’d love to forget it all, I really would, but there are some things I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try.
38.
Ray
I was hired by Georgia Millington’s parents after the police had drawn a blank. They were a mild-mannered, bewildered couple. Every time I met them, Mrs. Millington was wearing a headscarf, as though she had been interrupted in the middle of scrubbing the floor. And their house was immaculately clean. They seemed pleasant, a bit dull, like decent parents everywhere. The disappearance of their daughter was the worst and most inexplicable thing that had ever happened to them. I really wanted to help.
When I found Georgia, in an enormous run-down squat in Torquay, I was on top of the world. I told myself I had won. I had beaten the police, and the forces of stupidity and chaos, and the silly girl who wanted to lose herself with her dope-addled boyfriend. It’s not that I didn’t ask her what she was running from. But I couldn’t have asked in the right way. I didn’t realize, then, that she was afraid of me. That she had spent her whole life learning how to be afraid. And what occurred to me was not the truth. I had thought about sexual abuse, of course. Mr. Millington was her stepfather, and you do hear of such things. When I asked Georgia about it, she laughed, scornfully.
When, months later, she was found beaten to death with a hammer, Mr. Millington was arrested. He didn’t attempt to deny it, but it came out, eventually, due to anomalies in his statement, that it was his wife, the obsessive, anxious cleaner, who had killed Georgia. Her mother. A woman subject to violent rages, furiously possessive of her husband. She didn’t want to share him with anyone, not even her daughter.
Why didn’t I foresee it? How could I have prevented it?
I didn’t understand anything after that. Not a thing.
I wonder if my marriage didn’t begin to founder back then. This was after I met Hen, and he taught me how to drink. Drinking wasn’t the most logical way to forget the extraordinary violence inflicted on Georgia, I realize, but to an extent it worked. Jen got sick of me going on about it, and when I drank I stopped. But when I didn’t go on about it, the thoughts circled like sharks beneath the surface, consuming me.
When I reach the M25 the following morning, I turn right rather than left without pausing to think. I might have made a promise to Lulu last night to visit her family and tell them what has been found, but I made an earlier promise to Rose. The point is, I want Rose to know that even if no one listened when she was alive, I am doing my damnedest to listen to her now. I find myself muttering out loud as I drive—apologizing to her. I can’t change the past—I made a terrible mistake with Georgia, and I should have done something—I was there. I can’t save Rose, of course, and never could. The least I can do is find out what happened.
When I pull up near the gate, at first I don’t understand what I’m seeing; it looks so different. Then I realize: overnight, the river has claimed her.
The Black Patch is improved by flooding. The scarred earth is hidden by a sheet of brown water. The trees, the steel reinforcing rods for the foundations, the poles planted by the police to mark the site of their operations, all poke out of it. All other evidence of the building site has gone, except for one of the diggers, which didn’t get out in time—alone and stranded, its yellow jaws gape at the sky. The green tent is still there, too, sagging, looking like a lost hat in a puddle.
I get out of the car, pull on damp boots, and walk over to the young PC on duty. It’s raining again, a steady drizzle, and he’s shivering with cold even though it’s the end of July and he’s sheltering under a water-proof cape like something out of a Victorian detective serial. His name is Derek. He doesn’t smoke, but he’s still glad for someone to talk to, even a private detective. I tell him a couple of stories and drop hints that I might know something. Eventually, he laughs.
“I can’t tell you anything, mate, no matter what. ’Cause I don’t know anything!”
His accent is a soft Fenland burr.
I show him the pictures of Rose and tell him about her, and he stops laughing.
“They did say it might have been a child, or a young woman, ’cause of the size of the arm bones. Only might have been, mind. Now they have to wait till the water’s gone down and they can find the rest. I didn’t tell you that. There’s no proof, is there? It could have been put here five years ago; it could have been twenty-five. They just don’t know.”
Unsurprisingly, from a few pieces of arm bone and rib, and some pieces of vertebrae, they have no inkling of cause of death. They were splintered fragments. The digger clawed right through the grave.
“When do you think the water might go down?”
He shrugs, making a noise with his lips, dismissive of those who ignore where the water goes, which is where it has always gone.
“Crazy, isn’t it? Building here. Asking for trouble.”
“Wouldn’t you live here, Derek? In one of these nice new houses?” He bursts out laughing again.
“Must be joking! Couldn’t afford them, anyway. I’d have to save up for a hundred and fifty years before I could buy one of those. Or be promoted to chief superintendent. And you have to wait for them all to die off before you get promoted round here.”
Then, before I leave, he leans toward me, made garrulous by cold and boredom.
“I don’t like being here on my own. No one round here does. It used to be a burial
ground, you know? Hundreds of years ago—during the Black Death. People died too fast to be buried in the churchyards, and anyhow, there weren’t enough people left alive to bury them. They just brought them here in carts and tipped them into a pit. Set fire to it. God knows how many bodies are buried below that one.”
He lowers his voice, deadly serious.
“The dead come back, you know. They really do. Have you ever seen a ghost?”
I don’t think he’s joking. A shiver goes down my spine, despite myself.
“No. I haven’t.”
“I have. My granddad came back after he died. I saw him. I can see you don’t believe me, but I know what I saw; he was as clear as you standing here.”
“Oh.” I can’t think of anything to say.
“That’s why I don’t like being here on my tod. All of them, down there. Would you want to live in a house on top of all that?”
As I drive away, a wary sun comes out. The river at the Black Patch must have risen three or four feet. How long will that take to drain away? And how long, then, before the mud is stable enough to resume work? I don’t think I can wait that long.
I can’t think of anything else to do, so I keep driving past my turnoff to fulfill my second promise. The route is familiar now. And, as if blessing me, sunlight pushes long fingers through the clouds. Steam rises off the damp, glistening meadows; the woods are a deep, secretive green. All the rain has held back the attrition of summer: it’s the end of July, but everything looks fresh and new.
I am trying not to think about last night. I can’t believe I told Lulu those things. And yet, in some way, I’m glad I did. I’m not sure what I feel for her. You can’t call it love. You don’t love someone you hardly know. But this violent tenderness deserves a more dignified name than “crush.” I don’t know whether she will ever speak to me again, but my confession unburdened me. You can’t unsay such a thing. The jury cannot disregard it. You take your fragile secret out of the darkness and expose it to the light. You lay it on the ground, where anyone can tread on it.