The Keeper

by Jessica Moor

  ‘I don’t know. Call it my story.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Saying those words made Nazia feel defiant. A release from having to have an answer and defend it to the death, regardless of whether or not she believed it.

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘I don’t know either.’

  * * *

  • • •

  Katie had always been so keen to get everyone to talk. But she couldn’t tell any of them what had happened to her. Why she was dead.

  Because, despite all that, all the wash of talking, Katie had never really fitted in. Not like Val. She wasn’t the type of person who made other people’s misery her business. The furniture of disaster.

  So why had she been there? And why had she died?

  Maybe Jenny knew. Jenny seemed to know all kinds of things that she didn’t say.

  Nazia pulled her hat down to her eyes and walked away from the bridge, leaving the deadly sound of the water behind.

  12.

  Sonia was a mum, first and foremost. That was what she’d told the police, and the social worker. That was what she’d tell the judge.

  Just a mum, don’t worry. No anger against the world; you don’t have time for anger when you’ve got two lively boys like mine. They keep me on my feet. Don’t get a moment to think. Ha. Ha. Ha.

  ‘You don’t have to just be a mum,’ Katie had said. ‘It’s okay that you wanted to leave him for yourself.’

  But it wasn’t.

  Sonia had gone to the police. They had photographed the bruises. Not a high point for her, but she had done it. She had to, for her boys. That was what she told herself. She’d stood there in her white cotton underwear while the police photographer snapped away, gathering the evidence they said would win her the safety of her children.

  ‘The problem with your skin,’ the photographer said conversationally as his camera snapped and clattered, ‘is that it’s harder to photograph your bruises. They don’t show up as easily. They can just look like the natural shadows of your body, if you’re not careful.’

  Sonia said nothing.

  Where is your pride? a voice that sounded a lot like her mother’s hissed in her ear.

  It’s in the posh department store, with all the other things I can’t afford right now.

  ‘You’re not the one who’s on trial here,’ Katie had told her.

  ‘Yes I am.’

  Katie was sweet, and she was doing her best, but she clearly didn’t know the score.

  Sonia thought back to one of the women who had greeted her when she first arrived at the refuge. She was gone now, but her story stuck around. The family courts had said that she wasn’t emotional enough about her children. They said she was cold, uncaring. Then they had taken her kids away.

  * * *

  • • •

  Katie had come with them to the school on the boys’ first day, just last week. Sonia had asked her to come. She hadn’t been able to think of an exact reason, but Katie hadn’t seemed to need one.

  ‘Moral support,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The bridge was a natural place to pause.

  ‘Sometimes you need to give yourself a chance to stop and think,’ Katie said.

  ‘I think I’d really rather not think too much,’ Sonia said, laughing so that Katie wouldn’t know that it wasn’t a joke.

  ‘What happens when you think?’

  ‘If the thinking part of me was working, then the boys wouldn’t be in that school. Away from me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have left them alone?’

  ‘I wouldn’t leave them because David won’t leave them alone.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Lynne thinks it’s her Frank.’ Sonia bit her tongue hard before she could get out the rest of the sentence – stupid cow always thinks it’s about her – ‘but I’m not so sure. Lynne’s a bag of nerves, you know that. But following me. Stalking me. Letting me know who’s boss before the custody hearing.’ Sonia’s hand clenched on a bulge of stone on the wall. ‘That’s exactly the kind of stunt David would pull.

  ‘He could show up at that school and the kids would go straight to him. No bother at all. They always thought he was such a great dad.’

  ‘Even after he hit Lewis?’

  Sonia paused, staring into the water, considering. ‘I don’t know what they think of him now.’

  ‘Maybe it’s changed.’

  ‘Maybe it hasn’t. Wouldn’t surprise me. They’re half me, after all.’ Sonia snorted bitterly. ‘Maybe they still think he’s the most wonderful man in the whole world.’

  ‘Is that what you still think?’

  ‘He’s the only man . . . the only man I know like that. The only man whose bones I know. And that means I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s any better or any worse. And I felt like . . . I felt like it was as good as it was going to get for me.’

  ‘You left him, Sonia.’

  ‘I did. But it was too late. The damage was done.’

  * * *

  • • •

  Sonia saw the light on in the office. She knocked and entered – Val always said she had an open-door policy. The sound of her movement mixed with a heavy jingle and a drawer hastily slamming shut. Val was sitting at the desk, her cheeks uncomfortably red against the starkness of her black hair. Sonia said nothing but looked – first at Val, and then at the plastic children’s tumbler of amber liquid sitting on top of a pile of paperwork.

  Val sighed.

  ‘Hi . . . Sonia.’

  ‘Hi,’ Sonia said. Val licked at the flakes of red that still clung stubbornly to her thin lips and gestured at the swivel chair that used to be Katie’s.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Val said. ‘Do you want . . .’

  She gestured at the closed drawer. Sonia shook her head.

  ‘Got to look after the boys,’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Though . . . they’re asleep.’

  Val said nothing further but reached back into the drawer and brought out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label and an off-white mug with ‘Widringham Women’s Aid’ written on it in pink block capitals.

  She poured out what Sonia thought was probably a generous measure – though she wasn’t sure; she’d never been a drinker of spirits. Didn’t keep them in the house. Not with what they did to David.

  Sonia took the mug, wrapped her hands around it the way she would to draw warmth from a cup of tea.

  ‘I don’t normally do this,’ Val said. ‘You know, we’re after hours. And it’s an exceptional occasion. Those bloody detectives.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They think they can just wander in, play their macho games, wander out again. Behave the way they would if they were talking to prisoners. As if this was just some . . . men’s hostel.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Poor Nazia was terribly upset by them earlier, I could tell. Lynne’s been in here in tears, worried about what it all means. I’ve been putting out fires all day. Some of the people here are fragile. Complex needs.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Not you, of course.’ Val raised her glass as if to toast Sonia. ‘Doing a marvellous job with those two boys of yours. Same as always.’

  Sonia worked her jaw back and forth for a second or two before it could solidify into a hard line.

  ‘Well, you get on with it, don’t you?’

  ‘You certainly do. Anyway’ – Val raised the plastic tumbler – ‘to Katie.’

  ‘To Katie.’

  Val took a gulp of whisky and studied her hands intently.

  ‘I keep women safe, Sonia. That’s my job. That’s the work we do here. Do they think I want to be like . . . like this? Fuck-all money to work with, police coming in and out
at all hours, harassed’ – her voice cracked a little – ‘all day online. Which nobody seems to be paying the slightest bit of attention to, by the way.’

  She picked up a piece of paper from the desk and read from it. ‘Shut up you sad old whore or you’ll get what you deserve.’

  She let the paper slip between her fingers.

  ‘What do you do with that?’

  She was asking the room, not Sonia, so Sonia said nothing.

  ‘Not investigate it,’ Val continued rhetorically. ‘Not treat it as part of an inquiry, that’s for sure.’

  Sonia took a sip of the whisky, keeping her face calm as the liquid ran a fiery path down her throat and behind her breastbone, where it wrestled against the shifting flutter of fear that lived in her chest.

  She took another sip. The fire started to win.

  ‘My date’s coming up,’ Sonia said. She’d thought so hard about how to make it sound casual that it came out almost careless. Surely Val would know otherwise. Surely it was her job to know.

  But Val wasn’t looking at her.

  ‘Come on in, Jenny.’

  Val gestured at the door where a tall shape was lingering, wraithlike. ‘We’re having a little snifter. For Katie, you know.’

  She drained her plastic glass and then, in a voice that Sonia had never heard her use before, she murmured, ‘Poor girl.’

  She raised a hand to rub at her face. In the light of the energy-saving bulbs her face looked dim, reddened. Her eyes were ringed with crumbs of mascara.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Val.’

  Sonia was always surprised when Jenny used full sentences. Her utterances were usually bent out of shape with tangents and clichés, as if she couldn’t quite bear to get to the point.

  Val looked surprised, too.

  ‘I know it wasn’t,’ she said, utterly unconvincingly. ‘Lord only knows what happened. The police are incompetent. God knows. Even if . . . if it’s what they think it is – depression . . . you know. Terrible illness. But in a sense . . .’ Val poured herself more whisky. ‘There’s a duty of care, you know. It’s the system. Even down to the sodding background checks. I’m expected to wait weeks or months with no staff for the powers that be to get their act together.’

  She turned her eyes imploringly on Sonia, and Sonia felt herself prickling slightly.

  ‘It’s a systematic problem, you see. With the resources available to us, structurally speaking, there’s no time for what – you know, conventionally . . .’ She trailed off and looked back towards the door, only noticing then that Jenny had gone.

  ‘I’ll wash these up,’ Sonia said, gathering up the mug, the tumbler. Val nodded and locked the drawer of the desk, her keys jangling.

  ‘Better turn in,’ she said. ‘Was there something you wanted to talk about?’

  ‘My date’s coming up,’ Sonia said again. Softly this time.

  Val nodded.

  ‘We’ll speak about it in the morning,’ she said.

  13.

  Then

  It’s hard to make sense of those first nights together. There are moments of clarity, but they refuse to assemble themselves into sequence. Katie remembers how his skin looked half blue in the faint light of the street lamps outside her bedroom window and how she felt the parallel sensations of being torn and caressed. How he looked at her with great solemnity, as if he had a secret and she knew it, too, and she felt that perhaps she did. It lionized the thing they had into something that might be called love.

  Faking orgasms has always been par for the course in Katie’s experience – so much so that she didn’t think of it so much as faking as putting on the appropriate show. After all, men are aroused by arousal. She is just doing her bit.

  None of that matters. Or at least, not in comparison to the flooring sense of eased naturalness she feels when she curls into him afterwards. The boundary of her skin with his offers undeniable proof of his otherness. That she isn’t alone, not any more.

  She clings to him. So tightly that maybe any other man would be annoyed or spooked, but not Jamie. He has the capacity to hold on to her even tighter than she holds him. How could she fail to love him for that? Jamie makes certain things so easy.

  It’s the comfort of having a vessel to pour herself into, something she can be sure won’t break. The set-piece perfection of picnics on Box Hill, wanderings through the South Bank, Sunday-afternoon walks in the park. The sureness that the intensity of his love invites. The singularity of his devotion.

  ‘There are so many guys around these days who don’t appreciate an amazing girl like you,’ he tells her, before leaning back on to the grassy hill, his face mottled by March sunlight, and pulling Katie down on to the solid step of his chest.

  ‘You’re just saying that,’ she says, semi-automatically, and he frowns.

  ‘I don’t just say things,’ he says. ‘You’re really great. And you deserve to be treated well. Take the compliment.’

  Jamie has a tendency to incise the world of men into two – those who treat women well, and those who don’t. The former measure time in bunches of flowers, little gifts, money spent with no expectation of being repaid.

  It is never clear what those who treat women badly are like, only that Jamie is not one of them. So there’s no need to find out.

  * * *

  • • •

  When her friends ask her how the sex was on the debrief that follows, she replies that she doesn’t remember. This makes them worry for a moment, and then laugh for a long time. And then she has to backtrack and says, ‘Wait – yes – it was good. Of course it was good. Don’t get me wrong, it was really good. Passionate. Urgent. That’s what sex is supposed to be like, right?’

  And then her friends, who are all at various stages of play-marriage (in rental agreements, at least, if not in spirit), and either live or half-live with their boyfriends, agree that, yes, that’s a very good thing. That they wish they still had that.

  Yes, the passion does go. Or at least subside. You’re lucky you’re still at that stage.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘He’s kind.’

  She’s gone for a glass of wine with Ellie after work. Their commutes cross over, so they sometimes meet like this. Sometimes it’s good to talk one on one, not in a group where everything falls to a jury verdict.

  Ellie blinks and nods and seems to consider.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘He is. Or it sounds like he is, anyway. He seems like a nice guy. From what you’ve told me.’

  Then Ellie smiles and rolls her eyes. ‘We could all do with giving a nice guy a chance, right?’

  Ellie’s boyfriend is a nice guy, but that’s all he is. He doesn’t seem to have ever been anywhere, done anything or had any interests, but he is undoubtedly devoted to Ellie. Katie has always figured it’s not her place to judge, but she knows that she’d pick Jamie’s rough edges over that kind of flaccidness any day. She is confident that Jamie is capable of doing something substantial in life, even if he hasn’t done it yet.

  ‘The point is, I don’t want a project,’ Katie says. ‘I don’t need someone who I need to make like me. I think he just does like me. The way I am.’

  Ellie just keeps looking.

  ‘In fact, I know he likes me,’ Katie says, and flushes. The words shouldn’t mean as much as they do.

  ‘That’s good, then,’ Ellie says, and Katie feels the fibres of her body starting to relax.

  They talk about some other stuff to do with how much they both hate their jobs, now that they’re settled into them, but they finish their glasses of wine knowing that the substance of their talk is over.

  Katie’s phone buzzes.

  Where are you?

  She hammers out a quick reply.

  At home. Talking to mum. Talk in half an hour?

  That isn’t
true, she thinks. She waits a beat, expecting the thought to continue, for the source of the lie to reveal itself. But it doesn’t.

  ‘Need to dash off,’ she says. ‘Work in the morning.’

  ‘Great to see you,’ Ellie says, hugging her. ‘Let’s do it again soon?’

  * * *

  • • •

  So good to see you last night and talk about stuff. Same time next week? Xxx

  Katie looks at the text, then looks at the bed where Jamie is lying.

  A shaft of light from the early sunset is falling across his face, airbrushing it. He looks up at Katie and smiles, and holds out his hand.

  ‘Come to bed,’ he says, and she does, and she doesn’t reply to Ellie’s text.

  14.

  Now

  They searched the victim’s house the following morning.

  Noah let them in and made them a cup of tea, before reinstalling himself on the sofa. He was watching some American sitcom (Whitworth vaguely recognized it as one of Jennifer’s favourites), with a vast bowl of pasta in his lap.

  Brookes went straight into the bedroom, and Whitworth could hear him poking about, pulling drawers open and closed.

  ‘How’re you holding up?’ Whitworth said to Noah. It was the only thing he could think of to say.

  ‘It’s weird without Katie.’

  Whitworth did his best to convey concern with his eyes, the way the women officers seemed to do so effortlessly. He hoped that, God forbid, if something ever happened to Maureen, he’d be able to come up with a better word for it than ‘weird’.

  ‘Have you got anyone around to keep an eye on you?’

  ‘There’s my mum,’ Noah said.

  ‘She around much?’

  ‘I’m going to move back in with her. Can’t afford the rent on this place by myself, anyway.’

  Whitworth wondered if Katie had – if she had indeed killed herself – considered how it might impact Noah. Whether she minded that it would make him regress even further to childhood.