by S. J. Morgan
‘Hey! She didn’t mean any harm,’ I said. I went towards him, my arm outstretched.
But he wasn’t watching me: I might as well have not been there.
He grabbed Sindy by the shoulders and started tugging and pulling the jacket, trying to get it off her. I was afraid he was going to break her arms.
‘You don’t touch this, you understand, you little cunt?’ he growled at her. He could barely spit out the words. ‘You don’t touch any of my stuff. I’m fucking sick of you, you hear? Sick of you.’
He grabbed a fistful of hair with his one hand and pulled the jacket free with the other and tossed it behind him onto the floor.
Sindy was screaming and crying as she tried to make him let go of her. I was still doing sod all with the outstretched arm gesture, trying to get in the way and stay out the way all at the same time.
Next thing, Minto flung her, without warning, towards the kitchen table. There was a clatter of chairs and she fell forward, hitting them all out the way like she was a bowling ball.
‘You’re endless fucking trouble,’ he shouted. ‘You stink, you’re stupid. You’re a fucking waste of space, Sindy.’ He grabbed the back of her hair again. ‘Now get up!’
‘C’mon, take it easy, man,’ I found myself saying.
That was it. He knew I was there. Minto’s face turned towards me and that sick, wretched hatred shifted to my direction. ‘What has this got to do with you, golden boy?’
‘You don’t need to hurt her.’
‘Don’t I?’ he said. ‘Why not? She screws up my life, stinks out my home. Fuck me, she even brought those pigs sniffing around here, turning the place upside down. Scheming little bitch.’
‘I didn’t!’ Sindy sniffed. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Don’t you lie to me, girl!’ Minto grabbed her again but this time with more force, more fury. My eyes followed his gaze to the big window. He was lining her up for the big one.
‘No! Minto! It was me. All right? It was me.’ I put a hand on Sindy’s arm, ready to ease her out of his grip.
Minto straightened up, slow and stiff. He looked at me as he finally let Sindy go. There was no surprise in his eyes, though. Nothing to suggest what I’d said was news to him. Instead, the slow upturn of a smile.
Yeah, he had me.
That bastard had known all along.
Chapter 26
There was no way I could stay in the flat once Minto had had his fun with me. I still had almost a week before the new place was ready but with a big target plastered to my back, I’d have slept in the gutter rather than go back to Oakdale Terrace. If I’d been able to, I would’ve legged it to Bristol to see Daniella, but as luck would have it, she was staying with her parents.
Mum was pleased to have an unexpected visit from me but on the downside, my presence in Cardiff meant I was obliged to join Daniella for some anniversary party she and her parents were going to. I had a bad feeling about it, a sense that something didn’t bode well, but I was in damage-limitation mode as far as Daniella was concerned and I knew this was my penance. Perhaps I would’ve been better listening to my gut.
The McAllisters – Pamela and John – had an even more impressive place than Daniella’s. They were entertaining their guests in the conservatory, but this was no lean-to, like we had stuck on the end of our house. No, this one was palatial, rounded, with soaring glass ceilings and fancy white ironwork.
At first glance, I reckoned the average age of the guests was sixty. There were a lot of pearl necklaces and golf club ties, and had I not promised Daniella I’d give the party a decent go, I’d’ve turned around and walked straight out.
‘So, you’re the young man Daniella’s been telling us about,’ Pamela said, as we arrived at the drinks table. She poured wine into a glass for me. ‘It’s so nice to meet you at last, Alec.’
‘Yeah, thanks. You too.’
She smiled at Daniella. ‘Neil and his friends are out in the garden if you want to get away from us wrinklies.’ Her eyes shifted to me again. ‘Neil’s my son,’ she explained. ‘Actually, it’s possible you might know him – he’s around your age so, you never know, you might have been at school together. You should go and say hello.’
We took our drinks and headed to the buffet instead. If we had to endure an evening like this, we decided we could at least make the most of the food.
Daniella spent the next hour trying to save my sanity by plying me with drinks and vol au vents, but I could feel my will to live slipping away with each passing second.
‘Isn’t it time to go to that other...event?’ I said to her, nodding in the direction of the front door.
‘We can’t go yet. There’ll be a toast for their anniversary.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Not long,’ she said, avoiding my eye.
‘Hey, Daniella!’ someone called from outside the door. ‘What are you doing in there? The party’s out here!’
She looked up and waved – and then, before I knew it, we were heading out to the garden where some younger guys were standing around a fire pit. Daniella leaned in for a kiss with a couple of them, then took a step back to let me through. ‘Oh, and this is Alec,’ she said. ‘Alec – this is Neil and John and…I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met?’
I shook hands with Neil and John but stopped when I got to Daniella’s new acquaintance. I hadn’t seen him since the funeral.
I steadied myself and took a breath. ‘Kev,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘How are you?’
The moment our eyes met, his expression twisted. He paused, as if to catch his breath, then turned his back on me. Everyone watched in silence as he marched over to Daniella’s brother, who was chatting to some of his friends. ‘You could’ve warned me!’ Kev yelled, turning Mike by the shoulder and gesticulating in my direction. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’
I watched this play out like I was following a movie. We all did.
Mike looked confused, then slid his eyes to me as Kev hurried inside.
‘Kev!’ Mike said, dashing after him. ‘Kev!’
It made things very awkward for the group of us that was left. Daniella looked up at me, her eyes asking the question that her voice seemed unable to, while everyone else kept their gaze on the grass.
‘We’d...better go and see if he’s all right,’ Neil said, nodding towards the house and leaving us. John took his cue and followed him inside.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Daniella said, pulling me away.
People were still rubbernecking, standing on tiptoe to see if the action was continuing inside, half an eye on us to gauge our response.
I was still fumbling for a reply when Mike appeared. ‘If you had an ounce of decency in you, you’d piss off home,’ he said to me. Then to Daniella: ‘I hadn’t realised he was included on the invite tonight.’
‘Why wouldn’t I invite him?’
Mike looked at her. ‘Why? Because that’s Kev Mitchell. Y’know? Brother of Jill Mitchell.’
‘But…who is this Jill Mitchell?’
Mike snapped his head in my direction. ‘Christ! You still haven’t bloody told her, have you?’
Daniella’s voice was quiet, like she already knew it was something she didn’t want to hear. ‘Told me what?’
The pair of them stared at me but it was only Mike who spoke. ‘Well, Alec?’ he said. ‘Alexander? Xander? Whatever name you’re going by these days. Aren’t you going to tell her who Jill Mitchell is? Was?’
None of us moved. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t speak.
‘Maybe I’ll have to do it for you,’ Mike said, edging towards me. ‘Seeing as you haven’t got the balls to tell her yourself.’
He kept his eyes on me, but it was only Daniella’s eyes I was worried about. Only her eyes I could think of as Mike cleared his throat.
I heard it outside myself. He was talking about me, yet it wasn’t really me. This was a different reality. The same scenes; the same characters but no
w with an untrustworthy narrator.
‘She was Alec’s girlfriend,’ he said. ‘Or rather, Xander’s. She didn’t actually know you as Alec, did she?’
That bit was true, but I didn’t respond.
‘Anyway, they were going out together when they were in high school.’ He paused and I could feel his eyes on me as he tried to drag out the drama. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, won’t you, Alec?’
Daniella folded her arms. ‘Just say what you’ve got to say, Mike.’
‘So, they had a big fight when they were coming home from the bay one night. She admitted she’d been cheating on him.’
He waited, as if inviting me to deliver the punchline, but my voice was locked too far down. I wished I could speak. After all, Mike had never even met Jill yet here he was, recounting a night in her life, like he’d been granted some God-given right speak on her behalf.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the next morning, her body was found on the beach, just below the cliffs. She was pregnant too. But not, it turned out, by Alec.’
As he finished, I sensed eyes downcast around us.
Who knows what Mike expected: A gasp? Shocked silence? What he got was awkwardness. Those who’d been near enough to hear seemed trapped. They didn’t want to know this or deal with the fallout. They’d come for a party, not a pantomime.
I felt Daniella look up at me, finally, when Mike moved away. ‘Why couldn’t you have just told me?’ she whispered. ‘Why couldn’t you have...said?’
I wasn’t surprised to see her eyes well up and her pale face flush. And it was hardly unexpected when she turned and marched away.
The only shock was that she was dragging me with her.
An icy, windswept beachside breakup: I wondered what could be bleaker.
Daniella hadn’t said a word since we’d left the party and I certainly wasn’t going to risk one. I figured she’d have enough to say once she got going, so I was in no hurry to begin the showdown – nor its inevitable fallout. There was a part of me that wanted to just stop her before she began and say: ‘Enough: let’s just bid each other farewell’ – because that was the only way this little scene could play out. Trust was already on a knife-edge between us as far as Daniella was concerned. The only thing that stopped me from putting the relationship out of its misery was knowing that Daniella needed to have her say. It seemed the least I could do to stand and hear it: I owed her that much.
It wasn’t easy, walking towards the water when it was too dark to pick out a foot in front of us. I think we just followed the sound of the waves and tried to stay upright on the pebbles.
Before we reached the shoreline, Daniella sat down. No warning, nothing said – she just suddenly plonked herself down at my side. I stood beside her not sure what I was meant to do, then I sat next to her, the hard edges of the stones offering maximum discomfort.
‘It wasn’t like you needed to lie,’ she said, as if we were already mid-conversation. Perhaps in her head, we were. ‘You had the perfect opportunity to tell me,’ she said. ‘Several opportunities, in fact. You could have just told me, explained. That’s all you needed to do.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not? If you’d told me, I would have listened, made up my own mind. But no, you chose to lie through your teeth and have someone else inform me.’
I picked up a stone, running a finger along the icy smoothness of its edges. It was solid, weighty and it was about the only thing in this whole situation that felt real.
‘I didn’t lie,’ I said. ‘It was...more that...I couldn’t talk about it.’
‘Even to me?’
‘To anyone.’
‘Why not?’
I felt her look across to me in the darkness, waiting.
‘Alec? Why not?’
I shrugged but I doubt she saw me.
The longer the silence continued, the more I knew she’d be filling in the gaps, putting all the pieces in the wrong places. It didn’t matter. I’d barely said a word, but I was already too exhausted to put things right.
‘Was it because of Mum?’ she said. ‘That warning I gave you about no scandals. No questionable pasts.’
She was offering me a way out; an easy fix. Something concrete.
‘That didn’t help,’ I said. ‘I mean, I was shit-scared of either of you finding out. But…that wasn’t the reason. That’s not why I kept quiet, not really.’
I picked up another stone and eased my fingers around its smoothness, waiting.
‘Was it guilt?’ she said at last.
I looked at her. ‘Guilt?’
‘I’m not saying you...did anything wrong but maybe you felt guilty that she...that your girlfriend died; that it was her and not you.’
Daniella wouldn’t say the word, wouldn’t allow Jill’s name to fall from her lips – and I was glad about that.
‘People always think I have something to hide,’ I said. ‘I don’t talk about it because I can’t, that’s all. I can’t.’ I looked down at the pebble in my hand then tossed it into the distance. ‘No one ever...’ I shut my mouth and shook my head.
‘No one ever what, Alec?’
My face began to sting from the chill in the air. I hadn’t been cold when we’d left the party, but now I could hardly stop my teeth chattering. Our coats were still at the McAllisters’. And I just wanted to be home. Home in the warm, not thinking.
When I didn’t answer her question, Daniella reached across and found my hand. Her fingers were warm, comforting as they squeezed mine. But it wasn’t a gesture that bode well. I knew what it meant.
‘It’s only because it hurts,’ I said. ‘They all want to know what-happened-when, who said what to who, how it was said, the whys, the wherefores, all the fucking pointless practicalities. But...’ My jaw clamped itself shut, like its joints had iced over.
Daniella watched me but didn’t try to coax more from me. After that, she just sat there, looking out at the grey water, her thumb stroking the back of my hand. It was that one movement that drove me on, made me want to finish what I had to say.
‘None of that stuff mattered to me,’ I told her. ‘She was gone, that was all. She was gone, and I knew I wouldn’t see her again. But no one ever let me just...I never got to just...deal with it; deal with her not being there anymore. It was just a wall of questions and suspicions and finger-pointing. Even from my own dad!’
‘He didn’t believe you?’
I shrugged. ‘Put it this way, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion.’
She looked off into the distance and shook her head. It was probably hard for her to imagine; she was from a background where loyalty was written into the family crest. They had each other’s backs, whatever the situation.
‘Well, that’s pretty shit,’ she said.
I wiped the grit off my hands. ‘Anyway, after that, there were just a whole bunch of enquiries and reports; findings and evidence but...you know what?’ My voice began to quiver.
Daniella looked at me and shook her head. ‘What?’
‘No one ever simply said, ‘Hey, Alec: I’m sorry your girlfriend… died.’ I swallowed, struggling to finish. ‘No one ever said that to me.’
I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to take control of my breathing. What I’d said, what I’d just told her – that was one thought I’d never put into words before. Just saying it out loud was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.
Daniella kept her gaze fixed on the horizon. I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking. ‘So, what happened in the end?’
‘What happened was, I fell apart. I closed down; hated everything and everyone. I felt I’d lost her twice – I mean, she’d obviously cheated, and…I didn’t know how to deal with any of it. I was just an angry, confused mess.’
‘But what happened, with the police?’
Back to the facts, the answers, the assurances, times, dates.
‘I was cleared,’ I said. ‘Well, I mean, it never went to court. No case to answer. Death by misadv
enture; that’s what the inquest found. But I was never cleared by her family. They didn’t believe me, whatever anyone said.’
The amber lights shone higgledy-piggledy back at us, marking out the hills and troughs of the landscape, the English coastline on the other side of the water.
‘So, you hadn’t known...about the baby?’ Daniella said, at last.
‘No.’
She shook her head. ‘I see.’
‘She was pregnant, mate. But not by you.’ That’s how the wanker of a detective broke it to me. Even asked if I had any ideas who the father might be.’
I sat, biting my bottom lip, keeping my eyes on the ripples of water, on the expanse of it, waiting for my mind to settle, my thoughts to be pulled back into shape.
Daniella rested her head against my shoulder and the wind whipped up her hair so that it stroked my face.
‘Alec?’ Her tone was uncertain, wary and I felt a subtle shift in the atmosphere.
‘Mm?’
She didn’t reply.
The seconds ticked by without her speaking and in the silence, I sensed what was coming: the guillotine slice of goodbye that was all-but dripping from her tongue.
I put an arm around her and pulled her close, giving her the permission she seemed to need from me. Even so, it took a few moments before I could steady my voice enough to speak.
‘It’s okay, Daniella,’ I told her. ‘I know. You’ve had enough. You can say it.’
She looked up, her eyelashes still moist and she kissed me lightly on the lips. ‘Alec?’ she whispered.
‘Mm?’
There was a long pause, and I knew she was struggling. I drew a strand of hair away from her cheek.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said, finally. ‘I love you. And I’m really sorry your girlfriend died.’
Chapter 27
It was still dark when something woke me. It took me a few minutes to figure where I was but then I picked out the silhouette of my old Cardiff City lampshade.
Being home, at Mum and Dad’s, brought me an odd sort of comfort. It was raining softly outside, and I heard the clicks and whirrs of the radiator on the wall.