Life Ruins

by Danuta Kot

Becca felt as though someone had punched her in the gut. Then she told herself it was nothing, she was imagining things. Lots of people said Bex for Becca. And he hadn’t really emphasised the name, had he? That was just her being paranoid.

  ‘What you doing?’ Paige sat down next to Becca and leaned over to look at her phone. ‘Cool. You got Candy Crush?’ She got out her own phone and tapped it, showing the game to Becca.

  ‘Cool phone.’ Becca was surprised to see Paige had the latest iPhone, which was an expensive bit of gear.

  ‘Yeah. Look, see, you gotta . . .’ Paige showed her the intricacies of the game. Becca knew it, but she let Paige take her through some of the moves. They sat companionably for a while, Becca playing games, Paige texting. After a while, Paige spoke again. ‘So where do you go in the evenings?’

  ‘I don’t go anywhere much.’ It sounded pathetic to Becca and she wasn’t going to be pathetic for anyone. ‘Round here, I mean. I go back to Leeds mostly.’ She hadn’t been near Leeds for months, not since the Bexgirl thing had happened, but Paige didn’t have to know about that, or that Becca spent her evenings playing games on her phone and trying to keep the darkness at bay.

  ‘So why don’t you come out with us?’

  ‘Where do you go?

  ‘Parties. There’s good parties here,’ Paige said.

  A bunch of kids popping pills and getting high didn’t sound that attractive, but Paige was being friendly and it reminded Becca of times sitting in the coffee bar at college with her friend Ashley, chatting, texting, as people came and joined them, left, came back – just best friends in a circle of friends. She’d never had that before. At school, the kids had been wary. Becca was a known troublemaker and ready with her fists. She hadn’t really had friends, not even when she calmed down. But college had been a new start, and . . .

  ‘ . . . Saturday nights.’ Paige had been talking about parties again.

  ‘Sounds cool.’

  ‘So I’ll text you, then?’

  ‘Yeah, co—’

  ‘You. Paige. Come on – what you waiting for?’

  Becca looked up. Liam was at the door of the café watching them. He started to come across as Paige got to her feet. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’ She smiled at Becca. ‘See you.’

  They both disappeared into the hall.

  Becca didn’t like the look of that. There had been a bullying note in Liam’s voice, and though Paige hadn’t seemed concerned, she’d looked back as Liam led her out. Becca stood up, not sure what she planned to do, but as she reached the café door, Neil came out of his office and saw her. ‘There you are.’ As if he’d been looking for her for hours. ‘Have you got a minute?’

  ‘I just want to . . .’ But Liam and Paige had vanished. ‘Yeah. OK.’

  She followed Neil into his office, wondering what she’d done wrong now. He gestured her towards a chair and sat down himself. ‘Just a quick chat, Becca. Are you settling down? Is your flat OK?’ He threw the questions at her as if he didn’t really want an answer.

  ‘Yes. Fine. I’m fine.’ How could she start to explain? She wouldn’t talk about anything to Neil anyway. She’d had it up to here with social workers like him.

  ‘Well, now you’re at the end of your four-week trial, I just wanted to tell you that we’re happy with you, so if you’re happy with us . . .?’

  ‘I’m . . . yeah. Great.’ Her smile felt a bit forced. It was nice to be told she was doing something right, but . . . if they’d been unhappy with her, if they’d asked her to leave, then she’d have had no choice. She could go. Now she’d have to stay.

  And suddenly there was this thing with Liam.

  He couldn’t have meant anything . . .

  ‘Kay told me you were training in health and social care before you came to us. I don’t know what happened –’ he held up his hand – ‘none of my business, Becca, I know. But if you want to do a bit of on-the-job training here – you’re good with the kids, Becca. They talk to you.’

  Tell you later . . . Bex.

  ‘Yeah. Right. That’d be . . . yeah. Great.’

  ‘I’ll have to go ahead with your CRB check now. We should have done it sooner but there was a bit of an emergency. I’ll deal with that . . . is that OK? You haven’t got a police record or anything have you?’ He laughed as he said it to show it was a joke, and Becca shook her head.

  ‘No. No police record.’

  And that was true.

  Wasn’t it?

  Chapter 9

  Jared opened his eyes. It was freezing. He tried to move. Agony spiked up his leg and through his back. He collapsed onto the mattress, keeping his breathing shallow, his hand fumbling for the morphine pump.

  Then he woke up properly. He wasn’t in hospital. He was in a caravan on the deserted site near Flamborough Head. The rain was drumming against the roof. The mattress under him was hard and unforgiving, and the pain had him pinned down. The dark tunnel rushed into his mind, the debris falling, the mask, the thick, stinking water as he dragged himself through it . . .

  Shit! God al–fucking–mighty! What had he been thinking of? He’d never have taken that kind of risk, never have gone into that side tunnel on his own without the right equipment, not before his accident. What was he trying to prove? What a dick he was? If that roof had caved in, he could still be lying there, still alive, still conscious, still trapped, waiting for the rest to come down and suffocate him slowly in mud . . .

  A face, masked and snarling, jumping out of the darkness.

  And the silky flowers, gleaming in the flickering light.

  He jerked awake again, gasping for breath. Shit! What had he seen down that tunnel? It was already vanishing from his mind. He couldn’t tell what was real and what was part of a delusion induced by oxygen starvation.

  It can’t have been a body in the tunnel, not just hanging there . . . it was . . . a mask, an effigy . . . a sculpture? That was it. That had to be what it was. Most people who went into the tunnels left no trace of themselves, but some explorers, a few, left transient works of art in strange, inaccessible places, then posted photographs online. If you wanted to see the artwork for real, it was up to you to find it. He could remember coming across a sculpture in some woods near Sheffield once, a reclining woman made out of cling film, suspended between two trees.

  So there had been artists around the tunnel – that odd painting of a woman outside, that must have been left by the same person.

  He felt himself relaxing.

  The sooner he put the whole thing out of his mind the better.

  He tried to sit up. White-hot pain stabbed up his leg and into his back. His teeth snapped together and his neck arched. Fucking Jesus. It was like the days immediately after his accident. What had he done to himself?

  He managed to roll onto his side and grab the bottle of painkillers – the painkillers he’d cut right down to a couple at night. He tipped two into his hand but they dropped to the floor and rolled away – fuck – he tipped out two more and got them into his mouth. The bottle of whisky was by the side of the bed. He managed to get the top off and washed the pills down with two gulps that sent the liquid spilling across the mattress and his sleeping bag. He reached for a half-smoked joint that lay beside the pill bottle, lit it and took a long drag.

  Five minutes. He’d give them five minutes to work and then . . .

  He was drifting in a glaze of pain, fatigue and drugs. He struggled to keep himself awake, but every time he thought he was standing up, he realised he was half dreaming and was still flat on the hard mattress struggling against the stupor of the analgesics.

  How did you get it so wrong, son?

  He shouldn’t have taken the pills. He should have gritted his fucking teeth and manned up. He should . . . he should . . . The cave acted like an echo chamber. After he’d eeled his way out of the passage, his breath was ragged with relief and the sound of it filled the space. Only it wasn’t his breathing. It was the struggle of someone still in
the passage, still squeezing through the narrow space and the last pinch point where the rock had gripped his pelvis and held him trapped for long, tense minutes.

  . . . and the water kept on rising . . .

  Someone was knocking on the door. It was a sharp, peremptory knock that jerked him out of his dream. He realised he was still lying flat on the mattress. The fucking drug had got to him again and he must have slept for a while because light was streaming through the window and reflecting off the walls.

  The knocking came again. He sat up slowly, wiping his wet face. The pain had receded. It was still there, but it no longer bit deeply into him. He could move. He felt oddly detached, spaced out, the price he had to pay for his mobility.

  He had dumped his dirty clothes on the floor and the caravan stank of the filthy water from the tunnel. He slid his legs off the bed and eased himself upright, reaching for his jeans on the seat where he’d left them the night before, and almost fell.

  The knock came again, more sharply this time. ‘Just a minute.’ He pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt, dug a heavy sweater out of his bag and pulled that on as well. His feet were blocks of ice, but he couldn’t negotiate his socks and boots, not just yet. He supported himself with his stick as he went to the door and opened it.

  Daylight bounced against the backs of his eyeballs, making him wince. It wasn’t, as his hallucinating brain had half expected, his father. Two police constables, a man and a woman, stood there, the man with his hand poised to knock again. They stood side by side and looked at him with carefully blank faces. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

  Jared leaned against the doorway, squinting against the bright light. ‘Yes?’ He remembered, with a sinking feeling, the phone call he’d made the night before.

  ‘We’re investigating an incident from last night. We need to ask you some questions. Can we come in?’

  The pills scattered around were all legal, all on prescription, but he didn’t want the hassle of finding the proof, and the hash certainly wasn’t. ‘We can talk here.’ He lowered himself carefully onto the step, envying them their thick uniforms and gloves.

  ‘Heavy night?’ The man grinned at him, bonding.

  Jared shrugged but didn’t comment. The man pulled

  up an old milk crate that had been dumped outside the caravan at some time and sat down. ‘Not the best time of year for a holiday,’ he observed. ‘Could you give me your name, please, sir?’

  ‘Sir’ was what you said to your superior, your boss. In the mouth of the policeman it sounded like ‘scum’. They could find out easily enough. ‘Godwin. Jared Godwin.’

  ‘OK, Jared. Now, where were you last night?’

  Jared took a gamble on the possibility of someone having seen his car on the road. ‘Here.’

  ‘Just – here? Doing what?’

  Jared shrugged. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘You didn’t go up the coast?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone made an emergency call from this location late last night. Was that you?’

  If he’d been thinking straight, he’d have waited, made the call from a phone box – except he’d been in no state to think about anything much. His phone wasn’t registered to him – it was just a pay as you go. They must have tracked it but they had no way of knowing whose it was. He shook his head.

  They came at him from both sides. ‘A man – sounded like he’d had a few. He said there was a body in the Kettleness tunnel, in one of the side tunnels.’

  ‘The call came from this site. It was you, wasn’t it? No one else here.’ That was the woman, who was watching him with a mixture of incredulity and distaste. ‘The call handler said the caller sounded drunk – might have been a bit of fun to make that call, but people had to go into that tunnel, check it out. They sent a caving team in, Jared. That’s expensive. Can we see your phone?’

  ‘No. Why don’t you ask the people who were having the party?’ He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Never offer an explanation. That was their job, not his. Now they’d want to know all about that.

  ‘What party? Who was having a party?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said wearily. ‘Someone around here. They kept me awake, that’s all. Music, shouting. Just a party.’

  They were both studying him closely, seeing, in the daylight, the evidence of long-term illness and injury.

  ‘You’re hurt, Jared,’ the woman said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The ground. I fell fifty metres and I broke just about every bone in my fucking body. A year ago. I’m getting better, but I need to lie down and I need you two to go away.’

  He’d expected them to arrest him on suspicion of wasting police time. Instead, a close look at what a physical wreck he was must have convinced them, or convinced them enough, that it wasn’t him who’d called.

  But at least he knew now that his second thoughts of this morning were right. They hadn’t found anything. If they’d found a body they’d be here mob-handed with search warrants. He felt a wash of embarrassment. And the glittering flowers? He sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t mentioned them in the phone call last night.

  He felt stupid enough as it was.

  Chapter 10

  Saturday was Becca’s day off, and days off were a drag. Weekends were worst, because at weekends you were supposed to be out having a good time. When Neil said they were short-staffed Saturday evening, she’d volunteered to go in, because what else would she do? And she needed the money. She was close to broke.

  It was two o’clock, Saturday afternoon. She’d cleaned the flat, gone to the shops and stocked up on what she could afford – bread, beans, tea, sugar. She’d taken her clothes to the launderette, and by the time she got home, it was just midday. She’d made herself beans on toast, which she didn’t really want but it was something to do, then she switched on the TV – small, with a jumpy picture – and lay down on the bed, where she dozed off briefly.

  A pathetic loser living a loser’s life.

  The weekend stretched ahead of her like a featureless wilderness. She didn’t know anyone in Brid, she had no money to go anywhere and there wasn’t anywhere for her to go anyway.

  She could still see Clare’s face – Clare had been her tutor, and Becca liked her. Had liked her. Kind of. But Clare was just like all the rest of them – she didn’t want to listen, she just wanted Becca out of there. ‘You must know I can’t let you go on with the course after this. You’d never— What were you thinking of?’

  It had been such an easy way to make a bit of money, camming. There was her, the chat room, her webcam and her followers. The crazy thing was, she’d been good at it. You couldn’t just sit there and take your clothes off and do things. That was OK for a while, but the guys soon got bored. You had to chat, smile, be flirty, be friendly, make a bit of a joke about it sometimes, play games, be like their girlfriend. And if you got it right, the tips came in.

  It wasn’t a fortune, but it meant she could run a car, have a bit of money in her pocket, pay her rent. For the first time in her life, she’d been truly independent. Online, she was Bexgirl, and Bexgirl had a very different life from Becca Armitage, college student and future child welfare officer.

  Bexgirl looked at the camera with the gleam of promise in her eyes, she drank champagne – well, on camera it was mostly lemonade, but once someone had actually sent her champagne – she played with sex toys and told sexy stories.

  Becca Armitage studied hard, didn’t have a boyfriend, went round with a group of friends to clubs and places but didn’t drink, not really, and never touched hard drugs. As for the rest of it, what Becca Armitage did in place of the sex toys, mind your own business, right?

  And then her worlds collided.

  There were just two pictures. One was a screenshot from Twitter, and showed Bexgirl on a bed below a poster of urban graffiti, a riot of primary colours and the word WOW! in the centre. Her skin was dusted with sparkles. She was wearing a thong and a
camisole, two fingers tugging teasingly at the top of the thong. The bed was piled with stuffed toys. She was smiling at the camera, her tongue extended a bit to show the stud piercing it. The tweet was from Bexgirl, and it said: online and camming guys!

  This wasn’t the picture that caused the trouble.

  It was the second image, which showed Becca sitting on the same bed, in front of the same poster, but this time with a little girl who looked maybe six years old. They were hugging each other and were sticking their tongues out at the camera. They were both wearing shorts and sun tops with the legend Grrrl Power! across the front – Becca had bought the tops for them from the market that day.

  The girl was Ruby, Ashley’s little sister. Ashley was on Becca’s course and they were – they had been – best friends. Becca had come across a fed-up Ashley dragging a screaming kid behind her. The kid was howling and Ashley was yelling at her. Becca hadn’t had much to do with little kids, but Ashley was her mate, and there was something about the kid’s crying that tugged at her.

  She’d taken them both for ice cream – My treat, she’d said when Ashley grumbled about the expense. Ruby was OK after the ice cream, but Ashley kept moaning she was a pain, and she had to look after her all day, so Becca took them to a movie and then they’d gone back to Becca’s flat to have takeaway pizza. To Becca’s surprise, she’d really enjoyed it, but Ashley got a bit funny with her when Ruby started saying things like ‘I wish you were my sister.’

  Just before they left, Ashley had taken the photo of the two of them sitting on the bed.

  Becca saved it in her cloud file. She didn’t think anything about it, but she got hacked. First her Twitter account, then, before she realised what was happening, her cloud stuff was gone, and someone sent pictures to all her friends – and whoever did it put the camming image and the picture of Becca and Ruby together.

  The same setting, the spaghetti straps on the sun tops, the tongues sticking out – it was enough. The first she knew about it was when she went into college that morning.