by A. M. Castle
The fact that Becca’s not-insubstantial sympathy gland wasn’t working, at this of all times, said something. Surely?
As she buckled up in the car, she turned to Burke. ‘What’d you make of her, then?’
Burke was silent for a moment, his face hard to read in the gloom. The drive at the Bridges’ place was long, and the streetlights were a way off. Becca waited.
‘Totty, obviously.’
She swatted his arm and he laughed. ‘Well, come on, I’m only human. Yeah, she’s a bit chilly, if that’s what you’re getting at. But seriously, Becca, what are you expecting, news like that? She’s not going to welcome us like long-lost members of the family.’
‘No. But don’t you think something was odd? The way she kept stirring that bloody stew?’
Burke faced the front for a moment, hand on the ignition. ‘Bolognese, you heard her. They’ve got to eat. She’s got to feed the kids, whatever’s happened.’
‘But—’
‘Becca. Not everything is more complicated than it looks.’ He sighed, his hand dropping from the car key, resigned. She knew he found her attitude tiring at the best of times. ‘Poor woman, give her a chance. You’re expecting her to be on the floor. She can’t do that with the little ’uns. She’s got to be strong, hold it together.’
‘What about when she saw us at the door? The first thing she said was “Patrick!” She knew. She knew what was up. That means – that means she must have had something to do with it.’
There was a silence. Becca could almost hear the cogs turning. Finally Burke spoke. ‘You’re right, that was a bit funny maybe. But you’re making a huge leap. She makes a wild guess, so she’s a killer. Nah, I don’t think so. Look at it the other way, who else would we be coming about? The rest of the family was already sitting there. It was obvious, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes but … she didn’t know we were coming with bad news, did she? Could have been anything. Neighbour’s cat missing, whatever.’
‘People always know, Becca. There’s an instinct.’
Becca hated it when Burke adopted that lofty ‘seen it all before’ tone. She tried again. ‘Yes, but when we asked her if she wanted someone with her? If she wanted us to ring her mum, for example.’
Burke gave her a look. She could just about interpret it as exasperation in the gathering dusk. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than having my mum around in a situation like that.’
‘But what about your kids? Wouldn’t it be good to have their gran there?’
‘You’re making a lot of assumptions. Not every family works like yours. Mine aren’t crazy about their nan, she’s pretty strict. Maybe Mrs Bridges, or whatever, is the same? Maybe they just don’t get on?’
‘OK, so not her mum – but why not another friend? Is she seriously going to sit there all night on her own with those kids? After what we’ve just told her?’
‘Why not? Maybe she wants to get her head around it first. Maybe she doesn’t actually have any friends. Basically, Becca, that’s not a crime.’
‘I’m not saying it is, but—’
‘You’ve got to stop expecting everyone to be the same as you. When you’ve been doing the knock for as long as I have, you’ll realise people take it all ways. Forget the textbook, forget what you think you’d do.’
A cold drizzle started to fall. The windscreen wipers were soon beating a soothing tempo, as English as a nursery rhyme.
‘Truth is, you won’t know till you’re there. Where she’s sitting now. Just pray you never are,’ Burke said, turning the key at last, putting the car into gear with his usual heavy deliberation and signalling to pull out.
Perhaps he was right. He had years of experience, in the end. All she had was instinct, and they were always being told to make that secondary to the rule book.
‘Amen to that.’ Becca shrugged, accepting defeat. For now.
Chapter 3
Now
Louise
All I want to do today, the day of the funeral, is make sure Giles and Em get through it, that we all do, as best we can. It’s not going to be easy. There was the delay, due to the … circumstances. You’d think that would make things less painful. It should be less raw. But it’s like pulling the plaster off bit by bit. They’ve had time to get used to the pitch of their grief, we’ve pared down our lives to fit around it. Now we have to open ourselves up again, parade in front of strangers.
Still, if we can keep putting one foot in front of the other, get to the end of this long and dreadful day, then it’s one major ordeal over. I’m not saying we can then move seamlessly on with our lives. I know now that recovery will be slow. But still, it will be one less thing hanging over us.
Em is in a dark-purple dress, one that Patrick liked. Better than black, for a girl of her age. We’ve scrambled together a dark suit for Giles. Boys can look wrong, dressed up in men’s clothes. Vulnerable necks, shiny jackets. But Giles looks good. Pale as his shirt, of course, and so sad, so brave. But smart, well turned out. Just like his dad.
I’d taken one of Patrick’s suits to the undertakers. His best. They’d asked me if I wanted to see him then. I refused, of course.
Unwisely, I mentioned it to the kids and then, of course, they felt obliged to see him. So I had to do it after all. Back to the funeral parlour, the careful obsequiousness of the staff, the décor that was so inoffensive it managed somehow to be revolting. We waited with another red-eyed family, offering each other stunted little smiles. Then we were led into the ghastly viewing room. Real flowers, at least. A pale pink carpet, suspiciously clean. I loathed it all. I looked at anything except the dazzling high shine of the coffin we’d picked, and the snowy white satin around his head. We were a tight little clump again. I could feel their fear and dread, the horror the living have of the dead, but I could feel their determination too. They are the best part of me, that’s for sure.
I shuffled them forward, tried to make things easier, all the while averting my own eyes as much as I could. I couldn’t avoid a glimpse. And the worst thing was that he somehow looked so untouched, after all that he – we – had been through. That dressmaker’s dummy was not my husband. But he was still my children’s father.
Chapter 4
Now
Becca
Becca Holt stumped into the station building and dropped the results of her shopping trip on her desk. It was cluttered already with clumps of empty Costa cups and plastic bags as shrivelled as autumn leaves. Tutting audibly so her colleagues wouldn’t think it was all her rubbish, she shoved the lot into the nearest bin, hesitating only briefly over whether it should go into ‘recycling’ or ‘general waste’. Even throwing stuff away was complicated nowadays.
Once the decks were cleared to her satisfaction, she snuffled in the pristine white paper bag she’d brought in. Just inhaling the doughnuts calmed her, the reassuring, wholesome smell of vanilla undercut with the hidden raspberry jam. She breathed in a bit too hard and had to splutter, finding a sudden unwilling sympathy for the coke addicts they were constantly moving on from under the arches down near the station.
She darted a quick glance around. At most of the desks, her fellow PCs were sprawled flat or had their noses pressed up against screens. Opposite, Burke was knocking a biro against his teeth in a rhythm that was doing his dental work no favours and would soon be messing with her head. She’d bought the doughnuts to share. She knew she should be tearing open the bag, leaving it on the side of her desk, making a general announcement of her largesse. Getting them all to love her. But bugger that. She wanted them all to herself.
She carefully edged a doughnut up a tad in the bag, ducked her head down, bit and sighed. It was good. So good it was bad. A bead of jam oozed down the side of her mouth and she licked and rubbed ferociously. Didn’t want to look like Dracula, did she? Or be caught snacking, either. She could do without being teased. As she’d discovered, the banter here wasn’t imaginative. Give them a stick, and they’d be beating you with it
until you collected your pension.
She chewed carefully and swallowed, the movement making her waistband dig in that little bit more. She felt a prickle of shame. It suddenly made her think of that woman’s thighs. Her first and only knock, and as such seared on her memory. But she didn’t think she’d have forgotten it anyway, even if she’d called on as many of the recently bereaved as the Co-op Funeral Service.
Louise Bridges. That had been her name.
There’d been something about her, for sure. She couldn’t say it had been eating away at her. She was the one who had been eating away, and not at that case, but at mounds of stuff she shouldn’t even be looking at. She knew that. But this was a tough job, physical. She could walk it off. In theory. Unfortunately, her beat didn’t cover Land’s End to John O’Groats. As often as not, she was welded to the seat of her patrol car, and even that was stationary in traffic.
The truth was, it was the kind of work that you wanted to compensate yourself for doing. Demanding, sometimes demeaning. Requiring a lot of patience. Being polite, however absurd the calls on her time. Stepping in to defuse rows between grown men that would have shamed toddlers. Picking drunks up out of the gutter, and still treating them with respect, even when they hurled all over her clodhopping shoes. She needed a treat after a long day – and sometimes in the middle of a long day. And occasionally, like now, right at the beginning of what was, after all, bound to be a long day.
Unbidden, that woman’s legs unfurled in her mind again. How did you even get legs like that? Genetics, that’s how. Her own tree trunks would always be just that, even if she ate nothing but tofu and quinoa from this day forth. She knew that to be the truth. Yet there were steps she could take, to make sure the rest of her didn’t run the same way as her legs. She didn’t need Mrs Bridges rubbing it in.
But that wasn’t really why the woman had stuck in her mind. Or wasn’t the only reason, at any rate. Something didn’t stack up. Whatever her partner said, Becca hated a loose end even more than she hated an untidy doughnut. She lowered her head to the bag again, and nibbled the corner until it was flattened off. Perfect. But was that another bit poking up? She sighed. And nibbled again.
Even the hit of sweetness wasn’t enough to keep her mind off Louise Bridges for long. With a powder-white thumb she prodded her terminal into life. Burke would kill her, but he didn’t have to know. Thanks to her IT degree, she could just sneak a quick peek, set her mind at rest. Then enjoy her snack for as long as the job would let her. She licked her fingers, pressed a couple of keys, realised they were getting sticky and shrugged. This wouldn’t take a sec. Then she could give the whole keyboard a good wipe down. She fumbled in her drawer, found a piece of paper, studied the letterhead and tapped in the name.
A few strokes later and she was in. The doughnut, jam haemorrhaging away quietly inside the bag, was forgotten.
Chapter 5
Then
The first time I ever laid eyes on Patrick was at work. He just sauntered right past me. He didn’t need to tangle with me and Jen, the beautiful bookends sitting on reception. He was already in, shoulders swinging in his sharp suit, security pass wafted at the guard. Not that the fat, middle-aged geezer they’d hired to protect us all would have been able to stop anything other than a rampaging doughnut. Patrick knew where he was going, walked as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He owned everything. The job. The building. And now, suddenly, me.
That confidence. That sense of blithe entitlement. It wasn’t arrogance, he wasn’t really flash. He was just sure, steady, unshakeable. He was in the right place, at the right time. Everything was within his grasp, his for the taking. That definitely included me. Patrick was a living, breathing symbol of everything I’d wanted, my whole life.
I was attracted, an iron filing to a magnet. Stuck forever, just like that.
He gave Jen the ghost of a wink as he passed, shirt like a washing powder ad, glimmer of a smile, then clocked me and something changed in his expression. Too soon, he’d passed us and was at the lifts. On a better day, I might have mustered the boldness to get up, sashay past him, pretend I was on my way to the ladies’. But as it was, I just felt as though I’d been socked in the stomach.
That’s all it takes, sometimes. A look, and your life is sealed.
It was my first day in the job. God, I loved that place, the office building. Looking back on it, it was very ‘new millennium’, as they now say with a sneer. At the time, the shiny glass, chrome and marble seemed breathtaking. A palace to commerce, to possibilities, to a bright, clean future. Smart. Glitzy. Everything I badly wanted to have – and be.
So many things to remember, that morning. Who was who, where everything should go. It was crucial I shouldn’t look as though I was out of my depth. I’d blagged my way onto the temp agency’s books. The middle-aged woman at the dingy office had been deeply sceptical, but – surprise, surprise – the manager, puffing out of his shirt, was dead keen to have me on his books. Probably in all ways, but I just didn’t want to go there, even in my imagination.
This was my second temping gig. The first had been fine; boring. A solicitor’s office. Sitting there, I’d soon felt there was more dust settling on me than on the files they guarded so jealously. I hadn’t expected much from this next booking, as a result. But as soon as I approached the building, I got butterflies. Even the door handles looked like they had more class than I did. Long, chrome rods, running the length of the sheet glass doors. I was reluctant to grasp one, get my smutty prints all over it. But that only lasted a second. They had people who spent their days buffing this stuff. I took a deep breath and strutted in like I wasn’t dirt, like I didn’t come from nothing – as if, contrary to everything I knew in my heart of hearts, I had some sort of a right to try my hand at a better life.
It must have been an Oscar-winning performance, as Jen, the permanent girl, barely raised an eyebrow. They’d taken me on to cover her colleague’s two-week summer break, the idea being that Jen would bring me up to speed, though if I couldn’t hack it, it wouldn’t much matter, as she had everything under control. I couldn’t believe my luck. From the moment I sank into that leather-and-chrome swivel chair, rich and squishy as chocolate mousse, I was determined they’d never drag me out of it. It was beyond me why anyone would want time off from a job like this.
It’s hard work, pretending everything’s fine when it’s not, pretending you know what you’re doing when you really, really don’t. But I’d had practice. Sucking in every possible clue you can glean from your surroundings, your companions, can make the difference between passing unnoticed and getting into, well, let’s just say, a sticky situation. ‘Where are you from?’ Jen’s eyebrows were elegantly arched, but geography wasn’t on her mind. Her eyes travelled up and down as I gave out the mixture of truth and lies I practised every morning. She smiled and returned to her keyboard, shoulders relaxing slightly. She was somewhat reassured. My answers had passed muster. But I’d clocked that my outfit was a catastrophe which needed immediate attention.
As soon as I could, I ran to the loo. This little get-up had cost all the money I had. But it was wrong, wrong, wrong. I looked at myself in the mirror. Shame and disgust blurred my vision and when it cleared, I saw my fancy sheer blouse for what it was. So pretty, when I’d popped it on this morning and slid my feet into my towering scarlet heels. So tarty, now I looked at it coldly, while the shoes would have been better on a street corner. The tiny pucker between Jen’s eyebrows had shown me the terrible error of my ways. Highly polished invisibility was what we were after, as though we’d grown out of our marble reception desk like Greek goddesses.
I was devastated. Humiliated, yet again. A less determined girl might have thrown her hands up at that point, called the agency, asked for something … more suited. But I swallowed hard. Got to work. The desk would shield the shortness of my skirt. I couldn’t do much about the silly shirt, except fasten every single button, right up to the neck. I felt as though I was being s
trangled, but instantly the look was less … available. Anything else I could do? I scrutinised myself, tried to be dispassionate. The bling. I took off a bangle, then two, and stashed them in my bag. The fewer personal touches, the better. Instead of refreshing my make-up, I scrubbed half of it off, brushed my hair with furious vigour until my scalp burned. I did my best to glide back to my seat with a detached smile, just like Jen’s.
Every morning after that, I pared myself down, shedding hoops and necklaces, dumping outfits I’d saved up for, sloughing off the vibrant shades I’d loved. Working out that they shouted so much that I wanted unsaid. In the space of days, I became a monochrome, sober version of myself. The only ray of light left was my curtain of hair. It hung like the sun in the sky during that long, hot summer. Something told me that blonde would always be the one colour that went with everything.
Sometimes I’d see a hand on my keyboard and wonder who on earth it belonged to. Those tasteful taupe nails, just long enough to show they were high-maintenance, could they be mine? Fire-engine-red had been my favourite since I left school, except when I went for blue or a green or a shrieking neon. But soon I was swiping through my bathroom shelf at home, chucking my little rainbow straight into the bin. That was now definitely in my past. And the mound of jewellery on my bedside table, so beguiling when it was bought? It oxidised almost overnight, showing me who was right. All that glitters is not gold. Lucky I was a quick learner.
Chapter 6
Now
Louise
Standing in front of my mirror, today of all days, I know that, ironically, I’ve finally found a look I can definitely pull off. Well, who doesn’t suit a little black dress? Patrick’s wedding ring round my neck on a simple chain. And lilies – the other perfect accessory.