by Jack Jordan
‘Why. . . why are you telling me this?’
‘Because I can’t do anything about it and I’m sick of it.’
‘But what can I do?’
‘Here.’
Rose took the scrap of paper from the woman’s hand. A name and number had been scribbled onto it. She shoved it inside her pocket.
‘Tell him Anna told you to give him a call. And please, don’t tell anyone else I did this.’
The woman held her eyes until she was sure she could trust her.
‘Why are you?’ Rose asked. ‘If you can’t do anything about it, how can I—’
‘You don’t have to do anything, but something tells me you will. Here.’ She took her bag from her shoulder and removed the journal. She must have sneaked inside the interview room and taken it before Montgomery returned. Anna pressed the journal into Rose’s hands and turned back before she could speak again.
Rose watched the woman run down the hill again until she was back in the station, not using the main entrance, but a door further along the side of the building. Even with the distance between them, the woman hesitated in the doorway, and their eyes met before she stepped inside the station and closed the door behind her.
Things that go on within the force, things that might have jeopardised the case.
Rose had gone to the police to help find out what had happened to Finn Matthews. She hadn’t even considered they might also be to blame.
She looked down at the journal in her hands. It was back in her possession; now she had to figure out what the hell she was going to do with it.
JOHNNY
29th November 2005
Johnny sat at the dining table in his usual place. He would call it his spot if his father didn’t constantly remind him that he was living under his roof on borrowed time, and that everything in the house was his and his alone. His sister Harriet sat opposite him, with their parents at each end of the table. They ate in silence but for the occasional scrape of metal against china and the chew of tough beef, all with their eyes set on their plates. None of them could look at the bruise darkening around Johnny’s eye. Occasionally Harriet would glance at him, consider the way his eyelids had swollen with the punch. When he looked across the table, her gaze dropped to her plate again, her cheeks redder than before.
They had followed him home after their shift at the factory where half the boys in his year had ended up after school. They had taunted him the whole way until words weren’t enough and the first fist hit the back of his skull. He’d fallen to the ground with his ears ringing, did nothing as he was turned over with rough hands and punched again by a different man. They were all men now, but it felt like none of them had aged a day. It was the same three boys from school who had made it their mission to ensure that each day was worse than the last, the same boys who made him wish he had never been born. He thought that the fear would subside after a while; he would get used to their taunts, their fists jabbing in his ribs as he walked down the school corridor, the kicks littering his body from his head to his ankles after the last bell rang, the summers when they shoved grass cuttings down his throat after the groundskeeper had mown the fields. But each word and touch was as fresh as the first. As they assaulted him, he wondered what it would be like to die, and if it would hurt like everyone said, or if it would be painless and the idea of pain was a lie people told to keep others from taking matters into their own hands.
His father dropped his cutlery with a clatter and everyone looked up from their plates. They watched him rub his face, the slack, ageing skin moving with his hands. Johnny glanced at his mother as she eyed his father sharply, warning him not to start, but he wouldn’t look at her. She knew what was coming. They all did.
‘You need to stop making it so easy for them, John,’ his father said finally. He said it with anger or frustration, Johnny couldn’t tell which. Maybe it was hate.
‘Andrew,’ his mother said sharply.
‘No. He needs to hear it.’ He looked back at Johnny. ‘The way you walk, the way you talk, you’re basically. . . well, it’s like you’re. . .’
Asking for it, Johnny thought.
‘Andrew, that’s enough!’
‘If you didn’t act like such a. . .’ He stopped, shook his head. ‘If you just acted like a normal bloke, they’d leave you alone.’
Normal.
‘Andrew!’
‘Damn it, Lin, he needs to hear this!’
‘Fuck you.’
Silence fell upon the table. All eyes shot towards Johnny, shocked at the words that had left his lips. But none of them were as shocked as him. He touched his lips where the words had fled.
‘What did you say to me?’
Johnny stood up. Andrew snatched his wrist and tightened his grip.
‘Say it again.’
‘Andrew, please. . .’
He looked into Johnny’s eyes, his grip tightening and tightening as the anger flooded his face.
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, not when you’re under my roof.’
Johnny tore his wrist from his father’s grasp and headed out of the room. He snatched a coat from the hook, not knowing or caring if it was his.
‘If you leave this house, don’t come back!’
He listened to his father’s words ring down the hall and the quiet sobs from his mother. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him.
The rain pummelled down, following the slant of the street in streams beside the kerbs. He shrugged into the coat and raised the hood, his throat burning with unshed tears. He wouldn’t cry over them. He was done crying.
He headed down the road and turned right down the next, walking without a destination in mind. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. He didn’t have grandparents. He didn’t have any friends in town; the only few he’d had were off at university. They had left school with good grades. They hadn’t been scared stupid at their desks, watching the clock ticking down to the end of the day when the beatings began. They’d escaped the town and left him there.
He walked through the rain, breathing quick, visible breaths into the night, remembering every word his father had said.
It’s like you’re asking for it.
If you were a normal bloke.
Asking for it.
Normal.
He walked until his legs ached, wandering for miles without really seeing. When he stopped, he looked up from the path and saw the bridge that led out of town. It was then, as he stared at the only route of escape, that the tears fell.
He would never be able to leave. He had no savings, no car, nothing to offer the world. The people who he had once called friends had changed so much in their short time away at university that he didn’t recognise them any more; they had all grown up, while he remained in the past. His father didn’t want him, and his old friends wouldn’t either. He would work in the factory until the day he died, just like his father.
He wished them dead. He wished the entire town dead.
‘Hey.’
He jolted with the sound and stumbled back.
A car had pulled up beside him. A man with dark hair sat behind the wheel, looking up at him from inside the car.
‘You all right? It’s pouring down.’
Johnny almost looked behind him to check the man was talking to him. He was attractive with a kind, straight smile. He couldn’t remember the last time someone smiled at him.
‘Do you need a lift somewhere?’
Johnny looked at the road out of town, and then back the way he’d come. He couldn’t go back, but he couldn’t go forwards. He was stuck there with nowhere to go. More tears came.
‘Where are you headed?’
‘I. . . I don’t know.’
‘Get in, you’re shaking. You need to call someone to pick you up?’
He tried to think of someone to call, anyone at all. The rain stalked down his face, hung on the ends of his eyelashes.
‘I don’t have anyone,’ he said
absently.
The man looked him up and down, something flashing in his eyes. Johnny was used to pity.
‘Get in,’ the man said. He leaned over and opened the passenger door.
He was kind, the only kind man in the entire town. His face was familiar, although Johnny couldn’t pin it down, but he had eyes that made him easy to trust, a smile that made Johnny feel like crying again.
‘Come on, the seat’s getting wet,’ he said.
Johnny got inside. He slammed the door shut, quietening the rain until the downpour was just a patter against the roof and glass.
The man smiled beside him and locked the doors.
SIXTEEN
Rose reached the top of the drive, trembling all over with a blue tint to her fingers. Her clothes clung to her body and dripped from every hem.
The bus journey home had almost lulled her to sleep. She had steeled her muscles against the juddering of the engine, but the soothing motion was like being rocked to sleep. If she had slept then, she would have woken at the last stop and had to wait for another bus or walk back; or she would have dozed for ten minutes before jolting awake again, only to spend the rest of the night awake. When she had the opportunity to sleep, it evaded her, but when she couldn’t, it attempted to drag her under; an endless battle she was too exhausted to fight.
She looked up at the house, darkness lurking behind every window.
Surely Samantha’s parents would get sick of having Lily to stay so often; perhaps her mum would start asking questions. She imagined the mothers talking about her the way they used to.
Is everything all right at home? Lily has been staying over an awful lot.
Oh, you didn’t know? Rose fell asleep at the wheel with her children inside; only her and Lily survived. Lily can’t stand the sight of her now.
Maybe she wasn’t at Samantha’s. Perhaps it was a lie, and she had no way of knowing. It was as though she wasn’t a mother at all.
Rose walked up the gravel driveway with her teeth chattering in her ears and the journal clamped firmly under her arm. She reached to her shoulder for her bag.
It wasn’t there.
She swore under her breath and rubbed her face. Her phone, purse and house keys were inside. She imagined her bag unattended at the bus stop; strewn out across the road, the valuables gone and the rest scattered by the wind. Perhaps she had left it under the seat on the bus; she might still get it back. If she had left it at the police station, they would have called.
But how can they call if they have your phone, you idiot?
She looked up at the house, hopeful for a sign of life behind the glass, and moved further along the drive. Night was falling, and the chill in the air was getting sharper. She cupped her hands around her face and peered through the living-room window until her breath steamed up the glass. Darkness.
All she wanted to do was change out of her wet clothes and collapse into bed, but if Lily and Christian were staying out, there was no way she was getting inside.
She opened the side gate to the garden and lapped the house, hoping to find an open window, maybe a light on in Lily’s room. Every window was fastened, reflecting the evening sky. She eyed the brick they used to prop the door open in the summer, and for a brief second, considered breaking a pane of glass in the back door to get inside. She walked back around to the front of the house.
Without her purse, she couldn’t check into a hotel. If her annual bus pass hadn’t been in her pocket, she might have realised sooner. There were no phone boxes she could walk to, no neighbours she could rely on. She couldn’t bear to give them anything else to gossip about. She tried to think of someone, anyone, who she could turn to. She had no one.
No one, she thought, except her father.
A week ago, she wouldn’t even have thought of him, but seeing him at the graveyard had brought him to the surface again.
She couldn’t go to him; every time she thought of him she remembered all the pain he had caused. It would be a betrayal to Jay and their mother. But her only alternative would be to sleep on the doorstep and hope someone returned, or stow away in the shed until dawn.
She had to face her father.
She had to go home.
Rose stopped outside the family home, a barrage of memories hitting her like a fist. She remembered Jay’s first blundering steps across the living-room carpet, heatwaves spent in the garden, her mum tending to the flower beds. She remembered the Christmas mornings when it was the four of them, and then three, until it was just two left, spending the day apart.
Even in the dark, Rose could see that the house had lost the essence that had made it home. Thick layers of dirt coated the windows and the gutter was packed with rotting leaves. The grass had been left to grow untamed, and litter blown from the wind had caught in the reeds. Knee-high weeds swayed from their roots between the grooves in the path. It seemed the house had died with them.
The hallway light was on. She couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or disappointed. Perhaps it would have been better to spend the night on the doorstep, waiting for Christian or Lily to come home.
Before she had the chance to change her mind, she walked up to the door and rang the bell. The paint on the front door was peeling off, revealing the bare wood beneath, which was rotting from years of rain. A dog barked inside the house next door.
As she waited for him to appear in the frosted glass, her stomach turned over, spitting bile up her throat.
This was a mistake. She still had time to turn back.
Just as she began to turn on her heel, a figure hobbled into view, edging down the hallway towards the door.
No turning back now.
A key turned in a lock and a chain moved across the other side of the door. She held her breath as the door opened.
Tony looked even older than he had at their graves. White stubble littered his cheeks and neck. He wore an off-white shirt covered in food stains, and old, yellow sweat soiled the fabric beneath his arms. Worn slippers poked out from beneath ill-fitting tracksuit bottoms.
His eyes widened and looked her up and down. She couldn’t believe she was there either.
They stood in silence and stared at each other over the threshold.
‘I. . . I lost my bag. Christian and Lily are out, and I’m locked out of the house for the night.’
He jolted back to life.
‘Oh, right,’ he stammered, moving aside for her to pass. ‘Come in.’
‘This doesn’t mean anything.’
She peered down the hallway. Cardboard boxes were stacked up against the walls, leaving only a narrow path into the house. Dust coated everything in sight: the clock on the wall that had frozen at four minutes past midnight, on top of the boxes like a thin coat of fur, lining the picture frames on the walls; she noticed the photos had been taken out.
He followed her gaze as she took in the state of the house and blushed.
‘I haven’t had a visitor in a while.’
She took a tentative step inside and pressed herself against a box as her father shut the door. He squeezed past her and led her down the narrow corridor.
‘This way,’ he said, as if she hadn’t lived there for two decades of her life.
It was as though he couldn’t see the mess. She wondered how long he had lived like this, if whatever was in the boxes was hers, or her brother’s or mother’s, the past hidden away, each box taped shut to keep the memories at bay.
She followed him down the hall, squeezing past the banister, and stepped into the kitchen.
Her jaw dropped.
Crockery and pans towered from the sink, coated in old food and mould. Food containers were strewn on the floor and countertops, where stains had been left to harden into a thick crust, so baked on that she couldn’t even remember what colour it was beneath. The floor was littered with wrappers and dropped cutlery left to stick to the lino. Flies buzzed languidly around the single light bulb.
‘I can’t believe—’
A mouse shot out of an old cereal box by her foot and scurried along the skirting board beneath the kitchen units. She screamed and jumped back, pressing herself against the door frame. The black bag beside her tipped over; maggots wriggled underneath.
‘What the hell?’
‘It’s only a mouse, Rosie!’
‘A mouse in your bloody kitchen, Dad!’
‘I’m sorry. I would have tidied up if I’d known—’
‘This doesn’t need tidying, it needs fumigating!’
She stayed against the door frame, her chest racing, and eyed the floor for any more emerging creatures. Just being near the filth made her skin itch.
When she looked at her father, his eyes were on the maggots twisting and turning on the floor.
‘I didn’t know about those. . .’ he said glumly.
‘What the hell is going on?’
He stuttered as he struggled to find the words, his eyes darting around the mess.
‘When. . . when you live alone, you let things slip. It’s only me who sees it.’
‘You could get ill. This is dangerous.’
She stepped further into the room and cringed at the sight of a blackened banana peel stuck to the work surface and left to rot. Dead ants framed the sink; live ones slinked in from the broken seal around the window. Mouse droppings were scattered everywhere she looked.
She couldn’t stay here; even the air felt dirty in her lungs.
‘I’ll tidy up the living room,’ he said nervously, as if reading her mind. ‘It’s not so bad in there. I could make a pot of tea, or something.’
She couldn’t stay here. It was a hovel, a cesspit of filth and disease. She would catch something within the hour.
‘Yes, tea in the living room,’ he decided quickly, and made for the door. He turned, his eyes pleading for her to follow. She noticed a yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes and wondered if he still drank.
She had nothing to feel guilty about – he had broken three hearts – and yet, standing amongst the mess, she felt it burning in her chest. She was all her father had left, and she’d cut him out.