💙🖤"The Widower's iLie" by J.A. Baker

‘Sorry,’ I say, simply because I don’t know how else to respond. I think about getting up and moving away, pretending she isn’t here but my bones are weighted to the ground, my limbs too heavy to move, so I sit instead, wrapped in a tight smog of anxiety and confusion.

‘It’s me,’ she says, cocking her head to one side to catch my attention. ‘Jeanette, from the school. I was the secretary. Remember me?’

Of course I remember her. What does she think I am, some sort of idiot? I find myself nodding in agreement even though every nerve ending in my body is screaming at me to turn away from her and run until I am weak with exhaustion, my legs buckling beneath me.

‘I just want to say that I’m really sorry for what happened. None of it was your fault. I wrote you a letter but I don’t suppose you were up to reading it, were you? Everything must have been a bit of a blur.’

I stare at this woman’s face, at her probing gaze and her portly midriff, and feel a tsunami of bitterness towards her. She needs to leave me alone, to get up and walk away. I barely know her and I don’t want her here asking all these questions, making bland, uninformed statements about my life. Who the hell does she think she is? I don’t know her. She doesn’t know me.

‘Phillip used to sometimes chat about you, Jade, when I saw him in the school. He said you were getting a lot better, that your therapy sessions seemed to be having a positive effect.’

I feel her touch my arm, the heat of her hand seeping through my skin, mingling and fusing with my blood. Getting a lot better. What does that even mean? Getting better from what? Have I sustained an injury of some sort that I know nothing about – a broken hand, perhaps? Maybe a broken arm? Or is she referring to my broken mind? I am suddenly cold, the breeze now an Arctic gust as it wraps itself around me, an icy shroud of hatred and resentment building and rising within me.

‘I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this? Phillip did say that you had had a tough time with all your issues and of course, the last time I saw you was after the court case…’ Her voice tails off which is just as well. I want her to stop talking, to close her stupid mouth and leave me alone.

‘I’m fine,’ I murmur. ‘We’re fine. We are all just fine.’ An ache sets into my jaw as I clamp my teeth together, wishing her far away from here, wishing her gone altogether. Why is she here? What was the point of following me and what does she even want from me? She needs to leave. Now.

‘Oh, that’s good to hear. Listen,’ she says, oblivious to my cool, detached manner, to the fact that I am impervious to her words and am refusing to meet her gaze, ‘maybe we could meet up for coffee one day? It would probably do you good to chat about it all. It must be a heavy burden to bear.’ She stops and touches my arm. I recoil, my head buzzing with hatred, a wave of revulsion rippling over my flesh. ‘Not that any of it was your fault, of course! Far from it. Or I could call around your house. Are you still at the same address?’ She continues talking. Babbling. Not detecting my mood, my wish for her to walk away and leave me be. She just goes on and on and on. Words floating around me, over me. Piercing my thoughts. My heart. Skewering me. Making me bleed. ‘How about next week? Coffee and a chinwag? I know some people took Sophia’s side but I always think there’s more than one victim in these cases. I mean, look at you, sitting here all alone. It’s all so very sad, don’t you think?’

Perhaps it’s her intense stare or her empty chatter. Or maybe it’s her inability to pick up on my deteriorating mood or maybe it’s just because I cannot control myself, but before I know it, I have pushed her onto the ground and have my hands around her throat. She struggles as I lean over her and pin her down but for all of her extra weight, I have the advantage. I am younger, stronger, fitter. I am everything she isn’t. And I am angry. The more she tries to push me away, the angrier I become.

We’re hidden behind the bench as we struggle and squirm, her body pressed up against the metal frame, pinning her in place. I am abruptly made of iron; my mind, my body fortified and solid. I have the strength of a hundred men. She is losing and she knows it.

‘I’m Alice,’ I hiss, my voice low, almost a whisper, loaded with fury and bitterness and loathing. ‘I don’t know anybody called Jade. Stop saying it. Stop fucking calling me Jade! I am Alice and I don’t know anybody called Phillip so just stop fucking talking, okay?’

My fingers are powerful around her neck. My knee is on her chest. Her eyes are distended, her fingers clawing at my hands. I can feel the thud of her body, the weight of it reverberating through the ground when she kicks out, her legs flailing as she struggles to breathe. I press down harder, tightening my grip, a strength I didn’t realise I possessed surging through me. Her attempts are futile. She knows it, I know it. She may as well just accept her fate.

Seconds pass, maybe a minute. Perhaps even longer. We continue with our power struggle, heat billowing deep within my muscles. And then nothing. A sudden flop as she stops fighting, her body now limp beneath me. After the initial rush of power, I am overcome with exhaustion. I drop to one side, my eyes roving around the churchyard for anybody else. We’re alone. I pull myself back up, kneel by her body, my lungs burning, and study her face: the way her eyes stare up at me, her tongue as it lolls out of the corner of her mouth. Her skin is mottled, a purple tinge spread over it. With fumbling fingers, I close her eyes and spin around looking for something, anything I can use to cover her body. There is nothing. Instead, I take hold of her arms and drag her farther around the back of the church, her body heavy and cumbersome, even more weighted in death than it was in life.

I lay her behind a row of gravestones, pushing her legs up to her chest, dipping her head away from the sky, then step back and glance over my shoulder. I’m still alone. Only the birds know what I have done. What she made me do with her constant intrusions and demands. She brought this upon herself. It was not my fault. These happenings rarely are. Events are foisted on me and I have to do things to limit the damage. It’s just how it is. I’ve learnt that much in the past year. No number of therapy sessions can teach me what I have learned since the murder. It’s a form of survival. A way to get by and keep my dignity and my current life intact. I refuse to be dragged down by things that have nothing to do with me. And Sophia Saunders’ murder was not my fault, yet it has impinged on my life in so many quantifiable ways, too many to count. Nobody knows my pain, my suffering. Nobody.

Jeanette looks as if she is curled up sleeping as I move away and head out of the churchyard, keeping my head low. I stroll back down Goodramgate, dipping into as many alleyways as I can until I am back at the city walls, ready to flag down a taxi. Ready to get as far away from this place as I can.

I should be nervous, agitated or perhaps quite sick. I don’t feel any of those things. It’s surprising really. I don’t feel anything at all. But then, I didn’t expect to. It’s not as if this is a first for me.

A passing taxi comes to a halt as I stick out my hand, open the door and jump inside.

We pull up outside my house just fifteen minutes later, the traffic flowing easily. I pay the driver and step out into the soft, midday sun, thinking I should perhaps call Peter after all.

32LAUREN

I am a spare part but Alice insisted I come along. I don’t mind accompanying them if they don’t mind me being here. I just presumed they would want some time alone together, not have me hanging around spoiling their fun but it appears they actually enjoy my company. I suppose it’s a chance for us all to bond. I almost laugh out loud at that thought. God, it sounds crass. Mad and old fashioned. Bonding. What does it even mean? That she will become my new mum? My face heats up. Images of Mum’s dead body balloon in my mind. I close my eyes, will them away.

I need to know more about her, this Alice, dispel any nagging doubts I have about her background, her intentions. It is a weird time in our lives, lots of changes, a shifting of roles and expectations.

‘More coffee?’ Alice is holding out the flask to me, the cup in my hand now empty.

‘Yes please.’

We’re sitting in the middle of the North Yorkshire Moors, a blanket draped across the rough terrain, our picnic spread out before us. To the south of us is Rosedale Abbey, to the west, The Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge, another of Mum and Dad’s favourite haunts before their marriage fell apart, and a place that I remember visiting as a kid. The sun beats down on us, a brisk wind cooling our faces as we eat and chat. I’m surprisingly happy and relaxed. I think about the faces of my friends when I tell them I spent the day up on the moors having a picnic with two oldies. They’ll think I’ve flipped, gone soft in the head. Right now, Jessie and Allegra will be sitting on their beds, painting their nails, music blasting out in the background as they chat all kinds of shit about who’s going out with who and who’s sleeping with who.

‘How do you manage your nut allergy, Lauren?’ Alice drains her coffee and places the cup upside down on the grass. ‘It must be a real worry when you eat out at restaurants.’

I shrug my shoulders. ‘I guess we’ve just got used to checking everything. And most places are getting better at labelling and making sure food is properly separated. Apart from Dad’s mistake, we seem to manage it really well, don’t we, Dad?’ I nudge him and he leans into me, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth at the memory.

‘I’m never going to live this down, am I?’

‘Nope, you old poisoner, you. Never.’ I reach up and give him a kiss on his cheek, his stubble scratching my mouth. I turn and look at Alice. ‘Apparently, he’s likened himself to some Dr Crippen dude from years and years ago who poisoned his wife.’

We all laugh, finish eating and pack everything up in our backpacks, the walk back to the car more like a trudge now my stomach is full and the length of the walk here has begun to bite at me, exhaustion flaring in my legs and up and down my back. I’m young. I should be fit and healthy but I’m definitely not: lazy and slovenly more like. Guess I’m allowed to be; I’m an idle teenager, after all.

There are so many things I want to ask Alice but the time never seems right, like how long was she with Stuart for? Where did the accident take place? We don’t even know where she lives. Although almost now a part of our family, she is still a mystery to us.

I spoke to Dad about it and he said we need to give her time. I like her, I really do but am curious, or maybe I’m still a little bit suspicious. He thinks that perhaps she is embarrassed about where she lives. She shouldn’t be. We have a nice home but it’s not a palace. It’s just a house, after all.

I know that people handle grief differently but I do wonder if she is still reluctant to get fully involved with us. I mean, could she really be the one who ruined those books, threw a rock through our window? It seems an insane thought and so unlikely but it’s not impossible. Alice is a middle-aged woman, for God’s sake. An image of her doing such stuff simply doesn’t fit. Maybe if we knew more about her, it would dampen all my fears and doubts.

Hopefully, she can also meet Grandma, forge a relationship with her. It seems like the natural thing to do. I think that perhaps I do want her in our life, this Alice woman, but not as a stranger. I want to know who she really is, what she has in her past that makes her so secretive and evasive. It might be something, it might be nothing but I won’t settle until I know. Unlike Dad, I’m not so eager to ignore her silences and coy glances when questioned. I have to get to the bottom of things. It’s just how I am.

‘Whereabouts do you live, Alice?’ I can’t help myself. What if this lady does become my stepmum? I have a right to at least know where she lives. She knows plenty about us, has been in our house, eaten there, slept there. I use the term ‘slept’ very loosely. I heard them creeping up the stairs last week, listened to her sighs, to the rhythmic squeak of the mattress. I’m seventeen, not seven.

I can’t work out if it’s an accident, ill-timed or deliberate but she goes down and hits the floor with a clatter within seconds of me asking the question. Dad rushes over to help, lifting her up by her arms and brushing down her clothes as she stands again, her hair mussed up, groaning that she has hurt her knee.

I do nothing. Is it me or is it Alice? My confusion is a solid lump in my chest. I swallow and try to reason with myself that this was no more than an accident, that she is hurt and that I need to stop being such a selfish cow, constantly doubting her, expecting things from her that she is not yet ready to give. She lost her husband in a car crash and is just treading carefully around us, that’s all it is.

And yet there is something, a sensation deep in my guts that refuses to go away. I wish it would, I really do, but I can’t seem to shift it. Before she drifted away from us, doing her own thing with somebody else, Mum used to say that I had a knack of seeing through people, was able to suss them out and could see beyond their tricks and deceptions. I hope this isn’t what it is with Alice. I hope she isn’t using Dad, getting what she wants before kicking him to the kerb when she’s done toying with his affections, leaving him miserable and bereft once more.

A thought occurs to me – what if she’s one of those strange types who is attracted to tragedy? I’ve read about them: women who actively seek out widowers and prey on their misery, using and abusing them then casting them aside once they have had their fun. And taken their money. I almost laugh. She will have to look hard for that. We’re comfortable, not immensely wealthy. We don’t have enough for Dad to be able to give up his job at that shitty little firm that employs him.