She shrugs and bites at her nails feverishly. ‘No reason. No reason at all.’ Her head is shaking, despondency evident in her stance as she turns and heads upstairs.
‘What, Lauren? What is it you’re trying to say?’ His voice echoes up the stairs, straggling behind her as she reaches the top and spins around, her face half hidden in the shadows. A cold feeling clings to his skin. It’s like looking at Sophia – a younger Sophia, but Sophia all the same. Peter shivers, bats away those thoughts: Sophia crying out as she slid down the riverbank, that strangulated cry, the echo of it as he turned and fled.
Lauren’s eyes are dark, her voice low, peppered with anger and, he thinks, possibly an element of desperation. Her words hit him with force, a punch to the gut that blindsides him. ‘Dad, you need to watch out. I don’t want to say anything else because I know you won’t believe me anyway, but something happened between Alice and me when you went to collect the car. Something really unpleasant. She’ll deny it if quizzed, but you have to believe me when I say that she is a very, very nasty piece of work.’ Lauren waits, her breathing irregular. Ragged. ‘She is hiding something, Dad and she’s mean – really, really mean. Just be careful.’
The door doesn’t slam as she goes into her room. It’s more of a dull thud that accentuates the instant silence around him. He stands, her words still ringing in his ears, thinking that he should go in there, demand she elaborate, speak to him, tell him what the hell that was all about, but then he thinks better of it. It won’t solve anything. In fact, it will probably escalate the situation, make things a hundred times worse.
Instead, he sits himself down in the living room, tries to work out what is going on in Lauren’s head. Did she misconstrue something innocuous that Alice said to her? Did Alice commit the terrible sin of speaking about Sophia and Lauren has taken it to heart, convinced Alice is the Devil incarnate for daring to do such a thing? He thinks not. Lauren loved her mum but he knows now that she knew about the affair, knew that the marriage was coming apart. She is all too aware that Sophia was not a saintly figure but simply a woman with flaws. So what did happen back there on the moors in his absence? What exactly was said?
Alice’s face implants itself in his mind – her gentle smile, the way she waved and blew a kiss as she stood at her gate, her hand resting on the latch. And he was right about that too. The house, whilst not completely rundown, needs repair. A small, terraced property, it had a postage stamp sized front garden and looked as if a lick of paint wouldn’t go amiss. Even the gate was looking the worse for wear with rusty hinges and paint flaking off in huge chunks.
Peter sighs. Poor Alice, having to endure the wildly oscillating moods of a resentful teenager. He needs to do something to bridge this gap because Alice is going nowhere and Lauren had better get used to having her around.
He glances at the clock, wondering if it’s too early to crack open a beer. It’s earlier than he imagined but as the lyrics of the song says, it’s five o’clock somewhere. He opens the fridge door, grabs at a bottle, snaps off the lid and takes a long and welcome slug of the freezing, amber liquid.
34ALICE
I wait until his car drives off, disappearing around a corner, and then I step away from the gate, hoping nobody inside saw me loitering outside their house. I’m pretty sure this is the same place where the taxi dropped me off when we were out together but I can’t be certain. Both Peter and I had had a drink, it was dark and if he questions me, I am a bloody good liar. One of the best. I could easily bamboozle him. He is naïve to the point of being childlike. It’s as if he was desperate to fall in love with somebody and I happened to be that somebody. I had to get to him before anybody else did. It took time but I managed it in the end. I guess I would have found another way had he not succumbed to my charms, but he did and now we’re a couple. A couple with a shared past. A dark, troubled one.
I continue walking, knowing I have a fairly long journey ahead of me but the weather is mild and I have plenty of time. Nobody waiting at home for me. Nothing pressing. Nothing at all.
I wonder if Lauren will mention our little chat to her father. I suspect not. We have quite the connection, Peter and I, our chemistry flowing nicely. If she does, he will undoubtedly take my side, thinking she is jealous of his new-found love, knowing she is still grieving for her mother. He will forgive her but he will not tolerate her berating me or blackening my name. As I said, Peter and I have forged a good, solid connection. He hangs onto my every word. It’s rather flattering really, if not a little disconcerting. Like a child clinging to its caregiver. Quaint and yet at the same, utterly grotesque.
The streets are quiet as I head home. Only the occasional teenager hanging around or the odd smoker loitering outside their doorway blowing grey trails into the air as they stand, banished from their own property because of their stigmatised habit.
My feet are aching by the time I get in. Faking a limp has put a strain on my leg and now I am paying the price. It seemed like my only option at the time. Fucking stupid Lauren and her relentless probing into my affairs. She wasn’t prepared to let it go. I had to do something to curtail the conversation. I just hope she’s now got the message that my private life and where I live is none of her fucking business and definitely not up for discussion.
I rest my feet up on the sofa and glance at my phone, looking specifically for the local news. I’ve been checking sporadically throughout the day and so far, there has been no mention of anybody finding a body in the churchyard. No missing persons either. I suppose I should feel relieved but actually, I feel nothing at all. Perhaps a little intrigued at how it will all pan out, but as for guilt and remorse and shame and all those sentiments that should be currently burrowing their way deep under my skin and into the very heart of me – they are absent.
Maybe my family were right all along and I am damaged and in need of help. I had to do something to stop that woman’s probing. Just like Lauren, she thought she had every right to investigate the goings on in my life, assessing and judging, paying visits to check that everything is as it should be, and I had to stop her. If people made the decision to get on with their own sad little lives and to leave mine alone, then none of these things would have happened. It’s been a damaging turn of events and it began with Phillip, telling me that I should see somebody about my declining mental health, his sister wading in on the argument, agreeing with him, backing him up. How dare they? How fucking dare they? I went along with his suggestions to keep him happy and he went behind my back and slept with another woman – a colleague. The indignity of it still makes my scalp prickle with horror. Initially his friend and purported confidante, she soon became his lover.
I stop scrolling as I stumble upon a headline about a death in York and read the story beneath, marginally disappointed that it’s not about Jeanette, but a homeless man instead, who was found slumped and freezing cold in a shop doorway by an unsuspecting young woman who had turned up early to open up for work. Surely somebody has been in that churchyard since I was there? It’s a tiny, overgrown area accessed down a small alleyway but still, local people know it’s there and what about the priest? Hasn’t he been and seen something? Small animals will be foraging by now, nibbling at her skin, tearing off strips of her flesh. That will surely draw attention to her, won’t it?
The walk home and the constant pretence I have to maintain in the presence of Peter and Lauren has exhausted me. I lie back on the sofa and drift in and out of sleep, dreaming of Tom and Jeanette, their faces leering at me, furious and ghost-like. I dream that Jack Downey asks me to marry him and that Elizabeth never returns home and I take her place as the woman of the household.
When I wake, the darkness has begun to set in, a veil of grey obscuring the sunlight and stealing the remnants of the day. I sit up and yawn then feel around for my phone, finding it lodged down the side of the cushion.
My eyes are misted over as I look again, scouring local pages for news of a body. And then I see it.
Body Found Near Local Church
I read the article but it gives little away, stating that it was found by one of the gardeners and that police are conducting enquiries into the identity of the deceased.
So little to go on. Still, it’s none of my business, is it? I barely knew the woman except for her connections to Phillip, to that damn school.
The knocking causes my skin to prickle. Not Sandra at the door. Not again. I’ve had about as much as I can take of that woman. I stumble through to answer it and am knocked sideways to see Tom standing there, his face set like stone as he watches me carefully.
‘Your sister thinks I’ve murdered you and buried you under the patio.’ I laugh and take a step forward to block his entry into the house.
‘As far as you’re concerned, anything is possible. I’ve come for my jacket. I left it here the last time I visited.’ His voice is like gravel, rumbling and bouncing through the hallway.
‘You’ll have to wait here while I get it.’ I try to close the door but he jams his boot in it, stopping it from shutting properly.
‘Look, let’s not start on the wrong foot, eh? Please, Jade. Let’s give it one more go. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for accusing you like that. I was drunk. I was upset. It’s just that I worry about you.’ He tips his head and smiles at me. ‘How are things with you at the minute? You managing okay?’
‘Wait here,’ I say, ice in my tone. ‘I’ll go and get your stuff.’
He stands there, his limbs locked solid as I reach into the cupboard and grab at his beige, cotton jacket.
‘Where have you been? Sandra said you weren’t answering your phone.’
He shrugs and stares down at the floor as I hand it over to him. ‘I just needed to get away, give myself some time to think.’
I consider Tom’s circumstances, so different from mine. He has money to keep him going, cash inherited from his parents. He is a drifter, going where the breeze takes him because life has given him the opportunity to be one. The rest of us need to work, to generate a regular income with which to pay our bills.
‘Well, you’ve had time to think and so have I. Nice seeing you again, Tom.’ I slam the door, remembering our last argument, his words lodging themselves in my head, telling me that I was unhinged, that I needed to see a shrink. That I used Phillip’s imprisonment and my subsequent shock and despair as an excuse for my deteriorating behaviour.
He was wrong. So very, very wrong. I had had a bad day, was really low, my sensitivities heightened and raw. Tom said the wrong thing at the wrong time and I flew at him, threatening to hurt him, to maim him. I recall him having to peel me off. I remember blood under my fingernails, smeared on his face, down his shirt. Everything else afterwards is a blur. He left. I didn’t see him again. And now he’s back, a face I thought I’d never see again, staring in at me as if nothing happened between us. As if we can pick up exactly where we left off. Why on earth would he ever want to be connected to me? Maybe I misjudged him. Maybe he’s as devious and damaged as me, although I very much doubt it.
I put the chain on the door and shuffle back into the living room, pushing people and recent events to the back of my mind – Phillip, Peter and Lauren and the Downeys. Jeanette. And Tom. He’s history now, another part of my life I would sooner forget.
The television is the usual stream of nonsense – game shows, reality TV repeats, re-runs of sitcoms that weren’t remotely funny the first time around. And then I spot it. An update on the local news. The police are asking for anybody who saw the deceased entering the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church on Goodramgate to help with their enquiries. The police officer stares at the camera, his look sombre and professional. ‘We are keeping an open mind but would ask that anybody who has been in the vicinity of Goodramgate in the past few days to get in touch.’
I wonder if they have CCTV cameras on that particular stretch? It doesn’t matter. Their images will be grainy. I kept my head low, desperate to escape Jeanette and her incessant hollering. Nobody is going to suspect a nanny in her late thirties of a violent crime. They will be out looking for druggies and dealers and other known offenders, scouring their records for the names that come up on their systems time and time again.
I’m not scared and I am not about to lose sleep over a woman who didn’t know when to keep her sticky beak out of my business. Besides, I don’t remember much about it. Perhaps she fell, hit her head and passed out.
I’m putting all the pieces together in my mind as I’m sitting here and it’s all so fragmented. I’m not entirely certain what happened, if I’m being honest. I thought that maybe I’d hurt Jeanette but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe she isn’t even dead and this is somebody else they are talking about.
