Damn Peter Friel and her own need to talk. Damn the woman for jumping. It made her question everything she had done, as if she had ever stopped. Angel would have come home and licked her wounds, Dad said.
Which wounds do you mean, Dad? A missing finger? A terrible affliction if you needed to sew. Perhaps I felt that more than she did. That would have been the worst thing, for me.
She walked twenty yards from the bus stop and took the key out of the pocket of the coat he had noticed last of all, which didn’t help him any, since she was proud of this homemade coat, slept in it many a time and the thing came out brand new. She had wrapped Angel in it to take her away. She opened the door, and thought, yes, her parents were right, it was high time to come home. There was a long march upstairs, past the empty shop premises on the ground floor and up, up, up. She had the top two floors and the thing she called the laboratory in the basement. You had to watch against moths, detect the smells, behave with decorum. There was a small nest of rooms in the attic which was hers alone. Bedroom, living room, kitchenette. That was all Angel needed, then, or so it seemed.
Forget Angel. Hen had been away for two weeks: there was work to do.
She sniffed the air in the kitchen, which was stuffy but clean. Jake, the old man who once lived here, still had a presence not quite displaced by the other, more recent ghost. There was still a missing space where a treasured coffee percolator had been and the sound of his kind, scolding voice, saying, NO, not that way, this way. It was her business now, he said; he was sick and tired of it. She missed him.
Hen moved into the bedroom, took the card Peter Friel had given her out of the carpet bag and put it on the table by the bed. She still needed to talk about it, and he was right, they didn’t know the half of it. If he was that fascinated by the subject, maybe he could be her unpaid therapist. After all, she had exhausted everyone else. None of it was real life, not any more.
Out of nowhere, a strange feeling of peace and homecoming stole over her. This really was home now, and she need not share it with anyone else, not even phantoms, spectres and memories. She hurried from the kitchen, down the stairs with the key and unlocked the door of the floor below, fumbled for the switch with her eyes closed only so that she could open them again.
Lights, action, spectacle, sensation. A workroom full of colour; a red cloak edged with purple hanging against the far window, a shimmering shawl over her chair and the halogen bulbs illuminating a rack of gorgeous skirts and dressed in the hues of a dozen subtle rainbows. The brash and the sophisticated, garments for tarts, queens and bishops and actors keeping company with one another, waiting for her in neat orderliness, a vision of loveliness. Cloth of silver and emerald silk, and a wedding dress that shone with an ivory sheen. Aladdin’s cave. It was a room of dreams and she sighed with relief.
My sister’s death, my parents’ mortality, is not my fault or my blame, it’s all over, now. I must say my prayers and go to sleep. It’s me and myself for all time, now. I’ve nothing to protect any more, except this.
In his own neat flat, Peter Friel reprimanded himself for being a liar. Not exactly that, but certainly a little economical with the truth. His need to apologise to her for the inadequacies of the law was certainly genuine, but the bottom line of the truth was that he was now hired by the hour to find out why Marianne Shearer had jumped in the way she did on the day she did, and what her legacies were, and the pay was good and he had to do it. One way or another, someone in that case had pushed her into despair. R v Boyd, featuring dead Angel Joyce, Marianne Shearer’s last big case, with a copy of the transcript on his desk. They all had them. She had ordered dozens of copies.
She had jumped to her death because of this case. There was no other reason and she followed no one’s example.
How pretty Hen Joyce was; he would always think of colours when he thought of her.
He looked up the website, Frockserve.com.
He took out the transcript of the trial, read to dispel his dreams and make himself remember the fine details he had forgotten.
No one was ever as straightforward as they looked, however colourful.
EXTRACT FROM TRANSCRIPT: R v BOYD
Cross-examination of Henrietta Joyce by Marianne Shearer, QC
MS. Ms Joyce, you have just told the Court that your sister phoned you from her place of work almost a year after you had last spoken to her. You have said that the last thing you knew was that she was with her boyfriend and was happy and you were happy with it?
Witness interrupts.
HJ. I didn’t say that. You’re paraphrasing. The last thing I knew about Angel was that she was apparently all right. She’d been on a training course, chucked it, met a man and gone off to live with him in Birmingham. I said our parents were happy with this, I didn’t say I was. I didn’t say I knew anything beforehand about what her real situation was, because I didn’t know. I said I hoped she was happy. Please don’t twist what I say.
MS. No need to be aggressive, Ms Joyce, just answer the questions. So, you hadn’t seen your sister in a while before she phoned you?
HJ. No.
MS. How long?
HJ. Sighs. I saw her intermittently before that, mostly when I went home to visit my parents once a month or so. Angel was usually there. She never really left.
MS. So, how close were you to Angel? You’d fled the nest, and she’d stayed dependent? How much older were you?
HJ. I do wish you’d only ask one question at a time. That was three, wasn’t it? Can I answer in reverse? Angel was eighteen months younger than me. We were very different in temperament and development, but we learned the same things and we were close.
MS. Ms Joyce, would it surprise you to know that the other Ms Joyce, Angel, your baby sister, told my client, the Defendant, that she was not close to you, in fact, that she did not like you at all? You had always bullied her and she disliked you intensely. Hated you, in fact?
Pause
HJ. No, it doesn’t surprise me. She might well have said that. Although I must say it hurts. I didn’t always approve of her, or she of me, for that matter.
MS. Your sister said to the Defendant, ‘She’s a control freak.’ She said you would always try and stop her. You tried to control your parents and her. You always went to the rescue when there was no need. You were bossy, domineering, jealous, even, and you always knew best.
Witness shrugs.
HJ. Takes one to know one, Ms Shearer.
Fuss in court.
MS. Just answer the questions.
HJ. I thought I was.
MS. Your sister phoned to say she was in distress. You stated she told you she wanted to leave the Defendant.
HJ. No, I didn’t say that.
MS. You said so, Ms Joyce, in your evidence. You said, quite clearly, that you went to Birmingham to rescue her because she was distressed.
HJ. If you had listened, Ms Shearer, you would have heard that I said in my evidence in chief that I went because I was distressed. She sounded lost and alone and she told me she wanted me to find him, because he had left her.
MS. Ahh. Is it not the fact that you found your silly, angelic sibling alive and well and whingeing about the fact that her boyfriend was in the process of leaving her? A common enough occurrence in a young woman’s life, surely? As well he might, after she had drained him dry and driven him mad with her infantile dependence and her spendthrift tendencies?