“What?”
“You know, tall stranger crosses the threshold with a lump of coal.”
“Oh, God!”
“Problem?”
Only that he’d forgotten it was New Year’s Eve. And now Marian Witczak’s voice came instantly back to him: “We will both wear, Charles, what would you say? Our dancing shoes.”
“Double-booked?” Lynn asked.
“Something like that.”
“I’m sorry I shouldn’t be laughing.” She didn’t seem to be laughing at all.
“This day’s leave,” Resnick said, “it’ll be tight, but no question you must go. We’ll cover somehow.”
“Thanks. And good luck.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow.”
Dana lit another cigarette, poured herself another drink. She had already had several, finding the courage to phone him when he hadn’t phoned her. And at work. Probably she shouldn’t have done that, probably that had been a mistake. Except he had said yes, hadn’t he? Agreed to come round for a drink. She smiled, raising her glass: he was worth a little seeking out, a little chasing after. She liked him, the memory of him: big, there was something, she thought, about a man who was big. And she laughed.
Twenty-five
Gary was sprawled across the settee wearing his County goalkeeper’s shirt over the top of two pullovers in an attempt to keep warm. He was watching a program about Indonesian cookery and Michelle couldn’t for the life of her see why. The extent of Gary’s cooking in the past few months had been opening a tin of beans and, five minutes later, slopping the contents, lukewarm, over burned toast and then yelling at Karl because he wouldn’t eat it. Beyond that, all Gary knew about cookery was “What’s for dinner?” and “Where’s me tea?”
Michelle didn’t say anything; knew well enough to let him be.
Brian’s wife, Josie, had offered to take Karl down to the Forest along with her two and Michelle had leaped at the chance. Natalie had lain, alternately cooing and crying in her cot, some twenty minutes after feeding but now she was quiet. Michelle had wiped round the sink in the kitchen, taken the rubbish out to the bin; for once in his life, Gary had grunted no instead of yes to the offer of a cup of tea and she’d taken her own upstairs to have a sort out, tidy round.
There were balls of dust collecting at the corners of the stairs.
In the small room at the back, Natalie was sleeping with her thumb in her mouth and one leg poking through the bars of the cot; Michelle took the tiny foot in her hand and slipped it back beneath the covers. So cold! Gently, she touched her lips to the baby’s cheek and that was warm, at least. Leaving the door ajar, she crossed to the other bedroom and shivered: it was like an icewell in there.
There were two pairs of tights hanging from the end of the bed, one of them laddered almost beyond repair. Gary seemed to have dumped bits and pieces of clothing everywhere, a shirt, pair of boxer shorts, one sock. From the state of the collar, the shirt could just about last out another day, so she hung it back inside the chipboard wardrobe they had got from Family First. Gary’s zip-up jacket, his favorite, stuffed down there on top of the shoes, getting all creased-Michelle bent down to pick it up and that was when the knife fell out.
She jumped and thought she must have cried out loud, but nothing happened; the baby didn’t wake, Gary didn’t call up from downstairs. The television commentary continued in a blur from which she was unable to distinguish the words.
The handle of the knife was rounded, wrapped around with tape; the blade, close to six inches long, curved out then in, tapering to a point. Near to the tip, a piece of the blade had broken away, as if it had been struck against something resisting and hard.
It lay against her one decent pair of heels, daring her to pick it up.
“You didn’t see Nancy that evening? Later that evening? Christmas Eve?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I never went out.”
Slowly, not wanting to, Michelle bent down towards the knife. Tried to imagine it being raised in anger in a man’s hand.
“’Chelle? Michelle?”
A second before the voice, she heard the board, loose along the landing, squeak. Breath caught hard in her mouth, she pulled the jacket back across the knife, pushed both with her foot further back inside, shut the wardrobe door.
“Here you are.” Smiling that way with his mouth, parted just a little, twisted down. “Wondered where you were.”
She was certain, the way it was pumping, he must hear her heart.
“What’s up?”
Afraid to speak, Michelle shook her head from side to side.
“That cooking,” he nodded back downstairs, “all it is, chop everything up small, meat and that, stick it in a jar of peanut butter.” He winked. “Reckon we could try that.”
Michelle had steadied her breathing enough to move away from the wardrobe door.
“Natalie sleeping is she?”
“I’ll just see …”
Gary caught her arm as she went past. Something had got stuck in the fine straggle of hairs beside his lip.
“Wondered what you’d come up here for.”
“I was just tidying round. Those things …”
“Oh, yeh? Thought you might’ve had other ideas. You know …” His eyes grazed the bed. “… Karl out the way for a change.”
“They’ll be back …” Michelle began.
One hand reaching for the belt to her jeans, Gary laughed. “Oh no, they won’t.”
All the while they lay there, blessed by the squeak and roll of the wire mattress, Michelle thought about the knife. Gary above her, thrusting down, eyes clamped tight, mouth opening only to call her that name she hated, over and over, finally to cry out; through it all she could only see the swelling of the blade, feel its point.
When he had collapsed sideways, pulled away from her, face down into the sheet, she felt gingerly down there, certain amongst all that wetness there would be blood.
“Michelle?”
“Yes?”
“Be a sweetheart, make us a cup of tea.”
She was on her way downstairs, sweater and jeans, hair uncombed, when Josie arrived back with the kids.
“Jesus, girl! Look like you been pulled through a hedge backwards.” And, leaning close enough to whisper in her ear, “Not been knocking you around again, has he?”
Michelle shook her head. “Not the way you mean.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “Oh, that! You know, when I was-what? — seventeen, eighteen, I used to reckon if I didn’t have some bloke poking away at me every night the world was going to come to a sodding end. Now …,” she shook her head and looked at Michelle knowingly, “… most of the time I couldn’t give a toss. ’Fact, far as Brian’s concerned, sometimes that’s all I will give.”
She was laughing so much now she had to grab hold of Michelle so as not to lose her balance. Josie. By Michelle’s reckoning, she was all of twenty-one.
Twenty-six
Lynn woke slippery with sweat and it was too many moments before she realized she had been dreaming. The blanket she had pulled on to the duvet in the night to combat the cold was wound, tight like a rope, between her legs; the duvet itself had been thrown to the floor. T-shirt, knickers, socks, all were drenched. Coils of dark hair clung fast to her head.
In her dream she had been between the henhouses, walking in a nightgown she had never owned, long and stiff and white like something from Rebecca or Jane Eyre, when she had heard the sound.
As she ran, moonlight threw shadows against the packed earth, the worn boards of the henhouse walls. A cry, high and shrill, like the mating of feral cats: except it wasn’t that. At first she thought the high, wooden door was locked, but as she threw her weight against it, she realized it was only jammed fast. Little by little it gave, then sprang suddenly backwards and she stumbled in.
Through the high, meshed windows the moon shone with a muted fall. Her father had climbed to the high conveyor and now he hung there, attached by the neck; his throat had been cut. Spurred by the silence, flies thrummed their wings, blue, and busied themselves in the dark and drying blood.