Sheena sat a safe distance away on the low stone wall, wrists trapped between her knees. No way she was about to go near them. The clock above the Council House sounded the quarter-hour.
“Here.”
She turned with a start, almost losing her balance. Janie Cornwall was close behind her, usual superior expression on her face, an open packet of Embassy in her hand.
“Go on, have one.”
Sheena blinked up at Janie, her hard young face framed by fizzed-out hair. At the other side of the street, outside Debenham’s, Janie’s friends stood watching. Lesley Dawson, Irena, Tracey Daniels, Dee-Dee, Diane. Janie shook the packet again and with a breathed “thank you” Sheena took one and angled back her head as Janie, leaning forward, lit it for her.
Sheena drew in smoke and held it down inside.
After a quick glance back towards her pals, Janie lit a cigarette for herself and sat down. “Your brother, we’re cut up, like, about what happened.”
“Thanks.”
“You must be feeling like shit.”
“Yeh. Yes, I am.”
Janie had been in Sheena’s year right through school, they all had, Lesley, Dee-Dee, and the rest. Girls whose breasts were obvious sooner, whose periods had started earlier, who were forever bringing scratty little notes to excuse them from games. They would smoke openly on the way to school and light up again the minute they had set foot on the Boulevard. They were the ones who boasted they had done it at thirteen, gone all the way, and Sheena had believed them, jealous, frightened, in awe. When, after school, Janie and the rest had huddled among the cars parked on the Forest, laughing with boys who were as old as Shane and older, Sheena had loitered close enough for them to call her over but they never had. Now this. Nicky’s death had given her notoriety at second hand, made her acceptable where she had not been before.
One of the girls called out to Janie, who turned her head and gestured for them to go on ahead. “We’re going up Diane’s,” she said to Sheena. “Why’n’t you come?”
At the far side of the square, Janie took Sheena’s Tesco bag from her and dropped it, uniform and all, into a green council bin.
Diane and Dee-Dee were black. Except for those times when they had briefly fallen out, they told everyone they were sisters, even went out dressed in the same clothes, though it wasn’t true. Their families never spoke to one another and would cross the street to avoid contact. Dee-Dee’s father was a minister in the Pentecostal church and Diane’s was doing fifteen years in Lincoln for shooting another drug dealer in the face at close range. When she fell pregnant just eighteen days short of her fifteenth birthday, Dee-Dee’s father prayed for her while her mother took her to the clinic to arrange for an abortion. As soon as Diane heard, she went out and got herself knocked up by a friend of her brother’s and miscarried after eight weeks. The next time she was more fortunate. The baby was called Melvin and Diane’s elder sister looked after him until Diane had finished school, at which point Diane and the baby’s father were given temporary accommodation in a high-rise the council were planning to demolish. The father had left but the flats were still standing.
“Fucking lift!” Diane screamed, kicking at the graffitied doors. “Never fucking working!”
Diane’s neighbor had been looking after Melvin and Diane collected him to show him off to Sheena.
“Gorgeous, i’n’t he? I’n’t he fuckin’ gorgeous?”
Tightly curled black hair, coffee skin, wide brown eyes; Sheena had to admit that he was.
The girls all bundled into Diane’s living room to play with Melvin and watch TV, pass round the bottle of vodka that Irena had lifted from the corner shop. Seated on the floor by the settee, Lesley carefully rolled a couple of spliffs. An hour or so later, when Janie tipped some pills into Sheena’s hand, she didn’t think twice, popped them into her mouth, and swallowed what was almost the last of the vodka to wash them down.
Peter was waiting when Norma got home from visiting Shane at the hospital, sitting on the uneven paving stones where days before Nicky’s flowers had huddled haphazardly against each other. He was leaning back against the wall when Norma saw him, a hand-rolled cigarette between his fingers, his feet bare, shoes neatly placed alongside him, socks rolled into a ball. Something lurched through Norma like a fist and she thought she was going to be sick.
Peter spotted her and stared, then pushed himself slowly to his feet. My God, Norma thought, how he’s changed. Most of the hair had gone from his head and what remained was flat against his scalp and dark. His face had never been full, but now the skin seemed to be stretched too tight across his forehead and both cheeks had sunken in. Inside a striped shirt, his chest appeared to have collapsed inwards, though a little potbelly strained awkwardly against the top of his trousers. How long was it since she had seen him? Twelve years? More? She had never imagined he could look so old. He could not have been more than forty-five.
Norma could no more stop the tears than she could stop time.
Peter tossed the nub end of the roll-up towards the curb and took her in his arms.
“Come away, you great geck! Let’s get inside else we’ll have neighbors goin’ round with a hat.”
In the kitchen she made him tea and toast while he told her how he had hitched three lifts from Peterborough to get there, the last a laundry van on its way in from the RAF base outside Grantham. He asked Norma how she’d been keeping, told her how good she looked in that blue-and-orange dress. Had she lost a bit of weight? Well, it suited her, there was no denying that. He asked her about Sheena and Norma told him she was at work; asked about Shane and looked concerned when she told him about the beating he had received. It was not till Norma had mashed a second pot that he asked about Nicky.
Without crying this time, clear-eyed, Norma told him what she knew.
Peter was silent for a long time and then asked if the inquest had been opened and adjourned.
Norma nodded and Peter, one-handed, rolled another cigarette. “If you like,” he said, not looking at her, looking at the pile of crockery heaped alongside the sink, “I could stay for a while. A few days at least. I’d not be in the way.”
Norma didn’t reply. She didn’t know what Shane, when he got out of hospital, might think. Nor Sheena either for that matter-he was her father, she should be pleased, but after all this time who could tell?
“Just till the funeral, eh? That was what I thought.”
“All right,” Norma said. “All right.”
He reached a hand to touch her but she pulled away.
At six thirty that evening, Bill Aston plunged into the Portland pool and swam the first of twenty slow, deliberate lengths. After showering and drying himself down, he drove the short distance to the Victoria Embankment and walked the Jack Russells along the north bank of the Trent. All things considered it had not been too bad a day.
Khan’s girlfriend was seven years his senior. Light-skinned, lithe-limbed, and blonde, Jill was a divorced woman with three kids who were spending the night at her sister’s. She had trained as a dancer, worked as a model; now she was a part-time receptionist at Central Television and did a dance class four afternoons a Week. Khan liked to imagine he could still smell the sweat on her body.