The fat woman detective leaned forward, not pushing Julie to continue, more showing her that she was content to wait, that she had all the time in the world. Julie sipped the tea. She didn’t tell the woman about the way Geoff had looked at Luke. Instead she moved the story on a year.
‘The tantrums started when he was about six. They came out of nowhere and you couldn’t control him. Mam said it was my fault for spoiling him. He wasn’t in Mrs Sullivan’s class then, but she was the only one at that school I could really talk to, and she said it was frustration. He couldn’t explain himself properly and he was struggling with his reading and writing and suddenly it all got too much for him. Once he pushed out at this lad who was teasing him. The lad tripped and cracked his head on the playground. There was an ambulance and you can imagine what it was like waiting to pick up the bairns that afternoon – all the other mams pointing and whispering. Luke was dead sorry. He wanted to go and see the lad in the hospital, and when you think about it, it was the other lad who’d started it with his teasing. Aidan he was called. Aidan Noble. His mam was all right about it, but his dad came round to the house to have a go at us. Mouthing off on the doorstep so the whole street could hear.
‘The head teacher called me in. Mr Warrender. He was a short plump man, with that thin sort of hair that doesn’t quite cover the bald patch. I saw him in town the other day and I didn’t recognize him at first – he’s taken to wearing a toupee. He wasn’t nasty. He made me a cup of tea and that. He said Luke had behavioural problems and they weren’t sure they could cope with him in school. I showed myself up. Started crying. Then I told him what Mrs Sullivan had said about it being frustration and if they’d pushed for Luke to see a specialist earlier on then he might not have worked himself up into such a state. And Mr Warrender seemed to listen because Luke did see someone. They did tests, like, and said he had learning difficulties, but he should be able to stay in school with some support. And that was what happened.’
Julie paused again. She wanted the fat woman to understand what it had felt like, the relief of knowing that the tantrums and the moodiness weren’t her fault. Her mam had been wrong about that. Luke was special, different, had been from the beginning. Nothing she could have done would have altered the fact. And the woman seemed to know how important that had been because at last she allowed herself to speak.
‘So you weren’t on your own.’
‘You don’t know,’ Julie said, ‘how good that felt.’
The woman nodded in agreement. But how could she know, when she’d never had children? How could anyone know, if they hadn’t had a child with a learning disability?
‘I could put up with people talking about us and the whispering at the school gate about the special help he was getting, because it was out in the open and most people were dead kind. There was a classroom assistant who came in just to help him. And Luke did all right. I mean, he was never going to be a genius, but he tried hard and his reading and writing came on, and some things he was good at. Like, anything to do with computers he took to really quickly. They were good years. Laura had started school too and I had some time to myself. I got a part-time job in the care home in the village. My mates couldn’t understand why I enjoyed it so much, but I did. It made me feel useful, I suppose. Geoff was never very interested in seeing the kids, but he was OK about money. I mean, nothing exciting ever happened, no holidays or wild nights out, but we managed.’
‘It can’t have been easy, though,’ the detective said.
‘Well, maybe not easy,’ Julie conceded. ‘But we coped. Luke started getting into bother again when he moved to the high school. Other kids saw he was an easy touch and took advantage. Set him up to act out in class. He was always the one that was caught. He started getting a reputation. You must know how it happens. You must see it all the time. The police were called when he was caught thieving from a building site. Plastic drainpipes. What would he want with those? Someone had offered him a few quid to take them, but it wasn’t that. He wanted people to like him. All his life he’d felt left out. He wanted friends.’
You could understand that, couldn’t you? Julie thought. She didn’t know how she’d have managed without her friends. The first trouble with Geoff and she’d be on the phone to them. Sharing her worries about Luke when he’d been ill. And they’d be straight round with a bottle of wine. Keen for the gossip of course, but there for her.
‘He did have one special friend,’ she went on. ‘A lad called Thomas. They met up when Luke started at the high school. He was a bit of a scally. In and out of trouble with the police, but when you talked to him you could see why. His dad had been in prison for most of the time he was growing up and his mam never seemed to bother with him much.
‘I’d never have chosen Thomas as a friend for Luke, but he wasn’t a bad lad, not really. And he seemed to like spending time in our house. In the end he was almost living with us. He was no bother. They’d be up in Luke’s room, watching videos or playing on the computer, and while they were there they weren’t thieving, were they? Or taking smack like a lot of their mates. And they got on really well. Sometimes you’d hear them laughing at some daft joke and I was just pleased that Luke had a friend.
‘Then Thomas was killed. Drowned. Some lads were messing about on the quayside at North Shields. He fell in and couldn’t swim. Our Luke was there too. He jumped in and tried to save Thomas but it was too late.’
Julie paused. Outside a tractor and trailer with a load of bales went past. ‘Luke wouldn’t talk about it. He shut himself in his room for hours. I thought he just needed time, you know, to get over it. To grieve. He stopped going to school, but he was fifteen by then and he wasn’t going to get any exams, so I thought I’d just let him be. I’d talked to the lady who runs the care home and she said she might be able to find some work for him there when he was sixteen, helping in the kitchen. He’d come to work with me a few times and the old folk really took to him. But I should have realized he needed help. It wasn’t normal the way he carried on, but then our Luke never really was normal, was he? So how could I tell?
‘He stopped washing and eating and he was awake all night. Sometimes I’d hear his voice, as if he was talking to someone in his head. That was when I got the doctor. He got him taken into St George’s. You know, the mental hospital. They said he was very depressed. Post-traumatic stress. I hated visiting him in there, but it was a relief not to have him at home. I mean, I felt guilty thinking like that, but it was true.’
‘When did he come home?’ the fat woman asked. Her first question.
‘Three weeks ago and he seemed better. Really. I mean, still sad about Thomas. Sometimes he’d burst into tears just thinking about him. And he was still seeing the doctor at the outpatient clinic. But not crazy. Not mad. This was the first night out I’d had in months. I really needed it, but I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t thought he’d be all right. I never thought he’d do something like that to himself.’
The woman leaned over and took Julie’s hand, covered it in her great paw.
‘This wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘Luke didn’t commit suicide.’ She looked at Julie to make sure that she’d taken that in, that she really understood. ‘He was dead before he was put into the bath. He was murdered.’
Chapter Four
They were sitting at the table in the kitchen eating breakfast and already it was sunny, the sunlight bouncing off the yellow crockery on the dresser, reflected onto the ceiling. Peter was buttering toast and talking, complaining about a record he’d sent to the British Birds Rarity Committee, which had been rejected. Felicity seemed sympathetic without giving the conversation her full attention. She’d had a lot of practice. When he was a young man Peter had been convinced that he was destined for greatness. He’d been described as the best young scientist of his generation. Now, close to retirement, he had come to realize that the natural history establishment did not recognize his abilities. He expressed his disappointment in a way Felicity considered churlish and ugly – there were snide comments about other staff in the department, their lack of rigour, and he dismissed other birdwatchers as chasers after rare birds, saying that they didn’t appreciate the importance of covering a local patch. Felicity understood the background to his disillusion. She wished with all her heart that his talent would be recognized. How wonderful it would be if he found a spectacular rarity close to home. Or was given promotion within the university. But his complaining irritated her. Occasionally she found herself wondering if he really was the great man she had believed him to be when they married. Then she would look at him, at the anxiety and sadness in his face, and feel disloyal. She’d stroke his face with her finger or kiss him while he was still in the middle of a sentence, shocking him into a sudden grin which made him look twenty years younger.