The afternoons they spent together were happy. They touched more than lovers because they were not lovers; they kissed easily, they hugged and she lay with her head in his lap. It meant friendship. No further bargain was being struck: the kisses led to nothing. With the sexual element removed they were equal, mutually protective, like brother and sister, as if they had shared a parent they both hated, now dead and unmourned. And it was partly true: Weech was in a cemetery in the blackest part of Ladywell. Hood saw her new boots and skirt as an expression of her freedom, and he admired them as a brother might, congratulating his sister’s taste.
She said, ‘Ron never let me buy new clothes — at least not like these ones. Men are such fuckers. They like to see dolly-girls, all tarted up, false eyelashes, miniskirts and that. But not their wives.’
‘You think every man is like Ron?’
‘I didn’t know any others, did I?’
‘You know me.’
‘I used to think you were the same,’ she said, ‘only you ain’t.’
‘I sure ain’t.’
‘You’re the quiet type, you are. You bottle it up. I used to think, “What’s he waiting for?” ’
‘You don’t think that anymore?’
‘Now I know what you’re waiting for — nothing.’ She pursed her lips and kissed him, holding his head, then she stamped her boots and said, ‘These things are killing my feet. Here, help me get the buggers off.’ She zipped them down to her ankles, showing the pink roulettes of the zipper on her inner thigh and then she raised her legs playfully for Hood to get a grip. She was unembarrassed with her legs in the air, her skirt to her waist; but even holding her this way and pulling her boots off he felt no twinge of arousal.
She said, ‘Stop looking at me knickers, you dirty devil.’
Only then he looked and saw the wrinkle fitting the parrot beak of hair where she was narrowest. ‘Black ones. Very sexy.’
‘I bought a dozen. All colours.’
‘You’re a new woman, sweetheart,’ he said, tugging her boot, tipping her backwards. ‘All these new clothes — you must have won the pools.’
She looked away. ‘I don’t know.’ He worked the second boot off, then she smiled and said, ‘Right. I won the pools. But it’s a secret.’
‘I hope it was a bundle.’
‘A packet — well, enough anyway.’ In a resentful monotone she said, ‘He knew I wanted boots like these. But he always said no. Or a skirt — I used to wear skirts like these but when we got married he said I was just trying to get other men to look at me. As if he didn’t look at other women! It was the same as the dog track. That’s where I met the fucker — at the dogs. My father took me there a few times, and then when he died I went with my girlfriends from work. Nothing serious — just for fun, like, a little flutter on a Thursday night. Made a change from going home to the telly. It was at the track one Thursday. Ron come over and chatted me up. He’s wearing this expensive suit, he tells me he’s something in insurance, full of talk. How am I supposed to know he’s a villain? He was a heavy punter — always showing off with his money and talking about his connections. He knows this bloke on the Continent, he’s got business with the Arabs. Then we got married and after that he wouldn’t take me to the track. He went with his mates — Willy, Fred and them. “That’s no place for no married woman,” he says.’
Hood said, ‘But you’re not married anymore.’
‘No,’ she said, and she looked so sad he thought she was going to cry. She surprised him by saying, ‘He was a right bastard, he was. Sometimes I think, “Poor bugger, he’s dead,” then I remember how he used to treat me and I think, “Good — the fucker deserved it.” ’
‘Maybe he had it coming to him.’
‘Maybe, maybe!’ she mocked. ‘Are you trying it on? You always sound as if you’re defending him.’
‘Do I?’ She was quick; he wondered if it was so.
‘Yes, you do. I tell you what an absolute fucker he was and all you do is nod your head and say, “Oh, yeah, maybe you’re right.” Jesus, whose side are you on?’
He said coldly, ‘It’s unlucky to badmouth the dead. Even if they are fuckers.’
‘No, that’s not the reason,’ she said. ‘I keep forgetting you’re one of them. You’re different, but you’re one of them. Why aren’t you like the rest of them?’
He almost objected. He so easily forgot how he had come into her life; then he remembered that he had introduced himself as one of the family. Had he said he was Weech’s friend? He no longer knew. Lorna had told him all the other names, and he had given them faces and cruel teeth. He could not ask for any more, he could not reveal himself. It was too late for that: assumptions had to be taken for truth.
He said, ‘Maybe I am like them.’
‘If you was,’ she said fiercely, ‘if you really was, I wouldn’t want to know you.’
‘Take it easy, sister,’ he said. ‘How do you know them so well?’
‘I know they’re filth,’ she said, tightening her mouth, pronouncing it, as Murf did, filf. ‘They’ve been over here. The other night — Monday, it was. Ernie — you know him, the little one, eyes like a rat, hair way down to here — Ernie come round. I thought it was you, so I let him in. Asking questions, but I knew he wasn’t listening to me. The fucker’s just going sniff, sniff.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘I thought you knew,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it don’t matter.’
‘Did he ask you about the stuff upstairs?’
‘No. But I knew he was checking up. I could see the little fucker’s eyes.’
‘I should have known.’ Hood was uneasy; he didn’t want to be exposed, but there was a greater danger for Lorna, and he regretted that he had told her so little. At once he saw how he had toyed with her affection — his victim’s wife was his victim: the thought repeated, more deliberately and so more cruelly. He said, ‘If they ever ask you about that loot, say you don’t know where it is.’
‘I don’t, do I?’ she said lightly. She was calm, she didn’t know how unsafe she was. ‘Like I’ve never been to your house, have I?’
‘Right,’ said Hood. ‘So you don’t know anything.’
‘I don’t want to know anything.’
Hood said nothing. For a moment he thought of telling her everything, from the murder onwards, but there was a threshold in every friendship which, once crossed, made the past a deception. Then, every explanation seemed like a suppression of a greater fact, and truth looking like a lie was an unforgivable taunt.
Noticing his silence she said, ‘Anyway, they’re your friends, not mine.’