‘Oh.’ He disentangles a weight-toned arm – an arm that filled her with lust back when they were getting together; that made her weak as he wrapped her into it – from the bedclothes and runs his fingers through his hair. The sleep-tangles fall instantly away. That’s Vic: a single grooming gesture and he’s ready to face the world.
‘You’re late,’ he says, and there’s an edge of reproof to the statement.
‘There’s a mug of tea.’ She waves her hand at it, sits down on the bed and rubs at her tired calves. ‘Didn’t you get my texts?’
‘Texts?’
‘I’ve been texting you all night. I tried calling too.’
‘Yeah? Oh.’ He picks his phone up from the bedside chest of drawers, holds it out so she can see the blank display. ‘Sorry. I switched it off. I was tired.’
She feels a twinge of resentment, squashes it down. He doesn’t suspect that anything is wrong. You can’t blame him for that.
‘Christ,’ he says, ‘you smell a bit ripe.’
‘Sorry,’ she says, and bursts into tears.
Vic lurches forward and pinches the back of her neck between thumb and palm, like a masseur. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Hey, I was just saying, Amber. It’s OK. It’s no big deal.’
Her tears dry as suddenly as they’ve come on. She finds that this is often the way with her emotions and that, though she’s good at controlling them, tears are rarely far from the surface. She loosens his grip, stands up and eases herself out of her trousers, rubs the place where his hand’s just been. Feels guilty. Stop it. Stop it, Amber. It’s not his fault. Be nice.
Suddenly, she doesn’t want to tell him. Doesn’t want to tell him because she doesn’t know how she wants him to react. Doesn’t know if she could bear sympathy, doesn’t know if she could bear not to get it. The last time Amber saw a murdered body, there were days of pretending, of hugging it close to herself, of hiding. A bit of her wants to try it again with Vic: to see if the outcome will be different this time. Stupid thought. The police are swarming all over Funnland, the park is closed. She could keep it to herself for no longer than it took him to go in for his shift.
‘Something happened,’ she tells him; keeps her voice even, controlled, as though she’s discussing a surprise electric bill. She keeps her back turned, doesn’t trust her face.
Vic sits forward. ‘What?’
Amber folds up the trousers, lays them on the chair. ‘At work. Tonight. I… oh God, Vic, there’s been another girl killed. At work.’
‘What?’ he says again. ‘Where?’
‘Innfinnity.’
‘Innfinnity?’ She hears him hear the word, take in the implication of what she’s just said. Amber’s the only one who ever goes to the mirrors at night. It doesn’t take long for him to understand that she’s the one who found her.
‘Babe,’ he says. ‘Oh, babe. You must have been so afraid. You should have called me. You should have let me know.’
She’s annoyed. Turns and glares. ‘I did. I called and texted. I already told you. All night. Turn it on. You’ll see.’ They don’t have a house phone, just pay-as-you-go mobiles.
He picks the phone up again, switches it on. ‘Amber. I’m so sorry.’
She sits on the edge of the bed as the phone lets out a series of incoming-message beeps. Rubs her neck again. Vic kneels up behind her and bats her hand away. Starts to knead the muscles: powerful, working-man’s hands squeezing, pressing; strong fingers straying upwards, brushing the line of her jaw. She has another brief flash of the swollen face, the bruised lips parted to show young white teeth. Shivers and closes her eyes. He presses the heel of his hand to her spine, pulls back on her shoulder. She feels a tiny skeletal clunk somewhere deep down and sighs with relief. When I was young, I had no one to do this for me. I thought back pain was just part of the human condition. Thank God for Vic. Thank God for him.
‘What was it like?’ he asks. ‘Who was she?’
‘Some poor little girl. Can’t have been more than twenty. All dressed up for a night out. Oh God, Vic, it was awful.’
‘But how? What happened?’
Amber sighs. ‘I don’t know. If I knew that, I’d either be psychic or a policewoman, wouldn’t I?’
The hands fall abruptly still. ‘You know what I mean, Amber.’ He sounds offended.
‘Sorry,’ she says, hastily. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just been… a long night…’
He forgives her, thank God, and the hands start their work again. It’s only a day since their last disagreement, and she can’t bear to start again. Vic has so many good qualities, but he can hold a grudge for weeks, the chill of his vexation filling the house with silence. She had been half afraid throughout her shift that their stupid spat might have kicked another episode off, until her discovery drove it from her head. It’s probably, she reflects, why he had the phone off. But I’m not going to push things by asking. Not when he’s being so nice.
‘So what was it like?’ he asks again, abruptly. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen anything like that, have you?’
She turns and looks at him. She doesn’t know what she had been expecting, but his look of sharp enjoyment surprises her. He covers it quickly with concern, but she’s seen it now, and it feels ugly. It’s not a real thing to you, she thinks, any of it. Not the girl under the pier, not the one they found in among the bins in Mare Street Mews, not this. In fact, now there’ve been three of them, and only a fool wouldn’t be asking if it’s the same person doing it, you’re probably just feeling a bit more excited – like Whitmouth’s finally on the map. It’s the same thing that keeps people reading the papers every day: if it’s not your family, if it’s not one of your friends, a murder is little more than a night out at the cinema; something to discuss gleefully at the pub.
The girl’s face flashes through her mind again, pop-eyed and black-tongued, cobweb veins on livid cheeks. Death, so abnormal yet so familiar: the shock, the cavernous emptiness behind those reddened eyes; it’s what it always looks like. Nobody dies and looks like they’d been expecting it.
‘It was…’ She has to think about her words. Strives to recall her emotions, to separate her response to the scene in front of her from her panic on her own behalf. ‘I don’t know. It’s weird. It was like I was in a bubble. Watching myself. In a weird way, I felt like I wasn’t really there.’
Vic leans back and opens the drawer in his bedside table. He fishes out his Ventolin inhaler. Takes a puff. ‘Bet you were scared, though,’ he says, his voice small from holding his breath. ‘Was there a moment when you thought they’d think you’d done it?’
‘Vic!’ She’s scandalised. ‘My God!’
‘Sorry,’ he says. Breathes out.
7 p.m.
‘We can’t go home like this.’
They face each other in the field, waist-deep in cow parsley. The sun is low, but still bright, and they cut smeared and dingy figures now they’re out in the open. Bel looks down at her hands, and sees that her nails are cracked and black from digging. Looks back up at Jade. She’s filthy. Earth and lichen, scraps of leaf and twig, scratches from thorns and bark on her arms and shins.
‘My mum’ll kill me,’ says Jade.
‘It’s OK,’ says Bel. ‘Just put it all straight in the washing machine. She’ll just put stuff on top. She won’t even notice.’
Jade is appalled. There is no washing machine in the Walker household. She’s always thought of them as things you found in launderettes. That Bel would assume they had one underlines the gaping chasm of difference between them. Jade’s mother does the family wash by hand, soaking everything in a heap in the bath on Monday night, then squeezing and scrubbing it wheezily through before pegging it all out on the network of lines she’s rigged up across the yard on Tuesday. It’s just another thing that makes Jade stand out at schooclass="underline" that all her clothes, hand-me-downs from older siblings, are grey and threadbare compared with her peers’. Everyone knows that the Walkers are dirty and have no self-respect; someone makes sure to tell her so every day.