‘Nah.’ Vinia shook her head. ‘Just heard about it.’ Cheryl nodded in agreement.
‘Did you know him?’
‘Knew of him, that’s all,’ Vinia said. Cheryl felt her jaw clench. Milo arched his back and yelled again.
‘And who’s this?’ The policewoman bent to speak to Milo.
‘Better get him back,’ Vinia told Cheryl, ‘must be his teatime.’
‘Yeah.’
The woman straightened up, gave them another smile.
Cheryl swung the buggy round and they set off. Milo’s cries got more frantic as the chance of him getting the flowers receded. Fat tears streamed down his cheeks. His crying drilled into Cheryl. Boring into her bones. He was enraged and desolate. She knew exactly how he felt.
CHAPTER SIX
Fiona
Fiona was dazed. The world, its minutiae, swam in and out of focus, at times hazy, then cast into sharp relief. Too harsh. Her mind was scrambled, thoughts jumbled like old sticks tangled on the river bank. On the Tuesday evening when Owen got back from school she was bewildered to find herself putting towels in the deep freeze.
She went over her memories of Danny’s death, anxious that they might fade and wilt like wildflowers brought into the house. Then she would be of no use when the police took her full statement.
She reassured her manager Shelley, who was also her close friend, that she was capable of returning to work as scheduled. Fiona couldn’t bear the thought of taking sick leave, of wandering round the house like some spare part: she needed to be busy, occupied, productive.
Tuesday teatime brought fresher weather. As she walked Ziggy the first full drops of rain fell, making little craters in the dusty footpaths. The river was hungry for rain, already the level had sunk with just a few dry days. The smell of mud, brackish and chemical, was pungent in the air. They walked along the river to the east. Fiona remembered her shoes, how the police had taken them, her cardigan: she’d have to get to a shoe shop, her trainers would do for tomorrow but they were pretty tatty.
On the walk back the sky darkened, huge bruised clouds hung low overhead and the first throaty rumble of thunder sounded. Fiona increased her pace, keeping up with Ziggy: the dog hated storms.
The deluge hit before they reached home. The rain, tropical in its intensity, flattened nettles and grass, bouncing off the hard earth. It soaked through the seams in her jacket and drenched the front of her trousers, making her limbs damp and cold.
Ziggy raced ahead, waited trembling at the gate. Fiona stood a moment, turned her face up and felt the cold, fresh water drumming on her cheeks and her eyelids, sliding down her neck. Lost in the sensation.
She was all right that first day back. More or less. She accepted the words of sympathy, the shared outrage of her colleagues, with a nod and a shake of her head. It must have been awful. That poor child. And his mother. A twin as well. Is it right you’d delivered them? Hands on her arms, on her shoulders, a hug.
She felt a little teary but once she was back doing her visits it passed. One of her mums-to-be showed signs of pre-eclampsia and Fiona organized a hospital admission. Another had worrying levels of sugar in her urine and Fiona recommended she see her GP: it happened to some women and not others, but they needed to consider whether there was any risk of diabetes. She went about her work: changed four nappies on newborns, dressed umbilical stumps, comforted a toddler, gave an anxious mum some help getting the baby to latch on properly and removed stitches from a tear. At each house there were papers and charts to complete. She called at the office at the end of the day. Shelley had checked her schedule and asked for a word.
‘Do you want to swap Carmen Johnson for another second-weeker?’
Carmen Johnson was the woman whose house overlooked the recreation ground. The woman Fiona was with when she saw Danny fall. Carmen was in her second week of motherhood and now only receiving visits every other day. Soon the midwives would stop calling and the health visitor would take over.
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ Fiona said.
‘Just yell,’ Shelley told her.
‘I will.’
Nothing had prepared her for the impact of returning there. As she drove closer she felt her guts cramp and her palms grow hot and sticky. She admonished herself. ‘It’ll be fine. Don’t be daft. Take it easy. It’s just a place.’ Fiona tried to empty her mind, let it fill with grey fuzz.
She turned off the dual carriageway alongside the rec. The tent and the police tape were gone but there was a police Portakabin at the northern side of the rectangle. And a splash of colour by a lamppost. Flowers. She should have bought flowers! Her thoughtlessness cut at her. She parked outside Carmen Johnson’s, gathered her bag and case, got out and locked the car.
She knocked on the door. Her face felt rigid, a mask. She tried to rearrange her features as the door opened. ‘Hello-’ The word caught in her throat, husky. She coughed.
Carmen looked perplexed, she wouldn’t meet Fiona’s eye. ‘We’re fine,’ she said. She wrapped her arms around herself, rubbed at her upper arms with her hands. ‘We don’t need a visit.’
‘It’s every other day now,’ Fiona explained. Not understanding. ‘We’ll be handing over to the health visitors soon, all’s going well.’
‘Look.’ Carmen’s eyes were everywhere, her mouth working. ‘I just don’t want any trouble. That’s how it is.’ She closed the door.
Fiona stood there, her knees weak, feeling humiliated, shamed. Her cheeks aglow, her pulse hammering. Aware at first only of the bald rejection. The door closed on her. There had been times before: women resistant to visits, not wanting interference, women with things to hide or a damaged view of professionals. But this sudden switch…
Then she got it. She was ‘the trouble’. Because of what she’d seen, what she’d done. Much had already been made in the media of the community living in fear, afraid to speak out. Carmen lived here. She might have a good idea who was behind the shooting and how they ensured people’s silence. Carmen was simply protecting herself and her baby.
Fiona was back in the car, still smarting, when the pain hit. A band crushing her chest, impossible to move or breathe properly. A huge weight. She could feel her lungs contracting, the terror of a vacuum developing. Like drowning. No air, no way of moving. Sweat bathed her skin, her tongue felt huge in her mouth, her mouth chalk dry. An overwhelming sense of danger, animal-keen, consumed her, urging her to flee, but she was pinned down by the pain. She was dying. Everything went dark, then red. There was a roaring in her ears and her hands and feet were nettled with pinpricks. Her knees were juddering, heels drumming in the footwell.
She gulped and found a breath, then another. The pain dimmed, her vision cleared. Trembling spread through her body. She felt sick. Her heart hurt, thudding irregularly in her chest. She couldn’t possibly drive. Her eyes filled with tears.
Opening her phone was awkward but she only needed to press one button for Shelley’s number.
‘Please can you come and get me,’ she told her when she answered. ‘Get a cab.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t drive, Shelley.’ She reeled off the address.
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘I need to get to the hospital. I’m having a heart attack.’
The shaking wouldn’t stop, and the waves of nausea. Every time she closed her eyes, with each blink, she saw a still from Sunday: Danny prone, his leg twisted at an odd angle, blink, the fear in his tawny eyes, blink, the blood in the creases of her knuckles.