His voice was low, devoid of energy – his accent quite American when he was tired. He had a beer and I was glad about that. Something to lift him.
‘What’s new?’ he said, and I told him about the christening, told him about Jenny Penny’s letter.
‘I don’t fucking believe it. You’re kidding me.’
‘No. It’s true.’
‘Who did she kill?’
‘I don’t know anything yet.’
‘Mum’s old boyfriend?’
‘Now there’s a thought,’ I said.
‘Jesus, Elly. What are you going to do?’
‘What can I do? Keep writing, that’s all. Get the truth. God, it’s so weird, Joe. She was my friend.’
‘She was weird,’ he said.
‘Yeah, but this? This wasn’t her. She had too much imagination for this.’
‘Elly, you don’t know her. You knew her as a kid. You can’t freeze someone in time,’ he said.
Silence.
I poured out more wine. I’ve frozen myself in time.
‘What happened to the job, by the way?’ he asked.
‘Panicked.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Can’t settle. You know me, restless. Turned into Nancy. No big deal.’
‘You sure?’
Silence.
‘Sure, Ell?’
‘Yeah. I’m good. Just hate being tied down,’ I said and finished my glass. ‘So what are you doing tonight?’
‘Falling asleep with a beer in my hand.’
‘Sexy,’ I said.
‘It just hasn’t been a good day, or a good week.’
And I heard the darkness fall again across his back. Silence. I held my breath.
‘Come back,’ I said. ‘I miss you. We all do.’
Nothing.
‘You know I have to be here.’
‘Still?’
‘Yeah. Work. You know.’
‘You hate your work.’
‘I love the money.’
‘You’re an arse.’ I laughed. I drank. ‘That job’s not you.’
‘Maybe. But what’s me, Ell?’
We both went quiet.
‘You need to meet someone,’ I said.
‘Given up on that.’ He yawned.
‘Isn’t there anyone in your choir?’
‘We’ve done each other.’
‘Ah.’
‘It’s what we do.’
‘I know.’
‘I have no friends,’ he said, and I started to laugh again. Good, I thought, we’re back onto this game, this game was familiar.
‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘We’re freaks.’
He prised the lid off another bottle.
‘How’s Ginger?’ he asked.
‘Hanging in there.’
‘Fuck.’ He drank loudly.
‘You should call Mum and Dad.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Send them my love.’
You could do that yourself, I thought.
‘Just a bad day,’ he said.
I put a log on the fire.
‘We’re singing at a mate’s wedding next weekend,’ he said, trying to sound happier.
‘That sounds great.’
‘Yeah, it will be. It’s like our first proper performance.’
‘Fantastic.’
‘Yeah, it will be,’ he said.
‘Something to look forward to.’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘I miss you.’
‘Same,’ he said.
The fire spat out minuscule embers onto the wide hearth where I watched them fade like dying stars. My brother had episodes like this, ones that eclipsed the brightness that he was; that he could be. My mother blamed it on rugby, on the frequent knocks to his head, the concussion. I blamed it on the secret I made him carry. My father simply thought it must be quite lonely at times, being gay. Maybe it was a bit of everything, I thought.
17 March 1996
Dear Jenny
I hope you are well. I can’t imagine what life has been like for you and that has made it hard for me to write this letter. Thank you for your honesty; I feel no desire to turn away; on the contrary, I just want to know more – what could have happened to my friend that she ended up where she is? If you wish to tell me more, I am here. I spent the last week in Cornwall and have thought about you all the time. Everyone wishes to be remembered to you. Joe especially – he’s in New York. Everyone sends you love. I’d like to see you, Jenny. My father said that you would need to send me a V.O., a visiting order, I think. Is that right? I really would like to visit you, but I don’t want you to feel awkward. I know it’s quick – maybe too quick. I’ve become like that. I find letter writing hard and have sadly lost the art. I have so much to say, so much to tell you, as if I’ve waited so long to tell only you what’s gone on in my life. Have enclosed stamps and also a postal order. Dad says you probably need money to get your own duvet or stuff like that, anything to make your room more personal. It never occurred to me, the whole catalogue-shopping bit. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.
I hope people are kind to you. Stay strong.
Take care.
Love, Ell
Three weeks later she told me everything. It tumbled from her pen like a confession, but not one she was forced to write because there were both sides to this story; intention and undertaking, freedom and consequence, she hid nothing.
The months leading up to the act were written unpunctuated as if every blow and insult ran from one to the other without a pause or break until she ended up bloodied on the bathroom floor with a shower nozzle forced into her mouth, drowning. She would have done it then, she said, as he leant over, playing with the taps. But there was nothing close to hand and anyway her wrist was broken and it dropped uselessly at a right angle and so she stayed leaning over the bath until the assault had passed, the footsteps receded, and the front door slammed shut.
I put too much salt in the spaghetti bolognaise! That’s what she wrote; with an ironic exclamation mark. It had the power to break a heart.
She didn’t report him. Instead, that night, she dragged herself into the rain to a secluded and notorious alleyway and emptied the contents of her bag over the ground and then stumbled to a phone box to call the police. She had been mugged, she said. They took her to hospital and looked after her and yet she knew they didn’t believe her, because no one ever believed the catalogue of ‘mishaps’ that had befallen her third and fourth years of marriage – not even Linda, nor the neighbours, who hid their disbelief behind a stuttering veil of silence. And when he came to pick her up he wept and said he’d murder the bastard who’d done this to her, and that’s when she realised what she was going to do and that’s when it became nine years.
The night it happened he came home to a take-out meal rather than the beef stew she’d promised to make him, and it was a Chinese meal, something she liked more than he did, something she hadn’t dared to order in months, but she needed his rage, you see. She got it from one of the oldest restaurants in Liverpool, the Golden Lotus. It was her favourite restaurant, which made her favourite dish – prawns with chilli, garlic and ginger – one of the few things that gave her confidence, together with a nice cold glass of Soave. Although her bruises had almost subsided (it had been six weeks), there were still dark rings under her eyes that made her look pitiful and harmless, which was quite useful, she wrote. He sat down and said nothing. She put rice on his plate and asked about his day and he told her to shut up. She ate a prawn cracker and handed him a beer. He smashed it over her head.
She fell to the floor, taking with her a bowl, a plate, a vase of budded flowers and her chopsticks. (She never used a knife and fork because it was important for her to be authentic whenever she ate Chinese food.) But that’s why she’d used a chopstick: it was the only thing close to hand; a pointed, black metal one that had been part of an unrequested wedding gift. It was reflex, you see; he’d leant over her and spat and
had forgotten to hold down her arms. She thought it was his shoulder at first. Only afterwards did she realise it was his heart she’d punctured fifteen times.
‘Here,’ I said to my father, giving him the letter. He put the saw to one side and sat down on an old armchair that was covered in wood shavings and dust. He felt around for his glasses in pockets crammed with everything but, until I pointed to his head and he felt for them and pulled them down over his eyes. Those were the sole moments that gave away his age; chinks in the armour of our eternal boy. I watched him read. His face was still, placid, as he read over the initial greetings. He hasn’t turned the page yet, I thought.
I went outside and freed myself from the smell of sawdust and grease, the smell of his workroom. I hung out down there as a child, watched him make things: the shed, the jetty, climbing frames for our neighbours, cupboards, shelves, and our table, of course. I used to think it was just as well he didn’t have a proper job, because he really was simply too busy making things. He used to give me solid cubes of wood that I would plane and sand smooth until they resembled pebbles, good enough to give. He taught me about the grains of wood, the textures, how oak was a pale brown wood whilst beech was sometimes reddish brown; how oak was coarse, and sycamore fine, and ash good for bending. My life was full of moments like that, moments I’d taken so wonderfully for granted. But Jenny Penny had never known her father. She’d never been around a man who’d taught her about wood or fishing, or joy.
‘Elly.’
My father called to me. I went in and sat on the arm of his chair. He handed me the folded letter and said nothing. I expected more: a sigh of disbelief, a wise comment, something; but instead he lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as if he’d seen the brutality of her life, rather than had read about it. I put my arm around him in case his thoughts had gone back to Jean Hargreaves, the ghost we all thought he’d laid to rest, but maybe never had.
‘She said she sent a V.O.?’ he said.
‘Yeah, for next Wednesday,’ I said.
‘Are you going?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ he said, and he got up and leant on his worktable. A nail fell to the floor and sounded like a tiny distant chime. He bent down to pick it up – never knew when he might need it.
‘She might not—’ he started.
‘Can you help her?’ I said, interrupting him. ‘If we got the papers and stuff from her lawyer, if we knew more. Could you help her?’
‘We’ll see,’ he said.
His voice promised nothing.
I waited in line for the gates to open, surrounded by excited chattering families about to see a mum, a sister, a daughter, a wife. It was cool in the shade, and instinctively I blew on my hands, as much as for my nerves as for the initial feelings of cold I’d felt, and yet no longer did.
‘Cigarette?’ said a voice from behind.
I turned and smiled into the face of a woman.
‘No I’m fine – thanks, though,’ I said.
‘First time?’ she asked.
‘That obvious?’ I said.
‘I can always tell,’ she said, lighting her cigarette and smiling at the same time; an action that turned her mouth into a lopsided grimace. ‘You’ll be all right,’ she added, looking towards the gates.
‘Yeah,’ I said without any conviction, not really knowing if I would be or not.
‘Have you been coming here long?’ I said, regretting the line as soon as it had left my mouth, but she was kind and laughed, and knew what I meant.
‘Five years. She should be out next month.’
‘That’s great,’ I said.
‘It’s me sister.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ve got her kid.’
‘That’s tough.’
‘Happens,’ she said. ‘Which of yours is in?’
‘Friend.’
‘How long?’
‘Nine,’ I said, suddenly getting used to the clipped edit of this conversation.
‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘Serious.’
‘I s’pose.’
A child suddenly shouted and ran forward as the gates opened up.
‘Well, here we go,’ she said, taking a last drag on her cigarette before flicking it to the floor. The child ran back and stamped on it as if it was an ant.
‘Good luck, eh?’ she said as we started to move forwards.
‘You too,’ I said, suddenly nervous again.
I’d been searched before, of course – airports, stations, theatres, places like that – but this time felt different. Two months before, the IRA had started bombing again – once in the Docklands and then on a bus in the Aldwych. Everyone was jittery.
The officer went through the little bag of measly items I’d brought for Jenny Penny, those memories from outside, and laid each one out on the table as if they were for sale: stamps, CDs, a nice face cream, a deodorant and a cake, magazines and a writing pad. I could have amassed more, I could have kept going, believing such acquisitions would make her room feel bigger, would make her days seem shorter, would make her reality seem more bearable. The officer told me there would be no kissing and I blushed, even though the normality of such a statement had been a constant throughout my life. I placed the items back into their bag as he called the next person over.
I went through into the visitors’ hall where the air was still and remote, as if it too was living its own cloistered sentence, and I sat at my allotted table, which was number fifteen, and which gave me a good view of the rest of the room.
The woman I’d spoken to in the queue was near the front talking to a man at the adjacent table, adding to the low hum of expectant chatter. I bent down to my bag to pull out a newspaper and as I did, I missed the arrival of the first inmates. They came out in normal clothes, ambling and waving towards their friends and families, and their voices rose as normal, as normal greetings took place. I looked towards the door at the faces coming in. The thought that I probably wouldn’t recognise her suddenly became real. Why should I? I had no photograph and people change; I’d changed. What was the discernible characteristic I remembered of her as a child? Her hair, of course, but what if she’d cut it – dyed it, even – what was left? What colour were her eyes? What was now her height? What was the sound of her laugh; I had no recollection of her smile. As an adult she was a stranger.
I was used to waiting for her. As a child I’d waited for her all the time, but it never annoyed me because I didn’t have the one thing that unfailingly stole hours from her life.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she used to say. ‘It was my hair again.’
And she spoke of it as if it was an affliction like asthma or a limp or a problem heart, one that slowed her down. I’d once waited two hours for her at the recreation park, only to bump into her on my way home.
‘You won’t believe what just happened,’ she said crying uncontrollably.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I had to brush my hair twenty-seven times before it would tie up properly,’ she said, shaking her head. And I instinctively put my arms around her as if she was hurt, or worse – had been dealt the cruellest possible hand that life could deal – and she clung on hard to me, stayed like that for minutes, until she felt the safety again of our uncompromised world and she pulled away and smiled and said, ‘Don’t ever leave me, Elly.’
A woman came through the door by herself. Most of the tables were deep in conversation; only mine and one other were still waiting. Her hair was quite short and wavy and she looked in my direction and I smiled. She couldn’t have seen me. She was tall, slim, thin even, and her shoulders hunched forwards deflating her chest, causing her to stoop, ageing her by years. I didn’t think it was her, but as I studied her movements I started to read into her face features that might once have been familiar, and could even be now. And then as she came towards me I stood up as if she was joining me for dinner, but she walked past to the table of two behind and said, ‘How ya doin’, Mum?’
; ‘You look well, Jacqui. Doesn’t she, Beth?’
‘Yeah, she looks good.’
‘Thanks. How’s Dad?’
‘Still the same.’
‘Pain in the arse. Sends his love.’
‘Send mine back.’