Harvest (31 page)

“
I
do
have a
speaker phone, but I’m not sure the partners would appreciate you
crooning in the middle of a conference call.”

“
Possibly not.” His smooth
voice melted within a warm laugh.

“
Ken, you have been really
supportive of me since Will, and now Billy… I just want you to know
that I will still be dedicated to my job when I return. And I will
be returning. When my maternity leave is over my mum is going to
look after Billy.” Ken had always been supportive of her and Will.
Despite the age there was still some discrete bigotry in the
private insurance firm they all worked within. Although Will might
have been as British as fish and chips, he was black, and his
knowledge and efficiency wasn’t being recognised until Ken had him
transferred to his team and worked on a pathway of promotion for
him. They had been firm work colleagues and their relationship had
become social too through their love of football.

“
Vi – you don’t need to be
worrying about things like that. You take your time to come to
terms with Will being gone. I have to add that you are perfectly
entitled to maternity leave, so you don’t owe anyone
anything.”

“
But after Will – I know
you kept the partners off my back.” She had been off for three
months after Will had died.

“
You’re a young woman
starting a family and you have had the rug yanked from beneath you.
Work is not for you to worry about, that’s my role as your manager.
You just come back when you are ready – your position will be here
for you.”

“
Thanks Ken.” Ken’s wife
had suffered with breast cancer ten years previously and it had
nearly killed her, Ken was the only person she knew that had come
close to experiencing what she was going through.

“
Marjory sends her love
and she is looking forward to seeing Billy again soon.”

“
When Billy has stopped
screaming I will call her and sort it out.”

“
We have had three boys
remember?”

“
I’m sure they didn’t
scream like this.” To emphasise the point, the pitch of Billy’s cry
reached a level that scored through her head. “Thanks for calling,
but I better go and feed him.”

“
Okay then Virtue. Take
care.”

She said goodbye and hung up.
The conversation had made her feel alive, it had been the first
time she had spoken to an adult that day, before that she had only
made baby talk; she was sure she would get stuck in baby talk mode
one day if she didn’t get more adult company. She raked her fingers
through a bang of black hair that had fallen over her eye, and
tucked it behind her ear. The tiredness was returning, drawing on
her limbs like weights. Billy’s crying through the night had kept
her awake. Even when she did give into the aching lethargy she
languished within nightmares. Nightmares about things happening to
people that lived in the building. People she barely saw since
things started happening at The Heights. She supposed it was a
reaction to losing Will, imagining the people around her, the
people ‘closest’ to her dying. She busied herself against the
tiredness that now crept into her eyes. The fresh vegetables she
had steamed were reduced to a brightly coloured sludge from the
hand mixer. She scraped it into Billy’s bold red bowl while his
screams dragged through her psyche like fingernails on a black
board.

“
Hush Billy!”

He did. Only to inhale for a
fresh wail. Virtue gripped the bowl tightly in both hands, only
relaxing her fingers when his scream died down into a sob. Days of
crying: he woke up crying and he cried himself into an exhausted
sleep. Even his sleep was fitful and his pattern was broken. Which
meant her pattern was broken also.

She had felt foolish to take her
baby to the nurse at the surgery; she didn’t want to be seen as an
incompetent or fussy mother that went for help every time her baby
cried, but over a few days his whingeing had become desperate
screams and he seemed weak and tired a lot more than usual. After
her visit she was embarrassed for another reason: the nurse had
questioned whether she was feeding Billy enough as he seemed
malnourished, and his tummy tight and bloated.

Billy was a gift from her Will –
she wouldn’t neglect him. Will was ravaged by cancer that had been
discovered too late, yet at some point in that desperate time they
had conceived. Billy had been the hope that got her through the
grief. Will hadn’t lived to see their son, he had died three months
before the birth, but during those three months she waited to get a
part of Will back. She gave Billy all her love and the love that
Will would have given their boy had he been there. Billy was
precious to her. She laboured over nutritious home made food for
Billy and interacted with him as much as she could to engage his
mind. The suggestion of neglect had disturbed her, she had seen
Craig in passing, and the policewoman that lived in the building
had been with him. Seeing her and what she represented had summoned
a miring guilt that kept reoccurring. The idea that she could be
accused of neglecting her child sickened her.

She sat before Billy and the
sight of food seemed to placate him, he gurgled eagerly from under
the tears and snot of his screams and reached clasping fingers out.
Virtue gave him time to calm down so that he wouldn’t choke on the
food, before scooping a mouthful of food onto the chunky spoon that
matched his bowl. “This is what you want isn’t it?” she cooed.
“Nice vegetables to make you strong and fit like your daddy.”
Fitter than his dad. Healthier. She wouldn’t – couldn’t lose Billy
too.

From beyond the window It
watched Virtue lift the spoon from the bowl.

Virtue leaned forward in her
chair and prepared for the mechanical routine of feeding him.

It made her think she leaned
forward and planted the spoon in Billy’s mouth. Made her think that
Billy took the food and moved it around his gums and then
swallowed, leaving a ring of food around his dribble slick
lips.

Virtue scooped the spoon into
the food.

She served
the mouthful into Billy’s mouth.

She dragged the spoon round the
slop in the bowl.

The mouthful she scooped into
his mouth was rewarded with a giggling coo.

She dragged the spoon against
the edge of the bowl and wiped away the food that clung to the
underneath.

Billy sucked
the food from the spoon
.

Billy screamed his lungs into
his throat in rasping despair at his mother who sat before him,
unaware that a single mouthful had yet to reach him. He snatched
for the spoon even though he did not know how the bright object
took away the agonizing hunger from his belly.

“
Hey, hey – don’t snatch
honey,” Virtue instructed in a sunny voice as she moved the spoon
beyond his reach and beamed back at him from behind a wagging
finger.

Billy made a dive for the bowl
that was still full of food, only for Virtue to take it from the
tray onto her lap. “You’re eager! You have your dad’s appetite.”
She scraped the spoon round the edge of the dish.

She collected the last of the
food and spooned it into his mouth and when he smacked it around
his mouth and swallowed she wiped his lips and cheeks.

She got up and emptied all the
food into the bin and popped the dish and spoon into the washing up
bowl, satisfied that he had eaten his fill as he always did. What
did Doctor’s know?

It allowed her to hear the
screams of her starving son. It reached into the baby and
experienced its pain and the weakness of its life force, It
realised the dangers of not having this need met. It understood and
empathised with the call of flesh for sustenance.

MURDER AT THE HEIGHTS –
Vicki wasn’t sure. The headline mentioned the tower, and people
would be following those stories but Vicki rejected it; it might be
mistaken with old news and it didn’t really do justice to the
shocking nature of the crime. GUTTED AT BREAKFAST. She liked it,
but it would be better to emphasise the killers and victim’s
relationship. WIFE EVISCERATES HUSBAND. ‘Eviscerates’? She wondered
what percentage of the
Camden
Gazette’s
readership would know what ‘eviscerated’
meant. WIFE SLAUGHTERS HUSBAND. No. WIFE GUTS HUSBAND. Yes. WIFE
GUTS HUSBAND. In the latest occurrence at The Heights, Mary Korben
gutted her husband at the breakfast table… Yes, she wouldn’t have
much say in the headline, but she could make her suggestions. She
couldn’t wait to get into the office and get the details down. This
was going to be a national story and another front-page story for
her at the
Camden Gazette
.
This building was excellent for her portfolio.

They arrived at Craig’s flat
and he shrugged off her support and steadied himself against the
wall.

“
No need to get all
macho. You wouldn’t be the first to lose your lunch at a crime
scene.”

Craig closed his eyes and
held up a cautioning hand. “Could you say something that doesn’t
involve you mentioning. Ugh…
You know
what.”

“
Vomit exclusion noted. I
just meant to say don’t sweat it you’re still my man, and we got a
story out of it.”

“
You coming in?” He
pitched his thumb towards his door.

“
No way, haven’t got time
to stop and have a laugh. You need to get those pics done and I
need to write my story.” She grabbed handfuls of his shirtfront and
gave him a little shake in a gesture of excitement. “I can’t
believe this. A murder! Front page here I come.” Craig propped
himself up against his door and he was suddenly framing her in the
lens of his camera. She quickly looked away and her face went hot.
“What are you doing?”

“
Face me. Face me.” He
cajoled.

“
No.” She stood firm, her
arms crossed, her stare fixed away from him. There was nowhere to
hide from him in the corridor, no activity to distract herself in.
“I need these pictures today. I am not going to wait around for you
to treat them and edit them. I am going to shoot off now so I can
write this piece, and you can email them to me at the office.” She
faced him, saw the camera was still trained on her and looked away
again.

“
Face me and you get the
pics.”

“
Stop dicking around you
fuckwit.” Her voice sounded angrier than she had intended. Guiltily
she faced him. Her eyes evasive at first, trying not to look at
him, she relaxed her stance a little and managed to keep her eyes
on him for a while.

“
That’s it.”

She shrugged. “What?”

Still staring at her through
the view-finder he told her. “You. You have a filter between you
and the outside world that turns things into stories. Truncated
column inches. First line tags. Sound bites. Headlines. I sometimes
wonder whether things actually get through, or whether there’s
anything beyond that for things to get through to.”

“
That’s a bit personal.
Aren’t you the same? Framing things. Composing pictures in what’s
going on around you?” She was hurt, but he was painfully astute. “I
thought we were friends?”

“
We are. You know we are.
Friends tell each other these things. They can say things like that
to each other. I only have my filter when I have my camera set up
for a shot. Do you ever lower your filter?” He waited for an answer
but gave up. “Doesn’t matter. My lens can see through it. I think
this is the first time I have really seen you.”

She shifted on her feet. “What
do I look like?”

“
You look raw,
vulnerable. Natural. It would be nice to see that more
often.”

She couldn’t remember ever
being vulnerable. She never really let anyone in; she didn’t allow
herself to get close to people just in case.

“
You know you’re
beautiful, don’t you?”

She was instantly flummoxed by
Craig’s question and then startled by the intense flicker of the
camera flash as he preserved her expression.

He studied the image in the
small LCD screen. “Got it. The perfect picture of you.”

“
I’m going to hate it.”
She didn’t want to see it. She hated pictures of herself. She never
kept still long enough to think about herself and what she was
doing. A photo always forced her to examine herself.

“
No you won’t. You will
love it.”

She gave in and held her hands
up in surrender but still didn’t look at the illuminated screen.
“You really need to get some sleep. But not on my money. Get me
those pictures, Craig and you can watch me all you want with your
magic lens.”

“
I am tired.” He
agreed.

“
Don’t
sleep now, Craig, pictures. Pictures!” She patted both his cheeks
and began to walk away as he keyed open his door. She stopped and
turned back to him. “What you said.” He popped his head back out
from inside the flat. “
About being
beautiful
.” He stepped back out into the corridor and
she walked backwards so she could still talk, it would have been
easier to say what she wanted to say with him half-in his flat.
“Thanks. No-one has ever told me that without a motive. It was
–
nice
. You’re a good kid.”
She smiled, and turned her back to him and continued walking away.
Her smile felt like a different smile. She hadn’t smiled that way
since she was fourteen and been going out with Gavin Parker, her
first crush.