Darkness, Darkness (23 page)

Nicky’s eyes were bright, remembering.

‘He came out once, suddenly. Out of the bedroom. Just, you know, in his pyjamas. Pyjama trousers. Almost fell over us. We’d been crawling along the floor, right outside the door. He picked Mary up – she was the nearest – grabbed her, really. Lifted her off the floor as if she weighed nothing, as if she were a doll or something. Really angry. Shouting and swearing. I’d never seen anyone so angry.’

Her expression had changed. The brightness disappeared; replaced, Catherine thought, by something akin to fear. Real remembered fear.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. I thought – at the time I thought, I don’t know, that he was going to swing her round, round his head, throw her against the wall. The way he was holding her. I really did. But he didn’t. Didn’t do anything of the sort. After a few moments, he put her down. Just, you know, gently. Went wherever he was going without saying a word. Off to the bathroom, I suppose.’

Catherine waited, drank some tea, giving Nicky time to recover.

‘Did you talk about it afterwards?’ she asked then. ‘You and Mary?’

‘No. Never. Stopped playing monsters, that was all.’

‘And that was the only time you saw him lose his temper?’

Nicky nodded emphatically.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Never with Jenny, Mary’s mum?’

‘No.’

Catherine leaned away. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘All those leading questions. As if I’m giving you the third degree.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Back to interviewing class for me.’

‘Are there such things?’

‘More or less.’

‘Passed yours with flying colours?’

‘Scraped a C.’ Catherine laughed, took a bite out of her scone. ‘It’s just, Mary and her brothers aside, you’re the only person we’ve found who was in that house over an extended period – one of the few people who can give us a sense of what it was like.’

‘Apart from Linda.’

‘Linda?’

‘Yes. She lived opposite.’

‘And she and Jenny, they were what, friends?’

‘I suppose so. I mean, I don’t really know. But she was in and out of the house a lot, I know that. Her little boy – I should be able to remember his name – David? He must have been the same age as Brian, Mary’s younger brother. They went to nursery together.’ She pushed a hand up through her hair. ‘They could’ve taken it in turns, I suppose, her and Jenny, you know, collecting the little ones, taking them in. It happens all the time.’ She smiled. ‘What mums do.’

‘And this Linda, you can’t remember her other name? Surname?’

‘No, I’m sorry. But then I probably never knew it in the first place. Just Linda.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Catherine said, ‘someone will know.’

‘You’ll talk to her?’

‘If we can.’

Nicky added jam to half a scone. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘That bump, there on your forehead . . .’

Catherine’s hand started to move towards it instinctively. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I slipped, that’s all.’

‘What? On the pavement? They’re treacherous, sometimes.’

‘No, indoors. My own kitchen.’

‘Too much wine?’

‘I wish.’ She dipped her head. ‘Olive oil. On the floor.’

The rear door opened and a tall man in tweed jacket and jeans stepped out and raised a hand in greeting. Older than Nicky, Catherine guessed, by a good few years.

‘You want some tea, Richard? There’s some in the pot.’

‘No, thanks. You carry on. I thought I’d go and collect Lottie.’

‘Okay.’

‘William comes home on his own,’ Nicky said, somehow feeling the need to explain. ‘It’s not far. Just the one big road to cross. But you have to let them, don’t you? At least that’s what I think. Be independent. How else are they going to learn? Mums driving round in great four-by-fours, picking their kids up at the school gate, shepherding them everywhere. Frightened to let them out of their sight, almost. As if there’s some bogeyman out there.’

Looking at Catherine, she slowly shook her head.

‘But that’s not where it happens, is it? You must know that better than anyone. Children, anything bad that happens – abuse, whatever – most times it happens in the home.’

EVER SINCE IT
happened she’s tried to wipe it from her mind. Scrub it clean away, just as she washed every trace of him from her body, hot water, washcloth and sponge. But still she feels his hand on her shoulder when she turns; in bed, when she edges away from Barry, it is his – Danny’s – mouth on her breast, so real, this, that it aches, the nipple erect.

Sometimes, when she goes into the kitchen, gone to get more squash for the children, or to check if the potatoes are boiling, she sees the pair of them, Danny and herself, wrapped around each other on the kitchen floor.

No one to talk to about it, it’s driving her crazy.

She’s thought about telling Edna, but fears her disapproval. Hears Edna telling her to get a grip, cast it out of her mind and think about the real issues instead. Time enough for slippin’ around when this lot’s over. Not that I’m sayin’ you should.

She thinks about telling Linda, but that’s a non-starter. Nice enough, but a bit strait-laced where some things are concerned; too embarrassed, almost, to knock and ask if she had any spare tampons when she’d run out herself and the shop was closed. Talk for England, could Linda, as long as it didn’t mean talking about her bits.

She thinks about asking Jill . . . and realises she hasn’t the least idea how her sister would react.

Close when they were little, aside from the usual covetous spat over this or that comic or doll, after going up to the big school they had drifted apart.

Chalk and cheese, their mother had said.

Jill the more studious, the one who’d invariably be found stuck in the corner with a book, while Jenny was outside playing hopscotch, taking turns with one end of the washing line she and the other girls used as a giant skipping rope; Jenny teasing the boys.

Yet it was Jill who had a boyfriend first: a quiet lad with National Health spectacles who trailed Jill everywhere, waited for her after school and then walked home five paces behind. One Sunday evening, she had shocked them all by asking if Gordon – Gordon, that was his name – could come to tea the next weekend.

Their mum had got out the best tablecloth, best chinaware, bought a nice piece of boiling bacon from the butcher, made a trifle. Poor Gordon had scarcely eaten a thing, hardly said a word.

‘Well,’ their dad had said when it was over, ‘he’s a poor thing and no mistake.’

Jill had fled the room in tears.

Gordon never came to tea again and when Jenny asked, somewhat maliciously, it’s true, if they were still going out together, Jill had told her not to be so stupid, she had more important things to do, like passing her O levels. Unlike you.

Jill had transferred up to the grammar school, a forty-five-minute journey each way on the bus.

Jenny had stayed at the secondary modern.

Net result: Jill went on and took her A levels, thought seriously about applying for university, but settled instead for a junior position in the administrative department of Nottingham University, which was where she still worked. Jenny stayed put, got married, had kids.

End of story.

Not quite.

Jill kept her private life, in so far as she had one, very much to herself. She was still living at home with her parents, after all.

Once in a while – Sunday lunch, say, all the family round the table, Jenny and Barry’s kids in their best clothes, best behaviour – someone would ask, politely, if Jill were seeing anyone, and Jill, just as politely, would say no, not right now, and move the subject along.

There was somebody Jenny saw her with once, a tallish man who’d smiled out from behind rimless glasses and looked for all the world, Jenny thought, like a Gordon grown up – except that Gordon would never have smiled. They’d met, Jill told her later, at the art class she went to Wednesday evenings and occasional weekends. She never told her his name.

Since the summer, since their parents had moved away, she knew Jill had only been working part-time, first four days a week and then three. Not only the coal industry was feeling the pinch.

Today, Jenny knows, is one of Jill’s days off. She thinks about ringing first, to make sure she’s in, but wonders what she’ll say, not wanting to start explaining over the phone. And if Jill has gone out, she’s likely not gone far.

Besides all of which, it’s not exactly far to walk. The other end of the village, the place their parents had moved into when their father first got a job down the pit. Not much more than a two up, two down, with a kitchen extension at the back, bathroom above that.

A chill in the air, Jenny tucks a scarf down into the collar of her winter coat. She sees one of the women from the support group on the opposite side of the street and waves, rather than stopping to chat.

She feels a slight tug seeing the house she grew up in; though, in truth, if she has crossed its threshold more than a few times since her parents moved, she’d be surprised.

Different courses: different lives.

Though it’s mid-morning a light still burns in one of the upstairs windows. Left on, Jenny thinks, by mistake.

She knocks and waits.

Maybe Jill has gone out after all.

Oh, well . . . she knocks again, less in hope than expectation. Turns away. She’s halfway across the road when the door opens.

‘Jenny?’

Jill is standing on the front step, tucking her blouse down into the waistband of her skirt.

‘I thought you were out,’ Jenny says. ‘Given up.’

‘Did you knock before?’

‘Twice.’

‘I didn’t hear you.’

The two sisters look at one another.

‘You’d best come in,’ Jill says.

There’s a man seated in one of a pair of easy chairs in the front room. He half-rises as Jenny follows Jill in.

‘You know Keith,’ Jill says.

Yes, she knows Keith. Keith Haines. He’s the village bobby, has been these past several years. Had a house in the village, a police house, but moved out a good month back when his windows were smashed for the third time in as many weeks, paint thrown over the front door.

‘Just dropped in for a cup of tea,’ Keith says.

‘You’ll have one,’ says Jill. ‘There’s plenty in the pot.’

Still not quite able to take it all in, Jenny shakes her head. ‘No, it’s okay. I only popped in on the off chance. You’ve got company, I’ll go.’

‘No call on my account,’ Keith says, though she can tell he doesn’t mean it.

‘What on earth’s going on?’ Jenny manages to whisper at the door.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Jill says.

There is no later.

Jill neither phones nor calls round. Jenny feels awkward about making the next move herself. When she bumps into Keith Haines a few days later – almost literally, turning a corner – he gives her a cheesy grin and carries on walking past.

IT NAGGED AT
Catherine for the remainder of the afternoon and on into the evening: the picture that Nicky had created. Two little girls playing monsters and the monster had suddenly, terrifyingly, become real. Even after all that time, the fear had been tangible in her voice, her eyes. Little girls exaggerate, of course, tease themselves with made-up tales of evil witches, wizards, wicked stepmothers; talk themselves into nightmares that leave them shaken in their beds, hair damp and skin slick with sweat. Tales of Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood coming home to roost.

Catherine’s parents had read those stories to her in Mombasa when she was little; but they had read her Kenyan stories too, like the one about the hare who escapes from the farmer’s cooking pot by outwitting the chicken into taking his place. Catherine had felt sorry for the chicken, but admired the hare for his cleverness and cunning. And, unlike Little Red Riding Hood, there’d been no need for a woodsman to come to the rescue swinging an axe.

Back at her flat, she sliced a banana into a bowl of yoghurt, added a cocktail of seeds she’d bought at the health-food shop and stirred in a teaspoon of honey.

Before sitting down, she changed the Bach CD that was still in the stereo for the new KT Tunstall. Scottish, wasn’t she, Tunstall? Perhaps she should try dropping her name into the conversation in the office, impress John McBride. Except McBride wouldn’t know KT Tunstall from Mary, Queen of Scotts.

And anyway, McBride hadn’t been quite such a pain lately. That morning he’d even smiled in her direction, showing off a motley collection of misshapen teeth.

Opening her laptop she pulled down the files from the inquiry, statements Sandford and Cresswell had taken from people in Bledwell Vale. Friends of the Hardwicks, neighbours; members of the Women’s Support Group. No mention of a Linda that she could see.

Linda?

Linda what?

It should be easy enough, first thing tomorrow, for one of the team to check the local census, voting records, whatever. Maybe the older Hardwick boy would be able to remember a name. Mary, even; she could phone Mary. After which would come the rigmarole of tracking the person down. Something a little more straightforward this time, she hoped, not another Geoff Cartwright, off in the wilds of Saskatchewan; another Danny Ireland, astray somewhere in the Scottish Highlands.

Didn’t anybody stay at home any more?

Not that she could talk.

With all that extra chasing, she would have to speak again to the divisional commander at Potter Street, see if she couldn’t get another body seconded to her team, even if just temporarily; someone to work the Internet, make calls. If the DC was still being sticky, she supposed she could always approach Picard, ask him to intervene, but only as a last resort.

Pouring herself a glass of wine, white from the fridge, she scrolled down from statement to statement, searching for something she might have missed in response to questions about the Hardwicks’ relationship.

Tension between them, there had to be, the way they’d been straddling both sides during the strike. Not too many families can go on like that, riven down the middle, without coming to blows. And the rumours Jenny might have set her cap elsewhere, that’d not have helped. Nor was there any doubt that Hardwick had something of a temper. It was not solely Nicky Parker’s vivid memory that gave testimony to that. Reading through the interviews again, the signs were there. Harsh words, a fist raised in anger, but over almost as soon as it had begun. Meant nothing, people said. Letting off steam, that’s all it was. Better out than in.