Shatter (31 page)

39

The school yearbook is open beneath my fingers, displaying her class photograph. Friends are behind her and beside her. Some of them haven’t changed at all since 1988. Others
have grown fat and dyed their hair. And just one or two have blossomed like late flowering roses amid the weeds.

Surprisingly, many have stayed in the area. Married. Had children. Divorced. Separated. One died of breast cancer. One lives in New Zealand. Two live with each other.

The TV is on. I flick through the channels but there’s nothing to watch. A rolling banner catches my attention. It says something about a manhunt for a double killer.

A pretty, plastic woman is reading the news with her eyes focused slightly to the left where an autocue must be rolling. She crosses to a reporter who talks to camera, nodding sagely
with all the sincerity of a doctor holding a needle behind his back.

Then the scene changes to a conference room. The dyke detective and the shrink are side-by-side like Laurel and Hardy. Laverne and Shirley. Torvill and Dean. One of the great
show-business partnerships is born.

They’re talking to reporters. Most of the questions are being answered by a senior policeman who has a bug up his arse about something. I turn up the sound.

‘
…
we’re dealing with a pervert and a coward, who targets the weak and vulnerable because he can’t get a woman or hold on to one, or because he wasn’t breastfed as a baby.’

‘The profile Professor O’Loughlin has drawn up doesn’t pass the so-what test in my opinion. Yes, we’re looking for a local man, aged thirty to fifty who works shifts and hates women.

Fairly bloody obvious, I would have thought. No science in that.

‘The Professor wants us to show this man respect. He wants to reach out to him with the hand of compassion and understanding. Not on my watch. This perpetrator is a scumbag
and he’ll get all the respect he wants in prison because that’s where he’s going…’

The media circus ends in uproar. The plastic woman moves on to another story.

Who are these people? They have no idea of who they’re dealing with and what I’m capable of. They think it’s a game. They think I’m a fucking amateur.

I can walk through walls.

I can unlock people’s minds.

I can listen to the pins fall into place and the tumblers turn.

Click… click… click…

40

I wake in the folds of a duvet holding a pil ow. I missed seeing Julianne wake and get dressed. I like seeing her slip out of bed in the half-light and the cold, lifting her nightdress over her head. My eyes are drawn to her smal brown nipples and the dimple in the smal of her back, just above the elastic of her knickers.

This morning she is already downstairs, making breakfast for the girls. Other sounds drift from outside— a tractor in the lane, a dog barking, Mrs Nutal cal ing to her cats. Opening the curtains, I assess the day. Blue sky. Distant clouds.

A man is standing in the churchyard, looking at the gravestones. I can just make him out through the branches, wiping his eyes and holding a smal vase of flowers. Perhaps he lost a wife or a mother or a father. It could be an anniversary or a birthday. He bends and digs a smal hol ow, resting the vase inside and pressing earth around it.

Sometimes I wonder if I should take the girls to a church service. I’m not particularly religious but I’d like them to have a sense of the unknown. I don’t want them to be too obsessed with truth and certainty.

I get changed and make my way downstairs. Charlie is in the kitchen wearing her school uniform. Soft strands of her hair have pul ed out of her ponytail, framing her face.

‘Is this bacon for me?’ I ask, picking up a rasher.

‘It’s not mine. I don’t eat bacon,’ says Charlie.

‘Since when?’

‘Since forever.’

Forever
seems to have been redefined since I was at school.

‘Why?’

‘I’m a vegetarian. My friend Ashley says we shouldn’t be kil ing defenceless animals to satisfy our lust for leather shoes and bacon sandwiches.’

‘How old is Ashley?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘And what does her father do?’

‘He’s a capitalist.’

‘Do you know what that is?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘If you don’t eat meat, how wil you get iron?’

‘Spinach.’

‘You hate spinach.’

‘Broccoli.’

‘Ditto.’

‘Four of the five food groups wil be enough.’

‘There are five?’

‘Don’t be so sarcastic, Dad.’

Julianne has taken Emma to get the morning papers. I make myself a coffee and put slices of bread in the toaster. The phone rings.

‘Hel o?’

There’s no answer. I hear the soft whoosh of traffic; brakes are applied, vehicles slow and stop. There must be an intersection nearby or a set of traffic lights.

‘Hel o? Can you hear me?’

Nothing.

‘Is that you, Darcy?’

There’s stil no answer. I imagine I can hear her breathing. The traffic lights have changed again. Vehicles move off.

‘Just talk to me, Darcy, tel me you’re OK.’

The line goes dead. I press my finger to the receiver button and let it go. I dial Darcy’s mobile. I get the same recorded message as before.

I wait for the beep.

‘Darcy. Next time talk to me.’

I hang up. Charlie has been listening.

‘Why did she run away?’

‘Who told you she ran away?’

‘Mum.’

‘Darcy doesn’t want to live in Spain with her aunt.’

‘Where else wil she live?’

I don’t answer. I’m making myself a bacon sandwich.

‘She could live with us,’ says Charlie.

‘I thought you didn’t like her.’

She shrugs and pours herself a glass of orange juice. ‘She was OK, I guess. She had some great clothes.’

‘That’s al ?’

‘Wel , no, not the only thing. I sort of feel sorry for her— about what happened to her mum.’

Julianne appears through the back door with Emma. ‘Who do you feel sorry for?’

‘Darcy.’

Julianne looks at me. ‘Have you heard from her?’

I shake my head.

Wearing a simple dress and cardigan she looks happier, younger, more relaxed. Emma ducks in and out between her legs. Julianne holds down the hem as a modesty precaution.

‘Can you drop Charlie at school? She’s missed the bus.’

‘Sure.’

‘The new nanny wil be here in fifteen minutes.’

‘The Australian.’

‘You make her sound like a convict.’

‘I have nothing against Australians but if she mentions the cricket she’l have to leave.’

She rol s her eyes. ‘I was thinking that maybe— now that Imogen has arrived— we could go for dinner tonight. It could be an “us date”.’

‘An “us date”. Mmmmm.’ I grab Emma and haul her onto my lap. ‘Wel , I might be available. I wil have to check my busy schedule. But if I do say yes, I don’t want you getting any funny ideas.’

‘Me? Never. Although I may wear my black lingerie.’

Charlie covers her ears. ‘I know what you guys are talking about and it’s sooooo gross.’

‘What’s gross?’ asks Emma.

‘Never mind,’ we chorus.

Julianne and I used to have regular ‘us dates’— nights set aside with a babysitter booked. The first time I arranged one I made a point of bringing flowers and knocking on the front door.

Julianne thought it was so sweet she wanted to take me straight up to the bedroom and skip dinner.

The phone rings again. I’m surprised at how quickly I pick it up. Everyone is staring at me.

‘Hel o?’

Again there is no answer.

‘Is that you, Darcy?’

A male voice answers. ‘Is Julianne there?’

‘Who’s cal ing?’

‘Dirk.’

Disappointment morphs into irritation. ‘Did you cal earlier?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Did you cal about ten minutes ago?’

He doesn’t answer the question. ‘Is Julianne there or not?’

She pul s the phone from my hand and takes it upstairs to the study. I watch her through the stair rails as she closes the door.

The nanny arrives. She is everything I imagined: freckled, photogenic and blighted by a singsong Australian accent that makes her sound like she’s asking a question al the time. Her name is Imogen and she is rather large across the beam. I know that’s an incredibly sexist description but I’m not just talking about 24oz Porterhouse big, I’m talking huge.

According to Julianne, Imogen was definitely the most qualified candidate for the job. She has loads of experience, interviewed wel and wil do extra babysitting if required. None of these factors are the main reason Julianne hired her. Imogen isn’t competition. She’s not the least bit threatening unless she accidental y sat on somebody.

I carry her two suitcases upstairs. She says the room is awesome. The house is also awesome, so is the TV and my aging Escort. Col ectively, everything is ‘absolutely awesome.’

Julianne is stil on the phone. There must be some sort of problem at work. Either that or she and Dirk are having phone sex.

I’ve never met Dirk. I can’t even remember his surname— yet I dislike him with an irrational zeal. I hate the sound of his voice. I hate that he buys my wife gifts; that he travels with her, that he cal s her at home on a day off. Mostly, I hate the way she laughs so easily for him.

When Julianne was pregnant with Charlie and going through the tired, tearful, ‘I feel fat’ stage, I tried to find ways of cheering her up. I booked us a holiday in Jamaica. She vomited the entire flight. A minibus picked us up from the airport and drove us to the resort, which was lovely and tropical, teeming with bougainvil ea and hibiscus. We changed and headed for the beach. A naked black man walked past us. Butt-naked. Dangling. Next came a nude woman, textile free, wearing a blossom in her hair. Julianne looked at me strangely, her pregnancy bursting from her sarong.

Final y, a smiling young Jamaican man in staff whites pointed to my trunks.

‘Clothes off, mon.’

‘Pardon?’

‘This is a nekkid beach.’

‘Uhhhhh?’

Suddenly the slogan from the brochure came back to me: ‘Be Wicked for a Week’. And the penny dropped. I had booked my heavily pregnant wife on a week-long package holiday at a nudist resort where ‘sex on the beach’ wasn’t just the name of a cocktail.

Julianne should have kil ed me. Instead she laughed. She laughed so hard I thought her waters might break and our first child would be delivered by a Jamaican cal ed ‘Tripod’ wearing nothing but sun-block. She hasn’t laughed like that for a long while.

After dropping Charlie at school, I detour to Bath Library. It’s on the first floor of the Podium Centre in Northgate Street, up an escalator and through twin glass doors. The librarians are boxed behind a counter on the right.

‘During the summer there was a ferry disaster in Greece,’ I say to one of them. She’s been changing an ink cartridge in a printer and two of her fingertips are stained black.

‘I remember,’ she says. ‘I was on holiday in Turkey. There were storms. Our campsite was flooded.’

She starts tel ing me the story, which features wet sleeping bags, near pneumonia, and spending two nights in a laundry block. Not surprisingly, she remembers the date. It was the last week in July.

I ask to see the newspaper files, choosing the
Guardian
and a local paper, the
Western Daily Press
. She’l bring them out to me, she says.

I take a desk in a quiet corner and wait for the bound volumes to be delivered. She has to push them on a trol ey. I help her lift the first one onto the desk.

‘What are you after?’ she asks, smiling absently.

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Wel , good luck.’

I turn the pages delicately, scanning the headlines. It doesn’t take long to find what I’m looking for.

FOURTEEN DEAD IN GREEK FERRY DISASTER

A rescue operation is under way in the Aegean Sea for survivors from a Greek ferry that sank in gale force winds off the island of Patmos.

The Greek Coast Guard says fourteen people have been confirmed dead and eight people are missing after the
Argo Hellas
sank eleven miles north-east of Patmos Harbour.

More than forty passengers— most of them foreign holidaymakers— were plucked from the water by local fishing boats and pleasure craft. Survivors were taken to a health centre on Patmos, many suffering from cuts, bruises and the effects of hypothermia. Eight seriously injured passengers have been airlifted to hospitals in Athens.

An English hotelier helping in the rescue, Nick Barton, said those on board the ferry included UK citizens, Germans, Italians, Australians and local Greeks.

The eighteen-year-old ferry sank just after 2130 (1830 GMT) only fifteen minutes after leaving the port of Patmos. According to survivors it was swamped by the huge seas and sank so quickly that many had no time to don lifejackets before they jumped from the side.

The heavy seas and high winds have hampered the search for more survivors. Throughout the night Greek aircraft dropped flares in the sea and a helicopter from the Royal Navy’s HMS Invincible assisted with the search.

Turning the pages, I fol ow the story as it unfolds. The ferry sank on 24 July during a storm that caused widespread destruction across the Aegean. A container ship ran aground on the island of Skiros and further south a Maltese tanker broke in two and sank in the Sea of Crete.

Survivors of the ferry tragedy told their stories to reporters. In the final moments before the
Argo Hellas
sank, passengers were hanging from the railings and jumping overboard. Some were trapped inside as the ferry went down.

Forty-one people survived the tragedy and seventeen were confirmed dead. After two days a change in the weather al owed Greek naval divers to recover three more bodies from the wreck but six people were stil missing including an American, an elderly French woman, two Greeks and a British mother and daughter. This must have been Helen and Chloe, but their names aren’t mentioned for several more days.