Splinter the Silence (8 page)

‘I’m not a drunk,’ she shouted. ‘Liking a drink doesn’t make me a drunk. You are completely out of order.’

‘I’m not. I’m back in line for the first time in a very long time. And this time I’m not walking away.’ He stopped at a T-junction. ‘Left or right?’

‘Left. Then a mile down the road, you take a right. Actually, no. Drop me at the corner. It’s only a mile from there. I’d rather walk.’

Tony gave a sardonic laugh. ‘In those shoes? My company must be worse than I thought. I’m driving you home, Carol. And then I’m staying over.’

‘What? What do you mean, staying over? There’s nowhere for you to sleep.’

‘There’s a whole barn. I brought my sleeping bag in case you don’t have a spare bed.’

‘No.’

‘Can we talk about this when we get there? Only, I need to concentrate.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

‘You can pretend all you like, but I know you’re not happy like this. And I can’t ignore that any longer. Whether you like it or not, Carol, it’s time you took your life back from the bottle.’

11

W
atching again. Waiting again. Wondering again whether this was the one. Ideally, he’d like to see inside her home before he made a final decision. He needed the kind of stairs that had a balustrade with spindles. You couldn’t hang someone when the bannister had a solid wall beneath it.

He didn’t mind waiting. He had plenty to occupy his mind. Killing time like this reminded him of where the debt he was owed had begun. It was a Sunday evening. His dad had promised him his mum was coming home that night. He’d been excited at the news, though he knew better than to show it. Lately, his life had changed in ways that enraged his father and baffled him.

It all started when his mum had announced she was going on a day trip to somewhere down south called Greenham Common. He’d never heard the name before. He’d only been eight years old; his world consisted of Bradfield, where all his family lived, and Torremolinos, where they went every summer on a charter flight from Bradfield airport for a week of sunburn and Spanish tummy. He’d heard of London and Manchester and Leeds but he’d never been to any of them and had only the haziest notion of how far away they were. Greenham Common, apparently, meant getting up at six because it was at least three hours on a coach. And it was women only.

He’d asked her what was at Greenham Common. Was it like a hotel? Or a beach? His mum had laughed and said no, it was American nuclear missiles and a women’s peace camp that was protesting about them. He didn’t understand why people were protesting about missiles. Missiles were good things, they meant you could fight back when people attacked you.

‘Nobody’s going to attack us,’ his mum had said.

‘You know that, do you? You’ve got the Russians’ personal guarantee of that, have you?’ his dad had demanded with a tired belligerence.

‘Nobody’s going to use nuclear weapons, Pete, don’t be stupid. They all know now about nuclear winter. It’d be the end of life as we know it. We’d be back in the Dark Ages, only worse, with mutations and all sorts.’

‘So if nobody’s going to use them, what’s the problem? They might as well be here as anywhere else.’

‘Apart from anything else, they’re a symbol of how this island’s nothing more than a giant floating aircraft carrier for America.’

He’d tuned out somewhere around there. He hadn’t properly understood much except that his mum and her pals were going to make a human fence round the place where the missiles were. Which seemed a weird thing to do. Like giving them a great big hug.

Him and his dad had watched the news that night and they’d seen a story about Greenham Common with pictures of women shouting at policemen then being carried away by them. There had been soldiers too, staring straight in front of them as if the women and the police were in another dimension. He’d been in bed by the time his mum got home, but at breakfast the next morning she’d been as excited as he’d been the day before his birthday party. His dad had just grunted.

It turned out that there was a whole camp at Greenham Common. Not like the cub camp he’d gone to the summer before, where they’d slept inside wooden huts and done lots of activities on the site and in the woods around it. There weren’t even proper tents, according to his dad. Only plastic sheets stretched over tree branches bent over and pegged to the ground. That’s why they were called benders, his mum said. His dad said something he didn’t understand and his mum flared up at him and said a word he didn’t know. When he asked her later what a lesbian was, she said he was too young to understand but it was a way of people showing they loved each other.

Anyway, his mum had got a taste for going camping at Greenham, even though it wasn’t summer. At first, it was just for a couple of nights at a time. Then she started going every other week for the whole week. He didn’t like it when she was gone. They had boring tea every night. Beans on toast or bacon and eggs with the yolks all hard and the edges of the whites all crispy. And his dad was always in a bad mood.

But his mum kept on about saving the planet for the future and the importance of sisterhood and how women united were strong. ‘I thought that was the miners,’ his dad had muttered.

‘Them too. Solidarity, that’s what it’s about. We’re fighting a war here.’

Which had confused him because he thought the whole point of Greenham was that it was a peace camp. His dad swore about it a lot when there were pictures on the news. He said the boy’s mum had been led astray by gobby bitches who wanted to convert normal women to their unnatural ways. That she’d been happy enough with her life before they’d started pumping their nonsense into her head, brainwashing her with their feminist ideas. She took to reading as well, in a big way. Later, he came across some of the books at school. Sylvia Plath. Virginia Woolf. Going to Greenham had made his mum somebody else’s puppet, his dad complained.

That Sunday night, they were waiting for her to come home. His dad had tried shouting and arguing to make his mum stay at home, but this week, he said he was going to try something different. ‘Soft soap,’ he said. And that made sense because there were no bathrooms at Greenham and his mum always came home gagging for a bath and clean clothes. His dad had prepared a special tea too. He’d gone to Marks & Spencer and bought two tins of chunky chicken in a special white sauce, and they were going to have it with oven chips and frozen peas. Then his mum would know how pleased they were to have her home.

She was due back about four o’clock. By the time it got to five, his dad was totally fed up. He’d opened a can of beer and he was smoking one cigarette after another till the living room was like a gas chamber. He’d left his dad to it and gone upstairs to his bedroom where he could look down the street and watch out for the battered old Volkswagen camper van that his mum’s pal Muriel gave her a lift in. He sat cross-legged on his bed, willing the orange-and-white van to appear, as if desire could make it happen.

That’s how he knew the police were coming before his dad did. The blue-and-white panda car stopped outside their front door and two cops got out, a man and a woman. He hurtled downstairs and yanked the front door open before they’d even reached it.

‘Is your dad in, son?’ the man asked.

Before he could say anything, a waft of acrid smoke answered for him. All at once, his dad was there, a protective hand on his shoulder. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he said in tones of disgust. ‘Has she gone and got herself arrested?’

‘If we could come inside?’ the woman said, a sympathetic smile on her face.

When he looked back, that had been the last moment in his childhood that had held any promise of happiness. Right then, in his head, his mum was still alive. Still there for him. Still somewhere between Greenham Common and his bedroom.

They’d been less than an hour from home when it happened. A fuel tanker in a crash. A diesel spill. A camper van sliding through 360 degrees and ending up wrapped round the central reservation of the M6. Three women dead. But only one he cared about.

His dad had taken refuge in rage. It was as if he wanted the boy’s mum back so he could shout at her and tell her how stupid she’d been to listen to those bloody women. It did make sense, the way he told it. Even if the boy had wanted to argue the toss, he couldn’t have faulted the logic. Until the women at the peace camp turned his mum’s head, she was perfectly happy, and so was he.

Some of the women turned up at the funeral. He expected his dad to kill them. But instead, he stayed deadly calm, like a ninja. He went right up to the undertaker and told him to tell them they weren’t welcome. Then he led the boy into the crematorium, dignified and head high. Only a bit of colour in his cheeks to betray how angry he was.

But once the funeral was over, there was no need to keep his fury in check. It seeped out, it seethed through everyday life, it seized every possibility of happiness and shook it by the scruff of the neck till it was dead. Those women had poisoned his whole life.

And now bitches like that were everywhere he turned, interfering in other people’s lives, making misery for other kids like him. He couldn’t escape them. He’d reached the point where he couldn’t keep taking their crap. He needed to put a stop to it.

But he had to be clever about it. Just killing them would make martyrs of them. He had to strip them of anything that might make them admirable. Make them worthless. Make it look as if their own behaviour had driven them to their deaths. That their guilt and shame had finally kicked in.

Now he’d started, he felt so much better. After Kate Rawlins, there was a kernel of peace in his heart that hadn’t been there before. It grew with stronger with Daisy Morton and Jasmine Burton. Now the bodies were starting to pile up, these bitches would have to take notice. It might take a while, but eventually they’d begin shutting up.

Or he’d keep on doing it for them.

12

I
n the end, Carol had made Tony sleep in her bed. ‘I have to get up early and walk the dog,’ she’d insisted. ‘That way I won’t disturb you.’ And so she’d finally found a use for the air mattress Michael and Lucy had kept for the children of visiting friends. ‘It’s intended to discourage them,’ he’d once said. Now she’d discovered he hadn’t been joking. Luckily Tony’s sleeping bag was thick with down and she hadn’t had to add cold to discomfort. She’d bedded down in a corner of the long stone barn she’d been systematically destroying then restoring over the past few months. Flash, accustomed to having the open-plan area to herself at night, was ecstatic to share her territory with her adored mistress and immediately curled up against her legs. Feeling the additional warmth, Carol couldn’t help wondering why she’d barred the dog from her bed until now.

Tony meanwhile was in the self-contained end section of the barn, where Carol had been living. He was gratified that she trusted him enough to give him free access to her most private domain. He hoped she’d eventually grasp that what he was about to do wasn’t a breach of that trust.

Carol had stamped her own personality on the space now. Michael, a successful games software designer, wouldn’t have recognised the place. It had been designed as an office that could double as a guest suite. A desktop ran along one wall, power points arrayed along its length like a strange design statement. Where there had once been an assortment of computer monitors and peripherals, there was now a single laptop and a neatly folded pile of T-shirts. Another wall was shelved and held Carol’s books and CDs. There was a king-size bed and a walk-in wardrobe, a shower room, and beyond that, down a short hallway, a decent-sized kitchen with a breakfast bar and a couple of stools. It was soundproofed and air conditioned; to Tony, it resembled a bunker more than anything.

Sleep had been elusive, but that wasn’t unusual. Tony had struggled with sleep for years, seldom managing more than four or five hours without waking and staring at the ceiling, listening to the wheels going round inside his head. The atmosphere between Carol and him before they’d parted hadn’t helped. He’d hoped she’d see the sense in what he was saying. He knew she wouldn’t be able to capitulate directly, that she’d make him drag her to the point of agreement, but he believed that she was ready for change. Ready to admit that it was time to reclaim her life.

That hadn’t been how it had gone. He’d barely made it to the barn door in time to stop Carol slamming it shut in his face. Her eyes had blazed with anger as he’d barged in behind her. ‘I’ve told you. This is none of your business,’ she’d said, storming through the barn to her living area. By the time he caught up with her in her kitchen, she was pouring a large glass of white wine.

‘Straight to the bottle,’ he said. ‘You’ve been busy telling me you don’t have a problem, but what’s your first response to any kind of criticism? Have a big drink. Classic, Carol. Classic alcoholic behaviour.’

She took a defiant swig from the glass. ‘I’m not an alcoholic. I like a drink. And frankly, after the night I’ve had, I think I deserve a little pleasure.’

‘I don’t think there’s any pleasure in that glass. I think there’s relief. I think there’s release. And I think there’s dependency. You needed that drink, whether you wanted it or not.’

‘You think I can’t do without it? You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m perfectly happy to do without drink.’

‘Really? So why did you always have a quarter-bottle of vodka in your desk drawer? Why do you always carry a hip flask in your handbag?’

She’d made a little ‘tcha’ of disgust. ‘What? You’re spying on me now?’

Tony shook his head, sadness in his eyes. ‘Not me. Your team. People who care about you, who came to me because they didn’t dare go to you.’

That hit home. He wasn’t ashamed of landing such a low blow. He wanted it to sting, wanted her to feel the shame of what she was doing to herself. She couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘You’ve never seen me falling-down drunk. Throwing up over myself. Out of control. I’ve always been able to do my job. Always able to function.’

Tony shrugged. ‘So you’re a functioning drunk. You don’t have to be falling down in the street or pissing yourself or sleeping with unsuitable men or losing whole days at a time to be a drunk. All it takes is for you to be dependent. And you are. We both know it.’