The Day She Died (26 page)

All any girl really wants is a guy who can get over his wife dying before the sun goes down. A guy who understands and understands, and then sets little hoops for you to jump through. Saves up a great big sackfuls of little hoops without even telling you and starts the training the very next morning after you've told him how bad it was—worse, surely, than he could have dreamed of. Or I wouldn't want his dreams if not, anyway.

If it was true. Maybe it was just a feather, with a bit of brown crud stuck in it. Once I saw the workshop, I'd surely know. The picture of that sack was burned onto my eyeballs. If he'd moved it, it would look different.

He'd moved it right enough. I left the kids playing outside—they'd found a muddy puddle and couldn't believe their luck—and opened up the House side of the workshop. It didn't seem nearly so bad in the light of day with the children squabbling and giggling. Or maybe it didn't seem so creepy without the sack lying all alone on the little bit of space between the stone wall and the breeze-block wall. It was gone. I walked to the corner and looked along the length of the room to the back. It wasn't there either, just another passageway between the breeze block and the stone. A window in the stone on this wall. I walked along and looked round the next corner. Breeze block and stone. A door in the stone, wooden, barred shut and padlocked. And the fourth wall. Breeze block and the other wall this time was plaster, dividing this side of the workshop from the one where Gus had taken me. No sign of the sack anywhere.

I closed up again, padlocked the door, and opened the other one. The smell of the old drain was worse in here. Gus couldn't have worked in it even if he'd wanted to. He'd definitely been here for a visit though, because there was the sack. Just inside the door, the neck tied tighter shut than I'd left it.

Still. Still I couldn't bring myself to face it all. Still I was telling myself that his ploy with the feather in the spider's web had worked. I had touched it and stayed standing. I hadn't curled in a ball and squeezed my head. I had dressed the kids and come looking for more. Come looking for answers.

I let my gaze move around the crazy jumble of the workshop, over the shelves and tables, over the bags and boxes and parcels. The answers had to be here. He was a mystery to me, this man I'd fallen for like a rock off a cliff, and here was his secret place. Even if I couldn't bring myself to ask the questions, the answers were here.

Only, once I'd been looking round for five minutes, I wondered how secretive he was really. Ruby—I lifted my head and looked out the door at them: muddy but happy—had said Mummy didn't come here, but there were notes in Becky's handwriting everywhere. That loose loopy script I remembered so well:
I'm sorry, I can't go through it again. I can't go on.
So she didn't just scrawl in her suicide note. She scrawled all the time. Except in her diary. Which didn't make sense at all.

Until all of a sudden it did. That diary wasn't in Becky's writing. That book in her bedside table belonged to Ros. Because Gus would know if Becky had kept one, and he'd have read it after she'd killed herself. So it wasn't Becky's. It was Ros's, and she'd given it to Becky before she went away. Or Becky had taken it. And what else might she have taken? I remembered the phone in the basket on the porch. Ros's phone? Becky's mobile gone with her and Gus's destroyed. Was that Ros's phone?

Was this the answer at last? The police thought Ros had taken her things because her things were gone. But if Becky'd had Ros's diary and her mobile, then she could have had her passport and clothes and everything.

I started searching in earnest then, because wherever Ros's stuff was, it wasn't at the house. I tore into boxes of nails and bolts, tore open sacks and bin bags, rummaged through piles of canvas and tarpaulin, peered into drums of wire and plumbing parts and finally found it right at the back of the room, a black sack, another bloody black bin bag, that felt—who knew it better than me, who booted them over the floor every day and rooted through them?—like clothes and shoes.

“Oh shit,” I said, dragging it into the middle of the floor where there was some space to open it and some light to see. “She killed her friend and then herself and Gus knows it.
That's
what he's hiding. That's why he freaked when Ros's sister phoned.” A tingle went through me and I knew what had been niggling away at the back of my brain. If Becky killed Ros, then Ros hadn't phoned to say she was fine. Gus lied. Gus knew. Oh God, if only he'd told me last night when I asked him about the worst thing he'd ever done. I didn't even think—not really—that covering up a crime by his children's mother when she was dead anyway was all that bad. Understandable anyway.

If
, I reminded myself, catching hold of the runaway train of my thoughts. If this is Ros's stuff in here. I stuck my fingernails into the plastic and pulled open a hole.

Jesus God! I reeled backwards at the smell. Mould and mud and something foul like a bunch of flowers left in the water too long if you breathe in deep when you pour it away. Rot and slime and decay.

But not death. Not animal. If it had been, I'd never have been able to turn the hole into a tear and see what I'd found. I closed my eyes, opened them again, looked down, and let my breath go in a rush of disappointment and foolishness. It was just a load of Gus's old clothes. Soaking wet. Shoved away in a bin bag like only a guy would do, but Gus's clothes. Not Ros's. My lovely, horrendous solution wisped off like the smell that was clearing from the bag now that it was open again. I raked through the things: a coat, one of those khaki ones with a long tail that kids used to paint the Anarchy sign on the back of; a jersey, ruined; a pair of tweedy trousers, totally ruined; black dress shoes, well-ruined. He could have worn them to the funeral if they hadn't been, instead of going along like some lout in his work boots. A flicker of unease crossed me at the thought of it. The thought of what, though? I sat still and listened to myself.

How long had this lot been here? Not long, if they were still soaking. How could he not remember that he'd just ruined his black shoes, the day he put work boots on for his wife's funeral? When he remembered, why would he not come here and get the bin bag to start drying the stuff out again? Why didn't he dry it out straight away? So I started going through the pockets, thinking maybe a petrol receipt or a lottery ticket or something would tell me they'd been there longer than I thought.

There was nothing in the jacket pockets. Nothing in the trousers' back pocket. I pulled the front pockets inside out to look, and that was when I saw it. I stared. I reached my hand out and picked it up. It was tiny, the size of an apple pip. I'd never have seen it if it hadn't been so bright. So unbelievably fluorescent orange. It was a crumb of rubber from the broken end of a bracelet.

I was so calm. I locked up and got the kids, took them home, only using half my brain to fight the madness that was growing inside it. Gus might have waded into the sea to save a baby gosling that was getting swept away. (Except that was river water, and I knew it). And maybe when Ruby broke her bangle that Ros gave her, he put it in his pocket. (Except Kazek said it wasn't hers). I still had half my brain free for the kids.

“You are so having a bath when we get in. Yes, before lunch. You look like chocolate mice.”

“Lot-lit,” said Dillon.

“I'll bring you some treats to eat in the bubbles, but you're getting a bath and you're getting your hair washed. Ruby-licious, you're filthy!”

I dropped the torn bin bag into the wheelie. I'd tied the stuff back up again in a new one and hoped he'd not have memorised the knot he'd used the first time. Then I hurried inside. The phone was ringing.

“Hello?”

“It's Gus,” he said. He sounded hoarse and far away.

“Hiya,” I said.

“Becky?” I couldn't cope with what it might mean if he was asking what he seemed to be. So I pretended not to understand.

“What about her? Gus, are you okay?”

“It said in the online
Standard
her funeral was today. What the hell's going on there?”

“I don't know what you're asking me. What do you mean it said in the
Standard
? Who picked the day?”

“What's happening?” said Gus. “Is Becky dead, or isn't she? Who are you?”

“What's this?” I said, “the start of an insanity defence? Where the hell are you anyway?”

“I'm closer than you think, and I'm coming home,” he said. “It's way overdue.”

“Was that Daddy?” said Ruby. I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, thinking about Granny laughing with the feather stuck to her lips, Granny twisted on the floor with her eyes clouding.

“It was,” I told Ruby. I looked down at both of them, hair stiff with mud, dried mud cracking off their anoraks, cheeks daubed like war paint. “What are you like?” I said. “Well, here's the good news. You're not going in the bath. We're going on a trip. We're going to visit … can you guess?”

“Mummy?” said Dillon.

I kicked myself. “Kazek!” I said. “Yeay!”

“Yeay,” said Ruby. “Mr. Wet Guy.
Dzieki
, Jessie.”

“
Deekeeeee
,” said Dillon.

I was reeling, but I still managed to notice that there were two proper baby seats in the van. And that's when the anger arrived at last to take over from all the fear. He'd done nothing but lie to me since the minute I met him. What was the point of that one that day? To keep me at home with the kids while he … what? Was that the day he went to the morgue or was that the day he went to the cops? Becky wasn't preg
nant and she probably wasn't gay either, and Gus had a piece of
Wojtek's bangle in his pocket, a guy who ended up dead in a river. And Gus had river water all over his clothes. And—this filled me with such boiling rage I thought I'd have to pull over, like I wasn't safe to drive—nobody talks back to voice-mail messages.
Nobody
!

This time I got a parking space no bother, middle of the day, middle of the week, and I hustled the kids up the stairs into the flat.

“Mr. Wet Guy,” said Ruby. “
Czesc
!”

“
Czesc mala
,” said Kazek. He turned to Dillon. “
Czesc maly
.
Co dzis porabiasz
?”

“Eh?” said Ruby. “Is this your house? I thought you lived at the beach.” She started wandering round looking the place over.

“This is my house, Roobs,” I told her and was surprised to see her turn on her heel and shoot me a look of anguish.

“You live with us!” she said. “Daddy and Dillon and me.”

“This is my old house,” I told her. “Kazek lives here now that I live with you, sweetie.”

This satisfied her and she went back to her poking around. Dillon had found the remote and switched the telly on. Some programme about houses in the country. He held the handset up to me, the mud cracking off his cheeks as he stretched his pleading smile as wide as it would go.

“Cartoons, Jessie.” I got my
Shrek
DVD out and put it on for them.

“I'll bring you some crisps,” I told them, but Kazek pulled me out into the hall.

“Why babies here? Gary! Dangerous!”

“Gary doesn't know I live here.”

“Gary find out.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Well, okay, at least
Gus
doesn't know I live here. Look, Kazek.” I pulled the broken bracelet out of my pocket and put it in his hand. He groaned—such pain—and two tears fell onto the little curl of orange rubber in his palm.

“Wojtek,” he said. “Where find?”

“Gus,” I told him. “I think … I don't know what to think, but we have
got
to go to the police. We
have
to.”

“No, Jessie-Pleasie,” he said. “
Gary zna tego policjanta I sa dobrymi kumplami.
Nic nie rozumiesz
! You no understand.”

“No kidding!” I said. “Okay, well, what about this? What about a priest? A Father? I need to tell someone. What do you think of that then?”

Kazek blew his cheeks out and wrinkled his brow. Then he nodded. “Okay. Holy Father? Okay.”

I dialled the number praying that it would be Father Tommy and not Sister Avril who answered.

“Good morning,” said his voice. Was it really still morning?

“It's Jessie,”

“Jessie, my child,” he said. “How are things down on the catwalk?”

“I'm not at work, Father,” I said. “I'm at home and I'm in trouble. I need you to come. I—” I was ready to plead and cajole, but I'd forgotten who I was talking to. He might not wear a cape or his pants outside his trousers, but Father Tommy was already in the chute to the Batmobile.

“God keep you, my child,” he said. “I'm on my way.”

It was less than ten minutes later when the pounding came on the door.

“Jesus, Father, cool it,” I muttered, as I trotted along the corridor. He hammered on the door again, and I was on the point of taking the chain off when something stopped me.

“Who is it?” I said.

“Jessie, I know you're in there.” Gus's voice was ragged, like he'd been running. Or crying. I could hardly hear him through the door.

“How?” I said. “How do you know this is my flat?”

“Just let me in and I'll explain.”

My hand was on the chain when he thundered his fists against the panels again. Both fists, fast as anything, like in a cartoon when they go round and round and turn blurry. It sounded like insanity.