The Flavours of Love (45 page)

I pause for a moment beside his pride and joy, to ensure he is watching, and he can accurately predict what is about to happen.

‘No!’ he shouts.

His car’s blemish-free bonnet shudders violently as I bring the iron down upon it with my full weight behind it. A jagged-edged dent appears beneath and around the iron.

‘Are you having fun yet?’ I shout at him.

I bring the iron down again, another shudder quakes through the car and another part of the bonnet crumples in like screwed-up paper.

‘Stop this, Saffron! Stop this right now!’ Imogen screams. Her hands are on her face, her eyes are wide with horror. How she looks is how I’ve felt almost every day since
that day –
paralysed by the horror of what is happening right before my eyes.

Around me, people spill out of their front doors to see what is going on in their usually quiet and placid street; others pull back curtains or hold apart blinds.

‘I’m calling the police!’ Imogen shrieks and disappears into the belly of her house.

Ray is incapacitated. Not only by shock, but also by circumstance – he needs to come up with a plausible explanation for this. He needs to formulate different stories with different wording that will work on Imogen
and
his neighbours.

I slam down the iron again. ‘How about this? Is this fun?’ This dent caves in the front left side of the car. Another slam, another devastating dent. ‘FUN?’

I wriggle the iron at Ray, a man as white and immobile as a statue. ‘This is brilliant fun, isn’t it?’ After two heavy, determined blows, the driver’s-side window gives a sickening crunch before the glass buckles and smashes into beads that scatter mostly over the front seat.

With one last blow to the bonnet, which is now like a crater-filled planet, I leave the iron embedded there.

Heaving air into my lungs, I stand and regard Ray. He is tall, he is well-built, he is handsome. He is a disgusting specimen of a man.

Between gulps of oxygen I say, ‘You stay away from my daughter,’ loud enough for our audience to hear, and noisy enough to drown out the sound of my heart thundering in my head. ‘You stay away from other little girls, too. Because I don’t care how many perverts make statements in the papers, or how many crappy TV dramas pretend it’s all right, or how many paedophile apologists tell you the teenager wanted it, grown men going with children is NEVER all right. And if I see you near my daughter again in her lifetime, I
WILL
come after you again.’

Ray has not moved. Even though I can hear the sirens in the distance, and I see Imogen in the doorway behind him, he does not move. He is stuck. Everyone around us has heard what I’ve said, including his stricken-looking wife. His lies will have to be epic to get out of this.

You should have thought of that before you started sexting my daughter
, I want to say.
You should have considered the consequences before you started to browbeat her into an abortion by telling her ‘I can’t love you in this state, you need to sort it’. You should have cut off all communication when she stopped responding to your texts instead of stepping up the mixture of sex talk, love talk, and ‘get it sorted it’ talk to try to get her to re-engage
.

‘I think we understand each other now,’ I say to him.

Imogen is frozen, petrified, in her doorway with her thin hands still on her face. The look of horror is gone, replaced by a mask of shock and despair.
I know how you feel
, I want to say. But of course I don’t. People said versions of that to me after Joel died and I wanted them to stop it. They didn’t know. No one knew. How could they when they didn’t know him like I did and they weren’t me? I don’t know exactly how Imogen is feeling now, but I can suspect. I can imagine what it feels like when the world around you starts to collapse but you’re expected to keep on standing through it all. I would never say
that to her, though. I would never presume to tell her that I know how she feels when I can only really guess.

My gaze shifts to the pavement beneath my feet. I’ve done what I needed to do, I’ve delivered my message visually as well as verbally, and I don’t want to keep looking at Imogen’s face.

Two police cars draw up and I do not move. There’s no point. I wasn’t sure one of them would do this, but they have, so I am not going to compound my troubles by resisting arrest. I simply stand where I am, waiting for them to come for me, to ask me my name, to tell me my rights; I am waiting for them to put handcuffs on my wrists, to bundle me into the police car and take me away from here.

Waiting. I always seem to be waiting.

My cell is quite cosy, all things considered.

I sit with the thin, PVC-coated mattress beneath me providing no kind of padding between my bottom and the hard metal of the bed. The rough-surfaced breeze blocks of the wall are painted an odd off-white that I suppose is meant to make the room appear larger than it is. High up on the wall there is a window with frosted, thickened (I assume) glass. At the foot of the bed there is a metal toilet and a metal, wall-hung sink. It smells in here, of course: a mixture of sharp, chemical-heavy disinfectant, stagnant water in the toilet, as well as the sweat of whoever has recently languished in here. Maybe it’s deeper than that, maybe that stench comes from the crimes of those who’ve been in here; maybe it rolls off them and seeps into the walls, lurking there like a communicable disease, waiting for another criminal to add to it, building incrementally into a smelly putrid disease that crawls nefariously up the nose of the next occupant. Maybe everyone adds to the smell so no two arrestees smell the same thing or leave with the same crime infection inside them.

I dismiss, then wrestle away those mad thoughts because, I remind myself,
this cell is cosy
.

It is
not
small, confined and claustrophobic. It is not making me want to scream and claw my way out through the metal door, or to climb the walls to the window to smash a chunk of air into here.

They’ve taken my trainers as well as my bag and coat and belt and socks. My shoes, I assume, will be standing outside, facing my cell door, like all the other shoes I saw lined up outside the cells when I was brought here.

My heart jerks to attention and my whole body jumps as the door
is unlocked and swings open. It’s the he one who was once my Family Liaison Officer. He pauses in the doorway. I vividly see what I am about to do: leap up, knock him aside and make a run for it. I’d have to stop to scoop up my trainers and I’d get nowhere without my bag, and would I even remember the way out of here? It’s a ludicrous idea but haven’t most of my actions been unhinged of late?

The he one sighs, deeply, the sigh of a confused, frustrated, concerned friend and arranges his face to reflect his sigh before he comes to sit as far away as he can on the narrow, short bed. At least he’s left the door open. At least he’s given me the option of doing a runner.

‘I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon, Mrs Mackleroy.’

‘I wanted to see if you’d get my name right twice in a row. And, hurrah! You did. Well done.’

The he one doesn’t find this funny but he is mildly amused. ‘What’s going on, Mrs Mackleroy? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw your name on the detention sheet. Criminal damage?’

He is genuinely concerned for me. I’m almost overwhelmed by the wave of affection I feel for him suddenly. He’s so young and he seems to have changed so much in such a short amount of time. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask him.

He blinks at me. ‘You don’t know my name?’

I shake my head.

‘I never told you or you forgot?’

‘You never told me. When you came to my house that very first time neither of you told me your names. You told me probably the worst news I’ve ever had and you were nameless people to me. And then, after that, you never said what your name was. All the other people who came introduced themselves but you never did.’

‘I must have done.’ He is wild-eyed as he searches through his memory, examining that time; he wants to pinpoint a moment when he would have told me what he was called.
I was in her house every day
, he’s thinking,
I must have told her my name
. ‘I must have done,’ he repeats, unable to locate that moment in time when he allowed me to know who he was.

I shake my head.

His eyes slip shut in regret. ‘I look back sometimes at your case and regret so much,’ he says, more to himself than to me. ‘I’ve learnt so much since then.’

‘But not how to tell me your name, clearly,’ I joke.

‘Trainee Detective Clive Malone.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Clive Malone.’

‘Mrs Mackleroy, you’re in a police cell, I don’t think you have much to be pleased about.’

‘No, you’re right. My daughter’s in hospital and it’d be great to get back to her.’

‘You’re going to be here for a while, I’m afraid. There’s nothing I can do to make this go away.’

‘I don’t want you to. I needed to show that man, the man whose car I attacked, that he had to stay away from my daughter.’

‘There are better ways of doing that,’ he replies.

‘Yes, there are. I wanted to be arrested. I’ve been such a bad mother, I’ve been absent, I haven’t been paying attention and I didn’t even notice how awful things were getting. I wanted to be locked up for a bit as punishment. Scaring the living daylights out of the bastard who’s been abusing my daughter was a bonus. I’m not going to prison, though, am I?’

‘No. If you’re willing to accept a caution, I’ll see if I can get your interview moved up and get you out of here as soon as possible.’

‘Thank you, Clive Malone.’

‘It’s the least I can do, given everything.’

‘Don’t suppose you can leave the door open?’ I ask him as he prepares to leave.

‘Afraid not. But I’ll see if you can be moved to an interview room.’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

Clive Malone smiles at me before he disappears. I pull my knees up to my chest and lower my head onto them. I deserve to be here. I really do. Not only for smashing Ray Norbet’s car, but for all of this.

I’m going to turn this around, though. I am going to make everything OK again. I have to.

Aunty Betty and Phoebe are both asleep when I get back to the hospital.

Aunty Betty has worked her magic and someone has found her a full-recline chair and she’s made herself comfortable under a couple of white waffle blankets. In the darkness of the room I drop into the easy chair I occupied earlier, the beeps punctuate the silence, the flashes push pinholes in the darkness.

I want to take a shower, I want to wash off the crimes I sat amongst in the prison cell. I want to cleanse myself so that I can start again all clean and new. That’d be good, wouldn’t it? It’d be symbolic.

As quietly as I can, I shift the chair closer to Phoebe and reach out for her. I rest my forehead on our linked hands. Without her, without Zane, there is no point.

I close my eyes and sleep. Everything’s going to be better in the morning.

Thursday, 23 May
(For Friday, 24th)

Saffron.

We’re so alike, you and I.

When you were attacking that bastard’s car, you felt the rage like I did, didn’t you? I saw it in your face, it was a power rush like no other. It’s like you become another person.

I heard what you said, too. I’m glad you told him. He’s disgusting. I’m sorry I thought Phoebe had been sleeping around. It’s awful what he did to her.

Someone told me that you accepted a caution, which is why the police let you out so soon? Why did you do that? If I was you, I would have explained what he did and they would have realised that you were completely justified.

I think they’d understand why I had to do it, too. I didn’t plan to, but when it happened I felt like you did – I was almost blind with rage at what he was saying to me. They were words you’d put in his mouth, but he didn’t have to say them, did he? I’d arranged it so we were alone. There was no one around who would know and there was no one who could tell you. And he kept saying those things.

It didn’t have to be that way. I was so … enraged. But you understand now, don’t you? You see why what happened to him, happened. I didn’t murder him, I didn’t plan it, but the rage took over.

It’s not that far a leap from a car to a person, if you think about it.

I think we should meet, and talk it all through. I think we could be friends, I really do.

A

I read the letter, delivered with flowers to Phoebe, while I sit on the closed toilet lid of the shower room that’s attached to Phoebe’s room.

This woman is everywhere that I am. She follows me, she doesn’t seem to sleep, she doesn’t seem to miss a thing. She’s getting braver, too. It doesn’t seem to matter to her whether or not I spot her, if she was there yesterday, close enough to hear what I said to Ray, near enough to see my face. I have no doubt in my mind now that she’s coming for me. I have to be ready and waiting. I return the letter to its envelope, then fold it in half, cutting her words in two. I fold it again, cutting them again. Then they are shoved into the back pocket of my jeans. They’ll have to stay there until I can add them to the others.

I wash my hands, cleansing her from me, then return to Phoebe’s room. Aunty Betty has charmed her way into a shower and a proper lie down in one of the nurses’ rooms. I went back to the house and collected changes of clothes for both of us early this morning – having to take a taxi there and back because my car is still at Imogen’s house, probably with several parking tickets covering the windscreen and the serious danger of being towed.

Phoebe has had breakfast, she’s had her consultant visits and now she is sitting up wearing her white gown, her cannula still taped like a white whistle to the back of her left hand, and her name written on a white band around her right wrist. She is obsessively flicking through the limited channel range on the small TV hanging above the bed as she has been all morning.

My daughter looks about six, right now, her face waiting for the wonders of the world to be visited upon her. I drop heavily into the seat beside her bed and she gives me a sideways glance. ‘I know that
look,’ she mumbles before she switches the television off. I move it out of the way so I can see her properly.