Anna was five. Sitting by the tree in a sea of wrapping paper, clutching a Buzz Lightyear with undisguised delight.
‘They’ve sold out everywhere, you know,’ Bill said, with more than a touch of smugness. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get hold of that one.’
Next to Anna, discarded on the floor, was a Barbie. It had hair that grew, eyeshadow that changed colour. Articulated bloody ankles. A Barbie I’d worked for, chosen, paid for. She’d looked at it once – saw how the hair could grow longer with the little wheel at the back – then she’d dropped it on the floor. I don’t think she picked it up again all Christmas.
I poured my first drink then. Felt judgemental eyes on me as I knocked it back, so I poured another, just because. I sat. And I seethed.
You messed up Christmas lunch. Overcooked the turkey, undercooked the sprouts. You’d had a drink yourself. You thought it was funny. I didn’t.
You tried to make Bill stay. Didn’t want to be on your own with me. When he insisted, you walked him to the door and pulled him into the sort of embrace you never gave me any more. I drank more. Seethed more.
‘Shall we ask Alicia to join us next Christmas?’ you said. ‘Awful to think of her and Laura in that horrible flat.’
I said yes, but I wasn’t so sure. If I was honest I couldn’t imagine Alicia here, in our house. She was different to us. She spoke differently; dressed differently. She belonged in her world, not in ours.
We’d kept our own presents till last. Anna was in bed, and the turkey wrapped in foil (although it couldn’t have got any drier), and you made us sit on the floor like we were five ourselves.
‘You first.’ I handed you a present. I’d paid for it to be wrapped, but you pulled off the ribbon without looking at it and I thought next time I wouldn’t bother.
‘I love it.’
I knew you would. The camera had caught Anna just as the swing hit its highest point. She was laughing, her legs swinging and her hair flying. The frame was silver. Expensive. It was a good present.
‘Now you.’ You put it in my hands. You were nervous. ‘You’re so hard to buy for!’
Carefully, I peeled back the sticky tape, slid the package out of the red and white paper. Jewellery? Gloves?
It was a CD.
Easy Listening: A compilation of the world’s greatest hits. Just relaaaaaax …
In the corner of the case was a sticky patch where you’d scraped off the label.
It was as though someone had stolen two decades from me. Marched me into C&A and dressed me in beige trousers, with an elasticated waistband. I thought of my life before you; before Anna. Of the parties, the coke, the lays, the fun.
And now, what was my life?
An easy listening CD.
You’d think it would have happened quickly, but for me it was the reverse. Time slowed down. I felt my fingers curl into a fist; felt my nails in the soft flesh of my palm. I felt the shiver of tension run from wrist to shoulder, pause at the top and then run back again. Building, building, building, building.
The bruise ran from your temple to your throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I was. I was ashamed. A little frightened – although I’d never have admitted it – of what I was capable of.
‘Forget it.’
I didn’t, of course, and nor did you. But we pretended we had.
Until the next time.
It scared me enough to make me stop drinking for a while. But I wasn’t an alcoholic, remember? That’s what I told myself. So, there was no need to go cold turkey. A cool beer here, a glass of wine there … It wasn’t long before I needed the sun over the yardarm long before six o’clock.
You never know what goes on behind closed doors. Out of every ten of your friends, two of them are in violent relationships. Two. How many friends did we have? We can’t have been the only ones.
I found it reassuring, in a way. We weren’t unusual.
We kept it a secret, of course. If we hadn’t, it might not have gone on for so long. But no one’s proud of a failed marriage. No one’s proud of being a victim.
You didn’t say anything, and neither did I.
I’d like to say I was out of control. After all, I only ever hit you when I was drunk; surely that absolved me of some responsibility?
You never called me out on it, but you knew – and I knew – that I must have had at least a modicum of control. I never lashed out when Anna was in the room, or even – once she was old enough to understand the nuances of an adult relationship – when she was at home. It was as though her presence was a calming influence; a reminder of how a rational person behaves.
That, and I was too ashamed to let her see me that way.
Each time it happened I told you I was sorry. Each time I said it had ‘just happened’, that I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t been able to stop myself. I hate myself now, for the lies I told then. I knew exactly what I was doing. And after that first time, however drunk I was – however angry I was – I never again hit you where the bruise would show.
FORTY
MURRAY
The High Tech Crime Unit was a mile from the nearest police station, in the middle of an industrial estate. Marked cars and uniformed officers were strictly forbidden, and nothing about Unit 12 suggested that inside the grey concrete box were dozens of IT specialists taking apart laptops, analysing hard-drives and extracting the worst kind of pornography from encrypted files.
Today the car park was empty, save for one car. Murray pressed the buzzer and looked up at the camera.
‘What, no Santa hat?’ came the disembodied voice, followed by a harsh buzzing noise and a loud click as the door released.
Sean Dowling had the sort of personality that entered a room a second before he did. Broad-shouldered and stocky, he still played rugby every Saturday, despite pushing sixty, and today sported a deep purple bruise across the bridge of his nose. He shook Murray’s hand vigorously.
‘Could have used you against Park House the other week.’
Murray laughed. ‘Long since retired, mate. I don’t know where you get the stamina.’
‘Keeps me young.’ Sean grinned. He held open the door. ‘Good Christmas?’
‘Quiet. Sorry to drag you in over the holidays.’
‘Are you joking? Tracy’s mum’s staying – I was halfway out the door before you put the phone down.’
They caught up as they walked, promising to get together for a beer, and wondering aloud why they’d left it so long. It was so easy, Murray thought, when you were working on a case. So easy to socialise, to make new friends and stay in touch with old ones. By returning to a civilian job after retiring, he had hoped this element of the job he loved so much would have survived unharmed, but as more of Murray’s peers had retired, so the after-work beers had petered out. Murray doubted any of the officers at Lower Meads even knew their front-counter civvy had once been one of Sussex’s most respected detectives.
Sean led Murray to the corner of a large open-plan room. Air-conditioning units – installed for the benefit of the myriad computers, rather than their users – rattled at either end of the room, and the floor-to-ceiling windows were obscured by blinds, preventing curious passers-by from looking inside.
Only Sean’s workstation was in use, a dark green parka hung over his chair. On the desk were three storage boxes, each filled with clear exhibit bags, their red plastic seals protruding at all angles. Beneath his desk were another two boxes, both full. In each bag was a mobile phone.
‘We’ve got a bit of a backlog.’
‘No kidding.’
Sean pulled up a second chair and flipped open a large black project book. At the top of the page was the mobile number of the caller who had given the name Diane Brent-Taylor.
‘The SIM card was pay-as-you-go, so we’ll need to work on the handset itself. It was active for six months after the incident, although no calls were made.’ Sean spun his pen like a baton through his fingers.