‘I made fudge,’ she said. She hovered over him in the dark hallway while he put on his shoes, blocking his light. When he stood straight and met her gaze, he found in it such terrible sadness that he wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her. But he did not.
‘There’s a half-pound of Lancashire cheese from the market,’ she went on. ‘It’s in the brown paper, watch you don’t squash it.’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’
‘Take this.’ She was holding a pound note.
He waved it away. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m fine, honestly.’
‘It was only coppers,’ she said. ‘From the jar on the window ledge, like. I changed them up this week once you said you were coming.’
He had to look away.
‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘Dad said he’d not be at work for a few weeks.’
‘Aye, but we’ve got some saved.’
‘Please.’ Christopher opened the front door, and with one hand holding onto the door’s edge kissed his mother on the cool bone of her cheek. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
Margaret nodded, pushed the money into her apron pocket and closed the door behind him. At the end of the avenue, he crossed the road and turned to look back at the house. His mother was at the window, hand raised, as if she were waiting to spot him in a crowd before she could wave properly, and it seemed to him he stood on the far shore, the road he had grown up in a river, its rapid waters too wide, too turbulent to cross. He waved, turned and went on his way, but as he came to White Lund Road, he was filled with the feeling of being followed. Twice he turned back but saw no one. Then, as he waited for the coach to pull away, the feeling came again. He looked out of the window but again saw no one – at least no one he recognised. He shivered and sat back in his seat.
* * *
A month later, towards the end of his first year – June 1978 – Christopher wrote to Margaret and Jack to tell them he had a job in Leeds for the summer, which was the truth – a truth that omitted his reasons for taking it. Adam had organised a rental house in Leeds 6, the student area near the uni, for the following academic year. They would be sharing with two lads from the electronic-engineering course whom Christopher knew from three or four pub crawls up the Otley Road. It was Adam who had blagged the job: bar work for both of them in the Fenton, a pub behind the university. He had bounced back from the shock of Sophie’s death, but according to Christopher had calmed down when it came to women. These days, he only had one on the go at a time.
‘It’ll be a good earner,’ he was saying now. They were eating dinner together in the cavernous university refectory – the smell of stew, steamed pudding, thin coffee, the deafening clank of cutlery on cheap china. ‘Free ale too. They’re always having lockins there, so you’ll get extra dough, and when we’re not on shift we can spread our wings a bit, get over to Chapeltown and Bradford. Apparently the clubs there are better. We have to pay rent over the summer so we may as well live in it, eh?’
‘Quite.’ Christopher shovelled in a mouthful of partially congealed lasagne. ‘Good thinking.’
‘Sorted then. You can give me a cheque.’
‘Right you are.’
‘You ever see that Angie?’ Adam traded his clean plate of what had been steak pie and chips for a bowl of apple sponge and garish yellow custard. ‘I thought you and she had hit it off.’
‘I walked her home a few times, nothing much to say really. All the women I meet seem to be terrified of the flaming Ripper.’
‘And that’s where we come in, my friend,’ said Adam, smiling. Christopher wondered how he could be so flippant, especially after his time at the police station, after what had happened to Sophie. ‘We can see them home safe, can’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Christopher. ‘Safe.’
* * *
That summer, Christopher moved his meagre belongings to Chestnut Avenue in Adam’s fourth-hand Mini. Christopher’s room was at the top of the house – Adam had given him second choice on the rooms, and only after he had chosen did he realise he had opted for the converted loft space. There was comfort in familiarity, perhaps, even if that familiarity was becoming ever more unfamiliar. He decorated the room with posters of Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Fleetwood Mac (for Phyllis). A poster of Stevie Nicks he Blu-Tacked to the sloping eave above his bed, where she could watch over him and he could look at her. Although David could get him tapes of pretty much any album he wanted, Christopher planned to save and buy a record player. There was nothing like vinyl, the sweet caress of the needle in the groove, as Adam put it. And Adam had a record player – a vintage walnut Pye Black Box – so they could trade discs.
In July, on the last Friday of the twins’ school term, Christopher made sure to go to Phyllis in the morning so that he could see her alone before the boys got home. He ran from the station to the bus stop, then from Heath Road by the town-hall grounds along to Langdale Road. He rapped on the door, looking up and down the street, checking for twitching curtains, like a thief under cover of broad daylight. The bubbles in the glass of the front door turned Phyllis into blobs of colour, and it was always wonderful when those colours cohered again to make her so clear, so young, this woman who always had a smile for him, who always threw out her arms and said: ‘Look who it is!’
He fell towards her with gratitude and relief. There was no better place on all the earth, he thought, than here.
‘Hello.’
She took his hand, as was her way, and led him into the kitchen. Once they were settled, she asked him question after question, as she always did, as if he were the most fascinating subject on the planet. How were his studies? How was Adam? Had he had any nights out? She fixed him with her brown eyes: ‘And your love life?’
‘Ah.’ He looked down at his hands, slack and useless in his lap. Memories of Angie’s naked belly flashed in his mind’s eye, the look of terror she had given him in their last moments together.
‘Good as that, eh?’ said Phyllis.
‘I’ve been pretty shaken up since Adam got taken in for questioning. It’s not just the women who are paranoid. The men are scared someone will think it’s them, and every woman you speak to, you can see in her eyes that she’s wondering if you’re a murderer or something. Not that I blame them.’ He was exaggerating his contact with the female student community, he knew, but he could not help himself. ‘But there was this girl. She seemed…’ He could not continue.
‘You can talk to me about anything,’ Phyllis said. ‘You know that.’
‘I think I mistook her intentions,’ he said eventually. ‘She seemed to want me to kiss her, and I did. She seemed to want, you know, more, but then… she said I should have stopped.’
Phyllis took his hand, and he wondered if it were possible to become addicted to a person like you got addicted to cigarettes.