‘Nas’s parents hate me,’ he said, his top lip pulled back over his teeth in a snarl, and I thought, I don’t blame them really. ‘They wanted a nice Muslim boy.’
‘Ah dear,’ I said sympathetically, but what I was really thinking was, Why did she want you? Were you simply an act of rebellion? An ill-chosen symbol? Handsome – a catch, perhaps, in looks at least, for a na?ve teenage girl – but sullen and tense beneath the surface. Not a good catch in reality.
I bought him a shot of tequila to go with his pint, and we played a game of pool. I’m really fucking good at pool actually; I can thank my misspent youth for that. I relish the look on men’s faces when I smack the black in – but this time I let Lenny win.
Him having the upper hand seemed vital at that moment.
It meant I had to put up with all those pissed blokes grafted to their bar stools exuding pity, scorn and superiority – but it was worth it, if it got Lenny on side.
Halfway through the second pint, Lenny was sweating profusely, but it wasn’t that hot. Not that hot at all in the air-conditioned pub.
There’s still no evidence. They’ve questioned him; they’ve taken away his computer – there’s nothing. It was him that told the family she’d been talking to someone in Syria online, that he’d caught her, and they’d been talking about jihad and Islamic State.
But if he thought that, if he was worried, why the fuck didn’t he act whilst she was still around? I asked him that last night – but he couldn’t really answer. ‘I thought she loved me,’ he whined. ‘Me not Allah.’
I am just waiting for him to trip up.
So now I lie in the bath with eyes closed and ponder why they can’t find the dirt on this bloke – and then my mobile rings in the other room. I ignore it. It never stops ringing.
Then the bloody landline rings. Now that never rings. Only Jeanie has this number – her and Frank.
The answerphone picks up.
‘This is a message for Marlena Randall,’ a northern female voice says: tentative, clipped. ‘This is WPC Evans at Derby Central. We’d like to talk to you about your sister, Jeanie King. Please call me back urgently.’
I’m frozen in the steaming bath as she reads a number out, and I find I can’t move my limbs; they are so heavy they are like wax. They won’t move…
Then I manage to scramble out, slipping, dripping across the tiles and the floorboards in the main room, and I snatch up the receiver. ‘I’m here,’ I croak. ‘I’m here…’
The voice speaks.
‘She can’t have done,’ I hear myself say, and the echo is in the room, bouncing off the walls. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’
When I put the phone down again minutes later, someone is yelling – and then I realise.
I realise it’s me.
* * *
So.
I know what you’re thinking; I do, really.
You think I really fucked up, don’t you? That I should have been there, that I wasn’t – that it’s my fault.
Don’t look at me like that please.
And you know this is what I’d say to anyone who asked. I’d say: Fuck! I really thought I’d seen it all – but I hadn’t.
* * *
The next day
* * *
It’s the simplicity with which she was living that kind of breaks my heart, you know, when I arrive at her cottage. It’s kind of like something from a sweet folk tale or Beatrix Potter – Goldilocks poking round the three bears’ stuff, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, that kind of nice cosy lovely thing that childhoods ought to be made up of.
Honey stoned and blue doored, in the middle of a row of four, roses round the door and pansies outside in the terracotta pots. Fields and fields of bloody green space out the back; a terrifying amount of space.
And what really gets to me now, what brings the fucking lump to my throat, is how there’s only one of everything in the meticulous kitchen. She was always so tidy, where I am such a messy cow. The little one, the baby, I got used to her picking up my pants, cooking for me, sorting stuff – you know the score. I got used to Jeanie being there. Jeanie’s always been bloody there.
I’m not sure why it’s her little pot of raspberry jam laid out by her single plate, alongside her single knife – why it’s that that makes me cry. Why is it that? After all, there’s only one of everything in my place too. We are the original singletons: just not à la Bridget Jones.
Indelible, the damage our parents did to us, etched into us, marking us forever. Why would we ever want to place our hearts in others’ hands? I can’t do it; I never have.
Jeanie is the only person I really trust – and now look what she’s bloody gone and done.
Don’t. Don’t even say it. I know now, too late, how remiss I’ve been.
Except… She did do it, didn’t she? That’s been the whole problem. She dared to put her heart in his hands – that tosser, Matthew – and Jesus, now look. Just look at this mess.
I kick the washing machine. I kick it and I kick it.
Her neighbour, Ruth, found the note in the early hours, alerted by the constantly banging front door, seemingly left ajar.