She was usually sober, although she pretty much always stank of booze and fags, mixed with a lavender scent which she bought from the market and thought masked the poison which constantly oozed out of her pores. She cried quite a bit and her make-up would clump and run and make me feel sick. Her clothes were dirty in that way where you can see the grime layered and ingrained, and she smelt disgusting, a mixture of mud and fish and decay which caught you in the back of the throat. She apologised a lot, her eyes darting over my face, as if I was meant to know how to respond. She told me about where she was staying and said soon I’d be able to come back and live with her, even though we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. Or at least, I knew; maybe she deluded herself right up till the end. She asked what I’d been up to and I shrugged and told her nothing.
She came a few times to Elaine and Barry’s, sitting nervously in their front room while Elaine bustled with tea and biscuits. Her hand shook when she raised the mug to her lips and there was lipstick on her teeth which didn’t wash away when she drank. I could hardly believe it when I saw that. My mother, I realised, was the type of woman who wasn’t even lucky enough to count on tea washing away her embarrassingly applied lipstick. It felt, as I sat on Elaine’s green couch, almost the worst of all her sins against me. It felt unforgivable. It felt cruel and vindictive. It felt like a summation of everything that was wrong about her.
I have decided to grant Elaine’s application to visit me because sometimes I surprise myself with my need to see her. Maybe it’s nothing more than sentiment for me to look back fondly on those evenings with them, the drone of Fat Terry’s TV in the corner, rehashing Christmas songs in a desperate attempt to make us buy trash, in between terrible shows where inarticulate people shout at each other about who has fathered their baby. Elaine and Barry love Christmas and I spent nine very happy ones in their home before I met V. I wonder if this Christmas will be better or worse than the last one and then I can’t believe it’s only been a year since all that. How sometimes life can drag and turn and other times it speeds and shunts, propelling you forward however hard you want to stay back. About this time last year I was fucking Carly and my life.
Xander told me today that V has been formally charged with accessory to murder, although she’s been granted bail. She will have to wear an electronic tag around her delicate ankle and report to a police station once a day.
‘The things you’ve both said just don’t add up,’ he told me. ‘The tone of the emails she sent you were too affectionate for you to have been threatening her and she never reported any of your so-called harassment of her to the police. She didn’t tell anyone she knew, including Angus, about the times you met one another. She’s now saying you assaulted her the night before the murder, but she didn’t call the police or mention it until recently. And then of course there’s that phone call she made to you on the night of the murder and the fact that she was in your arms when the police found you. And you keep going on about how in love with each other you are, which just makes the police think you’re protecting her. None of it looks great for her, which is no bad thing for us.’
I presume V will spend Christmas at Steeple House, but I wonder if Suzi will have pushed the boat out as she usually does. I wonder if they’ve decked the tree and if there are lavish presents beneath it. I wonder if the turkey is ordered from the butcher’s, the cake made, the mince pies browning. I wonder if they’re lighting candles and opening the door to carol singers. I wonder if they’ll turn up for the Christmas Eve service at the chapel.
Xander said that he’s been told to expect a trial date for early January. In all likelihood it’s going to take place at the Old Bailey because of the nature of the case and the public interest. And, as he assured me, we will be tried together, sitting for the duration within touching distance of each other at the back of the courtroom.
He knows V’s barrister, Petra Gardner, and says she’s formidable. I asked if we’re on the same side, V and I, and he laughed and said no, not really. It made me feel odd, him saying that. It was nearly enough to make me tell him to stop, but I have to keep remembering how this will really be a new beginning for us. I have to hold on to the fact that we are not fighting each other and ultimately both want the same thing. We both need to look to the future.
Elaine and my mother arrived on the same day. Elaine in person and my mother courtesy of the Daily Mirror. I folded my mother in half and laid her on my bunk, but she stayed in my head as I walked down the steps towards the visiting room and Elaine. My mother was alive and the thought gave me an unexpected rush of joy which pricked at my heart and lifted me along.
Elaine had lost weight and her winter coat hung off her frame as she walked between the tables towards me.
‘Oh Mikey,’ she said, reaching over for my hands. ‘My poor boy, what have you done?’
The shock of her kindness made me start. ‘I’m sorry, Elaine.’
‘I just don’t understand. What happened?’ Her kindly face fell and swayed beneath the weight of it all.
‘It was an accident. He came to the house in the middle of the night and attacked me and I punched him in self-defence.’ Xander had schooled me so well I couldn’t remember any more what was really true and what was necessary truth, as Xander called it.
‘And now Verity’s been arrested too. It doesn’t make any sense.’ Elaine’s eyes were begging me to tell her something palatable, something she could take home to Barry like a present.
‘Verity was going to leave him to be with me.’
‘Oh, Mike. But she says you assaulted her, that you’d been hassling her.’
‘It’s very complicated.’
‘But were you two having an affair?’
‘Not an affair exactly. It was more like it never stopped between us. We’d met a few times and talked about her leaving Angus. She felt very guilty about it all.’
Elaine’s eyes were small like a mouse, but she kept them on me. ‘If that’s true then why is she saying all that stuff about you forcing your way into her house and turning up outside her work?’
I was arrested for the assault last week, a technicality really considering I am already in prison. When Xander told me what was going to happen I think I got a bit angry and shouted, although it’s hazy in my mind. He said it wasn’t ideal and asked if I could be sure I hadn’t assaulted V, which was a preposterous question. Then he asked why I thought she might be saying I had. I couldn’t answer him at the time, but I can now. I’ve worked it out. It’s another part of the Crave. My information got her arrested and so she’s throwing it back at me. She’s angry because she doesn’t yet understand what I’m doing, but really we’re just playing, we don’t mean any of this, it will all pass as everything does.
‘Mike,’ Elaine said. ‘Did she ask you to hurt Angus?’
‘It’s hard to explain.’
Elaine lowered her voice. ‘Do you think it’s possible you have a different perception than Verity of what happened?’
‘No,’ I said, remembering how our lips had met, her gasp of desire, ‘no, absolutely not.’
‘I just can’t make sense of it,’ Elaine said again. ‘Verity was always such a lovely girl. I was so fond of her.’ She squinted at me. ‘Your lawyer asked me lots of questions about your relationship. I don’t believe you planned this together.’
I looked down and felt my heat rise. I couldn’t think of a way of explaining it to Elaine. ‘It wasn’t like that. It’s not a simple case.’