Vicky’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She held them up and was mesmerised. She knew this. Knew about this. She was in shock.
The memory came from nowhere, bright as freshly spilled blood. School. Being in the hall. A talk from two policemen about road safety. She remembered the screen being erected and a film being shown. The motes of dust dancing in the beam from the projector.
The images. One or more? She couldn’t quite remember. Just the boy. The little boy who’d been run over by a drunk-driver. She’d never heard the expression ‘drunk-driver’ before then. She remembered the horror, though. The little boy being covered in blood. The way his leg was almost hanging off. Could it have really been? Would they really have shown that to children? She wasn’t sure where reality ended and her imagination had picked up the story, but what she did recall was the way he shook, and his haunted, staring eyes. The way he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t respond to his crying mother.
That’s the effect of shock, one of the policemen had said, in response to someone’s question. That’s the body’s way of protecting itself.
She lowered her hands from her face and rolled onto her side. She had no idea how long she’d been lying there, howling. Could have been minutes. Could have been hours. Time had no meaning. But it was dark. Fully dark. A darkness that was protecting her, she knew – as was the numbness in her heart – from the full horror of what she had witnessed. Of what Paddy had done.
Paddy. She felt a scream rise in her gut and try to escape her. She clamped a hand against her mouth, then the other hand, pressing frantically, tasting dirt on them, and something else, something she didn’t dare even guess at – clamping both against her face as if unable to contain what was inside of her, then pulling her knees up to her chest and shivering, waiting for the shock to re-engulf her.
More time passed. But this time she was aware of its passing. She was in a kind of fugue but she was still aware of it moving inexorably forward. Coming to claim her from the ‘pause’ button she had pressed. But then a noise. A low moan, and she initially thought ‘Gurdy!’ but when she risked opening her eyes, forcing herself to accept what she couldn’t, the hump on the floor was still there, outlined by the moonlight, still moulded round the upturned metal chair. She stared. And as still as the building itself.
It hit her again then. Paddy. It was Paddy who was moaning. Paddy who – oh, God – she had walloped round the head.
She scrabbled up onto her hands and knees, feeling shards of something pressing into them. Then, effortfully, as if she’d been kicked, to her feet. He moaned again, and though she couldn’t see him, she was aware of him moving. Then a slice of darkness crossed one of the windows. He was lurching towards her.
Instinctively (it had to be, because by rights she should surely run from him) she held out her arms and let him stumble into them. ‘Shit, Paddy. Shit!’ she whispered. Did the dead hear? But still she whispered. ‘Shit, Paddy, what have you done?’
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fuck,’ then his head fell against hers, warm and heavy. And bringing with it with the beaten-metal smell of blood.
As she held him, and shushed him, she tried to think straight. Shake off the nausea that had begun to grip her. ‘Come on,’ she said, trying to balance the dead weight of him. Was he crying? ‘We need to get outside. Get the doors open. Get some air.’
He was barely responsive, but she managed to shuffle the pair of them back to the big metal doors, haul one of them open and let the light – such as it was – spill in. She staggered out with him then, holding him up before plopping him down again on what looked like an oil drum, whereupon he immediately put his head in his hands and moaned some more.
Then she turned around to where she could see back into the nightmare they’d just exited. To what was left of her friend. And saw a shaft of light – a guiding star? What the fuck? – shining down on the blood and gore where his face ought to be; a sick halo illuminating exactly what Paddy had done. She span around, ran blindly to the side of the building and vomited her guts up into the weedy grass.
Once she’d found the wherewithal to stand up straight again, her stomach voided, details began to catch Vicky’s unwilling attention. She was still wearing the pinafore she’d been in when he’d come to get her. Pink. Very old. Been through the washer a zillion times. Only now, as she tried to cough the sick from her throat, did she see how it was pebble-dashed with blood. She retched again, feeling dizzy, her body convulsing of its own accord, just as it had in childbirth. Giving birth to Chantelle. She kept her head down till the feeling passed. Fuck. Chantelle. What the hell was she going to do now?
Then his voice. Another whisper. ‘Vic, babe.’ He sounded broken.
She turned around. ‘Paddy, Christ! What the fuck have you done?’
He was crying. Sitting on the oil drum exactly where she’d left him.
She walked across to him, wiping her mouth on her skirt. Pulling it up from beneath the pinafore – the murderously stained pinafore – and dabbing at her mouth with the hem.
He held his arms out and, as she got to him, he flung both of them around her, properly sobbing now, his face buried against her stomach.
Like a child might. Like a daughter might with a mum. Though not her mum.
She stood and let him, looking up into a perfectly starry sky. Not the moon, then. Just the starlight. A multitude of constellations. The Plough. The Great Bear. The Brave Hunter, Orion. She could barely identify any of them but it suddenly struck her that she must learn them, so she could show them to her daughter. Thinking of Chantelle made something clutch at her, and she thought she might be sick again. But she breathed, deep and long, pushing the wave down.
She stroked Paddy’s head rhythmically, almost instinctively, and he responded by lifting his face to her. ‘I don’t know what …’ he began. ‘I just can’t …’ Then he faltered. ‘That wasn’t me,’ he said finally. ‘I took something bad, babe …’ His voice was all panicky. ‘Babe, I took something.’
Her hand, sweeping over his curls, felt the bump where she’d hit him. She could have killed him, she thought distractedly. Just like he’d killed Gurdy.
He lifted his own hand and placed it over hers. It was blood-blackened. Crusted. A claw come to claim her. ‘Babe,’ he whispered. ‘Babe, you have to help me.’
She left him outside. He kept on crying, and she couldn’t concentrate on anything with him crying. Being such a mess. Being such a junkie. A remorseful snivelling junkie. Besides, she didn’t want him in there, she decided.
Was she still in shock? She had no idea, only that a stillness had come over her. The ‘capable head’ her boss said she had on her shoulders. At the interview. That was why he’d given her the job.
She tried not to look at Gurdy. Instead she scanned the far reaches of the building, her eye eventually resting on something heaped in the corner. She walked across to it. It was a dust sheet. A big one.
She had no idea what to do. Only that she had to do something. So she grabbed it and shook it out and took it back to where Gurdy lay.
The blood. That was what you did. You tried to clear up all the blood. But there was just so much. He was lying on a lake of it, for one thing. And all about him, spatters and globs of the stuff – so much so that she didn’t know where to start. She started anyway, screwing up a corner of the dust sheet and applying it to the floor, but the more she scrubbed the worse it looked, even in the darkness.
Water. She needed water. But there wasn’t any water. It was useless. But she kept scrubbing even so. Making circles around the circle of blood that demarcated where he’d taken his last breath. She started to wail as the reality hit and was startled when she felt Paddy place his hand on her arm.
‘Stop, babe.’ Paddy’s voice. A hand stilling her arm. ‘Stop, babe,’ he said, softly. ‘There’s no point.’
He was no longer snivelling. Both his touch and voice were firm. And, in that instant she felt a wave of relief. He could take charge now, couldn’t he? Make it all go away. And he did. First the dust sheet, which he tugged from her hands, gently. Then pulling her back to her feet. It was as if a switch had been flicked and the Paddy that had been broken had been replaced by the old, calm and calculating one. The one who could deal with this mess. Take control. ‘You go outside,’ he said. ‘I know what to do.’
Vicky did as instructed, but stood and watched from the doorway. Watched as Paddy ripped part of the dust sheet to make a rag. Watched as he bent down next to Gurdy and picked up the crowbar. Wiped the worst of the blood from it, then wrapped it inside the rag, before pushing the package inside the front of his bomber jacket.
Then he stood for a bit, his eyes scanning the interior, his gaze finally coming to rest on the body by his feet, and lingering there for a long, thoughtful moment. Or was it? Vicky wished she could read his mind.
Then he came back outside and, taking her arm, urged her towards his car. ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Just like he was a character in a movie. ‘But what about Gurdy?’ she said. ‘Won’t they—’
‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘Shhhh!’ He patted his front, where the crowbar was. ‘This is all we need. We can leave him here, babes,’ he said, as he opened the passenger door for her. ‘When he’s found, the cops will think it was a drug-related killing. Or a racist attack. Or something like that. And without a weapon, they can’t pin any of it on us.’
On us. Not on me. He’d said on us. She stripped off her pinafore, and bundled it up into a ball, inside out, then placed it in the footwell before getting into the car. Pinafore. Pin it. It was a ball of damning evidence. Were they both responsible? Was that what he was saying? But he was right: she had been there and had done nothing to stop it. Her Paddy had murdered her friend before her eyes and she had allowed it. Just stood there and let him.
No, that wasn’t right. She’d tried. She’d tried her best. Or had she? She could have run away, couldn’t she? Run away and screamed for help. Or just screamed the place down. But she had done that, hadn’t she? She’d screamed and she’d yelled at him and then – yes, she had done it – she’d stopped him by hitting him with the crowbar. But too late. She had not acted quickly enough. She’d been too scared and too blind to see what he’d been doing. He was mad from the coke – and fuck knew what else, these days – and perhaps he had planned to kill Gurdy all along.
Was that true? She stole a glance at him. His face looked like granite. Bluish, where his stubble had started sprouting on his chin. Grey, black and blue. Like a rock. Still and calm now. Just staring ahead, driving the car, being Paddy. All trace of the monster she’d witnessed long gone, now the grip of the drugs had gone away.
But was he a monster? Was her boyfriend a killer? Was the father of her child a cold-blooded killer? He turned to look at her, as if feeling the strength of her scrutiny, and she realised she loved him just as much as she feared him.
‘Wassup! Whaaaathe fu … Whassgoing on … Whasssa – Vicky!’ Vicky’s mam blinked her way out of her slumber. ‘What the fuck time d’you call this, young lady!’
They had moved like assassins, by mutual agreement. Paddy up the stairs so he could get himself sorted – strip his clothes off, run a bath, get into it, clean up – while Vicky, of necessity, given the far more difficult task, went to check on Chantelle and face her mother.
She opened the door into the front room very quietly, and was rewarded with a minute or so of grace. Chantelle was spark out on the floor, on her crocheted blanket, beneath the arch of her baby gym, as if she’d fallen asleep mid-play. As was Vicky’s mam, snoring lightly, on the sofa, close beside her, one arm flung out as if reaching for her granddaughter’s head.
Tears sprang in Vicky’s eyes. For all the memories she didn’t have. For the thought that way back, during a time she couldn’t remember, the baby in this tableau might have been her. For the knowledge that, despite everything, her mam did love her granddaughter. For the enormity of what she might now lose.
‘It’s almost ten to eleven!’ her mam spluttered now. ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been thinking all bloody sorts. Nearly phoned the police!’
‘Mam, shhh,’ Vicky pleaded. ‘You’ll wake up the baby!’
‘I’ll give you wake up the sodding baby, my girl! Who the hell d’you think you are, stopping out, leaving muggins here to babysit? I’ve been worried sick, I have, wondering what’s happened to you – worried sick! Thinking you’ve had a car crash, or been raped, thinking God knows what else! Where the hell have you been? And why the hell didn’t you phone me?’
In a corner of Vicky’s mind a revelation registered. That this was true. That despite all appearances to the contrary, her mother worried about her. Her mother might even love her.
But this was no time to dwell on motherly love. Motherly belief was so obviously more important. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’ she trotted out, as per the story they’d agreed. ‘Paddy picked me up from work, and on the way home he had to go out of town to deliver a car part. So we made the detour, and he had a puncture. Hit a nail in the road. And—’
‘And it’s taken him this sodding long to fix it? You think I was born yesterday?’
‘Mam, listen! I’m trying to tell you. His spare was flat too. So he had to walk miles to find a phone box – we were in the middle of, like, nowhere – but he couldn’t, so he went on, and—’
‘And what were you doing?’
‘I was waiting in the car for him. Mam, will you just let me finish? And he couldn’t find a phone box but he eventually found a petrol station, and got some of that stuff you can inject into flat tyres so you can fix the puncture temporarily, but it took ages to do and then we had to drive back really slowly, and’ – she raised her arms and held her hands out, palms up – ‘that’s why we’re so late. I’m sorry, Mam. I would have called but once we were back on our way home it seemed quicker to just come home than drive round and round …’
‘Round and bleeding round,’ her mother huffed, reaching down to pick up Chantelle, who was now stirring. She sniffed her bottom. ‘Well, you can bloody change her and put her to bleeding bed! Where’s lover boy anyway?’
Vicky indicated with a nod as she took the baby. Her precious, precious baby. ‘Having a bath,’ she said. ‘He got covered in filth sorting the tyre out.’
‘Oh, so just use all my hot water, why don’t you?’ she yelled upstairs, as she shoved her feet into her slippers and toddled off into the kitchen.
Paddy was lying on Vicky’s bed, staring at the ceiling. She’d thought he might have fallen asleep, she’d been so long changing the baby, giving her a bottle and settling her down again – down in her basket in the front room, for the time being at least. She could bring her up and put her down in her cot later.
Her warm, living baby. She thought of Gurdy; she couldn’t stop herself. Of his body lying cold and dead and wet in a lake of blood, and had to fight to stop the images from filling her mind’s eye.
Paddy turned over on his side to look at her. He was naked, apart from a pair of boxers. ‘I thought it best to stay put,’ he whispered, beckoning her towards him. ‘Didn’t want to set your mam off even more.’
Vicky unbuttoned her blouse, took her bra off and stepped out of her work skirt. Then took her tights off and went across to join him. He’d watched her throughout and a wild thought entered her head – would he be expecting to have sex? But no. She could see as soon as she lay down beside him – his eyes were full of tears, the skin around them all puffy. He’d been lying here crying again.
She placed a palm on his cheek. ‘What the fuck have I done, babe?’ he whispered.
‘It’s the drugs, Paddy. You know that,’ she said, because it was. ‘It’s the drugs that have done this. Not you.’
‘Tell that to the judge,’ he said wretchedly. ‘Tell that to fucking Gurdy.’
‘But it is,’ she persisted. ‘That bloody animal, that bloody Mo! You should never have got mixed up in any of it, ever. It’s not like you had nothing else you could do,’ she went on, beginning to warm to her theme. ‘Is it? You’d have never have done this were it not for the drugs. Oh, babe, and going to prison. Being away from us for so long …’
‘Which I’m going to be again,’ he said. ‘Oh, fuck! What have I done?’ he swallowed another sob. ‘Babe, you are going to stand by me, aren’t you?’
She shifted position so she could look at him face to face. Feel the heat of his breath on her cheeks. ‘You don’t even have to ask that,’ she said, knowing it to be true now. No matter what – and she knew her grief for Gurdy would all too soon hit her. But no matter what, she understood. She knew who and what were to blame here. And, whatever happened, she would stand by him. They’d be fine. He had said so. No evidence. They’d be fine. Poor Gurdy would be buried, and then the world would move on. It would all go away, and they’d keep their dreadful secret. But if it didn’t. If she did have to fight for him, she would. Whatever happened, she would stand by her man. ‘Pad, I love you,’ she told him. ‘You’re Chantelle’s father and I love you.’
He drew both his arms around her and held her tight. Almost too tight.
‘Fuck, I love you,’ he said into her ear. ‘Fuck, how I love you! I’ll stop, Vic. I promise. I’ll do anything. Anything. I don’t think I could go on living if I didn’t have you. I don’t know what the hell I’ve ever done to deserve you. But, fuck, I love you – I need you, babe. You’re my life.’
He loosened his grip on her a bit then, so he could smother her with kisses. Tiny little kisses, all over her face. Little individual declarations of undying love that tore into her because he’d never done such a thing, ever. That ripped into her and almost burst her heart.
Because this should have been the happiest moment of her life.