Jayne Brett looked out of her window as she checked her watch. More than an hour before she started work.
She was giving the big-city life a go, living in an apartment not far from the centre of Manchester. It was modern and clean on the inside, the first floor of a bland red-brick building that was part of a cul-de-sac in a cluster of cul-de-sacs, built as part of the regeneration of the city in the sixties, when there was a mass slum clearance and whole communities were bulldozed and replaced with shiny and new. Gone were the long terraces, unbroken lines of houses without bathrooms or indoor toilets, laundry stretched outside and children wrestling in the gutters made filthy by the smoke that belched from the mills and factories.
Fifty years on, they’d turned into small warrens that attracted those who wanted to stay hidden. Broken street lights and dark alleys made it a dangerous place to be. She’d thought living close to the city centre would bring the noise and the mess and vibrancy, but it turned out that she’d ended up in the urban hinterland, caught between the wealthier suburbs and the steel and glass of the city-centre apartment blocks.
She’d got a job in a bar when she’d first arrived but got bored with the drunken leers and the arrogance of those in suits, who either thought she was beneath them or wanted her to be beneath them. To them, she’d been nothing more than tits in a T-shirt or an arse in jeans. Instead, she’d opted for the steady routine of the supermarket, either working on the tills or stacking the shelves. The bills had to be paid somehow.
She put her chin in her hands. It looked like rain again, the Manchester curse. It wasn’t the heady experience she’d been hoping for. She was too close to those who scraped by every day by cheating and stealing, haunted faces loitering in the shadows. Taxis and vans rumbled outside at night, keeping her awake, and glances through the curtains showed young women servicing the drivers, bobbing heads or hands working fast. She’d thought the quiet side street would mean peace. In the city, it meant somewhere for people to do things they’d rather not be caught doing.
She thought back to the few years she’d spent in Highford, living on her own in a small apartment at the top of a crumbling building, surrounded by drinkers and drug users. It hadn’t been so different, just a less dangerous version, even if the passing of time had turned the memories into good ones.
But it had been a hiding place, not a home, because she’d moved to Highford to get away from her past, when she’d been accused of murder. Her boyfriend died from a stab wound that severed his femoral artery, and Jayne had been holding the knife. It had been the final argument, one more piece of abuse that she could no longer tolerate.
It had all ended when he’d pinned her against the wall, his anger spewing spittle into her face, his teeth bared, his knee pushing her legs apart, his hands grabbing at her.
The knife had been nearby. Or had it been in her hand all along? She’d imagined it as panic, some desperate lashing out, no intention behind it, until he was bleeding out on the kitchen floor. All Jayne could do was wrap her arms around her head and try to block out the sound of her own screams.
But as time had gone on, she’d started to question that memory. Had it really happened in a blind panic? Or had she lost her temper and grabbed the knife intending to punish him, her own piece of sweet revenge?
It was how she’d met Dan Grant: she’d been a weeping wreck at a police station, and he was the tall dark stranger there to help. Her lawyer, and then her friend. Dan secured her acquittal and persuaded her to move to Highford, to get away from her boyfriend’s family, who were lashing out with threats she took seriously. He gave her a change of name and a new career as an investigator, where she worked on his cases, a freelancer, doing whatever Dan needed doing to help him win his cases. She was the one who knocked on the worst doors in town as he did the fancy stuff in the courtroom.
For a while, it had been good, but the work became too sporadic and the threats from Jimmy’s family turned out to be words spoken in grief. She left Highford, wanting to start a new life rather than hiding away.
It wasn’t just about the work though. There was something unfulfilled there too. Desire, lust, or even a deeper feeling than that, and she’d kidded herself that he felt it too. But she couldn’t allow herself to be dependent on a man again, because she’d killed the last man she loved.
Thinking of Dan brought down her mood. He was a memory of the dark times, even though they were never far away. The images rushed her at night, keeping her awake.
She’d tried living at home, but she’d been away for too long and acquired her own habits. There’d been too many arguments after she’d rolled in drunk, sometimes found slumped over the kitchen table, or having to sneak a man she hardly knew out of the house, worried that her parents had heard her.
Here she was then, the big city, the first part of the rest of her life.
She stepped away from the window and reached for her bag. It was time for another day of scanning other peoples’ shopping.