When she knocked on the door of Daniel’s house, and his mother answered, there was a short, startled hiatus in which each of them realised Alison shouldn’t be there on the doorstep, so when Marion Lawrence said, ‘Oh! I thought you were in Manchester, with Daniel,’ Alison immediately replied, ‘No, oh God, yes! I should be,’ and started to cry wildly.
You see, this was the problem, thought Marion, even as she clucked with concern and ushered her into the house: Alison Connor was as jumpy as a fawn; look at her sideways and she’d cry, or bolt. Oh, lovely-looking, granted, and good for Daniel, to a point, because he’d been a lot less moody round the house since they started going out, but she was a worry, oh yes, she was that; she was a youngster troubled with too many secrets.
‘Did you just forget?’ she asked, but Alison couldn’t answer because she was crying too hard, crying beyond all proportion to the event in Mrs Lawrence’s opinion. She hugged her and made all the right noises, while thanking God for Claire and her uncomplicated, sunny nature. ‘Now then,’ she said. ‘Now then. There’s no need for this, it was only a silly concert.’
Alison shook her head and pushed herself away from Mrs Lawrence’s embrace. She didn’t have the words or the will to explain herself, to explain this excessive outpouring of grief, which was all for Peter and had nothing at all to do with the missed gig.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Mrs Lawrence said. She went through to the kitchen, grateful to be busy, and Alison stood for a while, marooned in the sparkling living room, with its plumped-up cushions and smell of Pledge. She longed to crawl unnoticed up to Daniel’s room and change into one of his T-shirts, curl up in his bed, make a nest of his sheets; there’d be comfort in that. She could wait for him there, wait until it grew dark and late, and Daniel came home, and he’d get into bed with her so she could explain everything to him. But then, she thought, could she? After all, he was entirely protected from the shameful reality of her life; she’d been so scrupulous in her efforts to keep her world separate from his, to hide the chaos. How could she now lay all that on him: all the messy, miserable, private details of her life; all the turbulence of Catherine, Martin, Peter – oh God, Peter. She closed her eyes, but when she did that she could see him, terrified, staring at her from the edge of death, so she opened them again, and there was Mr Lawrence, Daniel’s dad, looking round the door at her, his gentle face creased with anxious sympathy.
Marion had fetched him, nipping out to the pigeon loft to tell him Alison was here, she was upset, and he was better with her than she was, he had more patience. Mr Lawrence had come gladly, and now he stepped into the room, and Alison began to cry again, she couldn’t seem to halt the tears, but he said nothing, nothing at all, just held her until she quietened, and then he said, ‘I’ve a new pair of birds, just settling in, come and see.’ He spoke perfectly normally, as if there was not even a sniff of crisis, and he took her hand and led her through the house, out of the back door and down the garden. He sat her down on the bench in the loft and let her be while he did all the talking. The new pigeons were Flash Pied Emperors, he said, a breeding pair, strong birds, both from a fine lineage of race winners. Alison, passive, worn down by events, listened to him and was soothed.
‘I’ve called this one Violet and this one Vincent,’ he said. The two birds were tucked together on a wide shelf, and they regarded Mr Lawrence as he spoke, for all the world as if they were in on the conversation. They were pretty, like all his pigeons. Piebald, white with markings of dark and pale grey. ‘I’ve no idea why I chose them names, they just came to me, and I’ll tell you what, they suit ’em, because they’re a dignified little couple, Mr and Mrs. It’s only been two days, but they travelled well, and there’s been no bickering. They’ll be grand flyers when they’re ready. Back here like boomerangs, I expect.’
He lifted Violet carefully from her spot next to Vincent and handed her to Alison, who accepted her in cupped hands. She was used to this now; used to handling his birds, no longer worried about their beaks or the feel on her hands of their startling red feet. She held Violet aloft and looked her in the eyes, and let her fingers sink into the softness and warmth. It’s a bird’s life, she thought; oh, to be a cossetted pigeon under the care of a man such as Mr Lawrence. She could feel the calm of Violet’s heartbeat inside her fragile frame, and felt immensely privileged, and touched, by the bird’s quiet trust in her.
‘See that brightness in her eyes?’ Mr Lawrence said. ‘And her upright stance, that beautiful, gradual slope from the top of her head to her tail? That’s a winner’s stance, that is. See how she’s watching you? When I picked her out, it was more like she’d chosen me, she were watching me that intently, and that means she’s alert, not flighty. She’s grand, she is.’
He lifted Violet from Alison’s hands and placed her back, next to Vincent. ‘But you know, don’t you, it’s what you can’t see that’ll make her a champion,’ he said.
‘Her brain, her heart and her lungs,’ Alison said.
‘Aye, that’s it, them’s what she’ll be relying on when she flies five hundred miles back here.’ He smiled at her. ‘Folk say, “Oh, why do you bother, they’re just birds,” and I know I’ve told you before, Alison, but there’s nowt like the feeling when a bird comes back to me, nowt on earth. They use every last scrap of strength and intelligence to get back where they belong. My birds kept me sane when I was invalided out of work. They still do.’
He paused, and looked at Alison with such deep affection she felt she was one of his very own, as dear to him as anyone ever had been. ‘I don’t know what ails you, love, and I know you’d tell me if you could. I wish I could help, but I can say this, you come here any time you want to. Come and sit in here with these birds, and find some peace.’
‘Mr Lawrence,’ Alison said, ‘you’re so good to me.’
‘Aye, well, you’re a grand lass, and you’ve a lot on your plate, I can see that.’
There was a tap-tap on the door, and Mrs Lawrence pushed it open with her foot. She had a mug of tea in each hand. ‘I’ve brought you this,’ she said, bustling in and handing them over, causing a momentary flutter in the boxes, a kind of communal agitation, a gentle hubbub that lasted only seconds before subsiding.
‘Now then,’ she said, looking meaningfully between her husband and Alison. ‘Now then, what was all that about?’ Bill shook his head at her, a subtle warning to go easy, and she understood well enough what he meant, but she said, ‘No, Bill, enough pussyfooting about. I need to know what’s wrong, because if she’s this upset, it might affect our Daniel.’
‘Oh,’ Alison said, alarmed. She stood, abruptly.
‘Nay, lass, sit down,’ Mr Lawrence said, but she didn’t.
‘Alison, tell me what’s happened.’
Mrs Lawrence had had enough, Alison could tell this from her voice, from her demeanour, and she tried, she really tried, to respond in kind, to be as open and straightforward as Mrs Lawrence was being, and wanted her to be, but all she managed was, ‘It … I … My brother, he …’ and then she stopped.
‘Well, so, your brother …’ Mrs Lawrence said. ‘What about him, Alison?’
She wasn’t being unkind, not at all; she made every effort to keep her voice soft with sympathy. But Marion Lawrence had a limited capacity to wait and see, and whatever troubles this young woman had, Daniel mustn’t suffer because of them, and he wouldn’t, not if she had anything to do with it. Somebody needed to get to the heart of the matter, and if Bill wouldn’t, she would.
Alison put her tea down on the bench she’d been sitting on. She felt hemmed in; three people was one too many in this small shed full of pigeons, and Mrs Lawrence was standing full square, with her arms folded and her chin up, waiting for answers. ‘I’m sorry,’ Alison said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She felt completely unequal to this encounter and desperate to leave. She had no right to be here without Daniel, no claim on their time or their kindness, these good, good people; she should leave, she must go.
Mr Lawrence said, ‘Nay, Alison, there’s nowt to be sorry about,’ but his wife said, ‘Sorry for what?’
‘Marion,’ said Bill. ‘Gently.’
‘Alison, what exactly are you saying?’
Mrs Lawrence’s searching voice. Mr Lawrence’s sorrowful face. The watchful black eyes of all those birds.
‘I have to go,’ Alison said. She darted out of the loft, and Mrs Lawrence, who wasn’t anything like as nimble, but was determined to discover at least part of the truth behind this drama, flashed a look of annoyance at Bill – for being useless, for being soft-hearted – then followed her down the garden and back into the house.
‘Alison!’ she said. ‘What am I to tell our Daniel?’
Alison stopped on the threshold of the front door. ‘Tell him I’m sorry about the gig,’ she said. ‘Tell him I’m really, really sorry. But I’ve got to get back. This isn’t right, I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry, Mrs Lawrence.’ She stepped out into the street, and began to walk away. She was two buses away from home. What if Peter had suffered some injury she wasn’t aware of, a delayed reaction she hadn’t considered? What’d she been thinking? She’d thought, she supposed, that she could forget herself, forget everything, with Daniel, but all she’d forgotten was that he wouldn’t be here, and now she was in the wrong place altogether. She didn’t belong in Nether Edge without Daniel.
‘And what shall I tell him happened?’
Mrs Lawrence was having to call to Alison down the quiet Saturday-afternoon street now, standing at the gate to their small front garden. This wasn’t very respectable in their tree-lined avenue, but she didn’t care if anyone heard, she just wanted answers; but Alison said nothing, only kept walking.
‘Alison! Is there something our Daniel needs to know?’
Again, nothing.
‘Alison!’ Mrs Lawrence said again, raising her voice further still, and now Alison stopped and turned around. She looked wretched, Marion thought: wretched, and sort of defeated, and possibly – because of this – dangerous. This girl was no good for her boy.
‘I love him, Mrs Lawrence,’ Alison said. ‘I love him, that’s what your Daniel needs to know. Please don’t worry, everything’s fine.’
She raised a hand, a half-farewell, turned away again, and walked out of sight.
It took over an hour to get back to Attercliffe, and when she did, Alison slid into the house as a mouse might, through the smallest crack in the door, without a sound, hoping not to be noticed. Terror made her heart thud in her chest as if she was walking into a crime scene, but there was nothing untoward to greet her, in the kitchen at any rate. She stood, as she’d been doing since childhood, and listened for clues, but there were none. She was shocked at herself now, shocked that she’d left the house so decisively, immediately after cutting Peter down from that noose, and she was sorry for it, and had no explanation, except perhaps that until then her brother had only ever picked her up in life and never, never let her down, and maybe she’d suffered a kind of emotional freeze at the terrible reversal of roles. But she’d known, when she left, that he wouldn’t have another go, knew she wasn’t going to find him dead upstairs in his room, because she’d looked in his eyes, and she’d known he hadn’t meant it, hadn’t wanted to die. He just hadn’t known that for sure until death was a distinct possibility.
She went upstairs and knocked on his bedroom door.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
He was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, and they looked at each other sadly. Alison could see weals, red raw on the soft skin of his throat where the rope had chafed and tightened, but other than that, he appeared quite normal. Jeans, sweatshirt and his Gola trainers. He looked like he had at fifteen, sixteen, off for a kickabout in the rec with his mates. She sat down next to him, and he put an arm round her shoulders.
‘Alison …’ His voice scratched, a sandpaper sound.
She shuddered and said, ‘Shush. Let’s not talk about it.’
She didn’t want to think about what he’d done, what he’d tried to do. It’d been such a long, terrible day, packed with incident, with horror. Peter didn’t know the half of it: the steelworks yard, Martin, the ugly photo gallery. She thought about those prints, and hoped they were still downstairs where she’d left them.
‘I only wanted to say sorry,’ he said.
She nodded. She gazed around Peter’s room, which had never acquired a personality in the way that her own room had. Peter was too self-contained, too private. There were no posters, no pictures, no books or records or cassettes, nothing that might betray his interests, his passions. This room was purely functional: a place to sleep, to dress, to hide. It was a kind of cell.
‘I really do regret putting you through that, Alison.’
‘I know.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Daniel’s, but he was out.’ She wouldn’t mention that she should’ve been with him now, in Manchester. ‘What’s Catherine up to?’
He shrugged. ‘She got up and went out, an hour ago. Meeting her cronies at the Carlton, I expect.’
‘Did you see her? She had a black eye and a cut.’
Peter shook his head. ‘She didn’t look in on me,’ he said. ‘She was too interested in opening time, and finding some mug to buy her a drink.’
‘Sometimes I think we should just change the lock while she’s gone, and not let her back in. Except she’d show us up, banging on the door.’
He turned his face to hers. ‘I want you to leave, Alison.’
She said, ‘What, right now, this minute?’
She wasn’t serious, but he nodded. ‘Well, as soon as you can get your stuff together. I want you to leave.’ He was speaking in a loud whisper to spare his throat, but it only made everything seem even stranger, and although he was in earnest, Alison wasn’t really taking him seriously; she only sighed and rested her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes. She’d fantasised many a time about another existence: it would be a bluestocking life; she’d have digs and a bicycle, and she’d pedal through leafy streets to an ivy-clad college where she’d talk to a professor about Jane Austen or Shakespeare or Milton. She’d have tea with fellow students, and make toast on a long fork by a real fire.
‘So,’ Peter said, ‘I’ve got an escape plan for you. Been planning it a while.’
She smiled. ‘Oh yeah? A rope ladder from my bedroom window?’
‘I mean it, Alison. I’m stuck here, this is my lot, but you’re not, you were meant to be somebody, that’s what nature intended.’
‘I couldn’t leave you,’ she said. She still hadn’t realised that he meant what he said. ‘We’re a team.’
‘I’m a fucking mess, Alison. My life’s a mess. Yours isn’t, yet. But you stay here, you’ll be tainted by it, you’ll be dragged down. I can’t watch that happen, so clear off, get away, over the Channel, anywhere. Put some water between yourself and Sheffield. Don’t look back.’
She shuffled sideways to make some space and get a better look at him, so she could tell from his face if he meant what he said. It was such a strange and outlandish proposal, but Peter said, ‘Do it,’ and he looked so serious, grim even. The spit of Geoff Connor, people said; the one that got away, the architect – by his spectacular absence – of their misfortune. Apparently, Peter had the same hair – dark blond, naturally wavy – and the same patrician, aquiline nose. If Peter had worn a suit to work, and black Oxfords, and if he’d shaved more often and had his hair cut, he could pass for a young MP, or a lawyer. But he’d never had the chance to shine; he’d left school at sixteen, kept the family fed and clothed with his wages from the steelworks, a place he’d always loathed, until he met Toddy, when life brightened for him. Alison understood what she owed him, she truly did. She understood, too, that their father’s disappearance had been far harder on Peter, who’d been six when he left, old enough to have scattered, fractured memories, and to feel the perpetual chill of abandonment. Geoff had never been back. Never checked on his children, never come to see them, never written to them, never sent a present at Christmas, a card on birthdays, a chocolate egg at Easter. He could be dead, for all they knew, and Alison didn’t much care. But Peter did. Peter had had a daddy, then lost a daddy. And then, because he was a thoroughgoing decent person, he’d filled the gap that Geoff Connor had left in their lives, so that even at six, seven, eight years old, Peter could be entirely depended on by Catherine to make sure Alison survived. This was what he was doing again now: trying to do, anyway, but she was having none of it.
‘I’m hungry,’ she said to him. She hadn’t eaten all day. ‘Come on, keep me company.’
She stood up and offered a hand, but he pushed himself to his feet without her help. The marks on his neck were violently red, and Alison could see bruising too, a purplish, bluish hue high on his neck where the rope had been tightest. This was the day that Peter had tried to kill himself and then changed his mind; this was the day he could’ve died. But there’d be tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and together, they’d cope.
She heated up some tomato soup and made sardines on toast too, and Peter watched her, but didn’t eat anything. He was quite calm and considered, though, and he told her he’d been planning her escape for a good while now, setting money aside every week, and he’d made her apply for a passport three years ago, did she remember? She’d been awkward about it at the time, asked what was the point, but in the end, she’d signed the form that he’d completed for her, and had gone and had her photo taken in the booth at Woolworths. Alison said, ‘Oh God, you’re right. I forgot about that. Did you send it off then?’
He nodded. ‘I did, and it came here, and now it’s in an old Oxo tin with the savings I’ve put by. Nigh on a hundred and forty pounds.’
She gawped at him. A hundred and forty pounds! Her own savings from her job at the supermarket were nil. Occasionally she paid the gas or the electric with her wages, but more often they were spent on music, or – less often – clothes.
‘It’s so you can take off, if you have to,’ he said. ‘And I’d like you to do that, now.’
‘But, Peter, I’ve only got a year left at school,’ Alison said. ‘What about my A Levels?’
‘Do ’em another time. Or do wi’out ’em.’
She looked at him askance. There was no logic to what he said. This was just a panicked reaction to the events of the past forty-eight hours. English, French, History: these were her A Levels, and she planned to take them and get herself to university.
‘It’s in my top drawer,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘Your tin. In my bedroom, top drawer, underneath everything. I should’ve told you before.’
She looked down at her soup. Before he tried to hang himself, he meant. As if she’d have been able to go anywhere, with him dead. As if she’d have been able to function at all. She continued eating, mechanically feeding her empty stomach, like shovelling coal into an engine or filling up a car, and she listened to him speaking to her in his temporarily strangled voice, on and on in a kind of rasping whisper, and she wished he’d stop.
He told her again she had to go, he told her he had a feeling worse was to come, with Catherine beyond help and Martin Baxter, the fucking psychopath, with his access-all-areas pass to their house. He told her she needed to steer clear of Martin, he was deranged, and if she was set on taking her exams, she should move in with Daniel Lawrence and try to stay safe that way.
She listened, and she didn’t reply. She thought he’d gone mad. There was a time when Alison acted upon every piece of advice that her brother gave her, because he was generally right. But now he was being irrational, he’d see that himself in a day or two, and whatever he said, she was going nowhere for the next twelve months. He could give her the escape fund this time next year, if he wished, or he could spend it on himself. Either way, come September next year, she’d be gone.
Peter went out, just for an hour or so, he said, but he didn’t say where and Alison didn’t ask. Toddy’s probably. She hoped so anyway, she hoped Peter could count on him to help him through the next few weeks and months. She washed up, then fetched the heap of photographs from the living-room mantelpiece, and burned them one at a time, dropping them into a metal bucket where they bucked and curled and shrank to harmless black remnants. Martin had the negatives, of course, but unless he planned to try and sell them to the Sheffield Telegraph there wasn’t much more damage he could do with them.
The kitchen stank of acrid smoke so she went upstairs to her room, and lay down on the bed. She felt better for having eaten, but she was exhausted, bone-weary. She thought about Daniel at the Mayflower Club, opening the gig, warming up the crowd, sharing a bill with Joy Division and the Fall, and she wished she was there, the girl in the band, harmonising with bad boy Steve Levitt. Oh well, she thought, there’d be a next time; she’d make sure of it: she’d make them forgive her.
She reached for the radio and turned it on, and if she hadn’t done that, she might have heard the door as Martin let himself into the house. Donna Summer filled the room, ‘Bad Girls’, toot toot, beep beep, not quite what Alison was in the mood for, but you took your chances on Radio 1 on a Saturday night. She was on her bed, eyes closed, dropping like a stone into sleep, when he entered her bedroom, and even then she didn’t hear him immediately because he was sober and had taken the precaution of removing his boots at the bottom of the stairs. Then she sensed a presence, a malevolence in the room, and she opened her eyes, but it was too late and everything that happened next did so in a fearful, uncontrollable rush, a worst nightmare, a horror story. He was at her and on her, monstrous and full of hatred, dragging her off the bed by the hair, gagging her with a scarf he’d brought for the purpose, ripping at her dress, her pants, her bra, tearing into her with silent determination. He said nothing at all but she screamed fit to fetch all the street in until the gag silenced her fury, then she fought like a lynx, scratched and kicked, but she was slight and he was a heavy brute, and he pinned her body to the floor, crushed her into submission, one hand round her throat, the other clutching her hair, and like this he was able to thrust into her, over and over, calling her bitch, cunt, bitch, cunt, to the steady rhythm of his violence. He took his time, so she could fully understand the depths of his loathing, the extent of her helplessness. When it was over, he laughed. Then he stood, zipped himself up, and prodded one foot experimentally into her side and then again into her abdomen, as if she’d just been washed up on a beach and he wasn’t certain what she was. He stared for a few moments at her nakedness, and the marks he’d made on her skin. Then he hawked and spat in her face, to remind her of her own sin, and then he left. All of this took less than ten minutes, and Peter came back home, as he’d said he would, an hour after leaving, thirty minutes after Martin Baxter had let himself out of the house.
Even so, by then, Alison was gone. She’d allowed herself no time to cry and cringe and wallow; all that was done now. She’d washed, dressed and buried her ripped dress in the bottom of the kitchen bin. Then she’d left a note for Peter, just a scrawl; she hadn’t mentioned Martin or what he’d done, because that would start a whole new chain of events and give the foul act more weight and substance, make it harder to forget. She would not, she absolutely would not, take anyone down with her into despair, especially not her brother, so all she wrote was: ‘Dear Peter, you were right, I can’t stay here, love Alison xx’, and then she packed a few possessions into her canvas satchel: the passport and the money, some clothes, and the mix tape, the only one she had, The Best Last Two, from Daniel.
For him, she left nothing at all – there wasn’t time, and there was too much to say. She’d write to him when she could. She’d write to him, and he’d come to her, and then they’d never have to part again.