“Well, he always did like dogs,” says Belinda, after we read the report. She seems totally unperturbed by Joe’s act of violence, which is more than I can say for myself.
The Joe I knew had never been a violent man. Tough, yes, and with a definite air of physical confidence—but I’d never seen him actually fight with anyone. He once told me that appearing unafraid of violence was the best protection against it—that if you held yourself the right way, and gave off the right vibes, people wouldn’t mess with you in the first place.
We are waiting on some further information that Liam thinks he can track down, and eating fresh croissants in Andrew’s kitchen. He is getting ready for a day at work, and tells us that if we need him to, he can see if the infamous Mr. Kennedy is featured in any further medical records.
“I couldn’t tell you anything about his treatment or condition or technically anything at all . . . but I will help any way I can,” he says as he leaves.
Belinda just nods, but I feel weirdly conflicted. Liam is bending rules for sure. Andrew has offered to as well. It’s spiraling out of control, and it is affecting my precious sense of order.
“A lot of people are getting dragged into this,” I say, losing my appetite and pushing the croissant away. “A lot of people are breaking rules for us.”
Belinda stares at me, looking frankly terrifying across the counter. She shakes her head in disbelief, and says: “A lot of people are breaking rules for us because they care. About Joe, about you. They’re doing it because of love, and loyalty, and trust—and that’s fucking brilliant! Don’t piss me off by going all fairy princess on me, Jess, OK? This is hard enough without your prissy sense of morality getting in the way.”
Her comment hits home harder than it should. No matter how close to friendship we get, there is always part of Belinda that only sees me as a prissy fairy princess. As Baby Spice. I don’t help dissuade her of that opinion when I feel tears swim in my eyes.
“It was my birthday,” I say quietly, swiping away tears that are making me angry with myself. “The day it happened. He’d always sent me the cards, and the gum, and that’s the first year he didn’t. I don’t know what happened to him in that year, but the day he got arrested was my birthday.”
I can’t quite escape the suspicion that on that particular day, he might have been in a worse mood than usual. Nearer to breaking point—near enough that some random arsehole abusing a helpless creature would have pushed him over the edge. Reminded him, perhaps, of when he was a helpless creature, being abused.
Belinda’s expression flitters between sympathy and annoyance. She clears our plates, and replies: “Right. Well, there’s nothing you can do about that now. All we can do is keep moving forward—assuming that’s still what you want to do? If so, I’m due to speak to Liam again. He was trying to find out what happened to Joe after that, beyond Pinefirth. He might still be in there, for all we know—or he could have immigrated to Siberia. And I’m sorry, OK? I shouldn’t have snapped. You’re not even that prissy anymore.”
I nod, and breathe deeply, and regain the control that for a nanosecond I felt slipping through my fingers.
“Yes. I want to keep going. And I’m sorry too.”
“Would it help if I apologize as well?” pipes in Michael. “I’m sure I’ve probably done something wrong . . .”
“I’m sure you have,” she says as she leaves the room. “I’ll compile a list for you.”
We fill in the time while she talks to Liam again by having a mindless conversation about the merits of The Greatest Showman, which he’d watched the night before when he couldn’t sleep. It’s trivial and silly and exactly what I need to calm down—and I suspect that Michael, who is a lot more intuitive than he appears on the surface, knows that. He glimpsed my inner panic, and he is helping me deal with it.
“It is an amazing film,” he says, sighing into his coffee, “but I also kind of hate it, you know? I mean, those songs! They’re so emotionally manipulative—they make me feel way too much! Plus, there’s the whole Hugh Jackman diminishing returns theory, and the detrimental effect that has on the rest of humanity.”
“The what?” I ask, smiling. He is good at distracting me, I have to admit. I’ve even eaten half a croissant.
“It’s a thing, honest. So, working on the assumption that there’s only so much talent to go around in the multiverse, Hugh Jackman has taken way too much for one person. Hugh Jackman is the reason that other people—maybe up to a thousand of them, at latest estimates—are ugly, can’t act, can’t sing, and look terrible in vest tops. See? Science.”
I am, miraculously, actually laughing when Belinda walks back into the room. Sadly, one look at her face chokes off a baby giggle partway to birth.
She sits down next to us, her eyes serious. My mind immediately starts to imagine what she’s found out. That Joe is still in jail. That he’s immigrated to Siberia. That he’s dead.
“What is it?” I say straightaway. “You look terrible. He’s not dead, is he?”
She pulls a face, and mutters something to stall me while she gulps down coffee, grimacing when she realizes it’s cold.
“Not as far as I know, Jess. But I have some information. Liam, in an unexpected display of actual police work, found out quite a bit. Useful stuff. Surprising stuff. Just . . . stuff.”
“Right. Well, are you going to tell us what stuff it is, or are we supposed to guess?”
I sound shrill as I say this, which is probably because I feel shrill.
“He’s not in prison,” she says in response. “He was kept in on remand for a while because he wouldn’t cooperate with the police, refused to make a statement, refused to even get a lawyer. Stubborn idiot seems to have gone the whole name, rank, and serial number routine. In the end, though, the police couldn’t make a case—they never tracked down Mr. Kennedy, the casually racist dog abuser, so he couldn’t press charges. Plus none of the witnesses really wanted to push it forward. The charges were dropped.”
This, I think, sounds like good news—so I am still confused about the somber set of Belinda’s face. I am pulsing with the need to shake it out of her, to grab her shoulders and rattle her until the information she is hiding tumbles from her mouth, but I restrain myself. It wouldn’t be polite, and Belinda could definitely destroy me in what the police report might call an “altercation.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” says Michael. Belinda ignores him, and fixes her gaze on me.
“Liam also found out the home address he was released to,” she adds.
I nod, but stay silent. There is something coming, and it’s something she thinks I’m not going to like.
“It’s OK,” I say after a few beats pass. “I can take it. Baby Spice is long gone.”
“All right. Joe was released from custody, free to go, at the end of October 2009. He was collected from Pinefirth by his wife.”