I was still in some sort of shock about what had just happened with Michael when I arrived at Julie’s. At least, I thought with a grimace, it distracted in some small way from what Julie had told me on the phone. I noticed Brendan’s car wasn’t outside and the front door was ajar.
When I walked in she was sitting on the sofa, smoking. She looked as if she hadn’t slept since we’d left the Taylors. She was still in pyjamas, despite it having gone eleven, and her hair was tangled and knotted at the top of her head. There was a mug of tea sitting on the coffee table in front of her, but there was also a quarter bottle of vodka, with its distinctive red lid unscrewed, sitting beside a glass with ice.
Julie must have noticed me looking at it.
‘You don’t need to worry. I’m not turning into an alcoholic. The sweet tea just wasn’t working for the shock and I’m not sleeping. Are you sleeping? I just can’t and then this …’
The front pages of several newspapers were scattered all over the sofa, all open at different pages about the murder. On top was a tabloid paper, The Chronicle, splashed with pictures from Clare’s Facebook page with the headline ‘Police hunt “ripper” killer’ in red, the only slightly smaller subheading declaring ‘Woman “almost decapitated” in brutal Derry slaying’.
Julie jabbed at the page; I noticed her nail varnish was chipped, her hand shaking. She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked back at me.
‘Is it true? They wouldn’t have printed it if it wasn’t true, would they? I can’t … I can’t even think. She was alive for a while after the attack. So it can’t be true. Oh, God, what if she wasn’t unconscious? What if she knew?’
Julie was almost manic, her words falling over each other. Her thoughts forming quicker than her words and rushing to get out.
‘Why would they say that? The police didn’t say that to us. Ronan didn’t say it. Who told the newspaper? It says “a source close to the investigation”,’ she read, her fingers still jabbing at the newsprint. ‘I always thought that meant it was a lie, but this is too serious. Why would they make her death so salacious? That same “source” said there was evidence she’d had sex on the night she was killed. Why would they print that? That’s nobody’s business. What’ll her parents think? Why won’t they leave her alone? Maybe I’ll ring this journalist and ask her. This Ingrid Devlin,’ she said, looking at the picture byline, ‘she might tell me.’
I realised I hadn’t spoken a single word, just listened to Julie rant and rave, crying as she recounted what she’d read and how she felt about it. I suppose the truth of it was that our friend didn’t just belong to us any more. She was a headline. A story. A victim. Would she always be looked at that way? Would how she died now define her more than everything she’d been to everyone in her life? Now, she’d be remembered as a victim first and foremost.
I glanced at the gaudy headline, the pictures of Clare, drink in hand and grinning at the camera. Painting her as some sort of party girl. Without even thinking about it, I swept the papers to the floor and trampled on them.
‘This is just shit to sell papers,’ I said to Julie. ‘It’s just shit.’
I sat down beside her, realising I was crying, too. Not hysterically like Julie but, nonetheless, my face was wet and I felt as if a knot of tension or grief or anger wanted to escape from my body in shuddering sobs.
‘Give me one of your cigarettes,’ I said to Julie.
It was enough to make her take a breath and look at me, her eyes narrowing.
‘You’ve not smoked since we were sixteen.’
‘I don’t care. It’s either a cigarette or the vodka and I’ve got to drive home to the kids, so the cigarette’s safer. Give me one.’
She fumbled with the white-and-blue packet in front of her and handed me a cigarette. Gingerly, my own hand shaking, I lifted it to my lips and inhaled as Julie helped me light. The hot smoke caught at the back of my throat, making me cough and shudder.
‘Jesus! this is vile,’ I said to Julie as I tried, and failed once again, to inhale the smoke deeply.
She looked at me, I looked at her. Then I put my cigarette down in the ashtray and pulled her into a hug.
‘What are we going to do without her?’ I cried.
‘I don’t know,’ Julie mumbled. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’
‘I think we start by throwing these papers in the bin where they belong,’ I said, reaching down and lifting them before folding them and carrying them out to the recycling bin.
It was only as I walked back in that I noticed the bouquets of flowers in vases on the kitchen table. All still wrapped in their cellophane. Among them, stems wrapped in black ribbon, was a posy of forget-me-nots, a familiar-looking small white card pinned to the ribbon. That uneasy feeling was back, but this time it was stronger.
‘Who are the flowers from?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice steady as I walked back into the living room.
Julie was staring at the bottom of her mug. She didn’t look up.
‘People from work. My sister … I don’t know really, Brendan’s been taking care of them. I’ve not even had the energy to look. I just told Brendan to put them in water. They’re not going to do much good, are they? They’re not going to bring her back.’
I lifted the posy of forget-me-nots, the satin-wrapped arrangement.
‘This one’s unusual,’ I said. ‘Do you know who sent it?’
‘No … I didn’t look. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, it’s just quite unusual and there was something similar left up at the spot in the road where Clare died. It stood out from the other tributes.’
Julie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Read the card if you want.’
She put her mug back down and lit another cigarette.
I unpinned the card from the flowers and read it. Again, a message was written in blue ink. Again, something cryptic.
‘Let me see,’ Julie said, looking at the card and reading from it. ‘Three green bottles, hanging on a wall. And if one green bottle should accidentally fall …’ Julie looked at me, eyes narrowed in confusion. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
I looked around, saw the chaos where we were sitting – in what was usually a pristinely kept home – and I saw how manic and near the edge Julie was. She’d spiral further if I told her what the note had said at the roadside, but I knew I couldn’t ignore it. This was something dark. I didn’t know why, but I was sure it was no coincidence that Julie had received an identical arrangement to the one left where Clare had died.
‘Who brought these?’ I asked, without answering her question.
My heart was thudding. I looked out of the window as if there was a chance I’d spot someone waiting in the distance. The glare of the midday sun caught my eyes and made them water.
‘I’ve no idea. Sorry. I’ve not exactly been coping,’ Julie said, ‘as you can see.’ She gestured around the room, to the chaos evident on every surface. ‘Brendan took the kids out because he said he needed a break from it all. I promised him I’d try and do something … but that was before I saw the papers.’
She leant forwards and poured a generous measure of vodka into her glass.
‘I don’t like this,’ I mumbled.
The sense of unease I’d been feeling had started to slip into panic. The words of that stupid rhyme playing over and over again in my head. Counting down until there were no green bottles left.
‘I’m old enough to drink if I want to,’ Julie bit back.
For a second I was pulled from my thoughts. Confused.
‘I’m not talking about your drinking, Julie. I’m talking about these flowers. That note.’
She started to sing the words, swaying her vodka glass. She was more drunk than I’d thought.
‘Some silly nonsense,’ she added. ‘God, do you remember when people used to sing that to us when we were at school?’ she laughed, a hollow laugh. ‘God, we thought things were so hard then. Little did we know. To be a wee “green bottle” again …’
It was a nonsensical nickname, based solely on the green of our uniform. Our green pinafores. The heavy gabardine of our school coats that covered us from the knee up in voluminous bottle green. Sometimes it came with a gentle shove from the singer, just to see what would happen if we did ‘accidentally fall’.
It was harmless.
It had been harmless.
But now one of my very solid group of three friends had become just two. One of us was gone …
I felt my stomach contract, a wave of sickness not just from the stale cigarette smoke wash over me. I drew in a breath.
‘Julie, there was an identical arrangement left at the side of the road where Clare died.’
‘So someone got a job lot,’ she said.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘No. Those words, Julie. Don’t you get it?’ My hands were shaking now. I wanted to shake Julie from her drunkenness and get her to understand. ‘Someone’s trying to frighten us. That note, the one left at the side of the road. That’s not what you write to offer condolences. That’s there to scare us. The other note said something about consequences …’
I glanced out of the window, saw a lone figure, jeans and a hoodie, hood pulled up to cover his face – clothes that were much too heavy for this weather. I fought the urge to pull the curtains. Or shout at him. I relaxed only when he walked past, not so much as casting a glance at Julie’s house.
‘I’m phoning the police,’ I said.