Community meetings had become routine. I understood what they were meant to achieve, but to be honest they didn’t really affect me.
All right, I’d had a few rockets in the early weeks for sneaky drinking, and after me and Naomi did our runner, but recently? Nothing. And as a result I’d started going in with my guard down, which was my big mistake.
It was the Friday before half-term when I took my seat on the settee next to Ade and glanced over at Naomi, expecting to see her usual look of irritation. She’d had a right face on her lately about the amount of time Ade had been spending with me, but had aimed it at Ade and Bex rather than at me.
But today there was no such look. Instead she perched on the arm of the settee, next to Paddy as always, a look of satisfaction on her face. It wasn’t a mood I associated with her, and that should have made me wary. Instead I settled back, ready to drift through the next forty-five minutes.
We started in the normal way, with pleas for people to tidy up the kitchen after using it, and Bex berating Paddy and Naomi for not attending lessons, nothing that raised the temperature. Not until Bex asked if there was anything anyone wanted to share. Usually this meant a succession of shrugs and a few minutes of awkward silence, so I focused on the floor, identifying everyone in the circle by the shoes on their feet.
It was only when a cassette landed by my trainer that my focus was broken.
I knew what was on the tape as soon as I saw it. My voice, my horrible truth.
I didn’t know what to do. Was it better to leap up and grab it, or ignore it, hoping it wasn’t what I thought it was? But to be honest I knew it had to be mine. Why would anyone else have something that belonged in the 1980s?
Glancing up, I saw a look of bemusement on everyone’s faces. Well, everyone but Ade, whose cheeks seemed to be flushing like mine.
‘Naomi?’ Bex asked. ‘Was it you who threw that?’
Naomi looked smug, yet was working hard to appear serious. ‘Yep.’
‘Er, what are you doing with a tape? I mean, where did you get it?’
‘I found it,’ she crowed. ‘On the girls’ corridor. Glad I did too.’
My face burned at her lie. There was no way she found it in the hallway. It had been hanging around my neck not two hours before, and there was no way I would have been that careless over something I was so ashamed of. I’d taken to hiding it, the Walkman and all, in the very bottom of my wardrobe, under a pile of washing. I didn’t think anyone would be desperate enough to root through that to find it. But as I looked at Naomi and she held my gaze, eyes narrowing momentarily, I knew I was wrong and that I was in for a proper hiding.
‘I thought it was weird to find a tape. I mean, I didn’t really know what it was till I found this on the landing as well.’ She brandished the Walkman from behind the cushion, her face scrunched in mock confusion.
If I wasn’t bricking it so much I would’ve been on top of her, beating the lie out of her, but of course I did nothing, except to swear repeatedly in my head.
‘To be honest, I nearly binned it,’ she went on, loving every minute, ‘but then I reckoned it might have meant something to someone, what with it being so old and that, so I took it to Paddy to see if he knew who it belonged to.’
My heart crashed through another level, knowing if Patrick was involved the pain was about to intensify.
‘I’d never seen it either, but reckoned we could work it out if we listened to the tape. We thought if we heard what was on it we’d know straight away who it belonged to.’
He’d got to his feet while talking and shuffled clumsily over to the tape. He picked it up and wandered round inside the circle, brandishing it like a detective with a piece of evidence. I knew where this was going, understood the humiliation that was heading towards me, and in that moment something snapped. I launched myself at Patrick, my hands grappling for the cassette.
He wasn’t the quickest of movers, and I managed to latch on to the tape, my other hand grappling round his shoulder. He spun in surprise but I clung grimly on, ripping the cassette from his hand before slumping to the floor.
All hell broke loose. Within seconds Naomi was on top of me, yanking my hair. She obviously thought I was going to trash the tape before they could expose me, and with my scalp shrieking in pain I was distracted enough for Patrick to prise the tape from my hand, bending my fingers back in the process.
There was a flurry of bodies above me and a commotion as the carers pulled them both to opposite ends of the room, but unusually there was no resistance from either of them. They simply lifted their arms in mock surprise, telling them to calm down, that all they wanted was the tape.
‘What’s going on, Bex?’ Naomi cried. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us who we were living with?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she answered, ‘but I won’t have violence in this meeting, do you hear me?’
‘Violence?’ Naomi asked, incredulous. ‘If you want to talk about violence, let’s talk about what we heard on the tape. We can’t believe that you’d put the rest of us at risk like this.’
Bex shook her head, clearly confused. ‘Naomi, what on earth are you going on about?’
‘Her,’ she said, pointing at me. ‘Myra bloody Hindley over there. I mean, I know we’ve all got previous, but we never expected to be living with a bloody killer!’
It was a tumbleweed moment. A clichéd scene from a crappy film when every head in the room turns and focuses on you in slow motion.
A look of satisfaction oozed across Naomi’s face as she snapped everyone back to normal speed.
‘So when were you going to tell us, then? When were you going to let us in on the magic? Didn’t you reckon we had a right to know who we were living with? Jesus, this place is sick. Sick!’
Bex looked ready to explode but Ade got in first.
‘Naomi, you have stepped over the line. You’ve no right to attack anyone like this. If you really had concerns, you should have shared them with us outside the meeting, in private. Not humiliate Daisy in front of the whole community.’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s right. She’s your little project, isn’t she? What is it, Ade, never worked with a serial killer before, eh? Reckoned it would look good on your CV? Well, it explains why you’ve kicked me to the kerb, doesn’t it? I can’t compare with that psycho, can I?’
Ade was on her feet, fires burning in her eyes. ‘I don’t know what you heard on that tape, what conclusions you’ve drawn from it, but you have no right to –’
‘To what?’ Naomi screamed. ‘No right to be concerned about living with someone who killed their parents? I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, Ade, but here we tend to take those sorts of things seriously.’
The mention of home seemed to wind Ade, enough to give Bex the space to jump in.
‘You can quit with that sort of talk, you hear me? There’s no place for that here. None of us want to hear it.’
‘Then what do you want to hear? Ever since I’ve got here you’ve given us the big one about sharing, about how we can help each other, how it can sort things out for us. Well, forgive me, but how does that work if we can’t talk about something as important as this? How could you keep this from us?’
‘We haven’t kept anything from you,’ Bex implored. ‘No one has a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about what we heard on the tape. What Daisy was saying into it. Not just once either. Over and over again. We had to turn it off in the end cos it was freaking us out.’
‘It would have freaked you out too if you’d heard it,’ piped up Patrick. ‘I mean, who brags about killing their folks?’
‘This is a right load of shit,’ shouted Jimmy suddenly. It was so rare for him to engage in anything that the force of his words jolted me. ‘You two have had it in for her for weeks. I ain’t buying it. It’s all bollocks.’
This delighted Naomi all the more and she leaned forward, pointing at me. ‘Why don’t you ask her, then, Jim? Ask her if it’s true. See what she says.’
She paused, head cocked mockingly. ‘Well, go on, Daisy. Deny it. Go on. Do it. DO IT!’
I couldn’t say anything. My tongue had stuck to the roof of my mouth and, even if I managed to prise it down, what could I say? It was my voice on the tape, my thoughts, even if there was less force in them than the day they were recorded.
‘That’s enough!’ cried Bex, releasing me from the silence. ‘Naomi, I want you and Paddy in my office now. The rest of you can have some free time. We’re finishing early.’
Naomi and Patrick looked at each other and smiled. It must have taken some effort for them not to high-five each other. Instead they walked towards the door, pausing by me as they went.
‘See how difficult life is if you keep stuff from us?’ Naomi spat. ‘Don’t do it again, eh? Otherwise things really will get tough.’
They left quite a scene in their wake. There was Susie close to tears, Jimmy confused and arguing with Eric, and me, shell-shocked, wondering where on earth I went from here.