Peter Robinson - The First Cut

There was only one thing to do. She rushed forward and ducked into the newsagent’s. She needed her morning papers anyway, as she had been so absorbed in her new routine that she hadn’t even spent her usual hour in the Church Street café. She hadn’t looked for news of Keith, and she was still feeling nervous about the Grimley investigation, though no one had knocked on her door in the middle of the night yet.

The newspapers were arranged in small, overlapping piles on a low shelf just inside the window, below the rack of magazines. From there, as she pretended to make her selection with her back turned to the newsagent, she could get a closer look at the man as he went past. She bent and pretended to leaf through the stack, as if she were scanning the front pages for the best headlines, when suddenly he appeared right outside. He didn’t walk past as she had expected. Instead, he patted his pocket, turned and came inside.

Sue kept her back to the counter and examined the Radio Times and Women’s Own in the rack above the papers.

“Afternoon, Greg,” she heard the woman say. “In for some baccy, I suppose?”

“Yes, please.” The man’s voice sounded muffled and Sue couldn’t hear him clearly.

“Usual?”

“Aye. Oh, and I’ll have a box of matches, too, please, love. Swan Vestas.”

“Finished for the day?”

“Aye. Just got back from the Leeds and Bradford run. Can’t leave the poor beggars without their fish and chips, can we?”

The newsagent laughed.

Sue gripped the rack of magazines to keep herself from falling over. Her heart was beating so fast and loud that she thought it would burst. At the very least, both the newsagent and the man in the shop must be able to hear it. Her face was flushed and her breath was hard to catch. Everything seemed to swim and ripple in front of her eyes like motes dancing in rays of light: the magazine covers, the grim terraced houses across the street. And all the while she struggled to stay on her feet; she couldn’t let these two people see that there was anything wrong with her. They would rush over to help, and then…

Sue held on and fought for control as the voice, the horrible, familiar voice that had been whispering hoarsely in her nightmares for a month, carried on making small talk as if nothing terrible had ever happened.

When Kirsten stood on the platform and watched the Intercity pull out at 12:25 on January 3, she felt frightened and desolate. Despite an awkward beginning, Christmas at Brierley Coombe that year had turned out to be the best time she had enjoyed since the assault. She had been glad to have Sarah around, especially as a counter to all the uncles, aunts and grandparents who had treated her as if she were a half-witted invalid.

The village itself looked like a Christmas-card illustration. The snow that began on December 22 went on for almost two days and settled a treat, particularly out in the country, where there was little traffic and no industry to spoil it. It lay about two feet thick on the thatched roofs, smooth and contoured around the eaves and gables; and in the woods, where Kirsten often took Sarah for early-morning walks, the snow that rested on twigs and branches created an image of two worlds in stark contrast, the white superimposed on the dark.

They went into Bath once more to do some shopping at the Boxing Day sales and have drinks with Laura Henderson, whom Sarah liked immediately. Also, one night they shocked the locals in the village pub. Sarah wore her FISH ON A BICYCLE T-shirt, and everyone looked embarrassed. There she was: the careless tangle of blond hair, the pale complexion and exquisite features that looked as if they had been expertly worked from the finest porcelain, then smoothed and polished to perfection, and, to cap it all, that great advertisement for the redundancy of the male sex scrawled across her chest.

Nobody bothered them, like the Lancashire lads in Bath had, but the village men glanced over and muttered nervously among themselves, some of them smiling superciliously. It was the most uncomfortable evening of the holiday for Kirsten. Her enjoyment of crowded pubs didn’t seem to have lasted long. She could relax with Laura and Sarah, but the proximity of men still made her tense and angry. And when they looked over with those superior smiles on their faces, her cheeks burned with fear and anger. After all, a man had taken what other men wanted from her. Somehow, she reasoned, they were all implicated in that.

On New Year’s Eve, Kirsten’s parents went to a party. Kirsten and Sarah were invited, but neither of them fancied spending the evening with a bunch of drunken old stockbrokers, their bored wives and Yuppie offspring, so they decided to stay at home and celebrate by themselves.

The cocktail cabinet was well stocked, a log fire blazed in the hearth and they turned out the lights and lit candles instead. The open curtains of the French windows revealed the snow-covered garden and trees. Kirsten brought some of her records and tapes down from her room to play on her father’s stereo, and everything seemed perfect. They sat on the thick rug in front of the spitting fire, listening to Mozart, with the cognac bottle beside them.

“What are you going to do?” Sarah asked as she poured out their second drinks.

“With my life, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t made any plans.”

“You can’t just stay here forever, you know.” Sarah looked around the room, where the candles and fire tossed shadows like dark sails in a storm, and out of the windows at the fairy-tale garden in the snow. “Nice as it is, it isn’t real life. Not yours.”

“And what is my life?”

“For Christ’s sake, you got a First, a good one. You’re not going to waste your education, are you?”

Kirsten laughed. “Listen to yourself. You sound like a bloody guidance counselor or something.”

Sarah bit her lip and looked away.

“I’m sorry.” Kirsten reached out and touched her shoulder. “I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I’ve put the future off and I resent being made to dwell on it.”

“Why don’t you go back to university, do your MA? It needn’t be up north if you don’t want. There’s plenty of other places would be glad to have you.”

Kirsten nodded slowly. “I won’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind. But I couldn’t start till the next academic year. What would I do in the meantime?”

Sarah laughed. “How the hell should I know? What do you think I am, a guidance counselor? But seriously, you could get a job, something in Bath. Just to keep you going and take you out of yourself. You’ve got too much time to brood on the past hanging around this village. What about a bookshop, for example? You’d probably like that.”

“But what would my mother think?” She put on a finishing-school accent: “I mean, it’s awfully common being a shopgirl, dear.”

Sarah laughed. “Is that why she’s so frosty toward me? Maybe I should tell her my father owns half of Herefordshire. Think that would help?”

“I’m sure it would. She’s such a snob.”

“Seriously though, Kirstie, you’ve got to do something, get out of here. What about Toronto? You could go out there and join Galen.”

Kirsten topped up both their drinks. It was eleven thirty. Mozart’s Requiem had just ended and the world outside was silent and still.

“Well?” Sarah repeated. “What about it? Or is it over between you?”

Kirsten stared into the fire. Flames licked the wood like angry tongues. If I don’t tell her now, she thought, I probably never will. She looked at Sarah, so lovely in the winter firelight with red and orange and yellow flames dancing in her eyes and flickering over her face. Her skin looked almost transparent, especially where the fire seemed to shine a delicate coral through her nostrils and over her cheekbones. And she had it all: not just the looks, but a whole body. She could make love and have orgasms and have children.