Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and the Dead

He pulled her beside him on the grass. She thought he was kissing her to stop the awkward questions. By the fire someone had started playing the guitar. There was a smell of pine and wood smoke. She lay on her back and looked at the orange moon.

All that came back when she was talking to the detectives, but of course they weren’t interested in the detail, only in the clues which might lead to information about their victim’s past. The party by the lake had taken place a year before Michael’s disappearance. What happened then could have no relevance to his death.

So they became a couple. Michael Grey and Hannah Meek. She always liked the way their names scanned. Now, listening to Porteous and Stout talking about the mystery of their victim’s birth, she thought it would be a shame if that turned out not to be his name, if the rhythm were lost. Though now of course she was Hannah Morton and she had more important things to worry about, like convincing these policemen that she knew nothing at all about Michael’s murder and that she had no reason for wanting him dead.

If their friends thought about it, they must have assumed that Michael and Hannah were lovers. Porteous and Stout, of course, had made the same assumption. After all, they went out with each other for nearly a year. Their intimacy was for everyone to see. They walked round the school hand in hand, despite a rule banning physical contact. It only got them into trouble once. They were walking across the yard towards the common-room for morning break. Michael had his arm around Hannah’s waist and they were laughing at a joke, some piece of nonsense. There was a shout and they turned to see Mr Spence bearing down on them. Spooky Spence. Now husband of Sally.

‘Mr Grey, Miss Meek. A little decorum, if you please.’

They looked puzzled. Like the ban on smoking in the common-room, the rule was never enforced. Spence must have taken their bewilderment, their failure to comply immediately with his instruction, as impertinence, a personal insult. Suddenly he lost his temper. He stood in the middle of the playground, gathering a small crowd of giggling onlookers, and he ranted about the younger generation in general and Hannah and Michael in particular, about their lack of morals, their failure to comport themselves with decency and modesty. As he yelled flecks of spit came out of his mouth. It took them a moment to realize what had provoked his anger. At last they got the message and pulled apart. Spence regained a shaky control and walked away. They didn’t mention the incident to their friends. They were embarrassed by it. It wasn’t the way adults were supposed to behave.

They never went to bed together. Spence and the gang they hung around with would have found it hard to accept, but they never even discussed it. Hannah thought that was because Michael was living with the Brices and felt he should conform to their standards. An exaggerated idea of good manners. She wouldn’t have known how to raise the subject. Later she wished she had, that she’d lost her virginity to him and not to a plump mathematician after a drunken freshers’ ball in her first week at university. Sally was certainly sleeping with her disc jockey. At weekends she told her parents she was staying at Hannah’s house, but she’d spend the evening with Chris and the bed in the Meeks’ spare room was never used. Her parents never checked up on her. Perhaps they didn’t want to know what she was up to. Hannah was worried about her, concerned she’d get caught up in his shady deals. It wasn’t only the drugs. There was an air of aggression about him.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ she asked once.

Sally had told her not to be stupid. She wanted Chris and he wanted her. That was all that mattered. Sally also wanted the things Chris could provide. He had two jobs, more cash than the rest of them could dream of. She liked the presents, the fact that she never had to buy her own drinks. On the evenings when Sally was supposed to be at the Meeks, she would go with him to work, to the disco at whichever village hall or hotel had hired him, or more often to the caravan site which was his regular gig and seemed to have become her second home. Then she would go with him to the scruffy flat he was renting over the betting shop in a back street behind the police station. She once took Hannah there when Chris was away for the weekend. He’d given her a key to feed his cat – an angry black tom. Inside the flat was surprisingly ordinary. There was the same utility dining suite as Hannah’s mum had in their house, and a floral carpet. One of the bedrooms was locked and Sally didn’t have a key to that. She said it was where Chris kept his sound system, but Hannah wondered what else was inside. Sally agonized about going on the pill as if it were a decision Hannah must be making too. ‘Doesn’t it make you put on weight? Chris would hate me fat. It’s all right for you. You could do with a few extra pounds.’

Hannah was noncommittal and Sally was too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice. Michael and Hannah didn’t spend all their time together. They were ambitious. It was the A-level year and they wanted to do well. Hannah for herself; Michael, she thought, for the Brices. Hannah went through the process of applying to university, filling out UCCA forms, going for interviews. Michael, however, refused to make any plans. None, at least, that he would talk about. It was as if he wanted to shroud his future as well as his past in mystery. He said he’d take a year out, travel perhaps. Hannah wondered if he had more specific ideas. He worked for his exams with a purpose which suggested he had a project in mind. He spoke once of a crusade. He had a responsibility, he said. There was something he had to put right. When she asked what exactly this mission was, in a teasing voice, because she refused to let him take himself too seriously, he clammed up. She didn’t push it. Talking to the detectives she thought it was incredible that she should have taken any of his stories at face value. Why didn’t she ask where his father was, why they never saw each other? Because she was perfectly content. She knew she would never be so happy again. She was determined to do nothing to spoil it.

The school play was planned for the end of the Easter term. When Michael went for the auditions, just after Christmas, she thought he was mad.

‘You are joking. Our last full term before the exams. You’ll never manage it all.’

‘Sod the A levels,’ he said, much as Rosie would do, then gave her a grin to show he didn’t mean it. Perhaps managing it all was the challenge. Perhaps it was part of his game plan.

Hannah went with him to the audition, not to try for a part, but to offer her support. She thought he might be given a small role. When she saw that Spooky Spence was one of the auditioning panel, she thought he’d be lucky to get that. It never occurred to her that he would go for Macbeth. She perched on a window-sill at the back of the hall and waited for his turn. The teachers sat in judgement on a row of chairs at the front: Spooky Spence, Miss Davies who taught English and drama, and Mr Westcott, still slightly tipsy from his lunchtime in the pub. The actors stood on a block to read, but when it was Michael’s turn he didn’t stand. He sat with his legs crossed, quite relaxed, and when he spoke, despite the language, it was as if he were speaking just to her. She knew at once that he would be chosen to play the lead.

Hannah saw Jenny Graves audition that day too. She was in the lower sixth, a year younger than them, tall and willowy, rather nervy. Hannah thought it was typecasting. The panel had gone for the look. She wasn’t sure she would have chosen Jenny over some of the others. She realized that Michael and Jenny would have lots of rehearsals together. It didn’t bother her at the time, but nearer to the performance she thought she could afford to get involved and she volunteered to help with props and to prompt. She never admitted to herself that she wanted to keep an eye on him.