Cath Staincliffe - Dead To Me

She’d tried to be diplomatic, no need to rub his nose in it, but she wasn’t about to let Dave’s resentment colour her decision. ‘We’d have to get a nanny.’

‘We’re already struggling with the mortgage.’

The house had been bought off plan. One of a development of individually designed properties on the outskirts of Shaw near Oldham. It had been a roller-coaster of meetings and design discussions, site visits and fallings out with the builders, but now it was theirs. And it was beautiful. Not overly ostentatious, but quality workmanship, everything from the York flags on the patio and the wooden-framed windows to the tiles in the bathrooms and the kitchen with its black marble and beech fittings had been chosen by them. Gill adored it. And it worked perfectly as a family home. Double garage. Enough space for Sammy to have a playroom that could be adapted to a den as he got older. There was a sun terrace outside their bedroom window at the back with an uninterrupted view over the farms and moorland up to the reservoir. Gill often brought work home and, unless it was freezing, it was a place she loved to sit while she did it.

‘We’re not struggling, Dave. That’s not struggling. We’re just having to be careful. Besides, I’d be on a bigger salary, from the start.’

‘If you get it,’ he pointed out. She bit her tongue. ‘Sounds as if you’ve already made your mind up,’ he complained.

‘Your mum or mine can come over in emergencies. They’d love to help. We can make this work.’ That was Gill’s mindset: decide what you want, plan a strategy to get you there, and get on with it.

‘He’s only little,’ Dave said. ‘Maybe in a few years…’

Feeling a prickle of annoyance, Gill got up, walked to the French windows, looked out at the garden, the cherry blossom, Sammy’s Jungle Gym. Turned to face him. ‘I might not get the chance again,’ she objected. ‘You know how limited jobs at the faculty are. If I don’t jump at-’

‘All I’m saying,’ Dave cut her off, putting on his reasonable voice, ‘is that your priorities-’

‘My priorities? My priorities.’ She laughed, not in the slightest amused. ‘Would we be having this conversation if it was you?’

‘Of course,’ he said, not even thinking about it.

‘No,’ she said, brusquely, ‘we wouldn’t. “He’s only three, Dave, wait until he’s at school, till he’s bigger, he needs his father here”, she mimicked. ‘No way!’ She felt close to losing her temper, her skin hot, harsh words, dangerous words crowding her throat. ‘But I’m expected to put things on hold because we have a child. Takes two to tango,’ she said. ‘I need you to back me on this. So I’ll think about my decision while you think about that.’ She’d walked out then. Agitated, disappointed.

Janet had listened to her recounting the discussion with Dave over a bottle of wine in a bar in the town centre.

‘You can’t not apply,’ Janet told her, ‘you’d never forgive yourself. You’re meant for this, you know you are. Supercop,’ she added drily. ‘You go, girl.’

‘I’d be back in between jobs anyway,’ Gill argued, ‘have reasonable leave.’

Janet laughed. ‘It’s not as if you’d be going off to the Antarctic or something. This is the twentieth century, nearly the twenty-first. There’s a girl in records, Indian, she’s left two kids with her mum in Delhi while she makes some decent money over here for them all. We don’t know we’re born half the time.’

‘I think he’s miffed,’ Gill said, raising her glass. ‘Me doing it and not him.’

Janet raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s a big lad, he’ll get over it. You know you could hack it. Maybe he couldn’t.’

Gill looked at her for a moment. Janet always had this precise, understated way of telling the truth. No flag waving or drum rolls. Straight to the point, measured, sensible, incisive. ‘Maybe that’s gonna be a problem,’ Gill said.

‘He’ll do all right for himself,’ Janet said. ‘He’s ambitious enough.’

‘What about you, though?’ Gill held up the bottle and Janet accepted a top-up. ‘You’ve never thought of moving into an MIT?’

‘I’m fine as I am,’ Janet said.

‘So, you’re going to stay on Division all your life. Not had enough of burglaries and assaults yet?’ Gill asked.

‘I get pulled on to the odd murder now and again when they need an extra detective. Not as if I never get a look-in. I’m not sure I’d want to do it all day every day.’

‘Give it time.’

Gill was dragged back to the present by a knock on her office door, as Phil Sweet the CSM came in to discuss the implications of Sean Broughton moving the duvet.

‘Snafu?’ Gill asked.

‘You could say that.’

JAMES RALEIGH, LISA’S personal advisor, was tall, maybe as tall as Mitch, six foot two or three with blond hair, blue eyes. Made Rachel think of a tennis player. He was her sort of age, she guessed, late twenties, early thirties. He worked out of the neighbourhood office in Newton Heath, an old stone building, modernized offices inside.

‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he said, after offering her coffee, which she refused; if this place was anything like the nick, the coffee would be revolting. ‘Can’t believe it. I understand you want some background?’

‘That’s right,’ said Rachel. ‘As much as you’ve got.’

‘Well, I’ve only been seeing Lisa since she left Ryelands in April. When she turned seventeen. Usually the social worker stays on the case for a while so there’s some continuity, but Lisa’s social worker was retiring at the time. A lot of the background I’ve picked up from the assessment reports.’ He flipped open the file on his desk. Rachel wondered if Alison knew him, both being in social work, though Alison was doing geriatrics at the moment, dealing with old people at Oldham General.

‘Lisa first came into care in August 1993, as a four-month-old. Mum on her own, not managing. Dad left during the pregnancy. Older sibling, two-year-old boy, went into the care of an aunt.’

‘She just couldn’t hack it?’ Rachel asked. Thinking of her own mother, fleetingly.

‘History of depression and alcohol dependency, no record of a problem with the first child, but two was obviously more than she could manage. Lisa remained in care, with periods in foster care, until she was six. Contact maintained with the mother and brother. Her brother Nathan returned home in 1996, when Lisa would have been three.’

‘Must have been hard for her to understand, Nathan’s at home and she’s not.’

‘Yes, it would,’ he said. ‘It’s always difficult. In an ideal world the children are kept together, whether that’s in foster care or the family home, but in reality…’ He pulled a face. ‘Age six to eleven, she was back in the family home. Then things deteriorated.’ It all matched what Denise Finn had told them. He turned over the pages in the file. ‘Pattern of risk-taking behaviour, absconding, solvent abuse, picked up for disorderly conduct, vandalism.’ He looked up. ‘Got into bad company, went off the rails. That’s when the decision was made to put Lisa in Ryelands. The aim was to move her back home once Mrs Finn was deemed capable.’

‘Which never happened?’

‘No, Lisa stayed at Ryelands until April. You’ve heard about Nathan’s death?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Lisa took it very hard. Even though she and Nathan had been apart a lot, he was a significant person, only sibling. Her big brother.’

Dom, Rachel thought, my little brother. It was two years now, more, since she’d seen him. He’d written at first. She’d burnt the letters.