Cath Staincliffe - Dead To Me

‘Don’t think so.’ Marlene thought harder. ‘No.’ She leaned forward, her head tilted, as if she’d share a confidence. ‘And I am the all-seeing-eye,’ she laughed.

It was a miracle Denise Finn was still talking and walking, given the trauma she’d been through. Where did she summon the strength to carry on? Perhaps after Nathan had died, she kept going for Lisa. But now? I couldn’t do it, Janet thought, I would just lay down and die, a bit of help maybe, from the car exhaust, stones in pockets, pills and booze. But it wasn’t true. She’d weathered hard times, survived. Not only with the baby, but before then. When she got ill.

Thinking of it brought the old, familiar tremor of anxiety. Like a faint aftershock from an earthquake, travelling from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. She allowed herself to revisit the memories as she made the journey back to the office, having discovered that, if she tried to deny the feelings and not think about the events that had first triggered them, it only seemed to feed her fears, making them stronger, more feral.

Fifteen, studying for GCSEs and worried about her exams, Janet was finding it hard to sleep at night. They all expected her to do well. Her mother was sorting through a box of old photographs, one of her clean-ups. Janet at the dining-room table, trying to learn chunks of King Lear to regurgitate for the English Paper. Oh, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven …

‘Look at you there, then’ – her mother thrust an old school photograph under her nose – ‘butter wouldn’t melt.’

Janet glanced dutifully at the photo. Primary school, class picture. She was seated, cross-legged on the front row. She could remember the hall, which doubled as a gym, the parquet floor that stank of polish and feet. The way you could make squeaky noises as you walked, especially with your pumps on.

‘And there’s Veronica next to you.’

Janet grunted. Veronica had bad teeth, sort of greeny grey at the front, that reminded her of bread with mould on. She had a plastic coat that was meant to look like leather but didn’t. The coat squeaked too.

‘They never did find out who killed her,’ Janet’s mother mused.

Time stopped. Janet stared at the girl’s face; Veronica was grinning. ‘What?’

‘She was murdered,’ her mum said. ‘Awful.’

‘You said she’d gone away.’ Janet looked at her mother.

‘You were six,’ her mother said. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you what had really happened. You’d have been petrified.’

‘What did happen?’ Janet felt confused, angry.

‘She was abducted,’ her mother said, ‘on the way home from school one day. They found her in the woods, stuffed in a holdall.’

Her mum took back the photograph.

Janet tried to carry on with her revision, but it was impossible to concentrate. She brooded over it for the rest of the day: how could she not have known about a murder? But she realized that, aged six, she would not have watched the news, or read the papers. She used to walk home with Veronica sometimes. She remembered that. They weren’t best mates or anything, not in the same group at playtime, just lived in the same direction. One day, Veronica had been offered a lift. Janet said no – it had been drummed into them: Don’t take sweets from strangers, don’t go with a stranger, don’t get into a stranger’s car – but Veronica had known the driver. At least, that’s the impression Janet had got. But Janet knew that didn’t count for her. If she didn’t know the person herself, then she mustn’t get into the car. She had to say no. Was that the day of the abduction?

Janet felt sick. She laid awake half the night, trying to remember more, frustrated that she couldn’t. I should have stopped her, she thought, asked her who it was, if she really knew them. She might still be alive if I’d only done that.

Why hadn’t the police solved the murder? Why hadn’t they asked Janet about it? She could have described the car if it had been fresh in her memory.

The guilt grew like a fungus inside her. And the anxiety, the sensation of the floor heaving, something crawling up her spine, twisting in her belly.

In an effort to find out more, she went to Oldham Central Library and scoured the microfiche, nervous in case one of the librarians saw what she was looking up and told her off. She read what she could quickly, almost not wanting to know, the details lodging in her mind, her back tense, her mouth dry. A navy-blue holdall, a shallow grave, someone walking the dog, a brutal murder. They didn’t say exactly how Veronica died. What Janet didn’t know, she made up. Her darkest fantasies filling the vacuum.

The murder played over and over in her head like a reel of film. Veronica’s terror became her own. She felt the unease as the car drove away from town, the spittle of the killer on her face, his hand in her knickers, the soil in her nose and mouth.

She would open her biology textbook or King Lear – How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, To have a thankless child – and the words swam. What was the point?

Abandoning any hope of sleep, she tried to study through the night. Her head ached and she felt sick all the time. Her dad, sensing something was going on, tried to jolly her along: ‘Exams won’t last for ever, and then you can burn your books.’

‘She’ll do no such thing,’ her mother retorted. ‘She’s still got her A-levels to do.’

Janet pretended to be going to a friend’s and went to the doctor’s to ask if they could give her something to help her sleep. The doctor was very sympathetic, said she had a lot of people with exam nerves, but generally it was better to let nature take its course. A regular routine was good, no tea or coffee in the evening. At that point, Janet had burst into tears. The doctor calmed her down, asked if there was anything else. Janet considered telling her about Veronica, but decided it would sound crazy.

The doctor gave her a week’s supply of sleeping pills. Take one at bedtime. Get you back in the habit . They worked, pulling her down into a black velvet tunnel. But after the week was up, it was the same as before, lying there with the light on, her limbs rigid, the pictures rolling through her. Then it was her first exam.

She couldn’t go in the gate. She couldn’t do it. If she had to go and sit in the silent hall with the sound of the clock ticking and other people’s breathing and the pictures in her head – the disgusting thoughts in her head, Veronica with worms in her mouth – Janet knew all that stuff inside her head would escape. She would lose control, turn her desk over, shout obscenities, tell them all it was her fault.

And so Janet stood, humming with tension, while the pupils streamed into school. While the clock struck nine and the invigilator told them to turn over their papers. While her fellow pupils printed their names and began to read through the questions. She stood, cold and shaky. Where could she go?

‘Janet?’

Ade from down the road. Lower sixth. ‘You lost?’ He smiled, his little joke.

She began to shiver.

‘Shouldn’t you be in there?’

‘I can’t, I can’t…’ she stammered. Words failing. Janet failing.

‘OK.’ He came closer, concern in his face. But not fear. Why wasn’t he frightened? If he knew what she was thinking… She bit her knuckles, rocking forward.

He put his arm around her, it felt warm across her shoulders, safe.

‘Would you like to go home?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘OK, then.’ And he walked her back. He was so kind. Here she was, a total nutter, throwing a fit, and he didn’t freak or anything, just walked her back. Went in with her, made a cup of tea.