Cath Staincliffe - Dead To Me

‘Yuck,’ said Taisie, force of habit.

Elise was on MSN. Janet didn’t make any attempt to snoop at the conversation. ‘So, what’s his name?’ she said.

Elise flushed, put her hand to her head and groaned. ‘Connor,’ she said.

‘Dad says he’s in Year 11.’

‘So?’

‘Nothing,’ Janet said, ‘just interested. I don’t need to do any safe sex-’

‘Mum!’ Elise recoiled, interrupting her. ‘No! We don’t even, we’re not-’ She pulled a face.

‘Good, fine, sorry! Thought I’d better check.’

‘I’m thirteen,’ Elise said. ‘I’m under age. You should know that.’

Janet kept a straight face. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘OK. Bed now. It’s late.’

Janet lay in bed, her thoughts slowing, relaxing towards sleep. They were all right, her girls, they were fine. Ade kept on raising the issue of her work, implying she was a bad mother, neglectful, absent, but it really wasn’t like that. Sure, there were times in the early stages of each murder investigation when she put in long hours and saw little of them, but it wasn’t always like that. They’re fine, she reassured herself again, everything’s going to be fine.

And she’d make sure it stayed that way. She’d forget about Andy; she had to. It would get easier with time: the awkwardness, the fear of someone finding out. New Year soon. A fresh start. Everything’s gonna be fine, she thought again. And then she slept.

Rachel shouldn’t have answered the phone. It was ringing as she walked in the flat, she had expected it to be Nick – who else, this time of night? It would be a relief to talk to someone, even about inconsequential things, to take her mind off James Raleigh and her sense of defeat, of inadequacy. Distract her from the fact that Rosie’s funeral was at half past eight in the morning.

It was Alison. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying for hours.’

‘Work,’ Rachel snapped. ‘Where d’you think?’

‘Till this hour?’ sounding as if she didn’t believe her.

‘Yes, interviewing a murder suspect,’ Rachel said.

‘Really! God, did he confess? Was it that lass in the papers – Lisa?’

‘Yes, it was. No, he didn’t.’

‘Wow.’

There was a pause. ‘So, anything else?’ Rachel said. ‘You rang me, remember.’

‘I’m going to see Dom on Friday,’ Alison said quickly. ‘You could come.’

Not this again. Rachel felt a wave of displeasure, anger. ‘How many times do I have to tell you…’

‘It’s Christmas,’ Alison went on. ‘Can’t you think about him for once?’

‘Try not to, does my head in. I’m not going, Alison. I don’t want to.’

‘You can be really hard-faced sometimes, you know that? What if it was me?’

‘Don’t be thick.’

‘Prisoners with family support…’ Alison started her touchy-feely spiel.

‘No,’ Rachel said.

Every time Alison brought it up, it felt like ripping a scab off a wound, opening it up again. When all Rachel wanted to do was bury it. The deeper the better.

‘He always asks after you, you know.’ Emotional blackmail now.

Rachel had a flashback. Dom in the under-thirteens. Man of the match. Slathered in mud and running across to her. Rachel, frozen stiff on the edge of the pitch. Their dad had promised to come, but they all knew he’d get waylaid in the bookies or the boozer. Alison at work, her Saturday job. So Rachel turned out. Bored senseless until Dom had the ball, scored not once but three times.

He had run over to her, happy as a pig in muck and just as filthy, arms raised and yelling, ‘Who are you, who are you.’ Some chant from the terraces. ‘Did you see?’ he demanded, eyes sparkling, stupid grin on his face. ‘Did you see?’

‘Wicked!’ she’d agreed. Laughing as he did a back-flip, his football boots sending up clods of earth from the field.

It’d broken her heart when they came to arrest him. When he was charged with armed robbery.

Rachel closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said to Alison.

‘But Rachel if you’d only just-’ Alison tried to prolong the conversation. Rachel hung up. Armed robbery: a robbery where the defendant or co-defendant was armed with a firearm .

She opened a bottle of wine and closed the curtains. Sat there drinking and channel-hopping until the bottle was empty, the central heating had gone off, the cold was stealing into the room and she’d a halfway decent chance of getting a couple of hours’ kip.

On the drive home, Gill ran through arrangements for the following morning. Sammy needed to go into the fracture clinic and she was torn – she could take him herself but she needed to be with the team, not desert them when the case was feeling blocked. Or she could ask Dave – tell Dave – but then he might delegate the task to the whore. The whore would have to take the brat with her, too. And who knows how long they’d be there. Could be hours, long enough to go insane and start eating the other patients; certainly long enough to show Pendlebury the downside of stepmummyhood. In fact, she mused, maybe that was the solution: kill her with kindness.

By the time Gill had picked Sammy up from the friend he’d gone home with, making fulsome apologies for the lateness of the hour, she had decided to send Dave on hospital duty and see what materialized.

He wasn’t best pleased when she told him: ‘But it’s slap bang in the middle of the day!’

‘You can tell the time, very good!’

‘Can’t he get a taxi or something?’

‘You’d let him go on his own?’ she tried to shame him.

‘It’s not as if it’s an operation or anything,’ he said.

‘I’ll cancel it, shall I? Risk him having a wonky wrist for the rest of his life.’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Dave said. ‘Tell him I’ll pick him up at break.’

Or your driver will? Gill thought of Pendlebury as a chauffeur girl. She was so young, could have been Sammy’s sister, Dave’s daughter. Gill wondered if anyone seeing Dave with the spawn-child assumed Dave was the granddad. Cherish that thought.

‘This murder you’re on,’ he said, ‘all very smash-and-grab.’ Implying that arresting then releasing two suspects in quick succession was chaotic in some way. ‘Lost your touch?’

Shows how much you understand. Gill hated it when he talked about her work, especially as she knew in her bones she was the better copper. Dave at chief superintendent grade was out of his depth, wearing armbands in a tidal wave.

‘Just remind me, Dave – how many murders you been SIO on? Three, wasn’t it, last count. Stick to what you know – then again, your division,’ she countered, ‘reported crime up two per cent, rest of us still on a decrease. There’s always early retirement, Dave.’ She hung up, then wondered if he knew when break-time was.

Sammy said goodnight. She pointed to her cheek, demanding a kiss.

‘How’s it feel now?’ she asked him.

‘Just a bit achy,’ he said. ‘What are we doing at Christmas?’

Not snowboarding, pal. ‘Grandma’s,’ she said, ‘I told you.’

‘Forgot.’

‘Why?’

‘Emma was asking.’

Was she now? Planning to poach him? ‘OK,’ she said brightly. ‘Well, that’s what we’re doing. And you can have your mates round one day in the holidays – be a break from all that revision you’ll be doing.’

Shouldn’t it be getting easier, Gill thought, the whole post marriage stuff? When she heard of people splitting up amicably, it was beyond her grasp. She couldn’t ever see a time when she and Sammy would play happy blended families, popping round to Dave’s for a jolly Christmas dinner or to celebrate New Year. Auld Lang Syne. Gill would sooner feed the tart mistletoe stuffed in her turkey and stick holly in Dave’s Y-fronts.