Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

Tears stood in her eyes. ‘You are so wrong,’ she said. ‘And he was wrong,’ she went on. ‘He misjudged-’

‘Don’t!’ He tried to silence her. She was tearing it down. Making his death meaningless, pointless, pathetic. ‘You were the one said he was brave, remember? Would you rather he had been a coward?’

‘He’d still be here,’ she said.

He felt the space between them, a chasm, steep-sided, too wide to bridge. Jagged rocks like knives far below.

‘But he wouldn’t be our Jason,’ he said.

She gathered together the newspapers; she was still wearing her coat. ‘I’m going to Sheena’s.’

‘I’ve made some food.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

She couldn’t go like this. Leaving everything so tangled. ‘Val, can we talk?’

‘There’s nothing to say.’ Resignation blunt in her voice.

‘Please?’ He wanted to tell her he loved her, but the words wouldn’t come. He watched her walk away and heard the front door close quietly behind her.

He moved to turn the gas ring off and caught a glimpse of Jason out in the garden, sitting on the bench, bent over his guitar, then glancing up, hair falling away from his face and smiling at Andrew.

Louise

When Louise got back from work, she made some pasta and tuna for their tea, then booted up the laptop. The pieces were there on the internet, and after them threads of messages readers had posted. Outraged and virulent, most of them. Luke was Borstal material; he’d obviously grown up without moral guidance or discipline, etc., etc. These people believed what they’d read, swallowed it hook, line and sinker. About Luke, about her. The impotence, the inability to shout the truth from the rooftops was tempered by the miserable shame Louise felt, the sense of failure.

Ruby said school had been weird but okay. Some of the kids thought it was cool that Luke had been in the papers again and didn’t really care what it said about him.

‘The cult of celebrity,’ Louise muttered.

Intent on maintaining a brave face, after tea she persuaded Ruby to run through her pieces and watched her.

‘Excellent!’ she said.

‘The wig moved a bit.’

‘I never noticed,’ she said.

Their visit to Luke was brief that evening. Louise read some of the papers out to him. Some deluded part of her hoping that he’d be so annoyed at what had been said that he’d wake up fighting. He never moved. Not a flicker.

Louise went round to see Angie later that evening. The last snowfal had all but gone now, rain most of the day, so just a drift left along the fence where it was shaded and sheltered, though more was forecast. Gusts of wind rattled the branches in the sycamore and made the lights swing. She’d keep them on, she decided, a bit of Luke shining in the dark. A beacon. She could hear the clatter of a gate somewhere close by, and a dog whining and yapping.

She was disconcerted when Sian opened the door in tears.

‘What’s wrong?’ Was Angie bad? Had she collapsed again? Louise went to put her arm round Sian, but the girl moved away into the living room and Louise went after her.

‘The stuff in the papers,’ Sian said. Angie looked miserable too.

‘Oh love, ignore it,’ Louise told the girl. ‘It’s a pack of lies. They’d write anything to sell a few more copies. We know it’s not true.’ Sounding stronger than she felt. ‘You know Luke. He’s no angel, but he’s not a devil either. He’s not got a mean bone in his body.’

They were both looking peculiar. Uncertainty stole through her. ‘What is it?’

Angie bit her lip, put her hand to her head.

‘I didn’t say any of that,’ Sian said in a rush. ‘Not what they put. They changed it, they made it sound really bad.’

‘Sian?’ Louise said, perplexed.

‘I’m so sorry, Louise.’ The girl started crying. ‘I didn’t…’

Louise felt everything collide: the girl weeping, the headlines, Andrew Barnes on the phone. ‘You talked to the papers?’ she said, quaking. A bad taste in her throat.

‘They kept ringing. They just wanted to get an idea of what Luke was like. Human interest for people. I never said those things, Louise. I never.’

Louise covered her eyes and pressed her lips tight together, felt the rapid thud in her chest and the busy swarm humming in her head. It was all such an awful mess.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh God.’ Louise sat down heavily on the sofa.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Sian sobbed.

‘It’s okay,’ Louise said, still smarting with shock and aggravation but knowing that the girl needed her forgiveness. ‘It’ll be okay.’ The words shallow in the overheated room.

Andrew

He stood watching the house; the night was cold and foggy, the pavements and fences shone with a dull gleam under the street lights. The thick air tasted of tar and seemed to cling to his clothes, making them damp.

The house was a bog-standard three-bedroom semi. One of thousands built by the local authority in the post-war period. Council houses. Many of them sold since in right-to-buy schemes, but this one didn’t bear any of the marks of owner occupation. No big extension, fake stone cladding or laughable mullioned windows, no garage crammed into the space at the side of the house. Just red-brick, a door in the middle, a window either side of it and two on the storey above them. And a satellite dish. In front of the house, a concrete driveway, an old Vauxhall parked there. There was a yellow glow of light through the glass in the door and electric blue from one of the upstairs rooms. Someone watching telly? Him?

Two weeks since Louise had given him the name, and still nothing had happened. Bland reports from Martine claiming they were making progress but never any specifics. And after two weeks he was still free. Going about his business. Laughing in their faces.

Thomas Garrington.

Andrew hadn’t been able to find him on the hospital system. He had to guess at dates of birth around Halloween. Louise had told him Garrington was celebrating his birthday when he and Luke clashed at the party. He had to guess which year, try days either side. He must have entered thirty different combinations, and nothing. Perhaps Garrington had never been to Wythenshawe Hospital. Perhaps he’d been born at MRI, or the family had moved to Manchester in recent times and managed to get rehoused.

While he had been hunched over Harriet’s terminal, stabbing at keys and crossing off combinations, he hadn’t thought about what he might do with any information he found. The acquisition of it was all that mattered. Knowledge is power.

In the same way, he was unaware what he might do if Thomas Garrington appeared now. But the very prospect of it made him clench his fists, sent his breathing up a gear. Seared in his memory was the glimpse he’d had: Garrington and the girl by the front gate, yelling as Jason and the other boy struggled over Luke. The look on Garrington’s face: exhilaration. Wild and high and excited.

Andrew heard footsteps in the fog and stepped back into the alleyway. The steps grew closer, were drowned out by the noise of a passing car, then he saw a man and his dog across the other side of the road. When they had gone, swallowed up by the fog again, he resumed his vigil.

The anger came in waves. He didn’t resist but let it carry him out to the depths. Allowed the pictures to bloom in his head: saw himself knocking the boy down and beating him senseless with a baseball bat, spurred on by the meaty sound of wood on flesh and bone; driving into him with the car and reversing back over his body, the satisfying jolt as the wheels went over him; felt the heft of a butcher’s knife in his hand and the ease with which it slid into the boy’s chest and throat and belly, watching his expression alter from belligerent to wary to fearful then anguished. Peeling back the layers of pretence. You hurt too. You bleed.