Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

Amy

Merrily folded the letter. Oh God, oh God, oh God .

‘Erm… I’m with Dennis,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘I think you should take this to the police.’

David Shelbone reached for the letter and quickly pocketed it.

‘No,’ he said very quietly.

‘David, just a couple of days ago she tried to kill herself.’

‘Tell me, do you trust your daughter when she tells you something?’

‘I…’ It was the things Jane didn’t tell you about… ‘Yeah. I suppose I do.’ She thought quickly. He wouldn’t want to go to the police for two principal reasons: one , that Amy might indeed do something stupid if she thought there was a search on for her, and two , it would confirm any social worker’s suspicions.

But this development might be more serious than David Shelbone could imagine. For instance, how much did he know about Layla Riddock? Anything at all?

‘She’s never lied to us, you see,’ he said. ‘Not from being a small child. Not about anything. It’s the way she was brought up, certainly, but also the way she is.’

Merrily sighed. ‘She lied – I’m sorry, but she lied about Jane, didn’t she?’

‘No!’ he insisted. ‘She didn’t. She said your daughter was there. The rest was implied. She didn’t lie.’

‘So when you told Sophie that your wife—’

‘ I lied. Hazel’s gone to try and find her.’

‘She knows where to look?’

‘She has a good idea, yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Up near Birmingham. It’s where Amy was born. And where her mother died.’

‘And Amy knows this?’

‘We assume she does.’

‘From…’

‘Initially, from the so-called messages she received.’

‘The spirit messages?’

‘Whatever they were, they were horribly accurate. And so, in the end, we had to tell her where she came from. And what happened to her mother.’

Merrily said, ‘Do you think you could tell me ?’

She’d been born Amy Jukes at Tipton in the Black Country. Her parents were even married before the happy event. Just about.

Justine was seventeen when Amy arrived and not yet a heroin user. She came from a respectable family, was doing A levels, hoping to become a doctor. This was what the court was told.

The father, Wayne Jukes, was twenty-two, an ‘assistant manager’ at a night club. What this actually meant was that Wayne had been responsible for selling various stimulants to the punters. He also did a little pill-peddling around the schools and colleges, for a bit of extra cash, and that was how he met Justine. Wayne wore nice suits and a tie and was smooth and plausible. He had a Toyota sports car, so it didn’t take long.

Justine’s parents were disappointed, naturally, but they thought Wayne was a presentable enough boy, with an apparently promising managerial position. They helped Wayne and Justine get a house, a little semi on a not-bad estate, ready for the baby.

David Shelbone knew all these details from the Social Services people in the Black Country and in Hereford. He’d also gone out of his way to obtain the inquest and court reports in the local papers – destroying them, of course, before Amy learned to read. He’d even traced Justine’s parents. David was very thorough: anything that might help understand Amy better, he and Hazel wanted to know.

Justine had been very young, had never really wanted this baby, found it awfully hard work, especially with Wayne out most nights, pursuing his junior managerial role. Justine, at home with the infant Amy, had very rapidly become depressed, and it became clear that Wayne Jukes had taken to slipping her a little something to make life seem easier. Sometimes he’d even keep her company.

They thought they were cool, rising above it. They thought because he was in the business somehow that meant they could control it. And they were young, too young for life to appear seriously bad. When you were young, you bounced.

It was a long time before Justine’s parents realized what was happening. By then, Wayne was himself using more than he was selling – too far gone to realize he was being eased out of the club operation because he was becoming untrustworthy, careless, a risk.

And the mortgage wasn’t getting paid, and the baby cried too much and Justine complained sometimes – to the extent that Wayne had found it expedient to give her a little tap from time to time.

David Shelbone was telling the story in his colourless, hesitant way, but Merrily was seeing it in harsh documentary flashes, hearing the voices, the accents, the head-spinning, squashy, bloody, sobbing reality of those little taps.

There was a serious falling-out with her family, and Wayne and Justine sold the house and got a small flat in a run-down area, at the end of one of those streets that went on for ever, a greasy ribbon of tatty garages and betting shops, chip shops, half-dead pubs.

At the very end was a church, which had been a big parish church back in the days when this had been a village street but now had a congregation of about seven pensioners. Some days Justine would retreat into the church, taking the baby, when Wayne was in one of his moods.

Which was most days, because Wayne was drinking heavily now as well. He’d made friends in one of the half-dead pubs and Justine had found it best not to be around – or to be there but completely out of it – when Wayne got home.

It was worse at night, obviously. A neighbour, who cleaned the church for the vicar – who had four other collapsing congregations to try and shore up – became concerned for Justine and gave her a key to the side door next to the vestry, and some nights that was where Justine would go, carrying the baby and a carving knife in case there was anyone already in there.

And one night there was.

Wayne had been wondering for a long time where Justine went, the times she wasn’t there when he came home in need of some kind of action. So one night he left the pub twenty minutes earlier than usual and waited in a derelict doorway across the street and followed her when she came out with the kid. Next day, he found the church key in the back pocket of Justine’s jeans and had a copy cut for himself.

And that same summer night, when Justine came into the church with Amy, Wayne was waiting for them behind the dusty, moth-eaten drapes in front of the vestry door.

It might have ended differently if Justine hadn’t done some business of her own that afternoon with a bloke she and Wayne used to know when Wayne was at the club – a bloke who gave her a little something for her trouble. If Justine hadn’t shot the little something into her arm before she came out, if she hadn’t been up there and ready for anybody, Wayne included, it might have ended with just a few more little taps.

‘And Amy saw all this?’ Merrily said. ‘How old was she?’

‘Nearly three.’

‘Dear God, that’s old enough to absorb everything. Even if she had no conscious memory, it would all be there.’

‘The Social Services were very careful about where she was taken,’ David Shelbone said. ‘The grandparents didn’t want her – they’d recently taken in an elderly relative, and, well…’

‘Mmm.’

‘It was an emergency, obviously. They wanted to get the child well out of the area, and we were experienced, reliable foster-parents, unencumbered at the time. We were approached, told the background. We were fully prepared.’ He fell silent.

‘And?’

‘Nothing to cause alarm. Not ever. No particular problems at all – and, believe me, Hazel and I have coped with some very taxing children in our time. But Amy settled down remarkably quickly. No nightmares beyond the norm. Nothing to suggest suppressed memories of violence. She was always a very well-balanced, if rather serious child. Our daughter. We both decided very quickly that, if at all possible, she should stay with us and become our daughter.’