Authors: M.R. Hall
When the
memories finally came it had been as simple as pushing open a door: she was
right there in Aunty Penny's house, aged five, dressed in her knee-length skirt
and buckled shoes. She and Katy abandoned the television in the front room with
its snowy black and white picture and climbed the stairs to play with their
Sindy dolls. The top floor of the house always smelled of cigarette smoke and
sickly rose- scented air freshener, but when Dad came to collect her it smelled
of him too. It was the smell of his bedclothes first thing in the morning and
his dirty shirts in the washing basket. There were noises coming from under
Aunty Penny's bedroom door, frightening noises: Aunty Penny in pain, Dad
grunting as if he was hurting her. Jenny pretended not to hear, but Katy stood
at the top of the stairs and burst into snivelling tears. Jenny attempted to
drag her into her room, where a closed door would separate them from the monstrous
sounds, but Katy wouldn't move. She clung to the banister, her sobs becoming
more and more hysterical, and when Jenny yanked on her arm she lashed out and
scratched at her face.
She hadn't meant
to push Katy down the stairs - just away - but she couldn't deny that there had
been a murderous intensity to her sudden eruption of rage. Through streaming
eyes she had watched her cousin fall backwards, her limbs windmilling as she
turned a half-somersault in mid-air. The back of her neck struck the treads
with a sharp report, and she flopped in a rag-doll tumble onto the patterned
tiles of the hall floor, her skirt thrown up, exposing her white knickers.
Dad burst out of
the bedroom, still buttoning his shirt, and raced to the foot of the stairs.
Aunty Penny had followed moments later, holding his shoes, her normally sleek
black hair in an untidy mess. Dad shouted at her to call an ambulance, but she
just stood over Katy's twisted body and screamed. Peering through the
banisters, Jenny saw that something was leaking from Katy's mouth and that she
had wet herself. It was Dad who grabbed the phone from the hall table. He spoke
into it with the same tone of voice he used talking to customers at his garage.
He seemed to forget about Aunty Penny as he yanked on his shoes and came back
up the stairs. Jenny was ready with a lie, she was going to protest that Katy
fell trying to push
her
down the stairs, but Dad didn't ask what happened. He held her chin in his
rough hand, so tightly that it hurt. Quietly, so that Penny couldn't hear, he
said, 'Breathe a word of what happened to Katy, and you'll end up like her. Do
you want that, Jenny?'
Jenny shook her
head.
Steve came to
the end and looked out across the stream at the meadow.
Impatient for
his reaction, Jenny said, 'You wanted it to be my father, didn't you?'
'It was. And
your aunt.'
'No. It wasn't.
I could have turned away, I could have run down the stairs, I could have
shouted at them to stop, but I
didn't. . .'
'You were five
years old.'
'Age has got
nothing to do with it. What I did was
in
me. I can still feel it, how I felt then . . . the rage.'
'It wasn't your
fault, Jenny.'
A cool gust of
breeze caught her legs and gave her goose- bumps. She hugged them tighter,
beginning to wish she hadn't shown Steve the notes after all. 'It
was
my fault. And
in this life there's no redemption, only the hope you'll never do anything like
it again. Some manage, some don't.'
'You can't
bracket yourself with psychopaths like Craven, Jenny. It's completely different.'
'He did me a
favour though, didn't he? It took staring a murderer in the face to understand
what was staring back at me in the mirror every morning.'
'You're
not
a murderer.'
Jenny nodded,
not because she believed him, but because she was tired of talking about it
already. She knew what she was and would just have to live with it. All that
separated her from Craven and his kind was a degree of self-awareness, an
ability to spend a lifetime striving to atone without delusions of having been
cleansed by a higher power.
Steve said,
'What will you do? Will there be more therapy?'
'Dr Allen thinks
I'm doing exactly the right thing. Every day I go to work I soothe the wound a
little more.'
'Haven't you
ever thought there might be something else, something that doesn't tie you to
the past?'
'I think it's
you who's longing to move on, Steve, not me.'
'Not from you,
Jenny.' He held the notes up in his fist. 'And not because of this.'
He looked
beautiful with the ripples from the water reflected on his face, his body taut
and lean beneath his T-shirt. Delicate, that was the word. He looked delicate.
She thought she might cry.
Jenny said, 'You
don't want me to be the mother of your children.'
'Who said
anything about children?'
'You'd make a
good father.'
'I want you to
come with me. Try it for a while, a few weeks. I'm not asking you to leave your
job. Treat it as a holiday - you can't tell me you don't need one.'
She was tempted,
painfully so. She could think of nothing she would rather do than run away, but
she knew that she couldn't. It was time to stand and face the truth. Her cure,
if there could ever be one, was right here, and in her office, and in the
mortuary and the courtroom, one by one laying the restless dead to rest.
'You know what
you should do, Steve? Go to France. Get a new life and a pretty girlfriend, and
if she doesn't mind too much, look me up every now and then.'
She stretched
out her legs and got to her feet, moving carefully so as not to jar her sore
neck. Steve stepped over to help her up.
'You've got
leaves stuck to your back.'
She let him
brush them off with his hand, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin
cotton dress, but as he moved to kiss her she dipped her head and his lips
grazed her forehead.
She took the
notes from him, and eased away.
Steve said, 'Do
you mind if I sit here for a while? I'd like to say goodbye.'
'Of course not.'
She smiled. 'Watch out for the ghosts.'
And she left him
standing by the stream, watching the brown trout flick this way and that, quick
as lightning. But when she stepped inside and glanced out through the kitchen
window he was gone.
I am grateful
once again to Maria Rejt for her guiding hand, and to my wife, Patricia, for
her unfailing encouragement and support. Also, I would like to thank all those
readers who have so kindly written to me from the far corners of the world over
the course of the last year, many concerned about Jenny Cooper's welfare. I
will do my level best to look after her, I assure you, but she doesn't always make
it easy.