‘Oh, I’ve heard your side of the story, Joe. I went along to your sentencing, and I sat there open-bloody-mouthed as I listened to what that poor female barrister had to say on your behalf. I hope they paid her lavishly for the public humiliation. I heard what you told your probation officer. I heard an awful lot of snivelling about life with Zoe, I heard shitloads of self-justification and self-pity. It’s Zoe’s side of the story we never heard! The judge might have been taken in but, believe me, I wasn’t. I’ve come across a thousand men exactly like you, violent men who think their women deserve everything they get. So let me tell you this, Joseph Scott: until you take responsibility and accept it was entirely your fault—not Zoe’s, not Hannah’s, not Frederick’s—until then, you needn’t even bother applying for membership of the human race, so far as I’m concerned.’
‘Look, Marie—’
‘Oh, piss off.’ A click, then a continuous tone. As rejections go, this one was pretty unequivocal.
•
Even the rain spat in his face as he stepped into the street. Passing cars seemed to scream, so that he actually ducked and pressed his hands to his ears. The pavement was coated in de-icing grit. It crunched under his feet.
A bus lumbered around the workmen’s barrier. The sign on its broad crimson forehead read york. When it pulled ponderously into a stop and disgorged a mother with a pushchair, Joseph began to sprint down the gritty pavement.
Just a glimpse, he told himself as he found a seat; just one sight of his beautiful daughter. He’d make sure he wasn’t spotted this time.
The bus stopped at every village on the way to York and became mired in traffic on the inner ring road. Joseph jumped off and ran the last half-mile, arriving gasping at the school gates with three minutes to spare. He knew it was the right place, because he’d used Akash’s computer to search for Scarlet’s name and found her among other award winners on a school website. Someone had left a property magazine on the bench outside the gates; he sat down and pretended to be absorbed in a selection of three-bedroomed semis in Tadcaster.
When the school bell rang, it seemed to be hooked up to an electrical circuit that ran right through his body. He jerked to his feet. A door banged, followed by the thunder of five hundred pairs of shoes as girls began to stampede down a path and through the gates. Joseph forced himself to sit down again. Any minute now. He hadn’t clapped eyes on Scarlet since she was ten, but he’d know her anywhere: a skinny pixie with long legs and a wild mane of reddish hair. She used to sit on his lap and wrap thin arms around his neck. Lovely Daddy, she used to say, when she wanted to get around him. Dad-
ee
. She’d smack kisses onto his nose, and pat his cheek with her palm. He’d always given in.
The pupils were a spring tide, hugging and texting and gossiping and promising to phone. Some pushed bicycles, others ran for buses. Traffic was gridlocked as parents in cars tried to inch closer. Gradually, though, the tide slowed to a steady stream, then to a trickle. By three thirty the street was quiet. The Minster bells began to ring.
Joseph leaned forward to stare at the pavement, resting his elbows on his knees and his mouth in his hands. He’d missed her. She must have walked right past. He hadn’t even recognised his own daughter—what kind of a father was he? Useless. He was useless, and he needn’t bother applying for membership of the human race so far as Marie was concerned. He shut his eyes.
It was dusk when he raised his head. A small sound had disturbed him. Not five yards away, frozen in mid-stride and staring at him in horrified fascination, stood a ghost.
Scarlet
Oh my God. I honestly thought my heart was going to smash through my ribs and go bouncing along the pavement like a rubber ball.
I was supposed to have violin on Monday, but the lesson got cancelled. Violin bitch was ill. I hoped it was something really serious, like cholera. Music teachers get shirty if you don’t turn up for your lesson, but they don’t practise what they preach. To add insult to injury, I’d waited nearly twenty minutes before anyone bothered to tell me. I normally walk home with a sixth-former called Rhiannon on Mondays. She lives in Faith Lane, and has judo. So I waved to her through the door of the gym, and set off alone.
Evening was falling already. The streetlights had come on, and the Minster bell ringers were practising when I walked past the tennis courts and out through the school gates. I love the feeling of a winter afternoon, when it’s frosty and clear and the sky turns mauve as day slides into night. There’s nowhere more Christmassy than York in winter. It’s like a postcard come alive: lights in the old shops, and narrow streets, and the smell of roasting chestnuts from the man with his cart. The air felt like icy glass, as though it might shatter.
There were the usual lost tourists wandering around, talking in French or German or Cantonese. A party of choristers from the Minster school passed in a crocodile, on their way to Evensong. I knew some of the older ones because our two schools do stuff together. They’re great singers but, believe me, they’re not as angelic as they look. Especially Zac. He’s hot and he knows it: tall and blond. He wolf-whistled quietly. I put up a finger, but I couldn’t help smiling.
The pavement’s very wide just there. Once the boys had gone I began to play hopscotch along the paving stones. Not so that anyone would notice; I was playing it in my head. Suddenly I got this feeling that there was something absolutely crucial nearby, something I
had
to see. So I stopped counting stones and looked around.
There’s a bench beside the pavement, where the lost tourists stop to peer at their maps. A man was sitting on this bench. He didn’t look like a tourist. He was wearing a black overcoat that fell almost to his ankles, and a satiny scarf, and he had a lot of dark hair falling across his face. His mouth was pressed into his hands and his eyes were closed. I couldn’t stop staring. It wasn’t that I recognised him; it was just that this person seemed really,
really
important.
Then his eyes opened. He looked straight at me, and I was as scared as I’ve ever been since the day Mum died. In fact, it was as though Mum was dying all over again. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even breathe. It seemed as though I was going to catch on fire, the way he was staring with those crazy eyes.
Then he whispered something:
Zoe.
That did it. I was running even before I’d told my legs to run. I rocketed down a snickelway that I often use as a shortcut, and I was sure I could hear his footsteps thudding along behind me. I didn’t stop running until I was in the middle of town, among shops and bright lights. I was gasping for breath as I dodged between the Christmas market stalls and shot down Coppergate. I looked back to see if he’d followed, and I’m sure I glimpsed that long coat in the crowd. I bumped into lots of people on the narrow pavement across the bridge, and kept having to say sorry. A really ugly woman wagged her finger and told me to watch where I was going, but I didn’t even answer. I just needed to be home.
The scariest part was Faith Lane. It was very dark there, under the city wall. I was afraid he might have overtaken me somehow and be lying in wait. I knew it was stupid, but I started thinking perhaps he planned to kidnap me and smuggle me away. I’d just disappear. Children do disappear. I mean, what was he doing waiting outside my school?
It wasn’t until I opened our front door, called out and heard Gramps reply, that I felt even half safe. I started to sniffle with fright, so I charged straight upstairs to my room. Flotsam and Jetsam were curled on my rug in a snowy heap of softness. Two pairs of doll-blue eyes looked up at me as I rushed in. Flotsam yawned, and Jetsam squeaked a contented ‘hello’. Mum’s cats. I didn’t stop to stroke them, though. I pushed a wedge against my bedroom door, rolled into bed and pulled the duvet over my head.
The music was playing in my head; the music that means death is coming. It has surround sound and built-in fear, and it always makes me want to scream. The man with a very deep voice was singing, though I can never quite make out the words or even the tune. Instead of words or a tune, his singing brings me terror.
Everything had gone terribly wrong. The air was about to explode. Mum was laughing too much, and Theo ran to hide behind the sofa. Dad was shouting:
Jesus Christ, Zoe, I can’t go
on.
I didn’t know why he hit her. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why. I screamed and he hit her again and she just went down, really fast and really hard. There was a horrible clunking sound. That was the sound of my mum dying. And the man kept on singing.
Later, once the ambulance had come, a policewoman took us children around to a neighbour’s house. The neighbour told us they’d taken Dad away and he’d never trouble us again. Those were her exact words, as she squinted out from behind her lace curtains at the police cars in the road:
Don’t you worry. He’ll
never trouble you again.
‘But he’ll be coming to collect us soon, won’t he?’ I asked her.
She dropped the lace and went to make the policewoman a cup of tea.
I remembered what that woman said as I lay shivering under my duvet.
He’ll never trouble you again
. Well, she was wrong because he was troubling me now. Suddenly, I understood something else: the man who talked to Theo and Ben in the park. He knew all our names. He had dark hair and round glasses like Harry Potter.
Dad was stalking us.
In films and books, the murderer is the last person you expect it to be. Normally it’s the motherly cook or the shy young vicar. It’s never the creepy guy with the weird laugh who’s always sharpening knives. It was like that with Mum being killed. Until then, I used to think my dad was the best. He was a fun person who wore cuddly jerseys, took us to feed the ducks and read bedtime stories. He looked after us. He kept us safe. I thought I was very lucky, because in my eyes my dad was much more handsome and kind than other people’s.
The kitchen door creaked. Gramps’ voice. ‘Scarlet! Please come down. Sca-ar-letta!’
I crept along to the bathroom, locked the door and faced myself in the mirror. I didn’t look too good. I had little piggy eyes from crying, so I filled a basin with warm water and splashed it over my face. That helped. I ran a comb through my fringe, exhaled loudly—I learned that in drama, it’s good for managing nerves—and forced myself down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Gramps had his arm around Hannah, and she was leaning her face against his shoulder. They weren’t speaking, and there was a terrible sadness hanging about them. It made me feel dark. He kissed the top of her head.
‘We have to play this absolutely straight,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘Play what absolutely straight?’ I asked.
•
Hannah
Freddie was playing his harpsichord as I stepped into the hall that Monday morning. Complex cadences permeated the air with calm, like a lavender candle.
‘Hello, Freddie?’ I called, stopping by the mirror to pat my hair. More grey than fair now, but the hairdresser did wonders and it was cut in quite a youthful bob. I liked the way it swung.
Mondays were oases in the pandemonium of our lives. Ben went to nursery school, and I had only one lecture. Freddie and I had developed a small, contented ritual: I always visited the delicatessen on Micklegate and came home with French bread, brie and a salad. We’d have lunch at the kitchen table. This was how I used to imagine our autumn years would be: just the two of us, talking and reading and loving our way into a mellow old age, visited by our grandchildren at the weekends and spoiling them rotten. We’d begun saving for a cruise to Alaska and an adventure on the Trans-Siberian railway. I never in my wildest nightmares imagined we might become our grandchildren’s only guardians, agonising over every decision, our lives entirely subsumed by their needs. So I looked forward to Monday lunchtimes.
I was warming my hands on the Aga when the music stopped. Frederick appeared in the doorway. He lit up at the sight of me—literally, as though a torch had switched on behind the fading honey-brown of his eyes. I felt my own face lift in response.
‘Hello!’ he cried, with the emphasis on the second syllable. Hel-
lo
! He always managed to make it sound as though my arrival was a delightful surprise. He came over to kiss me. ‘I didn’t hear you. How were your undergrads?’
‘Two were actually asleep, one played games on his phone, and one was grinning at her laptop—I’m fairly sure she was watching cute cat videos on YouTube.’
Frederick had opened the fridge door and was peering at the shelves. ‘I’m not sure what we’re having for lunch.’
I felt a twinge of irritation at his scattiness. He knew perfectly well what we were having! I’d bought brie and baguettes and other goodies, as I had done every Monday for years. It was waiting on the table. I could smell warm crust, faintly yeasty.
‘It’s all here,’ I said briskly, taking a seat. ‘You ready to eat?’
No, he wasn’t ready. He stooped over a chair back, gripping it. There were age spots on his knuckles. ‘A letter came this morning.’
I sat with a baguette in my hand and a rictus smile on my face, looking up at him. For some reason, I was thinking of the moment we heard Zoe had been murdered. We were sitting at that same table; we were happy, laughing, hosting a dinner party for good friends.
It was murder, you know. The lawyers did a little pleasant plea-bargaining over a cup of coffee (they denied it, but I’m sure that’s what happened) tipped sweet-smelling scent all over the crime and rechristened it manslaughter. But I know what it was, all right, and so did the judge and the police and the ushers and the woman from the CPS and all those wigged barristers who wouldn’t meet my eye.
Frederick pushed an envelope across the table. ‘He wants to see them.’
‘They don’t want to see him.’
‘He warned us he’d go to court.’
I read through the papers with a sense of disbelief. It was an application on a standard form. It sounded innocuous enough:
Joseph William Scott applies for contact with the children Scarlet
Zoe Scott, Theodore Marcus Scott and Benjamin Frederick Scott.