Death Watch

Ally Judd stood at her bedroom window looking at the harsh neon sign that read 24-HOUR WASH, buzzing on, buzzing off, buzzing on, flooding the double bed with green light. Through the party wall she heard the washing machines return to life in mid-cycle, the driers turning like whispers. She hadn’t thought of that – that with the power back on they’d restart.

On the bed she’d laid out some photos. She’d slept for an hour after she’d taken the sedatives, then started awake, crying out, so that the WPC on the step had come up to check she was all right.

Alone again, she’d laid out Bry’s life in pictures.

Her throat was dry and she still hadn’t cried. It was the guilt, she knew, that held her back. The knowledge that now she wouldn’t have to tell him that she had to leave, that she’d loved him once, but that the love had been ground out of her, drained, by her life on Erebus Street, and the bad blood which seemed now to be in the very nature of the Judd family.

She sat on the edge of the duvet and picked up the first picture: a snapshot of Bry and his twin, Norma Jean, her teeth encased in a brace. They’d be eight or nine, Ally guessed, and already the mirror-like resemblance was being torn apart by the difference in sex: Bry’s brow getting stronger, his face broadening, while Norma Jean’s

Then, the picture she’d taken on her first day out with Bry, on the front at Wells, taken by a stranger from Scotland – Pennycuick, she remembered, because they’d laughed at the name and got her to spell it out. Ally looked bitterly at her seventeen-year-old body in its shorts and bikini top – lithe, the waist impossibly slim. She’d had curves then, not this drab figure like an ironing board stood on end. Bry didn’t like the sun, so he was shading his eyes, an arm draped round her neck. The year they met – 1991. The year before everything changed, the year before they’d lost Norma Jean. After that, Bry hadn’t smiled much, but she’d still been drawn to him – a vulnerable, damaged man she thought she could fix.

The wedding day next; what was left of his family, all of her family – worse luck. But at least Bry’s smile was real enough amongst the sullen smirks. She’d been three months pregnant with the baby they’d lost. Andy in the background. She thought the cruelty of it was almost unbearable; Andy, alone after Marie had died, hiding in a family photo.

Next, holidays. The Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, just bliss: the music, the heat, and the thought of all those miles between them and Erebus Street. They stood together, astonished at how much fun life could be.

Back home it was always family. She bit her lip. A picture of Neil next, a laughing six-year-old, thrown over his brother Bry’s shoulder, her grinning behind. And then, finally, Christmas this year: her and Bry on the beach at Old Hunstanton. Bry, trying to be happy, but

And a new picture. A secret picture.

It had lain on the bedside table slipped inside the psalter he’d given her. A snapshot, him in swimming shorts, on a beach. She covered her mouth with her hand. She had a right to be happy, just like anyone else. She propped the picture on the bedside table beside the night-light they’d lit together. And they’d said a prayer for Bry’s soul. They hadn’t even thought about the future. That would have been a sin too.

She broke the line of thought. Next door she could still hear the washing machines. Neil and Andy shared the flat above the launderette. But Andy was at the police station, and would be all night. Neil slept heavily, and noise wouldn’t wake him anyway, unless he picked up the vibrations. She’d leave it until the morning. Then she thought about sleeping, in this bed, their bed, and decided she could deal with the machines now.

The female PC had retreated from the front step to the squad car parked at the T-junction, blocking traffic, the thin squawk of the radio just audible. Looking up, Ally saw a clear night sky, the moon, going to earth now, over behind the abattoir. She put the key in the lock of the launderette and turned the Chubb – but the door wouldn’t open. She turned it back and it did. She’d left it open.

‘God,’ she said, thinking she might cry now. One of the washers had malfunctioned and there was a pool of water in front of it; a detergent slick. She grabbed a plastic laundry basket, knelt down in the water and pulled open the porthole, dragging out the contents.

Inside was a pair of heavy-duty overalls. They were covered in red stains. Pressing the material to her nose she caught the unmistakable scent of blood: ferrous, acrid. She fumbled for the name tag inside the collar.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘No.’