Mice

45

The next day, Sunday, Mum and I slept in. We broke our routine and treated ourselves to a huge cooked breakfast — eggs, bacon, mushrooms and fried tomatoes — and ate it sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through the numerous supplements in the Sunday paper.

Mum looked ten years younger, the exhaustion, the dreadful strain of the previous morning, had vanished from her face.

‘Did you sleep well?’ I ventured.

She smiled broadly. ‘Very well, thanks, Shelley, very well indeed. Like a baby.’

I smiled too. Mum was sleeping again. That was a good sign.

That day had a special, magical quality to it, like Christmas Day. After everything that had happened the day before, after everything we’d been through since the early hours of April the eleventh, the nauseating roller-coaster ride that our lives had become, the relief that it was all finally over was exquisite.

I was in a state of bliss. I felt like the survivor of a shipwreck who, after drifting for weeks in an open lifeboat, lashed by storms, capsized again and again by waves the size of houses, is rescued against all the odds and suddenly finds herself sitting before a blazing fire, wrapped in blankets, sipping a hot drink. I relished every small, mundane detail of the world around me as if I were witnessing a miracle: the way the mushroom cloud of milk slowly spread its looping tentacles into the darkest depths of my coffee, the motes of dust gyrating like miniature solar systems in the sunlight slanting through the kitchen window, the minuscule purple veins on Mum’s lowered eyelids as she read the paper, the distant church bells that merged into one faint, crystalline note and seemed to speak of an idyllic, chocolate-box past. I relished all of it, I loved everything that there was for being.

We didn’t get dressed until eleven, and even then we just sat back down at the kitchen table and carried on reading the paper and made yet another pot of coffee.

We didn’t talk very much about the events of the previous day, but every now and then a thought would float into our heads and one of us would speak.

‘Do you think the blackmailer was telling the truth?’ I asked. ‘You know, when he said he hadn’t told anyone else that we’d killed Paul Hannigan?’

Mum considered. ‘Yes, I think he was. He told us the truth about his heart condition, after all.’

‘And about Paul Hannigan not having any close family who’ll come looking for him?’

‘That’s harder to say. That’s just what Hannigan told him. All I can say is that my gut feeling is it’s over now. I really believe it’s over now.’

A little later Mum exclaimed, ‘Imagine if I’d hit him, Shelley! We’d have had his body to get rid of, and that blasted car. Imagine!’

I shook my head, appalled at the thought of how close we’d come to having to enter that chamber of horrors all over again. What on earth would we have done with the fat man’s body? Buried it in the garden? Dug a grave in the vegetable patch? And what would we have done with the car? Abandoned it somewhere else with all the risks that entailed, or would it have been possible to sink it in one of the mine shafts in the national park as I’d suggested? It didn’t bear thinking about. .

‘Thank God you’re so cack-handed,’ I joked, but Mum didn’t laugh as I’d expected.

‘It’s like a miracle,’ she said. ‘I mean, how could I have missed from that close? The gun was virtually touching the back of his neck. It’s not possible, Shelley. It’s just not possible.’

Later still, thinking about the conversation we’d had the day before (Zugzwang. It’s an expression from chess.), I said, ‘It’s all been a bit like a game of chess, hasn’t it?’

‘I suppose so, in a way. We certainly had to think hard about every move we made.’

I thought about all the decisions Mum had made since she’d brought the chopping board crashing down on Paul Hannigan’s skull: to bury him in the garden instead of calling the police, to keep on with our routine as if nothing had happened, to dump the bin bags in the abandoned mines where they were never going to be found, to keep the gun, to stage the fat man’s death for the paramedics the moment she realized he’d died of a heart attack. So many difficult decisions, so many right moves.

‘You played a brilliant game of chess, Mum.’

‘We both did, Shelley. We both did.’

When my back was starting to ache from sitting in the wooden chair for so long and I was tired of reading about new fashion trends and new diets and new movies and new starlets, I said, ‘I don’t feel guilty about what we’ve done, Mum. I’m glad they’re both dead. I don’t feel guilty about any of it — not even about yesterday. He got what he deserved. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Everything we’ve done, everything — it’s all been in self-defence. Even yesterday.’

After lunch we drove into the countryside and went for a long walk through the water meadows by the river. It was another glorious day, and the colours of the landscape seemed incredibly vibrant. The yellow of the rape flowers was so bright I could hardly bear to look at it; it was like staring into the broiling heart of the sun. The sky was a deep cerulean blue, the distant hills an exquisite lavender, the young trees along the riverbank a lime green verging on yellow, the tall tussocky grass a rich emerald and the wild flowers that grew among it the purest zinc white.

‘It’s like being in a Van Gogh painting,’ Mum said. ‘It’s as if the colours haven’t been mixed on the palette at all, they’ve just come straight out of the tube.’

When we reached a secluded part of the river where the stinging nettles had been left to grow out of control, Mum made sure there were no walkers or fishermen around, then took the gun from her handbag and quickly tossed it into the river. It disappeared with a pleasing plosh.

‘What about water always giving up its secrets?’

‘Let it. They’ll never be able to trace the gun back to us. I just didn’t want it in the house any more.’

‘Are you sure we won’t need it?’

Mum put her arm around me. ‘Yes, Shelley, I’m sure. After everything we’ve been through, I’m not going to be frightened of anything ever again.’

In the shade of a weeping willow, in a little dip in the bone-dry earth, we burned Paul Hannigan’s driver’s licence. Mum held a lighter to it and slowly it turned black and the corners began to curl back on themselves in the heat. It produced a foul-smelling black smoke, which I thought was only fitting for the cremation of Paul Hannigan’s toxic soul. I felt immense relief as I watched his face melt and blister into unrecognizability.

The fat man’s revelation about the licence hadn’t triggered the horrible row with Mum I’d thought was inevitable — not even the day before, when we’d spent so many miserable hours indoors anxiously waiting for our fate to be decided. And now that the card was smouldering in the little dry hollow between us, I knew we were never going to have that argument. Mum was never going to question me about it, she was never going to reproach me, she was never going to bring the subject up again. I knew that she’d forgiven me.

Mum looked at me and smiled sweetly. ‘No more secrets?’

‘No more secrets,’ I agreed without hesitation.

When the flame had gone out and the heat had cooled, I poked the twisted black insect that was all that remained of Paul Hannigan’s driver’s licence, and it crumbled away to ashes.

Later that afternoon we both felt like sitting outside in the garden. Although my scars were healing well, I still had to be careful, and we looked around for a suitable swathe of shade to sit in.

‘What about there?’ Mum said pointing to the far end of the garden.

I blanched. She was pointing to the oval rose bed and the frothy exuberance of pink roses that gushed from it like an enormous floral fountain.

She saw my expression and realized her mistake. ‘Maybe it’s better over there by the—’

But I interrupted her. ‘No, by the rose bed’s fine.’

So we took our plastic garden chairs and sat in the cool shade of the roses just a few metres away from Paul Hannigan’s shallow grave. I mastered my revulsion, controlled it, philosophized it away. Whether I was near Paul Hannigan’s corpse or not, he was always going to be with me. In fact, I’d come to believe that he was a part of me now in just the same way that the tribesmen I’d seen on TV believed the wild pig or the monkey they killed became a part of them. There was no escaping him, there was no running away from him. Paul Hannigan was with me forever now. For better or worse.

The surreal scene even gave me an idea for a picture I thought I’d like to paint one day: two genteel Victorian ladies taking tea on the lawn, while in the flower bed behind them could just be made out a greening corpse in its grave clothes. I’d call it In the Midst of Life We Are in Death, from the line in the Christian burial service. Its message would be that no matter where we are or what we’re doing, death and horror are always near us. The challenge is to get on with our lives and be happy even though we can always see them out of the corner of our eye, blurred, but still recognizable in the background.

We dozed and chatted lazily, and when the whole of the front garden was painted in violet-blue shadow I lightly touched Mum’s shoulder.

‘Mm?’ She smiled drowsily without opening her eyes.

‘I want to go back to school, Mum,’ I said.

She opened her eyes now, and there was surprise and anxiety in them; the jagged furrow had returned to her brow. ‘But there’s only a few weeks to go to your exams, Shelley. All of your year is on study leave right now, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, ‘but there are some revision classes I’d quite like to go to. Mrs Harris has all the details, and I’d like to see some of the teachers again before the exams — especially Miss Briggs.’

Mum hadn’t expressed her real concern, and her brow remained furrowed. ‘What about those girls — Teresa Watson and the other two? What if they’re there?’

‘I don’t think they will be, Mum, I doubt revision classes would be of much interest to them, but if I do see them. .’

I remembered how I’d taken the knife from the dining-room table and plunged it into Paul Hannigan’s back; I remembered how I’d chased the fat man down the drive with bloodlust in my heart. If Teresa Watson touched me, I’d have her up against the wall with my hand crushing her windpipe before she knew what was happening to her. When she looked into my eyes, when she saw what I was capable of, she’d run a mile. I’d killed two men; I wasn’t going to be frightened of any schoolgirl.

‘Don’t worry. They won’t do anything to me. I’m not frightened of them any more. If anything, they should be frightened of me.’

I knew those words had come out of my mouth, but their sentiment was so unfamiliar to my ears it was almost as if someone else had said them. It wasn’t a mouse speaking any more; there’d be no more scurrying along the skirting board looking for a safe place to hide, no more keeping very still and hoping not to be seen. I felt stronger, more confident, more capable than I’d ever felt before. Life was brutal. Life was savage. Life was a war. I understood that now. I accepted that now. And I said: Bring it on. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim. Ever again.

‘And there’s something else, Mum. I want to call Dad.’

Her arm flinched as if she’d been stung; her jaw clenched.

‘Well, that’s your decision,’ she said, her voice dry and tremulous. ‘I’m not going to stop you.’

No, she was not going to stop me, and neither was Zoe. If Zoe answered the phone I wouldn’t be deterred (‘Tell him it’s his daughter.’). He wasn’t going to reject me that easily. Not without an explanation. Not without being held to account. Not without hearing what I had to say.

Mum stroked my hair back over my ear and left her hand nestling at my neck.

‘Those scars are healing beautifully,’ she said.

‘I know, I know. A few more months and you’ll hardly be able to notice them.’

She gently caressed my cheek and smiled. ‘As good as new.’

‘No,’ I purred. ‘Even better.’