The Wicked Girls

Chapter Forty-six

She finds the crumpled remains of a packet of cigarettes in her pocket: three Camel soft-top, a miniature lighter tucked beneath the foil: Jackie’s brand. She must have left them in here one of the many times she borrowed the fleece to go and stand in the garden. She looks at them for a moment, then thinks, Oh, what the hell. There’s no one to tell me not to any more, and it’s not as if I’m riding high on the longevity list.

She puts one in her mouth, lights it and inhales deeply, filtering out the ugly optimism of the dawn. It’s stale and harsh, and makes her out-of-practice brain stagger under the force of the nicotine. She has to lean one hand against the station wall for a few seconds, to stop herself falling down. Goddamn, she thinks. You hardly notice the effects if you do it all the time, but tobacco is powerful stuff.

Martin stirs and utters a gurgle of mindless humanity. Amber looks down, sees that his blood has almost reached her feet. She steps back, repelled, and takes another drag on the cigarette. If he’s still bleeding, his heart’s still beating, she thinks. I have to wait till it stops. I need to be certain he’s dead before I call.

On the seafront, she hears a car engine start up, the crunch of tyres as it pulls out of its parking place. That’ll be her, she thinks. Please don’t let her change her mind. There’s been enough waste already. Our lives, this shrivelled, bitter existence, it has to stop at some point. The cycle of revenge and punishment and passing it on to the next generation, it has to stop. I won’t let it spread out, destroy her nice husband, those clean, safe little kids. What good would it do? Who would it help? Society. I know. Society. But let’s face it: society doesn’t really care who it blames, as long as it blames someone.

She takes another drag and walks over to where the coupler lies, blood and skin and hair entwined among the bolts and the butterfly nuts. The iron has been painted red against rusting, flakes chipped off where it’s seen impact. She picks it up, two-fingered, and dangles it in front of her face, strangely fascinated. Bet this won’t go down so well with Health and Safety, she thinks. Bet someone will lose their job over this.

She leans her arm out over the guardrail, and heaves the weight of the coupler out into the air. Watches as it spirals downward, is caught by a wave and sucked beneath. She can see it sink for a foot or so after it enters the water; is impressed that the Whitmouth brine is clean enough to allow any visibility at all. The sea will do its work. Nothing remains unscoured for long in those endless, restless depths. Even if they look, if they find it, if Kirsty’s fingerprints are still on it, there won’t be anything else to link her to the crime.

A sound attracts her attention. Martin has started to fit, there on the floor. His heels drum like pistons on the wood, fingers bone-straight and brittle. It won’t be long now. Even if she does call an ambulance, the chances that he will survive, she thinks, remembering the deaths she has seen before, are slim; his skin is blue and what remains of his lips are drawn back to show his wisdom teeth. But she’s not going to. There will be no one to bewail his passing, she’s sure of that, and if she’s going to make this sacrifice, she wants to ensure that it is not in vain.

She finishes the cigarette and drops it after the coupler. A gull swoops down in hope of a tasty titbit, sweeps on with a shriek of disgust. To her surprise she finds herself smiling. I should make the most of these last few minutes, she thinks. I suppose this is the last time I shall ever see the sea.

There’s a bench beside the station: white-painted wrought iron, a lovely view of Funnland. Beyond the walls, her friends – her erstwhile friends – will be finishing up: wiping down the final surfaces, packing away their gear with a yawn and a sigh of relief. She sits, and surveys the view: flags and bunting, the blue-and-white of striped canvas awnings, the shine of rain-soaked stones catching early-morning rays. Three tiny figures pick a slow route along the top of the rollercoaster: a maintenance crew, or some teenagers who got past Jason Murphy and are celebrating their sense of immortality. You’re not much of a place, Whitmouth. But you’re my place. The only place I’ve ever thought of, even if only for a while, as home. I shall miss you.

She lights another cigarette.

Another parting, a quarter-century ago. Amber remembers her mother, visiting her in the remand centre. Coming emptyhanded, wrapped in cashmere, looking older. Bel attempts to throw herself into her mother’s arms, and finds a hand extended, blocking her approach. ‘Don’t,’ says Lucinda. ‘Just don’t.’

They’re not allowed to be alone – Bel is slowly understanding that she will never, to all intents and purposes, be alone again – but the crop-haired weightlifter in charge affords them what privacy she can by sitting on the far side of the rec room. Bel sits on a stained, armless, tweed chair with tubular steel legs. Lucinda, after scanning her options, picks a moulded grey-plastic chair beside a table four feet away and perches on it gingerly, as though she is afraid of infection. Both seats are fixed to the floor: a precaution against fighting. She puts her bag on the table, leans an elbow watchfully on the strap, even though they are the only people there. Crosses one knee elegantly over the other. She wears graceful wedge-heeled boots in green leather.

‘How are you?’ She doesn’t sound more than politely concerned.

Bel responds as she’s been trained to from earliest childhood. She fixes a bright smile on her face and says, ‘I’m very well, thank you. How are you?’, as she has said to everyone who has asked her since the day of the murder. Lucinda is her first visitor – or the first one she knows personally, anyway – since the trial.

‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ says Lucinda. ‘I’m glad to hear you’re very well.’

Bel’s eyes fill with tears.

Lucinda pulls a face. ‘Oh, stop being such a baby,’ she says.

Bel hangs her head and seeks composure. Her mother has never liked displays of emotion; not from Bel, anyway.

‘How is everyone?’ she asks eventually.

‘How do you expect them to be?’ replies Lucinda.

‘I don’t…’ says Bel.

‘Michael almost divorced me,’ says Lucinda. ‘But, thank God, he’s changed his mind. He understands, you see. That I can’t be blamed for what you’ve done.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Bel, humbly. Looks down at the worn cuffs of her sweater, wonders how much longer this visit will last.

‘Anyway,’ says Lucinda, after a pause. ‘I just came to let you know we’re leaving. Going to Singapore.’

Bel doesn’t answer. It’s already clear to her that it’s all over, on the outside, that the house is locked up and the family fled. No one has made much effort to hide the press coverage from her; she’s seen the boards over the windows, the steel grille on the door, like the burnt-out wastes of Broadwater Farm. The Walkers have been rehoused, their names changed, the younger children taken into care and the eldest scattered to the winds. Her own people – there’s less help from the state if you’ve got bank accounts. Less interference, too.

‘The bank’s transferred him,’ continues Lucinda. ‘Kind of them, really. But then again, he’s good at what he does. Popular, too, though I don’t suppose you’ll appreciate that. Anyway, that’s it. I dare say we won’t come back. So that’s us, condemned to life as international gypsies, thanks to you. I thought I’d tell you. Let you know.’

‘OK,’ says Bel passively. In a way she feels relieved, knowing more clearly what the future holds. They’re not going to fight for her. She’s on her own.

‘Right, well.’ Lucinda starts to root in her bag. For a moment, Bel has a wild thought that she might have brought a gift. A keepsake for the years ahead, some small token that will remind her that she did indeed once have a family. Her mother’s hair, usually immaculate, is unruly, tied back in a ponytail, roots showing among the candystripe blond. She’s developed lines, she notices, around her mouth, in the six months since Bel last saw her. I did that, thinks Bel. It’s all my fault.

Lucinda finds what she is looking for, brings it out: a handkerchief, embroidered: her initials in one corner. She blows her nose delicately; brings her oversized sunglasses down from their perch on her head and covers her eyes.

‘At least your sister’ll get some chance of a normal life,’ says Lucinda. ‘Without people knowing. People looking at her. Wondering.’

‘Yes,’ says Bel.

‘How could you do it, Annabel?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t meant. We didn’t mean to – it just happened…’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Lucinda dismisses the crime as though it were some petty gossip, some vandalism, some schoolyard scrap. ‘Not that. For Christ’s sake. I mean those lies. All those lies about Michael.’

‘They weren’t lies,’ she says defiantly. ‘I told you. I told, but you wouldn’t listen. They weren’t lies.’

Lucinda doesn’t want to hear it. Has never wanted to hear it: not about the cellar, or the stables, or the late-night visits when her mother is deep in Valium dreams.

‘I tried to tell you, Mummy,’ she says, ‘but you wouldn’t listen.’

And she won’t listen now. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. He paid for your lawyer, for God’s sake. How could you do something like that to him?’

‘Mummy-’ she tries one more time.

‘Oh, shut up. I just wanted to tell you, that’s all. What I think of you. That man’s brought you up since you were a toddler. He took you on out of the goodness of his heart. He’s given us everything. I can’t believe you’d repay us like that. How did you get to be like this, Annabel?’

You taught me, she thinks. I learned that lying was the best chance I had. She stares and shakes her head. There is nothing to say. Nothing that will be heard, anyway.

In the corner, the corrections officer turns a page of Woman’s Own pointedly. Lucinda glances at her, then gets briskly to her feet. ‘I’m done,’ she commands. ‘I’m ready to go now.’

The woman slowly puts the magazine down and starts to pull her keychain from the pocket of her navy trousers. Her expression is inscrutable; the expression of someone who’s storing every detail for later dissection. Lucinda turns back to Bel, gives her the Look again.

‘Dear God,’ she says. ‘You always were a little liar. From the minute you could talk.’

She wheels on her elegant green heel and marches towards the door. The officer points at Bel’s chair. ‘Stay there,’ she says.

The door bangs to behind them.

A cigarette is at its most delicious in damp sea air. She rests against the station wall and savours every last lungful. Waits as the lights on the front fade to insignificance and Martin releases a final, surrendered sigh. He’s gone, thinks Amber, and Jade is safe. No one to tell, no one to see.

She takes her phone from her pocket, dials 999. Looks at the watery sun as it leaps over the horizon, gets out the last of the cigarettes, crumples the pack and puts it, tidily, in her pocket. ‘Hello,’ she says, calmly, when the operator answers. ‘I need help. I think I’ve killed someone.’

She lights the last of the cigarettes, sits back and waits.