Hanging Hill Part 31

'Nothing.' She ran her eyes over her daughter's face and hair. She wanted to hold her so much. She wanted to just grab her and carry her somewhere far away from here. She swallowed hard, and said conversationally, 'How did the test go?'

'Oh, pants. I revised the wrong page. Doh ...'

'You've got prep after school tonight, haven't you?'

'Yes. Till five. Why?'

'Because I don't want you going home on your own tonight. I'm going to call Dad, get him to pick you up.'

'He can't. He's in London.'

'Then Isabelle.'

'She's at that gymnastics meet with Sophie. In Liverpool. It's OK, Mum I'll get the bus. Don't worry about me, I'll-'

'No! For heaven's sake, will you listen to me listen to me? I've just told you you're not going home on your own.'

Millie blinked at her, shocked. Neither of them spoke for a moment, embarra.s.sed by Sally's sudden outburst. From the other side of the wall came the shrieks and yells of the other kids. They all believed they were grown-up, Sally thought, that they knew what they were doing but they weren't and they didn't. Really and truly they were still babies. A car went by suddenly, its brakes screeching, and she jumped as if she'd been shot.

'Mum?' Millie frowned, her face curious. Suspicious. 'What's the matter with you?'

'Nothing.'

'Then you you pick me up after school, if you're so worried. Don't you finish work early today? You usually do.' pick me up after school, if you're so worried. Don't you finish work early today? You usually do.'

'I'm not going to work. I'm busy.'

'Busy? Busy doing what?'

'It doesn't matter what.' She put a hand to her head and pressed hard. She thought of Peter Cyrus's mother. Dismissed the idea. Tried to think who else she could ask. Who else she could trust.

'Mum? Is this about what we were saying this morning? About that Metalhead muppet again? Why are you so scared of him?'

'I'm not. It's nothing to do with him. Just stay in the school after prep. I'll make sure someone's there to pick you up.'

'Come on, something's wrong.'

'It is not not,' she snapped. 'Nothing is b.l.o.o.d.y wrong. Now please don't ask me again.'

Millie shrank back a little, her mouth open. She looked for a moment as if she was going to say something, and Sally took a step forward, wanting to say sorry. But Millie turned on a heel and marched back inside the school gates, leaving Sally standing in the rain, trembling under her umbrella.

s.h.i.+t, she thought, feeling in her pocket for her car keys. Life really was turning out to be the closest thing to h.e.l.l.

38.

'I don't want to do this.' Zoe drew the curtains and switched on the overhead light. 'You're making me do this. So I'm asking you as a fellow human being to recognize that.'

Sitting on the chair at the end of the room Ben nodded dully. 'I recognize you as a human being, Zoe. Maybe more than you do yourself.'

She stood in front of him, unbuckled her boots and kicked them aside. She unzipped the trousers and stepped out of them. Her own knickers were still on the floor at Kelvin's so she was wearing a pair of Sally's, which were too wide and flopped around her hips as she undressed. She hiked them up and unb.u.t.toned the s.h.i.+rt, threw it on the floor, and stood a step away from him, arms hanging at her sides. She felt totally foolish.

Ben sat forward, his elbows on his knees, his head up. He was expressionless, his mouth slightly open, as he moved his attention all over her face, over the swollen nose, the bruises on her cheeks, and down, over her bare arms, covered with bramble scratches. Then the bruises and the scars. She held out her arms and sighed. 'This one.' She put a finger on the scabbed mess she'd made last week, the day he'd admitted sleeping with Debbie. 'This is recent, but I did it to myself. And these ones here? They're old. I did them too.'

Ben looked at her in absolute disbelief.

'This one.' She gently palpated a new bruise on her arm. She thought about the hatred that had caused it Kelvin's need to harm. She wondered how her life had got so twisted that she'd ever imagined doing the same thing to herself. 'This was done this morning.'

'How?'

'When I was raped.'

There was a long, long silence. Then Ben dropped his head forward, put his hands on his temples and screwed up his eyes as if he had the world's worst headache. She thought for a moment he was going to get up and leave. Then she realized he was crying soundlessly, his shoulders shaking. After a few moments he wiped his face angrily with a palm and raised his eyes to her. There was an expression of such grief, such loss, such fury in his eyes that she had to turn away.

She went and sat down at the table, put her hands between her knees and stared at her thighs, mottled with bruises. She felt every inch of her sore body the tiny, intense jets of fury at all the places where Kelvin's fingers had come into contact with her skin. There was a creak and Ben got up from the chair. He came to the table and dropped to a crouch next to her. He laid his hands gently on her knees.

'No.' She shook her head. 'Don't be kind, please. I can't bear it.' She couldn't get her throat to open enough to explain. 'It's all right. I mean, it's not your fault. How could you have been expected to know that I was the most pathetic excuse for a human being that ever walked this planet?'

'It's not true. Something's happened to you but you're not to blame.'

She shook her head, bit her lip. A single tear came out of her eye and ran down her cheek. 'Ben,' she said, with an effort, 'you're going to have to listen. And you're going to have to forgive.'

39.

As Sally got into the car outside the school, still trembling, a figure in a waterproof, hood up against the rain, stepped out towards her from near the school wall. It was Nial. He looked odd. Determined, but nervous. He glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure no one was behind him, then hurried over to her.

'Mrs Ca.s.sidy?' He bent and peered at her through the driver's window, raised his fist and mimed knocking on the gla.s.s. 'Can we speak?'

Sally rolled down the window. 'Nial? What is it?'

'I'll give her a lift home. I've got the van it's parked round the corner.'

She stared at him. The gel in his hair and the way he'd knotted his tie, instead of making him look grown-up and cool, just made him seem younger and smaller. Even more inadequate.

'What?' he said.

She shook her head. 'Nothing. That would be very kind. I'll pick her up from yours. About seven.'

She started to wind up the window, but he gave a small polite cough. 'Uh Mrs Ca.s.sidy?'

'What?'

He bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder again, as if he was sure someone was listening. 'Millie's ...'

'Millie's what?'

'Honestly? Don't tell her I told you, but she's scared.'

'Scared? She's got nothing to be scared of.' She's got nothing to be scared of.'

'She says you're acting weird and she's got it into her head you're being threatened by someone. Is that why you don't want her going home on the bus?'

'Why on earth would she think that?'

'I don't know but she hasn't stopped talking about it all morning. She thinks someone's messing you around.'

'Listen to me, Nial. Millie doesn't need to worry about me, about anything. All that's wrong is I can't get here by five to collect her. That's all. Everything's fine.'

'OK,' he said, unconvinced. Then, 'Mrs Ca.s.sidy, I don't know what's going on with you, but I can tell you this. If anyone ever ever tried to hurt Millie ...' he shook his head, sadly, as if he regretted having to say this '... then they'd have to get past me first. Nothing and no one is going to get to her as long as I'm around.' tried to hurt Millie ...' he shook his head, sadly, as if he regretted having to say this '... then they'd have to get past me first. Nothing and no one is going to get to her as long as I'm around.'

Sally forced a smile and reached for the ignition key. She was getting a bit impatient with his hero act. He was too young to have any concept any proper way of grasping the truth of the awful, overwhelming reality of Kelvin Burford.

'Thank you, Nial,' she said patiently. She was tired. Very tired. 'Thank you. I'll pick her up before seven.'

40.

Nothing in Lorne's bedroom had been touched since Zoe's last visit. She could tell that from the still, shuttered weight of the air. It needed stirring, needed human breath in it. She pushed her sungla.s.ses on to her head, knelt, opened the lower drawer and began peeling away the layers of clothes. It was gone six o'clock and the rain had pa.s.sed over the town. The lovely trees outside Lorne's window dripped with water. Beyond them was the driveway and, at the end of it, Sally waiting in her little Ka. She'd driven Zoe here and now she was as anxious as Zoe was to get this stage of the process right. Sally, little Sally, who was turning out not to be weak-willed and spoiled, but tougher and smarter than Zoe would ever have guessed. And then, good G.o.d, then then there was Ben ... there was Ben ...

In spite of everything that had happened at Kelvin's, the part of Zoe that had been aching for years and years softened a little at the thought of Ben. He was ... What was he? Too good to be true? A reality she couldn't push away with a sarcastic 'Yeah, right'? Earlier, at her house, instead of speaking, asking questions, he'd simply sat with his arms round her, his chin on her head, listening to the whole story. Everything. And afterwards when she'd expected him to cough awkwardly, mutter something stiff about how her secret wouldn't go any further, that maybe she should think about counselling he'd shrugged, got up, clicked on the kettle and said, 'Right, got time for a cuppa before we nail the d.i.c.khead?' Now he was in the car somewhere, on the way to Gloucester with a list of Kelvin's known a.s.sociates in his pockets. She sighed. With all the wrong she'd done in the world, how had this right come to her so easily?

She shut the drawer and opened the next. There were some books in the back, and behind them a few oddments Zoe was sure Pippa hadn't paid much attention to when she'd done her hurried inventory of the room after Lorne's disappearance. She pushed aside a bra and knickers Lorne's underwear had been found so that was no use. She examined a grey peaked cap with diamante studs in it no, too distinctive, someone would have remembered her wearing a hat like that. Then she saw an orange silk scarf.

She sat back on her heels and rested the scarf across her knees. It could have been tucked under Lorne's pink fleece that afternoon when she left the house and no one would have necessarily noticed it. It was distinctive enough didn't look like something you picked up in Next, more like something that had come from a holiday. She checked the label. 'Sabra Dreams', it said. 'Made in Morocco'. The pin board above the desk had a photo of Lorne on a family holiday in Marrakesh. Pippa would remember her buying this.

Zoe put the scarf in her jacket pocket and zipped it up. She closed the drawers, put the sungla.s.ses back on, and went downstairs. She found Pippa sitting, bizarrely, on the chair in the hallway next to the front door. The chair was meant for coats and handbags and oddments to be thrown on to it, not to be sat on: it was in the wrong place. Pippa looked as if she was neither in nor out of the house. As if she was permanently waiting for something.

'Did you find what you wanted?'

'I just needed to look around again. I thought there was something I missed. I was wrong.' She stopped at the bottom step and studied Pippa.

'What?' She blinked stupidly. 'What is it?'

'I dunno. I guess I just wondered ...'

'What?'

'I shouldn't ask it, it's not ethical, but I'd like to anyway. I want to know how you feel about the person who did this.'

Pippa's face fell. 'Oh, please I can't stand another lecture on forgiveness. I won't forgive him. I know it's wrong, I know it goes against all the ideals I thought I had, but then it happens to you and all you want is for them to die. And die without being able to leave a final message. Without being able to have a final meal or hold someone's hand. That's all I could think that she couldn't hold someone's hand when she died. And now I want his mother to feel the way I do. If it means I'll rot in h.e.l.l I don't care. It's the way I feel.'

Zoe nodded. Pippa hadn't said it but she clearly still believed Ralph had killed Lorne. Earlier, when Ben had gone to the station to get her one of the unit mobiles to replace the one that was now in Kelvin's possession, they'd crept through a back door into Ben's office and done a quick intelligence search on Kelvin. They'd been stunned by what was there. He had been hauled in over and over again for petty offences. Even before enlisting at about the same time she'd been travelling the world he'd been a nightmare to the constabulary. Over and over again he'd sent up huge warning flares that he was dangerous. Yet over and over again he'd been freed on some technicality. Amazingly, it was only after the conviction for the a.s.sault in Radstock that his five-yearly application to renew his gun licence had been turned down. Up until that point he'd been allowed complete access to a twelve-bore shotgun. If Pippa was having trouble forgiving Ralph, how was she going to feel when she heard about Kelvin and how the entire system had failed her?

'I wasn't going to ask that,' Zoe said eventually. 'I was going to say sorry. About the way it's all gone.'

'Me too, Zoe. Me too.'

Wearily she got to her feet, and held the door open. Zoe zipped up her jacket and pulled up her hood even though it wasn't raining, Pippa put a hand on her arm and peered at her face. At her swollen nose and the red welts on her cheekbones. 'Zoe? Do people ever really walk into doors?'

'All the time.'

'I never have. Never at all.' never have. Never at all.'

'Then you've never been as drunk as I was.'

Pippa tried to smile, but it was a twisted, sad thing. Something pitiful. Zoe pulled the hood tighter and pretended to be struggling with the zip. Then she held up a hand, goodbye, and walked quickly away down the wet path, the scarf snug in her pocket.

41.

The rain had gone and the clouds had cleared but the sun was almost down now, the liquid orange light dissolving around the houses and churches on the hills above Bath. It was cold. Sally pulled her duffel coat around herself and watched Zoe come down the path from the Woods' house. She had her hood up but she'd taken off the sungla.s.ses and her face was naked in the twilight. The bruises and swelling had got worse in the last two hours, yet somehow she didn't look broken any more. It was as if something in her had mended.

She got inside the car and slammed the door. 'You OK?'

'Yes.'

'Good. You can drive now. Go up to the main road and turn left so we stay close to the ca.n.a.l. I'll tell you where to stop.'

While Sally started the engine and pulled out of the drive into the evening traffic, Zoe took off her jacket and rummaged in the pockets. She placed a plastic bag on her lap and unravelled an orange scarf on top of it. Then she fumbled inside the jacket again, pulled out a tiny Ziplock bag, and opened it. Inside there was a condom, filled with s.e.m.e.n.

'Oh, G.o.d,' Sally muttered.

'Well, don't look if you can't handle it.'

'I can handle it. I can.'

'Put the heater on.'