For a minute, Carla thought that Larry was speaking to her. But then she saw he was addressing the red-mouthed lady. Suddenly, she found herself being marched away from the car towards the corner of the road. ‘What did you see? Tell me.’
His voice sounded different from Tuesdays and Thursdays and the sometimes-Sundays. It was hard, like old skin on your foot which you had to smooth off every evening, just as Mamma did with a grey stone in the shower. (‘Only the English take baths, my little one. So dirty!’)
Carla’s mouth was so dry that it took time for the words to come out. ‘I saw you pushing your mouth against that woman’s. Your lips are all red, like hers.’
‘What do you mean?’ His grip on her arm was getting tighter.
Carla felt herself getting more scared. ‘Like the stuff on your collar,’ she whispered.
He glanced down and wiped away the red smear. His breath was so close that she could smell the whisky in his mouth. Sometimes, Mamma did not eat dinner so that they could afford to buy Larry’s whisky. It was important. A man needed to feel welcomed. Whisky and dancing. And in return, the rent would be paid. The electric meter would be sorted. Larry had paid the phone bill again. It is worth it, cara mia. Trust me.
‘Hah!’ Then his face came close to hers. She could see the hairs in his nose. ‘Very clever,’ he said, marching her fast along the pavement. ‘If you’re so clever, Carla, why don’t you tell me what little present I can buy you. So we don’t have to tell your mother about today.’
Remember, whispered Charlie. Remember the film?
Of course. She and Mamma had watched a story on television the other night. It had been late and she hadn’t been able to sleep. So she’d crept out of bed and snuggled up with Mamma on the sofa. The film had been about a young boy who had seen a couple stealing from a shop. The couple had given him money for not saying anything.
This is the same, whispered Charlie. It’s called blackmail.
‘Is this blackmail?’ she asked now.
Larry’s face began to break out in tiny beads of water. ‘Don’t play games. What do you want?’
That was easy. She held out Charlie. ‘Make him better.’
He frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘My caterpillar. Someone hurt him.’
The grip on her arm started again. ‘I will buy you anything you want if you keep your mouth shut.’
Anything? Carla felt a tingle of excitement.
‘This is what we will do.’ The grip was marching her back to the car. ‘I will take you home. And on the way, we will stop off at a toy shop. I will tell your mother that I found you wandering the streets after school and bought you a present. In return, you won’t mention anything else. And I mean anything … You don’t want to upset your mother, do you?’
Carla shook her head firmly. Side to side. So that her curls hit her face in agreement.
He opened the car door. ‘Out.’ This last word was directed at the yellow-white-haired woman in the front seat.
‘But, Larry, what –’
‘I said out.’
Larry reversed so hard that his car hit a stone pillar by the side of the road. Then he cursed all the way home as if it was Carla’s fault instead of his own impatience.
‘You found her. You found my precious one,’ her mother wailed when they got home. ‘I was so worried. She was not there at the school gate so I thought she had gone ahead and …’
Quietly, Carla left her mother to embrace Larry, and crept into her room. In her bag was a new Charlie to replace the old.
The priest had been wrong. It didn’t take three days for someone to come to life again.
It took three hours.
My head hurts.
My thoughts are confused.
Sometimes I think I am fifteen years younger.
Sometimes I think I am not here at all, but looking down at everything that is still happening.
Perhaps there really is such a thing as resurrection.
But not as we’re taught in church.
Maybe it’s the chance to do it all again. Right this time.
Or maybe this is just the rambling of a dying soul.
Never to return again.
11
Lily
BOILING BATH KILLER LAUNCHES APPEAL FROM PRISON
Joe Thomas, who was sentenced to life in 1998, is to appeal against his conviction for murder. Thomas claims that his girlfriend Sarah Evans died as the result of a faulty boiler.
Miss Evans’s parents described themselves as ‘shocked’ when they heard the news. ‘That man took our little girl away from us,’ said Geoff Evans, a 54-year-old teacher from Essex. ‘He deserves to rot in hell.’
Mrs Evans, 53, is currently undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.
My boss sucks in his breath as he scans the story on page two of today’s Times. ‘So! They’re baying for your blood already. You’re sure about your brief?’
‘Absolutely. Tony Gordon has agreed to do it pro bono like us. Says it could be a case of national importance.’
My boss makes a ‘well, what do you know?’ face.
‘I don’t want a woman,’ Joe had said firmly. ‘No disrespect meant. Juries might like to watch a woman strut around and imagine what’s under her dress. But it’s a man’s argument that will sway them.’
I swallowed my response to that.
‘I’ve seen him in court a few times,’ I assured my client. ‘Tony can play the crowds.’
It helps too that he’s handsome – in some ways, he reminds me of Richard Burton – with a gift for making female jurors feel as though they’re the only ones in the room, and for making male jurors feel privileged to be entrusted with the life of the man in the dock.
With any luck, he’ll pull the rabbit out of the hat. First, apparently, we have to make an application to the CCRC, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, for leave to appeal. If it thinks there are grounds, it will refer the case to the Court of Appeal. If the latter allows the appeal, says Tony, we’ll seek a re-trial. Meanwhile, he’s confident enough to ‘do quite a lot of spadework’ first to save time. The courts are rushing cases through at the moment. We need to be prepared.
I return to my desk to continue my briefing notes for Tony. I’m meant to share the room with another newly qualified solicitor, or NQ as we’re known for short. But my colleague, a young man fresh from Oxford, is ill with stress.
It’s common in law. So easy to make a mistake. To let clients down. To let the firm down. And all the time we have the constant fear of being sued hanging over us for inadvertently making a mistake. It reminds me of something that one of my tutors once said to us in the first year. ‘Believe it or not, the law isn’t always just. Some will get away with it. Some will go to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. And a certain percentage of those “innocents” will have got away with other crimes before. So you could say it balances out in the end.’
I’m aware of all this as I lean over my computer. Yet, as if in rebellion, my thoughts wander back to Ed.
‘Why don’t we have a dinner party?’ I suggested over dinner the other night. My husband of nearly two months looked up from his tray. That’s right. We’ve started having dinner in front of the television: something Ed’s mother certainly wouldn’t approve of.
But it helps to fill in the silent gaps. The sweet, kind, amusing man I met less than a year ago appears to have lost his sense of humour. Instead of being up and down, he’s now firmly down. He no longer tries to cuddle me in bed. But sometimes he takes me in the night – when we are both half asleep – with an urgency that makes me gasp.
‘A dinner party?’ he repeated when he’d finished his mouthful of macaroni cheese. Ed is polite, if nothing else. My latest imitation of a Delia Smith dish is distinctly runny, but he is manfully ploughing on. I’ve ‘progressed’ now from undercooked steak and kidney to overcooked macaroni cheese. Even with two salaries, our budget is tight.
‘Yes,’ I said firmly.
It had been Ross’s idea. ‘How’s it going?’ he’d asked when he’d rung to see how his information had worked out. His voice reminded me, to my shame, that I hadn’t even sent him a thank-you note. And the kindness in it made me well up. It’s strange what a bit of thoughtfulness can do. Or the lack of it.
‘Bit tense,’ I choked out.
‘Because of Ed?’
‘Why?’ My chest tightened. ‘Has he said something to you?’