Die of Shame (33 page)

‘Oh,’ Heather says, ‘it’s you,’ and she’s crying tears of relief as much as anything as she turns and walks back into the flat.

‘You OK?’ Heather’s second visitor of the evening closes the front door, checks to make sure that it is firmly shut, and follows her into the kitchen.

‘I’ve been better.’

‘Is it Chris?’

Heather turns and nods, reaches to tear off a fresh sheet of kitchen towel from the roll near the sink.

‘I saw him leave.’

Heather says, ‘I thought you were him… thought he’d come back to have another go. He burst in here, shouting the odds, you know? Screaming at me. Telling me it’s all my fault that he’s using again.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘It’s not just Chris.’ Heather leans back against the sink. She’s beginning to calm down. ‘It’s men in general. They let you down. Well… you heard.’

‘The older man in your story.’

Heather nods. ‘They make you promises. They make you feel stupid.’

‘You’re talking about Tony now, right?’

‘I’m such an idiot. I mean, what did I expect was going to happen?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘I just tried to call him,’ Heather says. ‘I left a message…’

‘Maybe you should steer clear of married men. Maybe Diana’s got a point.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Stop screwing Daddy.’

Heather blinks, looks at her visitor.

‘I’m no expert… I’m not Tony or anything, but I presume that’s what’s going on, some father-figure thing. Not that you’re thinking about that when you’re actually doing it, because you’re too busy enjoying yourself.’ A smile, a slow move sideways to stand directly opposite Heather. ‘Come to think of it, now’s probably a good time to ask what you
were
thinking? Ten years ago, I mean. When you were screwing
my
daddy.’

In the few seconds that crawl by before anyone speaks again, the colour drains from Heather’s face, while her visitor’s flushes with pleasure at seeing it. Heather’s hands creep across the edge of the worktop as she tries to steady herself

‘How can you be…?’ Heather is talking to herself as much as anyone and she begins to shake her head violently. ‘No, that doesn’t make sense.’

‘What, because we’ve got different names? I’ve been Caroline Armitage for quite a while now.’ She nodded, smiled. ‘I swear, sometimes even I struggle to remember who I used to be. Come on – it would have been a bit obvious otherwise. You might have remembered the name of your lover’s sixteen year-old daughter… did he ever mention it?’

Heather says nothing.

‘And I could hardly have used my real surname when I started writing to your ex-boyfriend in prison, could I? I don’t think he’d have been mad keen to see me, do you?’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Heather says. ‘Not the name.’

‘Oh, you mean because my father was a slim good-looking bloke and I look like this? You think I was always this big? You don’t think maybe I started shovelling chocolate and chips into my mouth after somebody murdered my dad?’ Caroline narrows her eyes. ‘You don’t think something like that might screw you up just a bit?’

Something has begun to flutter behind Heather’s ribs and she struggles to swallow or draw spit into her mouth. Aside from the tremor that is starting to build in one of her legs, she is perfectly still. She says, ‘You went to see John?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Caroline says. ‘A few times, actually… we got quite matey. I started going just because I wanted to know why. I never believed it was just some random thing outside a bar, so I wanted to find out what really happened.’ She smiles. ‘That was all. Then I found out he’d killed my father for somebody else.’

‘He mentioned my name?’

Caroline laughs. ‘Oh God, no. He’d never do that, bless him. He’s still madly in love with you, poor bastard. You do know he’s out very soon, don’t you?’

Heather shakes her head.

‘Pound to a pinch of salt he thinks you’re going to be there waiting for him. Arms wide open and legs spread. I mean, least you can do considering what he did for you. The time he’s spent inside, without telling anyone who put him up to it.’

‘That’s not how it was.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘I didn’t want John to kill him… I loved him. I didn’t think —’

‘You knew exactly how John would react, you said so. You used him as a weapon, because my father chose his family over you. Because he chose
us
.’

Heather’s hands move across her chest. The flutter of confusion has gained strength and grown quickly into something crazed; fear that’s stronger than any drug she’s ever known, any withdrawal, flapping madly inside her. She struggles to get her words out. ‘I can’t get my head around it… you being in the group. It’s completely mental.’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’

Heather is breathing quickly. She finds the strength to shake her head.

‘What, you think it was just a coincidence? A chance in a million?’ Now Caroline shakes her head; sighs at Heather’s idiocy. ‘I don’t care about the way I look, the way I am. I’m not trying to give up painkillers, I bloody love them. I wasn’t in that group because I’ve got a problem, I was there because you were.’

‘How… did you know I was there?’

‘I’ve been looking a long time.’ Caroline’s handbag is on the worktop next to her. She pulls it a little closer. ‘Once I began to think John had killed my father because of someone else, I started digging around. I talked to his family and as many of his friends as I could find and guess whose name eventually came up. The girl he’d been obsessed with, the one who broke his heart. The “crazy ex” one of them said. It was a piece of piss after that. I called your dad and told him I was an old mate of yours and he told me you were in London, that you’d had a few “problems”. When I’d stopped laughing about that, I found you on Facebook… I friended you, actually, started poking about in some of those groups you were in. You and all those other whining ex-junkies. You even mentioned Tony by name in one of them, so you actually made it rather easy for me in the end.’ She reaches for her bag and unzips it. ‘Been quite fun, actually. Sitting there and listening to you all every week, winding everyone up and watching the sparks fly. Oh… in case you were wondering what Robin was banging on about in the pub, he thinks you’ve been trying to blackmail him.’ Her face contorts into a mask of theatrical contrition. ‘Oh, I think I might have had something to do with that. Sorry.’ She leans closer, as though examining Heather’s face for tell-tale clues. ‘It wasn’t you, was it? No, thought not. Far too squeaky clean now for that kind of thing.’ She looks into her bag then reaches inside. ‘He was probably right the first time, thinking it was Chris.’

Heather can’t look at her any more. The expression on Caroline’s face that ratchets up the terror; the urge to scream or rush for the door. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve got what I want,’ Caroline says. ‘Took a while, but I wanted to hear you say it, to own up to what you did. You were very brave, by the way, confessing everything like that.’

‘So you heard how sorry I am.’ Heather’s whisper is ragged, desperate; the voice that had once begged for money or gear on credit, for one last hit.

‘Oh yes, and it was lovely to hear.’

‘I don’t know what else I can do.’

‘You don’t need to do anything,’ Caroline says. ‘I’m happy as Larry. Well, almost.’

Then, Heather glances up and sees the look on Caroline’s face, a sheen of sweat and the thick fingers curling around the black handle of a small knife.

She runs for the door.

Caroline moves far more quickly than Heather could have expected and, when she reaches Heather, clutches at her hair and begins to drag her back, she is far stronger.

She grunts with the effort of pushing the knife into Heather’s back and again when she spins her round. For a few seconds, Heather struggles and flails, sending a plant pot and glasses crashing to the floor. She opens her mouth to speak, to beg, but there are only gasps and delicate sprays of spittle each time the blade is punched in, then finally, a murmuring of blood before Caroline lets go and Heather drops like a bundle of wet rags.

Drops and looks up, then closes her eyes as the warmth starts to thicken and spread.

The darkness, the terrible high.

Caroline steps away and takes a few deep breaths. She rips off another piece of kitchen towel to wrap around the blade of the knife, before dropping it back into her bag. Then she moves forward and slowly leans down, her hands on her knees to take the weight.

‘
This
is what I was addicted to, see that? The need for this. To find out what really happened to my dad, then to find you and do whatever it took to make me feel this good. To take
my
pain away.’ Caroline laughs, easy and light. ‘Tell you the truth, I can see what you lot were all on about now, what a rush it is.’ Heather can no longer hear her, that’s obvious enough, but she carries on talking anyway, like they’re drinking tea somewhere or walking in the park.

Like they’re sharing secrets in a circle.

‘Now I can start my recovery, but something tells me it’s going to be a damn sight quicker than yours was.’

‘It’s not going to be the same,’ Robin said.

‘Well duh!’

Robin looked at Chris, but there was no anger apparent in his voice. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yeah,’ Caroline says. ‘Because we were a group.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Like family, sort of thing.’

It was the first time they had gathered in the pub
before
a meeting, but all had agreed it was a good idea. It would almost certainly be an emotional session, Tony had told them, and Robin’s suggestion that they meet up half an hour beforehand had been eagerly accepted. ‘I’m not sure you can actually get Dutch courage from water and Diet Coke,’ he had said. ‘But, you know…’

Now, Diana was nodding. ‘The group is a family and the family is a group,’ she said. The smile was tinged with just the right amount of sadness and she looked as though she might be about to invite everyone to join hands. ‘Remember what Tony always says.’

‘Really?’ Chris smirked. ‘That’s what you think? Seriously messed up kind of family, you ask me.’

‘No more messed up than the ones most of us have got. You as much as anyone, if I remember.’

Chris looked momentarily furious, but took a few seconds; closed his eyes, until his own smile slowly appeared.

The group fell silent for a while.

The pub was relatively quiet, but each of them was well aware that they were being studied by a group of teenagers at an adjacent table, that with a couple of hours until the football was due to start on TV, they were something of a spectacle. The disparity between their ages, the way they were dressed surely meant that nobody could have mistaken them for a group of close friends. Even work colleagues would be a stretch. Perhaps their conversation had been overheard or maybe it was just the fact that they were sitting in a pub and none of them was drinking alcohol. Caroline raised her glass of sparkling water to the audience in an ironic salute and the teenagers turned away.

She looked at her watch and said, ‘We don’t want to be late.’

Chris’s mouth dropped open in mock-horror. ‘God forbid.’

‘Think about it, though. Do we all want to be sitting there when the new bloke walks in?’

Robin nodded. ‘Like a weird welcoming committee.’

‘Might be a bit intimidating or whatever.’

‘Were you intimidated?’ Chris asked. ‘First time you came?’

‘Not remotely,’ Caroline said.

‘There you are then.’

‘We’re all different though, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah, bloody good job an’ all.’

‘You think he knows, the new bloke?’ Caroline looked from face to face. ‘Why there’s an empty chair.’

Chris shrugged. ‘Most of us have known someone who’s snuffed it. Some of us have come pretty close to it ourselves. Part and parcel, isn’t it?’

‘Not like this, though.’

Nobody spoke for a while after that. They ate crisps or tapped the table in time to the landlord’s appalling choice of music. Chris and Diana looked at their phones and Caroline sat tearing a beer mat into tiny pieces.

Then, Robin said, ‘Does anyone else feel guilty?’

The others looked at him.

‘The way we were with her, I mean. In here, that last night.’

‘She was blackmailing you,’ Diana said. ‘I don’t think you should feel bad about being angry.’

‘Well I do,’ Robin said.

Chris said, ‘I don’t feel guilty exactly, because I was out of it. If I was going to beat myself up about every horrible thing I’ve said or done when I was like that, I might as well top myself.’ For a few seconds he studied his finger as it rubbed at an old stain on the tabletop. ‘I know it wasn’t her fault that I got like that, though. Nobody’s stupid fault but mine.’

There was another silence. Diana looked across and saw the barman who had thrown Chris out weeks before, cleaning glasses, watching them. She turned back to the table and said, ‘I was probably a bit harsh, too, that night. It was that dreadful story, the way it chimed with what was happening to me. Stupid, of course, thinking back.’ She took a sip of water and shook her head. ‘Unforgivable, bearing in mind what… well, you know.’

Caroline was sitting next to her. ‘I’ve been starting to think that she made all that stuff up about her and Tony.’

Diana turned to look at her.

‘That’s the reason I was so pissed off with her, but the more I think about it, the more it feels like… something that was probably all in her mind. Just something she wanted to happen.’

‘That makes sense,’ Diana said.

‘Apart from anything else, I can’t believe Tony would ever do that.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘He just… wouldn’t.’

‘Bang on,’ Robin said. ‘I think you’re bang on.’

Diana turned to face front again and sat up straight. ‘We should have a toast.’

‘To what?’ Chris asked.

‘To
who
, you idiot.’ Diana smiled and shook her head. ‘Who do you think? Just to raise a glass together and say goodbye.’

‘We can do that at the funeral, can’t we?’

‘Whenever that is,’ Caroline said.

Robin leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Sometimes they don’t release the body for ages. If they make an arrest and there’s a trial, the defence sometimes demands a second post-mortem.’

‘Not any time soon then,’ Caroline said.

Diana held up her glass and cleared her throat. ‘Damn, I’ve finished my drink now.’

Chris laughed.

‘What?’

‘It’s sort of appropriate, when you think about it, that’s all.’ He looked to the others at the table for support, then leaned forward, enthused by the idea. ‘A dry toast. Come on…’

After exchanged glances and nods of agreement, they all finished their drinks, some taking longer than others.

They held their empty glasses out, touched them together.

They said Heather’s name.

As coats and bags were quickly gathered to cover the embarrassment, Diana saw that the teenagers at the next table were staring again.

She turned, slowly and deliberately, to look at them.

Said, ‘Would you please mind your own fucking business?’