Ghosts in the Morning (6 page)

He was
at the top of the stairs
. They were very
steep stairs, they wouldn’t be allowed to build stairs like that in houses anymore.
Not safe
at all, they wouldn’t meet the health and safety regulations these days
.
Apparently, he
lost his footing and tumbled awkwardly. It was me who called the police
. T
hey came
really
quick too, they did in those days
, before they got bogged down in bureaucracy and paperwork.
There were two of them and
they arrived at the same time as the
ambulance. The policewoman sat down next to me on our sofa
–
it was an orange, velour sofa, worn and threadbare – and she
put her arm around me, and told me I was very brave
, and that I had done really well to make the emergency call.
When my mother came home,
I heard
the policeman
speaking to her, even though his voice was very low. I had good hearing, I think it was honed through practice. The policeman told Mum
that Uncle Peter had
had a bad accident
,
‘
them are
dangerou
s stairs,
easy to trip, and sorry love, but
I think he’d had a drink
too
, I
really am
sorry love
, yes you best go to your daughter, love, she’s been really brave, must have been a real shock for the little’un
’
,
and then I heard one of the
ambulance men
whisper to the policeman
that it looked like
Uncle Peter’s
head had caught the banisters, and his neck had
been broken
.
‘
It would have been quick
, he wouldn’t have felt a
thin
g
’,
the
ambulance man
had
said,
but I remember thinking that that was unlikely, if you smash your head and break your neck, it has to hurt a lot, even if it is only for a split second.

I never told
Mum
about Uncle Peter and the abuse. I never told
anyone. I didn’t see the point. It was too late. 
Uncle Peter
took a piece of me that
I c
ould
never get back, no matter how much talking
was
done
, and he
was
dead.
I didn’t want to bring it all up, it didn’t seem fair to Mum.

I have often wondered since if Mum knew what was going on or, at least,
suspected
what was happening, but I could never bring myself to ask her.  And I just get worked up now if I think too much about it, I mean, I was just a young girl, I should have been able to count on my Mum, there’s no fucking way on earth that should have happened,
I was just a fucking kid
...

Mum died a few years later, there was only so much alcohol and cigarettes her body could take
. I
was sent to live with an Auntie
that I had never even met; she was a sister of my long-absent dad that the social services tracked down, and supposedly she was happy to take me in. They never said anything about the whereabouts of my dad. Living with my Auntie
didn’t last
very long
. She was too old
and
frail to look after me
, especially as I was having some ‘
adjustment issues
’, as the social worker put it,
so they put me in a
care home.

I heard they tore down our old house a few months after Mum died. Not surprising really, those stairs were awfully dangerous.

***

I
eagerly snatched up the newspaper. I had noticed something on one of the inside pages, as Graham had leafed idly through it over breakfast. Something about a cyclist. I had been impatient for Graham to finish
reading
, but he had taken his time
. I had ground my teeth at the sound of his chewing, his bovine cheeks flapping over the noisy mulch of cereal. I had to dig my nails into my palms to stop my fingers from drumming on the table; h
e was possessive over the paper in the morning, as if
it w
ere
his to read
first
by some inalienable right. He said I had plenty of time to read it the night before
, but I
never
usually bothered to
read it
through. O
ccasionally I glanced at the back pages to see who had been born, or died or got married, but I found the
stories on the f
ront pages – the local news -  depressing.
Most of the time it was just p
oliticians grandstanding about their latest projects, or claiming that
another
new rise in taxes was for our benefit
, was for the good of the island.
Jersey news was thankfully low key
most of the time
,
there wasn’t too
much crime
. Sure, there had been the odd murder but this was still rare – usually, crimes consisted of a
drugs bust, or some poor drunken mug getting a kicking from other drunken mugs.

The door slammed as Graham left and I flicked to the page I’d spotted earlier.
A short article, with the headline ‘
Cyclist tragedy
’.

The body of a cyclist was found on Wednesday morning in La Rue de Ma
rtie
. The cyclist, who the police have said is a man in his late f
if
ties, was found with fatal injuries near the wall along the northern end of the lane. The police have asked for witnesses to come forward. They have not yet disclosed
any further details and a police spokesman refused to confirm whether
the death
was
suspicious
. The body was discovered by a farmer
,
who
told the Jersey Daily that it looked like a tragic accident, stating that the road was pitch black at night, with a lethal ditch running alongside it.
The
cyclist has not yet been named.

I jumped as the phone rang.

‘Hello.’

‘Andy, it’s me, how are you?’

‘Oh, hi
, um, oh,
Anita
, hello.
. I’m fine, yes.
You, er, well, er, I haven’t heard from you for ages,
how are you, I mean
,
well,
you’re back then, you’re back from...from
- ’

‘Yes, I’m back.
Just yesterday.
From
India, dear, I’m back from India. Well, I spent some time in Nepal as well, but India was
simply divine
. I really think I’m going to have to go and live there, you know
, I really think it’s my spiritual home. It’s got this...this aura, do you know what I mean, Andy? The karma of the place just keeps me in balance. Well, a
nyway, listen, Andy, are you free for lunch? Today? It would be great to catch up and I could bore you wi
th
all of my photos.’

‘Er, well, um – ’

‘Perfect. How about ‘
The Cork and Top
’, say, twelve o’clock
? W
e can grab a sandwich, and maybe
a cheeky glass of wine. Right, see you then.’

So, lunch it was, Anita had decided. She always did.

Anita was
my oldest friend, indeed,
she was
one of the
only
friends I had. I had never managed to make many friends over the years that the boys were at school. It was difficult
; I
couldn’t relate to th
e
young mothers, who were barely women themselves
, pregnant at fifteen and a
ll geared up for a
life
funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad or perhaps by
benefits. And I struggled to bond with the
yummy mummies – sure, I had the money, sort of, but perhaps I lacked the class or the grace that was supposed to go with it, and
a lack of care for my body certainly whittled away at the “yummy” part.
The thing was,
I always felt that they could see
past my expensive
f
our-wheel drive car,
through
the
veneer
-
th
at
delicate gossamer
blanket
that Graham’s money afforded
– right through
to the shy, care-home girl beneath.

Only Anita called me ‘Andy’, I would
n’t have accepted it from anyone else.
I met her in the care home that they put me in when I was thirteen.
The
Garter Home for Girls
, named after its founder, Felicity Garter. There were photos of Miss Garter all over the walls of the home; she had a sour face and a cruel squint, but I guess looks
couldn’t
always
be
true because
it seemed
she set up the Home for altruistic reasons, so she can’t have been all bad.

I reme
mbered the first time I met Anita.
‘What’s your name?’
she
had asked. I had barely put my suitcase down – a few meagre belongings, clothes that had seen better days – and she was standing at the door of my room. It was a very small room with a single bed and one cupboard. Shoeboxes we called them.

‘Andrea,’ I said. My voice sounded small, I was a bit overwhelmed, and Anita looked a little scary. She had a mop of unruly, dark hair, like she’d been in a strong breeze, and was twirling a lock of it, with her head cocked to one side.

‘An-dre-a, hmmm,’ she said, drawing out the syllables. Her voice was lilting, a hint of accent, Liverpool, perhaps
, but I couldn’t be sure, I wasn’t very good at recognising foreign accents.
‘So, Andy for short. Well, Andy, I’m Anita. You can call me Anita.’

‘
Er, it’s
Andrea, not Andy,’ I said meekly.

‘Okay, Andy, whatever. Come on, I’ll show you round, meet some of the other girls.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘Ah, hi Frankie, this
is the
new girl, arrived today.
Andy, meet Frankie.
’

‘Hi
Frankie,
’
I said.

‘
Welcome to hell, Andy,’ said Frankie.

‘Er n
o, Frankie, no
. T
his is An-dre-a, not Andy
, she doesn’t like to be called Andy.’ There was
a hint of
steel in Anita’s voice and Frankie cowed back a step.

‘Oh, okay, sorry, I mean, Andrea.’

Later, Frankie told me her name was Francesca, but Anita insisted on calling her Frankie. She shortened all of the girls’ names, even those that couldn’t really be shortened. Elizabeth was ‘Lizzie’, Sandra was ‘Sandy’, Susan was ‘Susie’
,
and Clare strangely became ‘Clay’.
Anita was a few years older than most of us, so nobody argued with her.

‘So why
are
you here, And
y
?’ Anita asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘
I mean why are
you here
?
Here
, in the glorious Garter Home for Girls
. Or, as Frankie so accurately put it, hell.’

‘Er, well, I, um, guess I, well, I...’

‘Come now, Andy, don’t be shy, we’re not gonna judge you, we’re all friends here. Well-’ Anita winked at me – ‘we’re all outcasts here, anyway
. Now, l
ook,
what I mean is,
s
ome are here ‘cos they got no parents, or ‘cos their parents don’t want them. And some are here ‘cos they’re just plain naughty.
So, w
hich are you?’

‘Um, well my Mum died and – ’

‘And your old man?’

‘You mean,
m
y Dad, no, he, er, well, I never really knew him, he left when I was young.’

‘Bastards, aren’t they. Men, that is. My old man was a bastard. Used to get drunk and beat me Mum up.
And me, too.
Went too far one day
though
, beat
my Mum
a bit too hard, put her in a coma. She never came out of it. They locked my old man up, he’s still inside. Hope he rots in prison, the bastard.’ Anita looked sad for a moment, then it was gone. She was too tough for tears.