Dead Lovely (11 page)

We watched as the bottom hinge splintered from the wall, as the chain brace screw loosened and plopped to the floor, as the top hinge broke off
suddenly
and as the brace of the mortice lock fractured from the wall.

The door fell onto the floor before us, as if in slow motion, with a whoosh and a thud and a gust of air.

When I looked up, the door was flat before me, and a pair of legs were behind it. I followed the denim-clad legs, which I was sure were the legs of the ghost of Sarah, slowly upwards … towards the stomach I was sure was the stomach of dead Sarah … towards a face that under no circumstances was the face of Sarah.

Because it was the face of Chas.

After leaving Krissie’s parents, Chas had gone home to a fantastic welcome from his family in Edinburgh. Unable to get Krissie out of his mind he tried to get hold of her on her mobile. She wasn’t answering, so he phoned Krissie’s mum to check he had the right number. Anna told him the holiday had been a
disaster.
They’d argued. She’d had a fall. And Krissie had come home. Chas could tell from Anna’s voice that she was really upset.

‘I just don’t know what to do anymore,’ she told Chas. ‘We don’t seem to be getting through to her at all. Dave’s trying to persuade me that we need to get away. I have to admit, we’re both pretty exhausted. He’s found some internet deal or other.’

‘You should,’ Chas said.

‘But I need to check on her.’

‘I’ll check on her,’ Chas said. ‘You head off and get some rest.’

‘Are you sure?’ Anna said. ‘Maybe that would be a good idea … Maybe she’d respond better to you … But ring us. Let us know how you get on.’

During the fifty-minute train journey back to Glasgow, Chas thought about Krissie. He’d been in love with her for years. Since he’d first clapped eyes on her eating curry with her hands in a beach cafe in Goa, trying hard to be cool and local but doing it all wrong. Their eyes had locked. Hers were bright blue and deep, and they shone with energy and inquisitiveness.

After he got to know her he loved her feistiness, her determination, her body, her looks, her brain, her jeans, the books she read, the job she wanted to do, everything.  

But somehow she’d remained oblivious to his
feelings
for her, and consistently went for arseholes, guys who pretended to like her independence and
feminism,
then changed their minds when their chemicals merged. Chas hadn’t wanted to blow his chances, so he’d waited and waited, and they became the best of mates. There was that one time, when he’d kissed her in a taxi, when he’d wanted to fly to the moon with the thrill of it, but all she’d said was ‘yuck’.  

As Chas walked towards Krissie’s flat he could tell someone was in – lights had gone on and then off, blinds had gone up and then down – but Krissie didn’t answer her intercom, her landline or her mobile.

Chas rang her buzzer, but she didn’t answer. Then he tossed several stones at the kitchen window. He then rang all the buzzers in the close. Eventually, a young guy let him in.

When he got to the top floor, the old lady from across the way was watching through the window of her front door. Chas gave her a half-smile then knocked on Krissie’s door several times. He could hear strange noises coming from inside the flat, but no-one came to the door.

‘Be careful,’ the neighbour said, coming out of her flat to join him. ‘It could be a burglar. I was broken into a while back, you know. They took the diamond brooch my great-grandmother from Portree gave my grandmother … Should I ring the police?’

‘No, just give me a sec,’ Chas said, wary of police involvement so soon after his release.

Chas put his ear against the door. He could hear her in there, rushing around and yelling for her son, and he panicked and kicked the door in as the old lady watched with horror. This wasn’t a two or three kick affair; it took him ages and he seriously hurt his right foot and lower back in the process.

When the door came down, he saw Krissie sitting there, huddled and quivering with her little boy in her arms. It took her a few moments to recognise him, but when she did she breathed out hard and began to sob.

Chas held them both in his arms. His darling Krissie and her beautiful little bundle of a boy.

‘Sarah! She’s in purple!’ she muttered, over and over again.

She was delirious, not making sense. He took her into the bedroom and laid her down.

Chas told the neighbour there was no burglar and no need to call the police. Then he placed the door upright and fed Robbie who eventually fell asleep. Chas returned to Krissie’s bedroom, where she was lying with her eyes closed. It was dark outside now and Chas turned off the bedside light so Krissie could sleep.

‘Sarah!’ she said again.

‘You’re not well, baby girl, you’re not making sense. Get some sleep!’

Then she opened her eyes and said, ‘Chas, how did it feel, doing something really bad?’

‘I didn’t do anything really bad.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Never you mind, off you go to sleep.’

Krissie drifted off into a restless sleep, visions of Sarah’s face haunting her dreams. Blood and death with a sickly smile.

‘Krissie! Kriss! Clever clogs,’ said Sarah through her bloody mouth.

Krissie woke with a jolt and then drifted off again, mumbling in her sleep. ‘I slept with Kyle! I’m so sorry, Sarah. Kyle!’

As Chas watched Krissie tossing and turning in bed, he realised she was in a terrible mess. She looked ragged and drawn – and from what she was saying, it seemed pretty obvious she had committed adultery with Kyle. If she continued on this path, Chas thought to himself, she would spiral
downwards
and downwards. If only she could see that with him to love her and take care of her …

As her conscious world finally came into view again Krissie sprang up and crushed Chas’s hopes with her words: ‘Can you look after Robbie for a while? I have to go and see Kyle.’

She dressed quickly, as if in a panic, and raced off into the darkness.

After she left, Chas sat beside Robbie and looked at his little face. His bottom lip was tucked in under his top one, his hands were curled under his chin and his eyelashes seemed so long and dark that it was hard not to believe he had mascara on. He was so like his mum.

Chas was thinking about the time Krissie tickled him on the floor and he told her she was the most beautiful woman in the universe, when an alarm rang outside, jolting him back into the present.

Prison had imbued Chas with a fear of alarms. It started in the middle of his sentence. An alarm rang after lights out one night and kept on ringing. He was on the top bunk and had no cell mate at the time. He lay there on his back as he heard officers yell and keys jingle and then slowly got off his bunk, stepped down onto the concrete floor, and looked out of his tiny square peephole. The door to the cell opposite him was open, and a man was
hanging
from the top bunk, his jeans tight around his neck, his knees dragging on the floor, and his head bright purple. The dead man swung around towards the peephole and his bulging eyes looked straight into Chas’s. An officer was vomiting into the sink down the hall and someone was dialling a code blue, code blue.

When Chas returned to his bunk, the purple dead man seemed to have moved in below him, never to be liberated.

So when Chas heard this alarm, he jumped up, his head pounding. He moved the front door out of the way and walked onto the landing, and then down to the bottom of the stairs. The alarm got louder and louder as Chas looked out the front door onto the street and then opened the front door.

He stepped out onto the street and saw that the alarm was coming from a car. He looked at the car for some time. Would it just keep going? Would no-one do anything? How do things work out here?

Then the front door shut.

He grabbed hold of the handle and tried to open it.

Locked.

‘Shit!’

Too embarrassed to ring the buzzers again, Chas ran around to the back of the flats and climbed over the brick wall of the communal gardens. A sensor light went on and made it hard for him to see the back door, but he found it eventually and turned the handle.

The alarm was so loud that it almost blew him off his feet, and lights in the eight flats above him came on one by one. He yelled at the faces in the windows: ‘Let me in … The baby’s upstairs!’ To his relief, the dopey young man who’d let him in earlier opened his window.

‘What?’ asked Marco.

‘Let me in. There’s a baby alone in the flat above you.’

‘In Krissie’s flat?’

‘Aye, aye. Let me in.’

Marco thought for a moment, shut the window and called the police.

I got out of the taxi, approached the door, knocked, and stood in the darkness for a moment. As the rowan tree snowed brown and yellow leaves in the breeze, I thought I heard a whisper.

‘Krissie! Krissie!’

I turned around and looked at the leaves falling to the ground and then I saw Sarah – her white and red body – flesh and blood.

‘Krissie! KRISSIE!’

Kyle’s voice made me jump and I turned with a gasp.

There were several half-packed suitcases in the hall.

‘Krissie!’

I looked back at the tree – Sarah wasn’t there, just a tree trunk.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I whispered.

He let me in and we walked awkwardly to the kitchen.

Kyle said he hadn’t seen Sarah, that she was probably still at the cottage on Loch Katrine and wasn’t answering his calls. He was going to stay at his folks for a bit so she could come home in peace if she wanted and –

‘She’s not at Loch Katrine,’ I interrupted.

‘Have you spoken to her?’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean then?’

I blurted it out as fast as I could to get it over with, how she’d followed me that night, how we’d argued and she’d attacked me, how I’d pushed her, she’d fallen, I’d found her dead and hid her …

He swayed on his feet and then his eyes filled heavily with tears. He took his hand away from his mouth, breathing hard and oddly. Then his face distorted in grief and he made a ferocious groan and fell to his knees.

I tried to touch him, bent down to hold him, but he flicked me off and changed demeanour again.

‘You murdering bitch!’

He got up and began pounding on my chest. I took it, all the while saying, ‘It was an accident and I panicked. I didn’t mean it!’

He stopped hitting me and buried himself in me, sobbing uncontrollably into my chest.

‘I’m so sorry, so sorry …’ I cried.

Over his shoulders, my eyes zoomed in on the island unit, where the silver phone sat, waiting.

I gathered his face in my hands and looked into his eyes.

‘I’m going to call the police now,’ I said.

He was splotchy and drenched and he stared at me before a flicker of his professional calm returned: ‘NO! Krissie, no! You can’t call the police.’

He decided we should not tell anyone. Because of our affair, he would be a suspect and lose
everything
and I would lose Robbie. Instead, he would drive to Glencoe with the necessary equipment, and dispose of Sarah’s body properly. He would leave now and get it done by dawn, when he would text me. Under no circumstances should I contact him and we should never see each other again.

I argued with him. It was no use running away from this, I said. It would always be there, haunting us. But he insisted, rather angrily. ‘We will both go to jail. They saw us dancing in the hotel, heard you two arguing in the foyer, everyone must have known we had an affair for God’s sake! What will it look like? We’ll both get life!’

He started rushing around the house gathering things, asking me to describe exactly where the crevice was, rummaging under the sink for black bin liners …

‘Don’t contact me,’ he insisted, leading me to the back door. ‘I’ll text you when it’s done. I’ll text
yes
,
that’s all, just
yes
and you’ll know. Now go.’ He ignored my protests and pushed me through the door.

‘Go out by the lane and don’t let anyone see you!’ Then he slammed the door behind me.

I ran to the gate and into the dark lane where I stumbled into a brown wheelie bin. An enormous bang went off nearby, terrifying me until I realised it was local kids setting off fireworks. Guy Fawkes is coming, I thought to myself, before running for three miles as if Sarah’s sickly ghost was at my heels.

It was about ten at night when I reached my tenement. Most of the buildings in the area were turning lights off for the night, but mine seemed to have every single light on. Each of the eight flats, two on each level, were bright with life. I entered the close and heard lots of voices. They got louder and louder and several doors were open on the way up.

The old bag opposite was peering through her glass again and my door was no longer propped up precariously against the wall, but lying on the floor. I stepped over it and could hear several people talking in the living room. I checked Robbie’s room to make sure he was okay – he was sleeping soundly in his cot – and then walked into the living room.

There, on the two comfy sofas, were Chas, Constable Johnny Wallace, and the too-pretty
policewoman
who had appeared at my door the week before the holiday, plus a twin-set and pearls social worker and her pale gay apprentice.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

They were very polite, now that I look back, but I didn’t take it well. They’d been called by Marco after Chas got locked out with Robbie inside. They’d interviewed neighbours who’d heard banging and shouting in the evening, heard me crawling around in the loft, seen me dressed oddly and trying to run away down Gardner Street, then heard a man
shouting
up that there was a baby alone in the flat. And this wasn’t the first time I’d left the child alone, as the young policewoman pointed out. There’d been an incident about a week earlier.

‘I told you I was doing controlled crying!’ I argued pathetically. ‘And anyway, this time Chas was looking after him!’

‘Mr Worthington left the building,’ said the female cop.

‘I popped out when I heard an alarm, and the door slammed on me!’ Chas argued.

I could have killed him.

‘Do you realise Mr Worthington has just been released from prison and is currently on parole?’ This from Pearls, the social worker.

‘Yes, I do. Okay!’ I said, and sat down to try and be sensible. ‘I’m a social worker myself, a child protection social worker. I’ve worked in the Gorbals office for years, so I understand completely why you’re here. I’ve got loads of children on supervision who really
are
in danger, whose parents really aren’t
able to look after them. But this isn’t the same. I know what I’m doing. I’m from a good family! I’ve had a very difficult couple of days, and I’m very sorry, but I’m back now, and Robbie’s fine, so if it’s okay, I’ll just see you out …’