Escaping Life (32 page)

It had been the
first time that she had considered the stress that her
f
ather might be under.  As they sat
back in the car and began the last stretch of the journey, she had watched her
f
ather as he chatted away to Graham. 
Her
f
ather was not a chatty man,
and he didn’t make small talk.  He had always taught Elizabeth that it was a
waste of her time.  She could remember him sitting both her and Rebecca down
when they were still at infant school.  He had told them that they should
consider the things that they say to people carefully, and that each word that
they permit to leave their Iips should have a purpose and a benefit.  Elizabeth
hadn’t really understood what he’d meant, but she had nodded in all the right
places, following Rebecca’s lead.  It had really been a lesson for Rebecca, for
it was she who was older and about to start primary school, a fact of which
Elizabeth was incredibly jealous, so much so that she had purposely scratched Rebecca’s
new pencil tin with the shiny point of the sharp compass that had been neatly
stored inside it.  Afterwards, she had suffered a terrible sense of guilt and
shame at her actions, and had begged her
m
other to buy another one so that
Rebecca wouldn’t know.  Her
m
other hadn’t obliged, and
when Rebecca had finally seen the damaged pencil tin, she had cried and had refused
to speak to Elizabeth for what seemed like a lifetime.  It was the worst
possible punishment that Elizabeth could think of, and much worse than when her
m
other had made her sit on
the first step alone in the hallway.  When Rebecca had started talking to her
again, Elizabeth had dared venture what the talk from their
f
ather had been about.  Rebecca had
said that she wasn’t sure, but that she thought it was because she had been scolded
in class for talking when the teacher was talking.  Elizabeth decided at that
point that she didn’t want her misdemeanours to be the reason for one of these
little chats, and she made a mental note to follow Daddy’s advice, and walk her
own path in the shadow of his footsteps.

Even still, you
could be sure that no week would pass by without the need for another little sit
down.  He would sit two chairs beside each other in the main dining room, the
one that was unused, unless there were guests expected that nobody really knew
and that neither Elizabeth nor Rebecca had ever seen before.  He would call
them in and stand over them, his height his tool of intimidation.  The problem
was that Rebecca didn’t listen to her father, he explained.  Elizabeth was a
good girl, who did as he instructed.  He only wanted the best for them both. 
Yet Rebecca was too strong willed for her own good sometimes, and refused time
and time again to take his advice.  Eventually, Elizabeth had stopped attending
these lectures, and only one chair was positioned for Rebecca to sit on. 
Occasionally, Elizabeth would sit outside and listen as her father’s voice
became louder and angrier.  There were a couple of occasions when she had heard
the thud of his hand as it made contact with Rebecca’s back, or bottom, or one
time, her face and Elizabeth had winced as if it were her own body that he had struck. 
The trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s house that weekend had been cancelled and
Mummy had refused to talk to him all week;  the bruise on the side of Rebecca’s
cheek a red and swollen reminder of what their
m
other had described as hatred that was
growing inside her.  She had told Edward, when she thought that Rebecca and
Elizabeth were asleep and out of earshot, that taking out his frustrations
about work and the struggle of the
ir
engineering business on Rebecca was unacceptable.  That that was the last
time.  Rebecca hadn’t been allowed to go to school that whole week.  There had
been no further little sit down chats.

As she sat in
the backseat watching her
f
ather chat with pride about
his new ultra glamorous car, Elizabeth was surprised at how animated he seemed
for what to her was such a material object.  She couldn’t believe that he had
purchased it.  From the snippets of conversation that she had heard, it also
seemed like he had just closed the deal on a brand new city apartment.  He had
moved out of the family home after the murder and into a rented apartment in
the city, a rather humble affair with low ceilings and only the smallest of
balconies, from which, if you leaned out far enough, you could enjoy the view
of the river.  It seemed to Elizabeth that that was all about to change, and he
sat there speaking with enthusiasm about an apartment with ‘a view to die for’
,
which
had an unrivalled view of the river
and the financial district.  She knew the area that he was talking about; it
was the area that she and Graham used to look towards from their city-based
apartment.  She knew how expensive it was.

They pulled up
outside the broken down apartment complex, and Elizabeth checked the address
that she had scribbled down on a piece of paper.  The wheels of the car
crunched as they rode over the debris left scattered in the road.  As Elizabeth
looked out of the window, the dark blue of the late afternoon sky was a stark
contrast to the grey image of the tower block before her.  She didn’t know this
area, and she didn’t particularly want to, but she was fairly sure that, based
on the appearance and the fact that they had crossed the river - recognising at
least two of the roads the speaking SatNav had directed them through - they
must
be
in Woodside, the same area
in which Barry lived. 

“Is this it?” 
She asked the question of nobody in particular.  As she looked up she saw that
the impossibly tall building was painted a simple white
grey colour, and was divided up by
symmetrically positioned windows on every floor.  There was a canopied door at
the bottom of the complex, which was surrounded by police officers and whose
presence more than adequately answered her question.  This doorway seemed to be
the only way in and out of the building, and there was a sign mounted on a
large plaque to the side that stated:  ‘Reynolds House’, much like a
commemorative wall plaque placed insitue after a grand opening ceremony and
which was similar to the one she had seen at the bus station.  It had been defaced,
no doubt by one of the kids who were hanging around on their bikes in the park
a couple of hundred metres to the left.  Some of the residents of the tower
block were hanging out of their windows, eager to discover the cause of the
kerfuffle, having seen the police and blue and white streamers that prevented
any access in or out of the building.  Their attention was also drawn to the
new, out-of-place Jaguar that was pulling up outside the building.  Elizabeth
thought to herself that she wouldn’t relish leaving such a car here in this
spot, outside this building, in such close proximity to those kids who were
pulling wheelies on their tiny framed bikes, if the place wasn’t crawling with
police officers.  Some of them were just standing outside the doors, as they
had been at the entrance to the beach where she had been less than a week
before.  She saw the familiar figure of Jack coming towards them, and she
immediately felt better and more at ease.  As they got out of the car, they
approached the dividing line between the police-claimed area and the rest of
the world.  Jack was dressed as normal, white shirt and dark trousers, but
Elizabeth couldn’t help but think that there was something different about him:
 he appeared calmer.  He still had the wrinkles on his forehead and the small
puffy bags under his eyes, and yet somehow, his face looked less tired and less
angry.

“Thank you for
coming, I appreciate that it’s the weekend.”  He looked at Edward, and then
back to Elizabeth.  “This won’t be that easy.  Are you ready?”  She couldn’t
imagine what he meant.  They had been to Lyme beach; they had been to the
mortuary.  They had sat together and dissected the evidence as it was laid out
before them.  Never once had he told her that it might be difficult; never once
had he tried to prepare her.  She’d thought that she was ready for anything.

Jack held open
the entrance door, and she knew that she was crossing over into a life of which
she knew nothing about; there was nothing past this line that was going to be
familiar to her; to cross this line and discover what was on the other side of
it was to realise that she no longer knew her sister, to realise that she no
longer knew anything about Rebecca’s life.  It was to understand, too, that the
sister that she’d known, the warmest, the most affectionate person that would
stand there at her side through the toughest of problems until that fateful
day, would be truly lost forever.

She walked in
Jack’s footsteps, Graham and Edward following closely behind her.  The hallway
of the tower block was painted the same insipid pale grey, but here, without
the benefit of sunlight, it was cold and dark, devoid of life. 
The elevator stood derelict,
doors half open and inside the walls a fresco of graffiti. 
The stairway was a solid
lump of concrete, each step sharp-edged as they climbed, passing bright swirls
of graffiti names and cursing tags, similar to that scrawled on the metallic
sign outside the building and which denoted territory.  The stairs rose and
rose, spiralling upwards into the darker reaches of the building.  The higher
they went, the less light there seemed to be, as if they were moving steadily
away from any light source, and life.  The graffiti that adorned the walls on
the lower levels didn’t decorate the walls here; instead, the floor became
dirtier, and there was an odour of stale urine that she could remember from the
multi-storey car park in the city that she used when shopping.  There was
litter on the floor in various stages of decomposition, and the once-shiny
orange handrails now looked brown and dirty.

They approached
the door of the apartment that was surrounded by police.  There was a small
metal grate covering the door, the kind you would use to fence in an overly
enthusiastic animal in a prized garden.  The door behind it was open, and
Elizabeth could hear the bustle of more police officers working in the
apartment.  The doorway glowed orange against the dull grey dinginess of the corridor. 
Elizabeth couldn’t wait to get inside; she could feel the building crawling over
her, its dark and penetrating corridors swelteringly oppressive.  She wanted to
be out of this hallway where, if not for the police presence, to her, it seemed
like on any other day inhumane and criminal activities might be taking place. 
As she looked around her, feeling the building bearing down upon her shoulders,
she wondered how it might be that the woman she once called a sister, the
person that she once knew, might survive living here. 

“OK?  Ready to
go?”  Jack handed them all gloves and shoe covers.  Edward was a little behind
and just catching his breath.  They put on the shoe covers and gloves and Elizabeth
nodded, following Jack into the apartment.  He was still talking to her as they
entered the confined space that seemed to function as a living room, a kitchen
and a bedroom altogether, but she wasn’t listening to his words.  In one corner
against a wall, there was a small settee, old and threadbare that, judging by the
green watermark and thick-looking lumps of growth on the arms, appeared to be suffering
from damp.  She could smell that faint, musty smell of mould and her chest that
had not been bothered by her asthma since she was a child, felt tight.  In the
opposite corner, there was a small single bed, with no headboard.  All around
the room, there were newspaper articles pasted to the walls and in parts they
were peeling away.  Elizabeth moved in closer to read the dates.  The articles nearest
to her were from only last month; notices about deaths and births, weddings, birthdays
and crimes.  There were images of brides and grooms, their smiles mocking
grimaces in comparison with the cruelty of this room.  There were names and
pictures to commemorate deaths and anniversaries.  She moved along the wall,
the articles and notices slowly becoming older and fainter, the closer to the
small window that she got.  Above the long edge of the bed, against the wall,
was the only space free of newspaper clippings, a bare rectangle of plasterwork
that the bed’s occupant could gaze upon, in preference to the rest of the
covered walls.  It reminded Elizabeth of the Wailing Wall, a giant cenotaph
monument built from fragmented gravestones to honour the past lives of hundreds
of souls.  The only difference was that gravestone fragments had been replaced
by newspaper clippings, steadily put together over years to build one solid
unit.  She scanned the room, observing faces and noting names until one face jumped
out at her.  It was as if she was staring in a mirror, her own face gazing back
at her.  There, positioned next to the settee and pasted on to the wall, was
one of the oldest clippings:  Rebecca’s face on a newspaper clipping originally
posted to commemorate her loss.  Elizabeth could remember selecting the
photograph; it was the same one that she had chosen and given to Jack.  Next to
it there was a picture of their
m
other. 
It was not just a notification.  Above her picture was a headline:   ‘LOCAL
WOMAN SLAIN IN OWN HOME’.  She had seen this article before as well;  she
didn’t need to read it to know that it detailed how their mother was found with
her skirt above her waist, her head limp and neck bruised from an obvious
struggle.  Elizabeth knew this story well.  Next to that was another story,
posted the day after Rebecca’s disappearance.  It was a small article,
published before the press had discovered that the woman in question was the
daughter of the dead woman found in her own kitchen only days before, and on
whom there were no obvious signs of a sexually motivated assault.  In this
article, the new fatality was described as just another car accident, sad, but
not that newsworthy.  It was only the next day that the connection had been
made, and the press went into wild information frenzy.  Those articles were there,
too.  There were pictures of a younger Rebecca on the wall; Elizabeth hadn’t
seen these articles before, because Graham had kept them from her.  He had shielded
her from the storm that raged around them in those darkest days.  They still didn’t
know how they had managed to find pictures to print.