Shallow Be Thy Grave

CAFFEINE NIGHTS PUBLISHING

Shallow Be Thy Grave

AJ Taft

Fiction aimed at the heart and the head...

Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2013

Copyright © Alison Taft 2013

Alison Taft has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work

CONDITIONS OF SALE

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental

Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing

www.caffeine-nights.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-907565-61-8

Cover design by

Mark (Wills) Williams

Everything else by

Default, Luck and Accident

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Christian Geeson, Katie Jukes and Liz McPherson for being there - in true story-writing style - beginning, middle and end.

And also to Emma Barnes, Caitlin Butler, Hannah Butler, Becky Cherriman, Andrea Cowans, Rachel Connor, Louise Cunningham, Liz, Ian and Valerie Foulds, Seni Glaister, Rachel Greenwood, Ellie Greenwood, Liz Hughes, Julie Lewthwaite, Nick Moon, Tom Palmer, James Nash, Claire Oxby, Pam Ruston, Charlotte Ryan, Paul Sandham, Andrew William Smith, Karen Smith, Maggi Summerhill, Anna Turner, Melanie Whiteside and Anamaria Wills for all their support and encouragement.

There’s a fantastic team at Caffeine Nights Publishing, led by the visionary Darren Laws. Thanks go particularly to Ian Ayris, Bob and Carol Bridgestock, Harry Dunn, the two Nicks - Quantrill and Triplow and Sandra Mangan.

And thanks always and forever to Mark, Harvey and Maggie for putting up with me. I know I’m not always the easiest of women…

Also by AJ Taft

Our Father Who Art Out There...Somewhere (The first book in the Lily Appleyard series)

WAR – A Lily Appleyard short story

I Know Why Your Mother’s Crazy

This one’s for my dad, Colin Taft, for teaching me to always accelerate out of a curve and for sharing his passion for books

Actions speak louder than words

And even if mine are barely heard

I’d rather be a glimmer of light or a spark

Than a hollow pose that’s lost in the dark

Yes I’d rather be a glimmer that’s straight from the heart

Than a hollow pose that’s lost in the dark

                          
More Than A Badge

                                         Henry Normal

The room was pitch dark. Lily lay on her back and wondered whether the banging she could hear was merely a peculiarly intense hangover.

But the noise grew louder, became more insistent. The walls shuddered in protest. Lily raised herself up, pulled back the curtain and was almost blinded by the sudden influx of light. She yanked open the sash window and stuck her head out into the fresh air, “Hello?”

The banging stopped and a figure stepped backwards down the path, scanning for her voice.

“Up here!” Shouting wasn’t helping her headache.  The person on the path raised his head upwards, and Lily caught sight of his face. A face she hadn’t seen in thirteen months, two weeks and three days. Not that she was counting.

Her first instinct was to duck her head back inside and hope he hadn’t seen her. She collapsed back on the bed and closed her eyes.

“Lily, I need to talk to you.”

She concentrated on her breathing. If she ignored him long enough, he’d have to go away. She tried to erase the image of him from her mind.

“It’s important.”

A blast of anger threw her across the bed and back to the window. “Go away,” she yelled.

“Fiona’s missing.” He was shouting so loud she could see even from this distance that his face had gone red.

For a moment Lily thought she might vomit. The tequila slammers had probably been a bad idea.

“For God’s sake, Lily. Open the door!”

He disappeared from view and the banging resumed. Lily wrapped the duvet around her naked body and shuffled out of the bedroom. She slapped her palm on Jo’s door as she passed it and heard Jo mumble something offensive in reply. Lily sat on her bum and slid down the stairs.

Their flat occupied the top two floors of an old Victorian terrace overlooking Hyde Park in Leeds. The ground floor flat was occupied by a much put-upon member of University staff, who was either already at work or busy sticking pins into a wax effigy of her upstairs student neighbours.

Lily reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs and tried to run her fingers through her hair. It was beginning to dread again, but because it was still so short it stuck up at right angles to her head. She gave it up as a bad job and pulled open the heavy front door.

Stuart stood on her doorstep, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders hunched up like it was cold, even though it was May already.

 She tried to ignore the way her stomach leapt around and over-compensated by snarling at him, “What do you mean, Fiona’s missing?”

She hadn’t seen Fiona for thirteen months, one week and six days. Not that she was counting.

“Hi.” He stared at her and she felt her nipples shrink under his gaze. “Can I come in?”

“I don’t think so.” She tried to summon righteous indignation like a force field around her. “Where is she?”

He spoke quietly. Slowly. “I’ve got bad news.”

Lily felt dread seep through her body. She’d lived the past twelve months in anticipation of this moment. She swallowed to clear her throat. “Tell me here.”

“I’d rather tell you inside.”

“What’s happened?”

Stuart hesitated, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a seal. He wiped the palm of his hand down the front of his coat, “I’m really sorry, Lily. I’m afraid Arthur’s died.”

Lily scrunched up her face. “Who?”

Stuart stared directly into her eyes. The sympathy in his made her want to sit. By the time he started to speak she’d made the connection, but she let him spell it out anyway. “Your granddad. He died.”

“Oh.” The first feeling to hit her wasn’t sadness - it was guilt. Small and hard, like a knot in the pit of her stomach. “How?”

“Heart attack. They thought he was going to be ok, but then, well, then he wasn’t.”

“Oh.” Lily cast around for something more appropriate to say.  She had a sudden picture of Arthur with her sister, their heads bent together as they toasted marshmallows over the open fire. “Fiona must be gutted.”

Stuart shook his head. His hair was longer than she remembered, almost to his collar, dark and shiny like wet coal. “She doesn’t know.”

“Oh,” she said again, trying to get the sequence of events straight in her mind. Hard to do while Stuart was staring at her - she could feel the warmth of him even from this distance.  “Then, how come she’s missing?”

“Well, that’s the thing. Your dad rang. To ask if I know where she is.”

“I haven’t heard from her for ages,” Lily tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Not in the last week?”

“Not in the last month.”

His shoulders sank an inch. “She’s gone inter-railing, but no-one knows where.”

“Does she,” Lily tried to keep her voice steady, “keep in touch with you?”

He nodded slowly. “We’re still friends,” he said, emphasising the word ‘friends’ slightly, or did she imagine that?

Lily bit her tongue so she couldn’t ask any of the questions that were threatening to spill out of her mouth.

“Can I come in?” asked Stuart. His denim jacket was faded and had a hole on the sleeve.

“I don’t know.”

“I told her dad, your dad,” the awkwardness of his tone brought back thoughts Lily had been trying to ignore all year, “that we’d find her. In time for the funeral.”

“We’d find her?” Lily stressed the ‘we’ in order to emphasise the preposterous nature of that idea. “What did you tell him that for?”

“Please let me in.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“For God’s sake, Lily, Fiona’s missing-”

“She’s not missing.” Lily’s tone was scornful. ‘Missing’ was missing in action, presumed dead. ‘Missing’ was Salvation Army posters and men who had gone to the shop for a packet of fags twenty years ago. ‘Missing’ meant a whole lifetime of not knowing who your father was. “She’s not missing. You just don’t know where she is.”

“Don’t you care?” He looked at her like he didn’t recognise her. “She’ll be devastated if she misses her granddad’s funeral.”

The front door of the adjoining house opened and a group of students spewed out. “Wotcha, Lil,” said one of them, breaking open a can of Coca Cola. It sprayed into the air and Stuart ran a hand through his dark curls, as if to brush out the liquid, although Lily wasn’t convinced any had hit him. There were five second-year students in the house next door and Lily watched them all gawp unashamedly at Stuart. She knew they were trying to work out who he was, whether there was any gossip. There were no secrets in student-land.

“Alright,” Lily stepped aside. “Five minutes.”

Stuart stepped into the box-like hallway. They both headed towards the stairs and nearly came into contact with each other, Lily still naked under the duvet. She took a step backwards, indicated for him to go first, then shuffled up the stairs after him. “Go in there,” she pointed to the front room on the first floor. “I’ve got to get dressed.”

“It’s half past ten,” said Stuart.

“So?”

“Nothing. I wasn’t-” said Stuart but Lily didn’t hear the rest of his sentence as the front room door closed on its spring mounted self-closer, cutting him off, physically and audibly. Lily turned and raced up the second flight of stairs - as fast as she could while wrapped like a sausage roll - to the attic rooms. Her bedroom was on the right, next door to Jo’s, and she cannoned through the heavy fire door. She picked up a black T-shirt from a heap on the floor and threw it over her head, not bothering with underwear. She almost fell trying to get into her tight canvas trousers, hopping round the room, then hit her head on the low beam that ran diagonally across the room. She swore and zipped her fly.