The Ice Cream Girls (11 page)

Except, as of this moment, I have a beach hut. I have a green and red wooden shed with burnt orange doors that sits on the tarmac on the promenade on Hove Seafront. I am the owner of property. Thanks to Granny Morag.

Granny Morag was the only one who cared enough to send me the things I needed inside: a battery-operated radio, a Walkman, tapes, stamps and writing paper. She also sent me clothes and shoes on a regular basis, up to the limit that was set by the prison, and money for phonecards and anything else I might need. There was nothing I wanted for when Granny Morag was alive except for visits, which she found hard to arrange transport-wise by herself. One time, when I was sent to Cheshire for what turned out to be only a year, she came all the way in a taxi, bringing boxes of homemade biscuits with her, and a coffee and walnut cake. That was the time before everyone and everything were viewed as potential drugs mules and anything that wasn’t hermetically sealed and then opened and gone through with a fine-tooth comb was not allowed.

We spent the hour talking and talking like we were in her living room in Brighton, eating cake and drinking tea. It was only as she was leaving that she said, ‘I’ll get you out of here, Poppy lass. I won’t rest until I do. I know you would never kill someone and I’m going to make sure the world knows it too.’ That was the last time I saw her – she died three years later of a massive stroke.

She wasn’t like my gran at times, she was more a friend than anything. She used to come up from Brighton to London to help Dad look after me when I was little, and sometimes I would stay with her in her house for the weekend. I regret not telling her about Marcus. About what he was really like and what was really going on in my life. She knew I had a boyfriend, and she knew I wasn’t always happy, but she didn’t know the ins and outs, the depths my ‘relationship’ with him plummeted to. She didn’t know about Serena. Maybe if she had she would have convinced me to leave, to let Serena have him and to walk away. Run away, knowing how forthright and outright blunt Granny Morag could be. Maybe she would have been the voice of reason in the madness that surrounded Marcus. Or maybe I wouldn’t have listened. Because that’s why you don’t tell those close to you things, isn’t it? You don’t want them to do what good friends and loved ones are meant to do – tell you the truths you don’t want to hear, the truths that would dismantle all your reasons for doing crazy things.

My hands are shaking as I try to push my key into the first circular lock on the beach hut. It’s rusty. I’m not sure the last time Dad came down here, but it’s rusty and I have to use the tip of my key to scrape away the disintegrated pieces of lock until I can see silver metal. Then I try again. The key finds its way through the rust and other blockages and comes to a rest in its natural home. I jiggle it a little, and then turn. It’s creaky as it moves, but it rotates and the latch it was holding in place slides back. I watch it intently, immersing myself in the experience of freeing a latch, breaking its solid link. Undoing each latch is a sweet experience, something to savour, something to remember. I am making something free, opening it up to the world.

If only the judge who sent me down me could see me now.

‘Never have I seen such a blatant disregard for human life. To torture and then to violently butcher a man of impeccable reputation, who was devoted to his young son and dedicated to teaching is reprehensible. Your attempts to paint your victim as some kind of monster – although ultimately unsuccessful – have not gone unnoticed by the Court and it will be taken into account when it comes to sentencing,’ he boomed at me across the court. The haze of shock at the verdict, at Dad’s departure, at even being there had not cleared so I could only vaguely process what he was saying. ‘In sentencing you, I deem it necessary for you to have the time to understand the gravity of your crime. I hereby sentence you to life imprisonment with a minimum term of twenty-five years. If I were able to disallow early release for good behaviour, I would. You have robbed the world of a talented, gentle, kind man, in return you are to repay society with your life.’

Days, or maybe it was even weeks, later when what he said had sunk in, when the smell and sounds of prison were so overwhelming and I realised that I would be surrounded by this for ever, his words came back to me. Stored up as they had been in my brain until I could understand them. He had not only been carrying out his job, he was actually judging me. He thought he had seen the truth despite everything that had been presented to him in court, he thought he knew ‘my type’ and was making sure he sent a message to all other teenagers out there who thought it a good idea to seduce and murder older men. He thought he knew best and so wasn’t judging the crime, but me. It must have stuck in his craw that Serena got away with it. That there was nothing he could do to throw her away with the rest of society’s trash, too. I bet he had a nice little speech all polished up to deliver and damn her as well.

Well, he might still get the chance, if things work out for me the way they’re meant to. The way they’re going to – because I’ve found her. I’ve found Serena.

The hinges creak as I unbolt one door and then push both orange doors wide open, letting in the light, illuminating the dark place into something bright and light and beautiful.

Fuck you, Mr Judge, look what I’ve got
. His little speech, his damnation of me, was indeed too personal and too smoothly delivered within minutes of the verdict being announced so my stretch was reduced to eighteen years minimum. Apparently that was good. That was taking into consideration that it was a first offence, I’d had no other dealings with the police beforehand, and I was of good enough character to have stayed out of prison on house arrest until the trial. When my solicitor passed on the information and I nodded at him, I could tell he thought I was being ungrateful, that having seven years shaved off a life stretch was cause for celebration. ‘Only if you’re not innocent,’ I wanted to say to him, but kept quiet because I knew he wouldn’t understand.

My palace is dusty, the smell of rust and emptiness and the sea have become trapped in the grain of the wood inside and slowly diffuse into the air around me. This isn’t much smaller than most of the rooms I’ve lived in since 1989. It’s a hell of a lot more welcoming. I run my fingers over the rough, marine-treated wood, with its coats of stark white paint, and allow the smell, the history of the place to seep into me. I close my eyes and smile as I remember the picture I saw of Granny Morag and Grandpa Adam sitting outside here on their stripy deckchairs, metal cups in hand, proudly smiling at the camera.

On hooks behind the door are two deckchairs. One red, one blue. If any more than one person other than Granny Morag came down here, they’d have to sit on a blanket. It takes a little manoeuvring, trying to work from memory and against natural instincts, before I manage to put the red one up. Then I put up the blue one beside it on the tarmac. I sit on the blue one – the red one was Granny Morag’s. When I stayed for the weekend we’d come down here and I’d sit on the blue deckchair and she would sit on her red deckchair and we would stare at the sea, wave at people walking past and eat the picnic she brought. I thought life couldn’t get much better back then. Being with her here was the best thing on earth.

I look over at her seat, remember her as she was: the big curls of her grey-white hair framing her face; her soft features brightened even more by her smile; her large, friendly eyes; her small, perfect little mouth. She always wore small pearl earrings in her ears, and her engagement and wedding rings on her finger. Even though Grandpa Adam died a year after I was born, Granny Morag never married again. She was popular with the old fellas of Portslade, but she never went beyond a spot of companionship. ‘Why would I want to be messing with all that again, lassie?’ she’d say to me. ‘You know when you’ve met the man you’re meant to be with. I don’t see the bother of trying again.’

I close my eyes for a second, fancy that I can feel sun on my face, even though it’s an overcast day and there is a slight chill in the air. I prefer the outside when it’s like this. The sky does not look so scary and threatening and huge, but something to be ignored while I spend as much time in the fresh air as I can. It looks manageable again; only slightly bigger than the snatches of it I used to get.

I’m going to paint the inside of the hut an off-white. Maybe even a cream-white. Sew a new cover for the boxseat – I know how to do that now. Get myself a new kettle and a camping stove. A flask. Maybe even a picnic set. I’ll repaint the doors, keep it Granny Morag’s deep, dark orange but freshen it up. I may even get a rug for the floor, and a picnic blanket. And I’ll have to get myself a big woolly blanket so I can wrap up warm, drink tea and watch the sun go down.

I reach into my pocket and take out my cigarettes and lighter. I’ll need to get a job, of course, to be able to afford all that. That might take some doing, but I’ll have to find the money somehow. Granny Morag has given me this place and I want to make it my own and make her proud at the same time.

I inhale life into the cigarette, drawing in breath to make the tip take the flame and glow, while I look over at Granny Morag’s chair.

‘Thank you for this,’ I say to her. ‘Thank you. I’m going to make you proud. I’m going to look after this place. And I’m going to clear my name. I’ll make you proud of me again, you’ll see.’

I’ve found Serena. Three days in the library, going through old microfiche films of the publications from that time to find out where she went afterwards and then on the library’s Internet, looking for as many Serenas in the Leeds area who even vaguely matched her description. I looked and looked until I came across a photo on a social networking thingy website of a college reunion. She was trying to avoid being in the picture, but they still caught a partial of her – enough for me to recognise and enough for them to bother ‘tagging’ her with her new name.

I blow out a long plume of smoke, feeling for a moment like the villain in a black-and-white movie with a long cigarette holder and nefarious cackle.

Fate is on my side. Fate knows I’m innocent because I’ve found Serena and she lives less than two miles from here. With her so close, virtually a heartbeat away, it’s only a matter of time before I get my life back.

serena

‘I’m incredibly proud of you, Verity,’ I say to my daughter. ‘You’re the cleverest girl in the world and you’re a lovely person.’

Evan and I have just swapped children for the goodnight portion of the evening.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she mumbles, embarrassed. Today, three days after I found that book, we had a note from her form tutor saying that in all her subjects to date Verity was doing outstandingly well, and if they were still conducting Key Stage 3 exams, she’d be expected to achieve an ‘Exceptional’ in all her subjects. All of them! In other words, my daughter was a big girly swot.

‘Well, she’s always been talented like that,’ Evan had said to me as he re-read and re-read the note, almost bursting with pride. ‘We’ve worked hard to encourage her studies.’ He’d obviously forgotten that it was me who taught her to read before she went to nursery, and that it is me who checks over her homework every night. In fact, Evan seemed to have forgotten that when she was going through her ‘why?’ stage it was me who ended up, more often than not, pulling out encyclo paedias and dictionaries to get the answers so she would stop. He did everything but slap his hands over his ears and run away screaming ‘Lalalalalalalalalala, can’t hear you,’ until she ended the question onslaught.

‘Yes,
we
have,’ I’d said, pointedly, but it was completely lost on him. He’d refolded the note and slipped it gently into his inside breast pocket, patting the pocket afterwards like it was a precious item and it was safe there, beside his heart, keeping him warm.

Verity unhooks her iPod from around her neck and carefully winds the earphones around its slim, silver body before placing it gently on the bedside table.

‘I always knew you were clever, but it does well for the school to realise it, too.’

‘Dad said I get it from you,’ she says. ‘He said you had the book smarts and he was good at reading the streets.’

I roll my eyes at her father. Once, on an episode of
Starsky and Hutch
, one of them had said that in police work it was always important to ‘read the streets’ to fight crime. Starsky or Hutch meant that on a blazing hot day, he’d seen a man in a big overcoat going towards a liquor store, as they call them in the US. And, sure enough, it turned out that the man was going to rob the store with a shotgun stashed under his coat. Ever since he saw that episode, Evan has been going on about ‘reading the streets’. If he’s trying to find a parking spot, he ‘reads the streets’; if he’s trying to find the shortest line in the supermarket, he ‘reads the streets’; if he’s trying to find the quickest route to anywhere he ‘reads the streets’. I’ve said more than once that if he’s not careful, he’s going to read the streets right into the spare room.

‘He said since you’d already passed the book smarts on to me, he was going to teach me and Con how to read the streets,’ she adds.

‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ I say. ‘I’m going to pretend your father doesn’t have some really annoying sayings.’

I lean forwards and kiss her forehead. Her skin is soft and warm. I remember how soft and warm she was when she was a baby. I used to love to cuddle her, and would leave her to sleep for hours on her feeding cushion on my lap, just to be near her. Simply to hold my baby. I sometimes want to hold her now, but it would cause a major incident if I did. She didn’t seem to be a baby for long enough. One day she was lying still, her eyes following me wherever I went as I tried to spruce up the place before Evan got home, the next she was walking and then talking and then she was a teenager who had died a million deaths when I sat her down to talk to her about the birds and the bees and periods. It all seemed to rush so quickly by, I sometimes feel like I missed it. I want to go back and do it again. I wouldn’t change any of it, I would simply pay more attention. Remember what it was like when she was light enough to lift with one hand. Remember how it felt to see her roll over in her cot for the first time and stare at me. Remember the look on her face when she realised that she could get from here to there by moving her feet.