The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (27 page)

Jim finally pulls up outside Patty’s house at 4 a.m. and cuts the engine. Next to him Patty breathes softly, lost deep inside some inner world. He opens his door and slides out of the car, his back crunchy from sitting. He slams the car door; it does the trick and wakes Patty. She drifts for a second in some calm waters and then, as memories flood back in, she tenses once more.

Jim opens her door and bends down. “You’re home.”

“Do you have the spare key?” she asks, her speech thick with tiredness.

“Of course.” He hands it to her and watches as she walks into the house. She wobbles slightly as she walks, as if she’s on too-high
heels. At the door she fumbles with the key, pushing and scratching, until finally the metal slides into its sheath and she goes inside. She leaves the front door open.

“Dad,” Dani calls from the car.

“Yes, darling.”

“She’s left the front door open.”

He nods.

“You need to go and close it.”

“True.”

“I’ll wait. Don’t worry about me.”

He nods to her and walks over to the house. He holds the door, feeling the heft of the wood in his hand. He could shut it and leave; deep down he thinks this would be best. But instead he follows Patty inside and shuts the door behind him.

The house is dark. Jim tries to remember the layout from his brief visit earlier. Suddenly there is a cry, a scream of pain. Primal, animal, intense pain. In the darkness Jim is enveloped by the scream, the pain. It tears into him; he knows what it is. He rushes forward, unsure where to go. He sees a bar of light under a door and hits the wood. The scream rises in force, hitting him in the chest and ripping the years away from him. Patty is on the floor in the lounge. In her hand is one of the newspapers and she waves it around, then claws at the front page. She screams again, then rolls into a ball. She is having a fit—some kind of seizure—just like when she’d heard Dani was dead. A scream of pure pain. The intensity of loss, the hunger of despair—it cuts right through him.

“Patty. Patty. Look at me, calm down.”

He tries to put his arms around her and hold her, calm her, but she lashes out—forcing him back. Her body arches; she looks as if she could snap in two. He lunges again, trying to grab her arms, but she beats at him. The scream rises even higher.

“Patty, Patty, calm down.”

She writhes and twists. Jim holds on for dear life like a cowboy at a rodeo. She butts him in the face—so much pain. His lip is cut and there’s blood.

“Mine or hers?” he thinks, frightened and not knowing whether to call the hospital or the police or to try and ride the roller-coaster to the end. He grabs her shoulders and pulls her closer, tighter.

“Patty, we love you,” he moans into her hair. Then he starts to rock her, tiny movements he has not made since Dani was a baby. And he sings, barely audible, but he sings for her soul. Finally she starts to slow. Her screams collapse into shakes as her entire body vibrates. Slowly the muscles start to unwind, and she softens and curls into his arms from choice. She wraps her arms around his neck pulling herself into him, almost crushing his chest. Her sobs start to calm and she fades to black.

They are still for half an hour. She lies curled in his arms while he breathes in the perfume of her hair and her skin. Then suddenly, as if a momentous decision had finally been reached, Jim lifts her, supporting her head as he would a child, and carries her upstairs. He lays her down on her bed. She rolls onto her side and curls. She is so thin, so small. He searches, first under the bed and then in the wardrobe. He discovers a large duvet and spreads it over her. He feels like forty-five years of his life have melted away—it is that first night once again. She is so beautiful. Her skin is aglow and her hair ripples down her back in cascading waves. She is once again his pre-Raphaelite queen on a bower. He cannot help himself, but leans forward and kisses her head, then strokes her hair. Then he lies down on the bed. He does not plan to sleep, just to lie there in case she wakes, just a few inches between them. He closes his eyes.

Patty wakes, and for one blissful moment, floats above the world like a newborn, innocent. Aware of the press of another body against her, she feels the warmth of contact and is drawn into that gravity, yearning for embrace, her arms folding around the other figure. Then the memories flood back, swamping her, stealing her breath as they have done every morning for more than twenty years, grinding her under their heel. She begins to shake.

Jim feels the tremor beside him. Through the sticky curtain of sleep he holds out his hand and she grabs at it; they grip hard, harder. Just like they had done with her morning sickness. “Squeeze. Tighter, Jim, squeeze tighter.”

He did, with all his might. And if it didn’t work, then he held the hair away from her face while she retched … then wiped her vomity mouth for her.

“Oh, that’s disgusting, Jim. You don’t have to do that,” she’d say.

“I don’t care.” He didn’t.

He wakes. The pressure on his hand and the allure of the past draw him from sleep. For one terrible moment he is lost, buried, at the bottom of a hole as it fills with sand and he is running, scrambling, trying to climb out. Then the hand holding his own calms him. He remembers where he is. Their hands squeeze together, they roll face to face. Scared, needy, hungry and as old as the earth. Patty reaches out to his face and strokes it, feels the stubble, the gray stalks of hair forcing their way though his toughened skin. She could never have described it to another person, could not even have formed the words to tell herself about his face, his cheek. Yet she knows every contour of his face and body. A lifetime melts
away, she does not see him now, not the sixty-four-year-old Jim, but he’s a boy in her bed. So fine, so fine.

He opens his arms and she rolls into them, they hug so tightly. She feels so different in his arms, there is no curve and heft—now she is air and breath. Her once alabaster skin ravaged by loss, grief and despair. And yet.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispers.

“You bloody idiot.”

He looks into her face. Her smile dazzles him like the sun and her lips caress his. He can taste the salt of tears.

“I love you, Patty. I love you,” he breathes into her, overwhelmed by the rush of emotion and desire that he finds in his heart and mind and body.

She leans into him, snuggles her mouth into his hair and whispers.

“Jim. I killed a man.”

Monday, December 20, 2010

Parked almost directly opposite Patty’s house is a white van with tinted windows. Inside, invisible to anyone in the street, is Grant Ronson. He sits in the driver’s seat writing up his log.

It is now almost 4:30 a.m. and there has been nothing since the screaming. The house is quiet and dark. The young man is bored again. He had thought this job afforded some glamour, even danger, but it is mostly bloody boring. On the seat next to him he has yesterday’s
News of the World
, an iPod and a well-thumbed copy of
Escort
.

There is a rubber tube coiled off the seat and onto the floor, which snakes back behind him into a large jug that is almost completely full of his urine. It’s starting to smell. He has another two
hours until his shift is over and the day shift arrives. He yawns. He picks up the paper again and scans the front page.

The headline reads:
MURDERED MAN IDENTIFIED
.

He reads the article:

Ronson throws the paper down, bored. He yawns. If nothing happens soon he’s going to have to masturbate again. At least that will kill some time. Janet from Edinburgh deserves more attention. He sits for a few minutes and then unzips his trousers.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

“Two dog walkers found the body on the allotment,” DI Thorsen explains to Tom as they half-slide, half-drag themselves through the glossy mud. “They called it in at about 6:20 a.m. A local response officer was here in about ten minu—careful!” Thorsen grabs his arm as he slips sideways down an oozing incline. She steadies him. She’s got Wellington boots on. He wears black Oxford brogues. They both know which of them is the more stylish—and who’s ruined their shoes.

“Luckily the kid was bright enough to radio it in as Operation Ares.”

Tom nods. He walks with knees bent and feet splayed. They reach the bottom of the treacherous hill. Tom looks across the mud—rain falling a little heavier now. He sees a shoe lying alone, an evidence marker pushed into the mud alongside it. It’s the size of a child’s shoe—but the heel shows it was made for a woman. A shoe to dance in, have fun in. Not die in. It seems so alone, sitting there in the rain.