She couldn’t sleep; her body was too far gone, her nerves tight as cheese wire. She sat unseeing at the table for long enough, then went round to her neighbours, desperate for a ciggie. She’d given up almost three years ago, but now the craving was extreme.
‘Oh, Louise, how is he?’ Angie was shaking her head. She was housebound, diabetic and extremely obese. Answering the door rendered her breathless. She lived in her sitting room, slept in a reclining chair. Her daughter Sian looked after her.
Louise gave her the low-down. ‘You got a spare ciggie?’
‘Course.’ Angie walked slowly back to her chair, picked the packet up from the side table and passed it to Louise. ‘Lighter’s inside.’
Grateful, Louise pulled out a fag, fired it up. Felt dizzy, her eyes doing funny patterns like a kaleidoscope. Took another drag.
Angie nodded at the coffee table. ‘The paper’s there, you seen it?’
Louise picked it up, sat on the settee. Student Stabbed to Death. She studied the photograph. She felt dull, her wits blunted by the trauma. She wondered if the boy was a friend of Luke’s, but she couldn’t recall him knowing any Jasons, and she didn’t recognize the lad in the paper. The attack had been outside this Jason’s house. They hadn’t given Luke’s name.
‘The police didn’t tell us much,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what he was doing there.’
Angie tutted at the paper. ‘They all carry knives these days,’ she said, wheezing as she spoke. ‘Terrible.’
Did Luke? Louise didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be completely sure. He wouldn’t be that daft, would he? ‘Can I take another?’ She held up the packet.
‘Take a twenty.’ Angie nodded to the corner cupboard. ‘In there. I’ve plenty more. Sian got ’em duty free.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Go on, before I change my mind.’
Louise nodded. Took a packet. ‘I’ll pay you back.’
‘You will not,’ Angie scolded. ‘Don’t you bloody dare.’
Louise wanted her grandad. Times like these it was him she missed, more than her mother or father or grandma. He’d been proud as a peacock when Luke was born, insisted on taking him in his pram to the CND meeting at the Labour club, promising to be only an hour. By then her mum had died. Just keeled over one day in Asda. When they did the post-mortem, they found she had a hole in her heart. It had been there all along and no one had ever known.
They had a party for Louise’s mum after the funeral, and her friends from the ships came, those that were in between trips. They sang all her repertoire. One man brought along a cardboard cut-out of her mother in a wine-coloured evening gown and long gloves, her hair in a Doris Day, pearls round her neck, something that had been used to advertise a forties night on board. Teenager Louise hated them, all these people who knew her mother well, who’d had the best of her. Coming up and insisting on talking about the larks they’d had and how Louise’s mum had been a good friend in times of trouble.
‘Why did they have to come?’ she complained to Grandad.
‘They mean well.’ He’d looked at her a while, his eyes soft. ‘She had itchy feet, always had. Hard on you.’
She felt a flash of hatred for him then too. Why did he always have to be so bloody understanding? ‘I’m fine!’ she retorted. She downed her drink too quickly, making her throat burn, and flounced off.
The police had kept Luke’s phone, but the staff at the hospital had given her his wallet and gold chain and his ear stud. All in a plastic bag, ‘Patient’s Valuables and Clothing’ written on it. The chain was grimy, mud she thought, but when she washed it, the water turned pink. She braced her arms on the edge of the sink, let her head hang down, taking a moment.
Louise knew his friends should be told what was happening, but she only had a few numbers and the thought of calling each of them was overwhelming. She decided to ring Declan and ask him to spread the word. He should be up by now. Declan had no work, no education; he signed on and sponged off his mum, who was on incapacity benefit with mental health problems. When Louise called, he answered with a suspicious ‘Hello?’ then wary recognition followed by fractured disbelief as she told him:
