Approaching Zero (5 page)

This had been Kathy’s favourite when she was about eight years old but she would never have the heart to tell her mum this. “Brilliant! Thanks, Mum.”

The enthusiasm in Kathy’s voice made her mum look over for a moment, questioningly; her daughter wasn’t normally this happy with her treats, which occurred a good few times a week. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

Kathy saw what had happened immediately; she was overdoing it. She quickly switched down her behaviour, plunged her spoon into the cereal and grunted a few times, but her mother was at her side with her hand on Kathy’s forehead.

“You look a little pale this morning, love.”

“I’m fine, Mum,” Kathy told her. She couldn’t say anything like ‘stop fussing’ or ‘I’m thirteen years old, Mum’ because her mum never took that kind of thing too well. She just had to go along with whatever kind of fuss her mum made and hope to get out as soon as she could.

Her mum seemed satisfied and returned to the sink, washing up the few bits that the breakfast preparation had left behind. But then she said, “I’ve got shut of the microwave.”

Just as Kathy opened her mouth to respond, her dad breezed in and said, “Don’t ask,” while kissing his daughter on the forehead.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, dear,” he told his wife, but then turned to his daughter with the ‘Mum is clearly nuts’ expression on his face. “I’m off. Stay out of trouble,” he said cheerfully.

“She’s never in trouble,” Mum said defensively.

“I was talking to you,” her husband told her and it almost made her smile.

When adult Kathy thought back to those times, she pictured her parents as something from the fifties, although she grew up in the nineties. The mum of her mind has post-war hair and a floral pinafore, maybe bright red lipstick. Dad is wearing a suit and bowler hat, gripping a briefcase and umbrella and balancing a little tash under his nose. If there were a Nineties equivalent of this image then this would be her parents; her mother was always immaculately presented and her dad really did breeze in and out of the house as if he found humor in the responsibility of winning the bread, while taking it seriously enough to devote the majority of his time to it. Kathy had grasped even at her young age that he simply preferred being away from home to being there. So did she.

The way her parents interacted was like something from a retro fridge magnet: the fifties couple and the one-liner. But outside of this captured picture was a darkness as black as the sky at night. Her dad would make his escape just six months later and as hard as Kathy tried, she couldn’t blame him for it. She made her own escape when she was just fifteen—moving in with her nan—a departure of which she was far less forgiving.

“Bye, Dad,” Kathy said, predicting his next move, and Dad picked up a piece of toast to go and was out of the door.

“Bye, girls.”

Kathy and her mum were quiet for a few minutes, each withdrawing to their own worlds until Kathy couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So why’ve you got rid of the microwave?”

“Radars and lasers,” came the reply and then a pause. “Or something like that. I read it. It doesn’t really matter what they’re called; it’s untested you see. When Marie Curie discovered radium everyone was using it as glow in the dark toothpaste. They didn’t know that they were killing themselves with radioactivity. So we’re having no microwaves running through the house, not until a whole generation has lived to tell the tale.”

“A whole generation?”

“You’re too precious to lose just so we can eat hot beans in thirty seconds.”

She had finally flipped, and on the day that Kathy and Brady were going to do it, too. The plan came back to Kathy as she listened to her mum and she remembered that she had to keep her onside. “Sounds reasonable,” she concluded when her mum had finished talking.

Mum stopped washing up and turned to her daughter. She scanned Kathy’s expression of support, searching it for cracks, then pulled a kind of jib and nod, satisfied that her daughter was seeing things her way.

“That was lovely, Mum. Thank you,” Kathy said, munching on the last of the cereal and grabbing her bag again while she pushed her chair out and shuffled upwards. If she was going to convince her mum of her plan it needed to appear inconsequential. She grabbed her coat and threw it over her bag. It was too hot for a coat, but her mum made her take it. “I’ll see you later,” she said, making her way to the door and knew that Mum would be right behind her.

“You’ve got everything?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“You’ve done your homework and got money in case anything bad happens to you?”

This no longer sounded weird to Kathy. “Yes, Mum.”

“Okay, call me at lunchtime and let me know that you’re okay.” By now she was pulling at Kathy’s lapels to give her more protection from the non-existent cold before giving her the hug of her life: a hug that Kathy could carry around with her as evidence of how much her mum loved her, just in case it was the last chance her mum got to show her.

“Will do,” Kathy smiled and she was halfway down the path when she turned back to her mum, who was almost in tears at the daily ritual. “Mum, I forgot to mention that Brady asked if I could sleep over tonight. I know you don’t like me going out, but it’s only Brady and I’m not going out at all over the weekend.”

Mum flushed and then seemed to swallow back something horrible before answering. “Okay,” she said, surprising both of them. “I’ll call Clara this morning and if I’m happy that she can look after you well enough then it’s fine. I’ll let you know at lunchtime.”

This was going to be embarrassing. Kathy’s mum had more dos and don’ts for a prospective carer of her thirteen-year-old that a first-time mother of a new born, but Kathy was happy to suck it up if it gave her a night of freedom. Why couldn’t she be more like Brady’s mum, Clara?

“Okay, thanks,” said Kathy, shaking off all of her concerns and focussing on her victory. “I’ll call you at lunch.”

When lunchtime came, Kathy and Brady were the first out of the school gates, beating the queue for the phone box, which was usually formed of girls in the upper years of the school making their daily calls to their older, mechanic or brickie boyfriends called Dave or Mike or something equally manly. Kathy slipped into the box, ignoring the unseemly aroma from the puddle on the floor and the receiver itself and dialled the number while Brady waited anxiously outside, kicking at the dusty, dried-up puddle bowls in the ground and looking to her friend every few seconds. Kathy maintained a serious demeanour so her mum wouldn’t suspect foul play and because she loved to see Brady’s suffering impatience. But after a conversation that lasted no longer than a few minutes, a smile burst on her face and she gave Brady a thumbs-up. They were actually going to do this.

Chapter 5

It wasn’t the kind of deception that other kids Kathy’s age were inflicting on their parents. There were two girls in her class who both told their parents that they were staying with each other and then spent the whole weekend in London, clubbing and drinking and shagging and all the things that Kathy wouldn’t discover until many years later. Kathy was sure not to tell her mum any lies—she really was staying at Brady’s—this wasn’t because she was scared of getting in trouble in the way that other kids were. She genuinely didn’t want to upset her mum. She was just such a fragile woman. Whenever Kathy spoke to her about anything, her mother’s face was riddled with concern until Kathy finished whatever particular sentence it was and her mum understood that she was just asking for her pocket money or telling her about a show she had seen on TV the night before. The woman spent her life dangling from a line of cotton that could break at any time.

However, although Kathy was determined not to directly lie to her mum, there was no way in the world that she was going to tell her the truth, which basically relied on the fact that Clara was a far more lenient parent. She was also protective of Brady, but not to the same extent, so if they stayed there for the night, Clara would let them go out for a few hours after dinner as long as they were back before it got dark, which was about 9 p.m. Kathy’s mum would have the police out looking for them if she knew, but this was something that Kathy had put to the back of her mind as she sat on the bus with Brady after school and they made their way to the other end of town. It was rare for them to take a bus because they lived quite close to the city centre and school was a stone’s throw away, and it smelt of something unfamiliar—kebabs and hangover breath. At least it wasn’t
the
smell.

The girls made their way to the empty upper deck and were in silent awe of the gravity of their mission for a few seconds. The gaps between the passing buildings catapulted the evening sun in bursts through the windows, temporarily blinding them. Someone had written the words
Live Fast, Die Young
on the seat in front of them, which only added to the sense of danger and excitement. Even the posters curved into the space between the windows and ceiling, warning of bag thieves in operation, seemed relevant in some way, as if they were entering a murkier, more adult world.

Brady reached into her bag and pulled out a brown envelope, but Kathy shushed her hands down as if police officers were lurking behind all the seats and would jump out and arrest them.

“Don’t be mad,” Brady told her then shook her off and pulled the chunky envelope out anyway. The thickly scrawled name and address on the front, Brady’s name and address, screamed of a no-nonsense sender who meant business.

“How does it work?” Kathy said quietly, looking around her.

“There’s a little package inside. I just pull it out and I think it starts to work?” In other words, she didn’t know. She had made some extremely shady contacts through the classifieds in
Military Monthly Magazine
and this was the solution that one of them had sent.

“Well, don’t do it now,” Kathy snapped, pushing her hands again.

“All right! I was just going to have a look.”

They were both silent again and then, for reasons that neither of them could explain, they started talking about school that day, as if they were simply taking the bus to visit a friend and were passing the time with a bit of friendly chat. Kathy told Brady about the math teacher that she absolutely hated and how he asked her questions that she couldn’t answer in front of the whole class just to humiliate her. Brady told Kathy about how she’d scored yet another detention for putting an assortment of slugs in Julie Steven’s pencil case. They were both still dressed in their forest-green school uniforms and looked to the whole world like a couple of innocents on their way to the library. And then… “This is it.”

Kathy reached over and pressed the bell, now feeling the first surges of adrenalin that would develop into a full-blown attack of fireworks and make it difficult for her to function in the normal way. Her hands would shake, her movements would become exaggerated and lack precision and her mouth would fill up with sand. Thankfully, she didn’t really have to do that much. They would post the package and then wait.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked her friend, but when Brady puffed at her in that way she had of making her feel like a total chicken, they both stood up, tackled the stairs and got off the bus. It was now about 6 p.m. and Brady knew that he—their target—got back from work at about 5.30 p.m. She had been in charge of all of the reconnaissance and had quickly got back to Kathy with an address and itinerary just days after Kathy pointed him out—sniffed him out, the paedo. As they walked down his street—an innocuous, neat street with meticulously mowed lawns, summer blooms and expensive cars—Kathy knew that Brady’s work had been accurate. The smell immediately began to swell in her nostrils and poison the back of her tongue until she had to stop and apply the vapour rub.

“The pervert!” Brady spat, correctly taking it as a sign that they were nearing the evil. “It’s number…” she continued, pausing to look around for the house.

“Forty-two,” Kathy told her and stopped still outside the house where the smell was unbearable even with the menthol vapour chasing it away. “This is it, right?”

Brady looked down at the scribbled address in her hand and nodded seriously. “This is it.” Then something in her seemed to switch and she became what adult Kathy imaged she had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Down here,” she snapped and all but dragged Kathy behind a car across the road. “We can’t be seen hovering around.”

“Take it easy!”

“What, do you want to end up banged up?” The slang sounded funny coming from the middle-class schoolgirl’s mouth, but Kathy had no trouble taking her seriously. She hadn’t thought far enough ahead to consider the idea that they could end up inside over this. Could they end up inside over this? The package was only going to fill the house with a bit of smoke and make him cough a bit. They were hardly posting a bomb.

“What now?” Kathy asked and watched as Brady took the padded envelope from her bag again and this time ripped the end off.

“Cover me!” she told her friend and then broke away, darting across the road and into the paedo’s driveway before Kathy could ask what the hell the ‘covering her’ responsibilities entailed. As she waited for Brady, watching her as she dodged behind a bush, possibly enjoying this manoeuvre a little too much, her mind took her to a place that she had been avoiding since she first smelt the man in the high street and heard snatches of his perverse thoughts. Just what had he done? How many children’s lives had he destroyed because he thought it was all right to overpower them and steal their innocence? How many tiny lights had been extinguished because this monster put his own urges before humanity and decency? Had he killed? Was death worse than falling prey to this kind of predator? She was still undecided. And then Brady was back at her side, skidding in behind the car as if taking third base, out of breath but lit up as if she had never been so alive in her life.

“Man, you should have seen it,” she said. “It was spitting out smoke before I could even get it through the letterbox.”