Off Minor (30 page)

Drawing in air through his mouth, Stephen Shepperd nodded.

“In that case,” Resnick continued, “I am cautioning you that you do not have to say anything in relation to these matters unless you wish to do so, but what you do say may, at some later stage, be given in evidence. All right, Mr. Shepperd? Stephen?”

Using his fingers to still the nerve that had begun to beat again alongside his head, Stephen Shepperd murmured, “All right.”

Joan put the tomatoes and the orange juice in the fridge, the apples into a bowl. She took one of the stamps from the book and stuck it to the corner of the envelope that was addressed and waiting, a letter to her friend in Redruth, just about the only friend from college with whom she still kept in touch. Stephen’s note was on the table, held down by a jar of basil he had taken from the shelf. She read it with neither surprise nor passion. She knew that she had let things slide for far too long, taken assurances at face value, looked the other way, she could acknowledge that. Well, now matters must take their course. The tranquilizers her doctor had prescribed that autumn she had never taken, not until last night, and she thought she might take another now, swill it down with some water before her mid-morning cup of tea. One: maybe even two.

Forty-one

“Michael!” Lorraine had called. “Michael! Michael!” From the foot of the stairs, the landing, finally a foot inside the bedroom door. Michael Morrison broke from his heavy, sweated sleep thinking that the urgency and the clamor were due to news about Emily, but one look at Lorraine’s face was sufficient to give a lie to that. He groaned and slumped back down, hauling the covers over his head.

“Michael, you’ll be late for work.”

From beneath the duvet came sounds she deciphered as, “That’s because I’m not going to bloody work!”

The cup of tea she’d brought him up half an hour earlier sat beside the bed, untouched and close to cold. The room smelled of drink and cigarettes: Michael sitting up till past twelve watching videos he’d fetched from the corner store, one after another, end to end. Finally, he’d insisted on hooking up the VCR to the portable set they kept in the bedroom, sitting propped against the pillows with the umpteenth bottle of wine by his side, an ashtray in between his legs, watching something loud and dreadful with Eddie Murphy.

Lorraine had lain with her back to him, telling herself over and over to remember what had happened, that we all dealt with trauma in our different ways; telling herself why it was she had married him. Trying to remember.

She had slept fitfully, disturbed by the sound of punches being faked, by Michael’s occasional laughter and later his trips to the bathroom; by dreams in which Emily was on a train pulling away from the station and she, Lorraine, somehow trapped outside, screaming, banging her fists against her stepdaughter’s bewildered face at the other side of the glass. In the morning there were ash and cigarette butts on the carpet, wine stains on the bed. Michael’s hair lay flattened like tar across his head. Emily’s picture smiled down at them from the top of the chest of drawers: soon it would be a week.

When Michael finally appeared it was ten minutes short of eleven. Lorraine was sitting in the living room at the back of the house, scissoring recipes she intended to make from magazines. On the low table was the scrapbook she had bought to put them in, the paste.

“My mouth feels like a toilet,” Michael said.

“Serves you right,” said Lorraine, deciding to pass over Cod Mornay.

“Bitch,” Michael said, heading for the kitchen.

Diplomatically, Lorraine decided she hadn’t heard him. When the doorbell sounded, she was spreading her recipes out along the table, considering the order; Michael was drinking instant coffee with sugar, waiting for the sliced bread to pop up from the toaster. Both arrived at the front door at roughly the same time.

“Hello,” said the woman in green duffle coat and glasses, “you don’t know me, but I’m Jacqueline Verdon. Jackie. I’m a friend of Diana’s.”

“My Diana?” said Michael, surprised.

“Well,” Jackie Verdon said, “not any more.”

“She’s not …?”

“Oh, no. She’s all right. I didn’t mean … I just meant it was a funny way to describe her. Yours.”

“Won’t you come in?” said Lorraine, stepping back.

“Yes. Yes, I would like to. Thanks very much. Thanks.”

“Live round here, do you?” Michael asked. Something inside his head seemed to reverberate each time he spoke.

Jackie shook her head. “West Yorkshire. Hebden Bridge. I’ve a bookshop there. You know, secondhand.”

“Oh, I thought when you said you were a friend of Diana’s …”

“We met up on a walking holiday. Not a holiday, really. A weekend. In the Lakes. B & B, guided tours, that kind of thing.”

“I never knew Diana was much interested in walking.”

“No, well, I daresay there’s quite a lot you don’t know about Diana. Oh, I’m sorry, that sounds dreadful. I didn’t mean to be so … I didn’t intend to be rude.”

“’S fine,” Michael said huffily.

“It’s just that over the last six months or so, Diana’s gone through a lot of changes. Started to take some control of her life.”

“Which is why she’s back in hospital, I suppose?”

“Maybe she pushed a little too fast too soon; maybe I tried pushing her too fast, I don’t know. But what’s happening now, I think it’s temporary. Not even a step back: one to the side. I think Diana’s going to be fine.”

“You do?”

“I’ve seen her recently. Today. Have you?”

“I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. But Emily is Diana’s child, too.” Lorraine came through with coffee and two kinds of biscuits, chocolate digestives and lemon creams. There were some polite inquiries about milk and sugar, some discussion of the onset of Christmas, how it seemed to start earlier each year, a little non-conversation about the weather.

“Does Diana
know
?” Michael asked.

“About Emily? No. And it’s important that she doesn’t. Not yet. Not now. That’s the principal reason I’m here. The hospital have been very good about keeping her sheltered from the newspapers, anything like that. Of course, they can’t do that for ever and when Diana herself is feeling stronger, well, it simply wouldn’t be possible.” Jackie Verdon looked at them and smiled. “By that time, of course, Emily might well be safe and sound.” She breathed out deeply. “If she’s not, I think I should be the one to break it to her.”

Michael glanced at Lorraine, began to say something but couldn’t choose the words.

“I think it’s fair to say I’m the closest to her now. Aside from Emily herself. I want you to agree that it’s all right for me to tell her, that you won’t go in and do it yourself. Afterwards, of course, if that’s what Diana wants, it’s only natural that it’s something you should share.”

“Look,” Michael snorted, “you’ve got a hell of a nerve. Waltzing in here, laying down the law about what I can and can’t say to someone you’ve known less than six months.”

“How long were you married to Diana?”

“Never mind.”

“And you think you knew her? In that time, you think you spent a lot of time and energy getting to know Diana?”

“Of course I bloody did!”

“When it was all over I doubt if you knew the size of her shoes or the color of her eyes, never mind anything that really mattered.”

The way Michael got to his feet, Jackie Verdon was convinced he was going to hit her; she rocked back in her chair, arms thrown up to protect her face. By the time she had lowered them, Michael was on his way from the room.

Jackie and Lorraine looked at one another across the overlapping circle of digestives and lemon creams.

“I’m really sorry,” Jackie said. “I don’t know what got into me. I should never, ever have said that.”

“Michael’s been under a lot of strain.”

“Of course. It’s just, with Diana, I get so protective. You know?”

Lorraine nodded. “I think so.”

Jackie reached for her hands. “There’s no news about Emily?”

Lorraine withdrew her hands, shook her head.

“I wish there was something I could say.”

“There isn’t.”

Jackie gave her a printed card. “I’m staying there for the next few days, till Monday or Tuesday of next week. If anything does happen, please let me know. If I think, after talking to the doctor, that Diana’s up to if, I’ll tell her about Emily before I go back to Yorkshire. Tell her something anyway.” She looked away. “Prepare her, I suppose, for the worst.”

Lorraine walked her to the door. The TV had been switched on upstairs, a rerun of an old Western series, the rigors of family life on the frontier.

“Tell your husband, tell Michael, I apologize for what I said. He’s more than enough to cope with to have to put up with my jealousy and bad temper.”

“Jealousy?”

“All that time when, even though they’d parted, Diana was still tied to Michael, emotionally. Time I would have wanted her with me.”

She brushed her cheek against Lorraine’s and opened the front door. “I hope there’s news of Emily soon, good news.”

Lorraine stood there, watching Jacqueline Verdon until she was out of sight, closing the door only then and wandering off into the living room to collect the coffee things, thinking about the relationship, Diana’s and Jackie’s, how protective, how fiercely caring the older woman had seemed. She knew she should go upstairs to Michael now, even if it were simply to sit with him and watch the movement of horses, dogs and men, hold, if that were what he wanted, Michael’s hand. You’ll live to regret it, her mother had said, you mark my words. But she could never, Lorraine thought, not even bothering to stem the tears, never ever have meant this.

Forty-two

Naylor negotiated the tray without spilling overmuch: two teas and a coffee, sugar, packets of UHT milk, plastic spoons. Resnick was by the window, looking out. Shepperd had barely moved in his chair, shoulders slumped forward, arms extended between his legs, fingers touching but not entwined. Not long into the first session, Resnick had felt Shepperd becoming over-anxious, words stumbling into one another, the accelerated tremor near the eye, the sweat. Either he was about to shut down altogether, refuse to answer, or start asking for a solicitor, legal representation. There and then, Resnick wanted neither.

“How’s the tea, Stephen?” Sitting opposite him, the pair of them, Naylor’s chair pulled slightly further back and round.

“Stephen? Tea?”

“Fine.”

“Good.” Resnick grimaced at his own coffee, decided adding milk was the better part of valour. He angled his eyes towards Naylor and the tape machine. “All right, then, Stephen, what do you say we push on?”

No reply.

Naylor set the mechanism in motion, twin tapes beginning to wind simultaneously. “This interview,” Resnick said, “continued at eleven forty-seven. The same officers present.” He shuffled back in his chair, wanting to appear relaxed, needing to be comfortable. “Let’s forget about Emily Morrison for a while; let’s talk about Gloria instead.”

Shepperd’s body jerked. “I’ve already told you …”

“Not about Gloria, Stephen.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know her.”

“Gloria.”

“Yes.”

“But you know who we mean?”

Shepperd’s head was lowered towards the table, his voice indistinct. “You mean the girl who was … who was killed.”

“That’s right. Gloria Summers.”

“I don’t know her.”

“But she was in your wife’s class.”

“Not for long.”

“Sorry?”

“She wasn’t there for long, Joan. She was hardly there any time at all.”

“Half a term.”

“No.”

“According to the head teacher, your wife taught there for almost half a term. What’s that? Six weeks? Eight?”

Shepperd was shaking his head strongly. “She was never there that length of time, never.”

“But while she was there, however long, you went with her, to the school.”

“I drove her, yes, usually. She can’t drive.”

“You carried her things inside.”

“No?

“Never?”

“Not hardly.”

“All those things infant teachers take with them; egg boxes and cartons and pictures and heaven knows what else. I can’t see you just sitting in the car and watching your wife struggle with all of that on her own.”

“All right, I helped, sometimes, when there was a need, I helped.”

“And you helped around the school as well,” Resnick brisker now, beginning, lightly, to bear down. “The head teacher could scarcely stop singing your praises. All of that free time you put in, the expertise. So much there was even talk of a presentation …”

“There wasn’t any presentation.”

“Only because you declined.”

“There wasn’t any presentation.”

“They considered what you’d done worthy of one. They were deeply grateful. Equipment mended, new pegs in the cloakrooms …”

“Look, what I did, it was nothing. Took me no time at all, that’s why I wasn’t having them give me anything for it.”

Resnick realized that he was sitting too far forward, arms on the table; slowly, he levered himself back and smiled. “You’re a modest man, Stephen. You don’t like people to make a fuss.”

Shepperd looked at the ceiling, slowly closed his eyes.

“When, later on, after your wife had left the school, when Gloria disappeared, all that in the papers, everyone talking about it, your wife talking about it, as she must have done, you did know who they meant?”

Shepperd’s hands were back between his legs, wrists locked tight.

“When she talked to you about it, you knew who she meant?”

“Of course I did.”

“You did know her, then?”

“Not know her, no, but when she said, Gloria, ’course then I knew who it was.”

“You remembered her?”

“Her picture was everywhere. You could hardly look in a shop window in town without it was there.”

“And you didn’t recall her from the school, your wife’s class?”

“No, not specially.”

“I wonder, Stephen, can you remember what she looked like now?”

“What for? I mean, I don’t see the point, I …”