V for Violet (20 page)

Beau opens the bedroom door. ‘Ladies first,’ he says.

I hesitate. If I step inside, will there be any going back?

‘Hey,’ says Beau. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’m not going to eat you. We can go straight back to Battersea if you want. We don’t have to do this.’

And that’s when I remember there isn’t any going back anyway. The police will have Joseph by now. Mum, Dad and Norma will be in bits and none of them will ever want to see my face again. I step into the bedroom and Beau closes the door behind us.

It’s late now. But the curtains in the room are thin and the room is at the front of the house so the streetlights are shining in, and I can see Beau’s face as clearly as if it were daylight. His head’s on the pillow next to mine.

The room is a bit pokey. But it’s clean. The walls are painted white and as well as the double bed we’re lying on, there’s a small chest of drawers with a spare blanket folded up on top, a boarded-up fireplace and a painting on the wall of a girl with eyes as big as saucers.

We’ve taken our shoes and jackets off, but we’ve kept the rest of our clothes on. The sheets are the fluffy flannelette sort and they smell of fresh air. We’ve got them pulled up to our chests.

‘You sleepy yet?’ asks Beau.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.’

‘I promise I won’t snore,’ he says.

‘I’ll poke you if you do,’ I say.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘Come over here and have a cuddle.’

I shiver. Is this how it happens? A cuddle first, and then …?

‘Hey, you’re cold. Come on, let me warm you up.’

I wriggle over to him and he slips his arm under me and pulls me into his chest. I shiver again, but I’m not cold. My stomach is wound up into a thousand knots. He kisses the top of my head.

‘Only a cuddle, Violet,’ he whispers. ‘Not every fella’s after only one thing, you know.’

After a while, the knots in my stomach loosen a bit and I let myself relax into him.

‘Tell me some more stuff,’ he says.

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. Like dogs having webbed feet. Some of that weird stuff you seem to know about.’

His sweater is scratchy on my cheek and it smells of sweat and soap. I tell him that there are over a hundred different words for camel in the Arabic language, that people with Moebius Syndrome can’t smile and that the word for a group of ravens is an unkindness of ravens. Then I take a deep breath and tell him that earlier on today I shopped my brother to the police.

‘Your brother?’ He turns on to his side to face me. ‘You think your
brother
is the Battersea Park Killer?’

I tell him everything then. About how I have this weird sense about people and that I always knew Joseph was hiding something. About how strange it is that girls only started to go missing when he arrived back in Battersea. I tell him about the letters I read from Arabella, the odd phrases;
dark places, you’ve changed, you frighten me.
That I think he might have killed her too.

I tell him I saw Joseph walking towards the Roxy on the night Jackie was murdered, but he lied to the police and told them he was at home. I tell him how I followed Joseph to Battersea Park and watched him revisit the scenes of his crimes, and how afterwards I followed him to Soho, where he went to pick up his next victim. I tell him that I’ll never forgive myself for not doing anything then. I could have saved the next missing girl. And finally, I tell him how I confronted Joseph this morning, how I called him a monster and how he seemed to know exactly what I was talking about.

Beau is quiet for a long time. ‘Yeah, there’s some stuff that doesn’t add up,’ he says, finally. ‘But your brother? Your own flesh and blood. Why would he just suddenly …’ His voice trails off.

‘But that’s just it,’ I say. ‘Nobody’s seen him for seventeen years. Nobody knows what the war did to his head, and nobody knows what he was really up to in France.’

‘God, Violet,’ he says. ‘I can’t get my head round it.’ He pulls me closer. ‘You’re so brave. I don’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything, I’m just glad you’re here.’

He shifts around onto his back again. ‘What’s going to happen when you go home?’ he asks. ‘It’ll be madness, you know.’

‘That’s just it,’ I say. ‘I can’t go home yet. Not until I know they’ve got him. I can’t go back until it’s safe.’

‘It’ll be in the papers,’ he says. ‘I’ll go and fetch one in the morning. If they arrest him today, it’ll be all over the front pages by tomorrow.’ He slides his arm out from under me and sits up. ‘God,’ he says again. ‘I need a smoke now.’ He gets out of bed and opens the window and I watch him as he leans out and blows clouds of blue smoke into the night. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Come here a minute.’

I climb out of bed and stand next to him at the window. ‘Lean right out,’ he says. ‘Lean right out and look over there.’

I stretch right out over the windowsill and look towards where his finger is pointing. Far away to left, between the rooftops and chimneys, is a tiny gap, through which the thinnest slice of the sea can be seen. But right at this minute, it’s exactly where the moon is shining, like a shimmering silver lining in the middle of all the darkness.

Beau is still breathing softly beside me when I finally wake up. His arms are flung out above his head and his quiff has flopped into his eyes. Sunlight is streaming into the room warming the sheets that are tangled around our legs. My first thought isn’t, oh my God, I’ve just spent the night with a fella (even though nothing like that happened), and it isn’t, oh my God, my brother’s probably going to be in the papers today, named as the Battersea Park Killer. No, my first thought is, I haven’t got any clean knickers and I haven’t even got a toothbrush.

I cup my hand to my mouth to sniff my breath. Then I remember that a better way of testing for bad breath is to lick your wrist, let it dry for a minute, then if it stinks, so does your breath. So, that’s what I’m doing, licking my wrist, when Beau suddenly says, ‘What on earth are you doing, Violet?’

‘Thought you were asleep,’ I say quickly, dropping my arm back onto the bed.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he says. ‘There’s something you know about licking wrists that I don’t, isn’t there?’

‘Well, actually, yes,’ I say. ‘Monkeys lick their wrists when they’re hot. It helps to bring down their body temperature.’

He laughs. ‘And you’re just testing out the theory, are you?’

‘Might be,’ I say. ‘It is pretty hot in here.’

‘Crazy lady.’ He rolls over and nuzzles his mouth into my neck.

I giggle and twist away from him. I don’t want him to smell my morning breath. ‘I’m starving,’ I say. And I am. We haven’t eaten since the chip buttie on the beach and my stomach feels like a yawning cave.

He checks his watch. ‘Well, we’ve missed out on one of the landlady’s breakfasts. It’s gone nine, you know.’ Then he slaps his head with the palm of his hand. ‘Shit! I need to phone work. Throw a sickie.’ He flings the sheets to one side and jumps out of bed. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘You stay here and sort yourself out while I go and find a phone box. I’ll bring us back something for breakfast as well. Okay?’

He shoves his feet into his boots, pulls on his jacket, runs his fingers through his hair and then he’s out of the door. ‘Won’t be long,’ he calls. ‘Keep the bed warm for me!’

I listen to his footsteps clattering down the stairs and the distant sound of the front door closing. I stretch and yawn and rub my eyes. Then I reach down for my glasses that I put under the bed last night.

The room’s so quiet and empty without him. There’s nothing of his in here and for a minute I worry that he might not come back at all. I still don’t understand what he sees in me. Perhaps if we’d done more than just kiss last night, I would understand more. I thought that all every fella wanted to do was to get into a girl’s knickers. But not Beau. ‘I’m not like that, Violet. I wouldn’t want anybody to do anything they didn’t want to.’

Thinking about knickers, I hurry out of bed and into the bathroom next door. Luckily there’s a scrap of soap stuck to the side of the sink. I quickly strip off and give myself a once over. Pits and bits, Mum would have said. I dry myself off on some sheets of cheap, slippery toilet paper, then turn my knickers inside out.

Back in the bedroom, I tidy the bed then open the window and look out on to the street, waiting for Beau to come back. It’s another dry day, and although the air is cold, there’s enough blue in the sky for me to pretend it might be summer. I imagine what it would be like to never go home. What it would be like to stay here in Brighton with Beau. He could get another job with the local electricity board and I could find some work in one of the fish and chip shops. I’m an expert at wrapping fish suppers, after all. We could rent a room somewhere and every night after work, I’d cook us our tea and then afterwards we could ride along the seafront on Beau’s bike and we’d get along just fine, just the two of us.

I can see him now, strolling back down the street with an armful of paper bags. I lean out of the window and wave to him. It takes him a minute to see me, but when he does he lifts his free arm and blows me a kiss. I feel better now I know he’s back, and I run to the bathroom again to rinse my mouth out with water and to scrub at my teeth with my finger.

I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed when he comes in and dumps the bags next to me. He bounces onto the bed and starts to tip out the contents. ‘Breakfast,’ he says, as two bottles of Coca-Cola, a loaf of bread and a packet of ham roll across the blanket. ‘Toothbrushes,’ he says. ‘Pink for you, blue for me. And lastly, a newspaper.’

I stare at the newspaper, then at Beau, my heart banging in my throat. ‘Have you looked?’ I ask. ‘Is he in there?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I wanted us to do it together.’

I pick up the paper and slowly unfold it. It’s a copy of the
Daily Mirror
. I spread it out on the bed. Joseph hasn’t made front-page news. There’s a story about a strike at London Airport and a picture of Queen Elizabeth visiting Ghana. I turn the page. Still nothing. Just an article about toys – ‘Only Six Weeks to Christmas’– an advert for diamonds, a story about London Fashion Week. I turn more pages, faster and faster. The football and rugby results, an advert for Qantas – Fastest Jets Around the World Service: London to New York in 7 hours – crossword puzzles and the television programme guide.

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Why isn’t it in here?’

‘Maybe it’s too soon,’ says Joseph. ‘Maybe they’re still questioning him. Don’t forget, they thought it was that other bloke at first.’

‘Mr Harper,’ I murmur.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘They were wrong about him, weren’t they? Maybe they just want to be sure this time?’

‘Or maybe they haven’t caught him yet,’ I say, the horrible possibility dawning on me.

‘Or maybe,’ says Beau, quietly. ‘Just maybe, he’s really not the Battersea Park Killer.’

I shake my head. ‘Of course he is! It all adds up, doesn’t it?’ I glance up at him, but he quickly looks away and starts to unwrap the bread and ham. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I ask. ‘You think I’m making it all up?’

‘Course I believe you. But there’s a chance you could be wrong, you know.’ He shoves some ham between two slices of bread and takes a bite. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, with his mouth full, ‘it’s like you really
want
him to be the killer.’

Suddenly, I’m not hungry any more. I watch Beau finish his sandwich and shake my head when he offers me a bottle of cola.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Don’t be like that. I didn’t mean to upset you or anything.’

‘I’m not upset,’ I say. But I keep my head down so he can’t see that I’m lying. ‘But I can’t go home today. I can’t go home until I know they’ve got him.’

‘Well, I won’t go home either, then,’ he says. ‘Bout time I had a holiday!’

‘But what about your job? Won’t they mind?’

He grins at me. ‘Don’t give a toss if they do. Besides, I just phoned in sick. As far as they’re concerned I’m stuck indoors with a bad case of the runs!’

I pull a face at him.

He laughs. ‘Yeah, sorry. But it was the first thing that came into my head. Anyway …’ He rummages around in his pockets and pulls out a handful of coins and a couple of pound notes. ‘Reckon we’ve got enough here for another day or two.’

I pull out my purse and tip the contents out on to the bed. ‘More than enough.’

He rubs his hands together. ‘Riiiight,’ he says slowly. ‘Holiday here we come. I’d better go and tell the landlady that Mr and Mrs Smith would like to stay at least another night.’ He winks at me and grins excitedly.

I stick out my tongue and then grin back at him. Suddenly, I’m starving again. I grab at the ham and push a whole slice into my mouth. ‘Greedy cow,’ says Beau. But he’s laughing and so am I, and even though it’s November, the sun is shining into the room, and just for that single moment, everything is perfect.

We dance to the jukebox and drink coffee, we stuff our faces with ice cream and candyfloss, we walk to the end of the pier and back again, I have my fortune told by a gypsy.
You will meet a tall, dark stranger,
she tells me.
Be wary of him.
We sit on the beach and share a fish supper. The hot cod slips through our fingers and the salty grease burns our lips. We stand in the sea until our legs are numb and we suck on sticks of gaudy, pink rock until our cheeks turn inside out. When Beau runs into a newsagent’s to buy more cigarettes, he comes out with a toy gem ring, the kind that are meant for little girls. This one is plastic gold with a ruby-red gem glued on top. He slides it on to my little finger.

‘There,’ he says. ‘Now, you’re my girl.’

We spend the evening in a pub by the seafront. Beau teaches me how to play pool and darts and we drink glass after glass of warm beer until the world turns soft and fuzzy, and I love being Beau’s girl so much that I want to run to the end of the pier and scream my happiness into the wind.

We stumble back to the boarding house and just make it up the stairs before we hear the landlady turning the key in the front door. For some reason this is the funniest thing in the world. We fall on to the bed and our kisses are wet and spitty with laughter. Then, by some unspoken signal, we are pulling off our socks and shoes and wriggling out of our jeans and sweaters until we’re down to just our underwear and I’m not even the tiniest bit embarrassed. We pull the bed covers back and tumble under the sheets.

The shock of his skin touching my skin makes my mouth go dry. He holds me close and strokes my back from my shoulders to my waist and back again. I shudder, because it feels so nice and because my head is full of beer and the scent of him. His mouth is on my neck and he’s kissing me so gently that I start to ache inside. Then his mouth is on mine and I feel like I’m floating away somewhere on a huge, soft cloud. If I believed in heaven, this is what it would be like.

‘Violet,’ he whispers. ‘Do you want to?’

I know what he’s asking me and it would be the easiest thing in the world to say yes. But it’s the biggest thing in the world too. And what if I get it wrong? And what if I don’t know how to do it? And what if I get pregnant? I imagine how different it would be for me than Norma. She could be proudly pregnant, but I would be hidden away like a dirty secret.

‘I’ve got some French letters,’ says Beau. ‘So don’t worry about that.’

He kisses me again and touches me down there. And it feels so special that I forget to ask what a French letter is. I can’t pull away from him now. I want to go the whole way. Whatever that means and whatever it does to me, I want my first time to be with Beau. ‘Okay,’ I whisper. ‘Let’s do it.’

He keeps his arm around me as he reaches down and takes something out of his jacket pocket. It’s a small packet which he tears open with his teeth. I watch in fascination as he pulls out a small rubbery circle.

‘Is that a French letter?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘You never seen one before?’

I shake my head.

‘I’ll look after you,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry.’

And then he’s pulling it on to himself, down there, and suddenly I understand, and then he pulls me close again and closer and closer, as close as I’ve ever been to anybody, and it hurts a bit but he kisses me and kisses me and my heart actually bursts with happiness.

He strokes my hair and for a long time I listen to the boom of his heart gradually quietening down. His hand falls away from my hair and the air around my head is filled with the fruity smell of beer as his breathing gets deeper and deeper. When I’m sure that he’s asleep, I let myself give in too and I run through the pictures in my mind of all the wonderful things we’ve done today and I try not to think about tomorrow.