after cigarette, aimless, unseeing, unkempt. ‘What did you say to him? What were you talking about? You must know something! Must have said something! Something must have triggered it! There must have been a reason! What did you say to him, you little bitch? What are you covering up?!’
‘I have told you ten times!’ she’d shouted back at her. ‘The story’s never going to change! He was asleep! We didn’t exchange a single bloody word! Not one! He was asleep when I went in there and he was still asleep when I went down!’
But this wasn’t the answer Irene wanted, and she wouldn’t let it go.
‘I’m his frigging mother!’ she’d screamed. ‘His mother! He wouldn’t have killed himself without leaving me a note. He just wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t! You have got to know something –’ She jabbed Kathleen painfully in the ribcage. ‘You were the last person to see my boy alive, so you’d better give me something! You’d better tell me what you said to him, or I’ll …’
‘What?’ Kathleen had retorted. ‘What? Or you’ll what? Well just do it! Do your worst! It’s not going to change anything, is it? It’s not going to bring him back!’
Which, of course, was the point at which her father had come upon them, and Irene, as was her way now, because she was all over the place, obviously, collapsed against a bar stool, sobbing like a baby, her fists beating out a tattoo on the bar.
Kathleen slipped back inside to start cleaning the main bar and tried to think how things might be made better. Time. That was her father’s line, and she supposed he knew what he was talking about. There was only one ‘cure’ for bereavement, and that was time. It was the only thing that could effectively blunt the pain. But this was Irene’s child – her favourite child, and that made such a difference. She had already figured that perhaps her dad was partly right – perhaps Monica’s frequent absences derived from always having known that; perhaps knowing her mother (had she ever been made to choose) might wish it had been her instead of Darren meant her sympathy now only stretched so far.
But there was also the nagging guilt that, in fact, Irene was right. She did know something Irene didn’t about what Darren had been up to and though her instinct was that his decision had been an act of sudden impulse, if he’d not had the gun, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. And no matter how much Terry had tried to convince her otherwise, she knew that even if he would have done it anyway, he wouldn’t have done it then, and not in that way.
The picture appeared before her eyes, just as it kept doing, all the time. She seemed powerless to stop it happening, and it seemed to have no pattern. Her thoughts would drift and then – bam – it was there right in front of her, the colours and textures, the whole revolting, unspeakable horror of it, all heightened to a grim glorious technicolour.
She shook her head to clear it and tried to think less dangerous thoughts. Thoughts of Terry. All those trips to the phone box she’d been making. He’d given her his work number (though not he hers yet; she couldn’t having him calling the pub and risking getting Irene) and she’d slipped away several times to the sanctuary of the red box on the corner of Park Avenue, and they’d talked and they’d talked and they’d talked. And twice more they’d met – she hugged herself mentally – the first time to his little two-up two-down on Louis Avenue. All this time, she’d thought, and he’d been living just a couple of streets away.
It was a neat house. A man’s house. It had little in the way of feminine touches, apart from a photograph of his dead wife, hung in a frame next to the fireplace; a pretty, dark-haired girl, with huge, expressive eyes. It had been professionally coloured. Done by a proper photographer. She wondered if he could really bear to look at it.
There was little furniture in the house, not that she could see. Not downstairs, anyway. Just a cellar-head kitchen – a tiny space at the foot of the stairs – and in the front room an oval coffee table, a TV stand and a small beige settee, with cushions that had hunting scenes on them, on which they’d sat to drink a brew and where he’d told her about how grim it had been having to move there after his house fire, and how it still didn’t feel quite like home since he was away so much of the time. Which he’d been happy with, he pointed out; always happy to take the really long jobs, rather than go home to a place that didn’t feel like a home. She didn’t say so, but she knew how he felt.
‘Might just opt for a few shorter ones now, though,’ he’d told her, and the shyness in his tone had made her heart swell.
Then she’d seen him again, albeit only briefly. He was leaving shortly to go to Europe, and after her lunchtime shift there was little time left, so they’d agreed to meet up at the café in John Street Market. They’d talked and talked – the time had just vanished – and when they left he took her hand, and continued to hold it all the way back to where he’d parked his car. He’d then dropped her outside St Luke’s – heaven forbid anyone saw them together and it got back to Irene – and before she got out of the car he’d leaned across and kissed her.
It had just been one kiss, that was all. Not even meant. He’d just pecked her cheek and then, somehow, they’d looked at one another, then rearranged their faces, and kissed each other properly.
It had stunned her and made her stomach churn and been everything she’d imagined it might be, but Kathleen wasn’t fanciful enough to start weaving romantic stories around it. Yes she was, she supposed, ‘seeing’ him, and he obviously liked her. But she wasn’t stupid, or soppy, or anything like that. She certainly wasn’t childish enough to do as Monica had a couple of years back, practising her married name – the name of a boy she’d hardly been out with half a dozen times, and who finished with her a couple of weeks later.
But she knew that what she felt for Terry had nothing of the breathless quality of the crushes and infatuations she’d had before this. There was nothing of the knight on white charger about him, or the jack-the-lad, either; he couldn’t be less like that – but perhaps because of that, she was drawn to him even more. That and the fact that they’d both lost someone dear to them? Perhaps. It didn’t matter anyway.
Lost in her thoughts, it was only the sound of a chair being stacked that made her realise her father was in the bar with her. She’d been emptying the ashtrays – one of those horrible jobs that always seemed to be her job – and she realised she’d no idea how long he’d been there. It made her start. What was he doing, creeping up on her like that?
‘Bloody hell, Dad,’ she ticked him off. ‘I nearly jumped out of my skin! What are you doing up at this time anyway? It’s not even quarter past seven!’
He was still in his pyjamas and dressing gown and, like Irene, looked like he’d aged a decade in a week. ‘Your mam’s just gone off, love,’ he said, nodding towards the ceiling. ‘Bloody wretched night, we’ve had.’
‘Then go to sleep as well,’ Kathleen told him. ‘God knows, you look like you need it!’
But her father shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go and have a bit of a sort-out in our Darren’s room …’
Kathleen raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’ Darren’s room had already become something of a shrine. No one was allowed across the threshold, let alone in to touch any of his possessions; well, bar the police, who she’d no choice but to let look around. Which they duly had, even after the funeral, because they needed to establish if there were any factors that might have had a bearing on things, but once it became clear that it was a straightforward suicide (which the extent of Darren’s debts clearly hinted at, on top of the forensics) they’d not been back, and probably wouldn’t.
