Kiss Her Goodbye: The most addictive thriller you'll read this year Page 21

  I get up and run my fingers over the soft bedspread and the pillow. Over the bed is the same black and white poster of a man holding a baby that I bought Leila from Athena a few months ago, alongside three pictures of Morten Harket. If things were different we could have slept over here and talked until the sun came up.

  I’m about to open the shell-encrusted jewellery box on the bedside table when I hear the front door open again so I open the wardrobe to look for the orange jumper that she wore the first time I saw her by the river, but I don’t see it. I grab her ‘Frankie Says Relax’ tee shirt and shut the door quickly. I wish I could stay the night in her bed and wake up with her bedding like a hug around me.

  In the bathroom, I put the tee shirt on underneath mine and come back downstairs with my palms hot and sweaty. It’s comfy and well worn, as if it was one of her favourites. When I get back downstairs Mrs. Green is putting her coat on the hook.

  ‘Just been to the loo Mrs Green.’

  I worry that she can tell what I’ve been doing until she rolls her eyes and starts to talk about next door.

  ‘They’re never in, those two.’

  When it gets to 6.30 p.m., Mrs Green looks at the clock and I decide to go before she asks me to leave. The tee shirt is soft against my skin and I can smell the washing powder as I smile at her.

  ‘You come back again soon. The Lord has let our paths cross for a reason. There’s always a reason. It’s his will.’

  She looks down at what I’m wearing and smiles. I wonder why, until I realise I’ve got a large silver crucifix on over my other necklaces. I’ve had the best day I’ve had for ages and, apart from all the God stuff, I like her more than anyone I’ve ever met.

  *

  When I get home, Mum is back from Blackpool and underneath her Anaïs Anaïs perfume she smells of booze and sweaty onions.

  ‘Poor Cheryl,’ she says to herself. ‘Oh, I got these from Woolies on the way back from the station. You can have a box for your friends. They’ve got robins on.’

  She puts a couple of boxes of Christmas cards on the table. I can’t believe her sometimes.

  ‘Dad came.’

  She bites her bottom lip and exhales. ‘Right.’

  ‘We went to see Letter to Brezhnev.’

  ‘The sailor film? Don’t be silly.’

  I walk away from her.

  ‘So let’s talk about it?’ she says, but it’s too late. She wasn’t here when I wanted her, as usual.

  ‘You never listen so what’s the point?’

  ‘I’m listening now. So tell me.’

  ‘When I do, you either say I’m being stupid or making things up.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she says, but we both know that’s a lie. I step over a pile of sheets at the bottom of the stairs and her eyes move down over my lace top.

  ‘Hayley?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll put the Christmas cards in the sideboard.’

  I go into my bedroom and shut the door. There’s a creak on the staircase as she follows me up and I see her shadow under the door. I wait for her to knock, but she doesn’t and after a few minutes the lounge door slams shut. She’s good at pretending to care, but she doesn’t – she never has. I’ve never been important. I take off Kirsten’s tee shirt and hold it close to my face. It smells of Mrs Green’s house and I shut my eyes and imagine that I’m back in Kirsten’s room with her. A-ha is playing on the stereo and we’re both happy. I pretend to like her music and we decide to run away abroad with a couple of sailors where no one can find us.

  *

  Mike comes back and Mum waits in the living room and shouts, ‘Surprise!’ By the time I come down he’s got a chocolate orange in one hand and my mother wrapped around his neck. A bunch of yellow carnations lies on the carpet next to his feet.

  ‘How did you know I was coming back today? You’re brilliant!’ Mum says as she picks up the flowers.

  ‘Lucky guess,’ he replies as he looks down at her suitcase.

  She smiles. ‘Oh, I missed you. Although, red roses are my favourite, so you know next time.’

  I stand at the top of the stairs and look at the flowers. They are the same kind that Kirsten’s mum had that day by the river and I know that he bought them for me to apologise for last night.

  ‘Is the chocolate for me too? Did you forget that I’m off it? Give it to Hayley.’ She smiles, before she kisses his ear.

  He blushes as he looks at the pile of my bed sheets on the floor, bloody from where I cut my hand. ‘You two been having a punch-up?’ She laughs.

  ‘The opposite,’ I reply.

  Mike goes pale and Mum shakes her head and grabs his hand.

  ‘I said you’d be fine. Come on,’ she says to Mike, ‘you can fill me in on what’s been going on and…’ She whispers something in his ear as they go into the living room and shuts the door to the sound of her own giggling.

  As I run my fingers over the bumps of the wood chip on the wall, I know that things are going to change. Now that Dad isn’t taking me away the rotten roots aren’t going to hold us up for much longer. Things are about to topple, like an old tree in a storm. I can feel it.

  The theme tune for Just Good Friends comes on and I know she’s recorded it so she can drool over Paul Nicholas again. In a matter of minutes everything has gone back to the way it used to be.

  I go upstairs, sit on my bed and listen to the water fall from the broken gutter onto the patio. Mum has told Mike to fix it, but I hope he doesn’t. I like the steady drip, drip, drip, of the water like a metronome keeping time and I think about the day that I sat with my arm around Kirsten while the water lapped against the bank. It’s what I’d waited so long for and I hope that she knew how special it was. When I open my curtains, the garden is darker than the inside of the sewerage pipe and a cold shiver goes through me. She’s been watching me through the leaves just as I used to watch her. I imagine her down there: hair stuck up in muddy spikes, water pouring from her mouth, throat thick with sludge and her naked body as brown and slippery as an eel’s. She’s more creature than girl now and I picture her scrambling up the side of the house in the darkness, teeth bared in a mud-filled grin, as I shut the curtain.

  The door opens and Mike is standing there when I turn around. He swallows as he stands in the doorway before he comes in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s watching her programme again.’ He nods downstairs.

  ‘And?’

  ‘We should talk about last night.’

  ‘What for?’

  He sits on the bed next to me and puts his hand out as if he’s going to touch my shoulder, before changing his mind.

  ‘What happened, shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘You’re just like everyone else. Thanks for the flowers, by the way. My favourite.’

  He looks at the dried yellow carnation next to my bed. ‘Yeah, I know. We really do need to talk.’

  ‘Why? To make you feel better? No, thanks.’

  His face is as white as the bed sheet and when I get up and go to the bathroom he doesn’t follow. After about five minutes I hear him go downstairs. I remember the warmth of his chest under my cheek that night; it felt as if he cared and I wish he’d never moved in. I glance up at the picture of Gillian Gilbert on the wall, but she’s looking sadly away as though she knows there’s no hope for me in any of this now.

  28

  Hayley Reynolds

  The next day, I decide to call Leila. I want to do something normal like sit on a bench and chat as we used to. It’s been ages since I’ve spoken to her and, despite everything, I want her to know about Dad, but her mum answers the phone.

  ‘Hiya, is Leila in?’

  She waits for a second before she answers, ‘Hayley?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry it’s early.’

  The line goes quiet for a second.

  ‘She’s just left with Barbara for the Student Union.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘A march they’re or
ganising. They’re inseparable at the moment.’ I can tell that she’s smiling as she speaks. ‘Your mum’s fine, I hope?’

  ‘Bye, Mrs McAndrews,’ I say, and as I put down the phone I know she hates me. She always has done. Leila’s got nothing to protest about. She’s got a Charles and Diana scrapbook under her bed and her parents still drive her to college. Her dad will get another job despite what she says. He’s not like Uncle Dave. He hasn’t had a job since the docks in Salford closed and all he does now is drink. I make a few funny phone calls to Maxine to make me feel better, but even that doesn’t work. I’m just too fed up.

  *

  Over the weekend, I shut myself in my room and play Low Life on a loop. I hardly eat and I can’t sleep. It’s been like that since I saw Dad. When he said he was leaving it made me feel strange inside. I’ve been having bad thoughts about Leila too, so I’ve stayed away. A part of me wishes that Kirsten were here to talk to and on Monday, instead of going to college, I find myself knocking on the door of her mum’s house again. When Mrs Green answers she doesn’t look surprised.

  ‘I’m going to town for something to do. Do you want to come?’ I ask.

  ‘I thought it was the police again.’

  I look behind me at the empty road.

  ‘They shouldn’t be bothering you. It’s not fair.’

  ‘They’re just doing their job. Just a second.’

  She looks up at the sky and frowns, before going back inside. I wonder if she’s realised that Kirsten knew me and has put it all together. Kirsten must have told her about the times we chatted on the bus ride home. I start to worry that she’s gone to phone Beverley Samuels, but she comes back with an umbrella and a leather handbag on her arm.

  ‘Let’s go, then. I’ve not set foot out of this house for days. You’re just what I needed.’

  I glance up at the red blinds in the front bedroom as we leave and on the way to the bus stop, Mrs Green looks thoughtfully into the distance. Kirsten is on both our minds. I’m annoyed that she didn’t mention me and glad about it at the same time. Perhaps I just wasn’t important to her either. Three geese fly overhead towards the river, honking loudly from above, and I try not to think about it. I want it to be a good day.

  When we get on the bus, we sit near a man reading a newspaper. The headline reads:

  Councillor’s River Safety Fears

  Kirsten’s picture is on the front, but Mrs Green doesn’t notice. In the photograph, Kirsten’s skin is milky white and curls of golden hair fall over her shoulder. I think about the September sky, the smell of her hair and the way she stared up from the mud afterwards. Her locket bounces against my chest whenever the bus hits a bump in the road and the man reading the paper turns the page, uninterested.

  I glance out of the window as the church bell rings, but there are only treetops where the steeple used to be. They couldn’t afford to fix it so they just got rid of it as though it didn’t matter. Nobody misses that steeple now, they’ve got used to it not being there, the same as it’s been with Kirsten. People were sad at first, but now it’s like neither of them even existed.

  The man drops the newspaper on the floor and stares out of the window as though he’s in a trance. Everyone else is just the same, unaware and wrapped up in their own thoughts. They’re no better off than Kirsten. All empty husks with blank expressionless eyes.

  As the bus goes through Fallowfield, I ask Mrs Green if she watches Terry and June because Mum thinks it’s funny, but she says she doesn’t watch anything these days and I’m not sure what else to say. As we pass the student flats and scruffy-looking kebab shops I want to ask her about the police, but I’m not sure which words to use. At the bus stop, a girl with a Chelsea Mohawk chews gum through a scowl. She checks her watch through the tangle of bangles and beads on her wrist before the bus pulls away. From the back of the bus a couple start to shout at each other in a foreign language. They sound like they’re arguing, but then they laugh and kiss each other. I can’t tell if they love or hate each other and it makes me realise that I don’t understand people at all.

  The bus continues on, through Rusholme with its curry houses and shops with glittering saris in the windows. The streets are bustling with people and the smell of cooked spices drifts through the windows. We pass a billboard with a white dove over a turquoise background that boasts: ‘Manchester. A Nuclear Free City’ and it reminds me of Leila’s campaigning. Underneath it, the shop windows are decorated with tinsel and plastic snowmen and I just know that this Christmas is going to be awful.

  The bus stops and we get off outside the museum. There are people everywhere. A girl with untidy bleached hair walks underneath a sign that says: ‘Parking, Town Centre, Theatre and Canal’ and I look down. I’d forgotten that the river goes through town. Kirsten could be sliding through the sewers underneath us right now and I wouldn’t even know it.

  We walk up to the front of the Gothic-looking museum. As we get to the window, Mrs Green stops to look at a giant spider crab suspended by wires. Its angry black eyes stare at us through a huge pane of glass.

  ‘I heard about them. There’s hundreds in Russia. All on the sea bed. No one realised they were there,’ I tell her, and she leans forwards to look closer. Seeing the spider crab makes me wonder how many others there are like Kirsten in the rivers and canals that nobody knows about too, but I don’t share that with Mrs Green.

  ‘It looks mad,’ she says.

  ‘Dead mad,’ I reply, and it makes her smile.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  The museum is quiet and we walk past the cases of stuffed animals, from polar bears to voles, until we reach my favourite place: the room with the mummies. It’s darker and colder than the other rooms and, as I go in, I go over to the turquoise scarabs that are lined up in the first case. The card says that they were buried with the dead bodies to help them be reborn in the afterlife and I wonder if that would work for Kirsten too. I don’t think so though. She’s here to stay. The red light on the camera in the corner of the room blinks to let me know that they’re watching, but that’s nothing new. Someone’s always watching me these days.

  ‘Ungodly,’ Mrs Green, says as she glances at three mummies in a long glass case and I walk over to have a look. The first one is wrapped in bandages with its black face poking out. Its frog-like mouth gapes above a melted brown neck as it squints at me through hollow slits for eyes. It’s so ugly that it’s beautiful and I wonder why it’s OK to put dead people in glass boxes just because they’re old. Kirsten would be just as interesting as these mummies, but they wouldn’t want her. I turn to Mrs Green to ask her what she thinks, but she’s gone towards a display of vases on the far wall.

  A grey-haired security guard walks up behind me and leans over my shoulder. ‘How would you fancy spending the night in here with these?’ He smiles and rubs his chin.

  ‘They’re OK.’

  I twist my hair around my finger as he coughs into his hand. There’s a musky smell and I wonder if there’s a crack in the glass.

  He laughs. ‘They might come alive at night, this lot. Who knows?’

  ‘They don’t,’ I tell him, even though I know that dead things never die. They stay in your head forever.

  He looks around the room to see who I’m with. ‘You on your own?’

  I motion to Mrs Green.

  ‘That’s my mum,’ I say. ‘We live in France.’

  He takes a step back. I’d like it to be true. If Mrs Green were my mum then I’d be so much happier. ‘Sorry if I scared you!’ He smiles and walks away quicker than he’d arrived, hands in pockets and trousers stretched over his behind.

  ‘You didn’t,’ I mumble.

  I glance back at the mummies, before I leave. Their open mouths look as if they’re screaming.

  Mrs Green walks with me to the exit and we go inside the museum shop together. There’s a box of blue scarabs on one of the displays by the door and I pick one up and rub it across my palm. It’s heavy, but pebble smoo
th. When the young girl on the till starts serving, I drop it into my pocket and she doesn’t notice a thing.

  Mrs Green puts her hand on my shoulder and makes me jump.

  ‘Seen anything you like?’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s just tat.’

  She smiles. ‘Saving your money. Wise. Get yourself something nice for Christmas.’

  After she’s said it, her eyes look watery and I’m not sure what to say back.

  ‘Come on, hun, let’s go.’

  We walk back onto Oxford Road and the giant spider crab stares through the window, eyes on stalks and grinning through a triangular-shaped mouth, as if it knows all my secrets. I look back over my shoulder and frown at it as we leave. We walk past the library with university students everywhere. A girl pushes a leaflet into my hand that says, ‘If Maggie gets up your nose then picket!’ and I let it drop. The wind carries it into an alley, where a man is lying under a pile of ripped-up boxes. Leila would like it here, but she’s no idea what it’s like to have nothing. She talks about poverty, but in a few years she’ll be working in a bank like her mum and all her ‘Never Trust a Tory’ posters will be in the bin.

  Mrs Green looks at her watch and then back at me.

  ‘Two o’clock. Shall we go home?’

  ‘I might just hang about till college finishes. I’ve kind of bunked off.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be wandering about on your own. Let’s get a drink.’