Love Me to Death Read online

  He didn’t like to admit to himself that he was afraid. There was something else too; a morbid fascination to imagine what it had been like for Jayne. He wanted to see what the woods were like at night, because he kept imagining her pale feet in those red shoes. He’d lie in bed sometimes and stare at the curtain as it moved in the breeze from the open window and imagine, just try to imagine that he was the one in the woods. That he was lying on a soft bed of snow as the clouds leaked sideways across the pale moon. He wondered if Maggie would have cried for him?

  He sat up and looked through the slit in the curtain to see Mr Anderson pushing back the shrubs over his secret gate and found himself getting up out of bed. His dad and stepmother were talking in the kitchen and he heard the sound of a cork as they started into the next bottle. They wouldn’t notice. It felt like his dad didn’t notice anything he did these days. They used to do things together. Go out places on a Sunday morning. They’d ride their bikes to the airport, sit at the end of the runway as the planes took off and his dad would bring sandwiches and lemonade. It had been ages since they’d done anything together. He remembered the look in his stepmother’s eyes when she said goodbye to them on a Sunday morning. She’d soon put a stop to it and his dad’s bike hadn’t been out of the garage for at least two years.

  Once he was out, Jacob ran down the road to catch up with Mr Anderson on the lane. He was worried that he would be gone before he had the chance to find him, but no, down the sandy path, through the twisting branches and bare trees he saw a dark figure walking down the lane towards the woods.

  He had a bag on his back, a black rucksack and something dark in his hand. Jacob could feel the cold in the back of his throat, and wished he’d put on his bigger coat. The lane got darker the further he went down it. The trees at the side blocked the undergrowth and he heard rustling from the side of the path. Thoughts of Jayne came to his head as he made his way further into the darkness. There was a sense of freedom and fear as he went deeper along the path. No one knew he was out and he could see the lights from the houses above, as he walked further away from home.

  He wished Maggie could see him now. She always said he was weak, but look at him now. Mr Anderson turned the corner without a glance behind him he was gone. Jacob quickened his pace to catch up with him. The ground was hard and noisy as he walked. As he got further on, Jacob could see the dip in the path where it opened up in front of the bowl, a big green field carved out at the bottom of the hill where they played football and people walked their dogs, but no Mr Anderson. Jacob looked around him, wondering where he could be. The path was too long for him to have made it to the end already. Further up there were brambles and thick undergrowth. He couldn’t have gone in there, could he?

  Jacob wondered if he’d carved a passage out of the brambles, a tunnel that he crawled through so that he could watch the badgers and wait for them unseen or what else he may have seen from the darkness of the woods. If Jayne came past this way that night, or if she walked down Green Pastures towards the river. Perhaps someone came after her from the darkness, unseen or she walked with them towards the woods, feeling safe. Not knowing. He hoped it had been quick.

  He stopped on the lane. The light from the moon shone over the path. There was a sound from the side of him and a figure stepped out from behind the tree.

  ‘Hello.’

  Jacob inhaled. He didn’t shout or make scream. It was Mr Anderson.

  ‘Oh,’ was all he could manage.

  ‘Were you following me?’ Mr Anderson asked, as though he hadn’t realised himself.

  ‘Just to see the badgers.’

  ‘The…?’

  ‘Do they come this way?’

  Mr Anderson stared into his face. He had the smell of the zoo about him.

  ‘Do they what?’

  ‘The badgers, do they come here as well as the woods?’

  ‘They go where the food is.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘I know you’re going out to see them.’

  Mr Anderson tilted his head. ‘You do?’

  ‘Can I help?’

  Mr Anderson started to walk back down the lane. ‘No.’

  Jacob walked a little behind him.

  The wind started to pick up, making the branches of the tree above them creak.

  ‘You could get in trouble, following people.’

  ‘Are we going to the woods now?’

  Mr Anderson squinted. ‘The woods?’

  ‘Yes, that’s where the sets are, isn’t it? I’ve seen them there.’

  ‘No badgers today.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You’d scare them.’

  ‘I just want to see one. I’ll be quiet.’

  ‘Another time. The fog is coming.’

  He was right. Jacob could smell it in the air. The bowl was shrouded in it. A low mist that hung like a cloud over the field, while in the distance the lights from the cars snaked down the road like fireflies. It felt strangely beautiful. Almost like a fairy tale.

  Jacob stared into the white mist and thought about Maggie. The way they used to run down that hill, holding hands, each one trying to outrun the other until one of them would lose their footing and fall. He would insist on the game just so that he could hold her hand and he knew that she liked it when they ended up in the long grass at the bottom of the hill, panting and wide-eyed. He wished he’d tried to kiss her. It felt as though it had all been taken away from him. He wondered if he was ever going to see her again.

  Jacob realised that Mr Anderson was staring at him.

  ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  Jacob felt disappointed. He wondered if Mr Anderson was angry because he’d taken the book from the library. He shouldn’t have done it.

  ‘I won’t make a noise.’

  ‘No.’

  As they walked back towards home Jacob could tell that Mr Anderson wasn’t happy.

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have asked,’ Jacob said.

  Everything was going wrong. From nowhere he felt a tear run down his face, unexpected and embarrassing. Once they started, he couldn’t stop it. Mr Anderson pretended not to notice and kept on up Station Road as though they were just a normal pair of friends.

  A woman walked past with her dog on the other side of the road and glanced over at them, but didn’t say anything. Mr Anderson’s skin was paler in the darkness. He looked so white, as though he was chiselled from a piece of bone. The small curls of his dark hair made him look even paler.

  Jacob wiped one of his cheeks with the back of his sleeve, tasting his own salty tears on the top of his lip.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mr Anderson said.

  ‘See you,’ Jacob replied, and started to run home. He didn’t want to be next to him anymore. He had been excited to see the badgers. He wanted to have that moment where nothing else mattered, but Mr Anderson had taken that away.

  When he got back home, he went in through the side door and back up to his room without anyone hearing him. The house was warm and he was almost glad to be back. He lay in bed and thought about the badgers in the woods. He’d messed up. He should have just asked and now he wasn’t ever going to see them. His cheeks burnt and he had a feeling of sickness in his stomach.

  An hour later he heard the familiar click of the back gate. Mr Anderson had been somewhere else before he came back tonight. Jacob wondered if he had gone straight to the woods as soon as he’d left him. Tonight, he didn’t look out of his window to see him going through the gate. He didn’t want to even look at him.

  11

  When Billy Vincent found out that a homeless person was pitched up near the old railway bridge it didn’t take him long to decide.

  ‘It must have been him that did Jayne.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Jacob replied.

  ‘Who else?’ Billy frowned. ‘Scum of the earth, Dad says.’

  ‘They’re homeless.’

  ‘On drugs.’


  Billy looked pleased, but Matty Vincent didn’t. He had the same look on his face that he did when Maggie’s mum came to get her in the car. Jacob wondered what was wrong with him. He was the same every time that Jayne was mentioned.

  ‘He probably saw her and wanted a bit,’ Billy said. ‘He’s probably the only one she’d ever said no to.’

  ‘Don’t,’ replied Jacob.

  Maggie wouldn’t have liked it and he hated when Billy talked like that. It was wrong. She wasn’t just like the rest of the girls – she was dead.

  ‘Dad said the police can’t do nothing cos there’s no proof, but we can. Come on,’ Billy said.

  ‘You don’t know he’s done anything,’ Matty replied.

  ‘Dirty bastard probably messed about with her first. Do you think that’s OK?’ Billy asked.

  ‘What are you saying that for?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Because of what she was like. She was a right slag, wasn’t she?’ Billy told him.

  ‘Don’t,’ Matty replied.

  Jacob looked at him. He was different when there were no girls around; he didn’t put on that stupid smile or pose about. At least he wasn’t like his brother though. Jacob wanted to hate him, but he knew that despite his faults, he wasn’t as bad as Billy.

  ‘Well, when’s a homeless going to get his end away? Who’s gonna want to touch that?’

  ‘Maggie would knock you out for talking like that,’ Matty told him.

  ‘Maggie ain’t here, is she?’

  ‘You still shouldn’t be saying it,’ Jacob said.

  It felt odd being on Matty’s side for once, but Billy was out of order.

  ‘Did you have the hots for her too?’ Billy Vincent laughed. ‘Was the whole bloody town after her?’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Maggie’s cousin. You had the hots for her an’ all? She wasn’t all that,’ laughed Billy.

  ‘Pack it in,’ Jacob replied.

  Billy smirked at Matty. ‘Tetchy.’

  Matty’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just leave it.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’re as bad. Come on let’s go down there,’ Billy said.

  Jacob frowned. ‘What for?’

  ‘To scare him off. Do you want him doing it again?’

  ‘You can’t,’ Jacob told him. ‘The police need to deal with it.’

  ‘Who gives a shit? I’m going down there.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Matty replied.

  ‘What about your sister?’ Billy said to Jacob. ‘What if he goes for her next?’

  Jacob bit his lip. He didn’t want that.

  It made sense in one way. There had never been anything like that before and then suddenly this. He thought about Maggie and how much he wanted things back the way they were. Maybe Billy was right. If they were, then he needed to see. Jacob needed to know. He hadn’t got anywhere with the dance class. There were no more leads to follow.

  12

  Mr Anderson walked down the lane towards the railway arch where the yellow tent had been pitched. The sky was elephant-grey and he could taste the freshness of the air. There was something else too, something exquisite: the taste of freedom for the boy. The boy was about to become a part of his family.

  The snow crunched under his feet as he left the red-bricked terraces behind, before the lane opened up into a mess of brambles where railway trains once thundered through. Everything was white, punctured only by the thick black trunks of the trees; there was no path now, only snow. His feet sank as he walked. He wondered if the boy walked down here too, if he heard the music from the top bedrooms where other teenagers sat on their beds and hoped for a better life.

  Perhaps he’d lost fear along with hope and become feral, out here alone. The whiteness of the lane was almost blinding, everything cleaned by snow. It was right that he should have a place where he would finally have others to look after him. This was no place to live. The weather reports said it was going to get colder and he was certain that the boy wouldn’t hesitate to come with him.

  As he got closer, Mr Anderson took smaller steps, with only the sound of breathing and the creak of his footsteps in the snow. The white landscape reminded him of the pale white clay that he longed to feel in between his fingertips. He thought of the deer as they waited on Cage Hill and the modelling knife that he would use to carve out the minute details of the face. The boy didn’t have long to wait now for a family. This would be the last time that he would have to go to sleep, hungry and alone.

  Mr Anderson’s heart quickened when he got to the second railway arch. It was empty. Fear ran through him that he was too late – that the boy had already moved on to another place – and as he stood there with the threat of another blizzard in the clouds above, he realised how much this meant to him.

  He sighed with relief as he saw the yellow tent in the third railway arch. The sound of material rustled from inside and for the first time since he could remember, Mr Anderson had butterflies; he wanted this.

  He stood in the archway and waited, glancing briefly behind him, but the path was empty. It was getting dark, the edges of the path draped in shadows from the trees and the snow gave everything a half-light.

  ‘I’ve got you something to eat.’

  The sound of his voice was loud on the quietness of the lane. He waited. Did not take a step closer, worried about what would happen next. Conversation was something he usually avoided and yet, here he was, actively seeking to reach out to a stranger. There was silence from the tent. He took another glance from left to right, not wanting things to get ruined by a passing dog walker or anyone else.

  ‘I went past yesterday on my bike. Saw you. Nothing to worry about. I brought you something hot to eat.’

  He waited, wondering if he would have to try another tack, or if he should just step forwards into the archway and unzip the tent himself. The boy could be asleep, or worse. Perhaps he was too late. The cold could have taken him. He could have been already sick or, even worse, he could be sitting in a nearby house, taken in by someone like Noreen who thought they were helping. He pictured her – the way she’d looked at him when she brought the post over to him this morning and wished she could see him now. She would see that there was so much more to him than what she thought she knew.

  A bad thought entered his head. What if there were more of them in there? What if the boy wasn’t alone? He hadn’t considered that. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about. If there were more than one person in there, then he would leave the food and go. Mr Anderson looked behind him and then back at the arches. There could be people behind them, people waiting there. Perhaps he was wrong about the boy, perhaps this was going to end up a mess like every other good thing he wanted. He felt the weight of the knife in his pocket and composed himself, it was just nerves.

  As the boy unzipped the tent, Mr Anderson resisted the urge to smile. The boy’s thick, dark, black hair was long and curly, which was something he hadn’t expected. It reminded him of his mother’s. She always used to wear her hair up in a bun, scraped back from her face, but when she let it down before bed it curled over her shoulders and softened her face in a way that made her look like a different person. Then she looked like all the other mothers he used to see holding hands with their children on the way to school or pushing prams around through the streets. With that hair, the boy and him could be related. They could be. They would be.

  Mr Anderson realised that he was staring. He didn’t want to scare the boy off before he’d had a chance to begin so he took out the corned beef hash from the bin bag in his hand and held it out. The look of desire in the boy’s face pleased him.

  ‘Corned beef hash.’

  He attempted a smile, something he wasn’t good at it. He was never good at acting, and yet, the boy was still there. Mr Anderson wanted this one to be perfect. The bin bag felt powdery against his fingers as he waited. It was industrial strength, the thickest plastic – the kind that builders used for bricks and rubble.
He imagined it pressed over the boy’s face, but he didn’t give it a second glance.

  Mr Anderson took a couple of steps towards him. He’d added a special ingredient – a little something to numb the boy’s senses: some of his mother’s pills that had kept her quiet at the end. The modelling knife made a pleasing weight in his pocket. The blade was thin and razor sharp, the finest he could buy and so efficient. The boy only had eyes for the food though. He swallowed as though he could already taste it. It was going even better than he’d hoped.

  The boy reached out and took the food as though he was scared that he’d take it back again.

  ‘I’m Simon,’ Mr Anderson said.

  He surprised himself. He didn’t usually introduce himself as Simon to anyone. It was the name that his mother used. He waited for a reaction, but there wasn’t one.

  ‘OK,’ replied the boy, as he ripped off the lid.

  ‘I made it myself.’

  The boy started to eat. He didn’t question anything. Mr Anderson was pleased. This was what he’d hoped for: acceptance. He felt closer to him than he had been to anyone in a long time. The recipe was one of his mother’s, a family meal that she would cook on occasion and the boy ate as though he hadn’t eaten for days. Perhaps he hadn’t. Mr Anderson toyed with the plastic bag in his hand, resisting the urge to begin. His fingertips twitched at the thought of the wooden handle of the knife in his pocket. He just needed to be patient.

  Through the open flap, Mr Anderson could see that the tent was empty. Inside, an old sleeping bag and some empty cardboard boxes the boy had dragged in were flattened down so that he could use them for extra insulation along with plastic bags and old clothes.