Dead To Me - [9]

When Rachel climbed into the car Janet already had the radio on, some documentary about the law and assisted suicide. Rachel blanked it. Watched the streets, the gleam of ice on the roads and stone walls, the fog distorting shapes, shadows and distance, the ribbons of light marking the roads winding down the hills.

Janet dropped her outside the station, a curt, ‘Night,’ the only communication.

‘Night,’ Rachel said flatly, and as she pushed the car door shut muttered, ‘Sour-faced bitch.’

5

ADE WAS IN front of the telly, a pile of exercise books on the sofa beside him, red pen in hand.

‘’Lo,’ Janet called from the doorway.

‘Hi,’ he grunted, not even bothering to look her way.

In the kitchen she opened the fridge, wondering if they had left her any tea. It was hit and miss. Time was Ade would have a hot meal for her whenever she was late home, would even sit with her while she ate, swapping tales from their days at work. She on the job, nothing strictly confidential of course, but the vagaries of policing, the cock-ups and triumphs, irritants among the team, the gossip, always someone shagging someone else. And Ade’s stories of high school hell, the Machiavellian manoeuvring of the geography department, the dirty politics of management and the LEA and school governors. The trench warfare of the classroom. Thirty hormonal teenagers, most of them regarding geography as slightly less interesting than waiting for paint to dry. Flirting, fighting, giving cheek, the lads rife with BO and Lynx deodorant, the girls wearing enough product to blind a lab-full of rabbits.

That all seemed so long ago. Janet couldn’t remember the last time they’d laughed together, the last time she’d saved up an anecdote to please him, relished the telling of it and his response. She opened the microwave, which was empty and looked a little like a crime scene. Blood spatter on the walls. She went back into the lounge. ‘What did you have for tea?’

‘Chilli,’ he said.

‘You save any for me?’

‘Eh?’ He scribbled something in the margin of an exercise book, slung it down, picked up the next. On the telly someone was explaining why drilling into the Arctic ice sheet was a good idea.

‘Did you save me some?’

‘There was a bit left. I think Taisie had it.’

‘That girl must have a tapeworm,’ Janet grumbled. Eleven years old and always hungry. Would eat twice her own body weight, given the chance. Never got podgy though. Taisie was out climbing. She got a lift there and back with one of the other parents. Next week Janet, or more likely Ade, would be the taxi.

Janet’s thoughts flickered to Denise Finn, lost both her kids in a year. Tomorrow, Janet reminded herself. Work stayed at work. The separation was the only way to stay sane. She never brought her work home, just like she didn’t lug her family stuff into the office.

She went up to see Elise, who was glued to Facebook. ‘How was Drama?’

‘What?’

‘Drama?’

‘Good. Yeah.’

‘Put this lot in the wash.’ The floor was thick with cast-off clothes. ‘Or you’ll have to borrow my knickers.’

‘Rank!’ said Elise.

Janet moved closer, taking the chance to peer over Elise’s shoulder and scan the screen.

‘This century would be good,’ Janet said.

‘Yeah.’ Absently, same as Ade. I am the invisible woman, Janet thought.

‘What’s TFN then?’ Janet asked, tripping over the acronym on the page. ‘Ta-ta for now?’

‘Total fucking nightmare,’ Elise said.

‘I knew that,’ Janet said. And caught a quick grin from her daughter in the reflection on the screen.

Janet made herself an omelette and ate in the kitchen, the local evening paper propped on the ketchup bottle. One of their cases had gone to trial, a lad who had fallen out with his girlfriend, rung her up and persuaded her to meet him on her birthday. She thought they were getting back together again. He arranged to pick her up in the car park behind Tommyfield Market in Oldham. She had recognized his car, stepped out to wave, so he’d see her. He had accelerated. Ploughed into her at speed and tossed her thirty-five metres. She died at the scene. He claimed it was an accident, he hit the wrong pedal, swore every which way to Christmas that he was gutted. A broken man. The postings he put online beforehand told a different tale. He was going down, unless the jury cocked it up big time; it was just a question of how long for. Janet had done the interviews with him. Let him drivel on for the first two days, nodding with understanding and encouragement as he had spun his fantasy, before she’d begun to pick his story apart, line by line, sentence by sentence. Finally finishing him with printouts from the Internet, the most damning being, That cunt’s getting a birthday present she never forget. Thick as shit.

Janet had watched the light go out in his eyes, watched him squirm lower in his seat, knowing she had enough for the CPS, that she had dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s and gone through the whole alphabet with careful penmanship – win a flippin’ calligraphy prize for it – and got it bang to rights.

She heard the clatter of Taisie arriving, the slam of the door that shook the floor beneath Janet’s feet and rattled the double glazing.