Witness - [14]

Fiona nodded, a letter had come yesterday.

‘They can help. Or we have a counsellor here, if you’d like someone to talk to. Just let me…’ She turned and hit some keys on her computer. Read up a bit. ‘Cognitive behaviour therapy can be very useful, that’s what Hazel’s trained in, good success rate reported. The other usual treatment is antidepressants. Some patients find a dual approach most useful.’

Fiona listened to her talk about side effects and the need for gradual withdrawal. ‘It may be that you’d prefer to wait and see if there is any recurrence.’

‘No,’ Fiona said quickly. The prospect of that terror clawing through her again, the flailing fear, the feeling that she was dying, was untenable. She asked for a prescription and said she would like to try the CBT. Dr Melling said there might be a wait but Fiona would get a letter as soon as an appointment was available.

Fiona filled the prescription at the pharmacy next door to the surgery. To be taken with food, it read on the label. She wasn’t hungry but she wanted the medicine so managed a couple of oatcakes and cheese.

She prayed the drugs would work quickly to protect her from the panic returning. She also hoped they would stop the pictures that were lodged in her skull. The relentless carousel of images shuttering on and on. Blink, Danny’s palm on the grass. Blink, his eyes rolling back in his skull. Blink, his mother on her knees, her face torn wide with grief.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mike

Ian was ready to sack Mike. He’d had customers on his back: several express deliveries not received, the firm’s golden guarantee rendered worthless.

Mike explained the situation and Ian had nowhere to go with it. Took a while for his body to catch up with his brain: face still grimacing, shoulders flexing as he processed the fact that witnessing a murder probably did count as a rock-solid excuse. Mike promised to stay late, clear his backlog, half-hoping Ian would give him a break, put some of his sheet on to one of the other couriers, but Ian just nodded and clapped him on the back. Trying for matey. Failing.

Word spread fast and a couple of the lads caught up with Mike in the loading bay. Mike was holding court describing the scene, telling it like a story, when Ian came out of the office, hitching his pants up. Already had the gut of a man ten years older.

‘Best get on.’ Mike broke up the little gathering before Ian could. ‘Shocking, no two ways about it. I tell you.’ He headed for his van.

‘Never seen a dead body,’ one of the younger men said.

Mike just caught the backchat as he clambered into his cab. ‘Hang around here any longer and we’ll all see one.’ The gale of laughter.

Mike felt a quickening in the pit of his guts. The shadow of the time before. The other boy who’d died, his father running into the street with his son in his arms. Mike pushed the shadow away, shaken, and stabbed at the button on the radio. Retuned to XFM, local rock station, Elbow singing ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’, plaintive riffs and Mancunian lyrics.

Vicky had been great. They’d fed the kids, got them to bed early. Mike had surreptitiously washed Kieran’s straw, turned it the other way up so the boy wouldn’t find the faint indentations his teeth had already made. Later Mike had snipped half a centimetre off the end so it’d look fresh enough to do for breakfast in the morning.

With the kids out of the way, she’d sent him for a shower. ‘You don’t half reek, Mike.’ And when he came back she gave him a cold lager, sat him down, wanted to know everything. When he got ahead of himself, she interrupted, pulled him back to the right point.

‘It’s bloody awful,’ she said when he’d done. She held his gaze. ‘You okay?’

He tipped his head.

‘Do you want to get off down the pub for a bit?’ He met up with the lads a couple of times a week.

‘Nah.’ He nodded at the fridge. ‘I’ll have another can. Maybe an early night.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ She walked to the fridge, got the beer, turned and faced him. Grinned, one tooth snagging on her bottom lip. ‘What sort of early night?’

‘Bring that over here and I’ll show you.’ He felt the heat of anticipation in his groin.

Vicky giggled, popped the ring pull and took a swig. Walked over to him, nice and slow, her hips swaying, the fine, straight blonde hair swinging in time.

She sat astride his legs, took another swig and handed him his drink. Her eyes were dancing. She smiled and reached for the buttons on his jeans.

* * *

Thursday the police wanted to see him. The murder had been all over the papers. A boy gunned down on his way to a band rehearsal. A lad who had a bright future by all accounts. Well liked in school, never in trouble. Planned to do a course in sound production and dreamed of being a successful musician. Mike had never done much at school. Just the thought of the place brought back memories he’d rather not have, set the swirl of unease moving inside him like dirty water, dampened his day.

They couldn’t tell him how long he’d be there. And the answer didn’t change when he explained things were a bit tricky work-wise. He agreed to go in for one o’clock, hoping an hour would cover it and he could call it lunch.