You'll Get Yours, page 32
“That’s what we need to talk about,” Roisin said, biting her lower lip. She moved some canvases and folders off a chair and Johanna sat down. “Tea?”
“Och, sure,” Johanna spat, waving it away, “who could think of tea at a time like this? It’s a whiskey I’m after. A triple.”
To her surprise, Roisin got up, went behind her desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a half-filled bottle of Bushmills 21. She grabbed two teacups and poured some inside.
“I didn’t mean literally, like. Do me good, but. Calm my nerves.”
Roisin nodded. “Aye, me and all.”
As she handed one to Johanna, sat down and took a gulp herself, Roisin couldn’t help but give a wry, or maybe rueful, smile, even as anxious as she was.
“I think it’s drink that got us into this mess in the first place, but.”
“Aye, that at the E,” Johanna said, her eyes disgusted. “What were we like that night?”
Roisin pulled a second chair up to her friend and sat across from her. Their knees almost touched.
“Typical teens of the time, that’s what we were like,” she said. “All around us everyone was gulping down the E’s. Sure, there was even that song about it at the time, mind? That’ ‘E’s-are-good-E’s-are-good-he’s-Ebeneezer-Goode’ one. Soundtrack to our youth, that one. Mind?”
Johanna looked like she’d rather not remember, like she wanted to block out everything about her life as a teen in the early 90s.
“We can’t be blamed for that,” Roisin continued, not sure if she was trying to make Johanna feel better or justify their actions to herself. “We can’t change what happened.”
Johanna wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but the whiskey seemed to be having a calming effect. She took another swig. “When I heard our Lily was really that woman found on the cannon, when everybody was saying she was that Regina Steps, it never entered my mind it had something to do with...us back then. Sure, I know you and her went off and led a very different life from the likes of Margaret and me. Of course, you know I was happy for you. Aye, a bit jealous and all, truth be told. But what am I blathering on about? What I mean to say is, when I heard Lily was murdered, it never entered my mind that it could have something to do with...” She grimaced, trembled a bit, then spat out with regret and hatred, “...that night.” She placed the teacup on the floor, grabbed one of Roisin’s hands and wrapped it between her own, clasping them tightly. “Och, why did we do it, Ro? For the love of God, why? Do you know, I’ve gone to confession that many times for it over the years I’ve lost count. I always do my penance, and sure, the sin should be wiped from my soul when I do, but I always feel like it’s still there. I have to keep going and going, confessing over and over, and still I don’t feel clean. I feel filthy. A sinner. Oh, it took me years to understand what we had done was a sin. It must have been having wains of my own that did it. Thinking of what if that had happened to one of them, at the age the lad was. I think I was in my thirties or so when I finally forced myself to go to confession and reveal it to the priest. Lord only knows what the priest made of it. But it had been playing on my mind, once or twice a month or so, for years. Years! Before I was finally that disgusted with myself that I sought the solace of the confessional and absolution.”
Roisin nodded. “Me and all. I mean, it took years until I thought back to that night and realized how awful we were, how heartless. And, aye, it was my own wains, so innocent, so full of love for life at that age, and one night it all came back to me, and I near had a breakdown, so stricken with grief, with shame, I was. Never confessed it, but. I’ve never really gone back to the church after all those years in the, er, limelight, the different life and what have you, and,” she gave an uncomfortable shrug, “I just never went back. Maybe I should. What I’m trying to say, but, is that...I know at the time we brought it up the next morning, all of us, and talked about it—”
“Och, but Ro!” Johanna wailed, her voice trembling. She slipped her hands off Roisin’s and placed them in front of her face as if hiding it. “We didn’t talk about it! We had a right laugh about it!”
Roisin reeled as Johanna picked up her cup and drank down. Johanna was correct. Roisin realized with a shock she’d created a false memory of the morning after in her mind at some stage over the years, her and the girls being remorseful, saying the drink and drugs had made them a bit too cheeky. Cheeky? It had been worse than that. Much, much worse.
Johanna moaned, “What callous, miserable, hateful wee girls we must have been when I look back. And we can’t blame the drink or the drugs. No, we can’t, as by the next day they were well out of our systems. We kept laughing and laughing about it. Even saying we should have pushed him further. How could we have been cruel?”
“We were young,” Roisin said softly.
“The thing is...when I heard this morning that our Margaret had been murdered...I knew! I knew it was him! Coming after us! After all this time!”
“It might be nothing but a coincidence,” Roisin said, though without much conviction. “We might be making a mountain out of a molehill. It might have nothing to do with us.”
Johanna snorted, a tinge of anger surfacing. “Aye, you go right ahead thinking like that, love. Until the minute he strangles the life out of you. Go right ahead.”
Roisin lowered her head in shame as a little tremor of fear ran through her.
“We’re next, Ro,” Johanna insisted mournfully. Her red-rimmed eyes searched her friend’s face. “I feel it in my bones. It’s no coincidence, Lily and then Margaret. I don’t know who’s going to be next, you or me, but...it’s going to happen. He’s after us. And he has every right to be.”
“Jo, but,” Roisin said in a little voice, “we can’t just let ourselves be targeted like that. Do nothing and wait for him to come and...and...” She shuddered, drank down more whiskey. “We need to do something. Seek him out, make him see sense. Plead our case.”
Johanna gave a bark of bitter laughter. “Are you out of your mind? He’s a cold-blooded killer. We’re middle-aged women. He’ll make short work of us. Also, I haven’t a clue who he is.” She stared intently at Roisin. “Do you? I’ve tried over the years to work out who that family was. I know they lived on Pemberton Road, but, sure, I didn’t know the family. It was that Candice who got me involved in it. Roped me into it, as the mammy and daddy asked her to find a replacement for her. Why Candice called me of all people, I haven’t a clue. Don’t even know where she got my number from. Can’t even recall Candice’s surname now, but.”
“Maybe we could hire a private detective to find out who the lad was? Is?”
Johanna stared scornfully at Roisin and shook her head in disbelief. “A private detective, you say?” she scoffed. “You’re off your head, you. What eejit does that, sure? In the real world, I mean? That time in London, that Sparklettes life, had you living in a fantasy world...”
Roisin inspected her friend’s face. More aptly, her former friend’s face. She hadn’t really been a friend since they were sixteen. Johanna was becoming increasingly irritated with her, she felt.
“Och, sure, don’t be like that, Jo.” She reached out to the woman, but Johanna jerked her hand back. “We’ve got to stick together or we’ll fall apart. Fall apart and be murdered. We’ve to do something.”
“What do you suggest?” Now Johanna’s arms were crossed, her face stretched with disgust. “Seek him out, play him your old records until he begs for the peelers to drag him away? A fate worse than death, that might be.”
Roisin flinched. “No need to be hurtful.” Things were spinning out of control. There were only the two of them left to comfort each other, but she could sense Johanna pulling away from her.
Roisin had had no idea such resentment had built up. They weren’t as close as they had been when schoolgirls, of course, though many in Derry were—but with her time in London... Johanna had always been civil, friendly, when Roisin dropped off her dry cleaning, when she’d invited Johanna to her exhibitions, her art openings, always thought they’d shared a laugh.
“That leaves us with the peelers,” Johanna said matter-of-factly.
Roisin recoiled from the suggestion. “I had them round here the other day, because of Lily, you understand. Interrogated me and Gerarda, so they did. They were of the mind it had something to do with the group. I thought so at first and all. How long ago that day seems now. They had me shitting bricks, and back then I hadn’t a clue that this was about...us.”
Roisin considered for a second, then shook her head vehemently.
“We can’t go to the peelers. If this comes out, we’ll be raked over the coals. You know how people think about it these days, what we did, especially the media. We will be vilified, the most hated women in Derry. If we’d been found out back in the day, maybe the peelers would have just shrugged, given us a wee slap on the wrist. But it’s a different world today. They see it all differently. Times have changed, maybe for the better, aye, but for us and what we did, absolutely for the worse.”
Johanna swallowed more drink. “I even think new laws have been created to deal with it, like. Sure, even without that night, I’ve felt the consequences of our, aye, I’ll call it for what it is,” her cold look was daring Roisin to contradict her, “bullying all my life, stuck as I was here in Derry. Many of our schoolmates from back in the day moved away, as it happens, but those that stayed...sure, I still see them, those we tortured, looking at me out of the corners of their eyes when I’m doing out shopping at the Top-Yer-Trolley. I can understand why our Lily came back to Derry as Regina Steps. I don’t know what else your woman was hiding, but I myself want to hide from the heartlessness of,” she sneered, “our misspent youth. You see,” she leaned toward Roisin, a conspiratorial tone in her voice, “there were further, more horrible consequences. A few years later, it was when you and Lily were already living the life in London, but can you imagine what your man must have thought of hearing you and Lily blaring nonstop from his radio and seeing the two of you, his tormentors, wriggling their arses on his telly screen?”
“I’ve been thinking about that and all.”
Johanna shook her head. “You don’t know the half of it. You didn’t hear the gossip here in Derry at the time, but I heard tell that he tried to top himself the week you were number three in the charts.”
Roisin grew pale.
“You’re joking!”
“God’s honest truth. Sleeping tablets, so it was. He took an entire bottle, or tried to. All the girls from school knew what we had done—we bragged about it at the time, a further sin—and you mind that Eunice McCafferty? She was working as a nurse at Altnagelvin at the time, she told me.”
“It must have been awful for him.” And Roisin gasped as a revelation came to her. “Attempted murder, then, they could charge us with. In addition to everything else. I couldn’t live with the shame. No. We are definitely not stepping one foot into that police station.”
“But...at least we’d be living. When they catch him, Ro, everything we did will come out anyroad. Do you want to be vilified when you’re dead, or when you’re alive?”
“I’m not sure what would be worse. I have a public profile, a legacy to protect. The good Lord knows it’s already tarnished with that Eurovision palaver. How will this affect my wains? My husband? My family name?”
Johanna was staring at her, incredulous.
“Would you listen to yourself, you jumped up snotty cow! ‘My legacy?’ Just who the bloody hell do you think you are? Lady bloody Godiva?”
Roisin reeled as if she had been slapped. She realized now she’d never really like Johanna much. If at all.
“What I’m saying is,” Johanna said, her face now flush, “I’m willing for all that to come out. In order to save myself, save my life. You should be thinking the same way. We must go to the police.”
“No. I’m telling you no.” Roisin gulped down the rest of her whiskey and lunged for the bottle, poured herself another. Her eyes were growing a bit glassy, her voice starting to take on a different tone as the alcohol took effect. “And if you are so daft as to go to the police station yourself, I’ll deny everything. Point the finger at you. Margaret and Lily are gone, so there’d be nobody to back up your version of events. You’ll be the only one vilified. More than I already am in this town.”
“B-but you were there!” Johanna protested. She filled her cup also and gulped down, Dutch courage, before revealing, “In fact...you were the worst! You kept egging us on, no, demanding we continue. Or there would be hell to pay. We all knew what that meant. We’d seen you do it enough to all our schoolmates. Jesus, you forced us into all that and all! Do you really think I was chuffed about having to shove Agnes’ head down the loo?”
Roisin screwed up her face and leaned back, shaking her head and crossing her arms. “Haven’t a clue what you’re on about. I was never there that night.”
Although Roisin’s head was spinning with the whiskey, she had to think carefully. This was the most important conversation of her life. She couldn’t go to the police. Couldn’t reveal what they’d done. Especially now that she’d heard the lad had tried to kill himself. If there was no way to make this dim-witted woman before her see sense, she’d have to resort to underhanded tactics. Her life was at stake. Hating every word as she was saying it, she looked Johanna directly in the eye and said in a conspiratorial voice, “I hate to say this, but if you insist on going to the police...” she grimaced but plunged ahead. “Do you mind that night you indulged a bit too much on the free drink at that opening of mine last year?”
Johanna’s eyes grew wide.
“What are you on about?”
“Off your face, so you were. I was mortified at your antics. You spewed up in the loo if you recall. Maybe you don’t. Had to clean it up myself. You told me, but, that you had a system for siphoning off some of the takings at that dry cleaners of yours. Final Spinz, is it not called? Owned by that Zoë Riddell? Your woman comes to my openings at times, I know her to talk to. A little word in her ear about her employee with her hand in the till...”
Johanna stared. “Are you threatening me?”
“Trying to make you see sense, just.”
“Grass me up to my boss? You wouldn’t!”
“Try me.”
“Och, wise up, you.” Johanna’s hands were balled into fists. She stared harshly at Roisin. “You know you, Ro? There’s one thing I could never stick about you, well, more than you leaving me and Margaret in the dust for your fancy fantasy life in London with your dance routines and Top of the Pops performances. I was truly happy for you at the beginning. Chuffed. Cheering you and Lily on all the way, so I was. Until I realized the letters I wrote to you, you never wrote back. You always had an excuse to get off the phone. Margaret felt the same and all. The two of you had turned your backs on us. Mind we said we’d be friends for life? Well, we were friends until the week your first song entered the charts. I mind it was only at 38 the first week. You had no time for me then, or Margaret either. Time for some home truths, love,” she sneered the word. “Shall I tell you what really always stuck in my craw about you?”
“I imagine you’re about to tell me,” Roisin said stiffly, her mind in free fall.
“You mind when you and Lily had those makeovers? Aye, I know you had them done in London in some manager’s office, had to make yourselves look like pop stars, plain to see for anyone with eyes. When your song first came out, Margaret and I raced to the record store to snatch it up, all the girls in our class and all. Proud of you, so we were. I still have the CD single, though why I don’t know. There was our Lily, suddenly with wee pigtails sprouting up all over her head, lifted from that Whigfield one that sang Saturday Night. Derivative, I think they call it. And there you were, staring out of the cover like Sinead O'Connor with your new shaved head and the matching scowl. Well, that was you all over, Roisin. Shaven-headed and scowling. You were the ringleader of our gang, aye, I suppose Lily was your deputy, och, I know you two were best mates, so it made sense. Margaret and me joined up with your two after, like. Margaret was like the girl always afraid of being kicked out, and I was the padding. You needed numbers. Margaret and me didn’t care at the time. Aye, we followed you gladly, happy to be part of a gang, any gang, but you were nothing but a menace, a bully. Woe betide any of us who would go against what you wanted at the time. And you always wanted to do harm to others. That girl with the wonky eye? Flush her head down the loo of the toilets during the lunch break. That girl with the new GameBoy we all coveted around that time? Steal it out of her satchel. That swot who was the teacher’s pet? Rip up her homework and throw the tatters all over the playground. And on it went, spreading terror through the corridors of the school. Aye, it felt grand watching everyone scatter as we swaggered the four of us from one classroom to another, the power we had. It hurts my heart, but, when I think of the amount of times we were dragged into the headmistress’ office for one offense or another. Och, we never grassed on one another, of course we didn’t, and the poor woman sat behind the desk was always on the verge of blowing a gasket, ringing the coppers, but never did. It was always the word of the four of us against the one poor wee girl we’d terrorized, so no proof. A right laugh we always had afterwards, after every dressing down we got in that headmistress’ office. But as I got older and, aye, wiser, I felt worse and worse about what we’d done as tearaway teens. Pranks, we called them at the time, hijinks. They weren’t, but. They were cruel. We were cruel. And who thought of all the creative ways to spread the terror? It wasn’t your deputy Lily, it wasn’t Margaret and it wasn’t me. It was you. Now we’re getting our just desserts for all those past offenses. Lily’s gone, Margaret’s gone, and now it’s our turn. And we deserve it.” There was silence. Johanna gulped down, the teacup shuddering in her hand. “Now that that’s off my chest, what I’m saying is, I never could stick this oppressive attitude of yours. I always bit my tongue and let you have your say. No more, but. We can just let ourselves be targeted. And we should. You’re still at your bullying ways, I see. Grass me up to Zoë if I don’t do what you want. Well, I don’t want to. Miss Sparklette.”
