The feline family used to sleep on Elsie’s bed until recently. Maria would go into Elsie’s room and find the old woman contorted around all four of them: Boris tucked behind her knees; Sweetie under one armpit; Spotty snuggled in tight next to her sister; Harry on the pillow, on top of Elsie’s head, or nestled between her neck and shoulder.

  But Maria started to worry that the tortuous shapes Elsie got herself into accommodating the cats wasn’t doing her creaking joints any good. She also worried they might smother her in her sleep, although that was probably just an old wives’ tale.

  After some negotiation, it was agreed the cats would sleep in the kitchen and luxurious new beds were provided.

  Now Maria worries that Elsie misses them.

  Eventually, she forces herself to go up to bed.

  She doesn’t sleep more than a few minutes at a time without the new and improved worries along with the dark old memories dragging her back to the surface.

  25

  Maria liked the caravan at first. It was snug. Sure, she had to focus on putting things away in their right place – Joby nagged her if anything was left out, saying she might have had a messy bedroom when she was a kid, but it wouldn’t work if she didn’t keep things ‘spic and span’. But he wasn’t angry if she forgot. Not then.

  He had his little rules. He didn’t like her brushing her hair inside. He wasn’t keen on showering in the wagon either, preferring to use the leisure centre or have a ‘sluice down’ outside with the bowl like his dad. He rarely used the indoor toilet apart from at night.

  He liked her to cook outdoors with the Calor Gas if the weather was okay. He was the far better cook, but now that was to be her job. He had his own jobs – sorting the generator and the water and the rubbish.

  He’d say things like, ‘You’re a woman now – a married lady. My queen!’ He wasn’t even taking the piss.

  Maria never felt like a queen.

  She had to leave a lot of things back in her bedroom at her dad’s – her old toys, clothes that had gone out of fashion that she couldn’t bear to throw away.

  Frankie immediately started a campaign to let out her room to a lodger.

  The other thing that took some getting used to was that there was nowhere to go when you had a row. At her dad’s she could stomp upstairs and shut herself in her own room to sulk, but what was she supposed to do in a caravan? Sometimes the atmosphere felt like the whistling pressure cooker in Uncle Nugget’s wagon, threatening to explode at any moment.

  Maria missed school. She thought they’d be off travelling now there was no baby, and whenever she questioned him, Joby promised they would – at some unspecified point in the future, ‘when the time’s right’.

  She also assumed, if she wasn’t at school, she’d get a job. But Joby didn’t want her to work. Her new position in life only required that she keep a clean wagon and cook.

  It was sooo boring.

  When she told him she wanted to go back to do her exams, he snorted, ‘How many married women do you know in a school uniform?’

  And she had no answer for that.

  He mocked, ‘My dad didn’t go to school. Now he’s his own boss. You don’t need a piece of paper to get on with your life, girl.’

  Joby’s dad might run a business, but Maria noticed how he had trouble reading and writing, although she knew better than to bring that up.

  She tried, ‘I liked learning, Joby. And my mates are there.’

  ‘You learn more from the university of hard knocks than you’ll ever learn at school,’ he pronounced.

  They had a row about it and she cried and then Joby apologised for shouting and said, ‘You know I love you, girl.’

  ‘Love is what you do, not what you say!’ she countered, feeling really wise, like Alanis Morissette or someone.

  She spent a lot of time on the flash new phone he bought her, chatting to her schoolmates when they got off lessons. He introduced her to the girls on the site who he suggested might be her new friends. The girls chatted about the usual – fashion and where to get good knock-off designer gear; they gossiped about celebrities and made bitchy comments about other families. There seemed to be various vendettas with clans from across the country. It was the sort of stuff Maria recognised, if not the history.

  Two married women were younger than her by a few months, and half a dozen had two or three kids by the time they were twenty. Photos of the little ones were on display in the caravans, mothers and daughters wearing flash matching outfits. The children might run wild on the site, but in the photos they were in their Sunday best, the girls with big bows in their long hair like Victorians.

  While Joby was at work she’d spend time in Lily’s wagon or go over to see the Maine Coon cats bred by her neighbour, Rosa, who lived in the biggest static caravan on the site. Most people were friendly, at least to her face. Rosa’s youngest, Chanel, was not.

  ‘We’re calling her Chanel, cos she’s number five,’ explained Rosa. ‘Youse best get on it soon if youse two are to catch us up on the babby front,’ she grinned.

  Lily had started on at Maria the day she got back from hospital, giving her advice about ‘starting another’, talking about the best time to ‘do it’, providing herbs. It was exhausting.

  Anthony took to popping by on his lunch breaks. The way he looked at her made her feel uncomfortable, so she tried to make sure she was at Rosa’s, or she did her shopping then, even though it was busier in town.

  She couldn’t talk to Joby about it – as far as he was concerned, the sun shone out of his brother’s arse. At least she was away from Frankie. At least she and Joby could do it whenever they wanted.

  Weeks passed.

  Chanel seemed to thaw. She was two years younger than Maria, although she seemed much older, and she was the only one of Rosa’s kids who still lived with her mum and dad. Technically she was supposed to be at school, but most of the time she just hung round the site. They had a few afternoons sunbathing together, or they played with Rosa’s kittens, but then the girl called her a ‘gadji’ and when Maria asked what it meant, she laughed and said it was a word for ‘stupid kids who aren’t gypsies’.

  ‘But I’m married to a gypsy,’ said Maria, annoyed at being labelled a kid by someone Chanel’s age.

  ‘Blood’s thicker than water,’ mocked Chanel.

  There were things she liked.

  Joby brushed her hair as she sat on the trailer steps. He bought her a new fancy hairbrush with proper bristles and told her she should give it one hundred strokes every morning and every night.

  In bed he’d spend hours on her, emerging from under the covers like a deep-sea diver.

  He bought her a gold bangle, so heavy it felt like a shackle on her wrist, big gold earrings.

  But …

  She began to hate the smell of the chemical toilet and the half-hearted shower. She didn’t like the dogs on the site – no one ever cleared up their shit. Same with the toddlers running round without nappies. And she didn’t like the horses – huge skittish things. The uncles made fun of her when Joby took her down to the fields to see them.

  Anthony encouraged her to get up on one of the mares a couple of times, which was a couple of times too many, and Joby had a go at him, telling him to lay off.

  ‘Lady Godiva with all that hair, hey?’ laughed Anthony. ‘I’d like to see that.’

  ‘Shut it,’ said Joby. ‘That’s for my eyes, not yorn.’

  But then he never seemed to notice how his brother always found an excuse to sit next to her at the pub, or how he touched her hair when she wasn’t looking, making her recoil.

  It was so easy to make fun of her. She knew nothing about horses, or trucks, or their way of life. She knew nothing about her new family either.

  ‘Rosa said they do the bare-knuckle fighting, your Anthony and Nugget?’ she asked Joby. ‘That’s still going on?’

  ‘Yeah. Good at it, too,’ said Joby, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  ‘Isn’t it illegal?’

  He laughed as if she was being funny.

  ‘Are you related to Tyson Fury?’ she asked another time.

  ‘What, that didicoy?’ sneered Joby. ‘He’s not one of us.’

  The distinction baffled Maria.

  She didn’t know how big a deal Lily’s mother had been as a fortune teller. She was ‘famous across the land’, according to Rosa. ‘She had the gift.’

  And until the wedding, Maria hadn’t registered that Joby was nearer thirty than twenty. Almost thirteen years older than her.

  His weekdays passed working on some building site or other, a drink down the pub with his dad and mates, then sex and telly, or telly and sex. His ideal weekends involved more sex and longer down the pub. If he was off at some boxing match or horse race she wasn’t usually invited. He claimed it was where ‘the deals’ were done, but she had no idea what those deals involved. If she asked, he didn’t answer.

  When she moaned that she wanted a night out, he said he was too knackered.

  When she met her friends down the precinct, they talked about school and netball and who they fancied, and she ached for it, even though it all felt childish now.

  He started nagging her, as bad as Frankie.

  ‘Life’s all about family.’

  And she nagged back – ‘When can we go on the road?’ – prodding, not letting it be, even when he came home late from the pub.

  Anthony once heard her and said, with a filthy leer, ‘She wants to spread her wings, that one.’

  ‘I want to get away, Joby. You promised, Joby. Can’t we go somewhere, Joby?’

  So it was her fault really; partly her fault.

  It was an accident.

  If Joby hadn’t been drunk, sure it wouldn’t have happened, but he didn’t mean it. He’d been annoyed, yes, but he’d only been gesticulating, not aiming for her. And there’s not much room to flail about in a caravan.

  She could tell her dad was livid when she went round to see him, her lip split. After his second tea – in the giant Best Dad in the World mug she’d bought him one Father’s Day a million years ago – he finally looked at her and said, ‘If you go back to that bastard, that’s it. We’re done, me and you, if you go back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come home,’ said her dad. ‘Now.’

  Frankie focused hard on her own tea. It was obvious she had no desire to see the prodigal daughter return.

  When Maria said goodbye to her dad he didn’t reply.

  Joby couldn’t say sorry enough. They had great make-up sex and he wrapped himself around her in bed. She was hooked on that as much as the way he made her feel during.

  He promised her a puppy. One of Walt and Lily’s dogs was pregnant. ‘Purebred,’ said Joby.

  ‘But …?’ All the dogs on the site were obviously mongrels.

  ‘Sure, it’ll be a purebred dog.’ He winked. ‘The father’s a dog and the mother’s a dog.’

  And she smiled and he took her in his arms, and she felt safe.

  It was a one-off, an accident.

  26

  Brian phones. ‘Come round! Come round!’ he trills.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Maria, feeling queasy. He usually sends a text. It is never good news when someone calls, although he sounds positively jolly.

  ‘Come here and I’ll tell you all about it,’ he replies. ‘It is mind blowing! And I’ve got something for you.’

  She’s annoyed that he won’t tell her anything more on the phone, so she sets off. Del is on duty this morning and Elsie seems happy enough. It’s less than twenty-four hours since she saw Brian, so it has to be something important if he needs to see her now.

  When Maria arrives at Brian’s flat, she startles when she sees him. He’s bleached his eyebrows and dyed them purple.

  ‘What …?’

  ‘Trying something new.’ He grins.

  He’s almost vibrating with excitement as he offers her a concoction that looks like frogspawn – bubble tea, apparently, although it bears no resemblance to any tea Maria’s ever seen. Brian sits on his beanbag and she sits on the sofa and he gets sidetracked telling her how the tea originated in Taiwan before he gets round to telling her his news.

  ‘For God’s sake, spit it out!’ says Maria. She is not referring to the bubble tea.

  ‘He’s never going to bully me, or anyone else, again!’ announces Brian, triumphant.

  She knows immediately who he’s talking about.

  ‘There’s been an accident!’ He tries hard not to smile.

  She doesn’t have to ask who’s had the accident. Her heart alternatively leaps as if it might escape through her throat and then plunges into her bowels as he talks.

  ‘No one at work reported him missing because we all thought he was off on his jollies, didn’t we? And his so-called chums? Didn’t even think to check why he hadn’t joined them on the first leg of their trip.’ Brian takes a sip of his bubble tea.

  Maria squeezes her hands into fists.

  ‘His ex-wife was still listed as his next of kin. She only called the office yesterday. You okay?’

  Maria is far from okay, but manages, ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He was off his tits is what happened. Not entirely out of character. Too fond of the Bolivian marching powder, if you know what I mean.’ Brian has never seemed so perky. ‘The lorry driver reported seeing a man dancing along the side of the North Circular, which the dashcam corroborated, apparently. He was merrily skipping along one minute and then he flung himself under the wheels of the juggernaut, laughing his bloody head off!’

  ‘Jesus!’ croaks Maria.

  ‘Turned out that wasn’t a metaphor,’ says Brian. ‘They couldn’t identify him from his face, that’s for sure. He was completely pulped. Splattered all over the tarmac—’

  ‘Stop!’ yelps Maria. She’s taken aback by Brian’s unfettered delight. She doesn’t need the gory details.

  ‘I know!’ says Brian, thrilled. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s so—’

  ‘Don’t …’ She takes a few deep breaths and asks, ‘When was this?’ She knows all too well when this was but she needs to feign innocence just in case he puts two and two together.

  ‘The night of my party!’

  ‘Oh-Jesus-fuck.’

  ‘I know! He didn’t seem that out of it when he left here, did he? Must have fuelled up on route.’

  She sits stony faced, trying to get a grip on her emotions. Another death! She is horrified, but also … What? It’s a feeling like laughing in church. She has to stop her lips smiling of their own accord and she’s appalled with herself. What the hell has she become? This is a different league of wrong.

  ‘Another tea?’ says Brian.

  Maria shakes her head and manages to ask how the lorry driver is doing.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be fine,’ say Brian. ‘It wasn’t his fault, was it? And it’s hard enough getting drivers these days.’

  Not what she means.

  Am I fine? wonders Maria.

  Brian seems gleeful now, but that might just be the shock. And how would he react if he knew that she had caused this? Would he still want to be her friend? Wouldn’t he be horrified by what she’s done?

  ‘Just a sec,’ he says.

  He pops into his office, and Maria collapses back on the sofa.

  How guilty should she feel? The boss’s death is her doing. She’s more to blame than the truck driver.

  There is a running tally of things she feels guilty for. Accidents. Her mother, her baby, Joby, Nick. Perhaps she is cursed.

  But this is a different level – premeditated; deliberate; callous. Perhaps she’s evil.

  Brian reappears, saying, ‘And I told you I’d got something for you. Here’s your pressie!’ He bows, handing her an iPhone.

  The gift distracts her from her weightier ruminations. It is so lovely.

  ‘I can’t take this. It’s too much, Brian!’

  ‘I’ve upgraded. I’m not using it. And yours is a museum piece,’ he mocks. ‘Go on!’

  She takes the phone, thanks him, makes her excuses, kisses him on the cheek and leaves. She needs to be alone to process this news.

  As she walks back to Elsie’s she has an urge to go to confession, but she was never actually baptised Catholic, so mightn’t that be a sin in itself? She wishes for the millionth time she could ask her gran or her mother questions like that.

  She is guilty, she knows that. At what cost to her eternal soul? But—

  The truth is, she feels little for Brian’s boss. She feels little for the old man lying under the rose bushes. Karma bit them on the arse. They both deserved it. She is only afraid for herself; for Elsie and herself.

  And what of the other body?

  What will happen if someone unearths that from its forest grave?

  And—

  A flash of an image.

  What happened to the head?

  The body she buried in Spain had no head.

  27

  She is walking slowly back from Brian’s, deep within her dark memories, when she turns into Roseberry Gardens , but the second she registers the police car up near Elsie’s, she’s running.

  Her first thought is that something bad has happened to Elsie. The second is that they’re digging up the back garden.

  One ankle winces as her feet hit the pavement. Her chest tightens with dread. As she feared, the police car is parked right outside Elsie’s house and the front door is wide open. As she reaches the gate, a policewoman comes out of the house and Maria gasps, ‘Where is she? Is she okay?’

  Before the officer can answer, Del appears on the doorstep and says, ‘She’s in the kitchen.’

  ‘Is she all right? What’s happened?’ She can hardly get the words out as she tries to catch her breath, bent double, her heart hammering as much from fear as the run.

  Oh, she’s fine,’ he replies, looking furious.

  ‘Her nephew’s explained the situation – the particular circumstances,’ says the policewoman.

  Particular circumstances hardly covers the insane battering in Maria’s chest.

  ‘She attacked one of the kids next door is what happened,’ scowls Del. ‘He’ll probably have a black eye tomorrow.’

 

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