‘Alcea rosea,’ he says.
‘Sorry?’
‘Latin name for hollyhocks. I wish I could get the ones on my allotment to grow like that.’
‘Oh.’
She busies herself with a knot. She doesn’t want to hear about his allotment. She can picture it without him having to tell her. It will have neat rows of military cabbages and a ‘Keep Out’ sign on the gate. He wears white socks and beige lace-up shoes and he’s probably a leading light on his allotment committee.
There were allotments near where she grew up. She used to go there when she bunked off school with Jay, or after dark when her mum was working in the pub. Some of the plots looked like the gardens of real homes, with paved paths and chalet-style sheds. She and Jay broke into one once and found deckchairs. They pretended it was their own garden and called themselves Mr and Mrs Clutterbuck. He smoked and laughed at nothing on earth. She laughed too, but she didn’t know why. Then suddenly he was crying and she crossed over to his deckchair and sat on his lap. The striped cotton ripped and they ended up on the ground, laughing again.
‘These are a fine bunch of specimens,’ the man with the camera says.
She ties another length of twine lower down the stem of the plant, her face brushing the blousy flower head, and breathes in to see if they have any particular smell. The air’s full of the roses in the neighbouring bed, so she almost feels sorry for the hollyhocks; they smell of nothing. She looks past the allotment man and realises she’s staring at the spot on the strip of lawn where Taheera hopped on one foot, trying to get the stone out of her shoe. It seems like months ago, not Monday. She sounded very upset on the phone this morning. If Chloe was dead, Taheera would carry on as normal, she’s pretty sure about that. She could die now, fade away among the hollyhocks and disappear; Taheera wouldn’t even notice.
A voice in her head says, you can’t die just to make people feel sorry for you. She knows that voice, she used to hear it all the time. It was the voice of a bird that flew past her window and told her the truth – or lies – she never really knew. The bird was a jay, which laughed like a crackle of static and flashed her a blue tattoo on its red-pink feathers. The bird and the boy, they shared the same name, the same voice.
‘You look ready for a break.’ Bill’s huge frame casts a shadow over her.
The man with the camera has gone and she wonders how long she’s been standing in the border, half hidden behind the hollyhocks, winding a piece of twine in and out of her fingers. Bill’s voice is reassuringly solid.
‘Why don’t you sit in the shade behind the shed and have your lunch?’
She nods and makes her way back onto the path, not wanting to tell him that she hasn’t brought any lunch. She’ll get a glass of water from the tap and make do with that. If Bill offers her a coffee she’ll put extra milk and sugar in it, but she has no money left for bread or sandwiches until she gets paid. She leans against the shed and lets the water cool her cracked lips. She closes her eyes and sees the face of Taheera’s young man, walking towards them outside the Minster, smiling at Taheera because he loved her. Like a delayed reaction, she feels a shock rip through her. It twists her stomach and forces her forward. She’s vomiting water and bits of bread, then dry retching until she’s crying, sobbing silently, tears stinging her cheeks.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Doncaster
Sean took the bus back from the town centre and went straight to where he’d hidden his moped behind the library. He motored slowly out onto Winston Grove and followed the streets to his nan’s. It felt like the moped knew where it was going, like an old horse. He struggled to keep his eyes open and felt himself leaning forward and jerking back, as sleep tried to catch him.
There was nobody home. Just a note on the table to say Maureen had gone shopping. He went straight upstairs, got undressed and fell into bed, the cool sheets against his skin. It could have been several hours later, or a few minutes, when the dreams started. A newspaper was rolling out, unfurling, like a red carpet, then blowing down the street in the wind. The words were everywhere, but he couldn’t make sense of them. The papers gathered together and blew into a ball like tumbleweed, knocking a young man to the ground. The figure lay, holding a wound in his groin, then he stood up and it was Saleem, brushing the papers off, telling Sean it was all right, he wasn’t dead after all; it had been a mistake. Then the young man had Mohammad’s face and the newspapers were soaked in blood.
Sean woke, drenched in sweat. He shook the dream away, sat up and took a drink of water from the glass by his bed. The glass hadn’t been there when he went to sleep. Nan must be home. He turned over on his back and stared at the ceiling. He’d painted it himself and he could see an annoying bit where he’d got yellow paint on the white plastic light fitting.
He stood no chance of getting that little studio flat now. It was a shame because he liked the road it was on, South Parade, tree-lined and full of old houses from the days when rich merchants lived along there. Most of them were broken up into offices and flats, but it was still a cut above. All the clubs and bars were a short walk away and it would be convenient if he ever wanted to bring a girlfriend home. That was a big ‘if’. He rolled back on his side and stared at the wall. A single bed, with his grandmother popping in with a cup of tea in the morning, was nobody’s dream. The last girl he’d dated would have died laughing if he’d brought her back here. Not that things ever got to that stage with her. It crossed his mind that Lizzie Morrison might be impressed with a studio flat on South Parade. Sean sighed. Don’t go there again. She was so far out of reach, she might as well be on another planet.
There was a soft knock on the door and it opened a crack.
‘All right, Nan. I’m awake.’
‘I didn’t want to bother you, love. But your phone’s been ringing. You left it on the kitchen table. I’ve brought it up.’
‘Oh. Right.’ He sat up as she came in. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s coming up to five-fifteen. Shall I open the curtains?’
‘Aye, go on.’
He took the phone from her and looked through the missed calls. One blocked number, then one from Carly and one from DI Rick Houghton, a drug squad detective he’d known since his first case as a PCSO. Sean selected voicemail and listened. They came in reverse order, so the last two didn’t make much sense until he got to the first message. Carly and Rick were both checking if he wanted to meet up in the pub later. They appeared to know something he didn’t about his shift pattern changing and were offering to buy him a drink. The first message explained why.
It was his unit sergeant, telling him there was good news, or bad news, whichever way he wanted to look at it. For the duration of this inquiry, Sean was being seconded to CID. DCI Khan had asked for him by name. He was to report at 8 a.m. the next morning for a briefing, which meant he had the night off and could he phone him back to confirm he’d got the message?
‘Everything all right?’ Maureen was still hovering by the window, pretending to be interested in something in the street.
‘Yeah, great.’
‘You don’t sound great, you sound a bit worried, love.’
Sean tried to make sense of everything that had happened since he and Gav got the call to attend the flats earlier that morning. Sleeping in the day had an odd way of shuffling time and memory, so he could no longer tell what was today and what was yesterday.