She’d just put the key away in the key safe by the back door and was walking to her car when Andrew Barnes rang her. There was a bitter wind, a northeasterly, thrashing the trees, making her eyes water and pinching her cheeks. Clouds dense and low swung overhead, making her giddy. She turned her back to the wind, hunched over the phone. Litter skirled down the street, bags and a plastic bottle, fast-food cartons, smacking against walls and skittering around parked cars.
‘I’ve seen the papers,’ he said. No commiserations or anything.
Guilt leapt inside her. DEATH IN VAIN. She stiffened. ‘Right.’
‘It can’t all be… well, it’s not all true, is it? What they said.’
The fact that he had to ask the question saddened her. How little trust he had, in her, in Luke. She had shared something of Luke with him – had he not heard her? Did he now not believe her? He’d come looking for her at the hospital, came there twice, and then they’d met in the pub, and each time she couldn’t quite figure him out. It was like he thought they had some common cause, but it didn’t really feel that way to her. He must hate her, surely. His son was dead, hers still alive. His only child gone, while she had a second child to comfort her. DEATH IN VAIN. There they were, the perfect middle-class family, Jason the golden hero, whilst Luke, Luke was now the undeserving cause of Jason’s death and Louise the inadequate, feckless single parent.
‘Louise?’
Wordless, confused, she was unable to deal with him on top of everything else. She hung up.
Andrew
Andrew was cooking, making spicy chicken and basmati rice, rinsing the rice under cold running water prior to boiling it when Val got back.
She came straight through, her arms full of newspapers. ‘Have you actually read them?’ Her eyes blazing, her face flushed. She slapped them down one after the other.
‘Yes,’ he said. He’d passed the hospital shop on the way to his department and they were there, startling, making his heart stop. The ground shifted underfoot. He’d even bought them himself. Scoured them feeling like a voyeur, his pulse too quick and heat in his face. His first reaction was a dreadful sense that there was some truth in the damning reports and that Jason’s honest response had been a terrible mistake. That prospect plunged him into an icy lake of despair, of senseless, meaningless loss. It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true. Then he had torn at them, cursing, shredded them and stuffed them in his bin, ink smeared on his hands. Val had rung him at work and he’d cut her short, ‘Yes, it’s outrageous. Completely. But look, I’ve a patient due, we’ll talk later.’
And in the middle of the afternoon, unable to quell the unease, he had rung Louise, anxious to settle the questions he had, hoping to reassure himself that Luke wasn’t the villain he’d been painted. She’d been too upset to talk.
Now he said, ‘You can’t trust what they-’
‘This is what Jason died for?’ Val shouted. ‘A thug, a yob who should have been locked up already.’
‘Val, you don’t know-’
‘He’d been in trouble with the police. He was too disruptive to stay in school, he was setting fire to things, terrifying people.’
‘It’s exaggerated, the tabloids, for Chrissakes, you know how it works.’ Why couldn’t he just agree with her? He’d shared the same sense of dismay, harboured the same doubts.
‘You’re defending him!’
He shook his head.
‘I wish he’d died,’ she said. ‘I wish Jason had done nothing and that Luke Murray had died instead.’
Silence split the air. She stared at him, jaw up, defiant.
‘Oh, Val.’
‘It’s true.’ Her mouth trembled. She shook her head quickly.
‘I know.’ He thought of Luke lying silent in his hospital bed. Of Louise, in the pub, talking about her son. ‘It’s easy to hate him. To blame him. Reading all that crap. To wish Jason had been a million miles away. It’s so easy. A scapegoat. But it’s wrong, Val. Half of it’ll be exaggerated, sensationalized. That’s not the answer.’
‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘This is our child we’re talking about, not some abstract, hypothetical case. This is ours, ours!’ She hit the table. ‘He died for nothing.’
‘No.’ He wouldn’t have it.
‘So you think this scum deserved saving?’
‘Val, please calm down.’
‘No, I won’t calm down. I’m so angry. I have every right to be angry. You should be angry,’ she yelled.
‘I am!’ he said. ‘What is this? A competition? Who’s angriest, most heartbroken? Who’s most traumatized? Who misses him most?’
She flinched.
‘I am angry, but I’m angry with the ones that hit him. Luke Murray wasn’t holding the knife. And I will not accept that what Jason did was worthless. I’m proud of him.’
‘Proud!’ She groaned, tugged at her hair. ‘He was stupid.’
‘No! He had the guts, he had the humanity to help someone in trouble.’ Andrew’s voice trembled; he tried not to shout. ‘He didn’t stop and judge them first: ask if they’d got a drug habit or messed up at school. He just went to help. I love him for that.’ He swallowed. ‘I love him so much for that. He didn’t look away or sit silent like the rest of them. Imagine if everyone did what Jason did, what a world we’d have.’
Tears stood in her eyes. ‘You are so wrong,’ she said. ‘And he was wrong,’ she went on. ‘He misjudged-’
‘Don’t!’ He tried to silence her. She was tearing it down. Making his death meaningless, pointless, pathetic. ‘You were the one said he was brave, remember? Would you rather he had been a coward?’
‘He’d still be here,’ she said.
He felt the space between them, a chasm, steep-sided, too wide to bridge. Jagged rocks like knives far below.
‘But he wouldn’t be our Jason,’ he said.
She gathered together the newspapers; she was still wearing her coat. ‘I’m going to Sheena’s.’
‘I’ve made some food.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
She couldn’t go like this. Leaving everything so tangled. ‘Val, can we talk?’
‘There’s nothing to say.’ Resignation blunt in her voice.
‘Please?’ He wanted to tell her he loved her, but the words wouldn’t come. He watched her walk away and heard the front door close quietly behind her.
He moved to turn the gas ring off and caught a glimpse of Jason out in the garden, sitting on the bench, bent over his guitar, then glancing up, hair falling away from his face and smiling at Andrew.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Louise
When Louise got back from work, she made some pasta and tuna for their tea, then booted up the laptop. The pieces were there on the internet, and after them threads of messages readers had posted. Outraged and virulent, most of them. Luke was Borstal material; he’d obviously grown up without moral guidance or discipline, etc., etc. These people believed what they’d read, swallowed it hook, line and sinker. About Luke, about her. The impotence, the inability to shout the truth from the rooftops was tempered by the miserable shame Louise felt, the sense of failure.
Ruby said school had been weird but okay. Some of the kids thought it was cool that Luke had been in the papers again and didn’t really care what it said about him.
‘The cult of celebrity,’ Louise muttered.
Intent on maintaining a brave face, after tea she persuaded Ruby to run through her pieces and watched her.
‘Excellent!’ she said.
‘The wig moved a bit.’
‘I never noticed,’ she said.
Their visit to Luke was brief that evening. Louise read some of the papers out to him. Some deluded part of her hoping that he’d be so annoyed at what had been said that he’d wake up fighting. He never moved. Not a flicker.