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IT: Well, a pervert, obviously. In a public place.
HS: For the benefit of the tape, Ms Taylor has made a masturbating gesture with her hand. Ms Taylor, that aspect of Mr Parker’s evening… activities was never reported. The only person to have witnessed it, by her own admission, is Mrs Edwards. Mrs Edwards has stated that she never told a soul. Given your casual acquaintanceship with Rachel Edwards, it’s unlikely that she told you about it, don’t you think? So how do you know what he was doing if you never went into the cemetery?
IT: I… I mean I… I mean, she must have told me. Or perhaps I saw him from the path. I did look over the fence so I must have seen him, I must have. That’s right, and it quite put me off my supper, so in the end I decided to go home.
(Pause)
HS: Mrs Edwards describes waking up with a pain in her head, as if she had passed out and perhaps hit her head. Or as if she had been knocked out by a blow to the head. Can you tell us anything about that?
IT: Of course I can’t. Are you accusing me of something? What, do you think I’d cosh her and make a run for it? (Laughs) Who do you think I am? Look, I’m her neighbour and I’ve come here to help you of my own free will. She handed herself in. I didn’t have anything against her; she was kind to me. She was just weird, that’s all. Why the hell would I attack her? (Pause) OK, so I followed her in. I did. I should have said that, but I was worried I’d sound as weird as her. I was curious, that’s all. I suppose I was imagining satanic rituals or something. Sacrifice of a small rodent on a stone slab. She was walking slowly, as if she was scared. At one point she stopped. My heart was in my mouth, to be honest. And when she turned around, I nearly screamed. Thank God there was a large headstone right there and I was able to hide behind it quite easily, being petite. And then of course she ducked behind a grave herself. It was then that I saw the Central Casting pervert in the doorway. I mean, do these people have no originality? I was going to walk away there and then. The grubbiness of it all reminded me too much of my ex. But Rachel! Oh no, she was transfixed. Could not take her eyes off him. And that made me realise that there really was no end to her weirdness. As I said to Mark, it was as if she wasn’t there in her own head, or at all. I mean, I just thought he should know. But I didn’t knock her out. Or bang her head on the gravestone. No way. I would never do something like that.
32
Mark
Transcript of recorded interview with Mark Edwards (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
ME: A couple of times I heard her talking to herself. To the file, I mean. And Katie walked in on her doing it. I did try and talk to her, to Rach, about it. When she started it, she said she’d already written to our MP, said she wanted to go to Parliament to protest about the terrible knife-crime statistics and what were they going to do about it. We’re neither of us very confident about that sort of thing – public speaking, like – but I think she thought that the ones who are good at public speaking, the ones in charge who were bred and educated for it, like, weren’t speaking the kind of language she thought they should be. She wanted to try and bring the numbers down. Make the government clamp down sort of thing. Or do something. I thought it was a pipe dream, something she needed to do until she didn’t, if you know what I mean. I thought it was hopeless, to be honest. I don’t trust politicians. They’re all as bad as each other. Posh hate-mongering’s the same as any old hate-mongering in my book, and I know Rach felt the same. The blame game, going round and round. It’s always someone else’s fault.
But she didn’t take any notice of me so I stopped saying anything and she kept printing off the reports and I think they were affecting her health. I’ve thought about it since she turned herself in, obviously, about her having that episode all those years before. I’ve put two and two together. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that; it was Lisa who made me think about it, Lisa who said I should get her some help. I’ve been a bloody idiot. We were lost, me and Rach. Katie was lost as well. And Kieron, obviously.
When she went down, I should have stepped up. I should have saved her, saved all of us. When I think where she must have been up to, you know, mentally, to get to a place where she could have done those things, and me not evennoticing… I mean, what kind of husband does that make me? What kind of husband doesn’t notice his own wife, for God’s sake?
33
Rachel
I think Amanda is tired. She looks a bit pale and there are dark circles under her eyes, which the concealer can’t quite hide. Maybe her kids kept her awake last night. Maybe she had a row with her husband. Maybe she went out on the lash. Who knows? As for me, I’m not tired. I’m like a boxer going in for round one, punching my big gloves together:come on, let’s do this. I just want it all off my chest and no one, no one has ever listened to me like she does. Funny – quirky, you might say – but both times when the other woman, the one in uniform, has accompanied me to the loo, when I’ve come back Blue Eyes has reapplied her lipstick. That tickles me, that she would bother. It’s a strong red-wine colour against her alabaster complexion. Harsh, almost, but it works. A face that hints that the smile, when it comes, will be worth the wait. She’s tall and striking in the way a Greek statue is striking: soft curves chiselled from hard marble. Grace and power combined. She makes me think she can tell me it’s going to be all right – that she has the authority to say this and make it so. And that makes me want to tell her everything, even though all is lost.
So I do. Because when you’ve held it all in for so long, once you start letting it out, you can’t stop. And maybe that’s what I’ve been afraid of all along. And maybe it’s only now, talking to Amanda, that I realise that when there’s too much inside, it creates this big pressure. The pressure comes from the very act of holding it all in. It’s no wonder the walls of me were cracking.
I didn’t see Lisa after that. Well, I saw her but she didn’t see me and now I’m in here.
Even saying that feels surreal. That I wouldn’t see Lisa every week would have been unthinkable once. But she went off to Majorca with some of the girls we used to meet up with – she invited me but I said no, obviously. Our lives had forked, I suppose. She was a single woman now and I was still married, to all intents and purposes, and that had changed things. When Patrick left her, he’d also left our little gang of four: me and Mark, Lisa and Pat, two couples happy as anyone doing happy things together. His scandalous dumping of her for a younger model had left us all reeling at the time, and that was before I had bigger things to worry about.
Meanwhile, somewhere in all of this, Katie went to Ibiza with her friend Thea and to Portugal with the boyf’s family, who are quite wealthy and had rented a villa with a pool. They say you lose your sons but keep your daughters, but I could see she was drifting away from me. She’d made no moves to apply for uni and I couldn’t broach the subject without her getting cross. She barely seemed to have time to chat or to want to spend time with me anymore, but that was understandable, I suppose.
I didn’t want to spend time with me either.
Mark and I didn’t go away. We hadn’t booked anything and we didn’t say it out loud but neither of us, I knew, saw the point. Instead, we drifted like shadows in the walls of our house. He went to the pub, or wherever he went, came back stinking of fags and beer; I went on my walkabouts. We ate our tea watching television: together but not together, looking anywhere but at each other.
I walked. I printed off the news. I went to work. I walked. I printed off the news. I went to work. Repeat to fade.
Dave continued to be a pain in the neck. Phil opened up a bit more, told me he’d got divorced the year before, which went some way to explaining the deterioration in his appearance.
‘I lost everything,’ he said, sitting on his regular stool after one of his gambling losses, ironically, though that’s not what he meant. ‘House, furniture, you name it.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘She used to shout at me, call me names.’
‘Oh, Phil, I am sorry.’
He shrugged, gave a bitter half laugh. ‘She cheated on me. I knew she was doing it. Used to leave little clues, and then when I asked her about them, she’d say I was controlling. Said she was innocent but everyone knew. Everyone. I thought I was losing my mind.’
‘Oh dear. That’s a bad do.’ Poor chap. It was no wonder he sought comfort in the betting shop – and here.
‘She made me feel about that big,’ He made an inch with his thumb and forefinger. I knew without him telling me that he’d repeated a pattern learned during his childhood, but he told me anyway. ‘My mum was what they used to call a scold.’
‘Now that’s an old word.’ By this time, I’d sat down on the stool I keep behind the bar for the rare moments when I’m not serving, cleaning, refilling, what have you. Phil seemed to want to chat and there was only one other punter in, so I didn’t see the harm.
