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‘How d’you mean?’ I said. ‘Like mind-reading?’
‘Not like Derren Brown, you nit. You’re not a bloody Jedi. But we weren’t born yesterday, were we? We’ve got to a stage in life where we can pick up on things, read people if not minds exactly. We don’t see everything in black and white like kids do. At our age we know nothing and no one is simple. It comes with being older.’
I thought about the chap’s crumpled trousers. When I was young, I would’ve assumed he was a slob. This morning, I’d had the compassion, I suppose you’d say, to think a bit more deeply about why he hadn’t ironed them. Same when I saw an older woman all dolled up like mutton dressed as lamb – before, I would have said to myself, look at the state of her, still thinks she’s twenty-one. Now, I know she doesn’t think anything of the sort. She knows bloody well she’s not twenty-one anymore. And it’s killing her.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said to Lisa.
‘No one gets to our age without living through something that knocks them about a bit.’ She met my eye and a flash of understanding passed between us, the one subject we never talked about. ‘We lose our certainty about things, don’t we? And that’s no bad thing sometimes when you look at the state of the world, people thinking they’re right all the time, that their way is better. We’ve spent most of our lives putting others first, haven’t we, you and me and a trillion other women? Meeting other people’s needs while pushing our own to the side, forgetting what our own needs ever were sometimes, not to mention who we were when we last had them. A tough habit to break, but it must make us more in tune with what others are feeling. It has to, doesn’t it? Stands to reason.’
I nodded. ‘I got eighty-five per cent inGrazia’s “Are You an Empath?” quiz the other week.’
‘There you go. And that’s bloody science, is that.’ She shot me a wicked grin. ‘God knows, if I’d had to discuss my interior life all those years with Patrick instead of you, I’d have thrown myself off the nearest bridge. He’d probably have started talking to me about the football scores. In fact, there’s no probably about it. He did. He used to. That or the mortgage.’
She pushed her once brown hair over one ear. She’d made that tricky transition to honey-toned blondey-grey without ever having the old caterpillar roots situation. Only reason I didn’t have grey roots was because I hadn’t bothered to dye mine at all this last year. My hair was pretty much salt and pepper these days, if you were being kind; geriatric mouse if you weren’t, and if I went back to the original black now I’d end up looking like something fromThe Addams Family. Lisa wore trendy clothes too, and even though she’d complained of a spare tyre, I couldn’t see one. Silently I vowed to get back on my hip and thigh diet the next day. My diets always start on Mondays. By Wednesday I think I can still turn it around. By Friday I’ve reached sod it I’ll try again next week, pass the chocolate.
‘Rach? Rachel?’ Lisa was staring at me. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Just… you were off somewhere else there for a second. Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Of course I’m OK – why wouldn’t I be OK? I’m just not sure I’m ready to be invisible, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. ‘If no one can see you, you can do anything you want, can’t you? You can get away with murder.’
5
Lisa
Transcript of recorded interview with Lisa Baxter (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
LB: We were just chatting, that was all it was. I thought it was no more than our age, time of life type thing. I didn’t realise she was so fragile until later on, and even then I thought it was the hormones, because I was in the same boat – hot flashes, tiredness and feeling cross about everything all the time. But I should have known it was more than that. I mean, I knew it was, obviously.
HS: It was more?
LB: (Pause) She’d been ill before. When her Kieron was born. Mark and I were frantic. In the end we called the hospital and they came and took her, and to be fair, she did get better. Postpartum psychosis she had, so I should have put two and two together, what with it being another hormonal time for a woman. But I’m only putting two and two together now. At the time, I didn’t know she had anything to do with those attacks. It never occurred to me. Thing is, Rachel’s kind to everyone, and I mean everyone, from the man in the street to her best friend. That’s me. I’m her best friend, always have been. I’d do anything for her, literally anything at all. She was a bloody rock to me when Patrick left. Both my girls call her Auntie Rach. She never forgets their birthdays, never. She even sends them both a Valentine’s card every year withlove from guess who?on it. I mean, they’re in their twenties now so I suppose I should break it to them, like… Sorry, I make jokes when I’m nervous. I’m just so up to here with it all. I just wish I’d done more to help her. I kept asking her if she was OK, but she wouldn’t let me in. She wouldn’t talk to me about it. So in the end I had to respect that. She knew I was worried about her. She knows I love her to bits, like. We didn’t need words to know that the other one wasn’t right. You don’t, do you, when you’ve known somebody that long?
HS: So you’re saying that you had no concerns about Rachel’s mental health back in June?
LB: Not then, no. No more than was normal. But as the weeks went on, she withdrew. I should’ve recognised the signs. But she’d just button up and that’d be it, change the subject, say she had to go. It was like a screen came down, one of them metal shutters like they have on shop doors, you know?
HS: Mrs Baxter, do you remember telling Rachel that she could get away with murder?
LB: What? I mean… I might have said something like that, but I was only joking. Come on, you can’t take something like that and turn it into something else. That’s twisting my words, that is. She was upset because she felt like Mark didn’t notice her anymore. Or her Katie. I knew exactly how she felt – don’t we all? I was just trying to cheer her up, that’s all. I didn’t for one moment suggest that she should go out and start killing people. Come on, that’s completely mad. I still can’t believe she’d attack anyone, let alone kill them. I mean, that young girl? No way. It’s just not Rachel, do you know what I mean? She wouldn’t hurt anyone. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. It’s just not her. (Breaks down)
6
Rachel
‘Get away with murder.’ Blue Eyes’ head twitches to one side. ‘That’s a bold statement.’
I see what she did there. I’m not daft.
‘I think it’s fair to say it got under my skin,’ I admit. ‘But I didn’t come over all “I Don’t Like Mondays”and go on a shooting spree or anything. Things got weirder, yes.Igot weirder, I mean, but weirdness is like ageing: you don’t notice it as much day by day, do you? It creeps up on you and one day you catch your reflection and see your own mother staring back. Or father, in my case, beard and all unfortunately.’
She doesn’t laugh, even though I’m trying to lighten the mood. But she’s spot on when she suggests the words might have stuck. Most of what Lisa said stuck, to be honest. Why? Because she’s my best friend, that’s why, and at the time I thought she had only good intentions towards me. But that evening, maybe because I’d had a moan, I noticed more than usual that it was me that made the dinner, me that cleared up, me that put the washing on the rack after folding the dry clothes and sorting them into piles to iron, me that took them upstairs and put them away. I noticed how Mark went straight through to watch telly without saying thank you, how Katie disappeared to her room the moment her knife and fork clattered on china.
