Day 18
3,021 words tonight / 25,780 words total. Over halfway now… better late than never. This last section is the weakest for a while, but I’ve got some ideas that should get the plot moving a bit in the next few thousand words. I’m currently 4,000 words behind where I should be at this stage, which I should be able to make up over the next few days, fingers crossed. 43. The Morning After the Night Before
All the Barrett children had the same dream of their father at a little after 4am that bitterly cold Sunday night. All were at home, save for Rowan, who was out on a park bench. All screamed at the same time. All woke up for a few moments, sweaty and breathless, before settling back down to sleep.
Valerie didn’t wake when the three screams in her house rang out. This was for two reasons. Firstly, she had the duvet well over her head to keep the warmth in; secondly, and more importantly perhaps, she had taken two sleeping pills, without which she hadn’t slept in three years.
All the children fell back to sleep in minutes. None remembered the dream in the morning, not even Camille who was usually particularly good at remembering dreams.
When she woke up, Valerie called Janice to ask if she knew of a man who could come and fix the window. Janice did. “His name’s Frank Wellington,” she said. “He’s very good at that sort of thing.”
Valerie called Mr Wellington immediately. He sounded nice on the phone and said that yes—even though it was a Sunday, he would come over. He couldn’t let her go through the day with a hole in the front of her house, could he?
Frank Wellington was in his mid-thirties. He was a large-set man with a receding hairline. He was in blue workman’s overalls, the kind a car mechanic might wear. “Mrs Barrett?” he asked, on arriving at the front door.
She had put some make-up on, just in case. As usual, she had overdone it somewhat. Her eyes were sunken beneath a bluish tint of eye shadow; he cheeks were more ruddy than healthy-looking thanks to the liberal dusting of blusher they had received. Despite this false colour, it was still possible to see that when she saw Frank’s face, she flushed slightly.
“Please,” she said, opening the door. “Call me Valerie.”
44. Wrong Place, Wrong Time
He wrung its neck.
It wasn’t that he hated it; he wasn’t even particularly irritated by it. Slightly irritated, perhaps, but no more than that. It was, after all, just a duck. Once it was done, and the bird was limp and lifeless, he struggled to work out why he had done it at all. That wasn’t to say he felt any regret or remorse; rather, he felt a moderate sense of achievement. He’d never killed anything before. Not unless you count what happened to Rod—but that wouldn’t be fair. For one thing, it wasn’t his fault and for another, he couldn’t be sure Rod was even dead. But the duck—the duck was definitely dead. That was it for the duck. All over. No more ducking around, or whatever ducks do. Rowan didn’t suppose it mattered very much, whether the duck was alive or dead. At least, there was one less thing to peck at his leg when he fell asleep on park benches. It wasn’t that he hated the duck; it was just that he didn’t want it to peck at his leg anymore.
Rowan was mildly interested by the angle of the dead bird’s head. But even that was nothing to write home about. It was just a dead duck, lying on a mattress of dead leaves by a bench made from a dead tree… A jogger passed by. She didn’t notice the duck, but she did notice Rowan. Her expression was one that he had come to be extremely familiar with: disengaged disdain, as if half-watching a distasteful television programme. Or, to see it another way, this jogger’s mind was tied up with the morning’s activity, but could still be distracted, if only momentarily, to spare a look of disgust for the inferior being on the bench. If only she’d seen the duck! Then she would really have something to be disgusted about—”Oi!” yelled Rowan, wanting her to turn back, to see the duck with its backwards-facing head. Just because he wasn’t impressed by it, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t make an impression on her. “Oi!” he called again but the jogger didn’t even break stride.
Rowan marvelled again at his fellow mans’ capacity for judgement at a distance. “Coward!” he screamed, on his feet now. If he could be bothered, he would have chased her, rugby tackled her if need be, just to prove that he did not want to hurt her. If anything, he wanted to protect her; it was her and others like her who were threatened by muggers like the boy in the navy sweater and his friends, and it was Rowan who had spent his time trying to track the bastards down. Yes, if he could be bothered, he’d have told her all of those things.
As it was he didn’t move; he just sat on the bench, wishing that someone might pass who could give him a cigarette in exchange for a dead duck.
45. Lunch Preparations
Much to Valerie’s disappointment, Mr Wellington finished his work without incident and left. He’d not been able to replace the glass, but he’d managed to board it up well enough to keep the wind out. He said he’d come back in the week to replace the glass properly. Under other circumstances, that would have excited Valerie, but it was clear that Mr Wellington had no interest in her at all. That’s life… there will be other men, at other times…
She called Janice and thanked her for the recommendation, explaining that the window was fine, that Jim was doing well; agreeing that yes, it was a terrible world these days. Eventually the subject changed. “We’re having a big lunch today,” Valerie said, excitedly. “The whole family will be here. Would you like to join us?”
Janice said that she would. “I’ll help you prepare if you like,” she offered.
“No need,” Valerie said. “Just be here for one.”
Valerie hung up and went to the kitchen, closing the door behind her. This was one of her favourite feelings: the anticipation of the meal not yet prepared. Her kitchen was full stocked. She had chicken with sage and onion stuffing; potatoes—some of which she intended to roast, some she would sauté; and a whole range of other vegetables including parsnips, broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. The washing up was done, the room was clean, the ingredients were ready. It was her kitchen, her sanctuary. She did something she hadn’t done since she gave up using the kitchen as a secret smoking room: she locked the door. Nobody would disturb her today.
Upstairs, Camille and Sara woke at the same time, bumping into each other in the hallway. “What were you thinking?” they both said, simultaneously.
“You just walked out!” Camille said.
“You just left me with that guy!” Sara said.
Both went for the bathroom door, but Camille got there first. “Bitch,” Sara said after her.
Jim emerged from his room rubbing the back of his head. “What’s wrong with you?” said Sara.
“I was mugged,” Jim explained. “I got hit on the head, from behind.”
“Let me see,” Sara said, turning him around. “Hmm… Looks okay to me…”
“It is now,” said Jim. “It wasn’t at the time.”
“Did they take much?”
“Yeah, a bit…”
“Did you call the police?”
“Mum did. Nothing will happen. It’s not serious enough, I don’t think.”
“Did you see who it was? Who attacked you?”
Jim nodded. “Rowan went after them.”
“Poor them,” Sara said. She looked at Rowan’s door. “Did he come back?”
“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I’ll knock.”
Sara nodded. Jim rapped twice on the door, there was no answer. He waited a few moments before calling Rowan’s name.
“Oh—just go in!” said Sara.
Jim paused anxiously.
“For God’s sake!” Sara said, pushing past him. She flung Rowan’s door open. The room was immaculate; minimalist in the extreme. Rowan didn’t have stuff. Their mother kept it clean, but it wasn’t hard. All Rowan had was a bed and a pile of clothes in the corner. The bed was a single, in the middle of the room. It was empty and perfectly made.
“He didn’t come back then,” said Sara.
“No,” agreed Jim. “Do you think…”
“What?”
“Well,” said Jim. “Do you think he is okay?”
“He usually is,” Sara said, with a shrug.
“Perhaps we should go out and look for him?”
Camille was out of the shower, standing behind them. “What’s up?” she said. “And what’s that lump on your head, Jim?”
“I got mugged,” Jim explained.
“Rowan went after them,” added Sara. “And now he’s not home…”
“What? You’re worried? About Rowan?”
Sara shrugged; Jim looked at his feet.
“Okay,” said Camille. “Fuck it, let’s go find him.”
Downstairs, Valerie was singing along to the radio, delighted that the cooking was going very well indeed.
46. The Muggers
The three men who were responsible for the previous night’s attack were getting home just as Jim and his sisters left the Barrett house to look for their youngest brother. Their names were Simon, Sean and Steve. Simon was the ringleader. He was the one who wore the navy top.
The three were nineteen years old. They had met at school, but had dropped out because they felt they could make more from petty crime than they could from any potential career academia might have provided them. They didn’t fall into a life of crime, they made the decision completely consciously; one day, halfway through a geography lesson, Simon leant across to Sean and Steve and said, “Let’s get out of this shit-hole. I know a corner shop we can rob.” Simon led them there, and led them in stealing more than two hundred pounds from the till and about the same amount in cigarettes. “See what I mean,” Simon said. “What job can geography get you that pays five hundred quid a day?” Sean and Steve didn’t know, and quickly agreed join Simon as career criminals.
Much of the early work they had taken on was what Simon called the soft stuff. That meant that nobody got hurt. In fact, in one robbery a man resisted, he tried to jump over the counter. The three simply walked out of the shop. They could have stopped him, hurt him, killed him even, but it was simply too much effort. It was a line that Sean was particularly keen on staying behind. “It’s like breaking the seal,” he said. “When we do it once, it’ll be that much easier to do again. And we’ll need to be a lot more careful when we’re wanted for murder.” Steve was less reluctant. His view was that they should do whatever they needed to do. Simon’s perspective was very simple. “You’ll do what I tell you,” he said. “And nothing else.”
In their first year as career criminals they earned a little over twenty five thousand pounds each. Untaxed, naturally.
It was one day, as the three were walking down the street to the shops, that Simon decided it was time to up the ante a little. A man was listening to an MP3 player, holding a bag that clearly contained a laptop. “You knock him down,” he told Steve, the more aggressive of the three. “You grab the music player and the wallet,” he told Sean. “I’ll get the laptop.” The plan worked, but the victim was accidentally knocked unconscious.
Sean insisted they called an ambulance, but Simon was having none of it. “Casualty of war,” he said. “And anyway, he’ll live, he’ll live.”
Indeed he did live, but the next victim wasn’t so lucky. It was an accident again, but she was so old, she didn’t have a chance.
Jim was the most recent of a long line of increasingly violent attacks. It was sheer chance that he didn’t end up with more than a bump on the head. So far this year, the three had made more than thirty thousand pounds each, untaxed from doing what they did to Jim, from robbing shops and from stealing handbags and the like from drunken patrons of London’s bars and clubs.
As they returned home that morning, to their luxury three bedroom house just two streets down from the Barrett’s family home, Simon announced that it was time they branched out. “I’ve got a mate who robs houses,” he said, rubbing a black eye. “The bastard cleared nine thousand in his last job alone. I think we should try it… and I know just the place.”
47. Fruitless
The three older Barrett siblings tried to look for their brother Rowan in the park first, but he had already gone.
There was nothing about the three Barrett’s that suggested they were family, except the fact that they appeared to have nothing in common whatsoever. Sara was dressed in a dark jumper / tight jeans combo—her favourite of her outfits. Camille, despite the cold, was wearing a low cut top with a shawl draped over her shoulders. Jim had a baggy t-shirt and combats on, as well as a big army-green coat and matching hat, which bulged slightly over the bump on his head.
They walked all around the park, but there wasn’t a sign of Rowan.
“He’s definitely not here,” said Camille.
“Hmm,” agreed the other two.
They didn’t say it, but they all wondered the same thing: what if he hadn’t even made it here. What if he was hurt? For all their differences, the siblings wouldn’t have wanted harm to come to each other.
This came as something of a revelation to Sara in particular, who hadn’t really thought much about how she would feel if one of her brothers or Camille were to die. But when she thought about Jim getting hurt, and Rowan perhaps hurt too—or worse—she felt sick to her stomach.
“Camden,” Sara said. “He could be in Camden. I saw him there the other day with a friend of his.”
“No way…” said Camille.
“Yeah,” said Sara. “I think he goes to Camden quite a lot…”
“No,” said Camille, “I meant ‘No way… Rowan has a friend?!’”
Jim’s watched beeped twice. It was midday.
48. Police Cordon
Standing at the exit to the park, the siblings noticed a police cordon. They enquired about it but the policewoman on duty wouldn’t tell them much except the victim was an ‘older man’. Satisfied it couldn’t be Rowan, they continued on their way.
Yes, it turned out Jim wasn’t the only victim of Simon, Sean and Steve that night. About fifteen minutes after Jim was mugged, a second man was attacked just around the corner. Simon had gone in on the man first; leading from the front as he sometimes liked to so. The victim—Dr Jenkins—didn’t know too much about it. He felt a shove in the back, felt himself toppling over, then his head hit something and everything went white, then red, then black.
The old doctor died instantly. He had forty-seven pence in his pocket, a one day travelcard and half a pack of polo mints. Simon, Sean and Steve left the coins and the travelcard, but divided the mints between them. It worked out to two each.
Some haul!
49. Cooking
Valerie looked at the clock: midday. Perfect, she thought. Everything would be ready for one. She hadn’t heard the front door, as far as she knew at least three of her four children were upstairs, washing or asleep. And she was in no doubt Rowan would be back for lunch. She had faith in her boy.
The food was coming along nicely, so Valerie took her familiar seat at the large kitchen table with a glass of red wine. The drink warmed her instantly; her had swam a little after only a couple of sips. There was a time, she was sure, that she would go out with friends and drink much more than just a glass or two. Sinful days, fondly remembered! It was all such a long time ago now and time seemed to pass so quickly. The hand that held the wine glass was wrinkled: a young woman’s hand submerged underwater for some time. Her youth was gone, that much was certain!
Just as her past was faded, lost in time’s fog, unclear and distorted—so the present never seemed quite real, either. One day passed into the next smoothly, seamlessly, as if on some cyclical loop, destined to repeat itself forever. There was no distinguishing mark on her daily existence. Of course, things happened every now and then: Jim’s attack, for example. Or Rowan’s stunts. These things, she supposed, were the kind of events that punctuated the drawling sentence of anyone’s life; yet, they didn’t seem to interrupt her being in any meaningful way. Rather, they in themselves became part of the rolling monotony, incorporated and stripped down, weathered and worn so that they could slip inconsequentially, without sense or sensuality, into the rest of the bland plot that was Valerie Barrett’s life.
She sipped from her wine.
Perhaps it would have been different if she were still married. Janice was all the proof anyone needed that an unsatisfying marriage can be made to work. Valerie was just so alone, all the time. What she would have given for a husband! Or, even better, an infirm husband… a cripple, a shell of a man requiring one hundred percent of her attention. Immediately, she regretted the very thought. What a terrible thing to think! But the thought led her to realise something she’d never considered before. She saw for the first time what the appeal with Rodger was for Janice. He was so ineffectual, so little and… so pointless, that every day Janice must have been reminded of her meaning just in looking at him. What was he without her? Nothing, that’s what. You define yourself by those that need you.
And no-one needed Valerie. It seemed that not even Valerie needed Valerie.
