Days 26-28
With 50,085 words I am a winner!!!
86. On the Ins and the Outs of Building a Big Bloody Monument in the Middle of a Garden
So the four children of Valerie Barrett stood below the giant, stripped tree and looked up in awe.
“I want to carve the head,” said Camille.
“I’ll do the features,” said Sara. “Rowan, why don’t you and Jim do the body shape together?”
“It’s a bit narrow, don’t you think?” said Jim.
“No,” said Camille. “She’ll have her arms by her sides.”
They all nodded. Rowan and Jim were the first to get to work, drawing on the wood the areas that they would be cutting out. “Michelangelo said, ‘I see the angel in the stone and I set her free.’,” Jim sagely observed.
“Fucking moron,” said Rowan, consciously.
Work on the monument was slow and unpopular. Once or twice, the neighbours threatened to call the council, “But have you got permission for that?” they asked. Camille tried to dead with them each time—she would explain, sobbing, if necessary, that their mother had died, in a terrible way, that this was something they needed to do as a family, that all they asked for at this awful time was a little compassion.
There was only one man who didn’t find this acceptable, their neighbour Sam Daniels. Camille had to tell him it was temporary monument, that upon completion they would burn it. She explained it was part of their religion, and she gently pointed out that to stop them honouring their murdered mother would not only appear callus to others, but may well also be discriminatory on the grounds of freedom of religious expressed. Exasperated, Sam backed down and left them in peace.
Over the next few days, the weather began to pick up. Crisp, bright mornings replaced the dark, depressing ones that had become a permanent feature of their lives for the past months. The work became slowly more pleasurable, and the giant Valerie began to take shape. The only time any of the Barrett siblings left home was for quick shop runs; mostly they lived off of fast food, ready meals or crisps and chocolates. They all found themselves beginning to think less and less about the outside world.
Jim had not spent a single moment thinking about his probabilities or his dice since building started. He and Rowan had arranged the work into shifts: they would do three hours on, one hour off. They probably would have worked into the night, but for the difficulties the bad light would have presented: the weak security light affixed to the outside of the house wasn’t nearly enough to carve by. The work consumed Jim entirely.
Rowan, too, forgot for a while about his new career as a vigilante. He and Jim were getting on well, and, more importantly, working well together. It was the first time that Rowan had ever felt close to anyone. They barely argued, the two Barrett brothers; although, truth be told, they barely spoke, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, they were working together, working to create something, working towards something.
That sense of working towards, rather than working against, was the most unique thing about the whole experience for all of the Barrett siblings. For her part, Sara had never previously gleaned any satisfaction whatsoever from any work—or anything that even remotely resembled work. But this, she enjoyed. She was the self-appointed overseer, site manager, frequently taking five steps back so as to see the bigger picture, to comment, “A bit more off there,” or, “Her leg was thinner than that,” or, “Rowan, I think we all need a tea, hmm?” And nobody minded, because the system was working.
Then there was Camille, working right up at the top, getting that head shape right, working to a photo of Valerie that she had found in the sideboard in the front room. It showed their mother aged twenty-two, after Camille and Sara had been born, but before Jim and Rowan came along. She was reasonably attractive back then, but she had never been beautiful. Camille saw it as her job to take this plain woman in the photo, and correct her features, subtly, in ways to draw out her beauty. On some level, she thought her own genetic interpretation of Valerie was a refinement—although she would never say that aloud, of course. Deep down, she found the whole idea of comparative attractiveness unsavoury, but accepted that without it, people—men—probably wouldn’t have any interest in her at all.
The four worked on, now impassioned sons and daughters, now dispassionate artists—it didn’t matter which guise they worked under, the more important point was that they were working at all, and together at that!
87. Sam Daniels
The neighbour with the biggest objection to the killing, stripping and mutilating of a tree was ageing environmentalist Sam Daniels. This cantankerous, greying man hobbled over to the Barrett’s on a daily basis; to complain or just to watch. When Camille told him the were putting the tree up for religious reasons, he found it difficult to believe her, but then he couldn’t prove otherwise; and besides, people were up to all manner of things these day… the things people did in the world really weren’t what they once had been: understandable, sensible, useful.
In his day, no bastards would be carving a twenty foot statue of their mother out of a tree.
He thought a lot about his childhood, in those days he spent watching the Barrett kids build their statue. When you walked down the street in those days, you knew what everything was. The factory over there made clothes, the one over there made toys. The smoke coming out of the chimney was from coal fires.
These days, it was all different. Nobody but the people in the factories and offices knew what was going on inside. These great industrial estates had popped up some years ago; these giant brick buildings, some with hundreds of employees all with machinery it took a graduate to turn on, let alone repair or maintain. You couldn’t tell what something did by looking at it anymore!
And jobs for life had long gone—people in one minute, out the next—there was no loyalty anymore. Not from the citizen and not from the companies. It was precisely because of the facelessness of the businesses, the imposing nature of the structures, the incomprehensible workings that the relationship between employer and employee had broken down so badly, Sam believed.
All of this, he would go on, to anyone who would listen, had devalued quality. Nobody cared about the companies they worked for, nor did they understand the machinery involved, so naturally they didn’t care about the quality of the final product, either. In the days when everything was handmade, each item was crafted with care. Now those days have passed, “It’s the flat-pack generation,” Sam would declare. But nobody listened to him, nobody cared.
A big part of the reason that nobody took him seriously was because he was so old and because he compared everything they had grown up with to things that they had never known and never experienced. For Sam, it was like trying to explain green to a blind man.
A thankless task!
88. Mark at Work
Sara had taken some time off work to do some family things, so Mark was alone in the office. One morning, a large group of impeccably turnout out men filed past his window, so he naturally went out to see what was going on. It seemed these young professionals all worked for FlameBrand, the company that owned the luxury meeting room on the top floor. But as Mark looked closer, he noticed a number of them were wearing delegate badges, meaning they were probably externals.
Mark had an idea.
He put on the tie he kept for emergencies such as this in the drawer by his desk, and slipped outside. He caught up with the group on the stairs, and walked behind them, as casually as possible. When the opportunity arose, he spoke to one of them, tried his best to blend in.
Everyone filed into the meeting room, Mark couldn’t believe he was finally inside. The ceiling was painted like a sky, the chairs were more expensive than most of the remaining furniture in his house… it was incredible.
No sooner had they all sat down around the magnificent table that dominated the centre of the room, than the FlameBrand employees began talking business. They were gauging client reactions to a new project; Mark, as one of the delegates, was supposed to offer his thoughts. The product in question was some kind of bluetooth telephone design.
“It’s super,” Mark said, when it was his turn to speak. And then, in a desperate bid to impress, he continued, as if possessed, “It’s um, design is good, is cool, I mean… ergonomic… Stylish… Encourages communiction… the um, oneness of man..?”
One of the FlameBrand employees raised an eyebrow, and asked him if he had anything more to add.
“Can I have a job?” Mark said.
The answer was no.
89. Simon and Steve get a touch of Cabin Fever
Steve, who had always been the more aggressive of the Simon-Steve-Sean gang, paced up and down the living room, wringing his hands and tutting and occasionally muttering to himself.
“For fuck’s sake, Steve,” said Simon. “Will you please sit the fuck down!”
Steve stopped for a moment, gave Simon a hate filled stare, and then carried on where he left off. “You have no idea what it’s like,” he said. “I’ve been stuck in here for weeks, Simon. You don’t know how much I need to get out. I am not the inside sort, you know that, you know that, you fuck. You have no fucking idea what it’s like for me.”
“It’s the same for me,” Simon said, trying to remain calm. “Working yourself up isn’t gong to do any good, is it?”
“I need to get out!”
“Have you forgotten that you are wanted for murder?” Simon hissed.
“I don’t care anymore, I can’t stay inside all the time, I need air!”
“You would get a lot less fucking air behind bars,” Simon pointed out.
Steve did not reply to that, he simply continued pacing and tutting and sighing.
“Look—it won’t last forever,” Simon said, trying to be reassuring.
Steve stopped abruptly and turned to Simon. “How long?” he said. “When will we leave?”
“Soon…”
“We could go up north!” Steve said. “We could go to Scotland! Do you need your passport for that?”
“No…” said Simon. “But it’s not safe, not just yet. We need to wait till things cool down a bit, sell up—get rid of everything we’ve got, and use the cash to get away and start again. I think we’ll need to go farther than Scotland…”
“Ireland?”
“I was thinking Mexico.”
“Mexico!”
“Yeah… we’d need fake passports, of course…”
“So you’re telling me that I’m stuck here, where I can’t do anything or see anyone, and all I’ve got to look forward to is going to some shithole country where I don’t understand a word they’ll be saying. I can’t speak a word of Mexican!”
“They speak Spanish in Mexico,” Simon said.
“Arsehole! What fucking difference does it make? I can’t speak Spanish either!”
“We’ll learn a bit… it’ll be fine.”
“I might as well be fucking dead,” Steve said, bitterly. He picked up a small ornament from the dressing table and threw it into the mirror, sending shards of glass everywhere.
“You’re a fucking liability!” Simon said, on his feet now, face to face with Steve.
Steve took a deep breath and backed off. “I’m cool,” he said. “But I want you to know, this is your fucking fault, Simon. This whole mess we’re in… Sean… everything. This is you’re fucking fault.”
“It’s all going to turn out fine,” Simon said.
He was convincing no-one, not even himself.
90. Et Voilà!
The industry of the Barrett children, the buzz of activity that had been going for what seemed like forever, suddenly stopped.
They had all been so involved in the building, the creation, of the monument to Valerie Barrett, that they had almost forgotten there was a time before they started making it; of course there was, and in many ways it was that time that hung over them like a dark cloud, that had spurned them forward every day to continue working, to get the job done. For days the labour had given them purpose. It had filled the void left not by their mother, but by their lives in general; for each of them, everything they had done until their mother was killed had been empty, meaningless. Whether it was Rowan with his casual violence, Camille’s dalliances with casual sex, Sara’s job or Jim and his probabilities, the commonality was activities without substance. Or, more accurately, activities that had no substance for them. There were, of course, men and women that found their life’s work in violence, sex, office work or numbers—but the Barrett kids were not those men and women, not at heart.
Building the monument had changed something within each of them. From the first moment, when Fred and Frank had brought the tree down, and they had worked together to strip it bare and re-erect it as a blank canvass on which they could work, they felt different. They felt purposeful, more than anything. It was beyond making something to honour their mother, it was about creating something to honour themselves.
And now it was finished; that activity that had kept them so busy, that purpose that had driven them on was finished. The four of them—Camille, Sara, Jim and Rowan stood underneath it in the fading afternoon light, hands on hips and looked up.
The were all in agreement it was finished, and that was the most depressing thing.
None of them had the words to do the sense of anti-climax they felt justice.
91. Sam Daniels: One Version of Events
From Sam Daniel’s house it was possible to see the Monument clearly. If you had a good pair of binoculars, you cold see it clearly; you could even see the four Barrett siblings standing around it, hands on hips, anti-climactic expressions and all.
Sam Daniels had just such a pair of binoculars.
He went round to the house—he had a few things to say to the Barrett’s about their construction.
“Remove it immediately!” he demanded of Camille.
“But our mother died!” she protested. “This is our tribute to her…”
“Most people get a bench,” Sam Daniels said. “Or a plaque—but this, this is a disgrace.”
“Well, we did talk about those things…” Camille said. “Like we told you, it’s not permanent, we’ll take it down soon.”
Sam Daniels was furious. It wasn’t good enough. These people think they can do whatever they want—whatever happened to rules?
It was with these thoughts that Sam Daniels stepped out into the road. He was so wrapped up in his own anger, he didn’t look. A bus rounded the corner and knocked him down. He died instantly.
Poor Sam!
92. Sam Daniels: Another Version of Events
From Sam Daniel’s house it was possible to see the Monument clearly. If you had a good pair of binoculars, you cold see it clearly; you could even see the four Barrett siblings standing around it, hands on hips, anti-climactic expressions and all.
Sam Daniels had just such a pair of binoculars.
He went round to the house—he had a few things to say to the Barrett’s about their construction.
“It is absolutely fantastic!” he said to Camille.
“It’s because of our dead mother,” she said. “This is our tribute to her…”
“And to think—most people get a bench,” Sam Daniels said. “Or a plaque. But this—this is wonderful.”
“Well, we did talk about those other things…” Camille said.
Sam Daniels was gushing praise. What wonderful kids. They say that people don’t care for there elders these days—well, here was proof they did.
It was with these thoughts that Sam Daniels stepped out into the road. He was so wrapped up in his own goodwill, he didn’t look. A bus rounded the corner and knocked him down. He died instantly.
Poor Sam!
93. Jim & Jenny (again)
Despite the emptiness that was left by having completed the monument, Jim was buoyed his achievement in the manual labour stakes and decided it might be worth trying to get Jenny to go out with him again.
“I’m a man,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. “I’m a man.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” shouted Rowan, who overheard the mantra as he was passing Jim’s room.
Jim took three deep breaths and picked up the phone.
“Hello?” Jenny said. “Jenny McElroy speaking.”
“Jenny… it’s me, Jim. Jim Barratt.”
“Oh, hi Jim!”
Sounds good, Jim thought. Positive. Just ask her out. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“Jim? You there?”
“Y-Yes… I—”
“How can I help?”
“I—I—” he was floundering. “I need to see you,” he said.
“Jim? Is this about what we discussed the other day?”
Shit! This was going nowhere. Jim panicked, his mouth went into autopilot. “No, no, it’s about my mother. I think I know something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think I have some information.”
“What kind of information.”
Jim didn’t know. “Could we meet in person?”
“Sure,” said Jenny. “How about I come round later?”
“No, no,” said Jim, not wanting to have to explain the monument to her. For the first time it occurred to Jim that building a giant monolith of a murdered loved one might seem odd in some people’s eyes. “Maybe we can meet in the pub? Do you know The Yellow Torch?”
“Yes,” said Jenny. “Shall we say seven o’clock?”
“Okay,” said Jim. They said goodbye. No sooner had Jim hung up than he found himself face down on the floor in a considerable amount of pain.
“Ow! Fuck! What are you doing Rowan?”
“What do you know?” shouted Rowan.
“What?”
“What information do you have for Jenny?”
It dawned on Jim that later, when he met her, he would have to come up with something. “Shit!” he said. “I don’t know anything… I lied…”
“You lied?”
“I panicked, I was trying to ask her out…?”
“And that was the best you could do?”
Jim nodded pathetically. “I don’t know what happened,” he said.
“Shit,” said Rowan, letting Jim go. “You really are a fucking idiot, aren’t you?”
94. Three Became Two, Two Become One
Mark returned home from work to a bad atmosphere at home. Simon and Steve weren’t talking. Usually, it was Mark who dampened the spirits of the others; as much as he hated and feared the two of them, he was curious to know what was going on.
“How are things?” he asked casually.
“Make some dinner,” barked Steve. Again, unusual: that was the first time Steve had been rude or nasty to Mark. Simon was regularly horrible, of course, but Steve never joined in.
“Okay, okay!” said Mark. “I’m doing spaghetti bolognese. Is that all right for you both?”
Steve looked away and turned the television up. Mark went to the kitchen and began unpacking the shopping. Suddenly, Simon was behind him. “Hi Mark,” he said, patting him on the back. “Good day at work?”
“Um… Y—Yeah…” said Mark, worried about what might come next.
“Good to hear it!”
Mark stood in awkward silence for a moment, unsure why it was that Simon was smiling at him. Simon said, “Here, come on, let me help you with that…” and began putting the shopping away, carefully, neatly.
“Thanks,” Mark said.
“I’ll help you cook, too, if you like,” Simon said.
“Oh Simon, thanks but really, there is no need. I can—”
“I said I’ll help you cook,” Simon said, firmly.
“Uh—okay!” said Mark.
“What shall I do first?” Simon asked, once everything had been put away.
“Could you chop the onion?” Mark suggested tentatively.
“No,” said Simon.
There was a moment of silence. “Okay, well, you could—”
“I don’t do chopping,” Simon said.
“Sure, not a problem. Why not—”
“Can’t be trusted, you see,” Simon added. “You know, with knives.”
“Right,” Mark said.
“What if I grate some cheese? You can’t have bolognese without cheese, can you?”
“No,” agreed Mark. “You um—you certainly can’t.”
So Simon got the cheese and the grater and got to work. Meanwhile, Mark began chopping: onions, mushrooms, courgettes.
“Steve should really be helping, don’t you think?” said Simon.
“Well, I don’t mind, you know, he’s probably tired or—”
“No, Mark,” Simon said. “He should definitely be helping. Why don’t you ask him?”
“Me? I—No, I don’t think—I mean, it’s fine… We’re doing fine, aren’t we?”
“Hmm,” said Simon. “No, I don’t think so. All or nothing, I think.” And then, shouting: “Hey, Steve! Steve! Come here!”
“Fuck off,” was the reply from the front room.
“No, really,” continued Simon. “You should get in here. There’s something I want to show you.”
“Fuck… Off..!” Steve shouted.
“You’ll want to see this,” said Simon. “It’s our way out of here!”
Mark looked at his cousin quizzically. “What do you—” Simon shot him a look that shut Mark up immediately.
Steve wandered into the kitchen, scratching the back of his head and yawning. “This better be good,” he said.
“Oh, it is,” said Simon. “Check this out.”
The next thing Mark knew, he had been thrust into Steve by Simon; they were eye-to-eye. Mark looked in horror as Steve drew in a pained, sharp intake of breath. His eyes widened in shock.
Mark felt Simon let go of him. He recoiled and looked down at his hand. The knife he had been chopping mushrooms with was dripping blood. “What the…?” Mark began, but he fell into silence when he saw Steve, staggering backwards, collapsing. There was blood everywhere. “What did you do that for?” Mark said to Simon. “He’s dying…”
“Wrong,” said Simon. “On both counts.”
“What do you mean?” said Mark.
“I didn’t do anything, Mark, you did,” Simon said, smiling broadly. “And he’s not dying… he’s dead.”
95. Camille does what she does best
Camille, like all the others, felt empty.
Out of sheer desperation, she called Mark, but there was no answer. He was probably busy, she thought. It was probably for the best that he didn’t answer. She wasn’t stupid: she knew he didn’t like her.
She was drawing absentmindedly, of course.
She just liked to be in control. That was the problem for her now. She had nothing to control. It wasn’t that she couldn’t control the situation—she was always capable of doing that—it was that there was no situation. The future lay in front of her like an infinite empty expanse; a void; a black hole, even: sucking her forward, forward, forward to—to what? To nothing. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that in fact everything was nothing. People lived blinkered to this simple truth every day, she thought. They treat life as if it’s on tracks, like a train; as if one stop leads to the next and to the next, events that mark out the import of a life well lived, until the end of the line is reached and we ‘all change’ at the buffers. But it’s not the case. What’s closer, Camille thought, is space. A giant vacuous expanse of absolutely nothing, and the things that are out there—moons, planets, stars—are red herrings, one and all: dead, indifferent chunks of rock or collections of gas.
Yes, thought Camille, indifference. How can you control a world that is impervious to your grasp. Even Mark, precious Mark, who she had manipulated for a whole day and ridiculed, he was nothing more than flesh and body heat—what control over her life did toying with Mark demonstrate? None! She may as well have been a child moulding plasticine.
She looked in dismay at what she had done to the page. What had begun as one of her usual doodles had gone wild: she had coloured the whole page in black.
Not for the first time, Camille noticed she was crying.
96. Rowan does some more good for the community
Yes, and just like Camille, Rowan was feeling lost in a world that had become so purposeful when building the monument to their mother; a world that, since the monument’s completion, had become empty and shallow.
Rowan’s method of coping, however, was somewhat different to Camille’s. He wasn’t crying—quite the opposite, he was seeking to make others cry. He was on the warpath. The men who killed his mother were the target, and he wouldn’t stop short of getting them.
He was up and out by 7am, that morning. He decided that between now and when he finds the men, he will act to stop any form of wrong-doing he saw.
If there was one thing Rowan believed he knew, it was justice.
If there was one thing Rowan believed he was, it was justified.
The first incident he came across was a man pushing an elderly lady out of the way to get onto a bus before her. He had seen that there were few seats on the bus, he had seen that people were queuing up to get on the bus in an orderly manner, but he didn’t care. He wanted a seat, it seemed, and that was that!
However, that, as far as Rowan was concerned, was far from that.
Rowan got on the bus and watched the man read. He was a young professional of some sort: suit, tie, polished shoes, expensive briefcase, no doubt housing an expensive laptop. Rowan enjoyed the anticipation of what was to come. The man had no idea that his transgression would be punished.
The man got off the bus four stops on, and Rowan got off too. He followed the man through the streets of Highgate, and into the woods. It couldn’t have been more perfect! Choosing his moment carefully, Rowan ran up behind the man, grabbed him, and dragged him into the trees.
“What the f—” the man began to scream, but Rowan smacked him in the mouth.
“Shh!” Rowan said. “Someone might hear us!”
The man was visibly shaking.
“Do you know what you did?” Rowan asked.
“N—No…”
Rowan explained.
“D—Do you know the woman?” the man said. “Will you apologise for me?”
“No, and no,” said Rowan. “I think some form of restitution is in order.”
“Money?” said the man. “I’ve got money. Here, you can have it…”
“Hmm,” said Rowan. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“Well what then?”
“I think…” Rowan said, menacingly. “I think I’ll take everything you’re wearing.”
“Wha—?” Another smack in the mouth. Rowan pulled the man’s clothes off, pausing every now and then to hit him in the face, when he made a noise. He opened up the man’s bag, sure enough there was a laptop in it. Rowan duly smashed it to pieces, threw it aside, and shoved the man’s clothes into the bag, which he slung over his own shoulder.
“That’ll teach you,” he said as he walked away.
97. The mess that’s left when someone makes you a murderer
The kitchen was covered in blood. It wasn’t like there was some blood here, some blood there: the kitchen was covered in blood. Mark very nearly stabbed his cousin—after all, what difference would a second dead body make?—but Simon was alive to the threat and took the knife from Mark’s shaking hand.
“Fucking hell,” Mark said. “Fucking, fucking hell.”
“Yep,” said Simon with a sigh. “You’ve got yourself in a pickle here.”
“Me?!”
“Of course! Who’s holding the knife, Mark? Who stabbed him?”
“You forced me!”
“Forensics wouldn’t see it like that, I don’t think…”
“You bastard!”
Simon stepped up to Mark, putting his face against his cousins. “You’re under a lot of pressure, I can see that, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Mark was silent. “Take it back,” said Simon.
“No,” said Mark.
Simon punched him in the stomach, swift and hard. “Oof,” said Mark, doubling over.
“Take it back,” repeated Simon.
“Okay,” said Mark breathlessly. “I take it back…”
“Good!” said Simon brightly, helping Mark up to his feet. “So, what are we going to do, eh? What are we going to do?”
“We need to get rid of it!” said Mark.
“But—shouldn’t we call the police?” said Simon, his voice a parody of innocence.
Mark paid no attention. “You can steal a car,” he said. “We’ll drive it somewhere, dump it.”
“I don’t think I should be involved in something like that,” Simon said.
“Come on, Simon!”
Simon laughed. “So desperate, aren’t you? Okay, well, I’ll get the car if that would help… but that’s all. And you’ll owe me for that, Mark. Understand?”
Mark understood all to well. “Just get me the car,” he said.
98. Poster Campaign and Jenny & Jim (yet again)
The four children of Valerie Barrett came up with an idea, and it was a good one: they would have a grand unveiling of the monument. They would publicise it, get people in—maybe even journalists—and everyone would look at the monument and cheer and admire the wonderful handiwork of the Barretts, the kindness and consideration of the Barretts, the spirit of the Barratts.
Camille and Sara got to work on posters right away. Camille drew a simple representation of the monument and carefully wrote the title Grand Unveiling above it. Below, Sara wrote £free, the address, and the date and time people should turn up. Their brothers both agreed that the sisters had done a magnificent job.
Jim and Rowan, meanwhile, set about creating a cover large enough to hide the monument; after all, you can’t unveil something that plainly visible. They went to a local tent shop and managed to get the material they needed, as well as pins to stick it into the ground. Sara and Camille agreed that the brothers had done a magnificent job.
The posters that went up around town got a lot of attention, not least because from a distance, the monument looked undoubtedly phallic.
One of the people to half-notice the poster was Jenny, on her way to The Yellow Torch. Had she taken it in properly, she would have thought it mighty strange that Jim and the others had built a giant penis in memory of their mother, and were asking people to go and see it the next day. Fortunately, she didn’t take it in properly at all.
Jim met her in the pub at seven o’clock, as agreed. He thought Jenny looked beautiful. His hopes were high that he could get the situation sorted painlessly, and in a way that he still had a chance with her.
He had not come without a plan, in fact, he had thought it all through in detail. The plan was this: he intended to get her so drunk that she didn’t have any idea what was going on. By then, she would have forgotten all about the ‘information’ he had promised her. She would be in no state to go home, and would come back to his. They would have sex; he would no longer be a virgin, the world would be perfect: the end.
However, the plan fell apart from the very first minute. “I’ll have a lemonade,” said Jenny. “Now tell me, what is this information?”
99. Disposal
Jim pulled the body into the car, grunting in the darkness. Simon watched on, giggling like a child. “He always was difficult,” said Simon. “You’ve done the world a favour there, really,” he added.
Steve’s body thumped into the boot. “Come with me, Simon,” Mark pleaded. Blood streaked his hands and clothes; his eyes were red and puffy from crying and tiredness. “I can’t do this by myself.”
Simon clicked his fingers: “I know who could help… the police! Wait here, I’ll call them.”
Mark sighed. “Okay, okay, forget it.” He got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“Wait,” Simon called, suddenly doubting his cousin. Sure, it was his fingerprints, his knife, but Simon had been there. It was all well and good making Mark think he would take the fall, but if Mark botched this, they were both going away for a very, very long time. “Wait…” Simon repeated. ”I’ll come.”
Simon dashed inside and returned with a variety of tools a couple of minutes later. He got into the passenger seat, and seemed to become a different man. He was organised, calculated. He directed Mark down streets he didn’t know: “Left here, right there, now, second right, right again at the lights…” Mark just did as he was told, grateful for the opportunity to stop thinking. He felt sick with exhaustion and anxiety.
At a set of traffic lights, a piece of paper blew onto the windscreen. Simon reached out and pulled it into the car. He read it casually and pocketed it. “Grand Unveiling,” it read.
Eventually, Mark and Simon arrived at a forest. “Dim your lights and drive in,” Simon ordered. Mark did so. After a few minutes of driving this way and that, Simon told Mark to stop. “Get out,” he said.
They dragged the body into the darkness. Simon looked around, as if for some kind of marker. “Have you been here before?” Mark asked. Simon pointed at half a dozen small sticks in the ground. Markers. “Once or twice,” he said. He passed a shovel to Mark and pointed at a spot behind the sticks. “Dig,” he said.
The dug together. It took almost two hours before Simon finally said, ”Okay, that’s enough.” Together, they pulled the body out of the boot of the car. Mark couldn’t believe that this was a person only hours ago. Now, it was nothing, not even usable meat.
Mark pulled the body towards the hole. “Not yet,” Simon said. For a terrible moment, Mark thought Simon might try and kill him as well, but much to Mark’s relief, he didn’t. Instead, he passed Mark the cheese grater he had been using hours before in the kitchen.
The next words Simon said filled Mark with horror. “You need to take away his fingerprints, his face, his teeth and his eyes.”
100. The unveiling or, finally, the ordeal is over!
The Barretts waited nervously at home for seven o’clock to come around. Everything was ready: the cover was over the monument, there was even a public address system set up for the grand unveiling. Jim had devised a clever pulley system that would allow Camille—who was to be giving the short introductory speech—to pull off the cover in a slick movement. Rowan, meanwhile, had bought lots of fireworks to let off when the time came. Temporary tables covered with food lined either side of the garden. The left over posters covered the fences on each side: in short, they had done an impressively professional job. All that remained now was to see if anybody would actually turn up.
But turn up they did—and in droves. Mostly, people were attracted by the free beer and food, but also there was a genuine sense of curiosity. Morbid curiosity, most commonly—”It’s a monument to their mother, she was murdered, you know…”—but curiosity nonetheless.
Rowan asked Jim about Jenny. “Will she be turning up,” he said.
“She saw the poster when we left the pub…”
“You left the pub together, did you?” Rowan asked, in a high-pitched sing-song voice.
“Yeah, about five minutes after we got there…”
“You scoundrel!”
“If only…” Jim said. The truth was that Jim, when put on the spot with her question: “What information?” had been unable to come up with anything at all, so he opted for honesty. His mother always said that “it’s the best policy.” Was it bollocks: Jenny put her drink down on the bar and walked straight out. That’s when she saw the poster. She was even less impressed than he thought she would be. “Jim,” she said, “I’m going to be honest with you. You and your family are fucking nuts. I’ll be coming to this, just to see what the freak show that is the Barrett’s can produce next.” Jim thought that quite an unprofessional thing to say, but thought better of commenting so.
But the biggest surprise of the night was the fact that Simon and Mark were there. Since getting home the previous night, both men had been drinking non-stop. When Simon rediscovered the poster in his pocket, he suggested they should go. Mark didn’t realise where it was, of course, but disagreed on the grounds it was too risky. He said this, having forgotten that their relationship was not one of equals. Simon didn’t need to ask a third time.
And by 7:30, the pair had arrived and were, unbeknown to them, standing behind Jenny McElroy, one of the investigating officers on the murder of Valerie Barrett.
Mark nearly fell over when Camille took the mic. “Our mother was a wonderful woman…” she began. But Mark had already tuned out. He was looking around—”Whathafuck’reyoudoin’?” Simon slurred drunkenly—and then, he saw her. Sara.
“Hey,” he called, over the speech. “Hey, Sara! S’me! S’Mark!”
Everyone looked over. Camille, still on the mic said, “Mark? Mark Selwyn? What the fuck are you doing here? How do you know my sister—?”
“Mark!” Sara said. “Shh!”
At this point, Jenny turned round. “Sweet fucking Christ—Simon? Simon Sanders? Is that you—?” Simon, drunk and panicked, punched Jenny square in the nose. Jim was standing a few metres away screamed in anger—”What the fuck—” In all the confusion, Camille accidentally pulled the pulley, bringing the cover of the monument tumbling down. Rowan, who was standing behind the giant figure of their mother, thought it was time, and launched the fireworks. Camille turned to him: “Rowan,” she said. “Rowan! It’s him!”
“Dad?” Rowan said, the colour dropping out of his cheeks.
“No! Fucking Sanders!”
“Where?”
Simon was trying to push his way through the crowd of people, but he couldn’t get past anyone in the confusion. Jim and Sara managed to grab him, and pull him back towards the makeshift stage that Camille stood upon.
“Call the police!” Camille called. “He murdered our mother!”
Rowan came around to the front of the stage to see the man he had been after for so long. The crowd gasped in surprise at Camille’s statement. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you all!” Simon yelled. “I’ll kill you like he killed Steve!” he added, pointing at Mark, who did his best to look shocked.
“Who did you kill, Mark?” Sara and Camille shouted together.
Mark made his was forward to explain: but they didn’t want to hear it. Meanwhile, the crowd pushed this way and that: here and there people fell into the monument and it creaked under all the pressure.
Rowan threw the biggest punch he had in the face of Simon Sanders, who reeled back. Sara slapped Mark, who also reeled. Both men fell on top of one another on the stage. The crowd by now had all but dispersed; the four Barrett siblings all joined in kicking and punching the two men on the stage, under the giant monolith they had created of their mother.
And in that moment, as the monument creaked and shook its way to the inevitable, each one of the family finally felt alive. With each kick placed, each punch that drew blood from either man, something of their own sins were absolved. Mark and Simon were soon finished, but the Barretts were far from done. The two dead bodies fell from the stage, but the family carried on fighting. As they screamed in the darkness, they had finally turned wholly on each other: all four Barretts, standing below the unsteady testament to their mother, rained blows on one another and in doing so, in both the giving and receiving, they finally knew what it was to be alive.
Jenny and the other guests stood at the front of the house, waiting for the police to come. From out there, the shouts and yells seemed to escalate unimaginably: when it seemed it could get no louder it did; louder and louder and louder until it seemed that nothing could stop the horror.
But of course, something could. The monument toppled. Valerie Barrett silenced her children once and for all.
