The Sleeping and the Dead

Out on the street Joe took her arm as he often did and steered her through the crowd on the pavement. A middle-aged woman in a see-through leopard-print shirt was throwing up in the gutter. A teenage girl was sobbing on her friend’s shoulder. Joe held Rosie’s hand and pulled her at a run across the road and on to the sea front. She had learned to take no notice of these gestures of affection but she still enjoyed them.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The scenic route.’ He paused. ‘You don’t mind going the long way?’

‘No.’

There was enough light from the street to see the white line of foam fall on to the beach. They walked in silence. She was thinking of her mother, of the body in the lake. If Joe disappeared into thin air, Rosie thought she’d make some effort to find him. She’d hassle his family, contact the rest of his friends. If they couldn’t help she’d go to the police. Yet from what she could gather her mother had done none of these things. Michael Grey had disappeared and she had accepted it without a fuss. That was a very Hannahlike way to behave, but even so it just didn’t make sense. She hadn’t even been to see the couple Michael had been living with. She hadn’t gone to the police. She’d sat her exams as if nothing had happened and then she’d left the area without trying to trace him to say goodbye. And she’d never gone back.

Rosie stopped. Without the noise of their footsteps they could hear the tide dragging back the shingle.

‘That stuff I told you about my mother being a suspect in a murder inquiry. It was a joke, right?’

‘Of course it was a joke.’ He sounded amused. That was all she was to him. One big joke.

‘It’s just she’s had enough to put up with. Everyone talking about my dad…’

‘I know.’ He squeezed her hand.

Of course her mother hadn’t killed anyone. She was the least violent person in the world. When Jonathan walked out on her, she hadn’t even raised her voice in anger. But it was odd all the same. Her mother couldn’t have told the full story. Something had happened.

They had come to the lighthouse, which had been converted years before into an art gallery. It still had a whitewashed wall around it. There was no need for the light now. The rocks in the bay were marked by navigation buoys on the water. Looking back towards the town, they saw the flashing neon which marked the entrance to the funfair, the strings of street lamps, the inevitable blinking blue light of a police car. From the lighthouse a footpath led inland, skirting the cemetery and arriving at last at the housing estate where Rosie lived. The free drink and the walk seemed to have cheered Joe up. He didn’t mention Mel again, or the stranger who had been looking for her. As they sauntered past the cemetery he started making howling, ghostly noises. There were houses banking on to the footpath and Rosie had to tell him to shut up.

Outside her house Joe lingered. If she’d invited him in for coffee, he’d have accepted like a shot. She could tell he was too wired up to go home. But Rosie couldn’t bear any more confidences. Not tonight. She might end up confiding in him. A small wind had got up. Down the street a Coke can rattled against the kerb and startled them. The trees threw strange shadows.

‘You’d better go,’ she said. Then she imagined him turning up at the Gillespie house, making a scene. ‘You’re not going to try to see Mel?’

‘God no.’

He kissed her on the cheek as if she were a favourite aunt. She gave him a quick hug. Then he loped off. Inside her mother was still up, watching a late film on Channel Four, half dozing.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Since the drama after the school reunion Rosie had been sporadically worried about her mother. She wasn’t getting much support. When Rosie had told her father about the police investigation he’d had difficulty in stopping himself laughing. ‘Hannah! Mixed up with the police. God, she’ll hate it.’

Yet if the murder had happened recently, everyone would have considered it horrifying. Rosie could tell that the past had become very real to her mother. She seemed to have become lost in it. Hannah said nothing, but Rosie could tell that in the long silences she was reliving it. Now, half asleep in front of the television, she was probably dreaming it too. To bring her back to the present Rosie offered her a piece of information. Usually she never told her mother anything about herself unless she could help it.

‘Joe walked me home.’

Hannah stirred at this but wasn’t, Rosie thought, sufficiently distracted. Not as distracted as she normally would have been. Usually she took an unhealthy interest in Rosie’s relationships with men.

‘The police phoned,’ she said. ‘They want to come here to talk to me. More questions. After work on Monday.’

‘I’m sorry. It must be shitty.’

Hannah was usually prudish about language and Rosie expected her to object to the word. Instead she repeated it. ‘Shitty. Yes, it is, rather.’

‘It can’t be important if it can wait until Monday.’

‘I suppose not.’