The Sleeping and the Dead

But right from the beginning Rosie couldn’t recognize who they were going on about. Slow down, she wanted to say. I mean, what is going on here? It was as if the person who’d been her best friend throughout the sixth form had disappeared to be replaced in their collective memories by a total stranger. Joe was worse than any of them. Really she wished he wasn’t there. She felt constrained. While he was going on about how delicate Mel had been, how fragile, she wanted to yell at him: No, she was more than that, stronger than that. You know what she was like. She could be a manipulative cow. Ruthless. She had to get her own way. She wasn’t the victim you’re all making out.

But she couldn’t do it to him. Not yet. Someone would have to put him straight, but it couldn’t be her. She had too much to lose. What if he never forgave her? So she sat quiet while they warbled on, pussyfooting around the subject.

‘What about you, Rosie?’ Porteous said at last, leaning across the table, giving her a seriously deep and meaningful look, as if he expected her to give them the truth. ‘What have you got to tell us about Mel?’

‘Nothing new. Nothing that’s not already been said.’

She could tell he was disappointed. They went on to talk about Mel’s music, how talented she was and how she’d already got a confirmed university place at Edinburgh, the same old gushing stuff.

‘They were so impressed,’ Joe said, ‘that they’d have taken her even if she’d failed all her A levels.’

Then Porteous tried again. He wanted to know if Mel had ever been pregnant. Not now, but at some time in the past. The question was so delicately put together that not even Joe was offended.

‘No,’ Joe said. ‘Of course not. She’d have told me.’

‘Would she?’

Joe didn’t answer that because there were lots of things Mel hadn’t liked to talk about.

Rosie though was certain. ‘It’s not possible. Mel would never get pregnant. She was paranoid about it, wasn’t she, Joe?’

Joe nodded sadly in agreement and Rosie continued.

‘She had to be in control of her body. Completely. That was what the food thing was all about. And if there was some accident, some mistake, she’d get rid of it immediately.’

‘Was there ever any accident?’

‘No,’ Joe said. ‘Not while she was with me.’

‘Are you sure?’ When there was no reply, he added. ‘No matter. The pathologist will be able to tell us.’

Rosie was daydreaming again. She and Mel had talked about children on one of their girlie nights together. She’d slept on the sofa bed in Mel’s room and they’d got through a bottle of wine each when they’d got back from the pub. Mel had got a bit soppy about the kid she used to babysit, but she’d made it clear a family wasn’t part of her future. ‘Your life’s not your own if you’re a mother,’ she’d said, shuddering. Though what could she know?

‘Eleanor seems to manage OK.’

‘That’s different. I’m old enough to look after myself. I don’t bother her any more. She wasn’t so keen when I was little.’ She’d paused. ‘I want to be someone. You can’t concentrate on what you want to do if you’re surrounded by screaming kids.’

And then, lying on top of her bed, propped up on one elbow, Mel had squinted across at Rosie. ‘What about you? I can see you as an earth mother. Married. A cottage in the country. Four or five kids, a goat and some hens scratching about in the garden.’ Rosie had laughed then, but something about the image still appealed.

She was brought back to the pub by a sudden blast from the jukebox, a couple of bikers laughing. Porteous gave her another pleading look but she ignored it. She told him she had nothing else to say and offered to look after the bar so they could talk to Frank.

Frank must have realized that Porteous would want to talk to him about the bloke who’d been in the Prom asking after Mel, but he didn’t seem very pleased about it.

‘Look, I don’t think I can be much help…’

‘Don’t be daft, Frank. No one else can remember him.’

And she gave him a playful little push, sending him out into the room. He looked shaky, panicky, walking towards the policeman as if he were already about to go into the witness box. From the bar she couldn’t hear exactly what the group in the corner were saying, but Frank was facing her and she saw him staring blankly, occasionally shaking his head. His eyes were unfocused, wandering. It was as if he wasn’t really thinking about the questions and the answers. He was just trying to survive the interview, waiting for it to be over.

The next day she tackled him about it. She’d been thinking about it all night. Frank had liked Mel, in the way that he seemed to like all the young people who came into the Prom. He’d joked with her, acted sometimes as father-confessor, standing at the bar for ages listening to all her troubles. So why had he been so reluctant to discuss her with the police?