The boxes were stacked as high as the old tarp clinging to the roof. Big ones at the bottom, smaller ones at the top. It made sense. It was order. He’d learnt that from his mother. The stuff that didn’t come in boxes was piled in the corner as best he could manage. It annoyed him, the lack of square edges, of stability, of dependability. He knew that if he piled the toasters, the juicers, the hairdryers, the fridges, they would be in the same spot the next day. Randomly shaped packets, long tubes, soft squashy toys often took a tumble and greeted his feet when he opened the door.
Max chewed a pencil and ran his finger down the list. His nails were long. Best for the guitar, except his mother didn’t like the din. She told him to stop. ‘It’s like dirt on the floor, darling. You’d take off your muddy shoes if I asked, wouldn’t you?’ He regretted it now, but he’d left the guitar on the railway line for a train to mash. Part of him wished it was him that was splintered and scattered – just an echo of a life once loved left behind.
‘The bread-maker,’ he said, businesslike. ‘Or the pressure washer.’ But who? he wondered. His father was always ungrateful and Fiona . . . well, he wouldn’t give her the shit off his boots, let alone one of these prized babies. He’d done most of his teachers and some of his classmates. They just mocked him and sold the loot on eBay. Used the money for booze and fags. He could do the same, of course, but he preferred not to. He didn’t want to devalue the hope they represented.
‘That girl.’ He winced as the words sounded louder than he’d intended. ‘That. Girl.’ He broke her down, as if That Girl was her name. ‘Miss Girl. Miss That Girl, I would like to give you this bread-making machine as an act of random friendship. May we be friends, Miss Girl?’ Max pulled a face. It wasn’t right. Not the bread-maker, he decided. He pulled the white and orange box that contained the pressure washer off the pile. He’d not opened it yet. Virgin goods. He liked that. ‘Miss Girl, I have this pressure washer, and I’d like you to have it.’
In his mind, Miss Girl’s face lit up. She dropped the heavy pack that she always carried – full of books, he’d noticed – and she gratefully took the box from him. ‘Just what I’ve always wanted,’ she said, beaming. ‘Now I can clean the drive. Now I can hose down my dad’s car. Now I can strip the graffiti off the garage wall. Thanks, Max. Thanks so much.’ And Miss Girl stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss. A long, slow, wet, lingering kiss full on the mouth. He got an erection.
He shook his head and stared at the list. Pressure washer. Yep, he remembered that competition. Judge must have had a sense of humour. The local hardware store had been doing a promotion in the car park. Ten uses for a pressure washer, the girl in the bikini had said, waving a leaflet at Max when he’d popped in for a light for his bike. Have a go. He’d leant on someone’s bonnet, filling out his ten suggestions. The last one, he distinctly recalled, was
Cleaning all the shit outta my life
.
‘Pressure washer it is then,’ he said, putting a line through the item. Next to it he wrote
Miss Girl. To be delivered. By hand
.
Dayna Ray was crying when she felt the tap on her shoulder. She flinched. They’d come back to get her. Bitches. Her breathing quickened as another panic attack welled inside her.
‘Hey.’ It was a boy’s voice. She didn’t recognise it. She looked up from behind the curtain of her hair. Her fringe was too long and she let it hang over her eyes to conceal the black mess that she knew ringed her lashes.
‘What?’ she said. Her breathing slowed.
‘I was gonna ask you the same.’
Dayna sat bolt upright. It was
him
. Shit. ‘You don’t need to sit down, you know.’ Best get rid of him. She looked such a state.
At this, the boy kicked a crumpled Coke can out of the way and dropped down next to her in the gutter. He offered her a fag. She shrugged and took one.
‘Bad day?’ he asked.
‘Bad life.’
‘You’ll be needing this then,’ he said, sliding a box across the alley to her. It was wrapped in yellow paper.
Dayna frowned. ‘It’s not my birthday.’ She touched it. Ash fell on the paper. ‘You weird or something?’ She brushed off the ash. ‘Did you follow me?’
The boy stared at her, shrugging. She could see the tiny flicks of his eyes as his gaze ran around her face. She knew she looked a mess. He laughed. ‘You look like a vampire. A ghoul or something.’ He blew smoke at her. ‘Go on. Open it. It’s for you.’
Dayna frowned and sighed. ‘Shouldn’t we at least introduce ourselves? It wouldn’t be right otherwise.’ Then she thought, is this a set-up? Is the box full of crap from the bin?
The boy leant across with his hand outstretched. ‘Max Quinell,’ he said. ‘Year eleven no-hoper and all-round outcast. Pleased to meet you.’
Dayna felt her cheeks burning. She relaxed a little. ‘Dayna Ray. Year eleven punchbag and also all-round outcast. Delighted to meet you, too.’
They shook hands.
Dayna felt it. Up her wrists, along her shoulders, straight into her heart.
By the look in his eyes, the deepening of their chocolate colour, she reckoned he felt it too.
God.
‘So. What is it?’ She sniffed. She hadn’t got a tissue. She pulled off the paper and stared at the box. She tilted her head round to read. ‘Xtreme-Force Pressure Washer including rotating head and six-metre hose.’ Dayna looked up at Max. ‘Nice,’ she said, nodding. Then she started laughing. A laugh that tore the fear and hate from her belly, a laugh that rang between the walls of the dank alley where she sometimes chose to sit, a laugh that announced to the universe that everyone had better watch out because she’d got a new pressure washer.
‘You like it?’
‘Love it,’ she said.
‘Now you can clean up your life.’
‘It’s already working,’ she said, hardly able to wait to get the thing out of the box.
Fiona Marton usually ate her lunch alone. It wasn’t by choice, rather because Brody insisted on eating
his
lunch alone, holed up in his office forking noodles from a carton, thereby leaving her on call and unable to go with the others to the canteen or that new place round the corner. She didn’t care. She could watch him through the glass partition, hunched over his desk, just thinking, just eating, occasionally drawing half a bottle of water in one gulp. She’d eat her sandwich – always cheese and lettuce – studying him as she chewed thoughtfully, imagining, wondering.
Today, however, was different. ‘Let’s go out for lunch,’ Brody said mid-morning. He’d just finished a lecture. Fiona nearly fell off her chair. She was typing up some letters he’d dictated earlier, all part of her job.
‘You mean us?’ She couldn’t look at him. Blind or not, the man seemed to know when she blinked. He was sure to feel the heat of her blush.
‘Of course us.’ He waited for her response. ‘Well?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, wondering what the catch was. He went back to his office. She watched as he typed on his laptop. The talk-back facility was turned down so low she could barely hear it. Brody, she knew, heard every syllable clear as a bell, confirming that what he had entered was correct. ‘That would be very nice,’ she called out. She wished she’d worn her new blouse.
By one o’clock they were seated in a booth in what Fiona could only describe as a greasy spoon caff not far, she noted dismally, from the estate where Brody lived. Sticky red plastic benches bracketed an equally sticky laminated table. ‘God, you should see this place,’ Fiona said. ‘It’s trying to be all fifties diner, but actually I think everything here literally
is
from the fifties. Including the food.’
Brody grunted.
She sighed and picked up the menu. It wasn’t what she’d had in mind. ‘There’s bacon and eggs. Bacon butty. Egg butty. Scrambled egg and bacon, with or without tom—’
‘I’m having Chef’s Special.’
Fiona glanced at the menu, then looked around the diner and saw it written up on a chalk board. ‘You’re right. There’s a Chef’s Special. What is it?’
‘Different every day.’ He stopped, turned to his left, paused for a moment. ‘How’s it going, Edie?’ His face rippled to a smile.
‘Just wonderful, thank you, Professor. I’m a grandma for the sixth time.’ Edie smoothed out her apron proudly.
Fiona saw that there were a couple of other waitresses buzzing about. How, then, had he known this was Edie? He must have been in before, but when?
‘Two Chef’s Specials and two coffees please,’ Fiona said. She just wanted to get this over with and get back to work. Lunch wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped it would be – time spent with Brody in a classy restaurant, perhaps him finally telling her how he’d felt about her all these years. She sighed and unrolled the cutlery from the napkin that Edie left on the table.
When they were alone again, Brody cleared his throat. ‘I brought you here for a reason, Fiona,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Stupidly, her heart missed a beat. Just one, but enough to make her catch her breath, enough for Brody to hear.
‘Don’t be concerned,’ he added.
‘I’m not.’ Fiona tensed. What was it about her that a blind man could see but she couldn’t?
‘I need you to tell me who’s in here.’ The words came out bitter and short. Brody didn’t like to ask for things, let alone use the word
need
. He accepted Fiona’s help grudgingly. He wanted her to drive him around, he’d said at the interview years ago, and assist with some administration work. Fiona didn’t mention the hundred other things she did for him, from helping with his students to making sure he had toilet paper in the bathroom at home. She’s my assistant, he told everyone.
I’m your eyes
, she thought.
‘Tell you what about them?’
‘Start with the table by the door. Four people, right?’
Fiona swung round, resting her arm along the back of the banquette. ‘Yes.’ She would never understand how he did it. She’d often wondered if he really was blind. ‘Two men, two women. Probably in their twenties. They’re a bit, well, alternative. One’s got a beanie on. One woman’s got a long patchwork skirt. They look nice enough.’ She turned back to Brody when one of the men glanced at her. ‘Would you mind telling me why?’
‘Next table,’ he ordered. The one running along the window.
Fiona sighed. ‘Man on his own. Old. Late sixties probably. Looks as if he lives alone and—’
‘That’s enough. Go round every table. And don’t speculate.’
‘Next one has a young mum. Girl with a pushchair. She’s got a friend with her too. They’re drinking tea. The next table has a couple of school kids and the one beside that has a couple of builders—’
‘Stop. Go back to the table with the kids.’ Brody leant forward. He reached out for Fiona’s hand and halted it before she wrapped it round the mug of coffee the waitress had brought. ‘I want to know every single detail about them. Right down to the colour of their socks.’
Fiona stopped, speechless. She stared down at her hand. It was the first time during the eight years she’d worked with Professor Brody Quinell that he had ever touched her. The first time she had ever seen him look scared.
Carrie wasn’t sure what was more shocking, the way the woman lived or that she’d lost her only son. She’d been sedated by her GP since it happened and, even with four days’ worth of diazepam inside her, she was still agitated, angry, hysterical, and lashed out at the cameraman when he filmed the photos of her boy adorning the mantelpiece.
‘Jimmy was my life,’ she wailed, her face lifting from the puddle that she’d formed on the foul carpet. Two boxer dogs and another rather illegal-looking canine slumped beside her. They seemed to understand her grief.
‘Mrs Plummer, I’m so very, very sorry about your loss. Words can’t explain the pain you must be feeling.’ It was almost a script, but not quite. The story of Jimmy Plummer had been headline news since it happened several days ago. He’d been cycling home through the estate after soccer practice. He’d found an old man beaten up and lying in the road. He stopped to help. His mobile phone showed he’d called for an ambulance. The operator heard Jimmy being stabbed repeatedly when the gang came back.
Carrie sat down, even though she really didn’t want to. It was all being filmed. Turning her nose up at the disgusting state of the sofa would lose her sympathy. The skirt could go to a charity shop afterwards.
‘Tell me what Jimmy was like, Mrs Plummer. He loved football, didn’t he?’
Slowly, the bereaved mother lifted her head. Her face was swollen, her cheeks red, and her hair splayed across her forehead in greasy streaks. As well as the mother, they were going to get some of Jimmy’s friends on the live studio part of the show. Talk about the gang culture in the area. Dennis would help with a reconstruction, too. The phone-in results were usually phenomenal. The ratings would be through the roof on this one. She needed to get this interview exactly right. Being in people’s homes was what made
Reality Check
unique.
‘Jimmy was Jimmy,’ Mrs Plummer said. She brought herself up to a sitting position. ‘He was fourteen. He liked football. He were good at it. He liked his bike. He loved Dollar here.’ Mrs Plummer rested her hand on the ugliest of the three dogs. ‘And he went to school. He ain’t got no ASBO or nothing.’
‘Was Jimmy part of a gang, Mrs Plummer?’ From the corner of her eye, she could see Steve zooming in on the woman. Perfect.
‘No, no, he weren’t part of any gang. Jimmy weren’t like that. He just got on with things, you know?’ Mrs Plummer hauled herself to standing. She clenched her fists, looking for someone to take it out on. Carrie patted the spot beside her. An intimate moment on the sofa. Fabulous.
The woman sat.
‘Do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill your son, Mrs Plummer . . . or can I call you Lorraine?’ Carrie’s voice was low, gentle, coaxing. She reached out and took the woman’s hands. Steve moved in front of the sofa and caught every second on film.