Dead Time (10 page)

‘I then suggested a very select private school that I'd heard of up in Hampstead Heath, a short car ride away. You didn't want that. I had grave misgivings about you attending the public school but you insisted and I had to allow you to follow your own particular path. Now I find that all my fears have been confirmed and you have become embroiled in some criminal friendship group.'

‘That's not true!' Rose said, a crack in her voice. ‘There's no
criminal group
. These people are just other students. I was unlucky enough to be at a station when a boy was killed. Now his girlfriend has been stabbed after she came to see me. Of course I'm involved in some way. I'm not to blame, though.'

‘It's the situation I'm angry about. If you had taken my advice you wouldn't be at that school!'

‘I wanted to go there because it was the kind of place I went to when … When I lived with Mum.'

Her grandmother stared at her, her brows tensing.

‘I went to a state school. I mixed with regular kids. I had lots of friends and I was happy. I wanted to be somewhere where it was like that again.'

‘But you had friends at Mary Linton?'

Rose nodded.

‘I don't understand.'

‘I did have friends but I never felt as though I belonged there. I wanted to go back … to the way it was, the way I was at school when … when I lived with Mum and Brendan and Josh.'

‘I don't wish to talk about Brendan Johnson and his son.'

‘They were my
family
. When I lost Mum I lost them! I lost everything!'

Her grandmother's lips closed tightly as though she was forcing herself not to speak. Her hands curled up in delicate fists and she seemed to be gripped by some thought that she couldn't or didn't want to say. She looked over to the door and it seemed as if she was on the brink of walking out of the room. Rose was ready for this. Every row she had ever had with Anna always ended when Anna thought that enough had been said.

But strangely she didn't go. Her hands relaxed and her voice softened. Rose was taken aback.

‘I understand you long for those days. Going to a particular school isn't going to do that. What you want is your mother and you cannot have her. It doesn't matter what school you go to. She is gone.'

Rose took a step towards the table and leant on it. She felt her anger drain away. It was replaced by a weight of sadness. Her grandmother continued talking.

‘I am trying to do what is best for you, Rose. You coming here has been a huge change in my life.'

‘I know. And I'm grateful.'

‘Do you think I want to see you in a police station? My granddaughter? In trouble?'

Her grandmother stared at her. Her hand was at her neck, fingering the chain that hung there. Rose found herself looking into her eyes, deep and dark. For a second she thought of putting her hand out and touching her, placing her fingers on the sleeve of her jumper. She almost did but her grandmother continued talking, her voice a little sharper.

‘That school is not a good place and I'm afraid you will waste the education that I gave you. This is exactly what happened with Katherine. Exactly. She threw away everything I had given her and insisted on going her own way. I just want to stop you making the same mistakes that she made.'

Rose stiffened. How had a conversation about Emma Burke being stabbed become a chance for Anna to criticise her mother?

‘I'm not leaving the school. These crimes had nothing to do with me. I was just trying to help someone. I would prefer it if you didn't criticise my mother. You have no right to do that.'

Anna's face hardened.

‘I have every right. She was my daughter. I tried to do my best for her and she let me down. She made it quite clear that she didn't approve of my lifestyle and went her
own way. And what happened to her? A baby and a string of unsuitable partners. Becoming a police officer. A job that any fool could have done. Everything I did for her wasted.'

Rose crossed her arms angrily. She didn't trust herself to speak.

Her grandmother's voice dropped. ‘She stormed out of here and we never spoke again. You haven't seen her for five years – it's been so much longer for me.'

Rose faltered. She stepped towards her grandmother.

‘Anna …' she started.

‘Don't throw away your education,' her grandmother cut across Rose's words. ‘You could walk into Oxford in two years' time with your predicted grades. Don't toss it aside like your mother did. That's all I'm asking.'

‘I won't talk any more about my mother,' Rose said firmly, turning away, keeping her voice low, trying to stay calm.

‘Wait,' her grandmother said.

But Rose was striding along the hallway. She walked quickly up the stairs.

‘And don't think I haven't seen that appalling tattoo on your arm. Don't think I haven't noticed it!'

Rose did not stop. She went up to her room and shut the door behind her. There was no lock so she stood firmly against it. She didn't know if Anna would come up but she stayed there anyway, her back to the door, to
the house, to her grandmother. Her eyes were hot and dry. She would not cry. She would not.

Much later in bed she kept the lamp on and lay in the quiet of her room. It was quarter to twelve and she didn't think she would get to sleep. She lifted her arm out from under the duvet and looked at the tattoo. The redness and swelling was receding; the blue of the Morpho deepening.

What would Anna have said if she had seen her daughter's tattoo?

Rose thought of the day she had first seen it. It was a tiny butterfly, on the top of her arm, just an outline really, hardly any colour at all. Rose had pointed at it in amazement. It was when Brendan and Joshua were living with them. They'd gone to a football match, and Rose and her mum were getting ready to go out and meet them afterwards. She'd charged into the bathroom while her mum was drying herself. She'd stared at it in wonder.
Oh, this!
A moment of madness,
her mum had said jokily, hugging her gingerly.

Rose remembered her mum's hugs, how they had smelled of perfume and hair shampoo and celery and basil and furniture polish and a hundred other scents that clung to her and lived in Rose's memory.

Now Rose was completely alone in the world. She had distant friends and she had Josh but really, when it mattered, she was on her own. Her mother, Katherine Smith, was gone.

She thought of
Smith
, the name her mother had chosen. When Rose had first come to live with her grandmother, she had suggested that Rose change her name back to Christie but Rose hadn't wanted to.
Smith!
Anna had sneered,
what a pointless name. She might as well have called herself Katherine X!
But Rose liked Smith. It was important to her that she kept it.

Those were the days when she tried to distance herself from Anna. She didn't allow herself to think of her as her ‘gran'. She was a woman who Rose had to live with. ‘Grandmother' implied a familial relationship but she had no relationship with this stiff distant woman. She called her Anna and she thought of her as Anna.

This
Anna
had little to do with Rose and her real
mother
.

She pushed her face into the pillow and tried to picture her mother but it was only a fleeting image. She had a pile of photographs she could look at and often did but when she
thought
about her mother she remembered her mum
doing
things; reading, talking, cooking, driving. The everyday things that happened regularly like cleaning her glasses, using a special spray and cloth to get them just right. And it wasn't just one pair of glasses. She had glasses to go out in, to drive with; she had glasses that she used to wear while working on the computer. She even had a pair of special half-moon glasses for when she was making notes on her work files. Rose watched her reading
and writing pages of notes and then signing her name at the bottom,
Katherine Smith
. The K was huge and had a curlicue at the bottom. Rose had tried to copy it but couldn't. She had pages of an exercise book full of ornate Ks and Rs but none of them came close to her mum's handwriting.

When her mother went missing Rose had spent time collecting those pairs of glasses together. She lined them up on her mum's desk. Some of the cases were dented and scuffed. When Rose and Joshua had been taken into foster care she'd left them there for her mother when she returned. But she never had and Rose wasn't quite sure what had happened to them. Years later Anna had told her that she'd employed a firm to clear the house for her. Most of the stuff there was sold but Anna had collected all of Rose's things and brought them home along with family photographs and some possessions of her mother's. Joshua and Brendan's things had been sent to Newcastle.

There had been no glasses.

Rose let her eyes close. There were no tears, just a hollow feeling in her chest. The police had tried to explain. Her mum and Brendan Johnson, both police officers, had been transferred to a unit that worked on old cases. This was where they had met each other. The police inspector who had spoken to her said that in all probability her mother and Brendan Johnson had been killed for their part in one of these investigations. Months after they had gone
missing he had visited her. His words had been kind but firm.
I wish I could tell you something different but it is my conviction that Katherine Smith along with Brendan Johnson were both targeted by career criminals. It was a professional job and I doubt very much that any trace of them will ever be found.

She thought of Emma Burke. In death Emma would leave traces. The investigation would pore over Emma's body, her clothes, the path, the rose garden. They would look for clues; fibres, skin, hair, blood, saliva. Her killer's body would betray him, would tell the police what they wanted to know and they would solve the murder.

But they would never solve her mother's …

She shook her head. She would never say or even think the word.

But it sat there in her heart, a splinter that wouldn't budge, that burrowed deeper and gave her a thin sharp pain.
Murder
.

There was a knock on her door. Rose opened her eyes. Her room was dark because the curtains were drawn. Grey light showed at the edges. She turned to her bedside clock and saw that it was 8.07. She'd slept for almost eight hours.

The knock sounded again. Then the door opened a crack.

‘Rose?' her grandmother said.

Rose turned away from the door and stared into the corner of her room.

‘Are you awake, Rose?'

Rose made a sound in her throat. She did not turn round to look at Anna. She felt the door open wider and imagined that Anna had stepped into her room. Just inside the door. Anna never came any further into her bedroom while she was in there.

‘Rose, some unpleasant things were said last night and I wanted to apologise. I understand that none of what happened was your fault and …'

Anna continued to talk but Rose wasn't really listening. Anna always wanted
to apologise
after a row. It was an action she took, a form of words. It was polite and placed Anna back on the right side of the argument but she had never once used the words
I'm sorry
.

‘… So you'll keep in mind my offer to transfer you to the school in Hampstead Heath but I understand if you wish to stay where you are for the time being.'

The door closed and Rose waited until the outside door to her study closed and then she sat up. That was it. When she went downstairs later Anna would act as though nothing had happened.

But things had been said that couldn't be erased.

She lay there for what seemed like a long time. Eventually she got up and showered. Afterwards she went to her wardrobe and took out some clean black jeans and a white shirt. She pulled out her DMs and looked for some socks. When she was dressed she looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a pale girl with chin-length hair. Her eyes were big and dark and made her look younger than her years. She pulled her hair back and held it behind her ears. She still looked young, not a girl of seventeen.

Her shirt was loose and her jeans were skinny, her boots making her feet look huge. She glanced at her wardrobe. She had a line of hangers with black jeans or trousers and various black or white tops. Anna didn't like the way she
dressed but she didn't care. At Mary Linton the talk was always about what you wore, what you looked like, who looked the best, whose clothes were the most expensive. Rose had felt completely at sea among the girls there, never knowing the right way to look. As soon as she got home she got rid of all the colours: the stupid skirts, tunics, leggings, T-shirts, dresses. She took them all to the local charity shop and bought herself some monochrome. She, whose very name suggested a variety of soft pinks, preferred herself in black and white.

In the evening Joshua came. She got a text from him to say that he was in the lane at the back of the gardens. Anna was out visiting a friend so she went down and opened the gate. He gave her a hug.

‘Poor Rosie!' he said.

She took him into the studio. Anna wasn't due back until after eleven so she was relaxed. Josh sat on the sofa and she pulled over the big cushion and sat on the floor. The electric heater had been plugged in for a couple of hours so the studio was warm. She'd already told Josh about the events of the previous night in an email.

‘If I'd got there earlier …' she said. ‘If I'd been
with
Emma.'

‘Might not have made any difference,' he said. ‘
You
might have been hurt.'

‘The police think I had something to do with it!' she said.

‘You're kidding!'

She described the interview she had had and how the detective kept pressing her to answer in a certain way.