Chapter 18
Things That Have Bloody Annoyed Me This Afternoon:
Velvet cushions on the banquettes at the pub. Can’t stand velvet.
The spoons at the buffet – scratchy and heavy. Forks like shovels.
Sitting on a warm toilet seat at the crematorium.
Funeral small talk.
Cooked meat smell at the buffet.
The strap of my bag which kept sliding off my shoulder.
Being kidnapped.
The Bad Seeds were out in force when we left the crematorium, screaming my name, wearing T-shirts with Rhiannon’s face on, covered in blood, wanting autographs and throwing flowers at me.
A few of them forced me in front of their phones for wet-cheeked selfies and shoved pink bunny rabbits into my arms. One had actually brought a real rabbit and dyed it pink, just for me.
‘What do you think, what do you think?’ she gurned as she tried to thrust it into my arms.
‘Erm, thanks?’ I said, and the woman roared and turned to her friends. ‘Oh em gee, she’s so funny! I love her so much, she’s just like her mom!’
There were more of them at the pub too, where the wake was, but River had appeared like my own personal bodyguard again, and kept them away from me, so I could grieve in peace over my veggie samosas.
As he pushed them back and yanked away overeager Bad Seeds from tearing at my clothes or trying to pull out strands of my hair, I felt like I should be paying him.
He had his own vehicle – an electric SUV he was renting – so he wasn’t taking advantage of the free bar and he got himself an orange juice and sat in the corner of the event room, watching me and Heather greet the mourners and showing them which end of the buffet to start from – ‘Sausage rolls to cupcakes, spoons in the centre, help yourself to tea and coffee.’
When I had a moment away from long-lost relatives and people who ‘hadn’t seen me since I was that high’, I squeezed through the throng and sat at River’s table for two on the vacant keg stool.
We talked about the funeral, my bandaged hand, and life in general.
He sneak-offered me a puff of his joint under the table to ease my anxiety but I declined.
He was easy to talk to, despite the moody, menacing, heavily tattooed ‘Stay the fuck away from me’ aura he radiated.
‘Who was the Scavenger’s Daughter?’ he asked.
‘It’s not a who,’ I said, ‘it’s a torture device they used on priests in the olden days. The pub’s mega-old, like Tudor.’
‘Nice.’ A faint grin appeared but he said nothing more.
‘River, why are you here?’
‘You know why. The threat. The threat that’s amped up a gear in the last forty-eight hours.’
‘The only threat I’ve felt in the last few weeks has come from you.’
‘From me?’
‘Yes. It’s quite disconcerting to see you staring at me between the trees in my own garden, or from the back of the bus, or … London. It’s scary.’
His eyes changed – going softer somehow. ‘I scare you?’
‘Well, yeah. I don’t like being followed.’
‘It’s for your own good.’
‘Says who? Rhiannon? Because of this so-called “danger” that I’m in?’
At the mention of her name, he bit his lower lip and got up from the table. I thought he was going to leave but instead he went up to the bar and got himself another drink. When he returned, he changed the subject.
‘Barman keeps staring at you.’
‘What?’
He picked up his keg stool and moved it so he was sitting between me and the barman’s stare. ‘There.’
‘Rhiannon messaged me. She told me about this danger I was in. Said she’d sent someone to look out for me. I can only assume she meant you.’
‘Nailed it.’ He swigged his drink and winced at the taste. ‘I’m duty bound to look after you.’
‘Why “duty bound”? Is she paying you?’
‘No,’ he sort-of laughed, shaking his head. ‘I owe her my life. You see what happened was—’
‘I know,’ I interrupted. ‘I read the book.’
His head dipped. ‘So you get it.’
‘Yeah, but you don’t owe her. How long have you been doing this?’
‘I contacted her just after she was extradited to the UK for sentencing five years ago. I said if she ever needed me to do something on the outside, I’d be like her foot soldier. Most of the stuff she wanted me to do was here.’
‘Like what?’
‘Stuff she’d read in the papers. Guys on the outside who’d evaded justice. She just wanted me to … give them warnings. A few women had contacted her in jail and told them things like how their spouses were beating them up or that a paedophile had moved onto their estate, things like that.’
I leaned in. ‘So you went around and killed these people? Willy-nilly?’
‘I wouldn’t say “willy-nilly” – I just made damn sure they weren’t a problem anymore.’
‘How are you allowed to just keep popping into the UK to kill people?’
He laughed. ‘I’m British by double descent. Both my grandmothers were Brits so I got a dual passport.’
‘So you’ve been doing this for five years? Just wandering round, waiting for a call from Rhiannon to kill whoever?’
‘Pretty much. It’s not always killing – sometimes it’s just a warning. Or like now, she asked me to protect you. That’s been my favourite job so far.’
‘That’s no life, River. I don’t think you want to do this.’
‘I have to.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I owe her.’
‘No, again, you don’t. She didn’t go to that flat to save you – she went there to kill the man who had hurt Rafael when he was a child. You being there was just a fluke.’
‘If she hadn’t have killed him—’
‘—yeah, I get it, God knows what else would have happened to you. But you don’t owe her your life. And you don’t need to look after me anymore either. I’ll be all right.’
He swigged his OJ, wincing again at the taste. ‘No, you won’t.’
‘Yes, I will. My life is none of your business, River, and it’s none of Rhiannon’s either. She gave up that right over sixteen years ago. Plus it’s kind of creepy, you being a full-grown man and me being a sixteen-year-old girl. Can you not see that?’
‘You must know I wouldn’t dream of putting you in danger.’
‘I know. And I’m glad you got rid of Mitch. And saved me today from the fans. I appreciate it. But I can look after myself. I have to.’
He was silent for a long time. We both watched the comings and goings of the wake.
The slide show on the projector screen above the snooker table had started – endless pictures of Mum at work, Mum at play, Mum on the beach, Mum and me outside the cinema where she’d taken me to see the reboot of The Land Before Time just before I got mad into dinosaurs.
The sound system played 100 Greatest Musicals on a loop.
I caught River looking directly at me like he was staring into my bones – his face took my breath away in the light of the table lamp.
He had these huge black-brown eyes that twinkled when he smiled, which wasn’t often.
Jet-black hair. On his knuckles there were tattooed letters.
One the left hand, ANGEL and the right, DEMON.
He pushed his empty glass away standing up but swaying slightly. I knew there wasn’t just OJ in there.
‘Are you going to be okay to drive?’ I asked.
‘I think so.’ He shook his head like a dog shaking off a flea. ‘Where’s the men’s room?’
‘Through the door there and down the steps.’
‘Thanks.’
He was definitely not walking in a straight line to that door.
In the meantime, I sat alone at the table, continuing to watch the slide show.
Pictures of Mum and me paddling in Tenerife; her with a killer tan and wearing rock-star sunglasses and laughing hard.
She looked so healthy and happy. There were no pictures of Mitch, thank God – Heather had filtered those out – so it was all Mum on her own or Mum with me.
I could feel the tears coming again as ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ from Mamma Mia!
played over the montage. Video footage of us at the zoo, us at some park, walking along a wall on the seafront, trick or treating, tiny me in a sea of Christmas presents.
It hit me then – just how fucking lucky I’d been to have her as my mum.
I glanced across at Melissa and Larry, slow-dancing to the song.
It wasn’t their fault they weren’t her. But it made me all the more determined to find someone I actually wanted to be with, instead of settling for two people who were only here out of duty; one who looked appalled every time her eyes landed on me, and the other who couldn’t stop scouring eBay for the prices of my mum’s things.
Melissa hadn’t said a single word to me since we’d got to the pub, not even to ask about my cut hand.
I guessed she had her own stuff going on.
She was a recovering alcoholic after all, stuck grieving her only sister with nothing to comfort her but a smelly husband, an indifferent stepchild and a Diet Coke.
Heather caught my eye as she talked to two women and pointed out the very end of the table where there were two plates of vegetarian samosas, neatly labelled. You okay? she motioned as the tears rolled down my cheeks. I nodded, wiping my eyes.
The barman appeared to clear the two glasses from my table. ‘Uh, there’s another slide show supposed to start in a bit but we can’t get the laptop to work. Your mum was going to sort it but we can’t find her.’
‘She’s not my mum – she’s my solicitor,’ I sniffed. ‘My mum’s the one in the coffin.’
‘Oh shit, sorry.’ He smiled. He was cute for a bloke. If I’d have been straight I’d have gone for him. Not as good-looking as River, but good enough for round here. ‘Could you have a look? I’m not into tech.’
‘Sure.’
I followed him through the heaving function space to the bar area.
‘It’s just here,’ he said.
I changed over the next set of slides easily, and they opened up a whole new host of memories – birthday parties with assorted kindergarten friends, custom-made birthday cakes, stacks of gifts, me at the pantomime, me coming first in Sports Day sprints, me in a fairy outfit on a stage.
And she was there, for every event – capturing every minute, cheering me on. My heart ached.
‘There you go,’ I said as I hunkered down in the cubby behind the crisps’ cabinet. ‘Sorted.’
‘Ah, that’s great, thanks.’ He had an accent that I couldn’t place and he poured me a Diet Coke from the hose and set it down on the counter.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m Louis, just moved here.’ He shook my hand as I swigged the Coke.
It tasted funny.
‘Is there vodka in this?’
‘Did you see me put vodka in it?’
‘No.’
‘There isn’t then, is there? Have a seat, stay awhile.’
I took a seat on a high stool, watching the people at the other end of the bar where the wake wasn’t taking place.
Where people weren’t grieving. Where life was happy and safe and people had parents and homes that weren’t empty but for three strange Australians and a solicitor I only knew because my serial killer mum had stopped her being gang raped in a rusty blue van.
‘I thought your mum was that serial killer?’ said Louis, replacing the empty card of Scampi Fries on the wall behind him.
I hiccupped. ‘Yeah, she is. I meant my other mother. Adopted.’
‘Ah, right.’
‘You’re not a Bad Seed, are you?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t seen you in here before. We came in for a meal recently.’
‘I haven’t worked here long. It’s a nice area though. Lot of money around here. Expect you’re loaded now, int ya?’
I didn’t like his face all of a sudden. And I was convinced there was something in the Coke – there was an aftertaste I didn’t recognise, though he definitely hadn’t put anything else in there or I’d have seen.
I wanted to go back to the table where River was but I couldn’t get down off the stool.
Half the glass of Coke gone, I started to feel woozy.
I felt like putting my head down on the counter and falling asleep.
Another guy appeared in a jean jacket beside me.
‘We’ll take you home if you like,’ said the barman.
‘No, I’m all right, thanks. I’m here with … some family.’
‘I can’t see any of your family looking for you. Come on,’ said Jean Jacket as he grabbed my elbow. All I could smell was his cologne. All I could taste was that weird aftertaste. I just wanted to sleep but even so I knew I shouldn’t leave with them.
‘I don’t know who you are.’ I didn’t even know if I was saying the right words – my vision had become all fuzzy as the Jean Jacket guy led me out of the function room.
My legs were moving beneath me but I didn’t want them to.
Everything was spinning, like when I was drunk – except I couldn’t be drunk.
I looked around for the barman but he had disappeared.
There were so many people about but nobody I recognised.
Where was Heather? Where was River? Larry?
Jordy? Melissa? Anybody. I needed help. I didn’t know these lads.
Two of them now – Jean Jacket and the barman.
As we got to the door, another one appeared and started walking with us.
‘Come on, let’s get you outside into fresh air, shall we?’ said Jean Jacket. The barman was holding me up on the other side. Flashes. Shouting.
Cold air.
Freezing cold air.
Red car.
Cigarette stink.
Warm seats. What did I do with that Swiss Army knife?
Get in there.
Fast engine.
Shit, it’s at home! I left it. Where’s my bag? Where’s my bag?!
Accents. Three voices all the same. Not Scouse. Brummie. Birmingham. Strangers. Shit, this was bad. This was really, really bad.
Hot air. Vents blasting.
Freezing air. Air conditioner on to clear the windscreen.
Shut the fuck up and drive!
Freezing air again.
Pain. My hair being pulled. Head inside a bag. Cloth bag.
Someone with the name ‘Louis’.
And then everything went black.