Ghosts in the Morning Read online

  The man got closer, but he was still looking up. He was rotund and red-faced, though whether that was from the exertion of the rock-climbing or the howling wind, it was hard to tell. Or maybe he was just florid-faced. Too many whiskies for too many years, perhaps...no, not whisky, it would be real ale. Pints of real ale with his twitcher friends in pubs that smelled of wet dogs. The man had a moustache; thick brown hair perched on his top lip like a soggy turd. I hated moustaches. Uncle Peter had a moustache.

  The man drew alongside me, and reached for his binoculars. As he did so, the point of his elbows caught me in the side of the ribs. I flinched but the man didn’t seem to notice that he’d struck me, or didn’t care. I gritted my teeth and stared at the man. He stared back, a mixture of impatience and contempt on his face. A cruel face, an arrogant face. He didn’t see me, he didn’t care, I was beneath him. He pushed past me, crossing to another rock, then turned his back and stared out to sea, binoculars raised.

  I am invisible.

  I felt the anger well, then a quickening as my blood starting to pump faster through my body. Like with the cyclist. My synapses started to crackle and I breathed deep. I turned my head, left and right, there was no-one around. I crossed the rock, the sound of my wet sneakers muffled by the wind, and I stepped behind the man. The rock jutted out over the ocean’s scream. A precarious place to stand. Unsafe, easy enough to have an accident, especially on a day like this. He didn’t see me, he didn’t hear me.

  I reached up and put my hands on the small of his back. His jacket was one of those expensive waxed ones, green and greasy with the rain and the sea spray. He must have felt the pressure as he started to turn. I shoved firmly. For a brief millisecond, he seemed to hang in the air, like a startled marionette, then he was gone. I stepped carefully to the edge of the rock. His body looked small, all crashed and broken on the jagged rocks below. The sea continued to pound relentlessly at the coast, growing large with the incoming tide, then a huge wave swept in, white horses rearing on its crest and claimed the man from the rocks.

  I turned around and headed back to my car. And just then I remembered. It wasn’t a parliament, no, that applied to owls. It was a murder of crows.

  ***

  ‘Where have you been, I’m starving?’

  ‘No, Graham, I would hardly say you’re starving,’ I said, pointing at his stomach. ‘Let’s be honest, I think you’ve got a few spare pounds there to keep you going.’

  ‘Don’t be facetious, Andrea. Besides, I’ve lost a bit of weight recently, actually,’ Graham whined, tapping his pot belly. ‘I’ve been going to the gym at lunchtimes now and again.’

  I snorted. More likely spending lunchtimes with Nikki. I vaguely remembered something about her flat being close to the office.

  ‘So, where have you been? And what’s for dinner?’

  I sighed. I didn’t really know where I had been. I had driven around in a fugue state, the car radio softly playing the latest pop drivel. I wasn’t really sure where I’d driven, nor of the route I had taken. I had probably driven around in large circles, it’s not like Jersey was that big, but I couldn’t be sure, there was a blur on my recall. I had been to the shop though, I knew that. I remembered the tinny, soporific music – songs I used to like destroyed in cheap cover versions by singers who couldn’t sing - and I lifted up the Marks & Spencer bag, and showed Graham the boxes within. Chicken dinners, sweet and sour sauce, microwave only, nice and easy. Separate boxes for the rice. I had planned to go to the fish market, some salmon perhaps, or some fresh king prawns, but I must have changed my mind. Perhaps my unconscious mind has steered me away from the prawns - I remembered from school that prawns were the scavengers of the ocean. They hovered up all of sea’s detritus, all of the dead bits, and I Imagined that would include rotting corpses.

  ‘Daniel phoned, he said he was going for a pizza with the boys, so...’ Graham said, realising that I wasn’t going to answer.

  I shook my head clear, and reached into the nag. ‘Okay, okay, no problem, I’ll freeze one of these dinners, I think they can be frozen,’ I said, then set about preparing dinner. I slipped the cardboard sleeves off two boxes and grabbed a fork, clutching it like a dagger. I pierced the film – I liked to stab the film hard and fast with the fork – then I jabbed at the buttons on the microwave. Minutes later and ping! I didn’t ask Graham if he wanted anything else with his dinner, I couldn’t be bothered, and the egg fried rice had a few peas mixed in anyway. Maybe not enough to count as one of his five-a-day but what did I care?

  ‘Will you pour me one of those?’ Graham asked, as I filled a glass with white wine. ‘Make it a large one.’

  He sounded tired. ‘Bad day?’ I still cared, a little, and it annoyed me.

  ‘Yes, yes, it was. Well, bad week, really,’ Graham sighed. ‘There has been some new Auditing Standards issued earlier this year and they’re a complete pain in the arse. I mean, I know we’re auditors and it’s meant to be our job and all that, but there must be a point when enough is enough...’ He bit into a piece of chicken, and the juice squirted on his chin. He wiped his chin with the palm of his hand, and then wiped his hand on the tablecloth.

  I ground my teeth together. The tablecloth was white and the sweet and sour sauce looked like it stained.

  ‘And, well, those new Standards mean even more controls over us, as auditors, I mean it’s probably going to take us longer to satisfy the requirements for the audit file itself than it is to do the actual fieldwork of the audit.’

  I poured another large glass of wine and Graham raised his eyebrows at me. ‘You going to leave some for me?’ he said.

  I topped his glass up to halfway, then the bottle ran dry. There was another bottle in the fridge but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  ‘So, anyway,’ he continued, ‘here I am, spending most of my time trying to justify the increase in next year’s audit fees due to these new Standards. I’m getting loads of flak from our clients, I’ve got Finance Directors queuing up to kick my arse.’

  Graham sucked and smacked his lips together, the greasy coating dribbling again on his chin, reminding me again of Uncle Peter, how he used to drool like an overexcited boxer dog, before sucking the saliva back into that mouth with its broken yellow teeth and its sour alcoholic breath and...

  ‘Anyway, I guess that’s enough of my boring work talk, I guess you don’t want to hear about all of that audit stuff. So, how was your day, did you do anything exciting?’

  Well, I killed a man – in fact, it was the second person I’ve killed in less than a week – was that classed as exciting? I mean, I would call it unusual, certainly, but exciting? I don’t know, Graham, what do you think?

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  Chapter 5

  Uncle Peter wasn’t related to me, he wasn’t my real uncle. But I was expected to call him “‘Uncle”’ though, I was told to call all of my Mum’s boyfriends ‘Uncle’. I should always respect grown-ups, my Mum said.

  I was ten years old when he first raped me. He told me not to tell my mother or he would kill her. And me, too. I was sure he would, too, he was a large, ugly, strong man, and quick to anger. There was a permanent aura of violence around him, like an evil smog. Sometimes at night, I would hear Uncle Peter and my Mum arguing, then there would be the sounds of blows, fists on flesh. Then the arguing would stop.

  The first time he raped me was the worst. He hadn’t been living with us for long then, a few weeks I think, but it seemed like longer. Mum had had quite a few boyfriends since Dad left, but none had been serious, none had come close to moving in. A lot of them didn’t even stay the night.

  Mum was asleep the first time he raped me. They had been out, had left me alone in front of the black and white television, while they went to the pub. Mum had wagged her finger at me as she went out – ‘now, don’t be staying up too late, Andrea, watching that box all night, and remember don’t open the door to any strangers. And don’t answer the phone. I know you’re big e
nough to be alright on your own, but some of the nosey bastards round here don’t see things the way we do, right?’.

  As soon as I heard the key in the lock, I flicked the television off and went upstairs to read my book. Mum never let me read much, there was always some washing-up I had to do, or some cleaning. Besides, it was safer to go to my bed, I didn’t want to risk falling asleep on the sofa, it was best to be out of the way when they’d been drinking.

  A few hours later, I had woken up with my book across my face. I heard my Mum and Uncle Peter shouting at each other in the kitchen, so I hurriedly turned off my bedside light. Then I heard Mum stomp upstairs, tripping over some of the stairs and cursing. Another ten minutes or so passed, then I heard Mum snoring. The walls were paper thin in that house.

  Every house has its own set of creaks and groans that emanate at certain points of the night, sometimes it’s as if the house itself is rolling over to go to sleep. But when you have lived in the same place for a while, there are always certain noises that you know for sure aren’t just the house resting. One of our stairs – the third one from the top – was loose. Whenever you stepped on it, it would creak and then slap back down like a muffled clapboard. I always stretched my legs and missed out that step when I went up or down the stairs. It was habit. Even Mum had done it when she had stomped up the stairs earlier.

  I heard the third step creak and then the dull slap as the wood fell back down. I closed my eyes tight, and felt the air shift. My nose twitched as it was hit with the pungent smell of alcohol, laced with tobacco. I tried to force my eyes to stay closed, tried to will my breathing to sound relaxed, to simulate sleep, but a creeping fear grasped my eyelids and slowly prised them open.

  Uncle Peter was standing at the edge of my bed. ‘You alright, love, you had a good night in front of that telly?’

  His body was swaying slightly, but his eyes remained still, staring at me. The hint of moonlight that sprinkled through the curtain made them yellow, matching the teeth that were visible in his ugly attempt at a smile.

  Everything happened really fast and really slow then. I remember scrunching up my eyes as tight as I could, willing myself to unconsciousness, so I could pretend it was all a dream, but I couldn’t, it hurt too much. Like a freezing fire between my legs. He told me not to scream, but I couldn’t help it. His hand was over my mouth the whole time, though, so the scream stayed silent. His moustache was the worst, its bristles scraped my face, my neck, my back...

  Afterwards, I didn’t cry much - I’m sure some tears fell, but mostly I remember hugging my knees to my chest and rocking back and forth, and wondering what my Mum would make of the blood on my sheets. I didn’t go to school the next day, I told Mum I didn’t feel well. I think she saw the sheets and assumed that my periods had started, so she gave me some sanitary towels and asked if school had explained about ‘that monthly stuff’. She hadn’t waited for an answer.

  From then on I didn’t sleep very well. Uncle Peter would rape me at least once or twice a week. It was almost worse on the nights that he didn’t come to my room. Almost. I would lay wide awake all night, staring at my bedroom door, shaking with fear. I would clasp my hands together so tight, praying to God to make it stop. After a few nights I stopped that, and I have never prayed again. I wanted to tell my Mum, or someone, but I was too scared. Every single time before he did it, no matter how drunk he was, how slurred his words were, he would hiss the words again at me, the words he had said on the first night. ‘Don’t tell anyone, love, yeah, you know what will happen, don’t you? I’ll kill your mother. And then I’ll kill you.’ Sometimes as he said it, he would pinch the sides of my throat between his thick, gnarly fingers. He would stare at me as I struggled for breath, and a terrifying panic would overwhelm me. Spots of light would dart across my vision. When I was smaller, I used to think these flashes of light were fairies, glimpsed infrequently in our world, but I think then I understood they weren’t fairies at all, and I used to dread seeing them. There would be a strange smile across Uncle Peter’s face as I fought to breathe and I wondered if one day he would just forget to let go, and would kill me by accident.

  It was worse when he was really drunk, it would take longer. That’s when I was the most scared by the choking. He would squeeze until I began to scratch at his arms with my nails, trying to dig into those greasy, hairy arms. Then he’d stop squeezing and stroke my hair as he forced his brutish penis into me. For a while I thought about killing myself, or running away, but I didn’t know where to go, I knew I wouldn’t survive on my own. And I didn’t want to leave Mum with him, I was sure he would kill her.

  But suddenly it all stopped. It stopped because Uncle Peter had a nasty accident. It was a few days after my twelfth birthday. Mum had gone out to see her sister to do some shopping or gossiping or both, I wasn’t sure. Maybe she just wanted to get out of the house. As she left and the front door slammed, I spotted a nasty glint in Uncle Peter’s eye. I had gone up to my bedroom and clenched my eyes shut.

  He was at the top of the stairs. They were very steep stairs, they wouldn’t be allowed to build stairs like that in houses anymore. Not safe at all, they wouldn’t meet the health and safety regulations these days. Apparently, he lost his footing and tumbled awkwardly. It was me who called the police. They came really quick too, they did in those days, before they got bogged down in bureaucracy and paperwork. There were two of them and they arrived at the same time as the ambulance. The policewoman sat down next to me on our sofa – it was an orange, velour sofa, worn and threadbare – and she put her arm around me, and told me I was very brave, and that I had done really well to make the emergency call. When my mother came home, I heard the policeman speaking to her, even though his voice was very low. I had good hearing, I think it was honed through practice. The policeman told Mum that Uncle Peter had had a bad accident, ‘them are dangerous stairs, easy to trip, and sorry love, but I think he’d had a drink too, I really am sorry love, yes you best go to your daughter, love, she’s been really brave, must have been a real shock for the little’un ’, and then I heard one of the ambulance men whisper to the policeman that it looked like Uncle Peter’s head had caught the banisters, and his neck had been broken. ‘It would have been quick, he wouldn’t have felt a thing’, the ambulance man had said, but I remember thinking that that was unlikely, if you smash your head and break your neck, it has to hurt a lot, even if it is only for a split second.

  I never told Mum about Uncle Peter and the abuse. I never told anyone. I didn’t see the point. It was too late. Uncle Peter took a piece of me that I could never get back, no matter how much talking was done, and he was dead. I didn’t want to bring it all up, it didn’t seem fair to Mum.

  I have often wondered since if Mum knew what was going on or, at least, suspected what was happening, but I could never bring myself to ask her. And I just get worked up now if I think too much about it, I mean, I was just a young girl, I should have been able to count on my Mum, there’s no fucking way on earth that should have happened, I was just a fucking kid...

  Mum died a few years later, there was only so much alcohol and cigarettes her body could take. I was sent to live with an Auntie that I had never even met; she was a sister of my long-absent dad that the social services tracked down, and supposedly she was happy to take me in. They never said anything about the whereabouts of my dad. Living with my Auntie didn’t last very long. She was too old and frail to look after me, especially as I was having some ‘adjustment issues’, as the social worker put it, so they put me in a care home.

  I heard they tore down our old house a few months after Mum died. Not surprising really, those stairs were awfully dangerous.

  ***

  I eagerly snatched up the newspaper. I had noticed something on one of the inside pages, as Graham had leafed idly through it over breakfast. Something about a cyclist. I had been impatient for Graham to finish reading, but he had taken his time. I had ground my teeth at the sound of his chewing, his bov
ine cheeks flapping over the noisy mulch of cereal. I had to dig my nails into my palms to stop my fingers from drumming on the table; he was possessive over the paper in the morning, as if it were his to read first by some inalienable right. He said I had plenty of time to read it the night before, but I never usually bothered to read it through. Occasionally I glanced at the back pages to see who had been born, or died or got married, but I found the stories on the front pages – the local news - depressing. Most of the time it was just politicians grandstanding about their latest projects, or claiming that another new rise in taxes was for our benefit, was for the good of the island. Jersey news was thankfully low key most of the time, there wasn’t too much crime. Sure, there had been the odd murder but this was still rare – usually, crimes consisted of a drugs bust, or some poor drunken mug getting a kicking from other drunken mugs.

  The door slammed as Graham left and I flicked to the page I’d spotted earlier. A short article, with the headline ‘Cyclist tragedy’.

  The body of a cyclist was found on Wednesday morning in La Rue de Martie. The cyclist, who the police have said is a man in his late fifties, was found with fatal injuries near the wall along the northern end of the lane. The police have asked for witnesses to come forward. They have not yet disclosed any further details and a police spokesman refused to confirm whether the death was suspicious. The body was discovered by a farmer, who told the Jersey Daily that it looked like a tragic accident, stating that the road was pitch black at night, with a lethal ditch running alongside it. The cyclist has not yet been named.