Page 28 of The Tapes
Nicola really has been chatting.
‘Sort of,’ I say.
‘You shouldn’t worry too much about her. I’ve told her she’s a snob but she relishes it.’ He waits a second. ‘But Nicola’s worried about you.’
I should’ve known it would get back to him. I was talking about Mum, on the back of Dad’s death. It all sounds a bit depressive; all a bit like I might be considering hitting the bottle. Which is obviously why we’re here.
‘I didn’t specifically come to see you,’ Kieron adds, as if reading my mind. ‘I was visiting my storage unit, then saw you coming out. I know it’s been tough after your dad. I suppose I’m worried…’
He angles himself gently towards the pub, making the point sledgehammer-style. On the other side of the garden a group of five lads are talking loudly as they sup pints of lager. I keep reading that young people today aren’t into drink or drugs but I guess there are always exceptions.
‘Seven years and one hundred and thirty-two days,’ I say. ‘I was there last night.’
‘I’m not checking up on you.’
‘It feels like it.’
Nicola’s father takes this in his stride, sipping his drink again with barely a tilt of his square ol’ head.
‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ he asks.
I almost laugh because we’re already here and his intentions are so obvious. Kieron Parris is a man of the old-school parenting and policing. Nicola once told me that he made her smoke ten cigarettes in a row, because he found a packet in her school bag. That really does sum up his approach.
‘We’re here now,’ I say, making a point to drink the lemonade, which is already mainly water. The sun is high and the only shade is the crooked parasol that’s barely covering me at all.
‘I saw Allie Rowett earlier,’ I say, largely because I want the response. I get it, of course, as Kieron tenses, a vein appearing in his neck.
‘Why?’
‘I invited her to Dad’s funeral. We were neighbours for long enough.’
His pint is halfway to his mouth but stuck in mid-air. ‘Is that all?’
‘She told me she believed me.’
He waits a moment, sips, returns the drink to the picnic table, then nods shortly. We both know what this means. ‘Peopledidbelieve you,’ he says.
‘Mum didn’t. Dad didn’t.’
Kieron bites his lip, not sure what to say. We both know my parentsdidbelieve me, but chose not to cause unnecessary trouble. The reason Kieron is aware of all this is because he was the person who interviewed me at the police station after I’d rammed a glass in Jake Rowett’s face.
Years had passed, I was drunk in town and saw him in a pub. By that time, Mum had disappeared and Dad no longer lived next to the Rowetts. I watched from across the bar as Jake stared at a young woman further along. She couldn’t have been much older than eighteen or nineteen and I knew that look on his face.
That’s why Allie Rowett said he deserved it – because he did.
Except you can’t ram a beer glass in a man’s face while being filmed on CCTV – and then walk away as if nothing happened.
It’s been seven years and one hundred and thirty-two days since I last had a drink. Seven years and one hundred and thirty-one days since I sat across from Nicola’s dad in a police cell and told him why I ground that glass deep into Jake’s skin, enjoying his screams, watching the crimson flow, only stopping because I was hauled away, drenched in blood both his and mine.
I was wild that night.
At those church hall meetings, I’ll talk about how it was my lowest moment. It was, of course, and yet there’s a tiny part of me that still relishes those few seconds of long-sought revenge. I can lie to everyone else but not myself.
Except, Faith and Shannon were already friends by then. Nicola was in my life. Her father had been a temporary mentor to Mum after one of her arrests. That’s why it was him. He asked why I’d done it, so I told him everything. The way Jake had stuffed his hand up my top while pinning me to the wall on Christmas Day when I was fifteen; the way nobody stood up for me, including my parents. The absolute fury with which I’d lived across so many years.
It was Kieron who somehow got me off with probation. He was a respected chief inspector, and he knew me. He got me into AA, so I was clean. There was no prison time. I don’t know who he talked to, or the arms he twisted, but it was him – because prison would have been catastrophic. Faith was only ten and would have been taken from me. Both our lives would’ve been wrenched apart because of those few seconds.
It’s a small price, but having to meet with him, to have conversations like this once or twice a year, is worth it – no matter how much I hate it.
