Page 58 of The Tapes
But, by then, things had become very clear. After five killings in six years, then none in three, Sedingham had seen two in five days.
Seven dead women.
Seven missing earrings.
The Earring Killer was very much back.
TWENTY-NINE
The locksmith arrived after almost exactly ninety minutes. It took around an hour to fix the door and frame, then change the locks.
I wait and watch, desperate to get home to Mum’s tapes that are still under my bed. Perhaps that’s what the burglar had been searching for? I’ve told enough people about them, after all. I swap texts with Faith, who is at Shannon’s house; then more with Liam who is worried about me. Meanwhile, Peter hasn’t sent anything more than his straightforward ‘OK’.
When I finally make it home, I realise I have a much bigger job ahead than I thought.
There are more than thirty separate cassettes in Mum’s box, all of which are ninety minutes long. I start by listening to the first few seconds of each, hoping Mum will say something obvious like, ‘This is my first go at this…’ – which would be a real help.
Once I’ve established there’s no obvious tape that might include her initial try at saying why she believed she was about to be killed, I start the lengthy process of trying to get through them all. I listen to a few seconds, fast forward a bit, then listen to a few more.
Thisis why tapes went out of fashion. The analogue world is now barely comprehensible to me – and I lived through the end part of it.
Mum talks about the walks she’s taken, or the books she’s read. She catalogues her arguments with Viv at book club, and how they apparently disagreed over everything and anything. The problem with trying to fast-forward through the tapes is that I find myself drawn into my mother’s world, as if we’re connecting in a way we never did. I knew she enjoyed reading, that she was in a book club; but I didn’t know her opinions on anything. Her constant fallings-out with other people are so funny all these years later, largely because Mum refuses to believe anyone can hold an opinion that isn’t hers.
The other reason it’s hard to skip forward is because she talks about me a lot.
There is a sports day I don’t remember, in which I apparently won a three-legged race alongside a boy named Damien. There’s the time I took my piano exam and passed first time. I’ve not played in years but, every now and then, I think maybe I’d like to try again. Mum talks about our caravan holidays and the hours we spent pushing one- and two-pence pieces into the slider machines. There was the paddle boat lake, where Dad misjudged getting out and fell into the water. He blamed the boat, of course. Ten-year-old me had the morning off school because Mum had booked an optician appointment. Afterwards, instead of rushing me back to school, we went and got cream buns from the market.
I realise the box of cassettes is the greatest gift my mother could have left. She’s been gone thirteen years and, somehow, it’s only now that I realise how much I miss her. She might be a parent who didn’t stand up for me when she knew what Jake Rowett had done, she might have been a thief and a liar. A woman so far from perfect.
But she was still my mother… and maybe I’d forgotten that.
With the cassettes, I get nowhere, of course. The idea of skipping through the material seems fanciful and ridiculous. A ninety-minute cassette means listening through almost all of it, because I can’t resist.
There’s more talks of Mum’s book club and arguments with Viv. More confessions and flights of fancy. More lies.
More darkness.
She robbed a dress from a shop but got stopped on the way out. The manager took pity on her and didn’t call the police. Mum didn’t need the dress but went back two days later and stole it anyway when somebody else was behind the counter.
She stole aChildren In Needcharity box from a pub but felt so guilty, she put it back the next day. Then she decided she wanted it anyway, so stole it again. She claims she robbed a security van that was picking up cash from a supermarket. I know she didn’t. It would have been too big and she’d have been caught.
I struggle to know what’s true and what isn’t.
There’s such bleakness, and it’s a hard listen – yet then she’ll say that she was proud of me because she went to parents’ evening and all the teachers gushed about how well raised I was.
She’s flawed, but everyone is. Perhaps most don’t recognise it, and certainly don’t record themselves admitting it. This is a diary and a confessional.
A gift.
A curse.
I wish I’d never started listening to them but part of me never wants to stop. Not really. There are so many hours.
I do stop, for now, in the end, because it’s getting dark and it’s been a long day. Because Faith will be home soon.
I don’t think a second version of the tape is in this box.
Owen had my original, and perhaps I’ll never get it back. My phone’s voice recording is what’s left for now.
