Chapter Four

“You don’t have to pretend you’re in love with me and all that crap, you know,” Donna Maitland said as Kevin Mower rolled out of her bed and slipped into his jeans.

“Sorry,” Mower said, pulling up his zip viciously. Donna slid from under the duvet, naked, blonde hair straggling down her back and her face, stripped of make-up, revealing fine lines that were usually carefully concealed. She was not quite the woman Mower had first seen belting out ‘I Will Survive’ at a karaoke night at one of the local pubs, but he had learned that in many ways she was much more than that woman throwing musical defiance at the world had appeared to be. Dozens of women from the Heights performed nightly on the pub and club circuit, casting off their bras and squeezing into too revealing dresses to exchange their pain and disappointment for a moment of glamour and whoops of drunken enthusiasm from the audience. He knew now that Donna was different. She saw life on the Heights as a challenge and had learned slowly and painfully that occasionally she could win and he admired her for it. But admiration and sex in the afternoon did not equate to anything more. They both knew that and most of the time accepted it. It was only occasionally Mower caught that look of longing in Donna’s eyes before they turned away from each other, he in sudden anger, she in embarrassment.

She pulled a blue silk nightdress over her head to conceal breasts that were beginning to droop and a stomach still flat from fevered dieting but not free of stretch marks, and reached out until Mower sat back down on the bed beside her and put an arm around her waist companionably.

“What is it about you?” she asked. “I’ve been watching you, you know. This weren’t just summat that came up on me today. I’ve watched you wi‘t’kids and seen you come alive wi‘them. And then when you come back to t’bloody adults you switch off, dead as summat that fell off back of a bin lorry. What’s that all about?”

“It’s a long story,” Mower said uneasily, getting up again to pull a sweatshirt over his head and moving out onto the balcony of the fourth floor flat where an icy blast from the Pennines made him recoil. Donna followed him, pulling a robe around herself and standing beside him shivering as they both gazed down at the littered car-park below. Donna’s lips tightened and she looked away so that the sergeant could not see eyes filled with tears which were only partly caused by the wind.

“And a story you’re not going to tell some slag you just picked up on a night out slumming on t’Heights?”

Mower reached out and pulled her closer.

“Don’t do that to yourself, Donna,” Mower said. “You don’t deserve it.”

“So why won’t you tell me about her? I know there’s someone else. I can see it in your eyes when you get into bed. It’s not me you really want. Dumped you, did she?”

Mower shuddered slightly as the wind threw a flurry of needle sharp sleet in their faces.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said, turning and urging Donna back inside.

“So you dumped her and now you’re regretting it?”

“She …” Mower hesitated. “You don’t need to worry about her. She died.”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,” Donna said quickly, her eyes filling with tears again. She dashed them away and began to get dressed, pulling clothes on quickly to cover flesh she did not want Mower to inspect too closely. Mower stood with his back against the balcony door looking at her, wishing he could give her what she so desperately wanted and knowing that he never could. He followed her into the living room where she began a furious tidying away of the previous night’s mugs and glasses which covered the coffee table.

“You don’t need to be sorry for me. It’s over now,” he said.

“Aye, but it’s never over, is it?” Donna said. “My sister lost her lad. He were t‘first to OD on smack. Too pure, they said, as if that made it any easier. She’ll not get over it. Not ever. Why d’you think I’m so gutted that the Project’s getting trashed by t’minutes. It’s to stop kids like our Terry getting hooked. And my Emma, for that matter, though she’s little yet.”

Mower glanced at his watch. Emma was Donna’s eight year old daughter and as far as he knew she did not know of his existence. It was a situation he preferred to maintain.

“She’ll be home soon, won’t she? I’d better go.”

Donna glanced out of the window again to where a straggle of school-children could be seen making their way round the corner of the neighbouring block of flats.

“Just let me get my coat on, it’s coming down like stair-rods out there,” she said. “I’ll walk down with you. I don’t like her coming up them stairs on her own. You never know who’s about.” Donna went back into the bedroom and within minutes had slipped into a jacket and carefully repaired her make-up and hair.

“Will I do?” she asked with an attempt at coquettishness as she came back into the living room.

“You’ll do fine,” Mower said, kissing her gently on the lips and opening the front door of the flat for her. They made their way along the rain-swept walkway to the concrete stairs which led to ground level.

“You wait there,” Mower said. “I’ll watch her safely up.”

“I’ll be back over t’road at seven,” Donna said, her face determined again. “I’ve got a babysitter sorted. And Kevin …”

Mower glanced back.

“I didn’t mean owt,” Donna said. “Just good friends, right?”

“Right,” Mower said, with what he hoped was the right degree of enthusiasm. He set off down the stairs without looking back and by the time he had reached the ground floor a small fair child in school uniform had made her way into the hallway where the single lift boasted an out-of-order sign.

“Your mum’s at the top, Emma,” he said quietly, but the child gave him a frightened look and hurried up the stairs, her school bag banging against her bare legs painfully as she ran. Mower stood at the bottom for a moment looking up until he heard Donna greet her daughter loudly enough for him to hear. It was not until the echo of their footsteps along the walkway above had died away that he groaned and thumped his fist hard against the concrete wall in a vain attempt to assuage the pain which still consumed him. A drink, he thought, would be good. Two would be better. Six better still. The sleet which was now battering against the doors would not deter him but he guessed that the kids who were waiting for him at the Project just might.

Laura Ackroyd stood on the top step of the Carib Club trying to keep out of the rain and watched the group of Asian boys on the other side of the road with some anxiety. They were a perfect example of what the police used to call loitering with intent, she thought, as one of the teenagers kicked a soft drink can across the road in her direction and fell back against the opposite wall laughing hysterically. She knocked for the third time on the club door and was just about to turn away when she heard the sound of movement inside. Eventually with much shooting of bolts and turning of keys in locks, the door inched open a crack and a voice demanded to know who she was and what she wanted.

“I had an appointment to see Darryl Redmond,” Laura said, pushing her Press card into the gap in the door and straggles of damp red hair out of her eyes.

“Safe,” the voice said and eased the door back sufficiently for her to enter before slamming it shut again.

The interior of the club was gloomy, lit only by the emergency lights over the exits and a faint glow which filtered out from an open door on the opposite side of the cavernous room. Laura had never visited the place before. The Carib was an addition to the Bradfield scene since her own student days at the university when she had gone clubbing with the best. These days an exhausted evening with Michael Thackeray slumped in front of the television and an occasional meal out made up the sum total of her social life. Middle age, she thought, must be creeping up, and she did not much like the prospect.