Page 59 of First Blood
Bryant tore his eyes away from the narrative while he still could. No way was he going to intrude on her private life to this degree. No way in hell.
But he couldn’t help glancing back at the photo where he saw something that he really wished he hadn’t.
Chapter Fifty-One
Kim wasn’t one to let the issue of opening hours stop her from going where she wanted to go, and under the cover of darkness she climbed over the metal entrance gate to Powke Lane Cemetery.
Didn’t everyone visit dead relatives at 9p.m.? Well, after a long day at work she certainly did.
It wasn’t something she did all the time. Now and again she came to Mikey’s grave when the gates were open. The only problem there was that other people were around and sometimes she wanted a private conversation with her brother.
She followed the road as it wound its way to the top of the cemetery, the graves on either side overflowing with wreaths, flowers, reindeers and snowmen. Many of them guilt gifts, already apologising to the dead for the merriment of Christmas they were about to enjoy. Mikey’s grave was empty of adornments. There was nothing of the festive season she intended to enjoy.
She came to a stop right beside the bench. She needed no lamplight to guide her to his headstone. A tall black marble headstone that she had saved for from her sixteenth birthday to replace the temporary marker that had been there for ten years.
It was simple in its inscription. His name and the years in between. Six short years represented by a short dash that mirrored barely any life at all.
Even now she could not hold down the rage at the woman who had done this to them. Their own mother, Patricia Stone, who now resided at Grantley Care, a secure facility for the criminally insane. She tried not to think of the woman, but a visit to Mikey was inextricably linked to the rage button in her soul.
Kim’s earliest memory was of her mother advancing towards the two of them with a bread knife in her hand.
Paranoid schizophrenia had been responsible for the woman’s conviction that Mikey, her own son, was the devil.
Kim recalled little else from those first six years, other than her numerous attempts to kill him and her own efforts to protect him. Kim had always sensed she was the oldest twin and her innate need to protect him had confirmed it.
But her mother had finally got her way when she’d chained the two of them to a radiator, in the scorching heat of the summer, in the flat from where no one had heard their cries.
A few cream crackers and a half bottle of Coke that she’d fished from under the bed with her foot had been rationed for the first few days, but eventually, soiled, ill and dehydrated her twin brother had died in her arms.
She had lain next to his body barely conscious for two days before help had finally come and the door had been broken down by police officers.
She remembered little of the two weeks that had followed, where she had been in hospital fighting for her life. By the time she was released the press had lost interest in the story. She had never read a report or looked at a newspaper clipping about the events of her life. She didn’t need to: she’d been present the whole time. She’d even heard that a book had been self-published by a money-grabbing journalist trying to make money from her misery. She had been oblivious to it all when she’d been removed from the hospital and delivered to Fairview Children’s Home with a half-full bin liner containing her possessions.
What had followed was a succession of foster homes that had each left a mark on her in some way. With the stream of homes had come an equally long line of psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors all trying to crack open her psyche and pour out the contents like a raw egg. Only one had been different; a middle-aged man named Ted who had allowed her to sit silently and watch the fish in his tiny garden pond. She didn’t speak during their sessions but she had always felt calmer when she left. In his own quiet, non-invasive way he had tried to get her to talk about her pain, but she had resisted every attempt and had instead chosen to build boxes in her mind where she stored all the bad memories from her past. She didn’t open those boxes for fear of what would happen if she did.
Even when she visited her twin brother she tried only to remember his smile when she’d found some kind of treasure in the kitchen or his chuckle when she had tickled his feet. Those were the memories she allowed out of the box.
Those moments were precious to her, evidence of the bond that had existed between them and couldn’t even be broken in death.
He was still, and would always be, the other half of her and it was where she would always go when she needed to talk.
She lowered herself and sat down at his headstone.
‘So, Mikey, I’ve got this new team…’
Chapter Fifty-Two
Kevin Dawson reclined the passenger seat in his Ford Escort to the lowest position and lay back. He’d considered trying his mates again to beg a bed for the night but had known that wasn’t going to work. His mates didn’t mind him kipping on a spare sofa, but the patience of their wives and girlfriends was starting to wear thin. And much as he would have loved to have been bedding down somewhere comfy and warm, he didn’t want to place a strain on anyone else’s relationship.
He had briefly considered Lou again but the sick feeling from the morning had stayed with him until lunch time.
He’d considered his parents but they wouldn’t leave him alone until he told them what was going on with Ally and he wasn’t ready to do that. He didn’t even want to think about it, let alone talk it out.
And his overdraft limit prevented him considering a hotel, even a cheap one. The few quid he had would be needed for food and drink, to get him to next pay day. But none of that mattered right now.
The discomfort couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.
After some gentle persuasion he had something coming that would blow his boss’s socks off.
