Fear of falling, p.1
Fear of Falling, page 1
Also by Cath Staincliffe The Sal Kilkenny Mysteries Looking for Trouble
Go Not Gently
Dead Wrong
Stone Cold Red Hot
Towers of Silence
The Kindest Thing
Witness
Split Second
Blink of an Eye
Letters to My Daughter’s Killer
Half the World Away
The Silence Between Breaths
The Girl in the Green Dress
CONSTABLE
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Constable Copyright © Cath Staincliffe, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-47212-542-2
Constable
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
www.littlebrown.co.uk
In loving memory of my mothers: Evelyn Cullen, 1935–2017, and Margaret Staincliffe, 1931–2017
Contents
Part One 1985–2004
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Part Two 2013–17
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Part One
1985–2004
Chapter One
The first time I saw Bel she was doing the moonwalk. On ice, in the park, New Year’s Eve 1985. The lake was frozen over and a gaggle of us teenagers were there, like animals come to drink at a waterhole. Except we were swapping cider and vodka and the gathering was a way-station, a warm-up (in spite of the chill) for the real destination. A party. A house party, since most of us didn’t have the cash for clubs in town and taxis home, even if we had got fake IDs with doctored dates of birth. It was just a matter of finding out who was having a get-together.
Bel glided in and out of the pools of light cast from the fancy lamp-posts that ringed the perimeter. She was all angles, sharp and sculpted. Her height was emphasised by the long dark coat that eddied about her ankles and swung out as she turned, revealing biker boots, a black-and-white checked skirt shorter than mine, a shiny black top. Her hair was cut short on one side and fell in a smooth inky wave on the other. There was something androgynous about her, even with the skirt and the slash of blood-red lipstick.
The ice squeaked and groaned and people called out, teasing her, warning her.
She spun round and bowed, self-mockery in her eyes. One arm bent across her waist, the other extended, hand cocked, fingers clutching a long, tapered joint.
Whoops and whistles from the crowd.
She straightened, sucked hard on the joint and held the smoke in her lungs before passing it to one of the others watching from the lakeside.
I wondered who she was. I didn’t know everyone there but no one else was so unfamiliar, so particular. She must be new. Or visiting. I wondered if the joint would eventually reach me, if it would do the rounds or circulate only among the inner circle of her friends.
Bel stepped up from the ice onto the pathway and I turned away, remaining next to her gang but not wanting to seem needy, greedy.
Shouts and singing heralded the approach of more people, and as they drew closer, I made out friends from school and felt relief. They were late but at least they’d come. I could lose myself among them, no longer on my own, sticking out like a charity case, someone to be pitied or despised.
Before they reached us, Bel tapped my shoulder, holding the joint in thin fingers, the roach pointed my way. Her dark blue eyes glittered. She smiled, large straight teeth, pointed canines.
That night I thought it was the drugs that made her eyes like that, almost feverish with a brilliant, burning intensity.
‘Thanks.’ Lowering my gaze.
She watched me, I could tell, as I took a drag and felt heat climb into my face. The joint was stained with her lipstick. The taste of it, powdery and sweet, mixed with the pepper of the nicotine, the pungent rubber of the cannabis.
Around us ran murmurs, rumours and speculation, names and addresses, potential sites for the celebration. Kids shivering, feet tapping on the ground to keep the circulation going. Someone’s teeth chattering. A scream of outrage cut off. Bursts of laughter. Fooling around.
Three tokes, and the effects of the smoke rippled through me, over my skull and down my spine, as if I was a cat being stroked.
Grinning, I handed it back to Bel.
She peeled away and my friends were there, pulling out bottles and cigarettes. Someone shouted the name of a street, people cheered, and the mass of us moved off.
The thrill of possibility, the joy of being here and free and young and stoned and part of it all, rose, like bubbles, in my blood.
The party was in an old villa, a student house, the music audible from the end of the street. Rectangles of light spilled from the open front door and the large windows.
In the front garden figures stood around a brazier, faces bright.
No one seemed to be monitoring arrivals. The first of our group walked in. I could see the hallway was crammed. The thud of the bass travelled through me, gave me butterflies.
A shriek to my side, and a Catherine wheel began to spin, pinned to the wooden gate that must have led to the back. Someone too impatient to wait for midnight.
I hung on outside, savouring the whirl of colour, the spokes of stars streaming into the dark.
As it finished, I made my way to the house. The door had shut. I knocked hard and it was flung open, a man there, frowning. ‘Who invited you?’ he demanded.
He was drunk, his eyes bleary, words thick. The sting of humiliation burned the back of my neck.
‘She’s with me.’ It was Bel, further down the hallway, a bottle in her hand already. She beckoned to me. ‘Come on. He won’t bite. Not if you’re quick.’ Laughter from the others there greeted the remark.
The man edged aside.
Pushing through the scrum I went in search of the kitchen where I found people I knew. There was a large enamel bucket full of mulled wine, a ladle hooked over the side, a few slices of lemon floating in it and a cigarette end. All the other bottles I picked up were empty; crushed beer cans littered the surfaces. I scooped out the fag end with a bottle top, then filled a plastic cup with wine. Took a long swig. It was tepid, sour. I took another drink and refilled the cup.
Later, I was on the stairs, when the music cut out. A relay of calls, ‘Five minutes, five minutes’, rang through the house. People moved to the living room, some standing on the sunken sofas, others shoulder to shoulder in any available space. A few had bottles of champagne or fizzy wine, well hidden until then, and were loosening the silver wires in readiness. The air was filled with smoke and perfume and a musty, fungal smell that I guessed came from the house itself.
The countdown began and I closed my eyes, as though something might change before I opened them again, as though there was some magic coming at midnight.
A roar went up: ‘Happy New Year!’ Corks popped, ricocheted off the ceiling. A girl started singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ – they always sang t
Then Bel was there. Eyes glimmering. She kissed me full on the lips. No tongues but her mouth moving, smooth and gentle, on mine and I felt an answering shiver deep in my belly.
Was she a lesbian?
Was I?
Who cared?
She stepped back, eyes dancing, the curtain of hair swinging away from her cheek, revealing a row of rings, glinting silver, in her ear. Over the shoulder of the boy I was kissing, I could see she barely touched the next girl.
Had I been singled out?
Everybody moved outside for the fireworks, the ground rutted hard with frost, creaking underfoot. The garden wasn’t really big enough: we were too close and people yelped as sparks caught their hair or clothes. I couldn’t see Bel anywhere. The gunpowder made me cough.
My friend Katy found me. We had to be home by one o’clock. It was time to start walking.
I could stay, I thought. I might never see her again. It’s New Year’s. Why shouldn’t I stay longer, stay out all night if I felt like it, sixteen after all? So what if I was grounded as a result, if they stopped my pocket money? I was old enough to leave home, anyway.
Films in my head, Bel cheering me on, admiration in her expression. Defending me. We could find a place to live together. I’d wear a coat like hers, cut my hair.
‘Lydia!’ Katy complained, pulling her hat on.
Should I find her, at least, say . . . What? Goodbye? Thank you? And risk looking like an idiot?
‘Coming,’ I said, and followed Katy through the house and out into the street.
‘That was a dead loss,’ she complained. ‘Not one fit bloke in the whole lot.’
Katy was hunting for a boyfriend – we all were. It was our permanent state of affairs, barring short stretches when we were actually seeing someone.
‘Apart from Mark Foster,’ she said, ‘who’s a total prat.’
‘Fit prat, though.’
‘You didn’t find anyone?’ she asked.
Those spiked teeth, the taste of her lipstick.
‘Nah.’
We walked back, talking too loudly, breaking into song every so often. Our breath puffs of mist. The cold pinching my feet, my wrists, the top of my back. A light, sick feeling inside me. Unease or excitement.
What if I never saw her again?
And what if I’d never set eyes on her in the first place? Would Fate have been any less brutal?
Chapter Two
School resumed, and my social life shrank again to Saturday nights, and then only if Katy and I weren’t babysitting for my little brother or her cousins. I had a Saturday job at the vet’s. At that stage I wanted to become a vet myself and my dad, who did the accounts for the practice, had put in a word with Mr Egerton.
Stifled by the routine of school and study, family meals and long evenings poring over my biology and chemistry textbooks, I kept reminding myself that I’d be leaving in a year and a half, off to uni (hopefully), independence and making my own rules. It felt like for ever.
I had the attic bedroom. An old Formica table served as my desk, and by standing on the chair, I could stick my face out of the dormer window while I smoked. The room was only marginally colder with the window open. The frame stuck sometimes, swollen and spongy with damp, mottled with mould. The central-heating radiator didn’t work. There was a two-bar electric fire that I was allowed to use on the most wintry days. It sizzled and whined and gave off a smell of burning metal. The heat scorched my legs. And I’d drape a blanket over my shoulders.
Some nights I rewarded myself with an hour of television at nine o’clock depending on (a) what my parents were watching, and (b) if I could bear to watch with them. Anything with sex in it was a no-no. Unless it was animal sex, some nature documentary, and even that came pretty close to making me shrivel with embarrassment at times.
I wanted to ask my friends about Bel, to see if they knew who she was, but couldn’t work out how to frame the question without sounding weird.
One Saturday in May we all went out for the evening. There was a strange atmosphere, everyone stunned by the fire that had ripped through the football stand at Bradford City’s stadium on Valley Parade that afternoon. We heard about it at the vet’s, and when I got home they were showing it on the news. Cameras had been there to film the match and captured the inferno. People had been trapped, the turnstiles locked. Dozens were feared dead.
I walked into the bar ahead of Katy and the others, my eyes stinging with the fug of smoke. Blinking, I looked for seats and there she was, Bel, in the far corner, arm draped over some boy’s shoulders, her head tilted, touching his.
I wanted to run away. I felt exposed, caught somewhere I shouldn’t have been. A trespasser.
Katy nudged me and pointed to a table where a group were gathering up their coats and bags. I nodded. She gestured to the bar and raised her eyebrows. The jukebox was loud, Frankie Goes to Hollywood singing ‘The Power of Love’.
‘Special Brew,’ I mouthed. I wanted to get drunk as fast as possible.
She probably doesn’t even remember me, I thought, as we claimed the table, shed our layers, moved the empties to the centre. I was determined not to look her way again, busied myself with a cigarette and arranging the beer mats in readiness.
It was taking an age for Katy to get served and Sue went to wait with her. Alison had split up with her boyfriend (after all of two months) and was in tears, confiding in Pam.
Lonely. I was lonely. Even there in the company of friends, with the evening stretching out ahead. Lonely and fed up. My trousers were too tight – my latest diet had defeated me. Why should she remember me? Fat, spotty, with stupid frizzy hair. And how could I be so shallow when all over the city there were people who had actually lost someone, or were terribly burned in hospital? I was a horrible person.
Once the drinks had come and I’d had half of mine and listened to the latest gossip about Mark Foster, whose mother had apparently caught him shagging his brother’s girlfriend, I began to relax.
Only then did I let my eyes return to her corner. Bel was talking, hands flung wide, gesticulating. The boy was listening, and smiling, a small, thin smile. Then she laughed, throwing back her head, turned and noticed me.
She gave a nod, a clear nod in greeting, and I waved. Immediately I wished I hadn’t: a nod in return would have been way cooler.
She beckoned and I went, like a puppy.
They squashed up on their banquette and I sat next to her.
‘Colin.’ She made introductions. ‘Bel.’ A finger pressed to her own breastbone. She wore a dark shiny top, a different one, a V-neck with a zip up the front. ‘Lydia.’ She pointed to me.
She knew my name.
‘You’re from here?’ she said.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Sad but true.’
Her eyes danced. ‘Colin says we can get into the disco at the university, don’t even need an NUS card.’
‘True,’ I said. Not that I’d been. ‘Just proof of age.’
‘Wicked! We’ll go before last orders. Beat the rush. You coming?’
‘OK,’ I said. OK? I sounded so lame. ‘So where are you from?’ I swigged my drink hoping that I wasn’t being too nosy, or too boring. It was the sort of question my parents might ask.
‘France,’ she said. I must have looked surprised because she chuckled and said, ‘Not French. My dad worked there, then London, now he has to work here.’
‘Bummer,’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She gave a little shrug, still smiling. Was she teasing me? ‘Least if I bomb my exams, I can blame it on the move.’
Colin said nothing. He seemed content to watch her, his eyes glittering. I guessed he was smashed. He was slightly built and had dark blond hair, a long, sharp nose and a pointed chin. His teeth were crooked like mine.
‘A levels?’ I said.
‘Yes. Yawn,’ she said. ‘The English isn’t so bad. You still at school?’
‘Lower sixth. Bradford Girls’ Grammar,’ I said.
