Child's Play (D.I. Kim Stone #11)(67)

‘Okay, guys, what the hell is she doing here?’





Seventy-Three





‘You almost ready, bud?’ Penn asked his brother as he took the final bite of his toast.

Always the same. Once slice, half with just butter and half with strawberry jam.

‘Remind me why I pay for breakfast club?’ he asked.

‘Dunno,’ Jasper said, rubbing his hands together furiously to despatch the crumbs from his fingers.

Jasper had been in mainstream school for five years now and loved every minute of it.

Initially Penn had been terrified of the taunts and bullying his brother would be subjected to, had wanted to protect him from the ugliness that existed in the world to people who were different.

One day Penn had asked his brother if he got bullied and called names. Jasper had nodded and told him some of the taunts.

Penn’s rage had travelled around his body. He had kept his face neutral as his brother spoke but in his mind he was already heading down to that school and demanding action from the teachers or he’d pull him out of school completely. His mind had been set. His brother was not going to be forced to endure the torture of being singled out.

‘Billy gets picked on cos of his limp. Sarah gets picked on cos her eyebrows are thick. Misty gets picked on cos her parents are vidorced.’

‘Divorced,’ Penn corrected.

‘’Swat I said. You know what Billy says to do with bullies?’

‘What?’ Penn asked.

Jasper had covered his mouth and laughed as though he was going to say something naughty.

‘Go on,’ Penn had urged.

‘Kick ’em in the nuts.’

His brother had waited to see if he was going to be chastised, but Penn had burst out laughing, feeling all of the tension drain from his body. He’d never loved his brother, or Billy, more.

‘Go on, then. Go brush your teeth,’ Penn said, looking at his watch.

He heard the familiar sounds of his brother as he cleared away the breakfast dishes, placing the half slice of jam-laden toast on to a square of kitchen roll.

He heard the farewells between his brother and mother, who rarely made it down for breakfast any more.

He waited at the front door holding the backpack in one hand and the toast in the other.

As Jasper squirmed into his backpack, Penn ruffled his hair.

‘Have a good day, bud.’

Jasper reached up and did the same to him. ‘You too.’

Penn laughed and handed him the toast.

When his brother had first asked for the freedom of meeting his friends at the end of the road, he’d been both terrified and proud.

Unbeknown to Jasper he’d followed him for the first few mornings. He’d expected to see him munching on his jammy piece of toast as he walked, but he’d seen him meet his friends and hand the toast to his best friend, Billy.

Billy came from a family with seven brothers and sisters and very rarely got breakfast.

Most folks could learn a lot from his brother, he thought, closing the door.

With the welcome distraction of his brother gone, his thoughts turned to the day ahead, a prospect he didn’t relish one little bit.





Seventy-Four





Kim watched the woman’s every move and only when she was sitting with a coffee at a recently vacated single table did Kim stride over.

‘How lovely to see you, Veronica,’ Kim said, taking the empty seat. ‘But what the hell are you doing here?’

‘Curious,’ she said, offering no emotional reaction at all to either Kim’s tone or her question. ‘Wanted to see what had fascinated Belinda for all these years,’ she said, looking around the room. ‘Wondering why she’d keep returning to this environment.’

Kim opened her mouth to speak and then paused. There was so much she wanted to know but for a split second she’d just heard a sadness in the woman’s voice that she hadn’t heard before. And it had found its way to somewhere inside her.

How had this woman’s life turned her into the woman she was now?

‘Veronica, what the hell happened to you back then?’ she asked, gently.

‘Nothing I care to share, Inspector,’ she answered, holding tight to the barriers she’d erected around herself. Barriers that Kim herself recognised and understood, but there was something inside this woman that wanted to come out.

‘Who is it going to hurt now? There’s no one left. Tell me your side.’

Veronica met her gaze. ‘You don’t get it, do you? I don’t have a side. It wasn’t about me. It was all about my sister. Everything. Always.’

‘Okay, tell me about Belinda. What was her childhood like? Leave yourself out.’

Although judging from the TV footage they’d seen, Veronica hadn’t been left out at all.

She took a sip of her drink and Kim was surprised to see a slight tremble to her hand. All the anger and hostility towards the woman fell away. There was a human in there somewhere no matter how hard she tried to hide it. And she had suffered; somehow Kim had always sensed that.

‘I was four when Belinda was born. I was pretty average and normal and definitely old enough to hear my parents tell everyone how Belinda did “everything before Veronica did”. She spoke earlier; she walked earlier; she spelled her first word earlier. It was clear to everyone that she was clever. I remember her first day of school. My father collected me from class first and held my hand as we walked to Belinda’s class.