Good Girl, Bad Girl(46)
The plume of blood sprayed in an arc across the kitchen bench and the sink and the cutlery drawer, which was open, and Tupperware boxes, which she always arranged neatly so she could find the lids when she needed them. The blood stretched all the way to the cat-food bowl in the corner where Tibbles would later lick it into a smear and track it across the floor with her paws.
Dad was next. My father, who worked in property management—a fancy way of saying he collected rents and organized building leases. My father, who taught Elias how to drive and would get him to practice his parking outside a succession of pubs, whereupon Dad slipped inside for a quick half. The White Lion, the Last Post, Beekeeper, and the Commercial Inn. Later Dad would fall asleep on the sofa, snoring through Midsomer Murders.
My father, who brewed his own beer, collected vinyl LPs, and once scored a golfing hole in one that ran all the way along the ground, but he still framed the scorecard. My father, who didn’t like using the word “hate,” but instead said he disliked racists, reality TV shows, Manchester United, pistachios that don’t open, and people who spend fifteen minutes in a queue and don’t know what to order when they get to the counter.
Dad died on his hands and knees, crouching in front of the DVD player because one of the twins had managed to get a disk stuck in the machine. The knife severed his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. He managed to roll onto his back and hold up his arm, trying to ward off the blows, losing two fingers on his left hand and his right thumb. For a long while they couldn’t find his thumb because it had rolled under the TV cabinet.
My twin sisters were doing their homework or playing in the bedroom they shared. They must have known something was wrong because they locked the door and barricaded it with beanbags and soft toys and a rocking horse that belonged to my grandmother and had no hair on its mane.
April was the elder by twenty minutes and always acted like an older sister. Earnest and bossy, she was the hoarder, the show-off, and the baker of cupcakes, partial to strawberry lip gloss and jelly snakes and able to name every King and Queen of England using a rhyme she’d learned off by heart.
Esme was different but the same—part of a collective child, or two halves with the same face, each slightly different but in symmetry. Esme the shy, the meek, the songbird, with a dancer’s grace and tiny feet. Esme the peacemaker, the advocate, the knitter. Esme, who pressed flowers in the pages of her diary and gave names to every animal she ever met.
Elias used an ax to break a hole through the door before reaching inside and turning the key. He tossed aside the rocking horse and the beanbags. April fell first, which followed the natural order of how the twins handled everything. She ran towards Elias and the knife entered her ribs and came out near her spine. Blood splattered across the wallpaper and the bedspread, the bald rocking horse and the dollhouse.
Esme tried to crawl beneath her bed but was dragged out by her ankles, scratching at the floor and bunching the rug under her body. I try not to imagine her fear or the sound of metal on air or metal on flesh or the silence that followed.
People always ask, where was I?
At football practice or on my way home. It was the second training session of the season and my first year with the Sherwood Strikers. I had moved up to Under 15s and felt a little overawed.
We trained at Brelsford Park, about two miles from the house, or ten minutes if I rode my bike along the towpath. Mum had told me to be home by six. She also told me not to “even think about” stopping for hot chips. Of course I didn’t listen. I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime at school and the Fat Friar did a cone of chips for a quid (although I had to forego the vinegar, or Mum would smell it on my breath).
I scoffed the chips and still had time to ride past Ailsa Piper’s house in the hope I might glimpse her in the garden or coming home from netball practice. Ailsa was a year older than me. I once helped her find a bracelet that she lost on her way to school. We hadn’t spoken since then, but she always smiled when we bumped into each other—happenstances that I tried to orchestrate as often as possible.
Running late, I had to stand up on the pedals and push hard to make it home by six. I wheeled my bike through the side gate and rested it up against the shed. Then I took off my muddy football boots and banged them against the back step. I could hear canned TV laughter coming from the front room as I opened the back door. I called out to Mum. She didn’t answer.
In my dream this is where I wake—as I step into the kitchen, seeing the smear of blood near the litter box. I don’t wake screaming or bolting upright in my bed, but my cheeks are sometimes wet and my voice hoarse. That’s when I get up. That’s when I run.
*
On my second circuit of Wollaton Park, a car pulls alongside me, slowing to my speed. Tires crunch over fallen leaves, acorns, and seed pods. The window lowers.
“You’re not allowed to drive on the footpath,” I say.
“I’m pursuing a suspect,” says Lenny.
“What’s he done?”
“He refuses to have a phone.”
“That’s hardly a crime.”
“No, but it’s bloody annoying.”
Her wrist is draped over the steering wheel. Her collar is turned up.
I kick ahead and take a shortcut past the playground. Lenny accelerates and catches up as I reach the lake. She pulls alongside me again.
“We have a problem.”