The Darker Half Chapter 1 & 2
By Janet Baldey`
CHAPTER 1
ANNA
Anna wonders what it’s like to drown. She’s heard that after the first few frantic struggles, it’s a peaceful way to go. Oxygen leaches from your brain, your worries fade away and you drift away on a cloud of euphoria. She’d like to think that was true but isn’t convinced. How does anyone know? Most people think they are so clever. Unlike her. She is always one step behind, always the last to know. She hadn’t even recognised the signs when her world started to collapse.
A frozen stream of air scythes down from the Arctic and she draws her coat closer. For the first time, she becomes aware of the
cold stone of the parapet cutting into her stomach and she draws back a
fraction, only to lean forward again, mesmerised by the river pounding
underneath the bridge. Its colour is constantly changing from metallic blue to
pewter, reflecting the turbulent clouds scudding across the sky. There’s a twig
caught in the grip of the current and she follows its progress as it spins
towards the weir. Without thinking, she
toes off first one shoe and then the other, standing on the balls of her feet,
watching the water writhing and foaming as if in the grip of a seizure.
“Is everything all right, Miss?”
Anna’s body jerks and her
hands tighten on the parapet as she smothers a scream. She’d thought she was quite alone.
The man’s bulky figure is
silhouetted against the bitter orange of the dying sun and all she sees is the
luminous oval of his face. He sounds concerned and she feels a surge of
irritation. When she replies her voice is curt.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Her cheeks burn as she
feels around for her shoes and slips them back on. With a brief, dismissive,
nod she turns and hurries towards the town.
Frost sparkles the pavement
as Anna walks through the empty streets. It’s full dark now and most of the
houses have drawn their curtains against the night. Lit by electricity, the
lemon coloured windows look cosy and Anna slows, gazing at them in the same way
that a sugar starved child gazes into a sweetshop. Inside those houses,
families will be brewing tea, asking each other about their day and settling
down for the evening. Her own will be in darkness except, maybe, for the blue
flutter of a television in the front room.
As she rounds a corner “The Queen’s Head”
materialises in a blaze of light. It’s a cheerful place and in happier days had
been her local. As she draws nearer, a drone of sound spills out into the
darkness and early Christmas decorations shiver in the windows as they catch
the draught of the ever-opening door. Suddenly she craves the warmth of
uncomplicated human companionship and without thinking, her body swerves
towards the entrance. Just in time, she stops herself, imagining what would
happen if she did go in, walk up to the bar and order herself a drink. At first, no-one would notice but, sooner or
later, someone’s look would harden into a stare. One by one, other heads would
turn, and the buzz of conversation would dwindle. Anna’s blood runs cold at the thought. She turns away and, picking up speed, almost
runs down the road.
Her steps are slow as she
reaches her street. A car comes around the corner and its headlights wash over
her house, briefly illuminating its windows one by one. The house looks as if
it’s winking at her. It looks sly. She used to love it once but not now.
She crunches up the gravel
drive and deliberately fumbles her key in the lock, making sure they know she
is back. As she slams the door a light goes on. A moment later, Romeo appears
in the doorway. His face is flushed, his hair tousled. He stretches, and his mouth opens in an
elaborate yawn.
“Nice walk, love?”
Apprehension dulls his eyes
as she doesn’t answer. Instead, she turns left, into the kitchen, giving a sick
shudder as a scene she’s repeatedly tried to obliterate flashes into her mind. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes
shut, pushing the image away, desperately trying to think of something else. At
some time, she knows she will have to deal with it but she’s not strong enough
yet. Weak with misery, her body leans against the sink. At last, she opens her
eyes. Reaching forward, she wipes
condensation from the window and looks out at the garden, seeing but not
registering. Long moments pass before she realises that it’s started to rain. Picking
up a white plastic kettle she thrusts it under the tap, listening as the hiss
of the water drowns out the steady drumming of the weather. Wavy lines of raindrops march down the panes
and on reaching the kettle’s pale reflection, merge slowly coalescing to form
the shape of a face. Her knees start to shake as a sudden certainty makes her
gasp,
“No.” she whispers and
shakes her head. “It can’t be.”
The lips twist in a familiar smile of triumph
and she knows she’s wrong. Almost instantly the face vanishes and is replaced
by the stygian black of a winter’s night.
Feeling weak and ill she puts the kettle down and stumbles to a chair,
wondering if she is going mad.
“Oh, Alec,” she whispers,
“how you must be loving this.”
CHAPTER TWO
BILL
The sound of the front door
closing echoes as he stands in the hall unbuttoning his coat. Unable to break the habit, he glances up the
stairs expecting to see the faint line of yellow light below their bedroom door
but it’s as black as pitch up there. He
frowns, impatient with himself. It’s
been a year now since Martha went and he still can’t get used to the emptiness
of the house. The dog’s the same. He looks at Jackson who’s also got his eyes
fixed on the dark at the top of the stairs, ready to bound forward the minute
he hears her voice.
“Come
on, yer daft bugger…there’s no one there.”
Turning away, he opens the
door of the sitting room. A faint warmth lingers but the fire is almost out, he
can just see a dull crimson glow underneath the layer of grey ash. Carefully, not wanting to smother what’s left
of the fire, he places a few lumps of coal over the embers and crouches,
covering the hearth with a sheet of newspaper until he hears the dull roar
telling him the flame has caught. He
remembers his Dad doing the same thing, all those years ago in Derbyshire and
wonders if anyone else, besides himself, brings a fire to life like this these
days? Probably not many, he thinks, just
us oldies. After he’s banked up the
fire, he stands up and listens to it crackle, staring into the mirror over the
mantelpiece. Not, that old, he thinks.
Fifty’s no age these days. He
peers closer, a bit of grey around the temples.
Distinguished, that’s all. Bags
under the eyes though, he hasn’t slept well since Martha went. Can’t get used to being the only one in a
double bed.
Briefly, his body sags and
he slumps into his armchair. The blank screen of the televisions stares at him
but he makes no move to switch it on, he’s not in the mood and anyway he’d bet
there’d be nothing worth looking at. He reaches for the whisky bottle placed close
to hand on a side table. For some
reason, he can’t stop thinking about the lass on the bridge. The moment he’d
caught sight of her, shoeless and slumped against the bridge, he’d known she
was a jumper. He hadn’t spent all those
years in the Force for nothing and when she’d turned round his instinct had
turned to certainty. He’d recognised the look on her face, vacant and spaced
out, she’d been psyching herself up. The
furrows crossing his brow deepen. He
knows her from somewhere; it isn’t a recent memory but her face was definitely
familiar. It wasn’t one that was easy to forget, the broad forehead and large
eyes, placed a little too far apart. Not pretty exactly, but striking, her cloud
of dark hair redeeming her. He closes his eyes for an instant, willing a name
to fit the image.
‘Come on Bill Dexter, Detective Inspector retired. Think. You know who she is. You know you do.’
But it won’t come and with a shake of his
head, he gives up for now. But, he’ll get it in the end, he knows he will. Once
a copper, always a copper. The trick is
not to think about it too deeply.
He lifts his glass towards
the light and watches the amber liquid swirl. He’s drinking too much and knows
it. Half a bottle a night; if he doesn’t watch it, soon it’ll be a bottle. It’s
the long, empty, boring days that does for him. Two years ago he wasn’t like
this. Two years ago he had a career, a
wife and a home, all of which he’d loved, possibly in that order. Now, he’d got
bugger all. Even his house isn’t a home any more, just a place where he lives;
if you could call it living. He barks a
laugh, a short unhappy sound that makes Jackson
Anyway, what’s done is done
and can’t be undone. He bangs his glass back on the table so hard that some of
the whisky slops from the glass. His eyes flick towards the clock. He hasn’t had his tea but he’s not hungry. He
forces his mind back to the problem at hand, perhaps there’s something in his
archives that might jog his memory, it’d be something to do anyway, might stop
him feeling so sorry for himself.
He knows it’s a mistake as
soon as he starts leafing through the dusty folders peering at the scribbled
notes in the margins, all in his own spidery handwriting, some so illegible and
obviously done in haste that he can hardly make them out. He’d always kept details of all his old cases
from the very first, even his failures - those that he’d known damn well who
done it but just couldn’t prove it. Why, he’d never been quite sure, perhaps at
one time he’d had a vague idea of writing a book when he finally retired. Every turn of the page brings back glimpses
of the past, tiny shreds of detail he’d thought he’d forgotten, the sound of an
abandoned child sobbing in the silence of a bedroom at the top of a house so
squalid they’d held their noses as they entered. The drained corpse of a
suicide in a bath brim-full of gore. The
dead eyes of a mother who’d just smothered her baby. He gasped feeling pain as
sharp as a bayonet thrust. His own eyes must have looked like that as he sat
feeding Martha her sleeping tablets, one after the other, praying he wouldn’t
botch it. It would be the end of his career, he knew that at the time, but he
hadn’t cared. He owed Martha and gratitude in her eyes, as she lay obediently
choking down her pills, was worth any sacrifice.
But now the yellowing
papers do nothing but remind him of past evenings spent in this very room, in
this very chair, scribbling the notes he is reading this very moment. He
breathes in half expecting the savoury smell of the evening meal to waft
through the door and to hear the low mutter of the radio, “The Archers” maybe
or the husky voice of Neil Diamond and the faint clatter of china as Martha bustles
around in the kitchen. For an instant the memory is so warm and alive that his
stomach rumbles in response, then his appetite disappears as he remembers. His hands tremble as he stacks the pages
together and replaces them in the folder.
They’d been no help and his useless trip down memory lane has only
served to torment him. If only he could turn back the clock. They’d
all been so kind, his colleagues. Some he’d worked with for so long that they’d
become close friends. They’d all
promised to visit and they had at first.
He glances towards the silent phone.
It’s a long time since it had rung. But he couldn’t blame them, they
were busy and had their own lives to lead. It wasn’t their fault that he’d
ended up a sad and lonely sod and he’d rather rot than be a burden to anybody. Thank God he had Jackson
“Come on lad, time for
bed.” He isn’t tired and knew he
wouldn’t sleep but eventually he’d drift off and at least he’d be lying down. Perhaps
a mug of cocoa would help. He might
even take one of Martha’s sleeping tablets if there were any left.
Copyright Janet Baldey
