Mouths of Babes Read online

  Stella Duffy was born in London and brought up in New Zealand. She has lived in London since her early twenties. She has written thirteen novels, ten plays, and forty-five short stories. She won the 2002 CWA Short Story Dagger for her story Martha Grace, and has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year in 2008 for The Room of Lost Things and in 2010 for Theodora. In addition to her writing work she is a theatre performer and director. She lives in London with her wife, the writer Shelley Silas.

  Praise for Fresh Flesh

  “Packs a punch … highly recommended” Diva

  “Spooky, sexy, cool” Crime Time

  “Duffy is another distinctive author on the up slope … Duffy gives good story” Time Out

  “Duffy’s quickfire wit is still strongly in evidence but the final emotional charge is deep and insidiously moving. A promising writer has matured into a classic” Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian

  “With her four Saz novels Duffy has proved herself to be one of the very best of the younger generation of crime writers. It is far too soon for her to bow out” The Times

  “Saz Martin is one of the best fictional investigators around … A shocking, intelligent and sympathetic thriller which shows why modern crime fiction can be trusted to handle serious issues” Telegraph

  MOUTHS OF BABES

  Stella Duffy

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be

  obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Stella Duffy to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by her in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 2005 by Stella Duffy

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  First published in 2005 by Serpent’s Tail,

  4 Blackstock Mews, London N4 2BT.

  website: www.serpentstail.com

  Set in Century Book by Intype London Ltd

  Printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc,

  Chatham, Kent

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication:

  to follow

  Thanks to:

  to follow

  ONE

  You all watched it happen. It happened to me, but it also happened to you. We were there at the same time. Each of you said you’d seen it, witnessed the exact same event. But I was there too, and my point of view was different to yours. Your backs were to the wall – mine wasn’t. I saw it all. You only saw me. And from where I was standing I could see all of you, each of you, quite clearly.

  And though you said they were, your stories were not the same.

  TWO

  Molly lay in bed. She’d already turned off the radio alarm three times, was reaching out her hand to turn it off again. A bomb somewhere. An earthquake somewhere else. An old dead movie star, another royal idiocy, a major scientific breakthrough promised. Maybe. Next year. Or the year after. If the funding comes through. Constantly waiting for funding. All of it utterly banal, pointless, as relevant as the weather. Squally showers to start, growing fine in the east, cooler tonight. She turned on to her side and stared at the new-bought clothes hanging on the wardrobe, darker and less distinct through the shadowed morning light. Molly had only bought these clothes yesterday, a whole new outfit. Too much money and an uncaring signature attached to her credit card slip. Uncaring, not caring, don’t care, can’t care, care too much.

  But now the clothes seemed unreal, in the shop still, on a mannequin. Not for her body, hers to wear. Surely it couldn’t be right to wear them. But she would, wear them, just the once. Wear them out, out on the street, into the car and to the places she had no choice but to go, her day carefully planned and moving ahead whether she liked it or not. Long white skirt, fitted white jacket. Both lined in robin red silk to match the dark red choli. New bra, new knickers. Red again. Silk again. Shoes sitting below the ensemble. Red shoes. Sexy shoes, high heels, red leather. Not funeral shoes. That was the point, her point. Molly didn’t want to be dressing for a funeral, this funeral. She didn’t want to be dressing at all, ever again. Didn’t want to be putting on the clothes, giving in to the light behind the curtains, making it real. Every day that turned into sleep-free night and another shattered morning made it more real, took her further from then, the time before this. The time before now.

  Not funeral shoes. Not funeral clothes, not strictly, white for mourning but the red too red, too statement. Fuck it. Wearing them anyway. Molly turned off the radio alarm, the moaning droning voices, and closed her eyes again, trying to find sleep, a place of safety, place of not-this, not-here, not-now. Trying to force herself back into a space where she wasn’t getting up for the funeral, where she wasn’t dressing up against her will for an event she couldn’t bear was happening, would happen, had to happen. Booked and paid for and planned and agreed and all nicely arranged to within five minutes of get-me-to-the-cemetery-on-time. Busy cemetery, bodies lining up, the living queuing up with their lying-down dead, careful not to miss their allocated slot, not to spill their own grief over those leaving before, the others waiting after. The funeral director had been very specific, honest, a plain language specialist Molly might have appreciated in another time, not this time. This particular cemetery was a very busy place. They had their hour booked. Molly had to get out of bed. Today was the day.

  She wasn’t going to cry again. Not now, not yet, not before she’d even lifted her head from the pillow, while the curtains were still closed, the street outside quiet. For the past week she’d finally gone to bed around midnight, woken at three, four at the latest, and waited crying in the dark for another day to happen. Another day that would bring sympathy cards in the post and too many flowers for the small front room and phone calls she couldn’t bring herself to answer. But she would. Molly was good like that. Polite. Well brought up. Getting up.

  In the shower she knew she was washing her skin, her long black hair, shampoo and conditioner, shaving brown legs, concave armpits, making herself nice. And good. Good girl. Razor reaching for scalp. She could shave her head too. Make a statement, harsher than the shoes, show on the outside what was going on inside. Bare, bared, unbearable. Except that it was. Anything was, everything was. Bearable, do-able, carry-on-able. Molly knew that now. Had guessed it before, seen it on the faces of the parents she dealt with daily at the hospital, grief-stricken at their own child’s pain, or even their own child’s death, and yet, astonishingly, still breathing. But she really knew it now – the planet demands we keep turning with it – and, incredibly, we do. The water was turning cold, must have forgotten to put it on overnight again, she didn’t care much. Hot, cold. Whatever. Washing felt utterly unnecessary. Had done since that first phone call six days ago, disembodied voice speaking aloud and making no sense. All of it meaningless and yet so incredibly ordinary at the same time, normal activities turned stupid ever since. Stupid and hard, hands moving through quicksand to make a cup of tea she couldn’t drink, milk turning sour in her hand, mouth forming impossible shapes to say the impossible words, taxis and buses and cars and bicycles, all with everyone carrying on, still breathing. Except the one Molly wanted breathing. Lying down, laid out, cold.

  Molly remembered a story her grandmother had told her, passed down through generations of early-widowed women, about an aunt who followed the old ways. Suttee had long been outlawed, and this aunt had been desperate to throw herself on the husband’s funeral pyre, plenty of older women ready to help her, but various authorities at the funeral, standing around to make sure it wouldn’t be done, taking care to prove that their village was as modern and enlightened as the next.
The aunt was finally dragged from the cold ashes and taken home, where she sat still, refusing to eat or speak. Refused to wash for forty days. There was nothing they could do, short of pushing the old woman into a bath. They could keep her alive but they couldn’t keep her clean.

  Molly liked the idea. Greasy hair and filthy clothes, unwashed mouth, ragged fingernails. She wanted the outer show, the proof of mourning. Remembered the white suit and the red shoes, everything depending on her clothes, and nearly smiled. Sunshine through the bathroom window. Proof of morning. She rinsed her clean hair in cold water, turned off the taps, dried her shivering skin. Applied deodorant, moisturiser, body cream, perfume. Performed the actions. The ones she had also performed for the cold body. Combed and dried her hair, long and straight and black. Pulled it back tight, hard as she could, hard as her mother had when she was a little girl and first wearing the long long plaits to school. Stood naked in front of the mirror and didn’t know why it was she was still standing. Dressed anyway. Was ready and waiting for when they would come to get her, join her, hold her hand as they all went off together. The standing ones, still-breathing ones, and the cold waxy dead one in the pale narrow box.

  Molly had been ready for almost an hour, sitting, not moving, when finally a key turned in the front door, there were footsteps, someone called her name, a quiet voice, uncertain, and then Saz stood there, their baby daughter sleepy in her arms.

  “Moll? Are you ready?”

  “No.”

  “You look ready. You’re dressed. That’s good.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “You look lovely. The suit looks lovely.”

  “Shoes?”

  “The shoes are perfect, babe.”

  “Sure?”

  “Perfect. He’d have loved them, the gesture.”

  “I can’t come. Not yet.”

  Saz shifted the waking baby girl to her other hip. “Right, OK. Well, what else do you need? Bag? Tissues?”

  Molly pointed to the bag at her feet. “I’ve got it all. I did everything you said.”

  “Good. That’s good. So we should go now. Babe?”

  “I can’t.” Molly shook her head, more tears, falling unnoticed, important. “I can’t do this.”

  Saz’s voice even quieter now, Matilda wriggling in her arms, grizzling to be put down, she blew a distracted kiss across their fractious daughter’s curls, held out her free hand to Molly. “We really do have to go. Your mum’s waiting in the car, she doesn’t want to come inside.”

  “She doesn’t like being here. Without him. It doesn’t feel like their house.” Molly shook her head. “But I think it does. I think if we just ignore all this it will be as if he hasn’t gone. We can just leave it as it is. His things,” she stroked the week-old newspaper, unfinished crossword clues stretched out across the top of the page, “We can just leave it. Like he only went out to the shop or something. This is mad. He was here and now he’s not.”

  “Yeah. It is.” Saz looked at the old wooden clock on the mantelpiece, “Come on babe, we have to go. Your mum needs you with her, we both do. We picked up your uncle, he said the flight was all right, but he really doesn’t look OK.”

  “I’m not OK.”

  “Of course you’re not. None of you are. You don’t have to be.”

  “But they all want me to act as if it’s fine, as if this is normal.”

  “Dying is normal, sweetie. And they don’t care how you behave, they just want you with them, sitting with them.”

  Molly ran her fingers over the newspaper again, picking out incomplete words, looking for signs, finding nothing.

  “I want my dad.”

  “I know you do.”

  THREE

  Three boys, two girls. Boys and girls here, now, though in another time and place they would clearly be men and women. Tall enough, broad enough, shapely enough. Ready. They were standing around her. In a tight little playground circle. Only this wasn’t playing. Looked like talking, gossiping, sharing secrets. But it wasn’t that either. There was laughter and something that sounded like singing. Or maybe wailing. On closer inspection it was a humming behind clenched teeth that an open mouth would turn into wailing. An open mouth would turn into words not to be spoken, words too dangerous to let out. She would not open her mouth, she knew better than that. And there would be no closer inspection either. No one was coming close, they never did. These kids were scary. Scary to the other kids and, truth be told – though it never was – scary to the teachers too. Not violent scary, obvious, brutal – nothing as uncouth as that, these kids were interesting scary, clever scary, cool. Their five person grouping of arty and weird and choosing-to-be different that made walking past them that little bit more frightening. Whispered giggling, snide remarks, always the possibility of something more, a scent of danger. Once there were keys scratched along car doors in the staff carpark, never in the open, never anything anyone could prove, and even if it had been, this group would have been horrified at the suggestion that one of their number might have used anything as prosaic as a bunch of keys for their vandal’s tool. They liked razor blades – on skin as well as things it was rumoured. Preferred weird American music with Japanese influences, black and white films you had to read as well as watch. The fear was in the possibility of bumping into this lot on the street, in the reinforced concrete, imitation High Street shopping precinct where they roamed their Saturdays, looking for anything that might take them away from the normal they so despised. Walkways built for baby buggies and slow old people, reclaimed for skateboards and bikes and swathes of youth. Coming across these kids, out of school, a gang of them and just one of you, kids freed from the restraining armour of uniform, teachers exposed by the lack of books and boards – that was what scared the adults. So the teachers knew some of what went on and yet they said nothing. The knowledge was there, on both sides. In your eyes. In their looks. In the sideways, smirking, fuck-you looks. They were good, these kids. Really good at bad.

  She had stupidly come round to their part of the school playground. The place they had made their own. She knew better, but somehow, not really thinking, she’d gone there anyway. And he’d called her up, the good-looking one, oldest one, Will Gallagher. And she’d been scared to say no, so she came at his bidding. Had hardly ever been up here before, the raised section of the courtyard. It was just the crappiest, least sunny corner of an old-fashioned playground really, only some old ex-Headmaster had died and left a bunch of money, and the Board of Governors thought it might be a nice gesture to have the whole area redone. It was meant to be a privilege to hang out down this end. That was the lecture they were given at the beginning of term anyway – they weren’t kids anymore, though not quite the oldest in the school, so they didn’t get a lounge to themselves, but they were big enough to be responsible, to not need to be directly under the staffroom windows, like the younger ones in the main playground. Big enough to not need supervised breaks, to be trusted in this raised corner, hidden corner. First there was a slightly elevated section with some wooden tables and benches, then a short flight of concrete stairs up to a crappy little rock garden, and then another half dozen stairs up again to where the concrete levelled out. The plants had grown well since it was originally laid out when they were just first-years, heavy flaxes had taken good root in the dry, sandy soil and now it was the perfect spot, right in the corner and at the top, with a ten-foot drop back down to the ground. Daniel Carver had jumped it once. Sprained his ankle really fucking badly. Of course Will had made the jump safely a couple of times already, but then he was fitter and better at that sort of thing. Anyway, after the skinny, lanky Daniel sprained his ankle, the caretaker built up this little three-foot wall. As if that would stop guys jumping down when they were showing off. It didn’t. But the fact that Will Gallagher’s little group made it their special place effectively stopped anyone else going there at all. It was a perfect vantage point. See without being seen. Just the way they liked it.


  Anyway, Will had called her up and because she was stupid and scared she’d come and now they were standing around her, the girl. Third time this month. And it was only the thirteenth. Unlucky again.

  “Fucking lezz.”

  “Dirty dyke bitch.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Is that what you like? Like that?”

  Whispered words, always whispered, creeping into her ears and staying there, festering, making her sick.

  A hand crosses a breast, stops, not long enough to say it was meant, not brief enough to pretend it wasn’t. No tears yet. She’s holding onto the tears, knows what her crying does to them, red rags to bulls, furious goring bulls spinning round to beat up on inept goading baby-boy matadors. She is no fighter. Even if she was, there’s never anyone on her side when something like this happens. Of course she has friends, officially, sort of. Two of the girls in her year, one guy, not many, no real group of her own. The few kids she’s sort of friends with now are like her – too clever, too stupid, too rich, too poor, too much – they are the easy prey, and long gone round the grey corners, into the hollow buildings with their smell of teenage sweat and cleaning fluids and caged frustration. No one stupid enough to get in the way, make themselves the next target. Not when this target is always so pathetically ready. She knows she does it to herself, knows she is an idiot. Why did she come into school early today? She should have waited as she had done for the past ten days, waited at the corner of her own street and made the final run for it, run the risk of being late, a detention carrying far more pleasure than pain. Kept in an hour after school, by the time she was allowed to leave they’d all be off, doing whatever it was they did when they got together at someone’s house, one of their houses, then she would be able to get home safely as well. In late, out late. The detention was always worth it. Except her dad had a go last time, the last time she’d brought home a detention slip for him to sign. Your daughter arrived late yet again. Getting to be a problem. Parental responsibility, parental necessity. Said he’d bloody well drop her off at school himself if she couldn’t get there, said he’d march her up to the gates. And then where would she be? All of them seeing her father bring her in, Daddy walking her up to the gates and handing her over for the group sacrifice, sitting target with still more ammunition for the circle.