Читать книгу For All Our Sins - T.M.E. Walsh - Страница 20

CHAPTER 11

Michael spent the rest of the day feeling disillusioned with everything that had happened in the last few days. He’d returned to the station after his talk with Jenkins, and kept his head down, avoiding Claire and Matthews as much as possible.

That became impossible by late afternoon, when Claire summoned him to her office along with Matthews to discuss the Hargreaves case, and when Michael officially handed everything he’d worked so hard on over to Matthews, he felt the resentment building up inside him.

The only consolation was that he caught the look on Claire’s face when she was less guarded. He saw the sadness in her eyes when he caught her looking at him.

Maybe she wasn’t doing this to him out of some petty personal vendetta after all. In any case, he didn’t wait around to find out. By the time he left her office, he gathered his things from his desk, told Harper he could be contacted on his mobile, ignored the advice to clear it with Claire first, and headed out of the station.

The drive home seemed to pass in a blur.

When Michael parked in the street about four houses from his own, he released the seatbelt and rested his head against the steering wheel.

A loud bang against the windscreen made him jolt upright.

‘Sorry!’

It took him several seconds to register what had happened. Then he saw Robby, the kid from next door, holding a football which had hit his car, with his mates beside him, laughing.

Michael got out from his car and allowed himself a small smile.

‘Sorry,’ Robby said again. ‘I kicked it too hard.’

‘No worries,’ Michael said, and headed towards his house.

Once inside, he glanced out the window. Robby and his friends were moving on, walking in the direction of the local park. They were good kids and in this town, that made a change.

Michael was fond of Robby. He saw a lot of himself in the kid, despite the fact their childhoods couldn’t have been more different.

Robby’s mother was a kind woman who worked every hour God sent to make sure her son had all the things he deserved in life. She kept a clean and tidy house, safe and warm. Michael knew this first hand because she’d invited him in a few times for a coffee. She was around his age and he knew she had a soft spot for him, but he wasn’t attracted to her in a romantic way.

The wonderful childhood Robby had was a stark contrast to his own.

Michael’s mind drifted back to one particular memory.

His mother.

She’d been wearing the same dirty clothes for a week. Her hair was tangled, her lips scabbed and sore, her soul torn.

She’d just kicked out another worthless boyfriend and the house looked ransacked, dirty, unloved.

A sad place to be, to exist.

He remembered that they were facing eviction. At the time he’d had no idea what that meant. He’d just wanted his mother to stop crying, something that rarely happened.

There were always tears in their strained existence.

There were no sweet bedtime stories, no teddy to clutch against his young skin to offer comfort from the monsters that were literal, not something imagined.

He remembered the song she used to sing to him.

A beautiful melody that would quickly dwindle into a sorrowful lament.

‘…My breast is as stone, my breath smells earthly strong; And if you kiss my cold clay lips, your days they won't be long…’

Then his mother would kiss him, a cool caress on his lips. It wasn’t the tender kiss that should come from a mother’s love for her child, nor was it born from passion – a sinister unnatural incestuous longing.

Michael closed his eyes.

He heard his mother’s voice in his head, and for a moment he was back there, in that old house, a mere child. He could feel the gentle vibrations of her breath against soft innocent skin, as she leaned over him.

‘…The stalk is withered and dry, sweetheart, and the flower will never return. And since I lost my own sweetheart, what can I do but mourn?’

There was death in her voice. The nightly ritual for her became something entirely different to him, but it was never something he could accurately explain.

‘…When shall we meet again, sweetheart? When shall we meet again?…’

Later he found out that this was an old English folk song. It was about a man who mourns his true love. When the spirit of his lost love complains she cannot rest, he begs a kiss. She tells him it would kill him and he should be content to be alive.

It took Michael about ten years from the last night she sang it to him to realise this nightly ritual was really about his mother’s loss of his father, who had died suddenly aged thirty, while she still carried Michael in her womb. She’d never recovered from it and longed for a way out.

The melancholy that surrounded his mother had threatened to swallow them both whole, and all of it born from her own tormented mind.

Michael’s eyes flicked open.

His mouth was dry and his eyelids were heavy.

He’d tried to erase this memory altogether, but it was as if it was to be forever etched on his soul.

He gazed from the window again. He watched Robby disappear from view.

The sound of his phone ringing brought him back to the here and now. It was Claire.

He didn’t need her messing with his head any more today.

He killed the call.