The Unseen(96)

‘Let that wipe the smile from your face, you son of a bitch!’ Cat yells at him. She keeps it up as long as she can, trading insults and missiles with the raucous crowd until heavy hands clamp around her limbs and she is carried off, twisting like a snake.


Cat’s upper arms are tender, and she touches them tentatively. Rolling up her sleeves, she finds bruises shaped like finger marks, dotting her skin like tokens of some plague. The lock-up at the police house is cool, the walls constructed of thick stone and coated in cream-coloured paint that bulges and cracks into craters in places; but Cat can’t appreciate the respite. She can’t even worry that she has jeopardised her position, has jeopardised everything, by losing her temper that way. All she can do is sit on the hard wooden chair and stare up at the tiny window with its dirty pane of glass behind strong metal mesh, and take her thoughts away, far away so that she does not panic. She must be anywhere, anywhere else but locked in a cell. The bitterness of bile burns in the back of her throat, and cold sweat trickles between her breasts to her stomach, seeping into the waistband of her skirt. If she were to pay attention, if she were to acknowledge her incarceration, she might lose her mind; burn out like a match in an instant of pure fear and be nothing but cinders, charred remains of herself. Frowning in concentration, she makes sure she is anywhere else but there …

She is in the house where she grew up, as they carry her mother downstairs and out to the waiting hearse. She had waited at first, and not told anybody that her mother had died. She didn’t know what she would do next; she didn’t want to start life again without her. Her mother had said somebody would come for her, when the time came. Cat had twisted and tried to turn away, but her mother had insisted, her eyes fever-bright, the whites gone grey, pupils huge in the shadowy room.

‘No, you must listen. This is important. When the time comes, somebody will come and collect you. You’re to go with her, and do as you’re told. Do you understand? It’s all arranged. It’s the best I can do for you. You will be looked after there. The Gentleman of the house …’ She paused, her voice little more than a whisper, and fought to keep a storm of coughing at bay. Cat willed her to succeed. She could not bear the agony these fits caused her mother. ‘It is a good place. The Gentleman of the house …’ she tried again, but this time succumbed to the fit, and was too exhausted afterwards to speak any more. So Cat, when she died, waited. She waited, and she wondered, but did not care, what would happen next. And when a neighbour had called round the next morning, and found her alone, and when they had taken her mother out, a strange woman did appear in the doorway. Buttoned tightly into a black coat, her face motionless beneath steel-grey hair, looking as though it had never worn a smile in a lifetime.

‘You’re to come with me now, young lady. Do you understand?’ she asked. Mute, Cat nodded. ‘This is what your mother, God rest her soul, has arranged for you. Go now and pack up your things. Others will see to the rest. Go on, now,’ the woman said. Cat did not want to. She wanted to go with her mother, even with her shut away in a box, even with her body so very empty and silent and wrong. She did not want to go with this hatchet-faced woman with her thin, censorious lips or her spidery hands. Mrs Heddingly. But her mother had told her to, so she went …

When the door is opened some time later – she has little idea how much time – Cat does not break off her reverie. Only when the police constable shakes her shoulder, tentatively, as if she might explode, does she blink. She twists her head, hears him speak.

‘Come on, I haven’t got all day. Or do you want to stay in here, is that it?’ Behind him the door is open, and Cat is up in an instant, bolting through it without a word. She runs headlong into George.

‘Cat! Steady, girl! You’re all right, are you? Not hurt?’ he asks, holding her easily with one solid arm, though she would have run right by him, out into the sunlight.

‘George! They locked me in!’ she gasps.

‘Hush, hush, I know they did. But you’re out now. Slow down, Cat. Look around you,’ he says, softly. Cat does as she is told, taking a deep breath. She is in the front room of the police station, and behind George the door is wide open, the street dazzlingly bright.

‘You’re letting me go?’ she asks the constable who roused her just now.

‘This time. But just you stay out of trouble, you hear? I’ve heard rumours about you, Miss Morley. We’ve no need for any more of your public exhibitions, understand?’

‘But … they wouldn’t let her speak. She had a right to speak! And … they threw things – a dead rat, for God’s sake! At two defenceless women!’ she cries. ‘Are you going to lock up the man who threw that, are you?’