Page 20 of The Tapes

FIFTEEN

After the talk with Kieron, I return to Dad’s house and continue looking for the jewellery box I know isn’t there. I wanted to find it before to somehow prove Mum was telling the truth – but now it’s about my own credibility.

I sit in the garage and use voice notes to record myself telling Faith that I need her to know I love her. It sounds corny, and I know I won’t send it. Except, when I play that voice note and then the one I recorded from Mum’s tape, it’s hard not to see that Kieron has a point. Or thinks he does.

The two recordings sound so much like one another that I have to tell myself I’m not my mother.

I thought I was finally unburdening myself by talking to Nicola’s dad but there’s a decent chance I’ve made things worse.

Kieron will likely check in with Liam to make sure I’m still going to the AA meetings.

At the beginning, it was part of my probation.

I’m past that now – but, considering he went out on a limb for me, that doesn’t mean Kieron won’t be checking up.

I fill a couple of bin bags with stuff to take to the tip, although it never quite feels as if I’m putting much of a dent in the mountain of stuff.

I do find a couple of my old school folders, that are crammed with various essays and test papers I must have kept.

I spend a short while skimming through those, before stumbling across the old HAVE FUN flyer that was given to all girls in my year.

That was at the height of the mania around the Earring Killer, a decade and a bit before Mum says she discovered the person’s identity.

The folder goes into a black bag but I put the flyer to one side, while I continue emptying more of Dad’s junk into the trash pile. It’s as I’m questioning why he has kept a bag of sawdust that the doorbell sounds. I head through the house and open up to find my daughter standing there.

‘I saw you on Find My Friends,’ she says, as I let her inside. ‘You said you might be here.’

I close the door and follow my daughter through to Dad’s kitchen. ‘There’s not much in the fridge,’ I say.

‘I ate already.’

I ask about college, which gets as much of a response as ever. ‘It was fine’ covers more or less everything. So much has happened in the past few hours, that I forget to ask about the older woman. It’s Faith who brings it up.

‘Did you see my photo?’

‘The silver car?’

‘Yeah, there was this weird woman who was following us. It was only when she pulled away that I thought she looked a bit like Grandma.’

I check the photo on my phone but it’s blurry and the glare is too strong to make out much of anything.

‘You didn’t say “follow” in your text,’ I say.

Faith is going through the cupboards and pulls out a packet of unopened custard creams. ‘I didn’t know anyone ever ate these,’ she says.

‘Good job you already ate then.’

She grins at me. ‘Maybe “following” is the wrong word. We were outside the theatre, walking towards the main union building. Then Shann noticed there was this silver car behind us. It was going really slow and Shannon reckoned there was someone inside watching us. We went across the car park but then, when we got to the other side and looked across, the car had parked on the road. A woman had got out and was taking photos.’

‘Of you?’

‘I don’t know. We were a bit far away by then.’

It does sound as if it could be a misunderstanding – except for the fact I also saw an older woman with a small silver car who was possibly taking photos of my dad’s house.

‘Why did you think it looked like your gran?’ I ask.

‘Dunno. I was looking through some of those photos you sent me at the weekend, so maybe she was on my mind. We were doing improv in class for how we’d react if a long-lost relative turned up. It was weird.’

After Dad died, Faith asked if I’d send her some pictures of her grandparents, so it does explain that she has a visual reference.

That doesn’t mean this woman was my mother, though.

More likely wishful thinking on Faith’s part, prompted by Dad’s death and the coincidence of the long-lost relative improv.

I decide not to tell my daughter that I saw a similar vehicle earlier in the day.

Faith continues going through the cupboards, though I’ve already cleared anything that had been opened.

‘Didn’t Granddad have any real food?’ Faith asks.

‘He thought rice was exotic, so not really.’

Faith lives off a diet that mainly seems to be eggs and yoghurt. It feels like the sort of thing someone on social media has recommended.

‘Can Shannon come over tomorrow?’ Faith asks, as she reaches Dad’s largely empty fridge.

‘Of course.’ I wait, and when the explanation doesn’t come: ‘Problems?’

‘The usual. Her mum’s arguing with Shannon’s stepdad ’cos he keeps getting home late from work. She’s convinced he’s having an affair.’

Faith closes the fridge and then props herself on the counter. I think for a moment, largely about Nicola and her jealousy. She scared off her first husband, Shannon’s father, for the same reason. She seemingly finds it impossible to trust any of her partners.

‘Do you know if Ethan’s having an affair?’ Faith asks.

‘How would I know?’

‘Maybe Nicola had said something to you?’

‘We don’t really talk about things like that – but you know what she’s like. Probably thinks he is.’

Faith swings her legs and shrugs. ‘I quite like him. Shannon does too but she says her mum is trying to get him to give up being a personal trainer and take a proper job somewhere.’

‘What does she mean by “proper”?’

‘Something that means he’s not visiting people in their homes…’

We catch each other’s eye because we’ve had conversations about this before.

‘Is there anything I can do around here…?’ Faith asks.

I know that type of phrasing, because we’ve all been seventeen once. Offering to do something with a clear indication we’d prefer not to. But there’s something I need to tell her.

‘I talked to the police earlier,’ I say.

‘Why?’

‘About the gun you found yesterday. They said your grandmother’s fingerprints are on it.’

My daughter’s legs stop swinging. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘I’m not sure. They didn’t seem to know what it meant, and I definitely don’t. At some point, Mum must’ve held that gun.’

Faith has a self-confidence I’m not sure I’ve ever had. It probably comes from having a solid group of friends over a course of years. That, or her father. She’s concerned now, as she stares unmovingly for a couple of seconds. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘I’m not sure anybody does.’

‘But when would she have left it there?’

‘I don’t know. Apparently, fingerprints can stay on something a long time. It could’ve been a while back.’

Faith thinks on this for a second and I know what’s coming. ‘So maybe I did see her…?’

‘I don’t think that’s possible, love.’

Faith blows a small raspberry with her lips to say that she’s not convinced – except I don’t know what to feel, either.

Somehow, without much of a conversation, we end up in the garage together, filling bin bags with junk.

It’s the first time anyone’s helped – and there’s a few moments of bonding as we laugh about the state of the things Dad kept.

There are eight fly swatters, a box of rusting springs, a flattened rugby ball that has a slash in the side.

Faith talks about the plans for her course’s overseas trip, dropping unsubtle hints that she’d like a few new outfits – but it’s nice to have a conversation that doesn’t have me second-guessing myself.

We fill so many bags that there are too many for the car and, for the first time since I started, it feels as if there’s been some progress made in clearing the space.

There are even odd minutes here and there in which I switch off from Mum’s tapes. Where I enjoy being a mother, and marvel at how grounded my daughter is.

Faith finds an old calendar from 1996 and asks why ‘milk due’ is written every other Monday.

I tell her we used to have a person deliver milk each day and we’d pay cash every couple of weeks.

My daughter is baffled by this and we go through the rest of the months together.

As well as milk deliveries, ‘Eve badminton’ is written in a series of squares from the start of the year until Easter.

It’s another memory that had been lost. ‘I had badminton lessons twice a week,’ I say, remembering.

‘Does that mean you were good?’ Faith asks.

‘I doubt it.’

Except, as I think about those sessions at the leisure centre, the shuttlecocks stuck high in the webbing of the wall, the way most of us could barely get the damned thing over the net, I realise it wasn’t my choice to go.

It was the time mentioned on the tape, where Dad had left and I was living alone with Mum.

She told me I had to get a hobby, so she’d have time to do things around the house.

That’s why I spent around three months playing badminton badly.

Which means this calendar includes the three months or so that Dad had walked out on us to live with someone named Harriet.

But now I have a year and month, one more thing occurs. I’ve spent the day reading on and off about the Earring Killer. There were peaks and troughs of attacks: short bursts of a few kills in a row, and then years of nothing.

And the Earring Killer’s first murder happened at the exact time Dad had moved out.