The Blissfully Dead

Now, Jess was biting the inside of her top lip to stop herself smiling and, with her right forefinger, she stroked the smudgy cheek of Shawn’s tattoo.

If Chloe had had to describe her friend’s appearance, she would have said it was ecstatic.

‘Are you on drugs?’ Chloe asked. ‘Did you get some E?’

‘Don’t be daft. Drugs are for losers. Now be quiet, all right?’ And she started to sing, belting out the words like her life depended on it.

Chapter 6

Day 3 – Patrick

Mummy, you put the triangle in there.’

Gill beamed and slotted the triangle through the triangular hole in the apparatus. ‘Here, Bo

Bo

Gill posted the circle, then handed a square one to Patrick. ‘Daddy do the square?’ she asked Bo

Bo

Patrick shrugged, feeling ridiculously slighted. Bo

Patrick remembered it, though.

He knew he would never, ever forget it. The sight of Gill’s purple fingermarks on their baby’s neck would accompany him to the grave, her tiny limp body within seconds of eternal lifelessness . . .

As if she could read his thoughts, Gill looked up at him from where she was crouching on the rug next to Bo

But the problem was, he wasn’t sure that he felt anything at all for his wife, bar a deep sense of sorrow and pity. How could he go back to sharing his bed, his life, his heart with someone he wasn’t sure he even loved anymore?

Their house was immaculate, far better than it had been in all the months it was rented out on short-term lets. Patrick looked around the room.

‘New picture? It’s nice.’ He gestured towards a large canvas on the wall – abstract artily out-of-focus petals. Privately he thought Gill’s tastes must have changed. The old Gill would have dismissed that as anodyne or too predictable. Perhaps that was a consequence of being incarcerated in a secure mental unit for over a year . . .

Gill actually blushed. ‘I got some new scatter cushions too,’ she said, pointing at the sofa. The cushions were the exact same shade of crimson as the petals in the picture.

‘Yes, I noticed,’ said Patrick, although he hadn’t. ‘Lovely.’

‘The kitchen was really dirty,’ Gill said, helping Bo

She hated this, Patrick realised. She hated the fact that he’d had to do all the work involved in the temporary lets of their house, negotiating with the letting agents when she didn’t even know who they were because she’d been locked in a mental unit, having daily therapy while he was approving the inventory, checking references, having to live with his mum and dad, parent Bo

Often, Patrick also thought that she never would be able to. ‘Does it matter now?’ he said, more testily than he had intended. ‘We’ve got the house back.’

Gill sat back and held her arms wide for Bo

He stood up and walked away, cursing his cowardice.

‘I’m still not ready, Gill,’ he said, without looking at her. When he glanced back from the kitchen, she was hugging Bo

He put the kettle on, for something to do, and stood at the kitchen counter listening to the water heat up as Bo

It was doing his head in. Why could he not just go for it? Fling himself back into the marriage, for Bo

Throwing tea bags into two mugs, he did what he always did when his thoughts reached this impasse: he thought about something else instead.

He remembered the vigil last night. All those big versions of what Bo

The girls last night had been torn between simmering post-gig euphoria – bordering on hysteria – and the pressure to be hushed and respectful. Patrick suspected that the murder of one of their own was making these girls feel even more excited, blood and hormones at boiling point, than they would at the end of a normal OnTarget gig. At least he and Carmella hadn’t had to sit through the gig themselves. When he’d found out that the vigil was taking place, he’d decided that their attendance at the actual concert wasn’t necessary. The vigil had been an unexpected bonus – a great chance to talk to the girls in his official capacity.

Many of them had got so hot from dancing and screaming inside the stadium that they had stripped down to tiny crop tops and removed the tights that they’d probably sported at the start of the evening in the chill February air. Half-naked, flushed girls holding lit candles was definitely at odds with the funereal atmosphere and Rose’s poor crying parents. He had looked around him at the thirty or forty girls who were all gaping at him as though he’d been beamed down from Mars, trying to spot anyone who seemed particularly uncomfortable or as if they had something to say. But even when he’d exhorted them to come forward, none of them had appeared flustered or anything other than curious, or ghoulishly fascinated by the whole affair.

Surely one of them must know something. Why had Rose gone to that hotel? Had she been dating an older man – the sort of man who would invite her up to a hotel room? He’d asked her mum, but Sally Sharp had been utterly convinced that Rose had no time for boys her own age, let alone older men. Rose had been a young fifteen who had never had a boyfriend and who had only had four, virtual, loves in her unformed and now unfinished life – the members of OnTarget. The girl had apparently slept, eaten, breathed OnTarget. Her whole life revolved around them – trying to get their attention online, buying CDs and downloads, concert tickets and merchandise with whatever birthday or babysitting money she happened to have. Her only friends were other OnTarget fans – Patrick had taken the names of all the ones that Sally Sharp knew of, and obviously he or Carmella would be talking to them as soon as they could – but he wondered if Wendy was right, and this was a simple case of an online predator. So far, the investigations of her online history and phone records had shown nothing interesting, just endless meaningless chit-chat with other fans.