Page 44 of Her Last Breath

‘Temporary seconded boss.’

Jane drank in all the changes she could see around her. It must have been twenty years since she last did this, wander round Burnley town centre. They walked past the new Charter Walk shopping centre, groups of people shouting drunkenly at each other.

‘What happened to Dorothy Perkins?’ Jane asked, eyeing up the Sui Generis store that had opened up in its place. She remembered it was where her mother took her for the occasional posh dress. Jane’s choice was always Topshop.

‘Closed down after the pandemic,’ Sameer said.

They carried on down St James’s Street, passing the Swan, with its Lancashire pale yellow brickwork. That shade of stone across Yorkshire and Lancashire made everything look so quaint. As they walked, they saw more people enjoying post-pub kebabs, throwing up after drinking too much, arguing heatedly. Silently, the homeless were laying down their cardboard mattresses and sleeping bags.

‘You ever wonder why we do this?’ he asked her.

‘No,’ she said genuinely. He held out his arm, which she grabbed, drawing herself close to him.

‘Shall we go get drunk on shots?’

‘I thought good Muslim boys don’t drink?’

‘I’m sure they don’t.’

They walked in silence, Jane enjoying the closeness of his body, remembering how solid it was under his clothes.

‘I remember coming here as a child,’ she said, her voice full of the emotion she was feeling, inevitably remembering Ed. ‘Everything felt so daunting, I was always scared. Ed used to have to hold my hand.’

Her eyes wandered around the small space of the town centre.

‘In my head this went on forever when I was young. This was the whole world right here. It feels so naïve to even say it.’

‘And now you’ve been corrupted by London,’ Sameer teased.

‘Something like that,’ she said quietly.

‘You never talked about him, do you know that? Your brother. You rarely mentioned him when I knew you, back in Hendon.’

Jane was quiet, lowering her hand, which he laced his fingers through.

‘It’s funny, because I think of him constantly. Every day he’s there. And since coming up here, he doesn’t leave my head. He’s so alive in this town.’

‘Well, if you ever want to talk about him, I’m here for you. Or if anything else is bothering you.’

She mulled over his offer before heading to safer emotional ground.

‘Dave Johnson thinks his face doesn’t fit, that that’s why you didn’t give him the job.’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘What’s the real reason he didn’t get the job?’

‘Dave Johnson is an automaton. That’s why he didn’t get the job.’

‘I think you’re drunk.’

‘Seriously though, that’s not on. I play fair, if you were rubbish no way would I give you this job. He just isn’t up to leading a team. He’s too obsessive, work means too much to him and the team might respect him because of his experience, but he doesn’t get on with them the same way you do. Have you seen his colour-coded binder yet?’

Jane laughed at the memory from Liam Harrison’s interview.

‘Why are you bringing up colour, you massive racist?’

It was a long-running joke they had between them. Neither of them was the slightest bit prejudiced, despite the invisible segregated lines that you could draw across Burnley. Jane remembered the race riots just before she left in 2001, when Burnley, along with Oldham and Bradford, had been set alight by marauding white and Asian youths. Each side thinking the other had it better than them, slyly fuelled by drug gangs and festering poverty. She wondered how much had changed since then. How much Ed had missed. A sucker punch to her gut as she thought about him.