Page 45 of Her Last Breath

‘Ed used to annoy me so much,’ she said wistfully, suddenly. ‘Calling me a ghost, saying I was always following him around. But he always let me come along, you know? I remember falling over a lot, hurting myself. He would carry me home and usually be the one to give me first aid, so our mother didn’t find out and bollock us.’

They came to a stop outside the Country House Gallery.

‘I always wondered who would buy stuff from here growing up,’ Jane mused. ‘Always felt a bit posh. Maybe it’s the gallery name?’

‘Not everyone round here is brassic, you know,’ he said, nudging her side. ‘Some of us have good jobs and money.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘You’ve lived down south too long, started to believe the entire town is on benefits which they use to shoot up at all hours.’

‘I mean …’

He shook her hand off in protest, walking away, at speed. She chased him down Cow Lane to grab it again. They were beside a derelict betting shop and café. He pulled her into the narrow gap between the two buildings.

‘This alley here, it was my go-to,’ he said. They were up close, barely any room separating them. Jane felt his hands on her back, his mouth so close. If she moved just an inch forward, she would kiss him. She pulled back, thinking how it would complicate things between them.

‘Don’t think too hard, because I’m not,’ he said, reading her mind.

‘Your wife?’ she whispered.

‘We have an agreement. United front for the kids and the community, but separate lives for years.’

Jane hesitated; she was so lonely and craving physical touch. No, things would get too messy. Sure, she and Sameer had hooked up in police college, but now he was her boss. She removed his hands from her back and headed back onto the street.

‘It’s not really my thing.’

‘It’s alright, you’re allowed to sleep with me now. You already got the job!’ he shouted after her.

For a moment, Jane was tempted to return to Sameer’s arms. Instead, she kept walking. She had run for too long and now it was time to stop and deal with the mess of her past, before it was too late.

Chapter 28

Jane checked her phone. It was 2 a.m. when Sameer had dropped her home. It was hard to resist him; he was far too good-looking to be a cop and there was something about revisiting a previous encounter that came with its own extra level of horniness. Her life was already complicated enough though and she didn’t need to add sleeping with her boss to the list.

Wide awake and staring at her bedroom ceiling, her mind wandered. She was thinking about Alice’s father, clearing out his mother’s place after her death. It was inevitable Jane herself would have to do the same within weeks. There was no sentiment, though; she would just make a list of what needed to be done and in which order. Maybe she could sell the house as it was, with everything included. She remembered, then, her mother had decided to leave it to the Church. Probably a good thing: Father Michael and his outreach volunteers were providing a service in which the council and government were failing.

She’d do a thorough check for anything personal though before she handed over the keys. As her mind traced shadows on her ceiling, she suddenly remembered the attic. That’s probably where most things were that Maeve didn’t want strangers getting their hands on. Jane decided sleep wasn’t going to come, so she would use her time more effectively.

She pulled down the ladder to the attic using the pole hook that had been there since she was a child and gingerly climbed the rickety steps. She hoped they wouldn’t break; there was no one around to save her if she fell.

The attic was surprisingly well maintained, everything in boxes, marked up. She imagined her mother spending her time here making things orderly before she got too ill. Dust and cobwebs were far less numerous than she had imagined as well. Feeling a pulse of sympathy for her mother, alone with her memories, she envisioned her holed up here to help time pass. Had Jane been a selfish bitch after all? No, she didn’t make this choice. She was forced to leave.

Scanning boxes to find any with her name on them, Jane could only see her brother’s name scrawled over a number of them in thick marker pen. Underlined, as though her mother was reinforcing her love for him.

Gingerly, Jane started to work her way through the packed items, finding trainers, a cricket bat, footballs. There were Transformer toys, He-Man toys as well. She didn’t remember him being into those shows. Instead, Jane remembered wanting a Barbie doll so badly she had screamed blue murder, lying on the supermarket floor, crying for her mother to buy her one. Her mother kept looking in her purse and ignoring Jane. Much later, Jane understood that there was no money to waste on something like that, her father buying her a knock-off version at the local market.

Rifling through another box, she found Ed’s old high school photos and report cards, glad hers were lost somewhere. The same crest adorned her own reports, only the content was much less glowing, having spent her high school years smoking, drinking and snogging. And the rest, her inner saboteur accused.

Eagerly looking through the class photos of Ed, Jane imagined he would be easy to spot. In her mind’s eye, he would be taller and broader than the other boys, she was sure. But as her eyes scanned the images and eventually found him, she was surprised. Her imagined version of Ed took a beating. The real Ed was comparatively shorter than his classmates, thinner too. It’s funny how she only measured him against herself.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane spotted a folder with her name on it. Had her own school things got mixed up with Ed’s? Carefully, she picked up the cardboard binder and opened it. At first she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing, then turned the pages more quickly. There was a picture of her graduating from Hendon, standing next to her mother. How could she have forgotten that time, her mother staying with her? The sun had been shining and they had managed two days without unpleasantness. Tourist hopping from Madame Tussauds to Harrods to the Tower and, the day after, Buckingham Palace, followed by afternoon tea in a swanky hotel.

Jane smiled at the memory. The other pages were articles in which she had been mentioned, cases she was investigating and honourable mentions from police magazines. The breath caught in her throat, Jane left numb and unsure how she should react. Her mother had not once said that she was proud of her daughter or was interested in her career as a police officer. Confused, unnerved, Jane put the folder back in its place.

As the images of London with her mother floated in her mind, Jane recalled the trips she had taken there with Melody and Phil. She felt a jolt, realising she had forgotten to run a check on Phil, distracted by her team and the investigation. She made a resolve to get on to it first thing.

Jane reached for Ed’s report cards next, reading through the comments from his first years with a smile. Model student, good at cricket. Her smile disappeared though as she checked his later reports. She thought they might be her own, had to do a double take.