LITMIR.BIZ

       The Deplorable Word

      Monday, 8 November

      Orla Hayes climbed the stairs and pulled on a jumper and another pair of socks. She put her head round the door of Gracie’s little room and pulled the quilt and sheet and blanket up to her chin. She stood for a moment looking down at Gracie’s fat, beautiful face; listening to the sound of the breath that came through lips slightly parted; allowing her hand to brush strands of dark hair away from her closed eyes. Nothing on earth must be allowed to disturb Gracie, for if Gracie was fine then so was all the world.

      She left her little one sleeping and crept downstairs to turn off the fire, though it was only ten o’clock and the nights were becoming bitterly cold. Her fingers were tingling now and her nose and the tips of her toes. She had wanted another hour of light and reading or else to darn Gracie’s socks before she went to bed but the cold was going to be too much for her.

      She pulled the blue-flowered quilt out of its cubbyhole and made the sofa into a bed, arranging her cushions as she always did. She briefly lit the gas and warmed half a cup of milk, which she mixed with sugar and drank down straight. Then she ran to get warm while the effects of the milk could still be felt and pulled the quilt right up to her eyes. The window in the kitchen whistled and shook in the wind. Brennan was late home tonight and she wanted to be asleep when he came in.

      She must have been lying there more than an hour when she heard his keys rattling against the door. Then a click and a scrape of wood and brush against the floor and a gust of cold blew across her face and fingers. The door shut again with a soft crunch.

      Brennan Hayes paused for a minute, standing on the mat, listening to the silence in the flat. Then he crept into the kitchen, poured water into a glass, left his boots by the understairs cupboard and softly plodded up towards his bed. Orla listened to him do this just as she had done on hundreds of other nights and she waited for him to speak to her, though this he never did.

      The little carriage clock ticked on the windowsill in the darkness. She guessed it was nearly midnight; he was rarely home earlier than half past eleven these days. In six hours Gracie would be awake, sitting on her mother’s stomach, poking her awake and she would grudgingly agree to light the fire again and make them both tea and porridge and the radio would be playing ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’, which always made Orla want to cry. And after seven he would come downstairs, washed and shaved and in his smart, clean uniform and he would drink a cup of tea at the kitchen table while Gracie told him some crazy story about monsters and eyes and tigers walking her to the shops and then he would kiss his daughter on the forehead and say goodbye and he would be out of their lives again for another fifteen hours or months or even years … because in every real sense he had been cut adrift and it was she who had done the cutting.

      Tuesday, 9 November

      At twenty past seven Brennan Hayes walked out of the house, squeezing the door closed behind him. He could still just feel the warmth of Gracie’s head where he had kissed her. The sky was dark grey and rain spotted his uniform. He turned north onto Finsbury Square and then headed west towards Smithfield Market. Fleet Street. The Strand. Charing Cross Road. Leicester Square. Piccadilly Circus. Savile Row. And at the end of it all – at the end of the road crossings and the grey-suited shuffle and the noise of angry bus drivers and the taste of petrol on his tongue and the spiky cold air of a London morning which thrilled him and froze him in equal measure – at the end of it all lay a different name, a different voice and a different life.

      ***

      ‘Excuse me. My name is Anna Treadway. I’ve been called in for an interview at eleven.’

      The desk sergeant continued to stare at her sleepily. Anna felt compelled to continue but couldn’t think what else to say.

      ‘Shall I go and sit over there?’ she asked, nodding to a wooden bench by the door.

      The desk sergeant frowned for a moment, as if this was a truly ingenious question to ask. Then he looked her in the eye as if seeing her for the first time: ‘Yes.’

      Anna retreated gratefully and sat down, squeezing herself to the very edge of the bench – against the armrest – in case some strange or large or terrifying other should arrive at any moment and be told to sit with her.

      Iolanthe had been missing for ten days and Anna could not shake the feeling that not enough was being done to find her. She’d been all over the fronts of the papers for a few days, and posters had appeared on the lamp posts asking for information, and Anna had found herself thinking how ridiculous it all was, and what a waste that Lanny wasn’t here to enjoy all the fuss. But then the boy had been injured in Golden Square, the headlines had changed and she hadn’t seen or heard from a policeman in over a week until the call last night.

      She thought about Lanny’s story of her father, her mother and then her brother dying. She was the very last of her little family. Surely she was meant to carry on – to have children, even. Iolanthe was forty but it might still be possible. If she met someone soon she could have the chance of a child. Maybe she could adopt. She had asked Lanny once about men: was there anyone, was there someone back home in the States?

      ‘I’ve never been a great one for relationships. And I’m not too good at sex and nothing else. I grew up really fast, really young. Went straight over that drippy crush stage and into the cold, hard world. Men are dangerous, Anna, you never know what they’re really thinking.’

      ‘I suppose. I’m not any good at relationships either. I quite like having my own life.’

      ‘That’s it. That’s it exactly. I have my life.’

      ‘Miss Treadway? Is it miss?’ A tall man carrying a bunch of folders under one arm was calling her from across the hallway. She raised her hand, nerves rendering her momentarily dumb. The red-haired policeman advanced on her with an outstretched hand: ‘Good morning, miss. I am Detective Sergeant Barnaby Hayes. We’re in interview room four. Would you follow me, please?’

      Anna followed Hayes along a beige corridor and then another. In the distance she could hear the murmur and rattle of a works canteen, but for the most part the station was oddly silent. Voices murmured and muttered behind half-closed doors; file drawers squeaked and rolled in and out in offices as they passed.

      ‘Here

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