The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson
I quite enjoyed organising someone else’s life and, all these years later, I still enjoy it, and I’m still grateful it gives me the flexibility to leave whenever I need to. Which is why having the creepy feeling of someone following me today, when I am leaving work at a time I would normally be here, is even more worrying. Maybe they sit here all day and wait.
I usually park in the underground parking spot in our building, but today I was in a rush and couldn’t find my pass so had to park in the public car park a few minutes away.
During that time of our arrest and then the trial, when she and I were nicknamed The Ice Cream Girls, I learnt what it was like to be watched and followed and basically stalked, and it is happening again. Someone is watching me. Regularly.
I stop in the car park and look around, trying to see who is watching me, who is causing the hairs on my neck to tingle and my spine to shiver. People are milling around: getting out of cars, pulling into spaces, climbing into cars, loading boots up with shopping. Everyone looks normal. As if they should be there, as if they are going about their daily business like I was until I felt someone’s eyes on me again. Someone who is closely, deliberately watching me.
After that little snippet in the paper, maybe someone has tracked me down and is trying to start it all up again. But they’d be more unsubtle, I think. After a few days of watching me go about my basically boring life (which I love), they’d need something else to keep their interest going. So I don’t think it’s the press again. It could be her but I don’t know how she would have found me since I have a new name and I don’t live in London. No, it must be someone else.
I unlock my car door and climb in, knowing that all the while someone is observing me. Someone is scrutinising my every move. I hate the not knowing. If I knew who it was, then I wouldn’t be so worried. I’d be worried, yes, but not like this. This is so frightening because it makes me feel powerless. And everyone I pass in the street, every car that seems to be going in my direction for just that bit too long, is a suspect. A potential assailant. The person who is going to hurt me, hurt my family.
Pulling out of the car park and on to the main road, up on to the road that leads me out of town, I feel the eyes drop away, the scrutiny lessen. It’s got worse over the past few days, I realise, my heart skipping up a few beats as I admit this to myself. Before, the chill would come over me fleetingly; the past week or so it has been happening much more often. In different places at different times. Sometimes when I am picking Con up from school, sometimes when I am getting the paper in the morning, sometimes, like today, when I am leaving work.
I want to tell Evan about it, but it’s like a lot of other things in my life I can’t share with him because they are all interconnected by the same poisonous web, and if I tug one cord all the other cords will fall apart too – if I explain part of it, I’ll have to explain the rest of it, and that isn’t how I want to tell him.
If I just knew who it was, then I’d feel a little better. Who is stalking me? And why? Why?
May, 1987
‘Are you OK?’ he asked when I had not been moving for a while.
I wanted to speak but I could not, because my mouth could not form the words and my chest detonated with agony every time I breathed in too much or breathed out. I could not get enough breath together to form even a word. One simple word. One word: ‘enough’. ‘Stop.’ ‘Please.’ ‘No.’ Whatever the word, it would not be yes. Because I was not OK. This was not OK.
‘I’m sorry, Serena, but you made me do this.’
‘“But” doesn’t make an apology, it makes an excuse of your behaviour,’ I heard Mum say in my head. Mum. I want my mum. I want her to hold me, to tell me it’s going to be OK, to make all of this go away. I want my mum to turn back time so I never did this. I never got involved with this.
‘You made me. Why did you have to smile? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love me any more? You’re everything to me and sometimes I think you couldn’t give a fuck what happens to me. If I died tomorrow would you even cry? Would you even notice?’
I want my mum.
I tried again to move, to uncurl myself from the ball I had turned into when he’d started to kick me. Not quick enough, not fast enough, and I had cried out when the steel in the toe of his new shoes connected with my ribs. Through the shooting stars of pain, I managed to curl up and tried to breathe even though it was agony. I tried to breathe and hold on and wait for it all to be over.
‘God, Serena, you know I love you. Why do you make me do these things?’
I want my mum.
‘I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t make me.’
I tasted blood in my mouth, and felt pressure on my side. I still could not breathe properly. The air was being stained with the sound of how I felt: inhaling was an agony of shrieking, gasping sounds and stars behind the eyes, exhaling was a silent cry of suffering.
‘Serena? Why are you breathing like that? Serena?’
His hands made me wince, even though I could tell they were trying to be gentle.
‘Serena? Stay with me, baby. Stay with me. I’ll get you to the hospital, OK? It’s all going to be OK.’
I want my mum, I thought at him as he gently lifted me into his arms, catapulting the agony like stabbing knives through every nerve in my body.
I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my mum.
Evan has already booked St Catherine’s church not far from us in Preston Park for the date he suggested because he knew you have to do these things months, sometimes years in advance.
We lucked out, he’d said, with the church being free on our anniversary when he rang on the off-chance, so he’d booked it and decided we’d find everything else to fit in around it.
I like it that Evan has become more romantic and involved in our relationship since the proposal. He takes my hand after he’s held open the car door for me. He kisses my neck when we’re standing in the supermarket queue – much to the horror of Con and Vee. He has just become affection personified.
We’re holding hands as we enter the restful, gloomy interior of St Catherine’s. It’s a beautiful building with a sand-coloured bell tower and an arched oak wood entrance.
Despite the reverence we usually feel when entering a church, we don’t walk in so much as almost fall through the doors, giggling at each other.
‘Shhhhh,’ I hush him as we stumble towards the aisle, ‘we need to be respectful.’
He responds by tickling me, causing me to wriggle away, trying to get his hands off me while stifling a giggle. ‘Shhhhh,’ he hushes me. Evan stops trying to tickle me and instead pulls me into his arms, and automatically I wrap my arms around his neck and smile up at him. If someone had asked what I wanted from Evan that I wasn’t previously getting, it would be this. Overt displays of affection. The public part isn’t important, it was knowing he could do it and would do it if the mood took him. His obsessive tidying (which excludes the kitchen for some reason), cigar smoking and sports watching I can more than live with: they form the man I married – he wouldn’t be him without those bits. But this, this new him is a bonus I would never dare have wished for. It might have come true and I would have had to lose something else about him to make it right. To balance things up. And it seems that my wish came true anyway. I not only got a proposal, and a wedding, but also this man who has no problems showing he loves me.
‘Just imagine, in three months we’re going to be doing this right here,’ Evan says quietly, adding to the hushed, calming atmosphere of the church. He kisses the end of my nose, something he does when he’s feeling particularly affectionate.
‘I know,’ I whisper back. ‘I’m so excited I can hardly breathe.’
‘It’s good to see two young people so obviously in love,’ a man’s voice cuts into our loved-up bliss.
We jump apart, embarrassed and guilty, like two children caught with their hands in the biscuit jar – or two adults caught canoodling in the house of God.
?
‘We’re sorry, we were just . . .’ Evan begins.
‘Practising?’ the priest says. ‘It’s fine, this is God’s house after all, and God is love, so I am hardly going to object to you showing love. Had you removed clothes, however, I might not have been so understanding.’
Evan and I both relax and smile at the priest. He is a solid man, whose girth has obviously seen one too many cream teas and biscuits. His white hair is scattered with grey and black, as is his full beard. He has a smiley mouth and striking brown eyes that seem kindly and astute at the same time.
‘You must be Mr and Mrs Gillmare,’ he says, holding out his hand.
It’s that small action – reaching first for Evan, then for me – that does it. It catapults me back through time and I seek out the priest’s eyes again, his face, the curl of his mouth. My body seems to be turned inside out all at once, and I am woozy and lightheaded as I raise my hand for the priest to shake. He does the shaking because I have lost control of my limbs as I stand here in God’s house, talking to one of his representatives.
‘I’m Father Gabriel,’ he says. ‘Not to be confused with the angel of the same name. After all, he is rather higher up in God’s hierarchy than me. But I like to think I can hold my own.’
I’ve met many Father Mikes, Matthews, Davids and Martins over the years but not any other Father Gabriels.
‘Old Father Mike and I are always arguing over which one of our namesakes is higher up God’s hierarchy,’ Father Gabriel continues. ‘I call him old, he’s only two years older than me. He just seems older. I think the Angel Gabriel is more important – after all, without him, Mary might have thought it was just something she ate.’
Evan is liking Father Gabriel’s patter, he must trot it out many, many times a week but he makes it sound original. When I first met him, he was a lot thinner and younger. His hair was black and his face more angular. He was new to the priesthood, only ten years or so older than me. But he had the same striking gaze, the same kindly manner. I was sitting in the pews at a church in London, shaking and trembling and trying not to cry or throw up. I could not go home, I could not stay where I had been, the light in the church was on and the door of the church had been open so I had come in and sat at the back, trying to work out what to do.
June, 1988
My terror was like barbed wire twisted around my heart, entwined around my stomach, coiled around my mind. I did not know what to do with myself. My parents weren’t expecting me home so no one would really miss me, but home is where I wanted to be. Except I could not go there.
‘Are you hurt?’ the priest asked.
He had walked softly because I had not heard him approach.
‘S-s-sorry,’ I said, trying to rise from the seat, but finding it hard on my rubberised legs. ‘I-I-I go.’
‘No, no,’ the priest said, sitting down in the pew in front of me. He didn’t look so scary, all dressed in black as he was, when he sat down. Standing over me as he had been he reminded me of the Grim Reaper, coming back to finish the job that he’d started earlier that evening. ‘Sit, sit. Don’t feel you have to rush off anywhere. This is an open place for anyone.’
I stopped trying to stand and sat, still. Waiting. Waiting for the answer as to what to do to come to me.
‘Are you hurt?’ the priest asked again.
I shook my head.
‘Your clothes, they have blood on them,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’
I looked down at the white top I had put on earlier that evening. It was scattered with red, like hundreds of poppies of all different sizes. I pulled my jacket across my top to hide the stain, to hide the evidence.
‘I’m Father Gabriel, can you tell me your name?’
‘S-Serena,’ I managed. My lips felt numb, as if they were not connected to my body so I could not work them properly.
‘Serena, that’s a pretty name. Are you in trouble, Serena?’
I was in big trouble. I had done something terrible. Something so very terrible, I wanted to throw up every time I thought about it.
‘Can you tell me what has happened, Serena?’
I shook my head. I could never tell. Never.
‘Are you Catholic, Serena?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Well, that means if you ask me to hear your confession, I can listen to what you have to say and I will never tell anyone what you have told me.’
‘N-n-not even t-t-the police?’ I asked.
‘No one, not even the police. Not even my superiors in the church. It stays with me.’
I nodded again.
‘Do you want to tell me what the matter is? See if I can help you?’
He couldn’t help me, no one could help me.
‘You don’t have to talk, Serena, we can sit here in silence if you want. But if you want to talk, I will listen and I will never tell anyone else.’
I covered my face with my hands, tried to normalise my breathing. I was so scared. This shouldn’t be happening.
‘You . . . you swear you can’t tell anyone? You swear on God?’ I asked.
‘I swear on God. It is one of my sacred vows.’
Anxiously, I tapped my fingers on my lower teeth. Should I tell him? Will he be able to help me? Will he be able to tell me what to do?
I looked up at him. He was quite young for a priest, and he seemed so kind; his eyes looked like they wanted to help, instead of condemn me like some of the priests did when they gave a sermon on those Sundays my mum would make me go to church with her.
‘Would you like me to hear your confession, Serena?’
I braced myself and nodded.
‘Tell me,’ he said softly.
‘I . . .’ My voice faltered. ‘I think I just killed someone.’
Father Gabriel is so affable and friendly and funny, Evan is feeling very comfortable in his room. It’s becoming obvious that he doesn’t recognise me. Why would he? It was twenty years ago. He must have seen a million people in that time. Well, maybe not a million but enough to render me simply another stranger to him.
I am on edge, though. This is another coincidence about the past that is connected to the wedding. Another occurrence that is warning me that I should tell Evan before it is too late. Giving up after the other night was a stupid thing to do. It could all so easily go wrong. If Father Gabriel had recognised me, I would have had to explain it all to Evan right there and that would not be a good way to start a meeting about getting married in front of the priest we want to marry us.
The priest continues to crack jokes, to tell us that he wishes more people would come and get married again after a registry office job because it made him feel important, as if they needed him to make a marriage seem real. ‘Imagine the numbers we’d get coming through these doors if everyone thought like you did. The diocese would have no reason to question whether to close us down or not.’ He starts to nod, sagely. ‘Of course, your marriage is all about me and how it will benefit my church.’ Evan laughs and so do I.
‘After fifteen years, I think it’s safe to say you two don’t need to come to our pre-marriage classes,’ he says. ‘Out of interest, why have you decided to get married again?’
‘Erm, well,’ Evan begins. He has been doing all the talking: I have been too shaken to speak. ‘We, erm, kind of did it in a rush last time. This time, we wanted to do it properly.’
Father Gabriel nods. ‘Quick and necessary, was it?’
‘Hmmm . . .’ Evan replies.
‘Ah, well, it obviously worked out for you both. And who am I to judge what brings two people together? The Lord moves in mysterious ways, after all. Well, it’s been awfully nice to meet you both. I look forward to seeing you again on the big day. If you could pop in for the odd service or two between now and then, it would look so much better in front of the other people who run the church. Me, I?
‘Will do,’ Evan says. ‘We’ll bring the kids to Sunday service as well.’
Ass-kisser, I say in my head.
‘It was good to meet you, Evan.’ He shakes my husband’s hand. ‘We can get together nearer the time to discuss the order of service and the such like. And we can do a dress rehearsal the night before if you’re not too busy.’
‘That would be great,’ my ass-kissing husband says, beaming away.
‘Good to see you, too, Serena. You’ll make a lovely bride, I’m sure.’ He takes my hand in both of his and, smiling at me, shakes my hand, holding on a bit longer than necessary at the end.
He remembers me. How could he not? There can’t have been that many people who confessed to killing someone to him. He is still smiling at me when he drops my hand. He never did say anything to anyone, even though he had many, many chances to do so. Even today, more than twenty years later, he hasn’t even given an indication to Evan about me.
On the way back to my car, walking on shaky legs, I can hear the clock ticking, reminding me that I am living my current life on borrowed time, and very soon it is going to run out.
poppy
He still walks out of any room that I enter. He still looks through me when he bumps into me on the stairs and on the landing. He still behaves as if I am dead to him. If he carries on, he may get his wish because every slight, every time he pretends I’m not there, is a slice into my heart, a wound that I find it hard to recover from.
I cannot take much more. I have decided to try and talk to him. To get him to talk to me, to let me back into that space in his heart that was always there for me. During Mum’s long stretches of illness, he taught me to walk, he used to dress me and change me, he used to give me my milk. He was the one who brushed my teeth, combed my hair, he had Granny Morag teach him to make braids so he could put two in my hair. Even when I was twelve it was him, not Mum, who sat me down on my bed and stuttered and blushed and hmmmed and ahhhhhed his way through the talk about periods. We were a team, a unit, but now he ignores me. Now he pretends I do not exist. I am not there. I do not understand how he can. I could never do it to him, no matter what anyone said he had done. I don’t think, even if I was presented with irrefutable evidence and a confession, I would believe he had done it.