Shooting in the Dark

the difference was that she’d found Geordie and he’d found her. There’d been Sam as well, of course, and Celia, the small handful of people who had seen the best in them rather than the worst. All of those things were missing in Ralph’s life. He didn’t only have nothing; he had no one.
    But, apart from Geordie, who would offer him love? He was so damaged that he couldn’t recognize value. He saw love as a form of weakness, something to be exploited. The closest he got to it was in his Euroslut mags.
    Janet wondered if she should go softer on him. Take a back seat and let Geordie’s brotherly affection and concern do its work. She could cook and clean and do the washing and be an all-round toe-rag in the house.
    Could she?
    Yes, she could, and she’d do it too if she thought that it would make a difference. But all that would happen was that Geordie would slowly be disillusioned and she and Echo would be exploited. Ralph would gain more power out of the situation than any of them could handle. And he’d abuse it; he’d abuse it on a daily basis.
    Is there anything I can do? she asked herself. Are there any actions available to me that will bring this whole thing to an end? She sat down at the table and put her head in her hands and thought hard.
    There were a number of things, of course. But there was not one single thing that Janet could think of that wouldn’t involve a series of risks to her family. Risks that, on balance, she was not prepared to take. She didn’t believe she had the authority to take those risks without consulting Geordie. And that was out of the question.
    After mulling it over for forty minutes she was left with one option. One thing she could do, and it didn’t really amount to much. She could clean his room.
     
    She took everything out of there and left it in piles in the hall. She hoovered the room and went to work on a couple of coffee stains with carpet shampoo. Next she tried to decide which of his clothes were clean. She made two piles, taking one of them downstairs to the washing basket and folding the others neatly and placing them in drawers and on shelves. The skin mags she left in their plastic bags and put them under his bed.
    When everything was done she looked at the room. She hadn’t touched the bed, for reasons she didn’t want to think about. But it was crazy to leave everything else clean. She stripped the cover off the duvet and picked up the pillow. A pair of scissors was there: green plastic handles, exactly like the ones in her sewing basket. She took them downstairs and checked. Yes, they were hers. She returned to Ralph’s room, thankful that she had found them in time. Another day and he’d have taken them apart.
    Janet changed the sheet and the pillowcase and realized what was missing. She brought up a vase of dried flowers from the kitchen and set it on the dressing table. Pleased with herself now, for having thought of the extra thing. The thing that makes the difference. She wasn’t doing it for Ralph, she was doing it for Janet.
    She stood at the door and smiled when she saw what she’d done. It looked really pleasant in there, a nice place to be. She took a step back and was about to leave and close the door when she changed her mind.
    She took three steps forward, towards the bed. She lifted the top corner of the mattress and saw the roll of Sellotape. She hadn’t known or consciously thought that she would find anything at all. It was as if some invisible force had drawn her there. She lifted the mattress a little higher and withdrew the magazine.
    It was called Loaded, and when she flicked through it several pages had had sections cut out of them. The cutout sections were not of naked women, which is what one would have expected of Ralph. They were cut-out sections of text.
     

43
     
    Ralph had seen the redhead and done nothing about it. Nearly nothing. He’d given her a look down the length of the bar. Then he’d ordered a pint and waited.
    Fourth bar, fifth lager. He’d had two in the Lowther, one in the King’s Arms, another in the Robin Hood, and now this one. Posh pub, but every place had its barflies. She came over when he’d taken the top off his pint. Tight little ass and a short leopard-skin coat with smooth hair on it like a real cat.
    ‘Got a light?’
    One of those extra-longs hanging from her bottom lip. He flicked his lighter and lit up her face. The tiny cracks in her rouged lips caught his eye, the elasticity as