Free Bad Blood by Aline Templeton Page A

call every year. She didn’t hate him or anything, but after he remarried he seemed able just to put it all behind him as if he didn’t want his shiny new life with a shiny new wife to be cluttered up with reminders, not just of her, but of Tommy too. It felt as if he wanted to wipe out the memory that was all that was left now of his son.
    He swore he didn’t, of course. She knew how angry that accusation made him, so she took care to claim that he’d forgotten, that he nolonger cared about Tommy being killed – murdered, though even saying the word made her throat close, her eyes fill.
    If he cared, she always said, he’d come with her on her pilgrimage today, the pilgrimage she always made on the morning they’d found Tommy after a whole day of agonised searching for him. Grant had resisted right from the start. Morbid, unhealthy, he’d called it, and her unflinching determination had been yet another nail in the coffin for a marriage that had been dead on its feet even before Tommy was killed. By the time Grant moved out, Shelley had long stopped caring.
    All she wanted from him now was recognition for the child they had shared. She might not be his wife any more, but she was still his son’s mother and Grant’s refusal to engage with her remembrance always made her feel vindictive. She knew her Halloween call always upset him, and Shelley relished her power to make him suffer, at least once a year. It was the only time he couldn’t make excuses not to speak to her.
    Even thinking about it made her headache worse. She swallowed a couple of paracetamols then went downstairs, made herself a cup of strong black coffee and took it to the chair beside the phone.
    The voice that answered her call was cheerful, buoyant. ‘Hello!’
    ‘Janette? It’s Shelley here.’
    Janette’s voice flattened. ‘Oh, hello Shelley. I was wondering if you would phone.’
    Shelley bridled a little. ‘Of course! You know what day it is, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes. Are you going to the park?’
    ‘Naturally.’ She was starting to feel annoyed; Janette was her best, her oldest friend. Janette, above all, should remember.
    ‘Do you think you should go on doing this? It doesn’t do you any good, Shelley. You’re depressed for weeks afterwards. Why not give it a miss this year, and see how you feel?’
    ‘
This
year? When it was forty years ago today we found him?’ Shelley couldn’t believe Janette was so insensitive.
    There was a silence at the other end of the phone, then, ‘Oh. Sorry. I hadn’t realised.’
    ‘Yes, forty years. And
I
remember, even if everyone else has forgotten. It’s still as real to me as it was the day it happened. But I won’t bother you. I’ll just make my pilgrimage myself.’ The tears were starting again.
    ‘Oh Shelley, don’t be silly. If you want to go, I’ll come with you, of course I will. I always have. He was my godson too, remember?’
    She could tell that Janette was welling up, and softened. She was the friend who had searched all day, the friend who had made the dreadful discovery of Tommy’s pathetic, battered little body in the pirate outfit he’d been wearing for Halloween, the friend who had broken the news, then sat with Shelley through the terrible days and even worse nights. All these years later Shelley couldn’t expect her, with her own children and grandchildren round about her, to understand that it still felt like yesterday when all you had was memories.
    ‘Thanks, Janette. I’ll come to the house then, shall I? I’ll be round in half an hour.’

    Janette Ritchie put down the phone with a grimace. Shelley Crichton’s visit on the anniversary of the day Tommy was found was a fixture in her calendar but someone from her Pilates class in Stranraer was having a birthday lunch. She wouldn’t be able to go now.
    Forty years! Could it really be that long? Yes, of course it could. Her own Jennifer wasn’t that far short of fifty and kept moaning about getting old. Poor