How to Play Dead Read online

  Also by Jacqueline Ward

  Perfect Ten

  Published in Great Britain in 2019 by Corvus,

  an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Jacqueline Ward, 2019

  The moral right of Jacqueline Ward to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Atlantic Books Ltd considers the quotes included within this text to be covered by the Fair Dealing definition under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and as subsequently amended. For more information, please contact Atlantic Books Ltd.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 380 4

  Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 379 8

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 381 1

  Printed in Great Britain

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  To Kathie

  Contents

  Chapter One: Day 29

  Chapter Two: Day 28

  Chapter Three: Day 27

  Chapter Four: Day 26

  Chapter Five: Day 25

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Saturday

  Chapter Six: Day 24

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Sunday

  Chapter Seven: Day 23

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Monday

  Chapter Eight: Day 22

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Tuesday

  Chapter Nine: Day 21

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Wednesday

  Chapter Ten: Day 20

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Thursday

  Chapter Eleven: Day 19

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Friday

  Chapter Twelve: Day 18

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Saturday

  Chapter Thirteen: Day 17

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Sunday

  Chapter Fourteen: Day 16

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Monday

  Chapter Fifteen: Day 15

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Tuesday

  Chapter Sixteen: Day 14

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Wednesday

  Chapter Seventeen: Day 13

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Thursday

  Chapter Eighteen: Day 12

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Friday

  Chapter Nineteen: Day 11

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Saturday

  Chapter Twenty: Day 10

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Sunday

  Chapter Twenty-one: Day 9

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Monday

  Chapter Twenty-two: Day 8

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Tuesday

  Chapter Twenty-three: Day 7

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Wednesday

  Chapter Twenty-four: Day 6

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Thursday

  Chapter Twenty-five: Day 5

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Friday

  Chapter Twenty-six: Day 4

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Saturday

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Day 3

  Tanya: Diary Entry: Sunday

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Day 2

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Day 1

  Chapter Thirty: Three weeks later

  Acknowledgements

  Book Club Questions

  Helplines and advice

  Chapter One

  Day 29

  I’m standing backstage on a Tuesday night looking out at the audience when Danny texts me. When I say backstage, I mean behind a set of dusty burgundy curtains, half drawn back to reveal a rickety podium laden with plastic, star-shaped trophies. And when I say audience, I mean a half-full meeting hall in a run-down cul-de-sac just outside Manchester.

  It is what it is. I know that. I also know that every woman here, especially me and Janice, is holding her breath, waiting to see what happens. This is one of the most important nights of our lives. I read the text and my heart warms.

  Day 29. I’m there. Here. Flight wasn’t too bad. Can you believe it? One day down, 29 to go and we’ll have enough to buy our own home and be back in the black. It isn’t going to be easy but it will be worth it. I love you x Always x Good luck tonight, babe

  I’m giddy with delight, even though I don’t share Danny’s desire to be the master of his kingdom. His settled kingdom. I’m a serial mover. I’ve lived in fifteen places since I left home twenty years ago, seven of them since I married Danny. Three of them since I had children. It’s not that I don’t want to settle down. It’s just that I can’t. But I do want to be out of debt. He’s right. It’s going to be difficult with him away, but he is right. And I love him.

  I love my job, too. It’s harsh, but I love the success stories, and I hope tonight will be one of them. I stare out into the hall: it’s filling up. Women looking for their names, which I so carefully Sellotaped to the backs of the tiny wooden school chairs earlier today. The local press snapping away at every fourth chair. Empty. Carefully labelled. I’d briefed them with the standard ‘One in Four’ message, but I knew it was all in the visual. On my rise to the top of refuge work I’ve learned that words often fall on deaf ears because people don’t want to hear bad things. They switch off. But if you show them, it sinks in.

  That’s why I insisted on holding tonight’s proceedings in the hall right here at SafeMe; in a domestic violence refuge with the women affected as guests. Each one of those empty chairs, one in four, represents a woman who has not survived; each one will help us get funding for those who came afterwards. Like a silent legacy. I know for a fact that it is exactly what the women who should be sitting there would want.

  It’s a strange dynamic. Although it’s heartbreaking, I know it has worked and I am happy. I’m happy Danny is away too, even though I will miss him desperately. He is doing this for us, finally dragging us out of the one-pay-packet-away-from-poverty life we have become used to.

  I see Sheila James hurry to the front, seeking out her seat. She’s all peroxide-blonde, false lashes and fake tan massaged deep into her ageing skin. She looks a little shaken and, as she sees me and waves, I see that her wrist is freshly plastered. I panic. Making sure she is OK means more than some award, but I can’t get off the stage. I rush around the barrier and bump into the PR woman I hired to run the event. She’s wearing a headset and Bluetooth earpiece and carrying a clipboard. It’s all completely out of place in the small hall and much more at home at the O2 arena. She holds my arms and moves closer, wide-eyed with adrenalin and hissing frantically. ‘Two minutes to go. Look, I know you must be nervous. God knows, anyone would be in these circumstances.’ She looks around as if we were just about to take the stage at a stadium gig. She shakes me. ‘You need to get a grip.’

  Get a grip. I look around. PR woman extraordinaire. Sheila James, obviously hurt again. A room full of women who are relying on me. Yes. I smile. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know how many times I’ve had to get a grip, to fight my way through. I have elbowed myself into the place I am now, at the top of my profession. Get a grip. I got a grip, all right. Tough and strong-nerved at work, I shed that steely exterior like a second skin when I am home with Danny and
the kids.

  She’s counting down silently now, complete with arm movements. A loud fanfare sounds and the mayor appears on the stage along with one of our trustees, Marjory Bates.

  I know it’s going well. I know when the audience clap at Marjory’s speech. I know when the members of the borough council who hold our future in their spreadsheets start to pay attention. I know when the funders, who turned up right at the last minute and were directed to their junior-school seats at the back, stop looking annoyed and start to look surprised. I know when the pictures of all the women who have passed through our doors are flashed on the walls one by one; those who survived stay there while the others fade. I know by the complete silence in the room and the realisation on the faces of the funders that I have made the right impression. My message has got through. This time.

  Then it’s time for the awards. Mine is second to last. Marjory turns and smiles at me as I feel the confidence I have cultivated push its way to the front. The fanfare that heralds each award is overkill now and, from my elevated position, I can see people fidgeting. I wish Danny was here. But I know that if he doesn’t do this work in Dubai, just for a month, things will only get worse.

  ‘And the award for Superwoman of the Year for services to SafeMe goes to Ria Taylor.’

  I stride on to the stage and smile and take the lightweight star with my name on it. Sheila is clapping and smiling and the photographer beckons. I pose and smile and blink into the flash. I feel for the envelope in my pocket, folded over. I always have a plan. They usually work, but sometimes my plan is not enough. My nerves are truly jangling when I think about the bailiff’s letter and the debt collectors. This is not the time. I know I could get another job, better paid, but I love this place and if I left, what would happen to these women? No. I know Danny is right. His thirty days away will get us out of the shit. And more.

  Marjory is heading my way with Trevor Jones, the funding coordinator, so I fix a smile again and hold out my hand.

  ‘Trevor, how lovely to see you again.’

  This is a huge lie, which I dress up in its own elaborate outfit of a fuck-you tone. Trevor takes the bait and my hand, which he grips harder and longer than he needs to.

  ‘And you, Ria. And nice to see you looking so … colourful.’ We all pause to take in my trademark Day-Glo orange jumpsuit and the matching scarf wound around my dyed-red hair. Trevor smiles benevolently. ‘Of course, it does the customers good to see you looking so cheerful amongst all this …’

  We look around. We know what SafeMe is. It’s the brink of change for some women, and for others the last stop. We are at the front line of services, the only small pocket of funding left and only for those people whose situations are absolutely critical. These are women with nothing left, nowhere else to go, often injured or scared to fucking death by violent partners. Life or death, for some of them, which is what I had tried to convey this evening. I fill in for him.

  ‘Crisis? And they’re people, not customers.’ There is always a crisis here. But it doesn’t look like crisis. Not tonight. We’re putting on a show for the people in charge of the purse strings. They never see what it’s like in the cold light of day when we’re all leaning on a door in front of a terrified woman whose ex-partner is trying to get to her. I look at the empty chairs and his eyes follow my gaze. He looks back at us, unsmiling now.

  ‘Look, we’ll be considering the funding in a month and this definitely helps. Definitely. You know, if it were just my decision …’

  I feel the rage creep up. I will defend this place to the end of the earth.

  ‘Well, let’s hope that everyone else feels the same, Trevor. Or there won’t just be more empty chairs. There’ll be no chairs at all.’

  I stare at him, my infamous ‘Ria stare’, which has warded off hundreds of angry men over the past twelve years, allowing their frightened partners space to breathe and recover and decide what to do next. Trevor Jones nods and shifts uncomfortably until Marjory guides him away. I want to check my phone, check if Danny, now thousands of miles away, has sent any more lovely messages. But Sheila is heading my way. I sit down on the low stage and she sinks down beside me.

  ‘Went well, didn’t it, lovey?’

  Her voice is gravelly and thick. I see her bright red lips twitching, her hand on her ciggie packet. She’s dying for a smoke but she doesn’t want to miss anything.

  ‘Yeah. Really well. So …’

  It did go well, and I feel a surge of pride. I glance at her arm.

  ‘Oh, don’t bloody start. I fell. On the stairs.’

  Her dead, glassy eyes tell me that she did not fall on the stairs. That this is yet another of the well-practised lies that she has rehearsed over the years. I have been Sheila’s advocate for ten weeks now, since she left her husband Frank. She’s lives in an independent apartment but spends all her time at SafeMe because she is scared shitless. Frank is a has-been local bent politician, ex-mayor and councillor, but he definitely still has connections. Shelia regales me with tales of how they are coming to get her. In reality, it’s Frank she is scared of. Just Frank, because Sheila could take on the rest of the world with no problems. Sheila, five foot nothing in her bare feet, is a human dynamo at sixty-three years of age.

  But the rest of the world hasn’t controlled her every move for decades, and Frank has. She is completely conditioned, and my job is to change her thinking so she can be safe, away from this man who claims to love her. The day I met Sheila, she was wearing a neck brace and her arm was in a sling. Before I said a word, she had qualified her appearance.

  ‘Looks worse than it is. A bit of whiplash.’

  But I knew she had been found abandoned in a car park in the middle of the night, crying and afraid. The two men who found her told the police she had been pushed out of a moving car, which turned out to be Frank’s limo. Of course she refused to press charges. She also refused to go home. Frank came to our office, palms turned upwards like some used-car salesman to claim his property. He reasoned with us then threatened us with legal action but we all knew what he really meant was that Sheila would pay for this.

  I look at her now, her shoulders hunched and her eyes ever on the door.

  ‘Did you go back to your house, Sheila?’

  She nods. ‘I needed to get something.’

  I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll get Janice to give you a lift home. Will you be OK on your own or do you want to stay at SafeMe? You can, you know.’

  We officially have twenty-four emergency places in the ex food warehouse that is partitioned into tiny rooms, each with a bed, a toilet and a sink. Some rooms have cots and smaller beds for children. They resemble prison cells but represent the biggest freedom most of these women have had in a while. Pull-out sofa-beds in our spare rooms and lounges extend the places to thirty-six at busy times.

  Janice, my co-manager and best mate, and I have transformed the main area into a veritable wonderland. It is a grotto, complete with charity shop chandeliers, fairy lights and donated rugs. Chesterfields we have done up with patches where they are worn out. The, mostly, women who have been driven out of their own homes love it. The men who drove them out and turn up here to try to reclaim them, not so much. Sheila smiles without looking at me.

  ‘It’s all right, lovey. This is nothing.’

  I know it isn’t nothing. But to Sheila, she got off lightly. I hug her and beckon Janice over. She knows me so well and reads me immediately.

  ‘Shit. Has he gone?’ I rest my head on her shoulder and she envelopes me into her. I hear her sigh. She knows me and Danny are a strong team. ‘Won’t be long, though. Thirty days? It’ll fly. And you’ve still got me.’

  I can’t help but smile, even with Danny in Dubai and the prospect of the bailiffs banging on my door.

  ‘Give her a lift, yeah, Jan? Make sure that the building is secure as well.’ I touch Sheila’s shoulder. ‘You’ve got your physio tomorrow, so I’ll be round the day after.’

  They leave
, and the evening is wrapping up. I get my phone out and text Danny.

  It went well, love. Don’t wear yourself out. I love you too. Always x

  I know he wants to be here to support me and he’ll be waiting to hear how tonight went. He is so patient. All the moving around, dragging Danny and the kids to new flats in new locations, all the jokes about being a serial mover. But I just couldn’t settle.

  Like lots of people, my difficult teenage years made me afraid to have a relationship for ages. Skipping from each one-night stand to the next, numbing myself with alcohol, cake, new clothes – anything. Only relenting when Danny held me tightly enough to let a little bit of the love he had for me seep in. Later, when we married, the horrible feelings faded. But some days I would wake up on edge and be unsettled for the rest of the day until Danny asked me what the matter was and offered to go to the chippy for tea. I need to settle, I know I do.

  I hurry the rest of the way home and let myself into our ground-floor flat. Terri, my babysitter, stands up to leave.

  ‘Danny’s going to be away a lot for a bit so …’

  She smiles. ‘I need the money, Ria. Any time. They’re good as gold, anyway.’

  Simon and Jennifer. Good as gold. They are gold to me, only more precious. I cannot ever imagine being without them, or them without me. Terri gone, I flick on the kettle and sit in our tiny kitchen at the Formica table. These flats have paper-thin walls and I can hear next door’s telly booming out and someone laughing in the flat above. It’s strangely comforting because I know I’m not alone.

  Tea ready, I open the envelopes that are stacked on the table. The glue is dirty, yellowed and thick with fluff. I pull out the contents, one by one, crumpled now, and unfold them. I feel a little flutter in my heart, a sudden stab of brilliant hope that this is finally going to go away. It isn’t as if we are frivolous; we have only bought what everyone else has. Our rent is high even for this tiny flat and the bills are steep. Things have accumulated over time. One loan in top of another, then topped up for Christmas. Then Danny was made redundant. Again.