Belfast Noir Read online

  But that wasn’t all. A large part of his charge came from the fact that he’d had an affair with a former pupil, Davina Calvert. It had been eight years ago, and they were married now: he’d left his wife for her, and it was a real scandal, he’d almost lost his job over it, except in the end they couldn’t dismiss him because he’d done nothing strictly, legally wrong. It had happened long before we joined the school, but we knew all the details. Everyone did. It was almost a rite of passage to cluster as first- or second-years in a corner of the library poring over old school magazines in search of her, hunting down grainy black-and-white photographs of year groups, foreign exchange trips, prize days, tracking her as she grew up to become his lover.

  Davina Calvert, Davina Knox. She was as near and as far from our lives as it was possible to get.

  Davina, the story went, was her year’s star pupil. She got the top mark in Spanish A-level in the whole of Northern Ireland, and came third in French. Davina Calvert, Davina Knox. Nothing happened between them while she was still at school—or nothing anyone could pin on him, at least—but when she left she went on a gap year, teaching English in Granada, and he went out to visit her. We knew this for sure because Lisa’s older sister had been two years below Davina Calvert, and at the time was in Mr. Knox’s Spanish A-level class. After Halloween half-term he turned up with a load of current Spanish magazines, Hola! and Diez Minutos and Vogue España. They asked him if he’d been away, and where he’d been, and he answered them in a teasing torrent of Spanish that none of them could quite follow. But it went around the school like wildfire that he’d been in Granada, visiting Davina Calvert, and sure enough, when she was back for Christmas at least two people saw them in his Alfa Romeo, parked up a side street, kissing, and by the end of the school year he and his wife were separated, getting divorced. The following year he didn’t even pretend to hide it from his classes: when they talked about what they’d done over the weekend he’d grin and say, in French or Spanish, that he’d been visiting a special friend in Edinburgh. Everyone knew it was Davina.

  We used to picture what it must have been like, when he first visited her in Granada. The winding streets and white medieval buildings. The blue and orange and purple sky. They would have walked together to Lorca’s house and the Alhambra and afterward clinked glasses of sherry in some cobbled square with fountains and gypsy musicians. Perhaps he would have reached under the table to stroke her thigh, slipping a hand under her skirt and tracing its curve, and when he withdrew it she would have crossed and uncrossed her legs, squeezing and releasing her thighs, the tingling pressure unbearable.

  I imagined it countless times: but I could never quite settle on what would have happened next. What would you do, in Granada with Mr. Knox? Would you lead him back to your little rented room, in the sweltering eaves of a homestay or a shared apartment? No: you’d go with him instead to the hotel that he’d booked, a sumptuous four-poster bed in a grand and faded parador in the Albaicín—or more likely an anonymous room in the new district where the staff wouldn’t ask questions, a room where the bed had white sheets with clinical corners, a room with a bathroom you could hear every noise from. The shame of it—the excitement.

  And back in the KFC on the Upper Newtownards Road, on that rainy Monday Baker Day in April, we knew where Mr. Knox and Davina lived. It was out towards the Ice Bowl, near the golf club, in Dundonald. It was a forty-, forty-five minute walk. We had nothing else to do. We linked arms and set off.

  It was an anticlimax when we got there. We’d walked down the King’s Road, passing such posh houses on the way; somehow, with the sports car and the sunglasses and the designer suits, we’d expected his house to be special too. But most of the houses on his street were just like ours: bungalows, or small redbrick semis, with hedges and lawns and rhododendron bushes. We walked up one side, and down the other. There was nothing to tell us where he lived: no sign of him. We were starting to bicker by then. The rain was teeming down and Tanya was getting worried that someone might see us, and report us to the school. We slagged her—how would anyone know we were doing anything wrong, and how would they know which school we went to, anyway, we weren’t in uniform—but all of us were slightly on edge. It was only midmorning, but what if he left school for some reason, or came home for an early lunch? All four of us were in his French class, and Lisa and I had him for Spanish too: he’d recognise us. We should go: we knew we should go.

  The long walk back in the rain stretched ahead of us. We sat on a low wall to empty our pockets and purses and work out if we had enough to pay for a bus ticket each. When it turned out there was only enough for three, we started squabbling: Tanya had no money left, but she’d paid for the bon-bons, and almost half of the Pepsi, so it wasn’t fair if she had to walk. Well, it wasn’t fair for everyone to have to walk just because of her. Besides, she lived nearest: there was least distance for her to go. But it wasn’t fair! Back and forth it went, and it might have turned nasty—Donna had just threatened to slap Tanya if she didn’t quit whinging.

  Then we saw Davina.

  It was Lisa who recognised her, at the wheel of a metallic-blue Peugeot. The car swept past us and round the curve of the road, but Lisa swore it had been her at the wheel. We leapt up, galvanised, and looked at each other.

  “Well come on,” Donna said.

  “Donna!” Tanya said.

  “What, are you scared?” Donna said. She had thick glasses that made her eyes look small and mean, and she’d pushed her sister through a patio door in a fight. We were all a little scared of Donna.

  “Come on,” Lisa said.

  Tanya seemed like she was about to cry.

  “We’re just going to look,” I said. “We’re just going to walk past and look at the house. There’s no law against that.” Then I added, “For fuck’s sake, Tanya.” I didn’t mind Tanya, if it was just the two of us, but it didn’t do to be too friendly with her in front of the others.

  “Yeah, Tanya, for fuck’s sake,” Lisa said.

  Tanya sat back down on the wall. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ll be in such big trouble.”

  “Fine,” Donna said. “Fuck off home then, what are you waiting for?” She turned and linked arms with Lisa, and they started walking down the street.

  “Come on, Tan,” I said.

  “I have a bad feeling,” she said. “I just don’t think we should.”

  But when I turned to go after the others, she pushed herself from the wall and followed.

  We found the house where the Peugeot was parked: right at the bottom of the street. It was the left-hand side of a semi, and it had an unkempt hedge and a stunted palm tree in the middle of the little front lawn. You somehow didn’t picture Mr. Knox with a miniature palm tree in his garden. We clustered on the opposite side of the road, half-hidden behind a white van, giggling at it; and then we realised that Davina was still in the car.

  “What’s she at?” Donna said. “Stupid bitch.”

  We stood and watched awhile longer, but nothing happened. You could see the dark blur of her head and the back of her shoulders, just sitting there.

  “Well, fuck this for a game of soldiers,” Donna said. “I’m not standing here like a big lemon all day.” She turned and walked a few steps down the road and waited for the rest of us to follow.

  “Yeah,” Tanya said, “I’m going too. I said I’d be home for lunch.”

  Neither Lisa nor I moved.

  “What do you think she’s doing?” Lisa asked.

  “Listening to the radio?” I said. “Mum does that sometimes if it’s The Archers. She doesn’t want to leave the car until it’s over.”

  “I suppose,” Lisa said, looking disappointed.

  “Come on,” Tanya said. “We’ve seen where he lives, now let’s just go.”

  Donna was standing with her hands on her hips, annoyed that we were ignoring her. “Seriously,” she shouted, “I’m away on!”

  They were expecting me and Lisa to follow, but we did
n’t. As soon as they were out of earshot, Lisa said, “God, Donna’s doing my fucking head in today.”

  She glanced at me sideways as she said it.

  “Hah,” I said, vaguely. It didn’t do to be too committal: Lisa and Donna were thick as thieves these days. Lisa’s mum and mine had gone to school together and the two of us had been friends since we were babies: there were photographs of us in the bath together, covered in bubbles, bashing each other with bottles of Matey. We’d been inseparable through primary school, and into secondary. Recently, though, Lisa had started hanging out more with Donna, smoking Silk Cuts nicked from Donna’s mum and drinking White Lightning in the park at weekends. Both of them had gone pretty far with boys. Not full-on sex, but close, or so they both claimed. I’d kissed a boy once. It was better than Tanya—but still, it made me weird and awkward around Lisa when it was just the two of us. I’d always imagined we’d do everything together, like we always had done. I could feel Lisa still looking at me. I scuffed the ground with the heel of one of my gutties.

  “I mean, seriously doing my head in,” she said, and she pulled a face that was recognisably an impression of Donna, and I let myself start giggling. Lisa looked pleased. “Here,” she said, and she slipped her arm through mine. “What do you think Davina’s like? I mean, d’you know what I mean?”

  I knew exactly what she meant.

  “Well, she’s got to be gorgeous,” I said.

  “You big lesbo,” Lisa said, digging me in the ribs.

  I dug her back. “No, being serious. She’s got to be—he left his wife for her. She’s got to be gorgeous.”

  “What else?”

  “She doesn’t care what people think. I mean, think of all the gossip. Think of what you’d say to your parents.”

  “My dad would go nuts.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We were silent for a moment then, watching the blurred figure in the Peugeot.

  “D’you think anything did happen while they were at school?” Lisa suddenly said. “I mean it must have, mustn’t it? Otherwise why would you bother going all that way to visit her? I mean like, lying to your wife and flying all the way to Granada?”

  “I know. I don’t know.”

  I’d wondered about it before: we all had. But it was especially strange, standing right outside his house, his and Davina’s. Did she linger at his desk after class? Did he stop and give her a lift somewhere? Did she hang around where he lived and bump into him, as if by chance, or pretend she was having problems with her Spanish grammar? Who started it, and how exactly did it start, and did either of them ever imagine it would end up here?

  “She might have been our age,” Lisa said.

  “I know.”

  “Or only, like, two or three years older.”

  “I know.”

  We must have been standing there for ten minutes by now. A minute longer and we might have turned to go. But all of a sudden the door of the Peugeot swung open and Davina got out: there she was, Davina Calvert, Davina Knox.

  Except that the Davina in our heads had been glamorous, like the movie sirens on Mr. Knox’s classroom walls, but this Davina had messy hair in a ponytail and bags under her eyes, and she was wearing scruffy jeans and a raincoat. And she was crying: her face was puffy and she was weeping openly, tears just running down her face.

  I felt Lisa take my hand and squeeze it. “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  We watched Davina walk around to the other side of the car and unstrap a toddler from the backseat. She lifted him to his feet and then hauled a baby car-seat out.

  We had forgotten—if we’d ever known—that Mr. Knox had babies. He never mentioned them or had photos on his desk like some of the other teachers. You somehow didn’t think of Mr. Knox with babies.

  “Oh my God,” Lisa said again.

  The toddler was wailing: we watched Davina wrestle him up the drive and onto the porch, the baby car-seat over the crook of her arm. She had to put it down while she found her keys, and we watched as she scrabbled in her bag and then her coat pockets before locating them, unlocking the door, and going inside. The door swung shut behind her.

  We stood there for a moment longer. Then: “Come on,” I found myself saying. “Let’s knock on her door.” I have no idea where the impulse came from, but as soon as I said it, I knew I was going to do it.

  Lisa turned to face me. “Are you insane?”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “But what will we say?”

  “We’ll say we’re lost—we’ll say we’re after a glass of water—I don’t know. We’ll think of something. Come on.”

  Lisa stared at me. “Oh my God, you’re mad.” But she giggled. And then we were crossing the road and walking up the driveway and there we were standing on Mr. Knox’s porch.

  “You’re not seriously going to do this,” Lisa said.

  “Watch me,” I said, and I fisted my hand and knocked on the door.

  * * *

  I can still picture every moment of what happens next. Davina opens the door (Davina Calvert, Davina Knox) with the baby in one arm and the toddler hanging off one of her legs. We blurt out—it comes to me, inspired—that we live just round the corner and we’re going door-to-door to see if anyone needs a babysitter. All at once, we’re like a team again, me and Leese. I start a sentence, she finishes it. She says something, I elaborate. We sound calm, and totally plausible. Davina says, Thank you, but the baby’s too young to be left. Lisa says can we leave our details anyway, for maybe in a few months’ time. Davina blinks and says okay, sure, and the two of us inch our way into her hallway while she gets a pen and paper. Lisa calls me Judith and I call her Carol. We write down, Judith and Carol, and give a made-up number. We are invincible. We are on fire. Davina asks what school do we go to, and Lisa says, not missing a beat, Dundonald High. Why aren’t you at school today? Davina asks, and I say it’s a Baker Day. I suddenly wonder if all schools have the same Baker Days and a dart of fear goes through me: but Davina just says, Oh, and doesn’t ask anything more. We sense she’s going to usher us out now and before she can do it, Lisa asks what the baby’s called, and Davina says, Melissa. That’s a pretty name, I say, and Davina says thank you. So we admire the baby, her screwed-up little face and flexing fingers, and I think of having Mr. Knox’s baby growing inside me, and a huge rush of heat goes through me. When Davina says, as we knew she was going to, Girls, as I’m sure you can see, I’ve really got my hands full here, and Lisa says, No, no, of course, we’ll have to be going—and she’s getting the giggles now, I can see them rising in her, the way the corners of her lips pucker and tweak—I say, Yes, of course, but do you mind if I use your toilet first? Davina blinks again, her red-raw eyes, as if she can sense a trap but doesn’t know quite what it is, and then she says, No problem, but the downstairs loo’s blocked. Wee Reuben has a habit of flushing things down it and they haven’t gotten round to calling out the plumber, you’ll have to go upstairs, it’s straight up and first on the left. I can feel Lisa staring at me but I don’t meet her eye, I just say, Thank you, and make my way upstairs.

  The bathroom is full—just humming—with Mr. Knox. There’s his dressing gown hung on the back of the door, his electric razor on the side of the sink, his can of Lynx deodorant on the windowsill. There’s his toothbrush in a mug, and there’s flecks of his stubble in the sink, and there’s his dirty clothes in the laundry basket: I kneel and open it and recognise one of his shirts, a slippery pale-blue one with yellow diamond patterning. I reach over and flush the toilet, so the noise will cover my movements, and then I open the mirrored cabinet above the sink and run my fingers over the bottles on what must be his shelf, the shaving cream, the brown plastic bottle of prescription drugs, a six-pack of Durex condoms, two of them missing. The skin all over my body is tingling, tingling in places I didn’t know could tingle, in between my fingers, the backs of my knees. I ease one of the condoms from the strip, tugging gently along the foil perforations, and stuff it int
o my jeans. Then I put the box back, exactly as it was, and close the mirrored cabinet. I stare at myself in the mirror. My face looks flushed. I wonder, again, what age she was when he first noticed her. I realise that I don’t know how long I’ve been in here. I run the tap, and look around me one last time. And then, without planning to, without knowing I’m going to until I’ve done it, I find my hand closing around one of the bottles of perfume on the windowsill, and rearranging the others so the gap doesn’t show. You’re not supposed to keep perfume on the windowsill, anyway: even I know that. I slide it into the inside pocket of my jacket and arrange my left arm over it so the bulge doesn’t show, then I turn off the tap and go downstairs where Lisa’s shooting me desperate glances.

  * * *

  Outside, she can’t believe what I’ve done. None of them can. We catch up with Donna and Tanya still waiting for us on the main road—although it feels like a lifetime has passed, it’s only been ten minutes or so since they left us.

  “You’ll never believe what she did,” Lisa says, and there’s pride in her voice as she tells them how we knocked on the door and went inside, inside Mr. Knox’s house, and talked to Davina, and touched the baby, and how I used his bathroom. I take over the story. The condom I keep quiet about—that’s mine, just for me—but I show them the perfume. It’s a dark glass bottle, three-quarters full, aubergine, almost black, with a round glass stopper. In delicate gold lettering it says, Poison, Christian Dior.