“Protection?” I gaped at Evelyn, “Why?”

Her freshly combed hair haloed across the pillow. She blinked and a reassuring smile melted the shadow from her face. “I forgot,” she whispered, “You can look after yourself.”

I took the teacup from the ebony coffee table and passed it to her. “Thank you anyway – for being so concerned – but I don’t think he’s coming after me.”

Her lips spooned up the tepid tea. She sighed and rested back against the yellow A-shaped pillow. “You think I should be more concerned for myself? That I could be the next old biddy he wants as a victim?”

“No,” I answered, perhaps too eagerly. “And as for me? Social workers are like doctors: we’re always taking risks. Anyway, the police say there might have been other reasons he killed Colin.”

“Other reasons?”

I knew better than to tell. “Let’s just say they’re unlikely.”

“Unspeakable, more like,” Her laugh was irresistible; I was tempted to join in but my mobile phone alarm started to play jazz.

“Time to go?” She asked. Resignation replacing the fun in her eyes.

“No, no,” Stammering in an effort to reassure her, I looked down at the back-lit screen. Not an alarm. A message. “CU 5pm @ Charing X, Luv E”. I thumbed the OK button and slipped the mobile back into my back pocket. “I forgot to reset it yesterday.” My grin grew more natural. “Went off by mistake.”

Her smile returned and I wondered if she realised just how alike the two of us were. In just five months since I was assigned to her case, she had made her loneliness too plain. For the first two weeks I had coaxed her trust until she found reassurance in my presence. Then came the stories of how her nephews fixed the house but had no time for tea, or how her neighbours relied upon her to pick up post but never thought to ask if she wanted shopping on a rainy day. When these meagre tales were eaten up, she retained my sympathy with a heart-rending gesture or a gentle touch.

Now I enjoyed doing even the most mundane tasks for her, jobs that her nephews thought beneath them. I truly cared for her and those feelings made it more unbearable that I was being asked to move on, to give up her case and many others for a promotion that, in honesty, I did not want.

“So, are we going out when you come on Wednesday?” She asked.

It had not been part of the plan. The last time, nearly three weeks ago, had tired us both just getting her dressed, let alone into my Volvo. But right now I knew it did not matter. I smiled back. Anything to make her happy. “Where to?”

She paused as if checking some long internal list, though I knew that list consisted only of three names. When consideration lengthened into contemplation, her face tilting backward, her grey eyes fixed , I said, “How about Camden?”

The vagueness left her face. “That would be nice.” She said slowly.

“How about a hair do?” I asked. “I could pick you up here, drop you off at the hairdresser, do your shopping and pick you up when you’re finished.”

She leaned forward enthusiastically. “And I could treat you to tea.”

“Bests in the High Street.” I said.

“Would be wonderful. My treat, of course.”

“Of course.” I assured her. The alarm on my mobile sounded again. “Damn. I thought I had turned it off.” I stood. “Still, I’d better go, I’ve got a meeting with the boss.”

I had enough time to wash up her mug and insure she was settled infront of the television.

“See you on Wednesday.” She called out.

Looking back into the room I smiled before closed the door on her flat. I was already wishing the hours away.



“You know you can’t hold onto cases like that.” Joseph Marin looked across his desk, his lips firm, eyes determined, secure in the knowledge that procedure was right behind him. He leaned back into his leather wingback chair and I could hear the tips of his shoes tap impatiently against the wooden frame of the desk.

But, I was not to be put off. Evelyn Augers was too important. “I’m not holding on any more than Darren or Patrick or even Margaret are. Surely it’s more settling for Evelyn to have contact with one long-term caseworker?”

“Normally.”

“Normally what?”

“If it was Patrick or Margaret, yes. But you accepted your promotion two months ago.”

“And?

“You also accepted that you might have to pass up cases if other major cases came along for you to deal with.”

“In what way major?” My interest rose, but could not top the thought of disappointing Evelyn.

“Francis Higgins.” He said, a quiet, almost smug smile on his face, as if he expected some epiphany from me.

I wrestled with the name in a moment of silence designed to make Marin feel as if he had me, but eventually had to ask, “Who?”

He sighed and passed a manila folder over the desk. I flipped it open and pick up the carefully clipped newspaper piece from inside.

A feature from The Times. I unfolded it and took a look at the profile of a man with long white hair, eyes that flared like white sunlight on black glass and two fingers raised from a gnarled fist and clutching a cigarette to his sagging lips. The wiry smoke seemed to drift across the page. I looked up at Marin. My previous question like a spectre between us.

“His name is Patrick Boult, or at least it was. That was twenty years ago. He’s now called Francis Higgins and he’s about to come out of prison.”

“A new identity so far down the line?”

Marin nodded.

“What did he do?”

“The file is your’s.”

I looked into my lap. “You want me to baby-sit a geriatric wife killer? Just how old is he?”

“He was 48 when he went in.”

“And they’re letting him out now?”

“He’s been in Cardiff for nearly his whole stretch, high security. They’ve been wanting to downgrade him for some time, move him to an open prison but there’s no room for someone his age.”

“And what’s wrong with him,” I asked, “Apart from needing to catch up twenty years on the outside?”

“Pancreatic Cancer. Well evolved.”

“Why not just ship him into a hospital?”

“One, no room again; two, he won’t go.”

“And why is he coming back to London?”

“Because he used to live here as a kid and his probation officer sees no problem with it.”
“So I get the pleasure of hand-holding him.” I muttered. “What happens to Evelyn?”

“Margaret will take her over.”

I nodded slowly, though everything in my head was shaking with anger, disbelief, and the unfairness of it all. Since when had terminally ill killers – no matter what their background – become more important than sweet little old ladies whose only need was a regular sympathetic ear. I did not doubt Margaret’s professional competency but was more than sure that she would not hit it off with Evelyn in quite the same way that I had. Why wreck a perfectly good relationship for the sake of departmental priorities?

Still, there was no arguing with Marin so I sighed and changed the subject.

“When do you want me to see him?”

“Wednesday morning.” Marin actually smiled. “10.30, at his new flat.”

“Okay, but I was thinking of taking the afternoon off. Is that okay?”

Marin weighed up the ‘fair exchange’ before nodding his head. “I’ll get Margaret to call Evelyn. It would probably be easier…”

“No, it’s alright. It would be better if I explained.”

“Fair enough. Then let Margaret know so she can plan an initial visit with her.”



“Evelyn.”

She had taken nearly two minutes to pick up the phone, so much longer than normal that I had begun to worry. “Evelyn?”

At last she replied. “Sorry, I fell asleep watching the television. Richard and Judy: they have that effect on me.” I could feel her gentle humour even through the white noise but it did not ease my worry for her.

Tell her.

“Are you all ready for tomorrow afternoon?”

“Bromley.”

Tell her.

“I’ll pick you up a bit earlier than normal. Say 12.30pm?”

“That would be fine,” she replied, the happy edge in her voice not letting up.

Tell her.

“Are you going to shop for anything special?”

“No, not really. It’ll just be nice to get out, get my hair done. And you are such good company.”

“Nice of you to say so, Evelyn.” I thought it had come out all right, but my voice must have betrayed a hesitancy, a signal of something that I was holding back.

Eventually she made the revelation easy for me, though in truth it was all the harder. “I wasn’t sleeping when you called,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to pick up.”

“Why?” It was almost a plea.

“I was afraid of what you were going to tell me. Margaret called from your office just before you did.”

I remained silent.

“I was worried you were just going to confirm what she said, call off our trip out.”

“I wasn’t going to do that, not over the phone,” I assured her. “I was going to tell you tomorrow, take you to Morrino’s in the precinct, get you a big frothy coffee, a slice of chocolate gateaux…”

“Break it to me gently – that’s just like you.” She paused and I heard the breath catch in her throat. “So our trip will be the last.”

“I think it will.” I admitted.

“And the last time I see you?” There was vain hope in her voice.

“Maybe not.” I replied and in doing so I knew I was not telling her a lie.



How do you care for a stranger for whom you have no respect? When I met Francis Higgins I was doing my best not to show any sort of contempt. In turn, he did his best not to notice how bad an act I was putting on.

“Has he gone?” He asked as he led me down the short lime green painted hallway and into the backroom.

“Who,” I asked.

“The guy outside,” He turned the TV set off and picked up an empty coffee mug from the card table beside the armchair facing it. “I thought he was following you but perhaps he is keeping an eye on me.”

I wandered over to the window and drew back the new white nets while Higgins made noise in the kitchen. There was no one there, though I held back the curtain until I had scanned the length of the narrow street. Maybe Evelyn’s unease regarding Colin’s death was getting to me.

“Here we go.” Higgins said, re-entering the room and offering me a mug.

I dropped the nets back into place, embarrassed by Higgin’s ability to affect me, and took the mug of coffee from him. It was sweet but gravel as it filled my mouth, and gave me a pause before speaking. “You’ve been decorating.” It was as good a place to start as any.

He sank into the sagging armchair opposite and extended a hand toward the chair beneath the window. “It was the one thing I could do when I moved in; the one thing that didn’t involve probation officers or visits from community nurses. I’m not quite finished yet.”

“You did it on your own?”

“What do you think? Those who know me aren’t likely to come within miles of this place, unless it’s to throw eggs or spit on the doorstep.” He lowered his eyes. “Nobody in this place. Nobody’s started to come around offering to do errands, and the nearest church is three miles away.”

“If it needed doing I could’ve arranged something…”

“What, through Age Concern? I think not.” Higgins stroked the rim of his mug before lifting it to his lips. He took a slug-like sip before speaking over its brim. “Anyway, being alone can be good. You don’t have to listen to other people’s opinions or run the risk that they’re going to discover something about you that you don’t want them to know.”

“I suppose that’s how some people survive.”

“It is if you’re going to spend a long, long, time in jail – or if your wife is a nagging bitch.”

I suppressed a shiver at Higgin’s seemingly throwaway comment and wondered if he realised that he had said it. In prison, inmates can develop very different ways of talking, more forthright rhythms of speech that is as much about survival than the truth. His face relaxed and he tried to smile. “It’s the reason I was let out.”

When I showed no comprehension he continued, “I admitted I’d done wrong to my psychiatrist, then to the parole board. Told them all I was sorry. I suppose it was the cancer speaking, certainly wouldn’t have been me even three years ago.”

“And they let you out,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” he replied, the grin widening. “Thank Cancer for small mercies.”

I realised just how much I hated him, so suddenly, so brutally. - Just how much I wanted to be out of there…


“Let me buy it for you,” I said to Evelyn as she looked at her reflection in the round pink and silver framed Mackintosh mirror.

“Is it allowed?” She considered her rouge-etched face a moment longer then looked back to where I towered at her shoulder.

“I’m not going to be putting it on my expenses.”

She did not look convinced so I continued, “It’s no great sin.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t get you into trouble.”

“Too late for that,” I smiled, leaning forward to catch her face in the crisp silver reflection of the mirror. My face joined her’s for just a moment before she lowered the mirror and placed it back on the glass top of the shop counter.

“It is beautiful.” She murmured.

“Then don’t think twice.” I paused. “I used to have a mirror like that. Not a Mackintosh, but close. It sat on the dressing table in my bedroom. I used to use it to comb my hair in, had to bend low and close even then. Go on. Let me.”

She nodded and, ignoring the jazz of my mobile, I beckoned for the sales assistant.



Why did I suggest such a parting gift for Eveyln? Perhaps it was that mirror. It certainly seemed right when I saw her face next to mine before she had placed it back on the counter.

My mirror had been whole, unbroken in my youth. It had also been set in a silver leaf frame that had sat on the maple wood Victorian dresser in my bedroom when I was a boy. It was the most unusual object in a room that was simply decorated with black spaceman wallpaper, shelves sparsely stacked with storybooks and badly painted models of English kings and queens – Elizabeth, Charles.

Like many mothers, mine had told stories to lull me to sleep, pulling fantastic tales from the room’s simple décor. Soon her storyteller’s eye had fallen on the mirror. According to her, a prince had used it to save his lover’s soul. At the point of death, his lover's spirit, carried on her last breath, had been drawn into the mirror. Though only ten minutes long this narrative had intrigued and unnerved me. Though it had failed in objective to send me into sleep it had, instead, kept me thinking a whole for a whole night, and beyond. Now, I suppose, I can see it’s simple allure objectively; the same as any classic myth – Dracula, Frankenstein, even Snow White. All gave a hint, a hope, even a taste of life beyond life. And no matter how terrible, I found them all oddly comforting in the face of death, aloneness.

The mirror story might have faded, become as fantastical as the tales of Stoker or Shelley if it had not been for the squirrel. I had found it one autumn evening, dying amongst the rotting leaves in the garden. What put the image of the mirror into my mind at that moment I just don’t know. I don’t even remember carrying the dying animal up to my room or placing it before the mirror. I watched as the tiny crippled creature leaned forward and stroked the surface with its twitching muzzle. In turn, the mirror seemed to draw the animal’s breath through the fine moist fog that gathered and retreated on its surface.

And then it was done. All that remained was a silent carcass.

Wrapping the body in newspaper, I had put it on the bed, ready to take down to the bin and gone back to straighten the mirror. That was when I saw movement in the silver space within it. At first the shape had been just a blur of shadowy movement, then my eyes seemed to focus and then the small lively animal looked back at me, looping and flexing its tale, no crooked broken bones, no red mulled stain of blood on its white chest. It placed its tiny paws on the maple wood top of the dressing table beyond the glass partition and sniffed at the air.

I had reached out but in shock swept the frame from the dresser. All I could do was watch, powerless, as the silvered glass shattered on the floor.

Six pieces: I counted them as I picked them up, held them close and saw a flicker of life still there in the fragments of spangled glass.


My mobile played Jazz, but I kept my eyes on the pink pearl frame of the Mackintosh mirror as the assistant first wrapped it in blue tissue paper and then placed it into flat red box. Evelyn was as entranced as I was pleased.

We had two Grande Cappachinos in the basement café of the store, and all the time she held the box in her lap and stroked the silk ribbon the assistant had wrapped around it in the mistaken belief that this was a present from a young man to his mother. If Evelyn had caught on she showed no signs of embarrassment. But I began to worry at my watch and suggest it was time to get back.

She showed no disappointment but, when we got to her flat, invited me in for tea and cake as if to prolong my presence. In all this time I did not mention my reassignment –to a murderer, someone much less worthy than herself.

“I’ll make some tea,” I said, confident of my way around her kitchen and knowing that she would spend the time trying to find a place of honour for the mirror before I left.

I emptied tea bags into the brown pot and filled the jug kettle at the sink before my mobile jazzed once more. I cut it off quickly and looked down at the four unread text messages listed on the screen. The first:

PLEASE CALL ME.

second

CALL ME

third

WHERE ARE YOU?

All from Marin.

And the forth.

HIGGINS IS DEAD. CALL ME.

“Shit!” I cursed, reached for the dial button, but stopped when Evelyn called my name. I poked my head around the door and found the old woman placing the mirror on top of the television set. “What do you think?” She asked, stepping back.

“Perfect,” I assured her.

“Thank you.” She smiled.

“My pleasure.” I replied, “Now I’d better finish the tea.”

The image of her smile followed me into the kitchen. How could I call Marin now, standing in Evelyn’s flat where, as far as he was concerned, I had no right to be. Worse still, she would overhear any conversation I had with Marin. Voices carried from one room to the other. There was no privacy in this tiny flat. What if I was forced into a reply that revealed the department’s betrayal of her, her replacement by a murderer. How could I risk that when she did not deserve it.

A wave of calm crept over me, as it had in Higgins flat. I switched the mobile off, placed it on the draining board and reached into my jacket pocket. The glass fragment was ice cold against my fingertips as I drew it out and stared down at it. The chipped edges and corners were smooth and blackened with age but the silver was still as crisp as when the mirror was first smashed.

The reflective surface caught the kitchen’s green walls, shelving, the living room door behind – and something else in the shimmering glass. Women looked out at me, their movements unnaturally slow, as if the mirror was made of water. Some were infirm, like Evelyn. Others were younger, dark haired, with only the buds of crows feet beneath their eyes and a few were worn raw with anguish at the effects of their containment: but beauty was only a supplementary reason for their existence beyond the glass.

I laid the mirror fragment beside the mobile and pulled an orange pill phile from my trouser pocket. Twisting off the lid, I tipped the Hydrocodone powder into Evelyn’s tea. The drug would soon suppress her respiration and make it less difficult for her. She would not suffer pain and soon realise just how much I wanted to look after her, just how much I wanted her company.

I wanted her to know she was special.

Higgins, on the other hand, had never been an option. A morose, brooding, calculating and angry man; he could never have been the sort of person whose company you could cultivate. I was sorry he had died so violently. No one deserved that, not even a man who had killed his wife in cold blood. I had never done such a thing before and had spent a full twenty minutes after the final bloody blow in the bathroom, vomiting and the shaking in terror at my own violence.

I had not thought anyone would find him so quickly. He had no family, no friends, no occasional callers, and that was what had repulsed me so much about him. How could a man reject everything that made him – well – human? And that’s from where my anger had come.

The reason for Colin’s death could not have been more different and I could not have been more sorry. He had been a colleague, a fellow social worker, and a friend until he started to realise that I was visiting folk who were not in my caseload. When a few of them had started to die he had become curious, asking questions that had eventually tipped even me off to the danger of exposure. I came to realise that I was a better social worker. More dedicated. I asked less questions and only wanted to be able to demonstrate compassion.

In the end, Colin had died no less violently than Higgins. He had been a man with few friends so, no doubt, only the officers attending the scene, and perhaps the SOCOs, would have had the opportunity to gasp at the vast, bloody, spitefulness of my actions. There were no questions, no clues, which had made it all the easier for me to sleep.

I finished stirring the teas and took the cups through to the living room. Evelyn looked up at me for a moment, but if she saw anything wrong in my eyes she drank the tea no less quickly than usual. So, I sat and talked while she drank.

Eventually, her eyelids flickered, grew heavier. She leaned forward and placed her cup with an awkward heavy chink back on the saucer. Her body sagged back into the chair, the ridged muscles of her throat pulsing as he lips tried to suck in short gasps of air.

I smiled, picked up the cups and took them back into the kitchen where I dumped them in the sink and turned on the tap. Once they were rinsed I put them on the steel draining board.

“Do you want a biscuit or anything to eat?” I waited.

No response.

I picked up the shard of glass and brought it close to my face.

“Sweethearts,” I muttered, feeling the cold yet reassuring vibration of their presence against the palm of my hand. They would welcome company. It was three months since the last.

“You’ll be there soon,” I whispered as I walked back from the kitchen into the living room. “There with the others.”

Evelyn had grown almost silent except for the heavy effort of breathing and her brave attempts to keep her eyes open. Eventually, her head tipped forward, wrinkled chin cleaving to lean breast. I pulled at her thin hair, drawing her head up and tilting her lips towards the mirror. The silver surface seemed to expand as she exhaled. Her breathing grew at first wild, then laboured again as if, though old and unconscious there was still some fight in her lungs.

“There soon,” I whispered again.

Her breath began to flow like fluid against the cold glass; I felt its warmth against my fingers and the anticipation of her immortality growing like wild static in my stomach. “There - .”

There was a blast of shrieking wood and metal behind me.

Spiralling round I found the broken door and three people, two in police uniform, rushing over the threshold towards me. Had this been a trap, they tracking me, following me, finally lying in wait, the old woman frightened but assured that they were there?

Too late. The drug and I had been too quick.

I pulled Evelyn, senseless, from the chair and clutched at her throat, hoping that such sudden savagery would delay my attackers. But, in raising her up, the mirror spun from my hand to land between the toes of her tatty black slippers.

They told me to lay her down, to give it up. Their young faces – one of which I was sure I had seen before - showed apprehension, disgust, and distrust. Yet all I could think was to shift her feet from the mirror. I panicked and overbalanced. My head hit the round edge of the ebony table, struck the floor with ricochet of pain.

Then she came to me, her dead weight crushing my chest, the carapace of her skull smashing into my throat, driving my jaws together in an explosion of splintered bone and blood.

The weight lifted but not the pressure in my throat. I tried to breathe, to suck air into my lungs. Forget companionship, forget being caught, forget prison – I wanted to live.

There were voices, fierce whispers, insignificant at first until one panted: “Is he dead?”

I tried to move but lack of air paralysed me.

“I can’t tell, hold on.” A voice, deeper, older, replied.

A blade of light flashed in my eyes. No, not light. A reflection, and in it the sight of Evelyn with all the others who had kept me company throughout my adulthood. I expected compassion, concern in their faces, but what I saw made me strike out with flailing arms to push it away.

Evelyn was there, just beyond the glass, her and the others. “Breathe,” she mouthed, her face dark with anger and grief, “breathe just one last time. You’ll be here soon.”

Her mirror image shivered with anticipation.


© John Gilbert, 2003, 2004