She checked her watch. She was early yet. Not that they would mind her arriving a bit sooner than expected. They would probably be delighted. She could imagine them chuckling with excitement in the hall, fussing around her, patting her arm, ushering her into an armchair while the kettle boiled. But she wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
Beyond the underpass at Perry Barr, she turned into the One-Stop shopping centre and parked up. Inside the mall, she walked past Asda and Boots, and out into the bus station.
She had studied for her degree in Criminal Justice and Policing at UCE, the University of Central England, right here in Perry Barr. From the bus station, she had a good view of her old alma mater, though it had now been renamed Birmingham City University. She could see the Kenrick Library and the golden lion emblem high on the main building of the City North campus.
Instead of going back to her car, she crossed to the other side of the bus station and walked towards Perry Barr railway station, past a few shops that stood between here and the corner of Wellington Road – The Flavour of Love Caribbean takeaway, Nails2U, the Hand of God hair salon.
But there was no point in avoiding the call. She was caught up in the machine now, had voluntarily thrown herself into the mechanisms of the criminal justice system, and she had no escape.
‘Diane, are you well?’ said Murchison, answering her phone instantly, as if she had indeed been sitting at her desk waiting for it to ring.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘I just wanted a few words with you, before our meeting this afternoon.’
‘You just wanted to make sure I was actually on my way, perhaps?’
‘No. I think you’ve made the commitment now. I’m sure you won’t change your mind. But if you do –’
‘I won’t,’ said Fry.
‘All right. Well, I know you might be feeling isolated and vulnerable at the moment. But don’t forget, you’re not alone in this. We’re all on your side. Any support you need is available, twenty-four hours a day. Anything you want to talk about is fine. Don’t hold it back. Call me, any time.’
‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’
‘Don’t worry, Diane. It’s my job.’
Fry winced, wondering if she had just received the hand-off, the subtle reminder that this wasn’t a personal relationship but a professional one. She supposed that counsellors, like psychiatrists, had to be wary of relationships with their clients, and draw firm boundaries. Some of the people Murchison dealt with must be very needy.
Below her, the yellow front end of a London Midland City train whirred into the Birmingham platform of the station.
‘There’s a lot of noise in the background,’ said Murchison. ‘Where are you?’
‘Perry Barr.’
Murchison was silent for a moment. Fry thought she had shocked her in some way. But Perry Barr wasn’t that bad, was it?
‘Diane, is there a particular reason you’re in Perry Barr?’
‘Yes, a personal one.’
She thought she could hear Murchison shuffling papers.
‘May I ask…?’
‘I’m visiting someone. Family.’
‘Oh. That would be…your foster parents?’
‘Well done.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I know it’s all right. I don’t need your permission to visit them.’
‘No, no. Of course not.’
Tm just calling in for a cup of tea. So you can tell Gareth Blake I’m behaving myself.’
Murchison laughed. Fry thought she heard relief in her voice.
‘I’ll tell him. And we’ll see you later, yes?’
‘Of course. After I’ve checked into my hotel.’
Fry watched people hurrying down the concrete steps to the platform and getting on to the train. She thought about following them, getting on the train and riding past Aston, past Duddeston and right into New Street. As if she could ride by everything, without even a glance out of the window, and start all over again.
But she stood for too long at the top of the steps, and the train pulled out, the noise of its motor dying as an echo on the brick walls.
‘Diane,’ said Murchison finally, ‘everything will be all right.’
Fry ended the call, and looked around. Opposite her stood three tower blocks surviving from an early 1960s attempt at low-cost housing. A number 11 bus emerged from Wellington Road in a burst of exhaust fumes. A strong smell of burning rubber hung on the air from the plastics factory on Aston Lane.
She walked under the flyover and emerged on the Birchfield Road side. Kashmir Supermarkets and Haroun’s mobile phones. Money-transfer services and lettings agencies for student flats. Outside Amir Baz & Sons boxes of vegetables were stacked on the pavement. Fry stopped to look at some of the labels. Bullet Chilli. Surti Ravaiya.
Now she felt lost. Nothing seemed to be recognizable. The street signs still pointed to UCE, but there was no point in following them. When you got there, you would find it had ceased to exist. Its name had been consigned to history.
The disappearance of so many landmarks gave her a strange sense of dislocation. Birmingham had been changing behind her back while she’d been away. This was no longer the place that she’d known. The Brum she saw around her was a different city from the one that she’d left. It was as if someone had broken into her previous life when she wasn’t looking and tried to wipe out her memories with a wrecking ball and a bulldozer.
But then, it was probably true the other way round. She wasn’t the same person who’d left Birmingham, either.
The Bowskills were the family she’d lived with the longest. She’d spent years in the back bedroom of their red-brick detached house in Warley. She’d been there when Angie ran away and disappeared. And she’d stayed with the Bowskills after her sister had gone. She’d needed them more than ever when she no longer had Angie to cling to.
And those times in Warley had been happy, in a way. Fry clearly remembered window shopping with her friends at Merry Hill, touring the Birmingham clubs, and drinking lager while she listened to the boys talking about West Bromwich Albion. Jim and Alice Bowskill had done their best, and she would forever be grateful to them. There had always been that hole in her life, though. Always.
There had been other homes, of course. Some of them she remembered quite well. She particularly recalled a spell with a foster family who’d run a small-scale plant nursery in Halesowen, and another placement near the canal in Primrose Hill, where the house always seemed to be full of children. But those families were further back in her past, too far upstream to re-visit.
Jim and Alice Bowskill now lived in a semi-detached house with a vague hint of half-timbering, located on the Birchfield side of Perry Barr, the close-packed streets in a triangle bounded by Birchfield Road and Aston Lane. As she drove towards it along Normandy Road, Fry had a good view of the Trinity Road stand at Villa