1.06, after Catherine's birthday party. Thanks to my great betas MorganLeFay33 and featherxquill for giving good advice and encouraging me!
CATHERINE'S HOUSE, BACK DOOR. Later. CATHERINE and ANN on the doorstep having a fag. They're both mellow, they've both had a few drinks. Everyone else is in the other room chatting.
xx
ANN: I was the long anticipated disappointment.
CATHERINE: Why are you a disappointment?
CATHERINE can't see it. She likes spiky, spirited ANN.
[Happy Valley script, ep. 1.06, p. 23]
xx
CATHERINE: I'm going to bed.
(CATHERINE goes. CLARE's left feeling awful. CATHERINE comes back in)
CATHERINE: You know you really ought to think about finding your own place to live.
CLARE can't believe her ears. CATHERINE heads off upstairs.
[Happy Valley script, ep. 1.06, pp. 32-33]
xx
Catherine slammed her bedroom door shut and crashed down on the floor. She sat in the dark, sobbing and swearing. "Damn Clare, damn Daniel. Damn Becky, damn Catherine. Fuck. FUCK!"
"Catherine." Her heart jumped and the hair on her neck rose. No, first, if it were Becky, she'd call her mum (or fucking idiot), and second, Becky had been dead since 2006.
"I hope I didn't scare the crap out of you." It was Ann Gallagher, of course.
"You did. Ann, what the hell are you doing here?" It was dark and Catherine didn't have the energy to stand up and switch the light on. She assumed Ann was sitting on her bed.
"I'm sorry. I stayed because I was going to ask you something, but then you went all wild in the kitchen."
"I'm sorry for that." Right, she hadn't said goodbye to Ann, but she didn't have a clear picture of what had happened after Daniel's show. Some of the guests had just left, presumably not wanting to embarrass her by listening to the hell rising behind the kitchen door.
"I sat on the landing and was wondering if I need to drag you, bleeding, out of the house, one more time."
Catherine's stomach dropped. They hadn't really talked about what happened that bloody - yeah, well, literally, bloody - day.
"Ann, do you remember all of it? I mean when I found you in the cellar and what happened after that?"
"I think so. Do you?"
"I'm not sure. It's quite blurry. I was going to read the report one day. I just remember fighting with Tommy, I don't remember how I got the tape off you."
"I did it, after you had taken the mouth part off."
"Oh." Catherine felt a new wave of shame rush over her, after all the ones she had experienced downstairs. "It looks like I didn't actually do a lot to rescue you. You dragged me out of there and I couldn't even catch the bastard." She heard the floor squeak and Ann sat next to her on the floor, fumbling her way over to wrap her arms around her. They sat there for a while.
"Who's Becky?" Ann's voice was very gentle.
"My daughter. Ryan's mother who died."
"What happened to her?"
"She killed herself."
"Why?"
"I've been telling myself that it was because Tommy Lee Royce raped her, because she told me he did. But I can't prove it. And today I was thinking for a second that I can't even be completely sure that it ever that's why I was chasing him, before I knew you had been kidnapped."
"Is Ryan his?"
"Yeah. God, I really shouldn't be telling you any of this, love." Catherine patted Ann's hand on her shoulder.
"So because of that you got the idea he had something to do with my kidnapping?"
"I can't even take the credit for that. It was our Clare who thought about it first. To be honest, all I could think was just to find him and… beat the crap out of him." Catherine tried to retain some primitive level of professionalism in front of Ann. Well, actually she didn't care what Ann thought about her wanting to kill Tommy, but she didn't want to give Ann the burden of knowing about it. Just in case Catherine got the chance to make it happen and questions were asked…
"I hope you'll get the chance to do it, properly. For you, and for me."
Catherine felt a sudden mad smile creep over her face and she was happy that Ann couldn't see it.
"I'm obsessed with that bastard. I wasn't so stable when he was in prison, but now I'm a proper fuck-up, after all that has happened." Catherine didn't get her tone as sarcastic as she had intended it to be.
"Join the club of fuck-ups." It was clear to Catherine that Ann was coping far better than she was. Ann seemed to have a habit of commenting on the state of things in a matter-of-fact but sassy way, which Catherine liked a lot.
It was Ann who crawled up and found her way to switch on a lamp on the bedside. She dragged Catherine up and hugged her tight.
"Just tell me if you want to get rid of me." Ann waved with her head towards the door.
"No, don't worry… What was it you wanted to ask me about?" Catherine tried to be a bit more focused than she actually felt like being. She sat on her bed and Ann took a place at the other end of it, legs crossed. She had apparently been lying and dosing on Catherine's bed, because she had kicked her shoes off and the duvet was crinkly. Catherine suddenly thought about the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. She felt like a bear wondering who'd been sleeping in her bed.
"The thing is… I've been thinking I could become a copper." Ann's gaze was steady.
"Shit. And what was your question?" Catherine didn't know what to say, she just blurted out something. She felt she wasn't in a state to give vocational counselling, not even for Ann Gallagher.
"Like what do you think about it? Do I have the guts for it?" If Ann was taken aback by Catherine's not exactly encouraging words, she didn't let it show.
"Of course you have, no doubt. But I just wonder… Where the hell did you get the idea from?"
"From this whole mess, and maybe from meeting you."
"Shit. I'm one hell of a role model for anything."
"You seem to me like the first real person I've met for ages. You dare to do and say things, you even get hurt. You don't care what people think about you."
"My speciality is to hurt others and really say things I regret. Things I should regret and I don't. Well, you've met me, like what, three times, you should have noticed that by now."
"I see what I see. And I know what people say about you. My parents, Clare."
Catherine felt a sting when she thought about Clare. Shit. She lay down on the bed, her better left arm crossed behind her head. She didn't know what to say. If Ann really knew anything about her… Ann went on talking.
"You know what, getting to know a scumbag like Tommy had a certain influence on me. I never considered myself to be one of the good guys. Like it wasn't the first time I was on smack. And I've met you before; you chased me once when I'd been shoplifting. But I think I learned a lesson with Tommy. And I just think that I need to do something I believe in."
"Didn't you just hear me telling you that I was planning to… Yeah, planning to kill that bastard? For something I can't prove he has done?Does it sound to you like I believe in the system I'm working for?"
"I didn't mean believing in the system, but believing that you can make a difference. Or something."
"Okay." Catherine said it with an emphasis, and didn't say anything more for a while. Then she suddenly smiled. "So I didn't catch you back then?"
Ann grinned cheeky. "No, you didn't."
"Shit." Catherine didn't look like she was very sorry.
"But you were pretty scary yelling at us."
"Good." That was again with an emphasis, and a silence.
"The police officer who Tommy killed, she was your colleague, wasn't she?"
"Yeah." Catherine fought against tears. She really was a wreck tonight.
"I'm sorry."
"It was my fault. I had just bollocked Kirsten, and she tried to show off, stopping that bloodyvan on her own."
"Don't say that. We could say that it was her own fault, because she tried to show off. I could say that it was my fault, because I tried to raise hell in the back of the van to get her attention, and I really managed to do that, with consequences. Catherine, it's as simple as this: she died because Tommy Lee fucking Royce drove my Mini over her, multiple times. That's why she died, not because of anything you or I said or did."
Catherine was sobbing and Ann was there again, holding her hand this time.
"Was it you she called then?" Ann's question made Catherine give her a genuinely surprised look.
"Yeah. So you could hear her?" There was a disgusted shock in Catherine's voice.
"'They've killed me', or something like that. Well, I wasn't surprised that Tommy killed her, actually, after what he had done to me. How he was like, in every way. That Whippey twat wasn't as bad as he was. I felt a bit sorry for that idiot and he felt a bit sorry for me, I guess."
"You know what, I'm really sorry that you had to be there when they killed Kirsten. But somehow it feels comforting that she wasn't all alone, that it wasn't only me who heard her last words." Catherine knew it was an absurd thought, but that was what she honestly was thinking. She felt she wasn't worth hearing Kirsten's last words, of all people.
"What I yelled at her the day before was 'I'm not your mother'. I'm so ashamed of it, not only because of the consequences, but in every way. Actually I felt that she was a kind of daughter to me. Maybe I was trying to tell off myself as well, that I shouldn't let anybody take Becky's place. Kirsten was so kind and patient and hard-working, everything that Becky wasn't, and I felt ashamed because I caught myself wishing I'd had a daughter like that."
Ann was wiping her cheeks as well. "Mothers and daughters… I don't even go there." Catherine just squeezed her hand. She didn't want to say anything about Ann losing her mother and needing somebody to be there for her, because it already was thick in the air.
"I'm so sorry that I've been telling you all of this." Catherine remembered her therapist's kind advice to put all her troubles in some fucking little envelopes. Well, if that lady could see her now, babbling it all out to Ann.
"It's been me asking the questions. And saving someone's life makes strange things happen, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, even though it isn't clear who actually was saved by whom." Suddenly Catherine couldn't look at Ann. She tried to tell herself that everything was alright now. This was something completely different from trying to help Becky and failing miserably. Ann was doing fine, after all. The girl looked at her, concerned.
"Oh sorry, ghosts are chasing me." Catherine sat up, tried to smile and shrug it off.
"Does is happen a lot?" Ann didn't sound surprised.
"Sometimes. Like I said, I'm a mad woman, you should know that."
"You're not. And even if you are, I like you." Ann gave her a crooked smile.
"You silly lass." Catherine grinned and pulled Ann in a hug.