‘I’ve always thought it important to like one’s own company. You have to train yourself, but it’s worth it.’
She looked at me carefully. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Anyway, hopefully you’ll get the job!’
‘Do you think? I mean I have got transferable skills. I’ve brought up three children, and managed a home.’
‘Wisdom and life experience,’ I said. ‘They’ve got to be better than youth in the job market. If this chap is any good, he’ll see that.’
‘I hope so. Thank you.’ She took a sip from her glass and then ran her thumb over the rim where her lips had been. ‘You’re on your own, you said, next door? Your mother died how long ago?’
‘Five years.’
‘Do you have any other family?’
‘Just a sister. Faith.’
‘And is she nearby? Do you see much of her?’
‘Brighton. Not as much as I’d like.’
She considered me for a moment more and then she extended her hand and gave the lapel of my jacket a quick, brisk sweeping. ‘Hairs,’ she said, withdrawing it. ‘Possibly dog.’
‘Oh dear. And I was trying so hard to look smart.’
She smiled suddenly. ‘For us? For Max? Oh, Verity, please don’t worry about things like that. I want you to feel relaxed here. I’m hoping now things have settled down a bit we’re going to be friends, in and out of each other’s houses.’
I felt suddenly coy. ‘I’d like that,’ I said.
We talked a little more – about nothing, really; I told her about my arthritis and she suggested a few things: a hot-water bottle, arnica cream. At the door, she took both my hands. ‘It’s been lovely to chat,’ she said. I could feel the roughness of her palms. ‘Max says you’re cool. And he’s right.’
I was disarmed. I’m used to keeping myself very rigid. I’m not used to compliments. People should be careful not to splash niceness around. I’m reminded of Konrad Lorenz’s imprinting experiment with goslings – how on hatching, they followed the first moving creature they saw. In their case him. Nothing was to break that bond until death.
I think it must have been talking about Mother that did it, but a tear was unexpectedly pricking at the corner of my eye. I flicked it away.
‘Likewise,’ I said.
Chapter Six
Tortoiseshell hairslide
Burgeoning, gerund & present participle. To bud or
sprout; to begin to grow.
This morning, I came out of my front door to see Delilah standing on the opposite pavement, staring up at the house. A murder scene is a draw. When Ailsa was first arrested, people regularly gathered outside or drove slowly past in their cars. I thought I’d got used to it, but when I saw Delilah, the prickliness of it got under my skin. I decided I’d had enough.
‘You should stay away,’ I called, zipping up my jacket.
She waited for a gap in the traffic to cross over.
‘Still with you, is she?’
‘It’s part of her bail condition.’
‘She owes me a lot of money, you know. All those plants I bought for her on my trade account. She never paid me.’
‘Well she’s not in a particularly good position to do so now.’
‘I want to see her, to find out if you can see it in her face, what she’s done.’
‘You don’t know she’s done anything.’
‘He wasn’t perfect. None of us are. He made some mistakes. But the night he died, he told me . . . oh, it doesn’t matter.’ She had begun to cry.
‘You spoke to him the night he died?’
‘I was dropping Max off.’ She wiped her eyes impatiently. ‘The police already know. Don’t look so shocked.’
It’s possible when she said what she said next, she was simply searching her own history with Ailsa for justification, using the tragedy as an opportunity to vent all the resentments she harboured about her friend. ‘The thing about Ailsa,’ she said, ‘is she couldn’t admit when things were going wrong. Everything had to be milkshakes and candyfloss.’
I said: ‘She has always been lovely to me.’
Delilah had started to cross back over the road. But over her shoulder, she hissed: ‘You hardly know her.’
I didn’t expect to see Ailsa so soon after the evening I ‘babysat’. I’m not so devoid of self-knowledge that, while her protestations of friendship may have impacted heavily on me, I expected them necessarily to have registered with her. But the next morning, having navigated my front path, she was at my door, holding out a bunch of tulips. It was a long time since anyone had bought me flowers – even at the height of our relationship, Adrian Curtis hadn’t stretched to floral tributes – and I was so touched I nearly lost control of my face.
A skip lorry clanked and rattled past, followed by a bus. ‘I feel guilty,’ she said, thrusting them at me. ‘You were in the house for hours yesterday, and you’ve made such a difference with Max.’ She came a step closer. ‘I haven’t even paid you yet, have I? God. I’m hopeless. Sorry. Next week, I’ll get to the bank. In the meantime I’d love to do something to say thank you: I could help you out here, for example’. She gestured vaguely at a few things I’d collected in the porch. ‘And also what about lunch? Can I coax you out of your lair?’
‘What, now?’
‘No time like the present.’
Was it pity? If so, she concealed it. Flustered, a smile still playing havoc with my cheeks and chin, I agreed and left her on the doorstep while I quickly got myself together, emptying the sink and filling it with water to make room for the flowers, and sorting through piles until I found my purse, and changing out of the silver-grey Uniqlo crew-neck, which I realised had come in her bag of jumble, and into the festive pink blouse.
She had suggested a cafe in Balham and we drove down in her Fiat, parking at the back of Sainsbury’s. She locked the car with her fob – it made a satisfying clink – and as we crossed the car park, I felt a leap of curiosity and excitement, the thrill of new possibilities. One minute I was a lexicographer at her desk, teasing out ‘angry’ as it relates to the colour red. The next, I was a lady who lunched. When a thin woman with blonde hair, emptying shopping into her boot, greeted Ailsa by name, and a Mini tooted, a hand waving out of the window, I remarked on her popularity. She laughed. ‘Acquaintances, not friends. Anyway, five minutes later and we’d have bumped into chums of yours.’ I’m sure she was already aware I wasn’t big on ‘chums’. She was just being nice. But it didn’t matter. She was just one of those women who got noticed, I told myself, and I bathed in the warmth of her inclusion.
The cafe, which was newly opened, was decorated with naked bricks and industrial wall lights. Artificial plants hung upside down from baskets on the ceiling. It was busy, including several children who should surely have been at school. There was a small kerfuffle when we first arrived, finding space for my trolley. I don’t know why I took it; silly of me. Finally settled, we sat at the far side, against the wall by the window. Ailsa ordered ‘huevos rancheros’ and, slightly bewildered by the available choices, I copied. When it came, a great mess of eggs and beans and chorizo, she tucked in voraciously. (I was soon to learn she either ate a lot or not at all; there was no middle ground with her.)
At first, we talked about Max. Tom, she said, was keen to hear about his progress. (Had he urged her to have this lunch for that reason? I hoped not.) I gave her my observations in detail: that he was very bright and creative and keen, but was slowed by a literal approach to language. When his teacher had recently told the class to ‘take themselves to a beach’, he’d been paralysed by confusion. She nodded and kept her eyes on me, her face very still. I said: ‘He’s fine when it’s explained to him that what he’s being asked to do is imagine. He concentrates much better when he understands what he’s supposed to be doing. It’s frustration that’s distracting for him. I’m going to keep drumming in the kind of questions he’ll get asked and teach him techniques to shortcut them.’
‘He says you talk to him about football and World of Warcraft,’ she said. ‘It’s so nice of you to take so much trouble.’
‘I’m happy to help,’ I said.
‘Tom can’t bear to see him doing so badly at school. His upbringing was very rigorous, really, very academically focused. His father was a judge and expectations were high: boarding schools and Cambridge and the law. Doing well was how Tom got his father’s attention. They were shit parents really. You know, his parents wouldn’t turn up for matches if he wasn’t in the first team? It was a huge thing for him when he did make it in, and on the first match he was subbed off, and they left. Can you imagine? So Tom, I don’t know, he associates success with love. He takes it personally that Max doesn’t seem to want to try. And then he shouts at him, and Max is beginning to talk back, and, well, it all goes horribly wrong.’
I winced. ‘Well hopefully, we can break the pattern.’
She pushed her plate away from her. ‘Tom is talking about sending him to school.’
I was confused. Max was already at school. If I’d realised she meant boarding school, I’d have answered with more indignation. ‘He’s a gorgeous boy, sweet and engaging, and extremely bright. You shouldn’t worry. He will be absolutely fine.’
She looked vulnerable; the skin beneath her eyes seemed to tighten; her eyes to magnify as if covered by film. I covered my mouth with my hand. What would I do if she cried? But she didn’t. ‘Oh, you are lovely,’ she said. ‘You say all the right things!’
‘I mean it. I wouldn’t say any of it otherwise. I’m not one of those people who compliments others just for the sake of it.’
Across the room, I noticed a small girl of about eight was staring at me. I brought my hand to my hair and readjusted the tortoiseshell comb – bought for a few pence at a ‘tabletop sale’ at the local church – that was secured there.
Ailsa smiled. ‘I can see that.’
When the plates had been cleared and we were sipping small grey cups of coffee – ‘flat whites’, which I had always wanted to try – she told me about her own upbringing, in a village outside Guildford. Her mother was an estate agent and her father an accountant. They were comfortable materially but her parents fought a lot and finally divorced when she was twenty. They’d have separated earlier, but at twelve Ailsa was diagnosed with a rare chronic disorder – an inability to process copper, Wilson’s disease – and the trauma of it brought them together. ‘I was very tired and anxious but I was lucky because it was detected early. I’ll always have to take medication, which is a shame, but.’ She shrugged.
As I expressed sympathy, a slightly self-pitying expression came into her face. She always talks about being lucky, but I know deep down she thinks she’s unlucky: this rare disorder struck her, and while it kept her parents together during her teens, it didn’t work forever. Bottom line, her illness wasn’t quite bad enough. In the cafe, I just admired her. But on occasions since, I have wondered if she subconsciously exaggerates things that have gone wrong for her – that it’s her way of seeking attention.
‘It was all rather grim,’ she said. ‘Arguments and slamming doors, my mother drank like a fish, and then two years after they finally split, she got breast cancer, which I’m convinced was caused by the stress of it all, and that was that. It knocked me for six. You know, she was relatively young and, being an only child, it was hard.’
‘And your father?’
‘My father moved to the Far East but he died, um, it must be eight years ago now. So, yes, I’m an orphan.’ She let out a sigh, noisy enough to express self-mockery as well as regret.
I sighed too – the intention was equally comic – and she looked at me across the table. ‘You too?’ she said.
I felt uncomfortable. ‘Oh. Me? I’m not sure. I think my father’s dead, but I don’t knew for sure.’
‘Why don’t you know for sure?’
I hadn’t expected the conversation to turn – it had seemed fixed very much in one direction, and I’d been perfectly happy with that. So really, it was as a sort of distancing technique that I told the anecdote of my father and the 319 bus. I thought she would laugh and we could drop it, but she didn’t. She looked quite serious. She said: ‘And do you think that’s what really happened?’
I laughed. ‘I don’t know. He took a suitcase if he did because his half of the wardrobe was empty.’
Her face didn’t change. ‘How awful.’
I looked down at the floor. I had a sudden image of my mother standing inside the cupboard, wailing and crying uncontrollably, the bare hangers clacking in her hands as she shook them, the shock of this woman, usually so composed, breaking down.
When I looked up, I started talking. ‘My sister and I, we went to a jumble sale that Saturday; I think it might even have been the next day, and we spent all the money we’d saved on armfuls of men’s clothes – some old boy must have died – and we filled that wardrobe, and when we showed her, she laughed and kissed our faces, and we had cake for tea, and it was all forgotten.’
‘That’s sweet and sad. What did she do with the clothes? Take them to the next jumble sale?’
I raised my palms in the air. ‘We kept them all. Still there.’
‘Verity. All these years, you’ve kept some random dead man’s clothes?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Verity. That’s a bit weird.’
‘The clothes cheered her up. They stopped her being sad.’
‘You should have a clear-out.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ I felt flustered. ‘I know.’
The waitress brought the bill and then went away again to find the machine. While she was gone Ailsa said gently that she assumed my mother had never married again, and I told her that was true, she hadn’t.
‘And your sister?’
‘Faith? Married men, yes, but generally not her own.’
‘And you?’
‘No. Never fancied it.’
‘Or maybe never met someone you fancied.’
The sun had moved and I was sitting in a triangle of light. I was facing the room and I fanned my warmed cheeks with my napkin. I tried to laugh, but didn’t know what to say. Ailsa must have picked up on my discomfort because she filled the silence. ‘I’ve made terrible choices that way,’ she said, leaning forwards as if in confidence. ‘Probably including Tom.’
The waitress returned and Ailsa put first her card, and then her number into the portable machine. ‘I was vulnerable when I met him,’ she continued when the transaction was finished. ‘I’d been having a bit of a tough time what with one thing and another.’ She leant back in her chair. Delilah had introduced them, she told me, a great gang of them had gone out for drinks after work. She and Delilah were both working for an advertising company; Tom was in corporate law. It wasn’t a natural fit. He was, is, an intellectual snob, and Ailsa, who hadn’t been to university – ‘as he’s always reminding me’ – had thought he was awful. But drinks had been drunk, shots even, and the two of them had ended up spending the night together, which wasn’t anything she usually did, ‘you know: have sex on the first date’.
As I say, I’m not without experience, but perhaps not as much as was needed in this context. ‘When you know you know,’ I said, as if I did, which I didn’t.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well if I’d been in any doubt before, I wasn’t afterwards,’ she said.
I laughed.
Looking directly at me, laughing too, she said, ‘Right?’
‘But you’ve made it work?’ I said. The question was too personal – she’d only given me all those intimate details because she was worried she’d offended me. Too late: the words were out there.
‘We have our ups and downs. He gets very stressed. There’s a lot of pressure running his own business. He’s put in a lot of his own equity. And, while it seems glamorous – drinks with famous people – in reality he’s constantly chasing clients, sweet-talking, entertaining. He’s just lost a big media client [she named a
company which I associated with mobile phones] and he’s feeling the hit. You know, personally.’ She pushed her cup and saucer away. ‘The house ended up costing much more than we expected. We’ve had to take out a bridging loan. It’s all very stressful.’
‘I can see why a job would help.’
It was perhaps an ambiguous comment, and she frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Yesterday? When do you think you’ll hear?’
She still looked confused. ‘Yesterday?’
‘Your interview, when they asked you to stay for drinks?’
She looked at me blankly for a moment. The tops of her cheeks, just under her eyes, were tinged with red. She did that combing thing with her hair, her fingertips playing with her scalp. ‘Oh yes.’ She breathed in, bringing her hand down to tap her stomach, as if suppressing a burp, and gave a little shake of her head. ‘I’ve no idea. I mean, it was sort of introductory really. It might not come to anything. And then if it did, I’d have to work on Tom. We need more money but he’s also quite old-fashioned in some ways; he likes the thought of me being at home. This job hunt – I might not tell him.’
A small alarm bell rang – maybe I already sensed something was off – but I didn’t comment. I think it was then we both started collecting our things and stood.
Our parking was nearly up and we walked back to the car. We were both quiet. I think it had surprised us both how much we had revealed to each other, how a quick lunch had led to so many unexpected confidences. Out in the real world we felt suddenly sheepish. I had begun to fret a bit about work – I’m expected to submit between thirty and thirty-five sub-entries a week (separate ‘senses’ of a particular word) and I was behind. But as we drove back, she mentioned some forms that needed witnessing and I ended up going into her house with her, signing my name and address; it was something to do with their mortgage, I assumed. It didn’t occur to me it might be about life insurance, not that it would have made any difference had I known. I do remember she told me she was addicted to ‘to-do’ lists; she had a special notebook and she showed me the latest page. We laughed at the juxtaposition of ‘pick up dry-cleaning’ and ‘make a will’. And I’m sure we discussed wills for a bit, too, then; how we really should all make one. So, yes, I think that was when the idea to write a will myself was planted in my mind.
Finders, Keepers: The mesmerising new thriller from the author of LIE WITH ME Page 6