The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  She heard a ping. Jackie had acknowledged her text. Stella had cancelled such meetings many times, but Jackie gave no hint of being frustrated. Nearly ten years older than Stella, Jackie Makepeace was something of a mentor to her. She couldn’t know that Jackie would have been unsurprised about Stella doing the foxtrot. It would have confirmed Jackie’s opinion, shared with her dancer son, that Stella would be a natural. Jackie knew Stella Darnell better than she knew herself. She had kept the office meeting slot free, but hadn’t expected it to take place.

  Bowling along in her van, Stella passed Rose Gardens North, a short terrace of houses left when the rest were razed for the Great West Road extension. She had lived in the street with her mum and dad until she was seven, when her parents separated. Her dad had continued to live there. She had inherited the house when Terry died and forty years on was living in there again.

  Accelerating around Hammersmith Broadway Stella raised her voice above the hum of traffic and belted out ‘Rebel Rebel’ note-perfect.

  Chapter Four

  October 2014

  George Watson made his way across Kew Gardens. A goose had defecated on the path. Although it was cold, two boys were rampaging about on the grass by the Queen’s Beasts. He cast a disapproving look; he wouldn’t let a child tear about making all that noise, scaring the birds. Their mother watched from a bench. Actually, no: he realized she was watching him. Since Jimmy Savile, everyone was alert for paedophiles. Savile had done it for any man walking on his own. You needed a dog or a kid to pass as normal. He had his briefcase, but he suspected that increased her suspicion. A mac and a case were not the usual garb for a man in Kew Gardens.

  He wasn’t aggrieved by her blatant mistrust. His grievances were deeper. Still, he glared at the woman clutching her cigarette as if for dear life. She could have no idea how uninterested in her children he was.

  He had seen her before. Not her, but the scene. The mother, the children. Generation after generation in Kew Gardens, like a field of sheep.

  One of these times he must have been with Rosamond because he remembered her saying that the mother should be ‘interacting with her children’. That would have been when Rosamond paid notice to children. When the problem wasn’t being mistaken for a pervert, but trying unsuccessfully to divert Rosamond from wishing she was the mother shivering on the bench. Not smoking – she considered the habit disgusting – but, like this mother, she would be fiercely protecting her brood while they played their idiotic games. The younger boy was bossing the older one, pushing and shoving him. He was tempted to go over and make him stop. The mother had guessed this and through plumes of smoke she was keeping her eye on him.

  George Watson hurried out of the gate, past the Herbarium and over to the pond. Minutes later he was pushing open the gate to his house. He looked up. A light was on in the drawing room. A sign that Rosamond was there. He had lived in the substantial villa for over forty years, a continuity that enabled him to chart his infirmities. It took longer to walk up the path, to fit the key in the lock and to climb the stairs to his studio. To get over slights.

  With the front door open he called out, ‘I’m home.’ He sniffed her perfume. Her coat was slung over the banister as if she had dumped it and rushed up the stairs in a hurry to tell him about her day. He felt bad for coming home late, it had thrown everything out. He shut the door and crossed to the drawing room.

  Rosamond’s knitting was on the table by the sofa. He had put it there; left on the sofa, he might have accidentally sat on it. Knitting and a half-drunk cup of tea – he felt the mug, it was cold – were signs that she had been there.

  In the kitchen there was no supper on the go. He liked to prepare their meals and, as he joked to her, one thing he could do with consummate skill was slice and dice.

  He smelled cigarette smoke. Not Rosamond, he could be sure of that. Ayrton smoked. He had been in the Herbarium all day making his life a misery. Still, diligence and respect reaped rewards. His own was on the horizon.

  He saw the stub as soon as he opened the back door. It had been crushed, the ash made a curving mark on the stone. He prised it off the step and, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, threw it in the downstairs lavatory and pulled the chain. Another slight. It flayed him raw.

  Gripping the banister as if it were a climbing rope to aid his ascent up a mountain, Watson laboured up to his attic studio.

  Submitting to the pain, he forced himself to look along the shelves where his books were ranged in alphabetical order. The study of an eminent botanist; he pictured telling the journalist about his life, his principles for a revised taxonomy. He would be bluff and hearty: It’s all about DNA these days.

  He sat down at his board and regarded the grey pencil lines. An early sketch, the basic form of structure traced with the camera lucida. Ayrton had called it the doodles of an old man. George had smiled. The trick was to smile. Ayrton was jealous, he couldn’t do his own drawings. The best botanists could. George knew he was good. Better than the blowsy young woman Ayrton fussed over. Ayrton had promised that the specimen George was drawing would be named after him. They needed each other.

  His eye was caught by a sticky note above his sketch. In block capitals were the words, ‘USE OYSTER CARD’.

  The last time he had gone on the District line he had forgotten to take it. He ripped the sticky note from the board and, scrunching it up, tossed it in his waste bin.

  Several hours later, there was a knock on the door. A far-off thud. He picked up a scalpel. The short sliver of metal could do much damage.

  Another knock.

  Rosamond didn’t approve of uninvited callers. Certainly not at past four in the morning. These days George slept little. Unable to ignore it, grimacing at his tight tendons, George laboured his way down the stairs, calling in a reedy voice, ‘I’m coming.’ Like a child on the count of ten.

  The elderly man in the shadow of the porch was a mirror of himself. Except he wore an absurd cap. George couldn’t think of its name. Perhaps the man knew what he was thinking because he snatched his cap off, rolling it up between his hands.

  ‘Howdy do, George!’ Palms together at his chest, he did a theatrical bow. George thrilled with revulsion. He tried to shut the door, but the man was already in the hall.

  ‘Do I know you?’ George did know him. The revulsion had taken root decades ago. Then, as now, the man reeked of alcohol.

  ‘We’re too old for grudges, aren’t we?’ The man patted him on the shoulder and strolled about the hall scanning left and right, as if looking for something. Someone.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’ George fingered the scalpel in his pocket and felt the sharp sting of a cut.

  ‘So did I, mate! Where is she?’ The man yelled up the stair-well: ‘Rosy!’

  ‘She’s popped out.’ The coat was gone from the banister. He heard how absurd he sounded. ‘She’s asleep.’

  ‘Wake her up man!’

  ‘She’s unwell.’ George lowered his voice.

  ‘Poor baby.’ The man sauntered into the sitting room. Behaving as if the house was his. His mind racing, George pictured the papers covered in dense print from his solicitor.

  With no other living relatives, the house belongs to your wife. Should she predecease you then it is in trust to you...

  ‘Jesus, I’m famished,’ the man exclaimed. ‘Midnight munchies!’

  ‘It’s four in the morning!’

  The man ignored him. ‘What you got?’

  ‘Rosy made a cake.’

  ‘More than my life’s worth to say no to Rosy’s homemade!’

  When George returned to the sitting room, a slice of chocolate cake coated with hundreds and thousands on a plate, his visitor was sprawled on the sofa asleep. In the kitchen he had managed to convince himself that his visitor was a dreadful trick of the imagination. But, mouth open, snoring loudly, he was real enough.

  In the hall the longcase clock struck five. George placed the plate on the coffee tab
le with a crash.

  ‘What in hell...?’ Barely awake, the man instinctively put out a defensive hand. He caught the plate and sent it skittering to the floor. Cake scattered all over the carpet. ‘Ah look at that.’ He marvelled, his rheumy eyes wandering over the lumps of cake without focus.

  ‘I’ll call a taxi.’ George went to the alcove by the fireplace and dialled a number on the phone.

  Fifteen minutes later there was a loud knock on the door.

  ‘The taxi’s here.’ George hurried into the hall.

  The driver, in shirt sleeves despite the cold, was grinning broadly.

  The elderly man swayed on his feet, tottering on the doorstep.

  ‘This both of you, sir?’ the driver asked.

  ‘No. Or actually yes. It’s both of us.’ George grabbed the man’s arm and guided him down the path to the black cab.

  George had left the cake on the carpet. As the taxi passed Kew Green, he remembered that the cleaner was coming in the morning. He let others tidy up his mess. He would leave it for her.

  Chapter Five

  October 2014

  ‘How’s business. Good?’ Dariusz Adomek, the Polish owner of the mini-mart beneath the Clean Slate office, swiped a litre carton of milk over the sensor and passed it to Stella. He tossed the right money into the till drawer and tore off the receipt. Reaching across the counter to Stanley on Stella’s shoulder, he ruffled his head and murmured endearments to him in Polish.

  ‘Good, yes.’ Stella paused. ‘We’re waiting to hear if we’ve got a big contract.’ It was rare for Adomek or Stella to stray from their morning script except to consult on staffing or business issues. Adomek referred Polish friends and relations to Stella’s team of operatives. Stella and Jackie checked over his letters and advised on tax forms. The symbiotic relationship was a decade old. It was even rarer for Stella to talk about a potential contract with anyone outside Clean Slate, but Adomek wouldn’t tell a soul.

  ‘I’m crossing fingers for you.’ Adomek popped a treat from a bowl by a charity box for the local hospice between Stanley’s lips.

  ‘Thank you. How are you?’

  ‘We’re opening another shop!’ Adomek ripped the cellophane off a carton of Benson and Hedges and keeping the packets stacked in a tower slotted them into a gap on the shelf behind the till. ‘Adomek’s is a chain. Eat your heart out Tesco!’ He scrunched up the wrapping and stuffed it into a bin beside his stool. ‘OK, so two shops is not a chain.’

  ‘It is nearly.’ Jackie had once said that Adomek was like Stella, prudent and cautious. If Clean Slate got the Kew contract they would have to move to larger offices and recruit more staff.

  Adomek, perhaps guessing her thoughts, said, ‘You get this business, you’ll need more people. I’m lining them up.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Stella picked up the milk carton.

  ‘I got a snap from Suzanne.’ He reached under the counter and produced his phone. Quickly he moved his finger over it as if stirring something and slid the handset over to her.

  Suzanne was standing in a shop holding a newspaper in front of her chest. Both hands were visible so Stella’s brother must have taken it. The paper was Fakt, a Polish tabloid that Adomek sold in the shop. Stella couldn’t understand the headline. Inset was a picture of two women in leotards, hands clasped as if dancing. She was reminded of the morning with Tina.

  ‘Suzie says she understands every word in the paper. I text her: Good so can you tell me!’ Laughing, Adomek put his phone back under the counter.

  Adomek was teaching Suzie Darnell Polish. Her mum said it was respectful to converse with Adomek in his own language.

  Unlike the photographs that she had sent to Stella, this was untouched by any filter or tool. The picture depicted her mother as she knew her. Stella quelled a pang. She hadn’t let herself miss her.

  Beside the fruit-and-veg display was a door; the murky brown paint was scored with scratches. The door shifted as Stella fitted her key into the lock. She tutted. Despite memos, emails and a laminated notice, staff in the insurance company above Clean Slate left the door on the latch. One reason to move.

  Stanley, straining on his lead, forged ahead up the stairs, claws clicking on the frayed linoleum. On the landing, Stella stopped at a door, the wired-glass window blocked by a notice that declared: ‘Clean Slate – For a Fresh Start’.

  ‘It’s the last straw!’ Stella said, mostly to herself, as she pushed on the handle and barged in.

  ‘We guessed you wouldn’t like it.’ Jackie Makepeace had been Stella’s personal assistant for nearly as many years as Clean Slate had been in business. With practised fluidity, she took Stanley’s lead from Stella, swapping it for tea in a mug emblazoned with the company logo.

  Stella stepped around Beverly the office assistant, who was taking up much of the cramped floor space extracting springy bunches of paper from the shredder bin and cramming them into a plastic sack. Strands of paper had escaped and were all over the carpet. Stanley snatched a bundle of shreds from the sack and, before Jackie could stop him, was tossing them about. Not for the first time Stella considered how wise it was that clients were discouraged from visiting the office.

  Jackie had put down a bowl of water for Stanley. He made for it and drank noisily. Stella took a gulp of tea; it was exactly as she liked it. She dropped her rucksack outside a door marked ‘Stella Darnell, Managing Director’. This was an initiative of Beverly’s. Jackie had stopped Stella from pointing out that the notice was extraneous since everyone – Jackie and Beverly herself – knew this anyway.

  ‘People can change.’ The voice came from her office. Looking round, Stella saw a tall man, locks of dark hair falling over the collar of a black overcoat that accentuated his pale features and deep brown eyes. Jack Harmon, driver on the District line, the best cleaning operative she had ever had, began to pet Stanley. The dog, furry chin decorated with paper shreds and dripping with water, set about licking Jack’s face. Stella looked away; she drew the line at licking.

  Beverly tamped down the paper in the bag and gathered another armful from the bin. ‘Life should mean life!’ she snorted.

  ‘Beverly!’ Jackie shot her a look.

  ‘It’s not about condoning, but finding a way to forgive the perpetrator.’ Jack sat down in Suzie Darnell’s chair. Stella’s mum came in three days a week to run the client database. For the next few weeks she was doing this from Sydney.

  ‘I’m done with forgiving.’ Stella nursed her mug of tea. ‘That company is processing burglary claims and at the same time putting us at risk from “off-street intruders”.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’ll speak to their MD and underline how leaving the front door open puts them at risk too. Anyone could walk in.’

  ‘Anyone just did walk in,’ Jack said. ‘I did and I’m anybody.’

  ‘No you’re not, you’re somebody!’ Beverly knotted the neck of the plastic bag.

  Stella’s first meeting with Jack had been early one morning three years ago. He had found his way into the office because the door had been left open.

  ‘We’re talking at cross-purposes.’ Jackie placed a mug of hot milk on the desk in front of Jack. ‘Sit down, Stell. Like some sugar stirred in?’ She waved a spoon at Stella’s mug.

  ‘I don’t take—’ The last time Jackie had put sugar in Stella’s tea was when a policeman told her that Terry was dead. ‘Is it Mum?’ Stella went numb. ‘She just sent me a picture.’ Not ‘just’ – it was over two hours ago. A lot could happen in that time.

  ‘Suzie’s fine. We thought you’d have seen the news.’ Jackie pushed Beverly’s vacated chair towards Stella. Jack jumped up and indicated her mother’s chair.

  ‘What news?’ Mechanically Stella sat down at Suzie’s desk.

  ‘They’re releasing that man who killed the policemen on the day you were born!’ Beverly’s voice was muffled by the desk under which she had crawled in pursuit of fronds of shredded paper.

  ‘Bev,’ Jackie said nicely. ‘Why don’t you
nip down to Dariusz and get us some milk.’

  ‘Stella’s just bought—’ Beverly began.

  ‘Take that to the recycling bin while you’re at it, there’s a love.’ Jackie nodded at the overstuffed bag.

  Hint taken, Beverly stomped from the room. Jackie pulled her chair to face Stella across the desk. Jack, now in Beverly’s chair, clutched Stanley to his chest. The dog, sensing a change in atmosphere, cocked his head.

  Some children grow up fearing the White Witch in Narnia or the wolf in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’; Stella Darnell, the daughter of a detective, was brought up believing that villainy was encapsulated in one name. Harry Roberts. She had retained the smallest facts about the events of 12 August 1966. The story of that day was in her DNA. When she returned to the house in Rose Gardens North for access weekends with Terry the house no longer felt like her home. She had lain awake at night, imagining that she heard Roberts’s footsteps on the stairs. He would shoot her dad and kidnap her. That he was locked up in prison didn’t lessen this fear.

  The story was as vivid to her as if she had been a witness to events that day. Terry Darnell was leaving the police station on Uxbridge Road in Shepherd’s Bush for the Hammersmith Hospital on Du Cane Road to see his newly born daughter when he was recalled to duty. He joined in the search for an armed gang who had shot dead three police officers in Braybrook Street in the shadow of Wormwood Scrubs prison. Two of the gang were quickly caught, but Harry Roberts was on the run for nearly a hundred days. According to his wife, Terry hadn’t seen the baby Stella for days: the number of days varied in the retelling over the years from three days to a week.

  ‘Harry Roberts has been released,’ Jack said.

  Stella gripped the arms of her mother’s chair. ‘The judge at the trial sent him to prison for life.’ She spoke in a monotone.

  Jackie’s voice was gentle, reasonable: ‘Roberts isn’t considered a danger to the public. He’s done, um, quite a few years.’