Quelling her disappointment, Stella set to with a bottle of environmentally friendly disinfectant, spraying it on to the stainless steel splashback behind the kitchen sink, the counter top, the sink itself, vigorously wiping every surface until it gleamed. Again she had the odd sensation that she still lived here and that the last eight months – during which she had met Tina – had not happened.
From the living room Stanley started to growl. In the time she had owned him – over a year – Stella had been learning how to decipher his variety of noises. Short shrill barks meant he wanted her attention, if he was stuck in the garden or wanted to be fed. Mewing meant someone he liked was nearby. Jackie said he did it when Stella was coming up the stairs at the office. Frantic barking was guarding, whether from a cyclist, someone on a skateboard or in a mobility buggy – he objected to people on wheels – or footsteps passing the house after dark. He took exception to the refuse collectors and the recycling float and more recently to the relief postwoman.
The low guttural growl, steady and unremitting, was a warning. A preamble to guard-dog barking, but in a flat with CCTV, a coded key pad at the entrance, three deadlocks and a London bar, there was nothing for Stanley to guard.
A scourer in her rubber-gloved hands, Stella peeped into the living room to signal silently to him to be quiet. Stanley was standing on a sofa arm, tail down, eyes black as pitch. Stella dropped the scourer. A man stood by the dining table, fingers splayed on the polished glass. Looking at Stanley, he addressed her: ‘I don’t think he likes me.’ His tone was pleasant, his eyes merry, apparently oblivious to what Stanley might do to him. The odour of stale smoke caught her nostrils.
‘Who are you?’ Stanley’s growls gained momentum. Heart thumping, Stella tipped her hand. He went quiet. All she had to do was mouth ‘Go!’ and the fluffy apricot poodle, the size of an average family cat, would launch off the sofa and rip the man’s throat out. She hoped.
‘We used to have a dog, bigger than him, but not half as fierce. Useless if my girls got in any trouble – he’d run a mile if he heard a car door slam!’
‘Who are you?’ Her mobile was on the table within reach of the man. She would never get to it before he did. Stella drew herself up to her full six feet, several centimetres taller than the man. She put him in his late fifties. He looked strong; she could see his muscles flexing through the fabric of his shirt as he tapped the table. She had no chance. The tapping was a steady beat.
He smoothed a hand over his thinning scalp and began rolling up his sleeves. ‘You missed a bit.’ He jabbed a finger at a faint mark on the carpet.
Taken aback at his change of tack, Stella looked at where he was pointing. She hadn’t missed the stain; it dated from her time in the flat when one night – or early morning – she and Jack were having a case meeting and she had knocked over his mug of milk. So far no remover – and she had tried many – had erased it. Jack said that the stain was a reminder of the beauty of life’s imperfections.
Never antagonize a criminal if your escape route is blocked. Terry’s dictum came back to her.
She looked up and the man winked at her. ‘My idea of a joke – not very good. I hear you’re the best.’ Grinning, he stepped towards her. At that moment, the hall door swished across the thick pile. An accomplice. Stanley began to mew. He shot off the sofa and seemed to literally fly across the room.
A short woman in a grey pin-striped skirt suit, holding a leather attaché case, stood in the doorway. Dropping the case, she reached down and gathered Stanley up, shutting her eyes.
‘Is you my ickle bitsy bubsa boo, is you, is you?’ She mumbled like a ventriloquist to avoid the dog’s clacking tongue.
Stella was astonished. Tina Banks, the hot-shot lawyer who took no prisoners because she got them off, was babbling baby talk at Stanley.
‘Hey, I wanted to be here when you two met!’ She tilted her face out of reach of the dog. He nestled into her neck. ‘Stella, this is my dad!’ Tina Banks shunted Stanley higher on to her shoulder.
Her legs as weak as jelly, Stella croaked, ‘Oh, great. Er, hi, I’ve finished, so I’ll be—’ The stain on the carpet was darker. It was spreading. Stella saw Tina’s dad glance at it and felt herself grow hot.
‘I gave her a turn. You didn’t say I was coming? Stella had me for a burglar and was about to set the dog on me!’ Mr Banks rocked with laughter, his arms folded.
‘I expected to be here when you arrived,’ Tina snapped.
Stella was suddenly reminded of interchanges with her own dad. Tetchiness, impatience and – something that until now she had forgotten – that taking for granted, the knowledge that whatever happened, her dad would be there. Until one day he wasn’t. Tina had said their dads were alike; now Stella saw what she meant. She felt strange. The sensation was envy, a rare experience for Stella: she made the best of what she had. She wished now that she could be irritated with Terry because he had alarmed the cleaner.
‘Cliff Banks. It’s good to meet you, Stell. I know you already. My girl tells me you’re following in your dad’s footsteps and catching the bad people. She says you’re the cleanest detective in town!’
‘That’s not what I said, Dad.’ Tina Banks remonstrated, her voice muffled in Stanley’s woolly coat. She didn’t say what she had said.
‘We was having a laugh about that mark.’ He scuffed at the stain with polished loafers. He laughed and Stella saw the younger man in the photo on the window sill. His face was used to laughing. Banks must be older than fifties: given Tina’s age and that she had an older sister, he’d have to be late sixties.
Tina was dismissive. ‘I asked Stella to leave it, she was in danger of going through to the floor.’ Tina put Stanley down and kicked off her heels, padding past Stella in stockinged feet to the kitchen. Stella heard her put on the kettle. ‘I’ve wanted you two to meet for ages.’ She lounged in the doorway. ‘Stella’s dad passed, sadly. It would have been perfect if you two could have met. I’m sure you’d have known each other.’
‘Had a few coppers in my cab. Good tippers!’ Mr Banks grinned at Stella.
‘My dad never took taxis.’ Too late she saw that the comment might be seen as impolite. She followed Tina into the kitchen.
‘If you’re lost, ask a policeman or a cabbie, my ma used to say.’ Banks didn’t seem offended.
‘My dad has the Knowledge; he’s a living compass. He never gets lost. Leave on left King Street, Right Weltje Road, Left Great West Road, Right Hammersmith Bridge Road, Forward Hammersmith Bridge...’
‘Will you listen to that?’ Banks beamed with pride. ‘She used to call over my runs. She’s the best!’
‘Stella’s dad was high up in the Met.’ Frowning, Tina was setting out mugs in the kitchen. Stella wiped away a splash of milk after Tina had sploshed some in the mugs, mildly surprised at Tina’s clumsiness.
‘Better than being high up a tree!’ Mr Banks wandered into the kitchen and gave his daughter a peck on the cheek. ‘Saw your picture in the paper. My daughter, the star! Teach them to mess with you. Mind you, that bloke you got off looked well dodgy to me.’
‘It’s not my job to judge clients, Dad, you know that. Someone gets in your cab, you take them where they wanna go.’ Stella noticed that Tina’s London accent was stronger, like Cliff Banks’s. Like Terry’s. Tina seemed embarrassed by her dad’s affection. Terry wasn’t like that. Or was he? There was so much she didn’t remember.
‘See, Stella? My girl’s got all the answers. Smart as you like. I’d have had forty fits if she’d followed me on the cabs! We sent her to the best school – I knackered meself keeping her there – but she didn’t let me down.’
‘Did you knacker yourself, Dad?’ Tina handed him a coffee.
‘You know I did, darling.’ He pinched Tina’s cheek. A red mark bloomed on her skin and then faded. He grasped her hard as if she was a little girl.
It was as if Tina hadn’t known the sacrifice that her dad had made for her. Yet she had told Ste
lla that, unlike her sister, she had been sent to private schools and graduated from law school. Who did she think paid? Stella was grateful that Terry hadn’t worked hard to get her to a posh school. You owed your parents enough as it was. Then again, his ambitions for her were modest compared to Banks’s intentions for his daughter.
Stella drank down her coffee and snatched up her rucksack from the sofa. ‘I’ve got a recruitment meeting. It was nice to meet you.’ She nodded at Mr Banks and again he grinned at her. ‘I have heard all about you.’ She had heard that he was like Terry; it made her think he was Terry.
‘All bad, I hope!’ They stood with the stain on the carpet between them. ‘If your dad was a patch on me, he’s all right! Bet he’d be chuffed at you now.’
Suzie said that he’d been disappointed when she became a cleaner. He’d wanted her to join the police. That Terry would be proud of her now was incomprehensible.
Banks got up and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Watch yourself, doll.’ He squeezed her arm. With Terry uppermost in her mind, Stella was flustered.
‘Give Stella a break, Dad,’ Tina warned. Dimly Stella saw that Tina had put her mug on the glass table; she had forgotten the coasters to protect the glass. ‘Terry Darnell was a top detective. People are always telling me. Catch you soon, babes.’ She ruffled Stanley’s ears. ‘You too, Stell.’ She air-kissed Stella and gave her one of her father’s winks.
In the lift, dazed, Stella watched the floor numbers illuminate as it descended: three, two, one. The doors slid aside revealing the glass-walled foyer. As she headed across the marble she was struck by three thoughts.
One, she hadn’t held her dad’s hand since she was seven.
Two, Terry had never visited her flat; he had never dropped in for coffee like Cliff Banks.
And three, she was still wearing the Marigolds.
Chapter Ten
June 1976
‘You lied!’
The two girls were standing at the top of a flight of stone steps; their shadows, elongated in the afternoon sun, fell across a girl on the grass below. Behind them the Palm House, a palace of glass, shimmered.
‘I did not.’ Chrissie tossed her hair. The sun in her eyes and the others above her put her at a disadvantage. And she had lied.
It was Saturday. The uneasy trio had come to Kew Gardens with a picnic and set up camp by the Queen’s Beasts. This series of twelve grotesque statues carved in Portland stone stood on guard outside the Palm House, commemorating the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The girls were sitting near the Yale of Beaufort who Emily said could swivel his horns different ways at once. They had summarily dispatched their packed lunches. Bella had called Chrissie’s Scotch egg a ‘pig’s eyeball’. This had put Chrissie off it so Emily had exchanged it for one of her Marmite sandwiches, a haphazard affair that she had made herself, with one end of the bread thin and crumbling and the other too thick to bite. It had too much Marmite, but Chrissie had eaten it because it was nice of Emily to swap.
Emily had cut her finger slicing the loaf. Bella said that she was lucky not to have died; her dad defended lots of criminals who had ‘killed with knives’. She warned Chrissie to look out for blood on the sandwich. Her own lunch, cheese and ham rolls, had been prepared by something she called an ‘oh pear’, which Chrissie gathered was a servant. She couldn’t ask directly because she had declared that her ‘oh pear’ was on holiday and her mother had had to make her lunch.
After this, they had explored the Palm House. Bella had chased off along metal grilles that led between the greenery. Shouting ‘Boo!’ she appeared suddenly from behind huge leaves. Above them towering palm trees were lost in a thick mist. Steam clogged Chrissie’s nose. Soon they were all hot and sweaty and relieved to escape to the drier, if no less hot, air of the gardens.
Now they were at the top of an avenue Emily called the Syon Vista. Weeks of drought had turned the lush green sward stretching to the Thames to a brown frazzled strip, bordered by beds of concrete-grey soil in which the plants and shrubs had dried up and died.
Chrissie had dressed up. Or rather her mum had insisted she did. She sported a pink blouse with green Oxford bags and brand-new pink flip-flops. To her dismay Bella’s flip-flops were the same, but in blue, and she wore South Sea Bubble stone-washed jeans with front pockets like the ones Chrissie’s elder sister Michelle was still saving up for. Emily was clad in baggy patched denim, topped with her Brownie-badged hat.
No one could remember when it had last rained. Only at night was there relief from the burning sun, if not from the relentless heat. Bewildered by the stifling humidity of the Palm House, the children were unsure what to do next. Into this vacuum, Bella had flung her accusation that Chrissie had lied about her mum and dad.
‘My daddy could send you to prison,’ she followed through.
‘Your dad’s a barrister, Bella, not a judge,’ Emily said. ‘They don’t send people to prison and anyway why would he? I don’t think Chrissie lied about living in that huge house.’
Chrissie wanted to hit Bella, but no one at her new school picked fights. This was a pity, because she would definitely win a fight with Bella.
‘She has to prove it. We need “co-oberated evidence”.’
‘They are my mum and dad!’ Dizzied by the heat, Chrissie felt she might pass out at the horror of being found out.
It was two days since Chrissie’s lie about Mr and Mrs Watson’s. All of Friday, Bella had said nothing and by today, when nothing was said while they ate, Chrissie had begun to relax. She was learning to accommodate her parallel life. In one life she was the daughter of a taxi driver and a cleaner with a sister called Michelle who was in love with David Essex and in the other she lived with Mr and Mrs Watson in Kew Villa with a bedroom of her own and a garden as big as a park.
‘You told Miss Sharp that you could say every street in London.’ Bella advanced down the steps and began pacing around on the grass, her hands clasped behind her. ‘That’s impossible! She didn’t believe you.’
‘Actually it could be possible.’ Emily was picking at a fraying thread on her skirt. ‘Actors learn parts for plays that have miles more words than streets in London.’ She pulled at the thread and it came away, loosening a panel of denim. Winding the thread around her finger, she added in a dreamy voice, ‘No one should lie.’
Chrissie could have hugged Emily. What she had told Miss Sharp, their form teacher, was true. Although she hadn’t told the whole truth. Chrissie was her dad’s ‘Calling Partner’, although he already possessed the Green Badge qualifying him as a London taxi driver. He liked to refresh the Knowledge with her. He recited the 320 runs and, although Chrissie kept the book by her, she could correct him without it, because, keen to make him happy, she had learnt the routes off by heart. He had to know over twenty-five thousand streets as well as thousands of places like Kew Gardens. Most of these streets and landmarks Chrissie knew too. She was ‘street-perfect’.
Chrissie would have liked to be a taxi driver, but her dad insisted that the point of her going to an expensive school and having drawing lessons was so that she could do better for herself. Chrissie thought that driving a taxi was better than drawing dead plants or wearing a wig on top of your own hair. If she was a taxi driver she could go where she liked and no one would know. Then, while he was reading her The Cat in the Hat, her dad had told her that a taxi driver had to be of good character and never have committed a crime. A lie was a crime. Chrissie knew then that she could never be a cabbie.
She raised her voice as an aeroplane flew overhead and began to chant, ‘Leave on left Putney Hill, Right Lytton Grove, Left West Hill, Right Sutherland Grove—’
‘Stop!’ Bella shouted. ‘Who cares since you’re not a stupid taxi driver!’
‘If we get lost, Chrissie could find the way home.’ Emily snapped a length of cotton hanging off her hem with her teeth. The hem came down.
‘Your mum’s going to be cross,’ Bella commented without malice.
�
�She won’t notice,’ Emily piped confidently. ‘She’s out a lot.’
‘How could she miss it?’ Bella asked.
‘She won’t notice,’ Emily said again.
‘We won’t get lost because we know where we are,’ Bella returned to Emily’s comment, adding superfluously: ‘I’m in charge!’ She blinked rapidly and tossed her hair.
‘Who says you’re in charge?’ Chrissie asked.
‘I did just then.’
‘We could all be in charge.’ Bending, Emily pulled at another thread. Her hat fell off and tumbled down the steps to Chrissie’s feet.
‘Only one person can be in charge.’ Chrissie forgot that she wanted to keep Emily on her side. Emily helped her with questions that confounded her. What sort of mount do you prefer? What’s your favourite, Paris or Berlin?
‘I saw your mum shopping by Kew Gardens station this morning.’ Bella’s voice was pleasant. Chrissie assumed she meant Emily’s mum but then saw with a jolt that she was looking at her.
‘No you didn’t.’ Chrissie breathed rapidly. It was as if the sun had sapped the atmosphere of oxygen. ‘My mum was at home, she made my packed lunch.’ Sweat trickled into one eye; she rubbed at it with a fist.
‘She must have sneaked out without you knowing.’ Bella balanced on one leg, a foot resting on her calf. She was always doing ballet poses. She cupped her chin in a pose of genuine puzzlement although Chrissie wasn’t fooled. She was confident about sticking to her story but, feeling a twinge of doubt, began to rake over the morning’s activities. She and Michelle had helped her mum clean the flat. Her mum had been supervisor. She hadn’t gone to the shops. And she wouldn’t go on a train to Kew because the shops were in King Street, around the corner.
With a terrible whoosh Chrissie guessed the truth. Bella meant Mrs Watson. She stalled for time. ‘This morning?’
The House With No Rooms Page 7