The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  ‘Newly tiled, with a great shower, a big table and lots of mirrors …’

  At least she likes Stan’s flat, if not him. Better than nothing, thought Jennifer.

  She walked across the room and looked out one of the windows. As the flat was so high up, you could see the sea from here. Below the house was the wide street and on the opposite side a few residential houses and the Grand Hotel. Not a bad place to live, thought Jennifer, revising her initial estimation.

  She jumped – Ena was suddenly next to her.

  ‘Linda Gardner lives in the house opposite,’ said Ena.

  The house looked a little like a long thin tooth which had a bit broken off its side.

  ‘Who’s Linda Gardner?’ asked Jennifer.

  ‘The woman Amy Mills was babysitting for. The student who—’

  ‘Oh yes, I know,’ interrupted Jennifer. ‘A terrible affair. Horrible.’

  And so similar to our own, she thought.

  ‘That’s the house she left on that July night,’ said Ena. ‘She went over that bridge and then into the Esplanade Gardens. Her last trip. Mrs Gardner’s flat is on a level with Stan’s, by the way.’

  Jennifer looked at the windows. They were dark holes framed by the frilly curtains.

  Suddenly she shivered, but that might have been because of the rainy atmosphere outside. She turned from the window. ‘You wanted to tell me something, Ena. And show me something.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ena. ‘That’s what I wanted to show you. The house opposite. The flat. And this here.’ She pulled a tripod from the corner. A black telescope was attached to it. She put it at the window.

  ‘He watched her from here.’

  Jennifer did not understand. ‘Who? Who watched whom?’

  ‘Stan. He watched Amy Mills. On the evenings when she was over there. You can see everything in the flat with this lens. At least in the evening when the lights are on. And it was always evening when she was there.’

  ‘What?’ asked Jennifer. She understood what Ena was saying, but was hoping that there was something she had not understood. ‘What are you saying, Ena?’

  ‘It’s not some absurd idea of mine, Jennifer. He told me. A few days ago. Stan told me that he used to watch Amy Mills over there, and he showed me how well it works. We could see Mrs Gardner and her daughter. She read to her and—’

  ‘He told you that he used to watch Amy Mills?’

  ‘Yes. For months. He acted as if he was … really proud of it. The girl who’s dead now, I knew her pretty well, he said, and then he brought out this thing. I was completely shocked, but he didn’t notice. He bragged about his great telescope and that he even … even knew what colour her panties were. You can see into the bathroom too, you see.’

  Jennifer put a hand to her temples. She felt a pounding starting. ‘That is … indeed a little disturbing,’ she said in the end.

  ‘But that’s not all,’ said Ena. You could see it was doing her the world of good to tell someone about this. ‘The day before yesterday I found something which … And since then I’ve felt awful, and known I couldn’t keep it to myself …’

  She pulled Jennifer over to a little chest of drawers, and kneeling down she tried to open the lowest drawer.

  Jennifer turned nervously towards the flat’s front door. She was shivering even more, and she knew it had nothing to do with the cool day. ‘Are you quite sure he won’t suddenly come in?’

  ‘He wouldn’t come back from Hull just like that,’ said Ena, but she did not sound completely convinced.

  ‘Quick, have a look,’ she insisted.

  She had finally managed to pull out the drawer. It was full right to the top with photos – photos of all sizes, black and white as well as colour photos, framed in wood or paper sometimes. Ena grabbed a pile and pressed them into Jennifer’s hands. She was squatting down next to Ena. ‘Here!’

  All the pictures showed a young woman. Most of them were grainy snaps, obviously taken at a great distance. They showed the young woman on a cliff-top walk. At the beach. Walking down a road. Coming out of a supermarket. Eating in McDonald’s. Inside a flat. Reading. Watching television. Staring out the window.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Jennifer, although she knew. Her voice sounded hoarse.

  ‘Amy Mills,’ replied Ena. ‘I know because her picture was in all the papers after she was murdered. It’s Amy Mills in just about every possible situation. You can see for yourself,’ she motioned to the open drawer, ‘the pics fill the whole drawer.’

  ‘Most were taken with a telephoto lens,’ said Jennifer, ‘and it doesn’t look as though Amy Mills knew she was being photographed.’

  ‘He must have been following her all the time,’ said Ena. ‘At least each weekend, when he wasn’t working. And on his days off. Evenings. He was constantly taking her picture.’

  Jennifer swallowed. Her throat was dry. She looked at the door again.

  ‘Did he show you these too?’

  Ena shook her head. ‘No. Like I said, I found them. And I didn’t talk to him about them. You know, I really didn’t like the thing with the telescope, and I’d tried to convince myself it was just a coincidence that Amy was his target. I said it was just because she happened to go to the flat opposite his, and that it was a terrible coincidence that she was later the victim of a crime. But the pictures … I mean, it looks as if …’

  ‘He was obsessed with her,’ said Jennifer. ‘What this is, Ena, is stalking. Even if the victim didn’t know about it.’

  ‘Stalkers aren’t necessarily murderers,’ replied Ena.

  The word murderers reverberated awkwardly in the air. It stood out like a penetratingly bad smell. It shook Jennifer out of her paralysis. She got up, with the photos in her hand. ‘Is that what you wanted to talk to Gwen about?’

  Ena stood up too. ‘I wanted to ask her what to do. I couldn’t work it out on my own.’

  Jennifer did not let go of the photos. Her eyes drifted back to the door. ‘We have to get out. If he finds us here …’

  ‘Do you think he …?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how far his involvement in the crime goes, and I don’t know how dangerous he could get with us, but I don’t want to know that, in any case. Come on. We have to go.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’m taking these photos with me. And we’re going to the police. You have to tell them everything you’ve told me, Ena. The police have to know.’

  In an instant it seemed as if all the energy which had carried Ena through the last half hour disappeared. Suddenly her arms hung limply at her sides.

  ‘And what will happen to me? He won’t want to be with me any more.’

  ‘Do you want to be with someone who …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who might have committed a serious crime?’

  ‘And what if it wasn’t him?’

  Jennifer waved the pictures around. ‘This here just isn’t normal! The telescope’s not normal! The guy is, at the least, disturbed! Anyway, you aren’t happy with him, as you just told me at some length. Please, Ena, let’s hurry. We shouldn’t stay here this long!’

  Finally Ena snapped out of her torpor. She bent down and closed the drawer. ‘Right. OK. I just want to pack a few things. I’ve already got some personal things here and I don’t know if I will ever …’ Her voice was trembling.

  ‘Hurry,’ urged Jennifer.

  She stepped over to the window while Ena rushed around the flat. Rain. Rain. Rain. And across the road the dark windows of the flat where Amy Mills had spent her Wednesday evenings. Dark windows which when lit up would allow you to have a good view in.

  Stan Gibson – a peeping Tom? A stalker?

  Or a murderer?

  Rain.

  Suddenly she knew why she was so uneasy. Why she kept looking at the door. Why her heart was pounding so loudly and fast.

  It was pouring down. You could not work on any building site in rain like this. And it did not look as if it wo
uld stop soon.

  She turned to Ena, who had just taken two pictures down from the fireplace and was stowing them in a plastic bag.

  ‘Ena. I bet he’ll come home early today. Are you ready? We have to go!’

  ‘Soon,’ said Ena.

  Jennifer looked out again and checked the street.

  Her voice trembled. ‘Now, Ena, now!’

  12

  Stephen was not in the flat when Leslie came back. At first she thought he might be out walking or wandering around town, keeping himself occupied. But the guest-room door was ajar and peering in she saw that his travel bag was not there. It had been on a chair by the window until then.

  She stepped inside the room. The bed had been made. The wardrobe’s open doors showed that it had been cleared out. No question about it: the room’s guest had gone.

  Leslie found a note on the bedside table in Stephen’s tiny scrawl:

  Dear Leslie,

  I have the feeling that I’m a nuisance to you. I’m sorry if my visit overwhelmed you. I didn’t want to make you feel worse than you already feel because of Fiona’s death – that really wasn’t my intention! On the contrary, I just wanted to help you and be there for you, in case you needed someone you know well, and I think that in spite of everything I am still that: a person you know well.

  My offer stands – to be there for you and to be ready for any kind of conversation. But I think a little distance would do us good. I’ve taken a room in the Crown Spa Hotel. I’ll stay there for a few days, but I won’t bother you. If you need me, just come over.

  I would be happy to see you.

  Stephen

  Typical Stephen. Considerate, understanding. Putting his own needs last, but in so doing subtly creating feelings of guilt. In his presence you always felt you were the bad person. Leslie suddenly realised that after his affair it had been the same. She felt like a scoundrel for ending the relationship, although he was the one who had taken a girl he pulled in a pub into his marriage bed for a screw.

  She scrunched up the letter and threw it into a corner.

  The pouring rain outside made her loneliness in the large building all the more apparent to her. Normally the view outside made up for everything else. There would be either blinding sunlight on the blue waters of the bay or powerfully wild cloud formations in the sky. The South Bay retained its charm in stormy as in good weather. Only the leaden, rainy bleakness of a day like today could not convey anything except its own bleakness.

  No one else could be heard in the house, as so often. Nowhere were doors slamming, windows being opened or closed, nor was there a toilet being flushed. Most flats were empty, and that would not change throughout autumn and winter. The house exuded a cold emptiness.

  For an intensely overwhelming moment Leslie could feel the loneliness her grandmother had lived with. It filled her with an almost physical pain. Fiona had experienced many days like this over the last few years: grey, cold and oppressively quiet. She had survived the days, somehow, and she had never complained. But she had suffered. Leslie suddenly knew that, although she could not have said how she knew. Perhaps her grandmother’s energy was just so strong within her four walls that it was impossible to ignore it.

  She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She asked herself uneasily what the police might have against Dave. Doubts about his statement regarding last Saturday night?

  It wasn’t him. He hadn’t killed Fiona. She could have sworn it, although she had nothing more to go on than her instinct, and there too she had little experience of judging other people’s criminal tendencies – to be precise: no experience. Dave had claimed he had gone home to bed. If that was not true, what motive might he have for hiding the truth?

  She put a bag of ginger tea in a mug, added some honey and poured on boiling water. While the tea brewed, she gazed out of the window above the sink. It looked out on the well-tended little park which gave the end of the Prince of Wales Terrace, where it met the Esplanade, a picturesque look. In spite of the bad weather an old woman was dragging herself along the muddy pavement. Was she lonely too? Could she also not bear to stay in her flat and so had fled outside, risking flu or even bronchitis? There are people who say that loneliness is the worst disease of them all, worse even than death. Was Fiona one of those people?

  Leslie turned away from the window. Her gaze fell onto a small metal board which hung near the fridge. You could fix notes to it with little magnets. There was a shopping list in Fiona’s familiar stiff handwriting, which had not yet become at all shaky. She had noted sugar, lettuce and grapes.

  Next to it hung a postcard which Leslie recognised as the one she had sent the previous year. She had gone on a walking holiday in Greece with two colleagues. You could see a sunny bay surrounded by rocks, and an almost kitschy blue sky above it. Next to the postcard was … Leslie stepped closer. The programme invite to a Christmas party down in the Spa Complex. Christmas Eve with a ventriloquist and a garish puppet. Leslie turned over the flyer, the front of which was decorated with a Christmas tree. The Hey Presto Dancers and Naughty Oscar, who was going to show his extra special tricks. Fun for the all the family, the flyer proclaimed, on the most exciting and magical evening of the year.

  The programme was from last year.

  Why was it still hanging here? Had Fiona gone? Leslie knew that nothing in the programme would have amused or excited her. Silly tomfoolery. Nice for kids perhaps, who did not know how to fill their time until Christmas morning arrived when they could unpack their presents. But for a well-read, critical old woman who found fault with every comedy programme on television?

  She had been lonely and had not known how else to survive Christmas Eve. That was Leslie’s only explanation. Christmas was the giant, problematic obstacle which people living on their own had such trouble negotiating each year. Such a dark and scary obstacle that people preferred to flee to any old silly entertainment than to sit at home.

  Why had she not told me? thought Leslie.

  She remembered last Christmas. It had certainly not been plain sailing for her. To make sure she did not get down in the dumps, she had volunteered to be on duty in the hospital. The evening before she had celebrated with two much older colleagues of hers in a pub. One of the two women was a widow, the other was single. All things considered, she got through the difficult days pretty well. Now she asked herself guiltily why she had not thought of her grandmother. What could have been more natural than to drive up to Yorkshire for a week, to celebrate Christmas with her?

  She was such a tough old cookie, Leslie thought, that you just didn’t think she could have trouble with Christmas. You just didn’t think that she could find anything problematic or frightening or shattering. Perhaps she too had felt grief and worry and fear, but why had she never shown the slightest trace of those feelings?

  There had obviously been no evening celebration on the Beckett farm, else she would have gone. But probably Chad with his taciturn, strange nature had not even thought to invite her, while Gwen for her part almost never made a decision herself, and Fiona was certainly too proud to ask.

  Perhaps she had hoped up to the last minute that her grand-daughter would come?

  The phone rang and startled Leslie out of her guilty brooding. She picked up the receiver and simultaneously thought: Hopefully not another anonymous call!

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  It was Colin. This time he was looking for Jennifer, and you could hear how difficult he found it to come to Leslie a second time with a Missing Person query.

  ‘She wanted to go shopping and perhaps have a bite of lunch. I know that the last bus went at one and the next one goes at four, but …’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ asked Leslie. ‘It’s half past two. You can probably only expect to see her in over two hours’ time.’

  ‘The weather,’ said Colin. ‘That’s my problem. It can’t be much fun in town with the rain, so I thought I could fetch her, if I knew where she was. But … s
he obviously hasn’t gone to your place?’

  ‘No,’ confirmed Leslie. ‘She’s not here. And by the way, Colin – Gwen, who you spent yesterday ringing round about so frantically, did spend the night at Dave Tanner’s. As I thought.’

  ‘Gwen’s home now,’ said Colin. ‘And I admit I was too worried about her. But my wife wanted to visit Dave Tanner too, and that … well, concerns me.’

  ‘What concerns you?’

  ‘You can imagine,’ Colin replied.

  Was he alluding to the still present suspicion that Dave was involved in Fiona’s murder?

  Out loud to Colin Leslie said, ‘I met Dave this morning at the harbour, and until three quarters of an hour ago we were in town together. If Jennifer had been hoping to see him at home, then she won’t have managed to.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Colin. It was not clear whether this information put his mind at rest or not.

  Leslie sighed quietly. ‘Colin, you’ve got some issue with letting the women around you—’

  ‘I don’t have any issues,’ said Colin sharply, ‘but my wife does, so I’m worried.’

  ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Colin stiffly and hung up.

  Leslie took her tea and walked into the living room. Talking about Dave Tanner had reminded her that he might be in some difficulty. Perhaps he needed help. Perhaps there was something in Fiona’s notes. She had to finish reading the computer printouts.

  She sat down on the sofa, sipping her tea. She was very tired. She would lie down, just for a couple of minutes.

  She put her cup down and stretched out on the sofa, falling asleep before any more thoughts came to her.