Perfect Little Children

by Sophie Hannah

  “Would you mind waiting in the car?” I ask Zannah.

  “Yes.”

  “I think they’ll tell me more if I’m alone. They know Flora and I were best friends for years. And confiding’s easier to do with an audience of only one, I think.”

  “All right. If you insist. But remember everything they say. Even better, record it.”

  Recording a voice memo is one of the few things that my phone and I both know how to do. Dom showed me so that I could illicitly record Ben singing, with the most reluctance and embarrassment I’ve ever seen packed into one boy in a school hall, a song called “Piratical Style” from the musical Pirates of the Curry Bean.

  “Wish me luck,” I say to Zannah as I get out of the car. I’m not going to record Flora’s parents if I’m lucky enough to find them—I’d feel guilty and it would show on my face—but Dom gave me some wise advice about a year ago, one day when I was crying because, yet again, Zannah and I were at loggerheads. He said: “Try this: say a direct ‘No’ as rarely as possible. If it’s possible to not give in but not actually say, ‘No, you can’t’ or ‘No, I won’t’ then do it. It works like magic.” I thought it sounded like the worst advice I’d ever heard, but I tried it and it worked.

  I ring number 43’s bell. The door is part glass, and through the leaded panes, I see a figure coming toward me along the hall. A tall man.

  When he opens the door, I recognize him as Flora’s dad, Gerard Tillotson. Ged, his wife used to call him. His hair is white now and he’s thinner.

  “Mr. Tillotson?” I say with a tentative smile.

  “Hello? You’re not going to try and sell me anything, are you? Because I’m not buying—not today! Haha! I don’t need any more dishcloths or clothes pegs.”

  I wonder if my two-tone hair has made him think I must be a gypsy. “It’s nothing like that,” I say. “My name’s Beth Leeson. Perhaps you remember me?”

  “At my advanced age, I remember very little, my dear. Here’s my advice to you: don’t get old. There’s really not much to recommend it.”

  “I was at university with . . .” I stop and clear my throat. “For a long time, I was best friends with Flora. Your daughter,” I add unnecessarily. His memory might not be what it once was, but he’s likely to remember his only child.

  “Is Flora all right?” he says quickly.

  “Um . . . yes, I . . . I’m not here with bad news or anything like that.” As I say this, I wonder if it’s true. What if Gerard Tillotson thinks everything in Flora’s life is fine? Should I tell him that I don’t think it is? Would that be fair?

  “Ah. Well, that’s a relief.” He looks down at his right shoulder, as if trying to decide what to do. “I’m afraid Flora’s not here, if you came in the hope of finding her,” he says eventually.

  “Oh—no, I know that. It’s not that. I was hoping to speak to you, actually. And Mrs. Tillotson if she’s around.” Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. Flora’s mum might be dead for all I know. “It’s quite important.”

  If it were my child, I’d want to know. Whatever anyone feared or suspected, I’d rather be told so that I could try and sort it out, however old I was.

  Gerard Tillotson says, “If you walk around the house, you will find—unsurprisingly—the back garden. At the far end of it is a little blue-painted structure. It used to be a shed, but my wife spruced it up and now calls it the summer house. You’ll find her inside it, surrounded by her dress-making equipment.” He closes the door without a good-bye. Through the glass, I watch him walk back down the hall and disappear into a room.

  What am I supposed to do now? Shouldn’t he be the one to go and get his wife? Would he have told me where I’d find her if he didn’t want me to seek her out?

  I walk around the side of the house. The blue former shed is there, as described, at the end of a long, tapering back garden. There are white net curtains at its windows, with small orange and green flowers standing out like birthmarks, raising the skin of the gauzy fabric in lumps. I knock on the door and it opens immediately.

  Rosemary Tillotson’s hair is as white as her husband’s. Unlike her husband, she is now heavier than she used to be. I see a large cream-colored sewing machine behind her, a patchwork rug on the floor, and some peach-colored fabric spread out on a table.

  “Oh!” She smiles, as if I’m a rabbit that’s popped out of a hat. “This is a surprise. Can I help you?”

  “My name’s Beth Leeson. I’m . . . I used to be Flora’s best friend. You’ve met me before, ages ago.”

  “Flora’s . . .” Her mouth moves, but nothing comes out. Then she looks past me, into her garden, and says, “Is Flora here?”

  “No, she’s not, though I’ve seen her a couple of times recently. I was hoping to talk to you and your husband about her, if that’s okay.”

  Rosemary Tillotson frowns. “I’m not sure if it is. You can’t just come here. You can’t just . . .” I’m preparing to defend myself when the angry words stop and Flora’s mother bursts into tears.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Zannah and I are sitting in the Tillotsons’ long, narrow, bay-windowed living room. The four of us are drinking tea from blue and white pottery mugs. I was in the car, ready to give up and drive back home, when Flora’s father tapped on the window and inclined his head to indicate that I should come back to the house. Since he had seen Zannah, I decided it would be strange if I didn’t bring her in with me.

  “I’d better tell you, and I hope you don’t take it personally, that your visit comes as rather a shock to us,” he says now. “Foolishly, selfishly, quite reprehensibly, I decided that my wife would be better able to cope with the shock and to deal with you than I would be myself.”

  Rosemary Tillotson hasn’t said a word to me since she had her crying fit. She’s sitting by her husband’s side on the sofa, red-eyed and mute. He has apologized four times so far for her distress, and I’ve apologized for causing it.

  Something is very wrong here, and I wish I knew what it was—whether it’s the same something-wrong as at Newnham House. Are Gerard and Rosemary Tillotson, at this moment, gearing up to lie to me as thoroughly as Kevin Cater and Fake Jeanette did?

  So far, I’ve seen this living room, the hall and bottom of the stairs, the bathroom under the stairs and the kitchen. That’s the entire ground floor of the house. There are no photographs of Flora, Lewis or their children anywhere to be seen. Unusual for grandparents. My mum has photos of Zannah and Ben at every age plastered all over her house.

  “Perhaps you could tell us why you’re here?” Gerard Tillotson asks.

  I’d intended to tell them the whole story. That was before I knew that a visit from their daughter’s former best friend would prove so traumatic for them. With Rosemary’s blotchy face in front of me, I can’t bring myself to say that I saw two of her grandchildren last Saturday and they didn’t seem to have aged in twelve years. Before I reveal too much, I need to know why my turning up has made the Tillotsons so distraught.

  “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known it’d upset you,” I say. “It’s just that . . . when Flora and Lewis moved to Florida, they sold their house in Hemingford Abbots to a family called the Caters. I happened to drive past the house the other day, on my way to take my son to his football match, and I saw . . . well, I thought I saw Flora there, outside the house. And then I saw her again in Huntingdon and . . . the way she behaved made me worry that something was really wrong. I spoke to her briefly on the phone, and to Lewis, and they both said she wasn’t in England. According to them, she’s in Florida—which makes sense, because that’s where they live now, but I know what I saw and I can’t think—”

  “Do they?” says Gerard. There’s a sharp edge to his voice. “Does Flora live in America?”

  “Are you saying she doesn’t? Have she and Lewis split up? Is he in Florida, but she’s still in England?”

  Zannah coughs and fires a harsh look in my direction. She thinks I need to shut up and gi
ve the Tillotsons a chance to answer.

  Gerard takes a sip of his tea. He looks at Rosemary, who doesn’t notice. She seems unaware of her surroundings and of the conversation.

  “We’ve had no contact with Flora since May 2007,” he says. “Nor with Lewis or the children. We know nothing about a move to Florida, I’m afraid, nor about the condition of our daughter’s marriage.”

  My head and heart start to spin. How can that be true? Flora was closer to her parents than anyone I’ve ever known. At university, she would ring them every night to say good night and tell them she loved them. She kept this up even after she married Lewis. He used to tease her about it.

  “We don’t google, and we don’t inquire,” says her father. “No doubt Lewis is taking the world by storm in one way or another—he always was destined for great things—but we prefer not to know anything about it. It would be too painful for us to have to contend with regular snippets of information. All our friends and acquaintances know that, if they happen to hear anything, we don’t wish to be informed.”

  “Did you say May 2007?” I ask.

  “That’s right,” says Gerard. “Lewis and Flora sat where you and your daughter are sitting now, and Lewis explained that we wouldn’t be seeing or hearing from them, or from our grandchildren, again. He meant it, too. Oh, we were in no doubt that he meant it.”

  My instincts are telling me that I need to get out of here and away, fast, so that I can think this through. I force myself to stay seated. Until last Saturday, the last time I saw Flora was in February 2007. Shortly before that, in December 2006, I felt betrayed by her for the first time in our long friendship. But what if . . . ?

  I push the thought from my mind. If I get caught up in thinking it through now, I won’t be able to concentrate on the Tillotsons.

  “Why?” I ask. “Sorry, I don’t mean . . . I understand why you don’t want to hear any news and how upsetting that would be, but why aren’t you in touch with Flora? The Flora I knew—”

  “Might as well have died,” says Rosemary Tillotson suddenly. “Afterward, she wasn’t the same person. She wasn’t our lovely, happy daughter. She was a stranger.”

  “Afterward?”

  Rosemary nods.

  “She means after Georgina died,” says Gerard.

  Oh, God, please, no. No, no, no. The room spins around me. For a few seconds, I can’t breathe. All the air is stopped solid in my lungs.

  “Mum, are you okay?” Zannah asks.

  “Georgina died?” I say, once I’m able to speak. “How? When?”

  “April the twenty-seventh, 2007. She was six months old. She just . . . stopped breathing.”

  “Cot death?” I say.

  “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, I believe they call it. Georgina wasn’t the strongest baby to begin with. There were various complications. She was born six weeks premature, and there was something wrong with her right eye. She would have needed surgery to correct it at some point, or perhaps an eye patch would have done the trick. She wasn’t as robust as both Thomas and Emily were as babies.”

  “Flora didn’t . . .” Of course she didn’t tell you, idiot. She didn’t tell you any of it. Don’t you remember the sequence of events?

  “She stopped being Flora,” says Rosemary. “The old Flora—the real Flora—would never have cut us off. Never. We’d done nothing wrong, nothing at all.”

  “Which of course is what parents who deserve to be ostracized would say,” her husband adds. “But we didn’t deserve it. Not a bit.”

  Then why? Why did it happen?

  I can’t bring myself to ask them if, before she died, Georgina’s nickname was Chimpy. It probably makes no sense that I still have the urge to ask this question. If Georgina is dead, how could Flora have been talking to her on the phone last Saturday?

  “Would you like a hanky or a tissue?” Rosemary asks me.

  “No, thank you.” I sniff and wipe my eyes quickly with the back of my hand.

  She says, “When Flora and Lewis told us that Georgina had died, I looked at Flora and I knew right away: she was gone. As gone as Georgina was. Somebody else was there instead. A different woman.”

  “We only saw them twice after Georgina’s death,” says Gerard. “Once when they told us the terrible news and the second time when Lewis said we would never see them again and that we mustn’t try to contact them.”

  “But why would Flora want that?” I blurt out. “You say she’d changed—anyone would change after a tragedy like that, but to push away your own parents . . .”

  “Please.” Gerard raises a hand. He’s telling me, as politely as he can, to shut up. “All the questions you’re likely to ask are ones we asked ourselves, again and again. We didn’t understand. Of course we didn’t. After such a tragedy, to be bereaved again so unnecessarily—and if you think it’s too dramatic to call being cut off by your daughter and remaining grandchildren a bereavement, I can assure you, that’s exactly how it felt and how it still feels.”

  “I can imagine,” I say shakily.

  But it can’t have been Flora’s fault. None of it can. She’d never have cut you off if she’d had a choice.

  How the hell am I going to manage the long drive home after this?

  Gerard says, “Since I’m no longer in touch with Flora, I obviously can’t ask her why she made the decision that she made. I have my suspicions, if you’d like to hear them?”

  “Only if you don’t mind telling us,” says Zannah.

  Thank you, Zan. Thanks for speaking when I can’t. If Zannah or Ben ever cut off contact with me, I’d throw myself off a bridge there and then. I wouldn’t try to be brave for anyone else’s sake. I couldn’t live in a world where my daughter didn’t want to know me.

  Gerard says, “I think . . . well, I know, from my own experience, that most people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid unbearable pain. It’s what we’ve done since losing Flora and the children. It’s the reason your visit, and your mention of Flora’s name, caused us such, uh, consternation, shall we say? Flora and Lewis knew that every time they saw us, every interaction they had with us in the future, they would have to confront our loss, the grief that we felt at losing Georgina. I don’t think they could face that prospect. I must say, it doesn’t surprise me to hear that they’ve moved to America. It fits with my suspicion: they want to surround themselves with people who have no memories of Georgina. It will make life easier for them. Perhaps it’s the only way they can face living at all.”

  People who have no memories of Georgina . . . Not me, then. I remember Georgina very clearly, from her one visit to my house. Even if I’d never met her in person, there was no chance I would ever forget her.

  Thoughts and memories crash-land in my mind, one after another: Flora on the phone, ending the call as soon as she could, promising to ring back and then not ringing back. Flora running away from me in a Huntingdon car park, Lewis on the phone from Delray Beach, Florida—happy to chat at length, confident he could sustain his lies for as long as I could keep him talking.

  Flora wasn’t confident or happy to talk, though she did her best to pretend to be. She could only stretch out her lies for a finite amount of time. And then she couldn’t risk ringing back. When she saw me in the car park in Huntingdon, she didn’t brazen it out, as Lewis would no doubt have done. She turned and ran.

  She was scared. Of me. Shit, how can this not have struck me before? She was on her way back to her car, presumably strolling along in a reasonably normal frame of mind, and then she saw me and she freaked out. Ran away. I was the thing that caused that rush of fear—because she knew I’d ask after Georgina and she didn’t want to have to talk about her death? But . . .

  No. That can’t be it. You might try and avoid an old friend in those circumstances, but the fear I saw in Flora’s eyes, the way she turned and ran . . . that wasn’t just reluctance to talk about a past tragedy. It was more and bigger than that. And then, to send that other woman back to the car park w
earing her clothes . . .

  “I’m worried Flora’s in danger,” I say before I can stop myself. “I’m not sure I can explain it very well, but . . . Flora and Lewis both lied to me. The people living in their old house lied. There are no pictures of Flora on Lewis’s Instagram page—only of him, Thomas and Emily. I know none of this proves she’s in danger, but I think something is really wrong.”

  “Beth, please try to understand,” says Gerard. “We can’t help you. We don’t know the answers to any questions you might ask. You know more than we do, and I’m afraid that conversations like this one won’t do me or my wife any good at all. It’s going to take us weeks, possibly months, to recover from your visit. Nothing you’ve said suggests danger to me so much as . . . well, hard though this might be for you to hear, I think it sounds as if Flora and Lewis don’t want you in their life anymore—much the same way they felt about us.”

  “But they told you quite directly, didn’t they? That’s not what they’re doing with me.”

  “Mum, we should go,” Zannah says quietly.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry to be so . . . relentless. Can I ask you one more question before I leave?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” says Gerard, at the same time that Rosemary says, “Yes.”

  “Did you like Lewis? Were you happy to have him as a son-in-law? Did you ever worry that he might . . .” I can’t bring myself to say it.

  “Harm Flora?” says Rosemary. “No. Never. He adored Flora and the children. Treated them as if they were made of gold. I didn’t like him, though.”

  Gerard makes a spluttering noise. He puts down his cup of tea and wipes his mouth. “Rosemary, of course you liked Lewis. We both did.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did,” he insists, looking perplexed.

  “I pretended to. I’ve always pretended to, even after they told us they didn’t want us in their lives anymore. It was probably silly of me, Ged. You and I should have discussed it before now. I shouldn’t have told you in front of people we hardly know.”