The Woman at Number 24

by Juliet Ashton

  Pacing her sitting room, Sarah’s arms were clasped about herself. It was unusual to be home from work at this time of the day; the flat seemed startled by her. Needing distraction, she noticed the ‘Welcome’ card she’d bought and went in search of a pen.

  Her writing was shaky. She paused, took a deep breath and started again. The events of the morning had rattled her to her core. She’d dashed out of her office as if she was being chased by wolves, ignoring her supervisor’s shouts. Now unanswered calls from Keeley stacked up accusingly on her phone.

  Sarah licked the flap of the envelope and stole down two flights, passing from lino and the smell of Cup-a-Soup on her own landing, to carpet and a melange of fig and ylang-ylang outside Flat B. Her steps slowed as she reached the ground floor.

  Flat C had been out of bounds since Smith’s departure. Sarah dreaded seeing the familiar flat altered; another small proof that, despite the letter in Sarah’s bag, Smith was gone for good.

  The door stood open, the brass ‘C’ wonky. A diminutive woman, her back to Sarah, hands on hips, gave orders to somebody out of sight. ‘No, no, not there, there.’ Thanks to the mail on the communal table, Sarah knew that this bossy child-sized person was one half of Mr and Mrs T. Royce.

  ‘Hello!’ Sarah knocked needlessly on the open door, taking in the sitting room, its familiar kitsch wallpaper already obliterated by white emulsion.

  The woman wheeled round, a smile already curving across an elvish face, her eyes wide at the sight of her visitor. ‘Come in, come in!’ She ushered Sarah into the chaos of packing cases. ‘Christ, this mess. Sorry. We’re still upside down.’

  ‘I’m Sarah, from . . .’ Sarah pointed upwards.

  ‘Heaven?’

  ‘Top flat.’ Sarah smiled; the cheer was infectious, and the power of the morning’s crisis faded a little. She held out the card. ‘To say, you know, welcome.’

  ‘Oh, wow.’ The woman put the card to her chest. The red of her closely cropped hair was nearer to ketchup than titian. ‘Aren’t you lovely? I’m Jane, by the way. Oh, and this is . . .’ She gestured at a tall man almost buckling under a box of books. ‘Oh God, I’ve forgotten your name.’ Jane apologised with an exaggerated gurn and turned to Sarah. ‘But of course you two know each other. He’s Mr Flat B.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we know each other.’ Sarah returned Leo’s nod, both of them flushed, his hair wilted with sweat.

  ‘Are you finished with me, Jane?’ Leo was hopeful, mopping his brow. The burgeoning paunch beneath his shirt didn’t suggest physical stamina, and he seemed grateful when she set him free.

  ‘I nabbed him, poor thing, when he was whistling his way up the path.’ Jane put her arm through Sarah’s, drawing her in, chatty and intimate. ‘He loved me bossing him about. Something about that wifelet of his tells me who wears the designer trousers in that relationship. He’s attractive, if you like that sort of tall, public-school, corduroy-trousers thing, which I don’t. I’m a one-man woman, me. When you meet my husband you’ll see why.’

  Without preliminaries, Jane parachuted into Sarah’s life. As a woman who weighed up pros and cons before committing to a toaster, Sarah enjoyed the heady speed of it.

  ‘Here. Make yourself useful.’ Jane handed Sarah an armful of hardbacks. ‘Stick those on the shelves. Any order. Doesn’t matter.’

  New shelving covered a wall which Smith had plastered with cheap prints of Matisse and Hockney, alongside a fading Photo-Me strip: Sarah and Smith entwined, giggling, a bit tipsy.

  Sarah held up a paperback. ‘You a fan?’ Sword of Lightning was a Chief Inspector Shackleton mystery. Even people who’d never read any of the fourteen Shackleton books were aware of Zelda Bennison, thanks to the TV series.

  ‘I’ve read everything Zelda Bennison wrote. Absolute favourite writer in the world. She died last week.’ Jane’s smile melted. ‘Very sad. Motor neurone disease. She kept it secret from everybody. A real class act. Her mind was going and the poor woman took too many tablets. It’s horrible to think she must have suffered and, you know, fallen apart before she finally went.’

  ‘That funeral, yesterday? That was Zelda Bennison.’

  Jane couldn’t readily process that, so Sarah enlarged.

  ‘Zelda Bennison was Mavis’s sister. Mavis is—’

  ‘—the old bat in the basement?’ Jane put her hands to her face. ‘Zelda Bennison was her sister? But Mavis is . . .’

  ‘Horrible.’ There was no other word for it. Mavis tried hard to be horrible; she was good at it.

  ‘Did you meet Zelda?’ The idea excited Jane. ‘Apparently she was amazing.’

  Hating to disappoint, Sarah explained that she’d glimpsed Zelda a handful of times. Like a well-dressed spectre, the writer had flitted through the hall, exquisite and ageless – the polar opposite of her sister. ‘She stopped appearing. I guess that’s when things got bad.’ Mavis had rushed in and out, harried, anxious. Her devotion had surprised Sarah.

  ‘Were they close?’

  ‘According to Mavis, Zelda abandoned her the moment she found success. There was bad blood between them.’ Sarah regretted not asking to meet the writer and tell her how much she admired her work; dying was nobody’s idea of fun, but dying in Mavis’s basement must have been gruesome.

  ‘Sounds like they kissed and made up at the end.’ The thought seemed to placate Jane. ‘I must ask Mavis about her sister.’

  ‘Seriously, I wouldn’t.’ Sarah smiled at Jane’s gung-ho; it was the gung-ho of people who petted psychopathic chihuahuas despite the owners’ warnings.

  ‘I heard her having a screaming row with some man down in her flat. Must be a boyfriend or something.’

  The notion of Mavis having a boyfriend was beyond comedy. ‘Was it a sweary, nasty argument? Did he call her a scrawny old bird?’

  ‘Yeah. I almost intervened.’

  ‘That’s Peck, her cockatoo. Named after his favourite hobby.’ The bird’s gothic cage dominated Mavis’s hallway. ‘He’s a lot louder and even more vindictive since Zelda passed away.’

  ‘Just you watch. Me and Mavis will be buddies before you can say—’ Jane’s face lit up as she looked beyond Sarah. ‘Tom!’

  Turning, Sarah took in the tall man at the door, holding aloft a carrier bag like the Olympic flame. So the ‘T’ stood for Tom.

  ‘Sarah, you’ll stay for chips?’ asked Jane. ‘Nobody in their right mind says no to a chip.’

  ‘Um . . .’ Sarah was tempted. The conversation had already picked her chin from the floor; chips would chase the fiasco at work even further away.

  ‘And mushy peas,’ said Tom. ‘Plus the finest pickled onions.’ He smiled and Sarah beamed her acceptance; they were good at smiling, these Royces. Sarah could see why Jane was a one-man woman; Tom was straight-up and wholesome. Broad-shouldered, with what Sarah thought of as a noble head, waving chestnut hair backing off his forehead, tawny eyes amused. She sensed he was aware of his height and width; Tom wasn’t the sort of clueless berk who’d clomp along the street behind a woman on a dark night. Tom would cross the road.

  Sarah wondered how she was gleaning all this information from one short exchange about chips.

  ‘Sit. Sit.’ Jane flapped her hands, righting the sofa. ‘No plates. They taste better out of the paper.’

  The peculiar picnic was cosy. With Jane at the helm, conversation bounced up, down, all around, taking in the fact that Tom had upholstered the very sofa Sarah sat on.

  ‘I’m impressed.’ Sarah blew on a chip. She’d never met a man who knew what piping was, never mind actually piped. Interrogated in a friendly way, Sarah told them she’d lived at number twenty-four for two years, that her flat was similar in layout to theirs but without the inconvenience of being near the front door. She remembered Smith’s rueful joke about buying a doorman’s uniform.

  ‘Finding this place was a once in a lifetime deal.’ Jane named a figure that would terrify an out-of-towner but sounded like a bargain to Londoners trapped in the capital�
�s crazy housing market. ‘We’ve got such plans for this flat.’

  Each improvement would bump Smith further into the past.

  Tom said, ‘Don’t worry. There won’t be too much kerfuffle.’

  ‘I don’t mind a bit of kerfuffle.’ Sarah liked that word, and she liked Tom for using it. ‘Besides, I have plans too. I’m moving out.’

  ‘No!’ Jane was wounded, as if they’d known each other years instead of minutes. ‘But you’ve got the attic space. Sloping ceilings and the best view in the house, I bet.’

  I’ll miss the view, thought Sarah. She smiled, showing all her teeth, hoping it convinced. ‘Time to move on.’ The countdown tick-tocked beneath her words. A patchwork of botched DIY, the flat wasn’t the home she’d envisaged. Since Smith, she barely interacted with her neighbours, racing upstairs to put her key in the lock each evening.

  The clock was heartless. It didn’t care that Sarah would be homeless; sure, she could find four walls and a roof, but if home is the place that when you go there they have to let you in, then Sarah had nowhere. She imagined her mother’s face if she turned up with her suitcases and almost laughed. ‘The flat goes up for sale in August.’

  ‘Reconsider,’ said Jane. ‘You’d be mad to move out of this gem. Just look at these cornices.’ She waved a pickled onion at the ceiling. ‘And the wide floorboards.’ She moaned low. ‘And the original marble fireplace, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Jane’s in property,’ explained Tom. ‘That’s why she gets orgasmic about skirting boards.’

  ‘I source houses for rich idiots who are too bone idle to look themselves.’

  ‘I hope you don’t put it that way on your website.’ The comment earned Sarah a We like her glance between her hosts.

  ‘The official term is property search consultant,’ said Jane. She paused as if something had just occurred to her. ‘I could help you find a new flat. For free, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, no need,’ said Sarah hurriedly. ‘Honestly. It’s fine.’

  ‘I get first dibs on loads of properties before they even go on the market. I’d haggle for you as well. Aren’t I brilliant at haggling, Tom?’

  ‘She is,’ said Tom reluctantly. ‘She saves people a ton of money.’

  ‘What are you after?’ Jane was keen-eyed. ‘One-bedder? Two? Are you fussed about outside sp—’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s all under control.’ It was like discussing who to marry next before your current partner was dead; I’m a one-flat woman.

  ‘OK, if you’re sure,’ said Jane, slightly puzzled at this refusal of her expertise. ‘I’ve just nabbed a new client. Bags of dosh. Wants a country pile in Suffolk, so I’ll be tootling all over East Anglia this summer.’

  ‘Sounds like fun.’

  ‘Why not come with me?’

  Tom made a noise in his throat. ‘Sarah might have a life of her own and a job and stuff.’

  ‘I could be an axe murderer for all you know.’ Sarah admired Jane’s emotional recklessness.

  ‘We kind of have to be friends don’t we,’ said Jane, ‘living in the same house?’

  It hadn’t worked that way up to now, but Sarah found herself laughing and agreeing. When Jane asked if number twenty-four was a friendly place, she said nothing for a moment and Tom butted in.

  ‘There’s your answer!’

  ‘It’s a typical London set-up.’ Sarah defended the house’s honour. ‘We don’t get involved.’

  ‘But you talk to Mavis.’ Idealistic Jane tried to disprove Sarah’s theory.

  ‘Mavis more or less talks at me.’

  ‘What about the other tenants?’ Jane screwed up her chip paper, greedy for nourishment of a different kind. ‘What’s the gossip?’

  ‘Jane . . .’ There was a gentle warning in Tom’s voice. ‘Let’s move in before you start inserting yourself into everybody’s lives, yeah?’

  ‘Shut up.’ Jane combined fondness and irritation so expertly that Sarah envied the Royces their ease, their understanding, the self-confidence of a happy marriage.

  ‘I’m not good at gossip.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Jane was a Labrador; playful but apt to mow you down. ‘Everybody’s good at gossip. Flat B. That smoothie Leo and the super-sexy wife. What’s the deal there?’

  ‘Only married for six months,’ said Sarah. ‘He’s an antiques dealer, owns that big emporium round the corner, the Old Church, and she’s an interior designer. Match made in heaven. Helena Moysova. You might have heard of her.’

  ‘I could find that out from their CVs.’ Jane was disappointed.

  ‘See? Told you. Bad at gossip.’

  Tom, who’d dipped out of the room, reappeared with a hammer. ‘Jane’ll soon train you up.’

  Sarah thought idly: He suits hammers.

  ‘Nitty-gritty, please,’ said Jane. ‘The husband seems a bit of a one, if you ask me.’

  Sarah agreed that yes, Leo was a bit of a one, and was relieved when Jane moved on to the basement.

  ‘Who lives opposite mad Mavis? Youngish woman with a little girl. I smell sadness there.’

  Rooting noisily in a box of nails, Tom said, ‘I think you’ll find that smell is damp.’

  ‘That’s Lisa. She works part-time as a carer for the elderly.’ Sarah spilled what few beans she had; Lisa had been living with a guy called Graham, who’d moved out under a cloud of bad feeling after a string of very loud arguments.

  ‘Poor woman.’ Jane shook her head at the cruelty of life in general and men in particular. ‘How’s Lisa coping?’

  Sarah couldn’t say.

  ‘I’ll invite her up for a glass of rosé,’ said Jane. ‘We’ll set the world to rights. I can babysit that little cutie if she ever wants to go out and drown her sorrows.’ Jane’s approach to her neighbours was highly un-London. ‘What’s her little girl called?’

  It struck Sarah as shameful that she didn’t know that either. She passed the child several times a week, always touched by the little one’s self-possession and grazed knees. ‘They keep themselves to themselves.’ Sarah resorted to the hackneyed phrase trotted out by neighbours whenever there’s a massacre in a suburban road.

  As the child of a single mother, Sarah should have been empathetic. Unless that was the very reason she avoided them.

  ‘And you?’ asked Jane, her foxy face intent. ‘What do you do, Sarah?’

  ‘I’m a psychologist.’ Sarah smiled at how much that impressed Jane. ‘A child psychologist, to be precise.’

  ‘A useful person.’ Tom approved.

  ‘Have you seen St Chad’s? It’s a big clinic a few roads away. We deal with CAMHs, mostly: children and adolescents mental health services. It’s an NHS service for children from local schools and children’s homes.’

  ‘Must be satisfying.’ Tom sounded envious.

  ‘It is.’ Sarah felt the truth of that simple statement. ‘It really is.’ Or was, up until that morning. ‘But we’re underfunded. Understaffed. All the classic gripes. We do our best.’

  ‘I knew you were one of the good guys,’ said Jane.

  ‘Note how she takes the credit for your career,’ said Tom.

  Ignoring him, Jane asked the question Sarah dreaded. ‘And your love life?’

  ‘You don’t have to answer that,’ said Tom.

  ‘My love life’s missing, presumed dead.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. With all that hair and that lovely face?’ Jane was as biased as the most indulgent grandma. ‘Men go mad for women with a gap between their front teeth.’

  ‘Hardly.’ Sarah was being disingenuous: on their first date Leo had told her he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth.

  ‘Plus those come-to-bed eyes.’

  Sarah’s eyes were indeed heavy-lidded, but they hadn’t invited anybody to bed for quite some time.

  ‘If I was a man,’ said Jane, ‘I’d fall for you on the spot. Tom? Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘If I was a man, you mean?’ Tom winked at Sarah, giving her the courag
e to say it out loud.

  ‘I’m divorced.’ It came out calmly enough, but inside, sirens blared as Sarah acknowledged Jane’s crestfallen, wish-I-hadn’t-asked sympathy. ‘Still a bit raw, really.’

  ‘How long?’ asked Jane, sombre now.

  ‘Six months.’ Sarah could have told them to the minute. ‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘it’s quite a funny story.’

  The Royces drew nearer, but neither of them laughed as Sarah told them how Leo had begun his affair with Helena almost as soon as the younger woman moved into the flat below them. ‘I found out. We argued. I thought we’d get back on track. But no. He divorced me to be with her.’ Sarah left out Smith for the time being; Smith wasn’t the issue. ‘Right after the decree nisi, they got married and now my ex-husband lives in the flat below me with his new wife.’

  Jane said, eventually, ‘I don’t think that’s funny at all’.’

  ‘Me neither,’ admitted Sarah.

  Chapter Three

  Notting Hill, W11

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  Tuesday 14th June, 2016

  A MAN GROWS MOST TIRED WHILE STANDING STILL

  On the other side of the glass, a small girl with a closed face refused to answer the questions put to her by the matronly woman sitting opposite.

  ‘Talk, please, Nadia,’ whispered Sarah. She could see her colleague and little Nadia but they couldn’t see her. The two-way mirror made a voyeur of her.

  Nadia – or Child R as she was known to the courts – had the translucent look of a trampled daisy. Sarah had worked with her for a month, slowly gaining her trust. There’d been a breakthrough of sorts, but working with children was a marathon, not a sprint. The notes Sarah had made, now on the matronly woman’s clipboard, outlined a careful plan to help Nadia deal with the abuse she’d suffered.

  Sarah didn’t turn at the sound of the door opening.

  ‘This isn’t good for you,’ said a voice with a West Indian swing to it. ‘Come on, you. Out.’