The Woman at Number 24

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘Peck knows.’ Zelda reappeared with a stack of paper held together with a heavy-duty elastic band. ‘He’s the only one who saw through me.’

  ‘Silly cow,’ said Peck.

  ‘He misses Mavis,’ said Zelda.

  ‘What is this?’ Sarah turned the bundle over in her hands.

  ‘It’s a present,’ said Zelda. ‘From me to you. The real me to the real you.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Notting Hill, W11

  This calendar is FREE to valued customers!

  Wednesday 7th September, 2016

  THE BEST TIME TO PLANT A TREE IS TWENTY YEARS AGO, THE SECOND BEST TIME IS NOW

  In the small hours, Notting Hill belonged to Sarah.

  A cafetière (her second) cooling on a low table, Sarah lifted her eyes from the page and stood up from the embrace of Tom’s chair. Wandering with a yawn to the kitchen, she gazed out over her empire of jagged roof shapes and pot-bellied chimneys. Here and there a slab of light showed, as houses woke up.

  Almost dawn.

  The manuscript on her lap had refused to let Sarah go to bed. Our Meeting Place was Midnight was the fortieth novel by Zelda Bennison.

  ‘Take this. Tell me what you think,’ Zelda had said, stunning Sarah with the responsibility. ‘I gave up writing, but writing wouldn’t give me up.’

  At first, Zelda told her, the book had come to life slowly. A scribbled character sketch on the back of a gas bill. A line about the sun hitting the grass in number twenty-four’s garden. Then the story ambushed her, and she’d typed compulsively on the laptop she’d smuggled into the house among discounted onions in Mavis’s string shopping bag.

  There was a simple dedication.

  For my friend

  Sarah Lynch

  Our Meeting Place was Midnight was a cathedral of a book. Romantic, mysterious, a complete departure from Chief Inspector Shackleton. Sarah imagined banging on Jane’s door and handing her a warm-from-the-oven Zelda Bennison.

  I’m a book club with a membership of one.

  Nobody else would ever read Zelda’s prose about life’s wrong turnings, about how tricky it is to reverse down a one-way street. Zelda’s peculiar life after death had inspired her; her writer’s block had given way to manic industry.

  Death and rebirth was the theme. Appropriate for a nightlong reading. Appropriate, too, for Sarah’s long coma. She’d thought that only Leo’s kiss could awaken her, but no. Tom’s lips had revived her. Tom made me realise I can love.

  But being loved? That was more tricky.

  Morning asserted itself. A cat stretched on next door’s shed. Plastic sheeting fluttered on a half-built conservatory further down the road.

  The revelations of the night before didn’t seem so extraordinary now: Zelda was the same person whatever she called herself. She was Sarah’s buddy, and her confidante. What was extraordinary was how blithely Sarah had accepted a totally different woman in Mavis’s place

  And I call myself a people person. It was just as well Sarah hadn’t given into Keeley’s pleas and gone back to working with children.

  Sarah had never had a proper conversation with the original Mavis. Keen to get away from the negativity, the cynicism, the – if she was honest – walking talking avatar of sexless old age, Sarah always had one foot out the door when they met. As if Mavis was Medusa, Sarah had never looked her in the eye.

  The only resemblance between the sisters was physical. No matter how she tried, Zelda had been unable to disguise her vivacity and her wit and her enthusiasm for her fellow man. The irritable outbursts were results of the unique stress Zelda was under.

  The anxiety about Mavis’s/Zelda’s health had lifted cleanly away, but Sarah knew her friend would need help with adjusting to the new half-life she’d fashioned for herself. I made the right decision, digging my heels in and staying at number twenty-four.

  It wasn’t that Mavis felt like family; Sarah’s own family ties had proved feeble. Perhaps her gut certainty was a pale version of the Bennison twins’ bond. Asking somebody to help you die is a test of solidarity.

  Is there anybody I could ask?

  Sarah’s treacherous subconscious put forward a name.

  Smith.

  Jane would talk her out of it; and perhaps she’d be right to do so. It was a one-of-a-kind decision that can’t be imagined. Smith, though, was the sort of twisted broken soul who would simply agree. Smith understands pain.

  Since the Southwold trip, Sarah had been unable to look back on Smith with equanimity. She mistrusted all the small delights she remembered, wondering if Smith had ever meant any of it.

  Now, Sarah could accept that, yes, Smith had been her friend at one time. Her supporter. Her conspirator. Before that impetuous lie which Sarah understood with her head but hated with her heart.

  There had been understanding. Kindness had flowed in both directions. Smith could tell by looking at my face exactly what kind of day I’d had.

  The soft spillage of Sarah’s tummy groused. Her mouth a thin line, she rode the wave of nausea; it was familiar by now, she knew how to deal with it.

  Funny how women carry around the makings of life as casually as we carry a tray of tea things.

  Our Meeting Place was Midnight, with its riffs on birth and rebirth, its insistence that nothing is wasted, resonated with Sarah. Over-caffeinated, dizzy from lack of sleep, she drew a whimsical line from herself to all living things. At peace but powerful, she felt something shift and change inside her.

  As if she’d conjured him up, Tom was down in the garden. Head down, one hand on his hip, his long strong legs smoothly muscled, he was a classical statue.

  Although Michelangelo’s David doesn’t wear boxers from Gap.

  Something had drawn Tom outside, his hair still tousled from the pillow, a sweatshirt thrown on inside out.

  Later, Sarah would blame the dreamlike texture of the dawn. A crack between night and day, it was a moment out of time when the unsayable could be said. Emboldened, she leapt up.

  When she approached him in the mauve fog, Tom seemed more real than he had from the window.

  He’s sad. Sarah tugged her cardigan around herself, bare feet squeaking on the dew.

  ‘Look,’ said Tom.

  The shapes on the ground looked like torn snatches of fabric, but they were Mikey. Something had torn him apart.

  ‘I promised Una he’d be OK.’

  Sarah blinked and the magic dissolved, leaving just the cold birth of another day.

  ‘Come inside.’ Sarah tugged at Tom’s arm, the feel of him sending a tremor through her even in these conditions. ‘I’ll . . . clear up out here.’

  ‘Nah.’ Tom shook his head. ‘I’ll look after him.’ He stared down at what used to be Mikey. ‘Poor little sod.’

  ‘You’re freezing, Tom. Back to bed with you.’ Sarah wanted to save him from the sadness, to protect him.

  ‘Camilla’s up there. I don’t want to, you know, talk.’

  Thank God I didn’t declare myself. Sarah had narrowly avoided yet another embarrassment.

  Tom looked at her, his face raw. ‘Why do things have to end?’

  ‘Because they do.’ Sarah hoped it didn’t sound like a cop-out. It was a brutal fact; things ended, like the blazing summer they’d just lived through, like Mikey’s modest life, but if nothing ended there’d be no beginnings. Sarah didn’t say that in case she sounded like her Confucius calendar. Her insides contracted, as if a hand firmly clutched her there, and she gasped.

  ‘You OK?’ Tom seemed to fully notice her.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Tom’s dawn crisis wasn’t just about Mikey. ‘Good things end, but so do bad things. After all these years waiting for a real acting job, you’re going to be famous, Tom.’

  When he flinched, Sarah carried on, following her instincts. ‘You’ll live up to the hype. You’re good at what you do. I can sense you’re scared of fame, but it doesn’t always destroy. You’re strong, Tom. Don’t run away from the very th
ing you’ve been praying for.’

  Tom stared. Sarah thought how lovely his face looked when he was sad. He said, ‘You really see people.’

  ‘I really see you.’

  His face drifted closer, his mouth driving the rest of him towards Sarah’s lips. This moment felt right and just; as if it must happen.

  The slap of feet on grass brought them back from the brink.

  Racing over the lawn, much-washed nightie flapping, Una threw herself to her knees. The sound she made – or didn’t make – was horrible: a hoarse zero.

  Tom squatted beside her, turning her little face to his chest. ‘Don’t, sweetheart. Don’t look.’

  Brought to her senses, Sarah ran to the shed, riffling the shelves for something to scoop Mikey up with. She glanced up and saw Camilla, wide awake at a window; Una had saved the innocent woman from collateral damage.

  I only just handed in my notice as the Other Woman. Sarah had no desire to be anybody’s contingency plan. She needed something – someone – of her own.

  Startled from her bed, Lisa came out and held her daughter, whose tears welled up from some bottomless source.

  ‘Why didn’t I clear it up the moment I saw it?’ Tom, grim, took the dustpan from Sarah. ‘Instead of standing about like a fool.’

  ‘Nothing foolish about grief.’ Sarah unrolled a bin liner and tore it off with a snap. ‘I don’t want to put Mikey in one of these but . . .’

  ‘I know.’ Tom coaxed gory body parts onto the dustpan. ‘What else can we do?’

  Summoned, Graham turned up. Sarah detected bemusement at such fuss over a hedgehog, but he made the right noises.

  As Tom was tying up the bin bag, he stopped and said, ‘You know what? Mikey deserves a funeral.’

  All adults remember the sombre goldfish/budgie/mouse burials of their childhoods. Jane and Zelda emerged readily when asked to be mourners. Sarah locked eyes meaningfully with Zelda as they stood around the bin bag, hoping to convey that she wouldn’t slip, wouldn’t call her by her real name. Zelda was twitchy, and Sarah recognised this as the nervousness she and Jane had mistaken first for irritability and later for illness, when really the woman lived in fear.

  Leo and Helena weren’t invited.

  ‘We need a coffin . . .’ Sarah looked about her.

  ‘Will this do?’ Camilla, in an over-sized shirt that was evidently Tom’s, approached them, holding out a cardboard box. ‘It’s from a gorgeous clutch bag Tom bought me,’ she explained. ‘You all right, babes?’ Camilla took Tom’s hand and he nodded.

  The service was brief. There’s only so much even the most sympathetic preacher can find to say about a hedgehog. ‘He was loved,’ said Tom in a gruff voice, as the Whistles box was lowered into the hole Graham had dug.

  ‘Aww!’ said Camilla. ‘Poor Mickey.’

  ‘Mikey!’ Jane was curt.

  As damp earth was heaped over Mikey’s remains, the little crowd were at a loss. ‘Why not come up to mine for breakfast?’ said Sarah recklessly, wondering how she’d stretch a few eggs to feed them all.

  ‘Wasn’t it sweet?’ Camilla said as the residents trundled upstairs, hushed and thinking of mortality. ‘Hey,’ she nudged Sarah. ‘You still shagging your ex?’ She recoiled from the shock on Sarah’s face. ‘Shit. Is it like a secret?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I’m such a big mouth. Ignore me.’ Reaching the flat, Camilla volunteered to scramble the eggs Sarah fetched from the fridge. ‘You have a nice little sit-down,’ she said, as if Sarah was Mikey’s widow.

  The little crowd perked up at the life-affirming prospect of food. Sarah looked around for Zelda, but she’d slipped away. For her, this was the morning after a momentous night before.

  ‘We don’t have to stop loving Mikey.’ Sarah cupped Una’s wan little moon of a face in her hands. ‘People and animals die, but love can’t die.’

  ‘We’ll get you another hedgehog.’ Graham was trying his best. There was a sea change in him, and Lisa too; the faint resentment that coloured all their exchanges with Sarah was kept at bay. She read the subtitles; they were ready to help their daughter.

  I have to be ready to let them. It was fundamentally, wildly unprofessional to feel possessive of a patient; it was also natural. A therapist has to tap into their heart at the same time as rigidly ring-fencing it; Una had breached Sarah’s defences without even trying.

  With Jane as sous chef, Camilla did a fine job on the egg-scrambling-for-the-masses front. So fine a job that the ungenerous might deduce she was showing a certain man what a catch she was. Sarah turned away from her own pettiness and sat in the pink armchair – ironically now a sanctuary – slightly apart from Una and her parents, to give them some space.

  Tom, lurking, reached for the manuscript on the coffee table.

  ‘No!’ Sarah shook her head, and he approached her, a mug in his hand. ‘Sorry. That’s private.’

  Tom sat on the arm of the chair. He was very close. Which shouldn’t have mattered, but mattered a lot. ‘You’d better have a sesh with Una later. She’s going to need you.’

  ‘I think she has all she needs.’ They watched Lisa and Graham, hunched over Una as if she was a hothouse plant. ‘I’ll wait a couple of days.’

  ‘I’ll miss Mikey.’ Tom went into a reverie. ‘Him and his silly one-eyed face. When I was Una’s age my uncle died. The finality of it was like a maths problem. I approached it from every angle but I couldn’t make any sense of it.’ He sighed. ‘Still can’t.’

  ‘Loss,’ said Sarah, hating the word. ‘It doesn’t have to be death, though.’ She thought of Leo, the man she’d lost; not the bully one floor below but the lover she’d married. She thought of her mother: alive, healthy, utterly lost to her. ‘Take my mum. We haven’t spoken in, ooh, five years.’

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Tom shook himself. ‘Ignore that. None of my business.’

  ‘I can tell you if you like.’ Sarah wanted to be Tom’s business. ‘Mum and Dad should never have had a second date, never mind a baby. He left when I was a little older than Una.’

  ‘Did you feel abandoned?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Of course. Dad did his best. It wasn’t about me, he said. I’d always be number one with him. Mum revealed some home truths I was too young to hear. Apparently my perfect dad had had affairs.’

  Tom pulled an ouch face.

  ‘Yeah, I know. She said he was sneaky. Like me.’

  ‘Were you? Sneaky, I mean.’

  ‘No more than the next kid. Mum punished Dad by keeping me away from him. Not all the time. She’d cancel at the last moment, ask for me to come home earlier, that kind of thing. So he could never be sure of seeing me.’ And I could never be sure of seeing him.

  ‘Nobody behaves well when they’re hurt, do they?’

  ‘Well, no.’ Sarah wasn’t accustomed to her mother having an advocate. In the courtroom in her head it was just her and Mum, engaged in an endless slanging match. ‘Mum blamed me.’

  ‘For . . . ?’

  ‘Everything!’ Sarah laughed at how irrational that sounded. ‘She said I ruined her life.’ She found herself telling him about her own muteness, about the holiday with her father that had ended her silence.

  The intensity of Tom’s concentration encouraged her. His eyes never left her, and he made the right noises as she talked. They’d come a long way; there were few people Sarah trusted with this story. Tom seems to have forgiven the name-calling, and the kiss in front of his girlfriend.

  ‘So, the reason you were able to talk again was because of the lack of pressure from your dad?’

  ‘Exactly.’ It was nice to be understood, and even nicer when the person doing the understanding was somebody whose clothes you wanted to tear off. ‘Dad was a natural parent. Showing love without losing authority came easily to him. Mum . . . she struggled. The responsibility was too much for her.’ Sarah understood her mother. Forgiveness, however, was trickier. ‘When we came back from Spain, Mum was pleased, obviously, tha
t I was talking again but she was sullen that the breakthrough had happened with Dad. Mum wouldn’t let him see me after that. She made excuse after excuse.’ She produced the note out of her pocket. ‘So he wrote to me.’

  ‘You still have it.’ Tom’s strong face moved into soft focus, leaving Sarah wondering how he did that. The note was flimsy in his hand. He read it aloud.

  ‘If I can’t see you then I have to write to you! I have no news, no nothing except some advice which you must take to heart. Promise? Be yourself, because, my sweet Sarah, you are more than good enough. And always find the beauty in everybody, because that’s the magic formula to make everything A-OK.’

  Sarah said, ‘It arrived the day after he died.’

  Tom stared.

  ‘Heart attack. Out of the blue.’ Sarah pressed her lips together.

  ‘You poor little kid.’ Tom’s voice was feather-light but sympathetic.

  ‘I didn’t know that the holiday would be the last time I’d ever see him. But I have his note.’ Sarah waved it and smiled, as best she could.

  ‘It’s the exact opposite of your mum’s manifesto.’

  Sarah exhaled loudly, causing Lisa and Graham’s heads to swivel. ‘They think I’m a bit too teary for a dead hedgehog.’

  ‘Not any old hedgehog,’ said Tom. ‘Did you decide to stop talking to your mum, or was it a row or . . . ?’

  ‘It was Leo. Mum came for supper every week, to our old flat over by Queensway. Leo had to put up with me clenching like a mussel shell before she arrived, then listen to her poking holes in me all through the meal, and then try to sleep as I tossed and turned beside him, going over it all in my head. One evening Mum went too far. I can’t even remember what she said, just more of the usual, and Leo stood up and told her what he thought of her.’

  ‘And what did he think of her?’ Tom stroked his chin.

  ‘That she had no right to intrude on our marriage, that she made me unhappy, that I was a different person when she was around. True, every word of it. Mum got into a strop and spouted her usual melodramatic nonsense – “I’ll never set foot in this house again” blah blah blah – and Leo said “Good” and off she went.’ Sarah’s energy petered out. She rarely talked or even thought about that night. ‘And that was that. I send a card at Christmas and birthdays, but nothing ever comes back.’ She could be dead. The thought scorched Sarah.