Sarah’s own mind boggled as she stood back and surveyed her friend. ‘You’ll do,’ she said, then, urgently, ‘You can back out, Zelda. We can do this another time. Something so important should be managed, planned—’
‘You’ve made your feelings clear, dear. You think this is too hasty. But it’s time. There’ll never be a right time, will there? It will always mean chaos.’ Zelda picked up a handbag. ‘Sarah, I need this. You of all people should understand how the human mind works. I can’t keep lying. I have to put right the wrong I did to my friends.’
‘I know, but—’
Zelda interrupted again. She was agitated beneath the surface calm. ‘And there’s Mavis. I owe it to her to stand up and say I helped her choose her time to die and I’m glad. I’ll take the punishment. Perhaps it might start a conversation in the media. Perhaps one day people like my sister won’t have to leave the country or risk going to jail if they simply can’t face their future.’
‘All very high-minded,’ said Sarah. ‘But what about your life? You could leave here, go elsewhere, start a better life on your own terms. This doesn’t make sense. There’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘Whoever tells anybody everything?’
‘Thank you, Confucius.’ They both laughed at that, and Sarah accepted she must fold away her qualms. ‘OK, if you’re ready, we can get the ball rolling.’ The big scary horrible ball that’ll crush you.
Zelda didn’t move. ‘That suitcase under Mavis’s bed,’ she said, as if Sarah hadn’t spoken. ‘Take a look.’
‘Now?’ Sarah was puzzled. ‘Everybody’s waiting.’
‘It won’t take a moment.’
Sarah tugged out the trunk, and threw back the lid. She put her hand to her mouth.
‘I found them this morning.’
Every book that Zelda had ever written, all the Inspector Shackleton mysteries, the stand-alone murder tales, even the recipe book for charity, sat neatly stowed in the case. Each copy was well thumbed.
‘Mavis read all my books.’
‘She was proud of you.’
‘I’ll never know that.’ Zelda patted her hair, changed the handbag to her other arm, and managed a valiant smile.
Sarah took Zelda’s hands in hers and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘I feel like I should say something clever.’
‘There’s no need to say anything at all. Off you go, Sarah.’
Upstairs, an expectant hush fell on the waiting semicircle as Sarah appeared. Self-conscious, she shook her head apologetically and nipped to Jane’s side.
Taking her hand, Jane squeezed Sarah’s fingers and said, ‘This better be good.’ With visible effort, Jane had asked no questions. ‘I’m missing Judge Judy.’
Beneath the noticeboard Una swayed, leaning back against her father – included in the round-up as an honorary tenant – and sang a tuneless song into Mikey’s ear as Lisa looked around, impatient. Helena, her atypical loose jumper the only clue to her condition, leaned on Leo, who seemed ill at ease.
In her efforts to ignore Leo, Sarah found herself looking at Camilla, who gave her a frigid smile and tightened her koala grip around Tom’s middle.
At the sound of heels on the stairs, the hubbub muted. Zelda emerged from the gloomy lowlands of the basement to the sun-kissed plateau of the ground floor, to be greeted with perfect silence.
Standing erect, her hands together and her chin high, Zelda let them take her in. Slender as a leaf in a grey silk sheath, her hair a perfect, gauzy helmet, Zelda was magnificent. Buffed, polished, perfect, she shone like a goddess.
‘My name,’ she said, certain and mellifluous, ‘is Zelda Bennison.’
Jane let out a strange sound. Tom’s head whipped round to Sarah. Murmured questions were stifled by the speech Sarah had helped Zelda memorise.
‘I have a confession to make, and an apology.’
Sarah watched the others as they listened to Zelda’s story, less believable than her most far-fetched fiction. There was anger – Graham’s face was stony – and there was sheer enjoyment – Camilla’s mouth hung delightedly open throughout. Mostly there was concentration. Jane dug her nails into Sarah’s palm as Zelda talked about helping Mavis die. ‘What a woman,’ she whispered.
‘I’ve been living in your house under false pretences, moving amongst you as an impostor. So thoroughly have I inhabited my sister’s life that I took care to be unfriendly and offensive. At times my mask dropped.’ Zelda inclined her head towards Sarah, who staggered when Jane nudged her. ‘It was difficult to stay aloof. Number twenty-four is full of goodness and love and, yes, the usual sprinkling of treachery, but it’s alive and I want to take part in life again. Because of that, now that I’ve confessed my deception, I need to apologise to you all.’
‘No need,’ said Tom.
‘Too sodding right you should apologise,’ said Graham.
‘I’m sorry from the bottom of my battered heart for lying about my sister’s death, and about my identity. I stand before you now as myself, but in a few moments I’ll leave number twenty-four to keep an appointment at West End Central police station. There I’ll make a full confession of both my crimes. It’s the inevitable finale to a very misguided plan. I’ve broken the law and I’ve lied to people who deserve better. Furthermore, I want to declare my role in my sister’s death. I want to stand up for Mavis’s right to orchestrate her own ending. Given my previous high-profile career, we should expect media interest. I can’t allow you to suffer the consequences of a media storm, so if my lawyer secures bail, I’ll stay at a hotel until my trial.’
That wasn’t discussed! Sarah felt as if something had wrenched adrift in her chest.
Zelda cleared her throat and held her Birkin bag in front of her like a shield. ‘I’ll go now, if my good friend Sarah is ready?’
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, her good friend stepped forward.
‘Good luck,’ said Jane, her face white. She was the only one who spoke.
Sarah and Zelda left the house’s sheltering roof, and walked together into the future.
Eight hours later, Sarah sat in a taxi that crawled through streets washed with sordid street-lamp orange. Her head against the window, she closed her eyes.
The innards of the police station had felt oddly familiar; TV cop dramas got it mostly right. Everywhere really did look hygienic, commonplace, like an insurance company HQ. What the television couldn’t convey was the dread that crawled over Sarah when an officer led Zelda into a room where she wasn’t allowed to follow.
There was power lodged in the plastic seating, in the carpet tiles, in the terrible coffee from a moody machine: the power to keep Zelda away from Sarah.
Zelda had been swallowed up by the police station, and Sarah spent hours in a waiting area she now knew better than her own flat. All was respectful politeness, but questions went half answered and Sarah got nowhere with her efforts to discover what the hell was going on.
Zelda’s lawyer, a formidable woman in sober suiting, emerged now and then to speed-smoke a cigarette and advise Sarah to go home.
‘How’s she holding up?’
‘Bennison’s a tough old bird.’
When Sarah wasn’t deafened by the white noise of her anxiety about Zelda, she allowed herself to be anxious about Tom. About somebody else’s boyfriend, a man who was soon to move out; Chiswick wasn’t far as the crow flies, but it would take Tom out of her daily orbit. He would recede. He would forget her.
The lawyer had stormed back from a cigarette break, throwing open double doors and shouting over her shoulder, ‘So much for police discretion!’ Outside the building stood a Sky News camera crew, alongside a couple of opportunistic paparazzi unwrapping sticks of gum. ‘This place leaks like a sieve.’
Twitter took up the baton. Zelda’s publishers were forced to comment that they had no comment. When Sarah searched the hashtag #ZeldaLives she found an array of WTF? and LOL! There was a lot of love, much scorn: the usual hot mess, in fac
t, so she switched off her phone and shut it all out.
The tough old bird didn’t look tough when she emerged, head down, to face the reporters’ shouted questions. Zelda’s image was all over news websites, but the real thing bore little resemblance to the soft-focus PR portrait.
Perhaps it was underhand to exploit Zelda’s fatigue, but Sarah had directed the taxi driver to number twenty-four. ‘There’s no way you’re going to a hotel room tonight.’
‘But the press . . .’
‘But nothing.’
‘Tomorrow, then.’ Zelda closed her eyes as they stopped at a traffic light. ‘I’ll move out tomorrow.’
‘I’ll help,’ said Sarah. ‘But for tonight I want you under the same roof as me.’
Like a zombie, Zelda answered Sarah’s questions in a monotone. ‘I’m on bail until the court cases. They’ll try me separately, once for the assisted suicide, once for the fraud. It’ll take months to get to trial. Yes, dear, of course a jail term is possible.’
It was happening. The storm Sarah had dreaded the moment Zelda announced her decision to come clean. After only a day, Zelda looked battered by the winds she’d conjured up; how will she deal with months and months of this?
Sarah suddenly thought of Albie. And little Nadia who was now in a foster home. And of herself, only recently woken up after a long coma. She’ll get through this and I’ll help. When one person falters, another helps them up. It’s the commerce of love. ‘I admire you, Zelda.’ Sarah had to stop hopelessly wishing that Zelda hadn’t confessed. It was time to accept. Time to be useful.
‘I’m not the martyr you think I am, Sarah.’ Zelda had shrunk; her likeness to Mavis was startling, despite the stylish wrappings.
‘Don’t argue with me,’ smiled Sarah. ‘It takes guts to do what you just—’
‘Guts,’ agreed Zelda. ‘Or blackmail. I had a visitor on Friday evening.’
Here was the missing piece. Sarah had known there was more to Zelda’s sudden resolve. ‘Who?’
Zelda’s laughter was cracked, dark. ‘The mystery fat cat who wants to buy your flat.’
Sarah remembered seeing the man approach the house. ‘So he rang your bell and not mine? But why?’
‘Because I’m his wife, dear.’ As Zelda rubbed her right temple, she told Sarah of Ramon’s sudden appearance, all in black, devastatingly handsome, seething with anger. ‘I opened the door and he said, “Hello, Zelda.”’ She shuddered. ‘He’d spotted me when he came to view the flat, and returned to see if his eyes were playing tricks. As you can imagine, he was sure some stranger would open the door, that he’d been seeing things. But no. There I was, rooted to the spot.’
Ramon had pushed past her.
‘Peck let him have it. Both barrels.’ Ramon was full of questions, but each time she tried to answer he roared another one. Or an insult. ‘It took quite a while to iron it all out. His fury kept dying down then flaring up. He was every bit as furious when he left as he was when I opened the door. I think he’ll go to his grave loathing me.’
‘No, no,’ said Sarah soothingly. ‘People can surprise you. He might come round.’
‘Ramon has no surprises left,’ said Zelda grimly. ‘He told me how the papers approached him after my death, digging for dirt, for some sexual titbit about the age gap. He’s been “loyal”, he said, but now he sees no need to be loyal any longer. I apologised over and over again. I begged. Whatever dignity I had is now lying on the floor of Mavis’s sitting room. He wants revenge.’
‘Bastard.’
‘I deserve his anger.’ Zelda silenced Sarah with one raised forefinger. ‘I do. Not that I respect him. Far from it. Ramon had no wish to discuss or negotiate; he simply wants to destroy me. He was flying to New York at the weekend – another property purchase with the money I left him – and he took great joy in telling me that as soon as he got back he’d have lunch with a tabloid editor. He said, “He’ll demolish you, Zelda.” Those were his words. So, you see, Sarah, I’m not a heroine. I’m doing what little I can to keep some control over the situation. At least this way it’s on my terms.’
‘What a pig.’
‘Yes, true. But all Ramon did was give me the final push to do what I knew was right. It does feel better in a way. But in another way . . .’ Zelda’s silence was deep, a foggy crystal ball of the months to come. ‘In another way I feel as if I’m already in prison.’
‘Your friends will come forward.’ Sarah needed to believe this.
‘Who can say? I don’t expect them to. I don’t deserve it.’
‘Stop telling me what you do and don’t deserve.’ Sarah was stern. ‘We’ll be the judges of that. For tonight you deserve an early night and tomorrow . . . we’ll see.’
‘My last night in Merrion Road,’ said Zelda. ‘And all I want to do is sleep.’
The cab slowed. With a lurching heart, Sarah saw a scrum of all-weather jackets by the gate. ‘They got here ahead of us,’ she whispered. ‘Here goes.’ She put her hand under Zelda’s elbow. ‘Best Louboutin forward.’
‘Over here, Zelda!’ ‘What’s it like being dead, Zelda?’ ‘Do you have a comment for Ramon, Zelda?’ Camera flashes punctuated the jeering questions as Sarah cleared a path with an outstretched arm.
‘Stay at the gate or I’ll call the police,’ she said as butchly as she could, wondering if the police would care. Ahead of them, the house was dark, as if the residents had been evacuated. The timer on the hall lights purred as Sarah and Zelda picked their way down to the basement.
Zelda slumped against the wall as Sarah pickpocketed the keys from her bag. ‘Thank heavens nobody’s about. I couldn’t look them in the face.’
‘Can you hear something?’ Sarah put her ear to the door, wondering wildly if reporters could have broken in. Warily, she went in first.
Welcoming them with a shrill ‘Mad cow!’ Peck bobbed and wiggled, unfurling his crescent of feathers. Gentle scuffling sounds came from the sitting room.
‘Wait here. Just in case.’ Sarah pushed at the door.
After the dreary streets, the room was glittering and warm. Candles burned on the table, which was laid with a red cloth and gilt-edged plates that Sarah recognised as Jane’s. The owner of the plates sprang up from Mavis’s lumpy sofa.
‘At last!’ Jane passed Sarah and reached greedily for Zelda. ‘Come in. You must be starving. Don’t be angry but we tidied up a bit and we laid a fire and I hope you like hotpot because it’s all I can cook.’
Allowing herself to be led to the table, watching Jane pour out a large goblet of blood-coloured wine, Zelda was silent.
Not so Una, who wriggled from her mother’s lap and said, ‘Can I taste the wine? Can I look in your handbag? You smell nice.’
‘You’re all here,’ said Zelda, amazed.
And they were. Even Graham had thawed out and sat on a hard chair, arms folded like a benign grandpa. Leo, careful not to catch Sarah’s eye, sat on the arm of a chair taken up by his wife, who was dressed for a ball but who was, crucially, there.
‘Was it horrible in jail?’ asked Una, leaning against Zelda as Jane urged, ‘Eat! Eat!’
‘Would you sign one of your books for me?’ Helena was unusually deferential to number twenty-four’s home-grown celebrity.
The basement flat came into its own, all its faults rebranded as virtues. It was cosy not dark; it felt safe not subterranean. ‘We’re not staying long,’ said Jane, pulling Sarah to her like a Siamese twin. ‘We just wanted to welcome Zelda home, see how she is.’
Through a doorway, Sarah saw the lamplit bedroom. The bed was made with new sheets and a fluffy duvet. The threadbare rug was replaced with a sheepskin Sarah recognised from Jane’s flat. ‘You’re a marvel,’ she whispered.
Jane peered at Sarah, and seemed not to like what she saw. ‘Christ, have you eaten? You look terrible.’ She kissed her cheek. ‘Fancy keeping this to yourself. Let us help from now on, yeah?’
‘I’m not sure Zelda wants help. She’s very proud.�
� Sarah saw that Zelda had managed only a couple of mouthfuls. Leo had refilled her glass; she drained it as she answered their questions, still looking dazed, still evidently not quite trusting the evidence of her eyes. Mikey snuffled around the table, knocking into the pepper grinder.
‘There’s been vile stuff on social media,’ said Jane. ‘We need to protect her.’ She dropped her voice. ‘What are the odds of her going to jail? Some blogger wrote something about the establishment making an example of her.’
‘Ask me tomorrow.’ Sarah was inclined to pessimism after her long day languishing under strip lighting.
‘We won’t let it happen,’ growled Jane.
The doorbell rang. Ignored, it rang again, until it was a constant buzz, some unseen and very rude finger pressing against it. ‘Right.’ Jane slammed down her glass and rolled up her sleeves. ‘Somebody needs a lesson in manners.’
‘I hope those paps are ready for her,’ laughed Sarah as Jane marched upstairs.
‘Never annoy a pregnant woman,’ said Graham, with the air of a war veteran.
‘Tom,’ said Helena. ‘Go after her! You can’t let a woman face those monsters.’
‘Tom, dear,’ said Zelda, her spirit revived, ‘stay put unless you want a black eye from your sister.’
Sarah had to look at him then. Just outside the pool of light thrown by the candles and the lamps, Tom’s eyes were bright in the gloom, and they were fixed on Sarah until she saw him, and they flicked away.
Raised voices came from outside. Hoarse protests. High-pitched name-calling. Jane returned, her cheeks flushed; Peck twerked a salute. ‘If those bastards want to get to you,’ she told Zelda, ‘they’ll have to get through me first.’
‘You’re a wonder, Jane.’ The application of food, wine and a stole made of love around her shoulders had worked wonders on Zelda’s energy levels. ‘I can’t believe you’re all here. It’s so unexpected.’ She tapered off, as if she couldn’t do justice to her emotions.
Number twenty-four had found its feet. Zelda’s honesty – or maybe her plight – had won them over. A year ago the same people had ignored Smith’s misfortune. Perhaps they sensed it was a lie.
The Woman at Number 24 Page 29