by Lesley Kara
When I’ve spoken to Miss Williams and she’s reassured me that she’ll keep an eye on the friendship situation, and I’ve said goodbye to Alfie and watched him file in with the others, I go over to where Cathy and Debbie are standing. They’re still talking about the Sally McGowan rumour.
‘Hi there.’
Debbie gives me a quick, tight smile. Cathy starts tapping away on her phone.
‘I was wondering whether Jake and Liam would like to come to the beach with me and Alfie after school today. Maybe get an ice cream while the weather’s still warm enough?’
Cathy glances up from her phone. ‘Today? Sorry. Jake’s got a judo lesson.’
‘And Liam’s going to Harry’s house for tea,’ Debbie says. ‘Maybe another day, yeah?’
I nod. She said it in that offhand way that basically means no. This is excruciating. It makes me feel like I’m back at school, humiliated by bitchy girls. Back then, I just slunk away, hurt and resentful. But not now. Because this isn’t about me, it’s about Alfie.
‘By the way,’ I say, already turning to leave the playground. ‘I think you may have been right about Sally McGowan living in Flinstead.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Cathy says.
I turn to face her. Suddenly, I’m a whole lot more interesting than her phone.
‘Oh, just something I heard. It’s probably nothing …’
The two women move closer. Sharks circling their prey. And yet their faces are softer than they were a minute ago, more open and friendly. Is this all it takes to penetrate their firewall?
My brain races. Which bit of what Michael told me last night should I share with them? None of it, of course, but this is working so well. They’re all ears. Debbie’s even offering me a stick of chewing gum, which I don’t want but take anyway. Besides, it’s not as if Michael’s going to write a story about McGowan. Nobody can. She and her whereabouts are strictly off limits to the press.
I lower my voice. ‘Someone I know, someone who knows about these things, heard that she was relocated to a dry town.’
The two women stare at me, eyebrows knitted. ‘A what?’ Cathy says.
‘A dry town. You know, one with no pubs.’
Cathy narrows her eyes. ‘When did the Flinstead Arms open?’
‘The late nineties, I think,’ Debbie says. ‘Don’t you remember, Cath? There was a big thing about it in the papers? We were still in primary school.’
It doesn’t sit right with me, all this. I’ve already passed the rumour on to book club. Now I’m stoking the fire all over again. What’s happening to me?
But then I remember Alfie’s little face this morning when I mentioned the word ‘friends’, and I know that, if this is all it takes to help him make some, I’ll do it.
‘Hm,’ Cathy says, a thoughtful look on her face. ‘That’s very interesting. Hey, Joanna, I don’t suppose you fancy joining our babysitting circle, do you? We’re meeting tomorrow. Nine thirty. My house. 14 Flinstead Road. The house with the blue garage?’
‘Oh, right. Yes. I think I know the one you mean. Thanks, I’d love to – that’s if I can arrange to go into work a little later than usual.’
I’m not sure I really need to belong to a babysitting circle, not with Mum living round the corner. Still, there’s bound to be the odd time I have to go out and Mum can’t come over. It’ll be like a safety net. And it’s the perfect way to get to know them all a bit better.
One casual remark. One whispered confidence. That’s all it takes to set the wheels in motion and change the course of a life. Once, some poor woman they thought was me was driven out of her home. She lost her job, her reputation, her peace of mind. Ended up throwing herself in front of a high-speed train.
I often think about that woman, that stranger, how our lives are now inextricably bound. And I ask myself, who is to blame for her death? The rumour-mongers for spreading the lies? Or me, for being the monster in the first place?
The monster. That’s what they called me.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror. No extra heads. No horns. Just an ordinary woman. Not bad-looking, despite the crow’s feet and the crêpey neck. Despite the lipstick radiating into the fine vertical creases on my top lip. But if I look long enough, really stare into the mirror without blinking, someone else takes my place.
The girl they locked up. The one I’ve spent my whole life trying to erase.
It’s her that’s brought them out again. Circling like vultures. Her that draws them ever closer. She makes bad things happen. She disturbs the air.
10
‘SHE MIGHT JUST AS WELL HAVE STUCK A KNIFE IN MY HEART TOO,’ SAYS SYLVIA HARRIS, MOTHER OF ROBBIE HARRIS, TRAGIC VICTIM OF CHILD KILLER SALLY MCGOWAN.
By Alex O’Connor
Sunday, 3 August 1975
Sun on Sunday
Today, six years after the murder of her five-year-old son Robbie, Sylvia Harris sits in her living room chain-smoking, a shadow of the woman she once was.
Flanked by her teenage daughter, Marie, Sylvia stares at her hands.
‘It wasn’t only my little boy Sally killed that day,’ Sylvia says. ‘She might just as well have stuck a knife in my heart too.’
Sylvia is now 35 and battling an addiction to alcohol; her marriage to Derek Harris is over. Marie lives with her father a few streets away but visits Sylvia every day after school. With news of McGowan’s temporary transfer to a new remand centre, this week has been particularly hard.
‘Maybe if we never heard about her again, we’d be able to get on with our lives,’ says Sylvia. ‘What’s left of them.’
But one senses that this is a family that time will never heal.
Sylvia picks up a framed black-and-white photograph that shows blond-haired Robbie playing on a beach with his bucket and spade.
She squeezes her daughter’s hand. ‘However long they keep her locked up won’t be long enough. I hope she rots in hell.’
I close my iPad and rub my eyes. The typeface on this scanned image of the original front page is small and blurry. I’ve been doing too much of this lately. Endlessly scrolling through Google for interesting articles about the McGowan case. It’s become a bit of an obsession.
As I reach the end of the street, I spot Liz Blackthorne coming out of the Co-op. She’s looking straight at me, so I give her a wave and am about to cross the road for a quick word when she turns on her heels and hurries off in the other direction, the tip of her white plait poking out of the bottom of her jacket like a tail. That’s odd. I could have sworn she saw me. Oh well, she must have her mind on other things this morning. I’m the same when I’m busy. Charging around like a horse with blinkers, oblivious to everyone and everything around me. Besides, I’m late as it is.
Cathy lives in one of the new houses at the top of Flinstead Road, the opposite end from the sea. Inside, it’s light and spacious and could have come straight out of the IKEA catalogue. There are six of us here, including Karen from book club – I didn’t realize she was chummy with this lot – and three toddlers. I’m pleased to see Fatima’s friendly face too. Cathy has just finished making everyone tea and coffee and is now leafing through a lever-arch file.
‘I hate it when people don’t fill the grid in properly,’ she says.
Debbie pulls a mock-worried face. ‘That’ll be me then. Sorry. I thought I’d done it.’
Cathy gives me a pointed look. ‘This is what happens, Joanna. And then they all start complaining their points aren’t up to date.’
I smile, as if I know what she’s talking about. Grids? Points? What on earth have I got myself into? I can just imagine what Tash will say when I tell her about it on the phone.
Fatima leans in towards me. ‘Every time you babysit for someone you get points. The more points you have, the more sits you can request. We take it in turns to look after the file and host the meetings.’
‘That’s right,’ Cathy says. ‘I was just going to explain all that. It’s basically a quid
pro quo arrangement. You get a point for every half-hour you sit. So two points per hour and a point for every quarter of an hour after midnight.’
I nod, as if I’m following all this.
‘After-midnight sits have to be negotiated in advance,’ Karen says. ‘And if you’ve got zero points, you can’t request a sitter.’
‘Well, you can,’ says a tall woman with red hair whose name I’ve already forgotten. ‘If someone volunteers to help you out and if nobody else has priority over you.’
Karen’s jaw tightens. ‘But then you’d be minus points,’ she says. ‘And we agreed we’d try not to keep doing that because it all gets out of hand and it’s unfair.’
I have a sudden urge to giggle. They’re making a real song and dance out of this.
The doorbell goes at just the right moment. ‘That must be Kay,’ Fatima says. ‘She said she’d be late.’
The woman Cathy shows into the room a minute later looks vaguely familiar. Judi Dench hair and kind, crinkly eyes.
‘Kay’s one of my neighbours and honorary mother,’ Fatima tells me, patting the seat next to her for Kay to sit down.
Of course. I’ve seen the two of them chatting on their doorsteps – they live up the road from me. Fatima did tell me a while back that her own parents disowned her when she refused an arranged marriage. It’s hard to believe what some people have to endure.
‘She’s also Ketifa’s honorary grandmother.’
Kay smiles. ‘My daughter and grandchildren live in Australia, you see. No matter how many times we Skype each other, it’s not the same as having them near. That’s why I’m so happy to be part of all this.’
‘Right, then,’ Cathy says. ‘Down to business, ladies.’
Later, after Cathy has made a note of everyone who needs a sitter in the next month and checked that all the points are up to date, I hear myself offering to do a sit for the woman with red hair, whose name turns out to be Teri Monkton. I’ll have to square it with Mum, of course.
‘Thanks so much,’ Teri says. ‘Ruby and Hamish are very well behaved. Although they will try to keep you upstairs reading endless bedtime stories.’
When the business side of things is concluded and we’re making moves to leave, Teri says: ‘I don’t suppose any of you have heard this rumour that’s going round? The one about Sally McGowan?’
Debbie laughs. ‘You’re a bit late to the party, aren’t you?’
‘I’m always the last to hear about these things,’ Teri says. ‘Is there anything in it, do you think?’
‘I doubt it,’ Fatima says. ‘For a start, they wouldn’t put her in a place as small as Flinstead.’
Kay nods. ‘You’re right. It’d be far too risky.’
Cathy shoots me a look. There’s a gleam in her eyes, just like Maddie’s the other day. ‘Joanna, tell them what you heard.’
I don’t want to say it again. I especially don’t want Cathy commanding me to say it.
Karen is staring at me from across the room. ‘Has there been an update then? Since what you told us at book club?’
Damn. Now I look like the biggest blabbermouth in town. But I’m not going to do it again. It’s bad enough that I repeated it in the first place.
‘It was probably nothing. Just one of those silly stories doing the rounds.’
Cathy frowns. ‘That’s not the impression you gave the other day,’ she says, and proceeds to repeat the story about the dry town.
Teri grimaces. ‘I hate the thought that I might be walking past her house when I take Ruby and Hamish to school, or that she could be watching them play in the park or on the beach. Have you seen that photo of her staring at the camera? It gives me the creeps.’
‘These sorts of rumours always surface from time to time,’ I say. ‘I mean, I’m not saying it isn’t possible. It’s just not that likely. And they’ll be keeping a close eye on her, won’t they, the authorities?’
Teri pulls a face. ‘I bloody well hope so.’
I walk home with Fatima and Kay. It feels like we’re escaping from something, but none of us wants to admit it. The cold wind scours my face and dispels some of the awkwardness I felt earlier. There’s a feeling of rain in the air.
‘So, Joanna,’ Kay says. ‘Your name is on Cathy’s sacred grid now. I hope you know what you’ve let yourself in for.’
Fatima nudges her in the ribs. ‘Come on now, Kay. Don’t put her off before she’s even started.’
‘I’m just wondering how everyone’s going to fit in my living room when it’s my turn to host the meeting. There’s barely room for me and Alfie.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Kay says. ‘We don’t all have immaculate big houses like Cathy. You could fit my entire ground floor in her living room.’
‘I love your house,’ Fatima says. ‘It reminds me of the house I grew up in.’
Kay laughs. ‘That’s her way of saying it’s old-fashioned.’
We’ve reached my cottage now so we say our goodbyes. As I close my front door I stand for a moment in the hall, letting the silence wrap itself around me. If it hadn’t been for Mum’s suggestion the other day, there’s no way I’d have joined a babysitting circle. She was right, though. Debbie’s already given me an invitation for Alfie to go to Liam’s birthday party in a couple of weeks.
I open the little envelope to check the date and make a note of it on the kitchen calendar. As soon as I see that it’s for 31 October and spot the pumpkin border, I realize she’s made it a Halloween-themed party, which means all the children will be dressed up.
I’m not a great fan of Halloween. It’s just another big retail event designed to drag money out of hard-pressed parents. Money I simply haven’t got. Not any more. Still, I can probably order something inexpensive online, or cut a hole in a sheet and send him as a ghost.
The important thing is, Alfie will be thrilled when I tell him.
11
‘You’ll never guess what,’ Dave says by way of greeting. ‘Mrs Marchant’s accepted an offer from Anne Wilson and Jeremy Sanders.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Really? I thought she’d hold out for the full asking price.’
‘So did I,’ he says. ‘And it was a cheeky offer, in my opinion. Seventeen K below.’ He sifts through a pile of papers on his desk. ‘They’re cash buyers. Did I tell you?’
‘No. It doesn’t surprise me, though. They don’t exactly look hard up.’
Dave grins. ‘I reckon she’s had a bit of Botox, don’t you?’
I laugh. ‘And the rest.’
‘I did suggest to Mrs Marchant that it was probably just an opening gambit and that they might very well up the offer if she didn’t bite straightaway.’ He sighs. ‘She didn’t even need to turn them down, she could have just waited and they’d have come back with something else, but she wasn’t interested. Obviously wants a quick sale, and that’s that.’
The morning passes in a blur. After three quiet weeks we’re suddenly inundated with enquiries: people popping in off the street and asking about something they’ve seen on Rightmove, five people registering with us as potential buyers and three valuation requests. Not to mention the usual phone calls from frustrated clients stuck in the limbo of a property chain and fretting about exchange of contracts and completion dates.
And in between all this I’ve been trying to update the Pegton’s Twitter account – a job Dave is more than happy for me to manage. I can’t resist having a quick scroll through my own Twitter feed while I’m at it, so I don’t notice Kay at first. People are always standing outside peering at the photos in the window. I tend to ignore them unless they actually come in and, in my experience, most people who scrutinize estate agents’ windows have no intention of coming inside. They’re either visitors curious to check out house prices in the area, or nosy neighbours keen to see what the house at the end of their road is going for and speculating on what their own might be worth.
Then I see something move out of the corner of my eye and realize it’s h
er, waving at me through the glass. I wave back and she comes in.
‘Hello, love,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize you worked in here.’ She flops down on the chair opposite my desk and gives me a sheepish look. ‘To be honest, I was about to pop in and see if you wanted anyone part time. I’m looking for a little job, you see. I can type forty words a minute and answer the phone, and I’m ever so good with people.’ She leans forward. ‘I also watch every episode of Location, Location, Location and Escape to the Country and anything else that’s remotely related to buying and selling houses. I’m completely addicted.’
Dave’s mouthing ‘no’ at me over her shoulder. I don’t know whether Kay’s just noticed my eyes flick towards him or whether she’d have done this anyway, but she turns round in her chair to face him. ‘I make a very good cuppa as well,’ she says. She’s got some bottle, I’ll say that for her.
Dave does his awkward laugh. He hates it when this sort of thing happens, and it quite often does. I did it myself, although I was a bit more subtle about it. Let it slip when he was showing me round a property that I’d been a lettings manager and was about to start job-hunting.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. ‘But we don’t have a vacancy right now.’
‘You can leave us your contact details, though,’ I quickly suggest. Dave nods vigorously. He always forgets to say that. ‘And if ever we do need some extra help, we’ll get in touch.’
Kay nods and gets to her feet. She looks tired all of a sudden, and a bit embarrassed. I look at my watch and catch Dave’s eye. ‘It’s almost time for my lunch break. I’ll go now, if you don’t mind, Dave. Then I can have a chat with Kay.’