by Elaine Chong
The Girl
in the
Red Dress
Elaine Chong
Copyright © 2020 Elaine Chong
KINDLE Edition
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored, in any form or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
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Contents
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Lenora
Julia
Richard
Six Months Later…
Lenora
Acknowledgements
About the author
Also by this author
Sturstone Hall
********
Lenora
There are raised voices outside my room. I can hear someone saying, “What do you mean, she’s just eaten some ice cream?” I think it’s my son, Richard. He sounds unusually agitated, fearful even, as though eating ice cream is a seriously risky business.
Another man’s voice replies in a calm, authoritative tone, “I know your mother only came back from surgery earlier this afternoon but she’s awake now. She’s quite comfortable, and she asked for ice cream. As luck would have it, we’ve been able to oblige her, and at this point we’re happy to let her eat whatever she wants.”
Their voices slowly fade as they move away from the doorway. I strain to listen, but the remainder of the conversation is masked by the sound of a hospital trolley as it rattles and rolls along the hospital corridor like an old-fashioned locomotive.
Ice cream. It’s soothingly cold and smooth, and ambrosia on the tongue when you’ve recently had a breathing tube inserted into your throat and the inside of your mouth tastes and feels like a dried-out dishcloth.
Aggie loved ice cream. How could I ever forget that?
I’ve been trying really hard not to think about my old friend, but the sweet, creamy taste of vanilla suddenly transports me to another place; reminds me of that fateful day, a day quite like no other day, when the sky was forget-me-not blue: a soft sweep of pale colour that stretched overhead, faded into the far horizon and disappeared into the sea.
The beach was sprinkled with people like Aggie and me: people with time to sit and stare at the water; watch the breakers burst onto the shore and let the sun warm their skin.
Aggie had bought me a large, vanilla ice cream cone. She tucked a paper serviette into the front of my blouse saying, “In case you dribble.”
“I know I’m getting old, but I’m not gaga.”
“Not you, silly, the ice cream,” she said, and – as if to illustrate my stupidity – she slowly licked a trickle of pink ice cream from the end of her cone.
“I wanted chocolate,” I protested.
“He hasn’t got chocolate today.”
“Well, why didn’t you get me strawberry?”
“You didn’t ask for strawberry.”
“I didn’t ask for vanilla either.”
Aggie ignored me and looked out across the beach with vacant eyes to the distant sea. We were waiting for the tide to come in so that we could paddle our feet in the water like we used to do when we were children. Every year the church choir organised a coach trip to the seaside; they were the only holidays I had till I got married. Aggie’s mum and dad used to take her to visit an aunt in Skegness, but she always said she much preferred the coach trip to Clacton.
We’d brought a picnic with us that day and bought an ice cream from the man on the pier. Aggie usually walked away from his van with pink cheeks and a sparkle in her pretty, blue eyes because she thought there was a frisson of something sexual between them – she thought he winked at her when she gave him the correct change. He was a nice-looking man with a flirtatious manner, but he really had a lazy eye.
The man who hired out the deckchairs was much less friendly and charged two pounds fifty for an afternoon. The deckchairs were those wooden contraptions that collapsed when you pulled a lever. It felt a bit like sitting on a clothes horse only less comfortable, but I always refused to sit on the damp sand like Aggie.
When Aggie’s gaze returned to her ice cream, she broke off the end of her cone and scooped up ice cream so that she had two cones. “Look,” she said. “Big cone, little cone.”
“That joke wasn’t funny the first time you told it.”
“At least I have a sense of humour.”
I laughed. “You’ll need one when you stand up and look like you’ve peed your pants. Why don’t you just get a deckchair like every other sensible person on the beach?”
“It’s more fun sitting on the sand,” she said.
We finished our ice creams in companionable silence then Aggie insisted on walking out to watch the waves come in. “You’ll have to pull me out of this thing first,” I told her, and I shifted myself forward in the chair.
She took hold of my hands and tugged hard. She huffed and puffed and heaved me into a standing position. “I think you’re putting on weight.”
“Too many ice creams, I expect,” I said.
We slowly made our way across the beach. The sand was hard beneath my feet and I wished I’d worn my sandals. As we drew closer to the pounding surf, the sand had been sculpted into ridges transforming the soft, yellow grains into a strange, alien landscape.
The wind blew in short, sharp gusts and tugged at our clothes. Aggie’s skirt was lifted up around her waist, and she screamed.
I laughed so much I almost tripped over my own feet. “You’ll have to hold it down!” The cold, grey sea was rushing in; foam-tipped waves crashing onto the shore. Suddenly I wanted to run. “Come on, Aggie-bag, race you to the water!” I shouted at her.
Within a few, short strides she had overtaken me, her long skirt flying out behind her like an unruly kite.
We met the incoming tide with whoops and cheers; reached down and trailed our fingers in the cold, briny sea. Soon we were wet and breathless, and I could feel the pull o
f the current beneath my feet. I reached for Aggie’s arm and hooked it round mine. “I think I could eat another ice cream after that,” I said.
“With sprinkles and a chocolate flake!” Aggie shouted at the wind then she turned to me. “Are you happy now, Lenora?”
“What do you mean, ‘now’?”
“Now that George has gone.”
“He didn’t leave me, Aggie,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“I know, but are you happy now? I so much want you to be happier than you were before…” She hesitated. “Before it happened.”
I considered this for a moment, but for just a moment because there was really nothing to consider. I said, “I can’t remember the last time I felt as happy as I do today.”
“You’re free now, aren’t you?” she insisted.
“Free?”
Aggie stopped walking and, as her arm slipped through mine, I felt it tremble. She was visibly trembling all over. Her long grey hair, which was more usually contained within a tight French pleat on the back of her head, now blew hither and thither, but she didn’t seem to care. She was crying.
I reached out to her, but she stepped away from me. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It was me,” she said. “I did it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“George. I killed him.”
Her voice had shrunk to a whisper, but the words resounded loud and clear inside my head. Of course, I knew that someone had killed him. Someone had driven a car at speed down a narrow country lane and catapulted him into the gutter. But all I could think to say to her was, “You haven’t got a car now, Aggie.”
“I’ve still got Daddy’s old Volvo in the garage,” she said. “I had it serviced.”
“I don’t believe you!” I cried.
She sank to her knees on the hard, wet sand; lifted the hem of her skirt; buried her face in its cold, damp folds, and sobbed.
Julia
Orchard Road, 8pm, and the humidity is over eighty per cent. The temperature is a pleasantly warm twenty-eight degrees, in fact the same temperature that it was when I left the house at 8am this morning, but it’s just a day like any other day in Singapore.
Colin has asked me to meet him at the LingLang Club as usual. I can’t bear the place anymore – all that dreadful, colonial bowing and scraping when somebody orders a gin and tonic. Colin loves it. That’s why he leaves the office promptly at five every day, calls the driver to pick him up from the front entrance of the building, and is deposited on the Club’s steps.
The low, bungalow style building is a throwback to a previous era, much like the smiling, white-jacketed man of mature years, who ushers him into its dim interior. The dark leather sofas and soft, yellow lighting from strategically placed table lamps is reminiscent of a London, gentleman’s private club, and so is the atmosphere in my opinion.
Of course, young Singaporeans have no time for deference towards white expats, especially the ones who want to live like it’s 1925 and the sun is still shining on the great British Empire. The world is a very different place now, but the LingLang Club lives on.
I insist on walking there when I leave the gallery, but I go through the same charade every day with Colin’s driver, Haziq. I lock the day’s takings in the safe, reset the burglar alarm then hand over to my assistant, Aysha, who does the evening shift. Shopping is an all-day activity in this part of the world, and if you want your business to make money then it has to be open all day, every day.
Haziq waits for me in the same parking space. He winds down the window and the car’s air-conditioning unit immediately cranks up a gear. “I drive Ma’am to club?” he asks. I always shake my head and wave him away, but he calls after me, “Walking is not good, not safe.”
“Walking is completely safe,” I shout back at him.
The window will slowly close and Haziq be enveloped once again in dry, engine-cooled air. The car is a moving, refrigeration unit.
This evening, I actually feel the need to walk to the LingLang Club after the unexpected phone call I received from my brother, Richard. It interrupted my very brief lunch break and preyed on my mind for the rest of the afternoon. I could probably use the space and time to think through our conversation, but I don’t want to think about it, I want a distraction, and a stroll along Orchard Road in the heart of the city at eight o’clock is the perfect way to banish unwelcome thoughts.
The thing that strikes me every time I walk here is the vibrancy and colour of the place. It’s a complete contrast to where I was born and where I lived until I married Colin. I loathe England. It’s full of dull people living out their dull lives under grey skies, especially in the winter months when every living thing is either dead, or in a state of hibernation.
Singapore, on the other hand, is perpetually bathed in warm, fragrant air. The warmth is self-explanatory, but the fragrance is something I feel is unique to this city state. Of course, New York boasts of its large expanse of woods and green open spaces in its city centre, and London has its more modest parks and gardens, but none of this compares to the scent and colour of frangipani-lined streets and bougainvillea-covered road bridges here in Singapore. In fact, almost every building is elegantly camouflaged from view behind dark green, towering trees and purple morning glory entwined in tall, bamboo screens.
Yes, it takes an army of people to keep the streets swept and clean all year round, but it’s a salve to the unemployment statistics.
Colin has already decided he wants to go home when he retires. Home is a small town on the Suffolk coast. I try not to think about it, but the conversation with my brother reminded me that it’s a problem I’m going to have to resolve, because I’m not leaving Singapore. His opening words sent a prescient chill down my spine.
“You have to come back here, Julia. Mum’s had a fall. She’s in hospital.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Richard,” I exclaimed. “I have a business to run.”
“It’s a shop,” he said. “And I’m quite certain you have someone who can take over while you’re away.”
His casual use of the word ‘shop’ stung me into replying, “I have absolutely no intention of handing over the running of the gallery to one of my assistants just because our mother has fallen over and broken a bone. I suppose she has broken something?”
“She’s fractured her hip.”
“Well, can’t she have a new one? Isn’t that what they do these days? Something wears out or breaks and you replace it?”
“It isn’t quite that simple,” he said.
“What do you expect me to do?” I demanded. “If she can’t look after herself then she’ll have to pay someone to do it. I suppose she could always sell the house and go into a care home,” I added, although this was an option, I knew I would never seriously consider, because I was banking on inheriting my full half-share of Hillcrest House, our family home.
There was a long, pregnant pause and I assumed that Richard was considering the options, which I’d suggested to him. I heard him take a deep breath then he said in a low but firm voice, “She’ll refuse to go into a care home, and she can’t sell the house even she wanted to.”
Richard and I had become strangers over the years, but I recognised at once that he was speaking the truth. I understood that our mother would fight tooth and nail before she gave up her independence, but I didn’t understand why she couldn’t sell the house and said so.
“Like I said, it’s complicated,” he replied. “I just need you to come back here for a bit so we can sort things out.”
Frustration rippled through me. “How complicated can it be? Honestly Richard, you can’t expect me to fly ten-thousand miles because you can’t be bothered to explain to me over the phone why she won’t sell the family home. I’m surprised she hasn’t downsized already. The place is far too big for one person.”
There was another long pause and this time I knew he was doing what he’d always done: trying to break some ba
d news in way that wouldn’t upset me or anger me, so I said, “Please, just tell me what’s going on.”
“I wanted to do this face to face, but if you insist…”
“I insist,” I said.
His voice held a note of genuine regret when he spoke. “Mum can’t sell the house because it doesn’t belong to her. And if you’re thinking that Dad left it to you and me, well, you’re going to be disappointed.” He quickly went on, “The fact is, only he owned the house and he left it to somebody else. Mum can live there until she ... until she dies, but that’s it.”
All I could think to say was, “I don’t understand?”
“Mum didn’t want you to know. She said it would only upset you if you found out.”
“Somebody else,” I repeated. I looked out of the window for inspiration; gazed up at the puffs of low cumulus cloud hovering in the sky overhead and tried to form a rational thought that would make sense of those words. There was somebody else?
“Her name’s Miriam,” Richard said quietly. “Apparently, she’s our sister.”
The rest of the conversation now eludes me because the only thing I could focus on was that I wasn’t going to get my inheritance. This is the worst of worse news and now I need to walk, cool my temper and put my shattered dreams in a place where I don’t have to think about them.
As usual Orchard Road is humming, and most evenings I’m happily in tune with the sounds of the city as I stroll along, but not tonight. Tonight, I’m irritated by the noise and the sea of pedestrians. They wash along the pavement with their faces fixed on the glowing screens of their mobile phones. Of course, it’s like this every night: a giant game of dodgeball.
I hate to be one of those middle-aged people, who complain about the youth of today, but it’s a hazardous affair trying to avoid them and impossible to be anything other than cross when they collide with you. Whenever I remark upon it to Colin, he rolls his eyes and says, “That’s what the bloody car is for.”