The Girl in the Red Dress

by Elaine Chong

  There isn’t a sensible response to this question, so I say nothing and wait.

  “I hate you and your sister because you had the life I should have had. You had tennis lessons and garden parties and holidays in exotic places, and you lived in nice, middle-class Shenfield with both your parents. I didn’t. I had bible study classes and church outings and my only holidays were visits to my mother because I was forced to live in Urk with my grandparents. When I left, it took me four years to get the stink of fish out of my skin.”

  “Four years?” It seemed a random number.

  “I spent four years in Amsterdam – the devil’s playground according to Oma and Opa. I was a student at the university. That was a real revelation. It showed me what I’d been missing out on.”

  Guessing that I’m treading on sensitive ground, I ask her gently, “Where was your mother all this time?”

  “Here!” she exclaims angrily. “Working two jobs and sending money back to my grandparents.”

  At first, I think I’ve misheard. “You mean your mother continued to live here?”

  “You look surprised.”

  “Does she still live here?”

  “Why shouldn’t she? This is her home now. She wasn’t going to stay in Urk if she didn’t have to.” She leans across the table and says in a low, confiding voice, “That’s the problem, you see. I’m conflicted. I completely understand why she didn’t want to live there. It’s just that she left me behind when she went. I spent a lot of time at university reading about the consequences of abandonment. Apparently, sometimes it causes irreversible psychological damage.”

  I realise I’m being toyed with – it’s something my father used to do. It seemed to give him a perverse pleasure watching me squirm. Of course, I’m no longer the small boy who hovered, trembling, in the doorway of his study, but it’s interesting to note that both his looks and his disposition have been passed on to his daughter.

  I feel an inappropriate bubble of laughter in the back of my throat, but I swallow it down. Miriam is … what? Twenty-five, twenty-six years old? Her childhood isn’t a distant memory and so the hurt of being left behind is still fresh and painful. I tell her, “I’m genuinely sorry that your mother had a hard time when Dad died. And that she was forced to leave you with your grandparents. Like I said earlier, if he’d been more open and honest then things might have been different for both of you, but he wasn’t so it isn’t really fair to lay the blame at my family’s feet.”

  “You didn’t lose your home when he died.”

  “Yes, we did,” I say. “One day Hillcrest House will belong to you.”

  “The house is already legally mine.”

  Well, she’s right on that score, I think to myself, but it might change if Julia has her way, and I’m not certain what the legal situation would be after that when it comes to ownership of the house. As things stand, however, one thing I am clear on is that the will provided for my mother to live out the rest of her life there, so I tell Miriam, “Our father might have bequeathed the house to you, but you can’t take possession of it while my mother’s still alive. That’s what he wanted.”

  Anger sweeps through her. “You don’t know that!”

  “It’s written in the will.”

  “I don’t care what’s written in the will! Why should I be forced to wait? I only want what’s rightfully mine, and I have every intention of making sure I get it. Trust me, you won’t stop me.”

  Her words have the ring of childish, petulant outrage, but the expression in her eyes is one of ferocious intent. “Is that why you agreed to meet me?” I ask her. “Because you think you can have the house now?” Disappointment overwhelms me: clearly there aren’t going to be any friendly discussions or working relationships. If Miriam imagines that she’s going to oust my mother from her home, then her hopes will soon be dashed. I slowly get to my feet because the meeting is over. “You will have to wait,” I tell her. “My mother isn’t leaving Hillcrest.”

  The sudden smile she offers me in return would curdle milk. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she says, and she presses a button on the keyboard of her laptop computer. It emits an electronic sigh. She’s been recording our conversation.

  Lenora

  The man who put up the scaffolding is knocking on the kitchen window to get my attention, so I go out into the garden.

  “It’ll have to come down,” he says.

  “It can’t be fixed?”

  He shakes his head. “If you want a balcony then you’ll have to get a new one, but I wouldn’t recommend getting one like that.” He points up at the back wall of the house, which now has a climbing frame of poles and boards and ladders erected in front of it. “If you don’t want a window, you could always have a Juliet balcony. They’re quite popular.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your architect calls it a balconette. It’s usually a nice metal railing or a piece of safety glass at the outside plane of the window. It’s a much safer option in my opinion.”

  “So not a balcony at all really?”

  He gives a rueful smile. “Not really.”

  My first thought is that Julia will be disappointed, but I have a strong feeling Richard will insist that it’s replaced by a window whatever we say.

  “Are you going to take it down today?” I ask.

  “That’s the plan,” he says. “We’ll come back in a couple of days and board up the doors. I know Mr Oakley wanted it done today, but I’ve had to fit this in around other jobs. We’ll stick some red and white safety tape across the glass. You’re not using the bedroom, are you?”

  I assure him that the bedroom has been declared off limits.

  When Julia returns, Maggie immediately leaves. The phrase ‘passing strangers’ comes to mind, but I suppose that’s what they are.

  As soon as Julia has removed her jacket, she goes directly into George’s study.

  I follow her. “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  She’s standing in the middle of the room casting eager eyes over the cupboards and shelves behind his desk. She says, “I was standing in front of Daddy’s headstone…” Her head flicks round. “And by the way, was that really the best that you could do for him?”

  “Are you talking about the headstone?”

  “The headstone itself is … inconsequential. Name, age and Rest in Peace. Is that all you could think of?”

  I feel my hackles rise. “I hope you haven’t come back from laying flowers on your father’s grave just to chastise me for my lack of imagination. What else was I supposed to say? Always in our thoughts; forever in our hearts? Loving husband and father to Richard and Julia? Oh yes, and Miriam. I think ‘Rest in Peace’ was a more than generous epitaph considering the mess he left behind him when he went.”

  “That’s not a very Christian sentiment,” she says peevishly.

  “Well, I didn’t ask God for his advice.” I look around the room. “Are you searching for something in particular?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m looking for. What I was about to say to you…”

  “Before you interrupted yourself,” I quickly interject.

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Before I got side-tracked. I was standing in front of Daddy’s headstone and I suddenly remembered something Colin said to me. He said there’s always a paper-trail, you just have to know where to look.”

  “A paper-trail?”

  “Something that will prove Lena Bartok used her influence to persuade Daddy to make his will in favour of her daughter. A letter maybe?”

  “You think you’re going to find something in here? Richard’s already looked though the files – they’re mostly bank statements and insurance papers, that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t know,” she says again. “This is where he kept everything isn’t it? Locked up in his study?”

  “I wouldn’t think he kept anything relating to…” I hesitate. I haven’t had to talk about Lena Bartok and her daughter, Miriam, for a very long time �
� not since George died – although I remember a reporter from the local newspaper turned up on my doorstep not long after it happened and asked me if I knew my husband had a second family. I told him he was mistaken, that she was just a friend. We both knew I was lying. Now, I’m not sure how I should refer to them.

  Julia slips a consoling arm around my shoulder. “It’s just an idea,” she says.

  “He did keep the door locked when he wasn’t here. He kept the key with the car key, so it was always with him whenever he went out.”

  “What was he hiding in here, do you think?”

  “Let’s find out, shall we?” I say.

  We set to work going through each file on the shelf behind his desk, systematically scrutinizing each page. I discover that he kept the invoices and receipts for all the major purchases in the house – furniture, electrical equipment, painting and decorating. I’m also reminded that over the years he became a member of lots of different clubs and societies because there’s paperwork relating to each and every one of them. His whole life is here in this room – except the life he shared with Lena Bartok.

  I’ve been standing for too long and my hip is beginning to throb painfully, so I tell Julia I’m going to make a cup of tea and sort something out for lunch.

  The first thing I notice when I return to the room is the temperature. It’s noticeably colder. “Have you opened a window?” I ask her. “It’s freezing in here.”

  She looks up from where she’s sitting at George’s desk. She’s found an envelope in the bottom drawer. “Never mind about that,” she says. “Look at this.” She holds up a receipt. “It’s from the jewellers. Did he buy you a diamond ring in 1992? He bought someone a diamond ring.” She quickly scans the page. “Hang on second … he asked to have a name inscribed on the inside of it.”

  The pain in my hip is a finger of fire and I know I need to sit down, but I don’t sit down because I want to see what she can see. I look over her shoulder. “What does it say? Did he buy it for her?”

  “Mag…da…le…na,” she reads out loud, emphasizing each syllable. “That has to be her, doesn’t it?”

  I’m peering at the receipt when I notice, from the corner of my eye, a shadow pass fleetingly in front of the window. I look up. There’s a sudden charge in the atmosphere and my first thought is that a storm must be brewing with dark clouds scudding across the sky.

  All at once the curtains billow as though a gust of wind has rushed into the room. A picture hanging on the wall facing the desk falls to the floor. The frame breaks apart and the glass shatters, shooting tiny shards in every direction.

  “What the hell was that?” Julia exclaims.

  “I asked you if the window was open,” I say. “Don’t worry, it’s just an old photograph of Lake Windermere.” I limp across the room to close the window, trying hard not to step on the frame or grind glass into the carpet.

  “When did you go to Lake Windermere?”

  “I’ve never been, but your father…” I begin to say, but I see that Julia is staring at the broken frame on the floor with a startled look on her face.

  She gets to her feet and walks towards me. The mood in the room has changed suddenly: it’s charged with suspense and the feeling is electric; it feels like Julia is moving in slow motion. She bends down and picks up the frame with careful hands. The sticky tape holding the backing cover in place has torn away revealing a second photograph. Julia slides it out from behind Lake Windermere. It’s a studio portrait of a woman in a white, strapless evening gown. Her long, dark hair has been twisted into a single ringlet and it sits prettily on one bare shoulder. The gown is made from a glossy, light-reflecting fabric, and she appears to shine. It emphasizes the colour of her eyes, which stare steadily at the camera: two pools of iridescent blue. “Oh my God!” Julia shrieks. “That’s … that’s Maggie!”

  It is Maggie – a much younger Maggie than the woman who cleans my house each Monday morning – but definitely Maggie.

  I really need to sit down now, but the only chair in the room is the swivel-chair behind George’s desk and I don’t want to sit there because this is where George sat and gazed at the picture of Lake Windermere knowing it concealed a photograph of the woman he loved. So, I hobble out of the study and go back to the kitchen.

  Julia storms after me. “Please tell me you didn’t know!” she howls.

  “I didn’t know,” I say and drag myself to a chair.

  “All this time … coming to the house every week … pretending to be a domestic.”

  “She wasn’t pretending.”

  “Why, Mummy? Why would she do it?”

  “I have no idea, Julia.”

  “I don’t believe it! Right under our noses! I tell you, that takes some gumption.”

  A feeling of complete exhaustion overwhelms me. The world I thought I knew is made of smoke and mirrors; the people I thought I knew are strangers. If this is the final battle with George, then perhaps I am defeated after all.

  Julia

  My mother is shrinking before my eyes. The painkillers I made her take to relieve the ache in her hip are working, but they can’t reach the part of her which my father and Magdalena Bartok have destroyed. She’s sitting at the breakfast-table with her head bowed over a cup of now tepid tea. I’ve urged her over and over again to drink it, but she lifts the cup to her lips then places it back in the saucer as though the effort of drinking is simply beyond her.

  “Talk to me,” I say. “Why aren’t you angry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Treachery doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

  She looks up. “Are you talking about George or Maggie?”

  “I’m talking about her!”

  A smile hovers on her lips, but this amusement at my response doesn’t relieve the sadness in her eyes. She says, “You’re always so quick to defend him.”

  “Because she’s the one who’s been coming to this house for… How many years?”

  She thinks about it. “Maybe eleven or twelve, I can’t remember exactly.”

  “Twelve years!”

  “I know you’re going to find this hard to understand Julia, but there’s method in her madness,” she tells me. “I’m upset by what she’s done: hurt and disappointed mostly because I thought we were … it sounds silly … I thought we were friends. But … when I think about it … I can see why someone in her position might do this.”

  She’s right, I don’t understand. “I’m going to call Richard and tell him,” I say.

  She reaches across the table and grasps my hand. “When will the scales fall from your eyes? Your father was responsible for all of this. We are where we are today because of him, not because of her.”

  I don’t want to hear this. “My father loved me,” I say. “I know he did. He would never have left this house to that woman’s child if she hadn’t influenced him in some way.”

  A huge sigh escapes her lips. “Well, he didn’t love me. He made me a tenant of this house – my own home, Julia. My own home! Not only that, he kept a portrait of the woman he did love behind a picture in plain sight, knowing that I would see it, but it would be his little secret. What kind of man does something like that?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “That’s because it’s unnatural, perverse,” she says. She clumsily pushes herself into a standing position, staggers slightly as she moves away from the table. “Maybe you should think on that when you’re berating Maggie for stealing your inheritance.” She stops in the doorway. Her face is a picture of unrelieved misery. “Have you ever considered for a single moment that maybe he just didn’t want you to have it?”

  I watch her walk up the stairs and go back to her bedroom.

  Have I ever seriously considered that he didn’t want me to have it? I think if ever that thought has slipped unbidden into my mind then I’ve quickly pushed it away again, and yet now I’m forced to ask myself if my mother is right. Of course, I know in my heart the answer to
that conundrum: I simply don’t care.

  I waste no time and immediately call Richard to tell him what we’ve discovered.

  “Hang on a second,” he says. “I’m at the solicitor’s – at Silver, Reid and Bateman.”

  I wait for him to finish his conversation. From the strident tone of his voice, it sounds like this is going to be more bad news, but before I can tell him my news he blurts out, “Julia, I’ve just come out of a meeting with Miriam. Before you complain, Henry Silver arranged it – he managed to find a telephone number for her.”

  Well, this is unexpected. Something tells me that it hasn’t been a resounding success. “Did you speak to her about Hillcrest?”

  “I didn’t ask her if she was prepared to share it with us, if that’s what you mean,” he says. “She was extremely hostile towards me, even went as far as recording the conversation…”

  “Richard…” I try to interrupt him.

  “Just let me finish!” he snaps. “Apparently, her mother was forced to leave her with her grandparents back in Urk. It sounds like they’ve both had a pretty tough time since Dad died. I’m telling you, Julia, if you’re still thinking of contesting the will then you’re going to have a fight on your hands. She wants Mum out of the house now! Said it belongs to her and she shouldn’t be forced to wait.”

  I try again, “Richard…”

  But the rant continues. “Just to make things even more complicated, Henry Silver has just informed me that Dad made Lena Bartok one of the trustees on this Life Interest Trust. And wait till you hear this: the woman’s been living here in Shenfield. Can you believe it?”

  This time I yell into the receiver, “Shut up and listen to me for a second.”

  “What is it?” he says sharply as though nothing I have to say can compare with his revelation.

  “Lena Bartok’s real name is Magdalena. She’s Maggie. Mum’s Maggie from Hutton Home Help.”