Ghost Girl

by Thomson, Lesley

  With Joel Evans on her mind, Stella knew how easy it would be to speed, so she did not go above twenty-five miles an hour all the way to Brentford. The van’s sensor opened the automatic gates to her estate and she accelerated up to her apartment block. Although the development was protected by steel gates and CCTV, here, as at Terry’s, the lighting was faulty, working during the day and going off at night. Unwilling to park by the dark garages, she put the van in a visitor bay near the foyer.

  Stella keyed in the security code, heaved on the door to override the closing mechanism and pushed it shut. A sharp ping made her jump. It was the lift. She had not called it. The door slid open and a shaft of light cut across the marble floor. She waited. No one got out. Cautiously she approached; the interior was empty. Along with the outside lights, the building’s smart controls often went awry and the lift would move without anyone operating it. Stella berated herself for succumbing to frayed nerves and stepped inside as the doors shut. Her discovery of the photos of herself in Terry’s basement had rattled her: all those faces smiling at her. No, not at her, at Terry. She could not smile at him now.

  The sparse tidiness of her flat tended to be a relief after her mother’s. Tonight it was not. Stella was alive to the hermetic silence and, with so many flats unsold, to the likelihood that she was utterly alone on this floor. She dropped her keys in a vase in the living room – a policeman’s daughter, she never left them in sight.

  In the bathroom she splashed her face with cold water and cleaned her teeth. The battery-operated brush ran down because she had forgotten to leave it on charge. She found a manual brush in the cupboard. Suzie’s muddle was catching.

  It was not until Stella was in bed that, disturbed by gripes in her stomach, she remembered that since a hurried hoisin duck wrap from the mini-mart below the office that afternoon she had eaten nothing. She was getting like Jack, who never ate properly. Jack. She did not want him to clean for Suzie: it would lead to complications. She would do it herself. Her mum had asked if she was busy on a case. Perhaps her muddle had extended to mixing up her ex-husband’s job with what her daughter did.

  This reminded Stella of the blue folder in Terry’s basement. He had taken fifteen photographs of roads and filed them according to a number order. Everything Terry did was for a purpose, so the pictures must be for a case. Although Terry had retired from the police he had not stopped being a detective.

  Stella sat up in bed. She would find out what the case was. Then she and Jack would solve it.

  7

  Saturday, 23 April 1966

  She stood up on the pedals and made them go faster. The wind in the chestnut tree filled her ears and everything flew by. Her dad said it was the wrong time for conkers when Michael asked. Michael was stupid for not knowing and she had been right to tell him that. It had not been right to be told off. Mary did not say that she did not know when conkers were. She did not care about conkers.

  She whizzed around the bend in the path and skidded to a stop, her brakes squealing. She looked behind her and saw Michael and her dad huddled by the flower bed. Perhaps they were hiding from her. She grew hot. They had not noticed she was missing.

  ‘Crocuses!’ Michael had shouted when they got to the park and he had pointed at the hyacinths. Daddy did not say he was wrong because he was unscrewing the stabilizers from Michael’s birthday bike. Michael was trying to stop him taking them off by saying flower names.

  Now Daddy was doing something at the back of Michael’s birthday bike, but she could not see from here. Michael had got back on and was wobbling on the saddle, which was set too high, making his frog-legs stick out. Mary held her breath; she knew her brother was scared without the extra wheels. It made her tummy ache and she let out a squeak when the wobbling got worse. Daddy was tall in his brown weekend trousers and his blue and white chequered shirt blew out like a balloon in the wind. She decided he was more like a cowboy with his sleeves rolled up and she wished that he was a cowboy so they could canter off together on horses as if he were her real daddy.

  They hadn’t seen her do her skid. Mary twisted the bike around and mooched over the handlebars, her chin on her fists. Daddy was teaching Michael to ride his bike properly the way she could, although he hadn’t said that. It was a secret, one she had decided to keep, that Michael did not like his new present. He’d told her he had wanted a microscope. She actually did think that would have been a nicer present for him and was sorry for him, especially as the bike was too big. All Michael’s things were too big: his trousers, his new blazer, even his shoes. He was supposed to grow into them. What if he didn’t?

  Michael had refused to have lessons off her, so now he was being punished because lessons with Daddy were worse. He had to pretend to be big and brave, which he wasn’t. He was too scared to tell Mummy and Daddy that he was frightened stiff of falling off. To them Michael was brave and courageous: their little soldier. They didn’t know he was terrified of everything.

  Mary Thornton had tried to prevent Bob and Jean Thornton knowing how frightened their son was of climbing trees, playing football or riding a bicycle. At six that morning he had sneaked into her bedroom and asked her to finish the bedtime story their mother had been reading to them. Mary agreed because she knew he lived in fear of the rattling attic door in the corner of his new room. Then he annoyed her with questions about her new name, so she had sent him packing. When Bob Thornton announced he was taking Michael round to the square to get him used to his bike without the stabilizers, Mary had ignored Michael’s pleading stare and said nothing.

  At the park she had ridden around with no hands partly to take Daddy’s mind off unscrewing the wheels and partly to show him she was highly skilled on her bike. But the plan had not worked because he carried on as if she were invisible. He ignored her suggestion that she do things on her bike to show Michael how to do it. He did not see her lift up her front wheel and mount the hump on the path like a cowgirl on a horse and now he had missed the best skid she had ever done. Mary eyed them dolefully from across the grass.

  After a bit, she let the wheels meander along the slope to the statue of the Greek Runner.

  The statue had no clothes on. Mary was not interested in penises – Michael had one – so she didn’t bother with the nude man and scooted her bike around and around the base. On the last lap she stole another look at her father and brother. Their heads were still close together. Secrets. She was inflamed. Michael was helping her daddy with the wheels. Traitor! Boys will be boys, her mum said. ‘Leave them to it, Mary.’

  Her dad arched backwards and stretched. Michael was like a statue. He was staring at the ground, which wouldn’t help him balance. Mary was startled by her dad’s shout: ‘Ready, steady… go!’

  Michael tried to stand in his seat as she had done. Despite her worry for him Mary was outraged that her daddy was keeping his hand on the bike rack and running along with Michael, help he had not given her. It meant Michael would never learn to ride by himself.

  As if he could read his daughter’s mind, Bob Thornton let go of the rack and ran on for a few more paces beside the bike, his hand out as if still gripping the rack. He dropped back and slowed to a stop and, hands on hips, watched Michael cycle away along the path.

  Michael had seen Mary and was coming right at her, his eyes fixed on her as he had done when he was learning to walk and was made to cross the room to her. She felt panic. He did not know Daddy had let go and he was going too fast. She started to climb off her bike. She must reach him before he realized this. He was treading too hard on each pedal, making the bike sway. The front wheel went first one way then the other; each time it got closer to the grass.

  Mary dropped her bike and hurtled towards Michael. She was the Greek Runner. It was like running in a dream; her legs would not work properly. Michael seemed to get no closer.

  The little girl would never forget this fleeting impression.

  Michael Thornton looked back to where his father’s face had been
. It was like flying, he was going to say, but there was only sky. He kept going. His sister was watching him. He was like her; he was just as good.

  The front wheel jack-knifed and the boy truly took off in flight. He landed belly first on the tarmac.

  An aeroplane droned above, a momentary gleam of sunlight flashed off the colours of British European Airways. A pigeon flying much lower might have been crossing the flight path. It alighted on the topmost branch of the chestnut tree that cast a thin shadow over the two children.

  Mary got to Michael before her father and dragged him to his feet. Her baby brother was not crying, but he would not look at her, which was a bad sign. She followed his eyes to where he was looking and saw white houses with ravens above their doors.

  ‘You stopped holding,’ she accused her father. She smacked dirt off the front of Michael’s jumper. A trickle of blood came out of one of his nostrils.

  ‘I dropped this.’ Their father pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Here, lad, use this. Buck up!’ He handed it to his son. Mary snatched it and clamped it to Michael’s nose.

  ‘The main thing, Michael, is you went by yourself.’ Bob Thornton folded his arms. ‘Keep practising, son, you’ll soon be the best.’

  ‘Did you see?’ Michael’s voice was muffled through the fabric now stained crimson.

  ‘Not properly,’ Mary scowled. ‘Tip your face back.’ She wanted to tell her daddy that she was the best.

  Bob Thornton went back across the park and Mary saw him pick up her bike. He did not need to; she would have got it. He knew where to find it: perhaps he had seen her do the skid.

  ‘He didn’t drop his hankie.’ She kept her voice low.

  ‘Yes he did.’ Michael eyed her warily.

  ‘He let go.’ She stepped away from him as if he were a bomb set to explode.

  ‘You said you didn’t see.’

  ‘I saw him let go.’ Mary was firm.

  ‘So did you see?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have stood up.’ She persisted: ‘He lied to you.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘You’re not Mary!’ Michael’s widening eyes betrayed that he was aware he had plunged into treacherous waters. He snuffled into his father’s handkerchief although the bleeding had stopped.

  The sun went behind a cloud and a chill fell like a mantle over St Peter’s Square. The breeze intensified pushing the branches of the chestnut tree violently.

  Rooted to the spot, Michael Thornton watched with growing panic his sister stalk off along the path.

  Mary took her bike from her father and scooted it, standing on one pedal; then she swung her leg over the saddle, like a cowboy. She rode around the park and out of the gate.

  ‘He didn’t lie,’ Michael repeated to himself, with less certainty.

  8

  Monday, 23 April 2012

  She leant shut the front door, her shopping bag in her arms, and conjured up the reassuring aroma of overcooked vegetables, disinfectant laced with the collective body smells of a hundred boys. She imagined so many innocent souls, their hopes and dreams before them, sleeping soundly above her.

  At this time of the evening, Reception, a partitioned area built before her time, was closed and she would be in charge of greeting the few visitors; a time she liked best.

  At the turn in the staircase something made her pause. She surveyed the cavernous hall below. Everything looked in order.

  Her shoulders bowed, the woman’s silhouette on the expanse of green gloss wall had no head; distorted further by her shopping bag, she could have been the minotaur.

  She wended her way upwards in the school where for decades she had been a trusted housemother. At each landing she extinguished lights behind her, leaving darkness in her wake. She did not wince at the weight and awkwardness of her bag, or the long climb. The effort was a price of existence. It must be paid. She focused on the step in front of her, unblinking. It was the way she approached her work and her life, unstinting and unswerving.

  The crêpe soles on her lace-ups expressed stolid reliability. Despite her heavy tread, she knew no one would hear her on the frayed linoleum. She never disturbed the boys: growing children needed sleep.

  Three floors up she did stop. She liked this window. It had fascinated generations of boys because, cut across by the stairs, it disappeared into the floor. The architectural necessity fascinated her too. It was possible to see through the gap to the stairs below where a boy was waving. James, William, Nicholas, Mark, the long list of boys had over the years merged into one lovely boy with all of their best qualities. A boy with the aura of an angel. She pressed her face to the glass.

  The car park was dark and deserted; no staff or parents here tonight. She observed without pleasure new leaves on the plane tree. They would screen off the school from houses in Weltje Road. She resented nosy parkers. Soon the weather would be warmer. She liked cold days shortened by dark nights when she could wear clothes that covered her body. She held the bag to her chest and resumed her climb.

  On the top floor, opposite a long unlit passage, was a door. Through shamrock-petal-shaped holes carved out of the upper panels a faint light sent elongated shamrock shapes along the low ceiling. These did give her pleasure. She flicked another switch, but the strip lights above did not respond. She left her bag by the door and felt her way along the passage, her shoes sponging on the linoleum. Six doors, three each side, had the same shamrock holes, dark outlines in the wood with no light beyond. She opened each door, ducked her head into the room, withdrew and closed the door. At the last door she went in.

  The room was dark but for orange light washing in through a window. She retrieved a rubber-covered torch from the top of a cupboard by the door and, keeping the beam low, revealed three iron bedsteads. A paperback book lay open on the tumbled blankets of the window bed, spine up. She folded down a page to mark the place and shut the book, laying it on a bedside cabinet next to a leather-bound travelling alarm clock. She gave the book a stroke as if to underline the action.

  She lifted a pillow that hung over the foot of the iron frame, plumped it, averting her face from a cloud of dust and then restoring it to the bed. Tutting, she pulled up the blankets and batted out creases. A bundle of material was jammed against a bed leg. She got down on her hands and knees and dragged out a shirt, no longer white. She struggled to her feet and, in the wardrobe, unhooked a hanger and draped the shirt over it. Throughout this procedure, one apparently familiar to her, she was quiet as a mouse. The perfect housemother, she was fond of reminding herself. She closed the curtains, aligning the fabric so that the pattern of a trellis twined with flowers with red petals was unbroken. Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite. A whisper on the breath, she pit-patted out and closed the door.

  She returned to the stairs and reached a key down from the lintel above the locked door.

  ‘I’m home.’ Despite the sing-song gaiety in her tone her expression remained impassive. If she was concerned by the lack of response she did not betray it. Two strip lights with frosted plastic casings spotted with dead insects cast a bland light on a corridor with a vermilion runner along its length.

  In a bright utilitarian kitchen she unpacked shopping with the efficient air of fulfilling a routine, lining up her purchases on a blue Formica table: a tin of dried milk, two boxes of frozen ready meals, baked beans, a jar of chocolate powder, six pork sausages, a box of tea bags and the London A–Z street atlas. Apparently no longer mindful of being quiet, she stowed the groceries away, banging cupboard doors and opening and shutting a large fridge and freezer. Now she appeared to want to draw attention to her presence. She secured the bag on a hook behind the door and straightened a yellow apron hanging there to reveal a yellow smiley face. When she spoke, in a confiding voice, it might have been to the apron. ‘I told you I wouldn’t be long.’ The intention perhaps not to reassure, but to be proved right.

  Carrying the street atlas, she went down the passag
e to a room like the boys’ dormitories, furnished with an iron bedstead, a plain wardrobe and bedside cabinet. Here the bedding was immaculate, a wool blanket tucked so tightly that only a cardboard figure could have comfortably slipped in between the starched white sheets. The woman shrugged her coat off and arranged it on a hanger in the wardrobe using the same spare movements with which she had handled the shirt. She regarded herself in the wardrobe mirror and shifted her rayon top so that it did not bunch around her waist. She smoothed a hand over a swollen stomach: not a promise of new life, but the bane of middle age. She gave a perfunctory brush to one leg of her black cotton trousers and a pat to her hair – a serviceable style demanding the minimum of effort. In the hallway, head up, shoulders back, she approached a door at the end.

  Her hand on the knob, her determination seemed to falter. She straightened her jersey needlessly and, the A–Z in one hand, tapped on the door. Rat-a-tat-tat, the jaunty tattoo at odds with her stony demeanour. No sound came from within and after a moment she opened the door.

  ‘There you are.’ She addressed a spacious room in which she seemed to be the only one present. It reeked of adhesive and paint. She grabbed a long pole resting against the door jamb and, thrusting it upwards, slotted it into the fastener of a skylight and hauled open the casement.

  ‘Let’s have some fresh air,’ she told the pole.

  ‘You’re late.’ A disembodied voice.

  Darkness obscured streets and tiny lights twinkled on the shimmering surface of the river. They lit up rooftops, exposing missing tiles here and there and chimneys prickling with aerials; signals, traffic lights and scraggy trees sent shadows over the roads. Hammersmith Bridge dominated the scene.