As She Left It: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  She stared down at the footboard again. It looked grotesque with its heads lolling on the covers, and she picked up one of the tops to replace it, wondering whether to put the note back too. when someone finds this after I am gone. What if no one had ever found the rest of the note in the headboard? What if it had been destroyed and that’s how the foot came to be matched up with the wrong partner? What if she—Opal Jones—was the only someone who had ever found anything?

  And suddenly the brass threads screwing shut the secret place where the note had lain for years and years, since little girls learned to write in that loopy way, were glinting in Opal’s mind like the golden thread that had brought her here and made Margaret tell the secret that only Opal knew. And in a picture in her head, the little lost boy and the little girl—who sounded pretty lost to Opal—had joined hands and were walking away into darkness, maybe going to be lost forever, unless Opal followed them and brought them home.

  Could she do both? She had told Fishbo she didn’t have time for another job. Turned him down like a bedspread, as Margaret used to say.

  But that’s different, she thought, laying the pages of the note on the dressing table and going to screw the tops back onto the bed again. There was no golden thread tying her to Fishbo. He thought there was, of course, because of her suddenly appearing, his old pupil, but he was just an old man who needed a stand-in if he was going to keep up with the rest of his band and not … what had he said? … lay down his sorry head and die.

  Two mysteries was more than enough, she told herself, getting back into bed and burrowing down. Plus a job. Two mysteries and two jobs would be crazy. Things didn’t come in fours, everyone knew that. Things came in threes. Craig Southgate, the little bed girl, and … a job at Tesco. Except that didn’t sound like three; it sounded like two of something and one of something else.

  She sat up, punched her pillow (releasing a faint trace of old tobacco), and lay down again, finding herself wondering if Fishbo had really worked in a tobacco field when he was a boy. Big Al and Pep Kendal had rolled their eyes when he said it; Opal had seen them and thought it was pretty mean, when he was old and he thought he was dying and would never go home again because everyone he had to go home to was—

  Sitting up this time, she scraped the back of her head on one of the outcrops of carving on the back of the bed; she’d have to watch out for that. She rubbed it roughly as she got up, shrugged out of her pajama shorts, and pulled her leggings back on again. She slid her feet into flip-flops and buttoned her camisole top up to make it look like a tee-shirt if she was lucky.

  Things came in threes. Not jobs—unless you were Margaret Reid—but special things. Golden thread things. And she had hold of all three ends now. She was going to find out what happened to Craig, solve the mystery of the little bed girl, and get Fishbo back with his family.

  She let herself out of the front door and trotted over the road to tell the boys she was ready to join the band.

  TEN

  BUT THE TROUBLE WITH having three fine threads of gold twined together to form a rope tying you to three separate quests—one tragic, one mysterious, and one pretty urgent, if Fishbo’s cough was anything to go by—was that the induction and training process for a full-time job as a cog in a machine as mighty as Tesco took up a pretty big slice of your time.

  And for the first two weeks or so, even when she lay in bed at night, the pick and the rumble, the trays and the dollies, the codes and symbols and substitution rules were all her skull could contain.

  She had expected to find herself stacking shelves and she wouldn’t have minded. But on her first proper day, she was told that she was shadowing a picker.

  “What’s that?” Opal said.

  “It was in the induction,” the team leader said (like anyone had listened). “Picking” turned out be the Tesco word for shopping—they had to have a special word for it. Doing the shopping for all those people who sat at home at their computers instead of coming out and doing their own. Pat, the picker Opal was shadowing to see if she was any good, had been in it since the beginning.

  “Twelve years,” she said. “Started when there were only two of us and one van. You stick wi’ me, love.”

  “Like a shadow,” said Opal.

  “Charlotte’s got you in here,” Pat said. “Put in a word for you. So let’s crack on.”

  Opal turned to look at the device clamped to the edge of the trolley, concentrated hard on the buttons and the little screen.

  “You scan the team pad, scan your own badge, scan the customer’s badge, and then you’re ready to start the pick,” said Pat. “It goes frozen, ambient, and then chilled. No booze or fags. If they’re on your picking list, they shouldn’t be, and you just ignore them.”

  “Frozen, ambient, chill,” said Opal, looking over the list. “What if you can’t find something?”

  “Substitution rules,” said Pat. “Now, I’ll find the right shelf and you do the picking.”

  “Right away?” Opal said. “Whatsisname—the team leader—said we were just to watch at first.”

  “You’re a bright kid,” Pat said.

  And they wheeled around the quiet shop as smooth as if they were on casters just like the trays. Frozen, ambient, chilled. Round and round, up and down, out to the warehouse, onto the shop floor, tray after tray. By lunchtime, by the time of the postmortem up in the canteen, when Opal was filling in shift sheets, Pat said she could do the afternoon on her own.

  “Just go to Customer Services and buzz me if you get stuck. But you won’t. You’ll be fine. She’ll be fine,” she called over her shoulder to the team leader, who was checking the substitutions. He stood and came over.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said. “The two-packs of cinnamon raisin danish on special offer instead of three individuals was genius … What’s your name?”

  “Opal,” said Opal, trying to sound as cold and uninviting as possible. She hadn’t missed the way he swept his gaze from her feet up to her neck and down again.

  “Tell Opal about that worst ever,” said Pat.

  “Aye,” said the team leader. “This wasn’t training, mind. This was a live pick, went out to the customer and all.” He pulled over a chair and sat down backwards on it. Pat chuckled in advance. “First thing, the list said fat-free creamy Greek yoghurt, and this kid picked full-fat creamy Greek frozen yoghurt dessert instead. But that you can nearly see if you turn sideways and half shut your eyes.” Pat laughed again.

  “Wait till you hear this,” she said.

  “The worst was Silvikrin lemon and lime conditioner for oily hair.” He paused. “That was what the customer asked for. Guess what she got.”

  “Lemons and limes?” said Opal.

  “If only,” Pat said, bursting with it. “Tell her, Dave.”

  “A baguette,” said the team leader. “A crusty baguette. She phoned us up.”

  “I’ll bet she did,” said Opal. “Still, it must have gave her a laugh.” Dave turned to look at her. “And I bet she’d rather have pudding instead of yoghurt than the other way around.”

  “A laugh’s not the point, love,” Dave said, the spark of interest gone from his eyes again. “We had to issue a refund and send a replacement.”

  “I dunno,” Opal said. “I bet if you entered the mistakes in like a prize draw or something every week, people wouldn’t get so fed up. If the baguette woman had got a hamper for best mistake of the week kind of thing.”

  “Anyway,” said Dave, standing and replacing the chair, giving her a stern look. “Just to be clear, we do carry out random checks on your work while you’re on probation. Checked and double-checked it is.” He clipped their pick sheets inside a folder and strode away.

  “Poor Dave,” Pat said. “He’ll fret on that all afternoon now. You’re a right live wire, aren’t you?” Opal grinned. “Charlotte said you were down in the dumps last week.”

  “Yeah, no, I was just stressed out,” Opal said. “Moving house and all that.”
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  “Have you? Where to?”

  “Meanwood,” Opal said. “Mote Street.” And she watched Pat’s round face cloud as she tried to remember what that name meant and then winced when the memory came.

  “Mote Street!” she said. “And is it just you? No kiddies or owt?”

  “Nope,” said Opal. “No kiddies. No no one. Just me.” And a lost boy and a lost girl and a lost family in a hurricane.

  “Oh well, that’s fine then,” Pat said, as if the Mote Street Snatcher would still be there ten years later. Would be back again. They’re not salmon, Opal wanted to say. She glanced at her watch.

  “Aye, I suppose we’d best get a move on,” Pat said, draining her coffee. “You’ve only got four picks for the rest of the shift. I’ll take a look at each one as you go, if you like.”

  “Okay,” Opal said. “But about that—wouldn’t it make more sense to have more than one list up at once?” She had thought so in the morning as they had rolled down Sugar, Preserves and Home Baking for the third time to pick up one jar of jam. “If there’s two trays can go side by side, anyway, wouldn’t it be quicker to have two customers’ frozen up and then both of their—”

  “Bright kid,” said Pat again. “You’ve cracked it. Depends what’s on if you get done, mind. You can either pick slow and fill your shift, or you can pick quick and flatten boxes for an hour at the end.”

  “Ah,” said Opal. “Right. And I suppose you’d get mixed up easier too, eh?”

  “Exactly.”

  And as the days passed and she started working alone, she changed her mind anyway. It would take all the fun out of it to be juggling two or three lists, all mixed up in your head at the same time. Because the fun was the lists themselves, like windows that Opal was allowed to breathe on, scour a clear patch in, peer through, and watch what happened on the other side, where people breakfasted on live yoghurt and blueberries and put prawns in their baked potatoes, drank glass bottles of water called Pellegrino, and spread their bread-machine bread with Breton butter. Or lived on Chunky Monkey ice cream at home but took individual muesli bars and 250ml Innocent smoothies to work where people might see them.

  And slowly, as she got the hang of it, her brain freed up again and she could shop for the week for a family of four and spend the whole pick thinking about Fishbo’s relatives, or where a kid of three would wander off to if he had his way or—this one had really been bothering her—who had paid Nicola’s bills and forwarded all the mail on to Whitby.

  One of the neighbors, obviously. Who else would have a key? And who else could go in and out without some other neighbor’s nose twitching. But which one? Not Mrs. Pickess. She would open letters, right enough—steam them, most likely—but she’d never cough up for gas and electric. Not Pep and Fishbo—they were men and men (as far as Opal had ever seen) didn’t go in for much taking care of things. And if Margaret had sent parcels, they would have had letters in them full of love and blessings. The house next door was empty (or had been until that crying man came), and that left only the students (say no more) and the Joshis.

  So on Friday night, Opal brought home a bunch of lilies near their date, since she knew that Zula Joshi liked them, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

  ELEVEN

  “I DIDN’T DO IT to get thanked,” Zula said, burying her face in the flowers.

  “Is that why it was anonymous?” said Opal.

  “But these are lovely.” She came up with lily pollen all over her cheeks and nose, like bronzer. “Come in, love. Have a cup of tea.”

  Opal had always loved the Joshis’ house when she was small, saucer-eyed at the elephant god in his shrine and the smoking joss sticks, the carpet on the walls, the spangles on the carpets, the mirrored glass droplets on the fringes that hung above the doors. Her favourite thing of all was in the kitchen, where, from hooks suspended underneath the top cupboards where other people might have mugs or ladles, the Joshis had garlands of plastic flowers with light bulbs instead of seeds. Opal had always thought when she grew up she would do without ladles and have lit-up flowers hanging in her kitchen too. So she was pleased when Zula took her past the living rooms to the back of the house, but she stopped dead in the doorway.

  “It’s changed,” she said, taking in the glass cupboard fronts with their silver handles and the grey laminate on the floor. There was a glass table too and stools with suede tops and silver legs.

  “About time,” said Zula. “I was straight off the plane when I came here, you know, and then I started popping the babies out before I was over the jet lag. Twenty years later when I lifted my head and looked around, I was living in a pantomime.”

  “I loved your house,” Opal said. “Not—I mean, it’s lovely now too. What did you do with all the Indiany stuff? The flower lights and all that.”

  “Scrapped the lot,” said Zula. “Tea or coffee? Mind you, I see them on eBay now. Should have kept them.”

  “And the door things?” said Opal, pointing.

  “I still put them up for Divali,” Zula said, “but I’ve got nicer ones now. Not so flashy.”

  “Coffee,” Opal said, trying not to let her disappointment show.

  Zula held up one finger and pushed her earpiece in, concentrating, then spoke into the microphone suspended in front of her mouth. “Sanj? Can you go out to Roundhay to Mrs. Pelham. The usual do, only she’s a bit early. How long? Thanks, son.” Then she smiled at Opal again.

  “That’s a bit space age, innit?” Opal said. “You were sat at a great big machine before.”

  “Changed my life, this has,” Zula said. “It was like coming off dialysis when I got rid of that switchboard.”

  “And so anyway, yeah, thank you,” said Opal. “About sending me the stuff.”

  “I was glad to help,” said Zula. She was looking at her reflection in one of the glass doors, and she swiped at herself. “What’s that on my face?”

  “And I think I owe you some money too, don’t I? I’ll pay you back, but it’ll have to be slowly.”

  “Oh get out,” said Zula. “Least I could do.”

  “What do you mean?” Opal said. “The least you could do how?”

  Zula waited with her hand on the kettle and then filled a proper glass coffee pot and put it down on the table with two mugs.

  “I always liked Nic,” she said. “She was a laugh. And I knew she had never told the council you’d left home.”

  “Yeah, why was that?” Opal said. “She’d have got a rebate for living on her own.”

  “Opal,” said Zula, looking up at her from under her brows. “Your poor mother.” She had great brows for frowning, shaped into blobs in the middle, down to little black spikes at the ends.

  “You know what I think?” Opal said. “I think she didn’t say owt when I first went because she’d have lost her child benefit and then by the time that stopped, she was too far gone.”

  Zula was still frowning, then she flipped her microphone out away from her face and seemed to give up the argument.

  “Yes, you’re right,” she said, blowing into her mug. “She didn’t go out much to take care of any business towards the end. The last while got a bit … what’s the word?” They were quiet for a moment, sipping their coffee, before Zula spoke again. “Where were you, Opal love?”

  “Eh?” said Opal. “You forwarded my mail. You know exactly where I—”

  “When she was fading, I mean,” said Zula. “When she died.”

  “Why?” Opal said, and she knew her tone was arch but couldn’t make it not be. “Did she ask for me, like?”

  Zula shifted her eyes away from Opal’s face before she answered.

  “She wasn’t herself.”

  Opal laughed. “Oh, yes, she was. That was herself.”

  “No, it was worse at the end,” Zula said. “She was more … distressed. Bad in the night. She used to phone people. Police, Samaritans. Just someone to talk to.”

  “How do you know?” Opal asked. “Did she phone
you?”

  “I used to stay with her,” said Zula. “Sometimes. When she was really upset, I would sleep over there.”

  Opal could only stare. Zula Joshi left her own comfortable bedroom with its en suite bathroom and stayed all night with Nicola? And Opal knew what Nic was like when she was “distressed” in the night too.

  “Is that why the single mattress was stashed in Mum’s room?” she said. Zula nodded. “So why the hell do you want her daughter back in the house after all that? I might have been the same. I might have been worse, if I’d had a good go at it.”

  “But you’re not, are you?” Zula was smiling. “And nothing would be as bad as someone coming in and gutting the place to rent out to more rowdy students.”

  But there was something she wasn’t saying, Opal knew. Zula didn’t care about rowdy—her own five sons had been rowdy since the day they could walk: football and boom boxes, parties that spilled out into the street and fireworks in the backyard, not to mention the taxis roaring up and down and even, in the early days, getting mended right there outside her front door, Mr. Joshi bent over the bonnet and yelling to a son to floor it while the fumes filled the air.

  “How’s Mr. Joshi?” Opal asked. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Buggered off,” said Zula and then laughed as Opal choked on her coffee. “To Huddersfield to look at a new motor. He’ll be back for his tea. He’s fine. Talking about retiring.”

  “And was he as keen as you to get me back again?”

  “I wasn’t keen,” Zula said. What are you not telling me? Opal thought, trying to see Zula really clearly without showing how hard she was looking at her.

  “Going to all that trouble, “ she said. “The highlighter pen.”

  “No more than I’d do for any friend,” said Zula, and Opal was sure she wasn’t imagining the flush, the lily pollen yellow against Zula’s skin. Because for one thing, Nic was a neighbor, not a friend. And for another, paying the phone and gas and insurance was more than anyone would do for a friend. Zula was definitely blushing.