As She Left It: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  “Shit!” Opal said. She stood up and, still limping a bit from where she had banged her knee, hurried to the corner. Karen’s car was out of sight already, well gone. “Shit!” she said again. “Bugger it!”

  She could walk all round the other streets of this suburb—or whatever it was called—and hope to see the car, but for one, Karen had headed back towards the main road, and for two, if she lived close by she probably wouldn’t bother with her car anyway.

  She could give it up, catch the next bus back to town and come again another day, wait in a taxi at the end of the street and … except taxi drivers probably wouldn’t follow a car in real life. Or borrow a bike from someone. One of the Joshis, except how subtle would that be, following Karen on a bike, pedalling like a maniac trying to keep up? She’d be seen for sure.

  Then Opal stopped her pacing, hobbling, whatever it was. Idiot! Why did she need to keep from being seen? What was she going to do, anyway? She was going to walk up to Karen and ask her a load of questions. She could have sat beside her on the bus and started then!

  “Stupid arse,” she said out loud, and she went back to the car she’d hidden behind and leaned her bottom against its boot, like it was home base or something, shaking her head and calling herself more names. She’d forgotten all about it being in someone’s front garden and the possibility that they might come to the door and start throwing plates at her. Or—since this street wasn’t really a plate-throwing kind of place—might come to the door and take a photo of her to show the police so she’d get done for trespassing.

  TWENTY-SIX

  AND THAT’S WHERE SHE was, leaning there, when Karen’s car came back around the corner and stopped in front of her, pretty much blocking her way.

  “I told you!” said the little girl, craning to stare at Opal. “She was hiding. Like a baddie. I told you she was here.” Karen turned round and said something Opal couldn’t hear. The little girl sat back sharply, taking herself out of view, and Karen turned round and smiled at Opal through her open window. An awkward smile, with a bit of swallowing.

  “Sorry,” she said. “My little girl.” She rolled her eyes. “Too many cartoons! She said you were—”

  “I was,” Opal said, not taking a moment to think it through. Karen was so embarrassed that she might just put the car back into gear and slide away again before Opal could stop her. She pushed herself up off the boot and walked over to the open window. “I was waiting for you, Karen,” she said. Karen blinked, and Opal thought she swallowed again.

  “Do I know you?”

  “You haven’t seen me for a while,” said Opal. “Maybe you don’t remember me.” This time Karen definitely swallowed, pretty hard. “It’s about—” She stopped, dropping her voice. That little girl wasn’t even old enough for school yet; maybe she didn’t know. “It’s about Craig.”

  Karen whipped her head round so fast Opal almost missed her expression.

  “You sit here, Jodie,” she said. “Mummy’s going to talk to this lady.”

  “Wanna come,” said the girl, whining and wriggling in her safety seat.

  “You just sit here like a good girl. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Jodie instantly stopped moving and clasped her hands together between her chubby knees. Opal had a flash of Miss Fossett, perched on her kitchen chair.

  When Karen turned back, the look on her face had been smoothed away, but she was pale, Opal thought, looking yellow behind the tan or makeup that gave her face its colour, and she fumbled a little as she got out of the car and closed the door again.

  “Do you mind if we stay out here?” she said, nodding towards the front door of the house. “I don’t want to be out of sight of her.”

  “Oh!” said Opal. “No. I don’t live here. Your little one—Jodie?—was right enough. I was kind of hiding out here, watching for you. I live—”

  “You were on the bus,” Karen said, as if just remembering.

  “Yeah,” said Opal.

  “You followed me?”

  “Yeah,” Opal said. “Sorry, but I really want to talk to you.”

  “About”—Karen moved away from the car—“about Craig?”

  “Yeah. And his dad.” Now, for sure, Karen Southgate—if that was still her name—changed colour, and Opal thought it was definitely makeup on her face, not tan, looking bright and streaked now as all the blood faded away from under it. Her lipstick had mostly gone over the course of the day too so that her lips, turning blueish, only had a bit of red left on the outside edge at the top, like a little red moustache.

  “Who are you?” Karen said.

  “Opal Jones,” said Opal. “From Mote Street. You probably don’t remember me.”

  “Mote Street.” Again, it wasn’t a question, just an echo.

  “I live across the road from your mum and dad and, Karen, I don’t know if anyone’s told you but—”

  “Did they send you to find me?” The sound of her voice was like nothing Opal had ever heard before, somewhere between terror, rage, and the mumbled sleep talk of someone coming round after anaesthetic.

  “I’m really sorry,” Opal said. “No, they didn’t send me. They don’t know I’m here, but I’ve got to say, if you want to see them—especially your dad—if you want to make sure you see him again, you better not leave it too long.”

  “I don’t—” she said, but it came out as a yelp and from the car a small voice said, “Mummy?”

  “One minute, Jodie!” Jodie stopped straining against her belt but kept staring out at the pair of them with round eyes. Opal could see the white all the way round the blue, the clearest part of the little girl’s face inside the shade of the car.

  “Okay, that’s one thing,” Opal said. “I think you should come and see Margaret and Denny. That’s one thing, yes.” She was steeling herself. This woman was really hard to talk to—barking at her kid, couldn’t care less about her parents. “But also, I want to talk to Robbie if you can help me find him. Tell me his address maybe? If you know it?”

  “But who are you?” Karen said.

  “I told you,” said Opal. “Opal Jones. I live across the road from your mum and dad. I’m Nicola’s daughter. You must remember Nicola.” Karen nodded, but very vaguely. She was studying Opal hard, or maybe just staring at her and thinking hard; Opal couldn’t say.

  “But you were long gone by then,” she said. “Why are you asking me all these questions?” Opal thought to herself that she had only asked one question, really, but she didn’t say so. “What’s Robbie to you?”

  “Nothing,” said Opal. “Except him and my mum were friends. Good friends. And after … what happened … because of them being friends, the police were at my mum. Like she was a suspect. Nearly.”

  “And are they still?” said Karen. She was staring very hard at Opal and her chest was starting to heave again.

  “The police?”

  “Friends. In touch. Together.”

  “No,” Opal said. “Or otherwise I’d know his address, wouldn’t I?”

  “Right,” Karen said.

  “And actually my mum died.”

  “But before she died,” said Karen. “Did she tell you anything. Did she know anything?”

  “No!” said Opal. “Jesus! Of course, she didn’t. But the police thought she did. They searched her house and everything. Ripped it to pieces.” Karen was blinking hard, and Opal realized she shouldn’t have made it so clear she was thinking of a thing hidden, not a boy hiding. She hurried on, trying to cover up the horrible pictures she might have conjured with more and more words. “And now I can’t ask her why the police did that, and I just want to know, and I thought Robbie might be able to help me.”

  “My husband would never have harmed a hair on his head,” Karen said. “I’ve never said any different.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” Opal said. “I just want to find him and talk to him.”

  “Where do you get the nerve?” Karen’s voice was loud.

&nbs
p; “Mummy?” The little girl had undone her belt and was kneeling up on the front seat now.

  “I really didn’t mean to upset you,” Opal said. “I know you must—”

  “You don’t know anything,” Karen yelled at her. “You weren’t even there.”

  “I know, I know,” Opal said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think how it would sound. Look, like you say, I wasn’t there. I went away when I was twelve. I never saw my mum again before she died. I must have flipped out or something to be bothering you like this. But look—that’s what I’m saying to you. If you don’t go and see Margaret and Denny and let them see your little girl, you might end up with all these things you want to know and want to say but it’ll be too late. How can you be right here and go past them on the bus every day?” Karen was staring, stunned, her arms hanging at her sides, and it was Opal shouting now. “I was a little kid, and I had a good reason. I must have, eh? And at least I was in Whitby, which is a half-decent way away, but you could be there in ten minutes in your car and how can you?”

  Something very strange was happening to Karen’s face now, red patches climbing up out of her shirt collar and spreading over her neck, creeping around the corner of her jaw and bringing her face back to rosy life, instead of the yellow mess it had been. And since her chest was heaving up and down, Opal couldn’t help thinking that it was those gulped panicky breaths that were pumping the colour up into her face. And she wanted to tell the woman to slow down, calm down, before all her blood ended up in her head and the rest of her just fell in empty crumples onto the ground.

  “Mummy, please!”

  Jodie was sobbing, with both her fat little hands pressed on the front glass, but Karen stood, frozen, nothing moving.

  “And I know more than you probably think I do,” Opal said. Karen started backing away from her towards the car, and Jodie’s sobs rose and quickened. “Go and see your mother. For God’s sake, before it’s too late. She’s talking. She’s so unhappy she can’t help herself. She needs to see you.” Karen had got to the car now and she opened the door and sank into the seat. Jodie immediately clambered over and wrapped herself around her mother, arms and legs, burying her face and pretty nearly screaming. But she might as well have been hugging a tree. Karen didn’t stroke her hair or rock her, but just stared at Opal until Opal, sickened with herself, tore her eyes away. She walked past the car back towards the main road, not looking in as she passed, but saying a soft apology she hoped Karen would hear over the muffled crying.

  It was twenty minutes before a Leeds bus came along, but the car still hadn’t appeared by the time Opal climbed on board and took a seat by the window. Maybe there was a different way out of that little scheme of houses somewhere. Or maybe Karen was still sitting there.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “HIYA,” SAID OPAL, WHEN Miss Fossett opened the kitchen door. “I’m glad you heard me knocking this time. I wouldn’t want to just barge in.”

  “Hello,” Miss Fossett said.

  “It’s Opal.”

  “Opal!” said Miss Fossett. “That’s a pretty name.”

  “So’s Norah,” said Opal. “Can I come in?”

  Miss Fossett’s face clouded a little.

  “I’m not supposed to,” she said.

  “I know,” said Opal. “Strangers. Shelley told me.”

  “Shelley!” said Miss Fossett, and it was like open sesame. She stood back and let Opal walk in.

  The kitchen wasn’t quite as bad as before, but Miss Fossett had been making cocoa, so between the milk that had boiled over onto the cooker top, the sprays of dry cocoa powder over the table, and the wet clumps of cocoa all over the draining board, it was bad enough. Opal looked into the pan at the thick blackened layer coating its bottom.

  “Did you get your cup of chocolate?” she asked.

  Miss Fossett screwed her face up and shook her head. “It tasted funny,” she said. “I put it down for the cat.” She nodded at a plate sitting on the floor half under the sink that had a dribble of pale pinkish liquid in it, flecked with burnt bits.

  “Have you got a cat?” Opal said, thinking what a poor bugger it was if so.

  “Smoky,” said Miss Fossett. “We got him when he was a tiny kitten you fed off a spoon, and I used to dress him up in my bonnets and push him in my pram.”

  “Your dolly’s pram?” said Opal. She was running hot water into the cocoa pan and wiping up the worst of the dribbles.

  “Emerald,” said Miss Fossett. “She had green eyes and red hair. I got her for my birthday.” So Opal lifted the long-gone cat’s dish and added it to the hot water filling the sink.

  “Let’s try again,” she said. “Where’s the co— Oh, I see it.” Inside the tin, it didn’t look too good, but she dug around and managed to get enough for two cups without having to use any of the lumps. That would have to do. “Milk in the fridge?” She didn’t look too closely at the shelves, just took a carton out of the door, sniffed it and filled another pan. “So were you allowed to take your kitten to bed at night? Or did you take Emerald with you?” She had been thinking on the bus—as soon as she decided to make up for upsetting Karen by going to Miss Fossett and giving her some of the company she was so obviously pining for—that she should try to get the old lady to talk about the past, the very distant past when she was a little girl. It was easier than she’d been expecting.

  “Smoky wasn’t allowed upstairs,” Norah said. “And Emerald’s hair was too pretty to let her get jumbled about. I had my teddy bear. Binks.”

  “Because it’s a big house, this, innit?” Opal said. “A little girl could get scared at night in a big old house like this, without something to cuddle.” She was watching the milk beginning to shimmer in the pan and didn’t look around until the silence had gone on for a minute or two. When she did glance up, Miss Fossett had wrapped her arms around her shoulders and was hugging herself hard. She had a sleeveless dress on, baggy and loose in the armholes—it was that hot this summer; even old ladies were wearing clothes with no sleeves—and her little fingers with their horny fingernails were digging deep into her skin, the little bit of flesh so soft her hands seemed to be squeezing right down to her bones.

  “Hey,” said Opal. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Milk,” said Miss Fossett in a tiny voice and Opal jerked her hand away from the pot handle as it boiled over again and the foam doused the gas and sizzled on the burner.

  “Bugger it,” she said, and Miss Fossett giggled. “There should still be enough for one.” She poured a cup, whisking hard with the spoon trying to make it as nice as it could be, a treat to take the nasty memories away. Or maybe she was just salving her own conscience because she knew she was going to bring them back again.

  “Where will we go?” she said. “Where do you sit?”

  “In the morning room,” said Miss Fossett. “I’ll show you the way.”

  She trotted off along the corridor Opal had glimpsed before, past door after closed door, past large paintings all thick with dust so the people in them looked like ghosts. And there were ropes of cobweb hanging from the lights, reaching like swags to the tops of the picture frames. And the carpet was dark and flat in the middle where feet passed up and down, and only at the edges and in the corners could you see that once it had been red and had a pattern cut into it of swirling leaves. It rustled underfoot as if it was laid over straw or something. Opal couldn’t remember feeling that before.

  Miss Fossett had trotted to the front of the house and turned to look back at Opal, waiting.

  “The morning room,” she said, sweeping her arm out to the side. She stood against the light coming through frosted glass panels at the front door—or a vestibule, anyway—and Opal could see very soft pale hairs in her armpit. Beside her, lined up behind the vestibule door were three shopping bags on wheels. The first of them was wicker with a curved bamboo handle and black metal wheels. Then a tartan one with black vinyl sides. The last one was made of rucksack material, bright green with
a logo and a handle made of chrome with a rubber grip.

  “Are these all yours?” Opal said. Miss Fossett turned and looked at where she was pointing.

  “All mine,” she said. “I was going to get a new one, but I don’t …

  they come now, so I don’t … ” She shook her head as if she had got water in her ears and was trying to get it out again. Then she smiled at Opal. “The morning room,” she said. “Do come in and do sit down. It’s very nice to see you.”

  Opal went in, but sitting down wasn’t so easy. Miss Fossett’s chair was set about three feet from a big old television as deep as it was wide, and there was a tray table on casters pushed to one side, holding the channel changer, a pair of glasses, some tissues, and a tube of lip salve. Every other seat in the room was occupied. There were two full three-piece suites, Opal noted looking round, as well as a round table and six chairs set into the corner bay window, and every chair was packed like a suitcase. It wasn’t like stuff just lying around; they really were packed. Linens on one, tablecloths probably, folded to fit the space and heaped up exactly level with the top of the headrest; rolled towels on another, a pyramid of them; and photograph albums—tricky things to heap up that many of, but Miss Fossett had managed it, using the longest thinnest ones to build up the sides and the shorter fatter ones to fill in, like those walls you see out in the country made of stones with nothing holding them together except the skill of the builder. The LP records had defeated her: they were tied together with hairy green string to make blocks and then these blocks had been built up like the photo albums too.