As She Left It: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  “Jesus!” she said.

  He was still panting and his face was streaked with sweat and tears, the bags under his eyes bigger and more bruised-looking than they had been the last time—the only time—she’d seen him.

  “I thought you’d gone back inside,” Opal blurted out before she realized that would tell him she’d been listening.

  “What are you doing in my bin?” His voice sounded calm enough, but that in itself made her heart start to pound. He had just been sobbing and smashing stuff with a hammer and now there was someone raking though his bin. He should be anything but calm. He was trying to fool her. He wasn’t going to manage it.

  “Sorry,” she said and she gave him a sheepish smile. “Mine’s full. I was just having a look to see if there’s space in yours. I should have asked really. I should have come and knocked on your door.”

  His eyes flicked over to her bin, but if he was trying to seem calm and normal, he was hardly going to go and check, was he?

  “Nah, you’re all right, love,” he said. “You help yourself if you need to.”

  “Thanks,” said Opal. Then, “Are you okay?”

  “Me?” he said. “Can’t smile wide enough, me. Sorry about the din.” And he took a very deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face. “Brrrr,” he said, like he was splashing himself with cold water.

  “Din?” said Opal. “I never heard a thing.”

  “Except me going back into the house,” he said.

  So he hadn’t missed that little slip then. “So I thought,” said Opal. She looked past him at how far away the house was. She had definitely heard him close the door. She’d never have come out of her yard if she thought he was still around, and yet a moment later there he was again. Opal felt a movement as the hairs on her neck and down her spine crackled, leaving her tingling.

  “I was in the outhouse,” he answered, and Opal nodded slowly. Of course. He hadn’t had time to cross his yard to the kitchen. That door she’d heard closing was the outhouse door. He held up a broom to show her and she nodded again. The outhouse.

  “Well, night then,” she said, and he gave her a look different from all the others before, head cocked, brows high.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Tired,” said Opal. The outhouse, the outhouse. “This weather.”

  “Aye,” he said.

  “Makes it hard to sleep at night.” The outhouse, the outhouse. The hold your nose and shout house.

  “All right if you can keep your doors and windows open,” he said. “All right for me. Nobody’s going to come bothering me, but you’ll be careful, eh love? Lot of funny folk about these hot nights. Full moon too.” He nodded over Opal’s shoulder, and she turned. A pale, glassy moon as big as a lake was just edging above the roofline.

  “Right,” she said. “Thanks for the warning.”

  He blinked. “Advice, love. Just advice. Ignore it if you want to.”

  Grab thee by thy lughole, put thee down the plughole. Opal felt her stomach roll over.

  “Night, then,” she said again, but this time she started moving. She took her wheelie bin with her in through the open gate and then shut the gate behind her and bolted it. Waste of time. He no more believed she was “just checking there was space” than he believed she hadn’t heard all the commotion, than she believed he was just giving her a friendly piece of advice about locking her windows. Pull, pull, pull the chain, wash back up again. She couldn’t stop the voice in her head now it had started. She took the piece of blue plastic and put it inside her bin. It looked like a bit of a skittle or a Frisbee or something. Something a kid would use, although she supposed it might be a dog’s bed or the bucket part of a cheap wheelbarrow. The outhouse, the outhouse, the hold your nose and shout house.

  She really did feel sick now and there was no way she’d make it up to the bathroom in time. Her cheeks were pouring with water. She looked at the outhouse door. Could she pull it open? The toilet, as far as she knew, was still in there. How hard had she tried that first time anyway?

  She went over and grabbed the handle, hauling on it, bracing one of her feet up against the panels of the door and tugging with all her strength. It didn’t so much as budge, but Opal felt something give way. Something inside her body had burst and was flooding her. And she didn’t feel sick anymore. The sickness came from trying not to see what was in front of her eyes and not join up all the thoughts that were skittering around the edges of her brain. She tugged and slammed, crying now; changed legs and hauled again, ignoring the way her foot slid down the splintered door, ignoring the sting as tiny shards of paint and wood dug into her skin.

  Then she gave up, panting. Looked around and picked up the half-brick used for propping the gate open. She stood back as far as she could against the opposite wall and threw it at the outhouse window. It hit the wooden crossbar and rolled away. She picked it up and threw it again, standing closer, not caring about broken glass now. This time it went through, shattering the coated, dusty glass and disappearing. Opal heard a dull thump and a grating sound as it hit something solid in there. She stepped forward and pushed the rest of the pieces in so that one quarter of the window was clear. Then she stuck her head inside and looked down.

  The floor—except it wasn’t really the floor—was halfway up the door, about three feet below the bottom of the window, as smooth as a pond in patches, uneven in others, rippled at the edges, with crumpled, lumpy shapes half-in and half-out of the tilting plane of it. Bags, Opal thought. The bags had been shoved in through the window, the easiest way to get rid of them, and they poked up and broke the surface here and there. In one place, it looked as if a bag was just below the surface—not sunk and not floating. Something was there. Opal turned around and sank down, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the ground with her legs bent like hairpins and her feet, one still bleeding, tucked close in underneath her. There was a noise inside her chest trying to get out of her. A howl. She held on hard and managed to keep it to a low moan that no one would hear.

  Cement. Or concrete. Something Mr. Joshi wanted for his new garage floor and Zula gave to Nic instead. And Nic poured it in through the window and left it to set there. And now Zula wanted to know if Opal was planning any renovations, if she had any bikes or sports equipment that needed storing and wanted to make sure that Opal asked the Joshis to help before she turned to strangers.

  Zula? Mr. and Mrs. Joshi? They couldn’t have.

  Couldn’t have what, Opal?

  And Mrs. Pickess. She told the cops to take Nicola’s house apart and she bought brandy and asked Opal if she’d managed to unstick the outhouse door. But she couldn’t know.

  Know what, Opal? Come on, out in the open.

  And Pep and Fishbo knew he liked hiding. Liked little dark places, little secret places, vans and sheds and behind bath panels. But that didn’t mean they would hide a thing like that.

  Like what, Opal? Just say it. These things always come back no matter how deep you bury them.

  “No,” Opal said, screwing her face up as tight as it would go. No kid could want to be in such a dark, smelly, cold, filthy hole. They were lying. He would have to be lured in there, with a trail of sweets thrown down for him to follow. Bribed in with the promise of a toy.

  She jerked her head up, thinking of the piece of blue plastic, a toy smashed to pieces, treats thrown away. And she put her arms over her head and tried again to keep the howl inside.

  “This is now,” she said to herself. “This is 2010, and you are twenty-five. You’re not twelve anymore. Franz Ferdi wasn’t here then. He’s the only safe one.”

  But that left the rest of them, all around her; monstrous Denny and Margaret saying it’s secret, it’s secret, but telling everyone. And Mrs. Pickess watching, and Fishbo ashy and hacking and secrets locked in his wardrobe, and Pep looking at her like she was dirt and telling her not to think, not to ask, just to leave it be. And Zula Joshi—the sly look from the corner of her eye—and Mr. Joshi�
��s whispered questions, and the hammer glinting and smashing down, and Norah taking her thumb out her mouth and saying “Martin”.

  Opal was stiff and, for the first time in weeks, cold. It was pure night now; the moon, much smaller, glittering down from out of a navy blue sky. Had she been sleeping? Please God let it be that she’d fallen asleep and not just that she’d gone. That hadn’t happened for thirteen years, and Opal had believed it never would again.

  Okay, she told herself. Take another run at it. Breathe deep and stay calm. Stick to the facts. The main fact was that Nicola Jones lived on a street where a little boy went missing, and that little boy liked hiding in small places, and Nicola Jones’s outhouse was half-filled with cement. If Nicola Jones wasn’t her mother, what would she think of that?

  Zula gave the cement meant for her garage floor to Nicola. Vonnie Pickess kept her in brandy. Fishbo kept Margaret’s secret, and Pep Kendal was so grateful he was willing to bathe him. And Franz Ferdi came to live on Mote Street, and he cried all the time and smashed up a plastic bowling set (or whatever it was) with a hammer and threatened Opal. Those were puzzles. But the big fact was that Nicola Jones’s outhouse was half-full of cement and a little kid was gone.

  She stood, pulling herself up like an old lady climbing out of a swimming pool, feeling gravity try to haul her back down again, and wincing as the sole of her foot moved, grinding the splinters in. Then she limped into the house and (advice or warning; it made sense anyway) she locked and bolted the back door and went through to check the deadbolt on the front one too.

  And that was when she saw the gleam of something white on the carpet just inside. An envelope, lying in a patch of streetlight. It must have come through the letterbox since Opal had gotten home. She picked it up and carried it through to the kitchen where the light was on.

  There was nothing written on the front, but why would there be? No one else lived here. She ran her thumb under the seal, opened it, and peered in. It was a photograph and her first thought was that Pep Kendal had forgiven her and brought over something of Fishbo’s to help her out after all. But then it was far too new to be Fishbo’s family back in New Orleans. This photo was colour. A little girl, pale skin but wild natural hair, sitting on a step in the sunshine, chubby hands clutching chubby knees, round face beaming. Opal looked at it for a minute, and the first thing she recognised was the step and then the wall and the patch of carpet.

  It was here, No. 6 Mote Street. And the little girl was her. It was a picture of Opal. Why would someone deliver that with no note?

  She turned the photograph over and let her breath go. There was a note after all, written on the back of the picture itself, in black felt-tip printing. Then she read what it said and dropped it, wiping her hand on her tee-shirt.

  Curiosity killed the cat. This little kitten is still too young to die.

  THIRTY-THREE

  OF COURSE HER THOUGHTS were going to fly to Franz Ferdi. Of course they were. His gleaming hammerhead whistling through the air, his sudden appearance at her side, his friendly “advice” that wasn’t friendly at all. But it couldn’t be him, because how could he have a picture of Mote Street from years ago when he had only just moved here? So Opal put him out of her mind.

  But he crept right back in again. Hadn’t she wondered why he had moved to a new place when he obviously hated it, crying alone in his house that way? What if he hadn’t moved to a new place? What if he had moved back to a place he’d been before?

  She put him out her mind again, more firmly this time. If he had lived here when Opal was a baby, all the other neighbors would remember him. Not that you needed to live in a place to take a photo there. But why would you take a photograph of a random kid in a random street where you were a stranger?

  As soon as she had asked herself the question, she saw the answer plain and clear. And what would she rather believe? That Craig Southgate was buried under concrete in the earth floor of her outhouse or that the man who snatched him was back and living right next door? It couldn’t be both. Unless Franz Ferdi knew Nicola all those years ago and used her yard. And that would explain why he was back again, in a way. Come back to the house with the shared wall where he could take his time, chip all the concrete out, dig up the body, and finally take it away.

  Crazy, she told herself. Insane. (As opposed to all the sane thoughts she’d been having, all the uncrazy ways little boys could just disappear? Right.)

  But then why would Zula have provided the cement, and why would Mrs. Pickess have bought the brandy? And anyway, Sandy and Nic were still married when Opal had been that little girl with the chubby knees. How could Nicola know Franz when Opal’s dad was still here?

  And speaking of Vonnie Pickess, Opal had tipped her hand only hours ago, hinting that way about a bottle of brandy. And that photo was taken from right across the street, right outside Mrs. Pickess’s front door.

  But it was Pep Kendal who had seen Opal actually snooping, going through Fishbo’s things, letting her “curiosity” get the better of her. The note made more sense if it was him who sent it.

  But if she was thinking of people who knew she was snooping, there was Denny too. He’d more or less told her to stop stirring the pot, hadn’t he? Could he have done it? Opal could no more imagine him writing that threat than she could imagine him getting out of his chair, raking through whatever box or album Margaret’s old snaps were in, leaving the house, and lumbering over to push the envelope through her door. If he had told Margaret, though … Opal shook her head. Margaret could physically do it, but she’d never write such a thing, threatening someone she still thought of as a child, still loved like a child, when one grandchild was gone and the other one was kept away.

  But what if Opal’s message to Karen had hit home? If she’d called her parents maybe, or written to them, and hurt them all over again? If Opal’s interference had made it worse somehow, could Margaret have been pushed to write the note then?

  No way. Margaret and Denny just weren’t the kind of people who do something so furtive as write a threat and quietly put it through a door. They hated secrets, for one thing—Margaret bursting out and telling everyone over and over again a secret she couldn’t keep inside, and Denny wanting so much to let it go and tell the police the whole story even if it came back on his head and ruined him. And for two (and Opal wasn’t proud of thinking this), it was too subtle for them. Margaret would just have come over and sat at Opal’s kitchen table, drinking tea and begging Opal to stop meddling. That was her way. She didn’t go at things sideways.

  Then, thinking of sideways made Opal think of sideways looks, sidelong glances, casual asides meant to find things out without ever really asking. Which took her back to Zula Joshi. Made her think—and now her thoughts were racing—of the sideways plan Zula had hatched to get Opal back here; nothing as blatant as phoning her up and telling her about the tenancy that was Opal’s if she claimed it. No, just forwarding mail, paying bills, not even saying who was doing it, just letting Opal make the discovery for herself, decide for herself that she was coming home.

  But why would Zula suddenly push that photo through Opal’s door tonight? It was days since they had even spoken. To stop Opal connecting the warning with what she had said to Sunil about the DIY?

  Did that make sense? If Opal couldn’t so much as connect the warning to what she was being warned about, how could the warning really warn her? She put her head down on the table and groaned. It was late and she was tired and she couldn’t make sense of anything.

  She didn’t even know what she was being told to stop interfering in. Craig? Fishbo? Some bit of Franz Ferdi’s business that was nothing to do with little Craig at all? Some bit of Pep Kendal’s business that was nothing to do with Fishbo’s family?

  The safest thing would be to stop meddling in all of it.

  She should concentrate on the little bed girl. The mystery of Norah Fossett and her creepy brother, Martin. At least she knew the photo and the note had nothing t
o do with that golden thread. Then she raised her head.

  Did she? Shelley wasn’t too keen on Opal hanging around Miss Fossett, and she knew Opal’s address. But would she go as far as threatening Opal? Sure, if it was Shelley who was boosting all Norah’s stuff and selling it off. Maybe there was no niece and nephew. Maybe Shelley had just persuaded Norah to say there was. The poor old soul was a bit hazy about whether or not she had a brother, wasn’t she? Maybe Shelley was acting all kind and neighborly and quietly paying off her mortgage thanks to Claypole’s auctions.

  Opal was beginning to like this idea. Her thoughts tumbled forward, meeting no resistance, until her eyes lit on the photograph in front of her again. She shook her head and almost laughed. Right. Shelley had a picture of Opal from twenty-odd years ago. Sure thing.

  Time for bed.

  She dragged herself to her feet, checked the back door, checked the front door, fastened the front and back windows (trying not to think about what an oven the house would be by the morning), and went upstairs. She needed to butt out of Fishbo’s past, in case it was Pep who was threatening her. She needed for sure to butt out of looking for little Craig, in case it was Zula or Mrs. Pickess or the Reids (it couldn’t be!), and she needed to keep the extreme hell away from her new neighbor, whether or not threatening notes were in his repertoire along with smashing toys and buying kiddie-snacks that went straight in the wheelie-bin.

  But at least she could go full steam ahead with Miss N Fossett, the little bed girl. Bad things bloody well shouldn’t happen to little girls and even if they did, someone had come along and found out, and now she knew.

  She put the photograph of the wild-haired little girl with the beaming smile next to the note from the quiet little girl who couldn’t stop saying sorry. She fastened her window, thinking about Norah’s window and the thick black bars. She pulled a chest of drawers across in front of her door, thinking about Norah’s door with its little brass bolt, and then, imagining Norah safely tucked up with the prayer book on the table beside her, door latched and windows barred, she climbed into the high, safe ship of her own bed. And even after everything she had been through that long hot horrible day, she was asleep while the air in the sealed room was still cool and sweet around her.