by Liz Evans
‘Did you? See him, I mean?’
‘Saw him pulling out of the lane one evening. We’d been up the cycle place, hadn’t we, Harry?’
Harry gave a noncommittal grunt.
‘Do you ride a bike too, then, Atch?’
‘Not had one of them for years. I mean the cycle place with the big metal bins. We puts the rubbish in them. Tins and the like. We drive it all into town for the bins.’
It just goes to show: I would never have put Harry Rouse down as a born-again recycler.
Atch chattered on happily. ‘That red car of Eric Groom’s came out of the lane as we come back along the main road. Saw it plain as I’m seeing you. And where else is there to go up there but our farm? I looked round next morning; there was tyre tracks all over the place. Fancy ones. Not like truck tyres.’
Harry pulled over abruptly, dragging on the handbrake with more force than was necessary. ‘I’ll drop you out here. Wholesaler’s down the other way.’
It wasn’t as close as I’d hoped, but at least the land in this area had the flat dullness of unbroken marshes. It made for boring scenery but easy cycling. I figured to an experienced cyclist like me it should be a breeze. A couple of miles into the trip, I knew distance had lent a rosy hue to my biking memories. Now the rock-hard saddle was doing the same to the more personal areas of my anatomy again. By the time I rolled into Steeple Ashlyn I was sore, out of breath, and sticky with sweat. And not all of it was down to pumping the pedals. The temperature was creeping up again and so was the humidity. It looked like we were in for a period of cyclical storms.
There were already a few people hanging around outside the church hall. I took them to be the queue for the clinic until I got close enough to hear the discontented mutters and see the scrawled notice pinned to the closed doors: ‘MRS SINCLAIR’S CLINIC HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS. SHE SENDS HER APOLOGIES.’ I swore.
‘You can say that again,’ one of the crowd said. ‘I have to see her. The lot next door is driving me mad. Yelling, screaming, music, day and night. And the filth they come out with when you tell them to shut up. She’s got to tell the council to throw them out. It’s only fair. I voted for her and I know for a fact they didn’t.’
I figured I might as well make use of her by asking if she knew where Faye Sinclair lived.
‘What? Go there, you mean?’
‘I thought I could put a note through her door.’
It was plainly a novel idea. But she was game. And more importantly, she knew the address.
Number 14 Chestnut Avenue proved to be a thirties semi. Not really what you’d expect for the combined incomes of an international lawyer and a Member of Parliament.
My new friend answered to Cheryl. Slapping a bottom that was already packing more fat than Sainsbury’s chiller cabinet on to the garden wall, she dragged out an old envelope and proceeded to list her grievances and what she expected Faye Sinclair to do about them. I pretended to do the same with a scrap of paper I dug out of my bag. Together we marched up the crazy paving pathway, posted our notes through the letter box and stepped back. There was no sign of movement behind the net-curtained bow windows, but I was sure I’d caught the faint notes of music inside as I’d bent to open the flap. Cheryl didn’t seem to have noticed, but that was probably down to the ear-plugs I’d glimpsed under the fuzz of badly permed hair.
‘What now, d’yer reckon?’
‘Go home and wait for her to get in touch,’ I said firmly.
Cheryl wasn’t keen. She seemed to have come with the notion that Faye could get the council hit squad to evict her neighbours by closing time tonight. Eventually, however, I managed to get rid of her. As soon as she turned the far corner, I scooted back. There was absolutely no way I was cycling back here again. I didn’t care if Faye Sinclair was on her deathbed. I intended to get a good look at her today.
Ringing and knocking on the front door produced no response. The music was coming from the back of the house somewhere. Two ornamental stone urns and some dodgy trelliswork provided just enough support for me to climb on to the flat garage roof, run along it and drop down into the back garden.
It was as ordinary as the front had suggested it would be: lawn, shrub beds and stepping stones with a small patio in front of the french windows.
Still working on my story, I shielded my eyes against the sun and pressed my nose against the glass. It took a second for my pupils to adjust to the darker shapes inside. It took ten times longer for my brain to do the same. Whatever I’d been expecting to see, it sure as hell wasn’t this!
23
Faye Sinclair - supermum, super career woman, super-cool - was dancing around her lounge stark naked apart from a towelling bath robe.
I tried the patio door and discovered it was unlocked. Faye was waltzing barefooted to Whitney Houston’s assurances that she would always love her. She seemed oblivious to everything but the music. The reason was standing on the coffee table. Faye Sinclair, Member of Parliament, minister for something-or-other, was smashed out of her tiny skull on vodka.
Humming the tune under her breath, she extended her arms and moved towards me, swaying unsteadily to the rhythm. I was half afraid I’d have to fend off a drunken embrace, but a tricky change of balance threw her just as she passed the sofa and she flailed sideways into the cushions.
‘Damn.’ She hiccuped, sniffed, looked around as if she’d lost something, and burst into tears.
I’m not the sort of girl who regularly carries a packet of tissues in her bag in case the public loo roll has run out. I pulled a lacy mat from under a plant pot and handed it to her.
‘Thanks.’ Her eyes were red with crying and with the remains of make-up smudged liberally above and below. There was more multi-coloured stuff smeared at random places over her face. She looked like a melting Picasso portrait.
‘Who are you? Well, never mind. Have a drink.’ She scanned the room vaguely again. ‘I seem to have misplaced my glass.’
I was impressed. Fancy being able to pronounce ‘misplaced’ correctly in that state. The woman had class.
The trouble was, I wasn’t sure she was Barbra’s Mrs X.
Her partial Chinese ancestry was more obvious in the flesh than it had been on the screen, and at present her face was swollen and blotched by misery and all those haphazardly applied cosmetics. I was going to have to clean her up and calm her down before I could compare her to Barbra’s snaps. I turned the music off and asked Faye if there was anyone else here.
‘No.’ She hiccuped and tied the bath robe more securely. ‘I’m all alone. I’m always alone. Even when I’m with the people who ought to be closest to me, I’m still alone. Do you understand that?’
Completely. However, an in-depth discussion on the realities of loneliness wasn’t in my current game-plan.
Perceived wisdom says the quickest way to sober up a drunk is a cold shower and hot black coffee. Perceived wisdom has never suffered from a stonking alcoholic overload.
Since Faye seemed unalarmed by finding a total stranger wandering in her house, I went in search of the bathroom and turned the power shower to a pleasantly warm temperature. By the time I got back to Faye, she was half passed out on the arm of the sofa.
‘I’ve run your shower.’
‘I don’t want a shower. I want another drink.’
‘Fine. I’ll pour us a couple while you shower.’ She was too drunk to think of a coherent argument why I shouldn’t lead her upstairs and bundle her into the cubicle. I unscrewed the shower gel bottle, put it her hand, stuck a lump of sticking plaster over the bolt on the bathroom door so she couldn’t lock herself in there, and left her to it.
Coffee was no good in her state. It would just increase the dehydration. I found two large glasses, added quarter of an inch of white wine, and topped them to the brim with soda water. Rooting around further in the kitchen produced cream crackers and cheese. I carried the lot back into the lounge and mooched around with one ear open for the sound of t
he water stopping. I decided to give her ten minutes then go up and compare whatever had rinsed out with Barbra’s photos.
The lounge was pink and pale green with display cabinets in some kind of pale wood. Dotted around the place were assorted co-ordinating lamps, ornaments, wall mirrors and silk flower arrangements. It was pleasant enough but gave the impression whoever had furnished it had walked into a display room in a furniture retail park and told them to deliver the whole caboodle. The kitchen had had the same oddly impersonal air about it: there was just enough food and utensils in the cupboards to suggest a self-catering break rather than a family home.
The only truly personal items were a collection of framed portraits scattered over walls and furniture. Faye and hubby Hamish were sparsely represented, but the three daughters were there from babyhood to present day. There were a couple of a boy of about eight who I assumed must have been the kid mentioned in the Who’s Who entry. I wondered why he’d been left out of the at-home piece in the magazine. Perhaps he wouldn’t wear the Laura Ashley outfit.
I explored across the hall and discovered a small dining room with the same ‘furnished let’ feel to it. Faye’s glass was sitting on the polished wood of the table, amongst half a dozen water-marked rings where she’d put it down after each swallow. Scattered around it were a dozen dark green and white bullet-¬shaped capsules.
Cursing softly, I hunted for the container to give me some clue what they were. No luck. The water was still running. I took the stairs two at a time, expecting to find Faye unconscious in the shower tray. She was, however, perched on the bathroom stool bundled in a couple of bath towels and using the corner of one to rub at her hair.
I thrust a capsule under her nose. ‘How many did you take?’
‘I have no idea. Who cares anyway?’
Grabbing the tops of her arms I made her look at me. ‘What were they? What’s in them?’
She frowned with concentration. ‘Sea kelp.’
‘What?’
‘Kelp. It’s good for you. Makes you feel ever so much better. Says so on the packet. Didn’t make me feel better. I feel bloody awful.’ Her face twisted and her lip trembled as the tears welled up. At this rate she was going to get all swollen up again before I could get the snaps out.
Kneeling so that my face was on a level with hers, I said slowly and clearly: ‘Are you sure they weren’t something else? Sleeping tablets? Or tranks?’
‘Tranks?’ Water dripped from her fringe and trickled down her nose as she tried to make sense of the question. Finally she got there. ‘You think I was trying to commit suicide!’
I admitted the idea had crossed my mind. The concept seemed to sober her up slightly. At any rate the slightly away-with-the- fairies expression was replaced by a spark of anger in those jet- black eyes. ‘My mother died when I was ten. Do you seriously imagine I’d deliberately put my own daughters through that kind of pain?’
There it was again. That enviable ability to form coherent sounds when tanked to the gills with booze.
‘Sorry, but you’re not exactly ... I mean . ..’ Oh, to hell with it, why did I need to bother with tact. ‘You’re smashed. Drunks don’t behave rationally.’
Am I?’ Faye Sinclair considered this idea. ‘Good. I haven’t been drunk since I was nineteen. Perfect little Faye Chang mustn’t get drunk. Mustn’t do anything to prove them right. Little Chink tease. Bet she’s desperate for it. They know tricks, these oriental babes. Know how to get a man going. I’m the wrong way round, you know.’
I was still holding on to her. Mainly because she seemed in danger of sliding to the carpet if I didn’t. Impatiently she pushed me off and stood up. Using a corner of the towel, she polished a porthole in the steamed-up mirror and examined her own reflection.
‘Usually in mixed marriages it’s the man who’s English, woman’s Chinese. It’s all right that way round. Well, almost all right. Not other way, though. My father had two first-class honours degrees. He ran one of the most successful import and export companies in the country. But it didn’t matter. My mother’s family never spoke to her again after the marriage. Never wanted anything to do with me. I had to be so bloody perfect. The perfect daughter to prove them all wrong. My father’s living legacy to my mother’s memory. Well, I don’t want to be perfect, OK? I want to be bloody normal! I want to feel something!’
Before I could stop her, we both felt the effects of a tooth mug shattering the mirror. Having made her gesture, she seemed at a loss to know what to do next and stood staring at the fragmented reflection behind the spider’s web of shattered glass..
‘Watch your feet.’ I slung the discarded bath robe down a la Walter Raleigh, and marched her out of there into the bedroom opposite.
The double bed was unmade. Newspapers and colour supplements were scattered over the duvet and floor and the remains of a half-eaten breakfast were still sitting on the bed-tray. The TV was muted but on.
Dumping Faye in a chair, I opened the wardrobe. It had that ‘just here for the holidays’ feel I’d noticed in the kitchen. No clutter, just neat rows of clothes.
I selected black trousers and a white T-shirt. It was the colouring of Mrs X’s outfit in the photograph and would give me a better comparison. Taking some underwear from the drawer, I bundled the lot on her lap. ‘I’ll tidy the bathroom while you dress.’
It wasn’t that I liked housework (you’d probably noticed), but there was something voyeuristic about watching other women dress. By the time I’d turned off the water, opened the windows and located a vacuum cleaner to pick up the glass slivers, Faye had got herself clothed and was sitting on the floor tracing the lines of text in a single-paragraph article in the open newspaper pages.
I peeped over her shoulder. It was this morning’s Telegraph. The headline read: Film producer dies in bizarre slaying.
And I finally saw what I should have seen days ago. If Faye had been heading past Barbra the morning she’d taken those snaps, she must have been walking down Cowslip Lane. And there was only one place she could have been going. ‘Luke?’
‘Luke.’ She whispered it like an echo. ‘Oh, Luke!’ With a cry of despair, she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth.
I did the only thing I could do in the circumstances. I slapped her.
The stinging mark of my fingers was still visible on her cheek when I returned with the drinks and crackers. ‘Spritzer,’ I said firmly. ‘Drink. Eat.’
She was too disorientated to argue. Once she’d nibbled her way through most of one biscuit and downed half the glass, I asked her how she’d met Luke.
‘He’s a friend of my son’s.’
‘The boy in the pictures downstairs?’
‘Peter, yes.’ She picked up a morsel of cheese that had fallen to the carpet and popped it in her mouth. ‘He’s a lot older than that now, of course. My little mistake. First affair. Only affair. Confirmed all the old prejudices, didn’t I? My father threw me out. Literally. His chauffeur turned up at my college rooms with all my things. Put them out on the pavement. I had to sell most of them to keep us both. And move into that awful commune.’
We were sitting cross-legged opposite each other. I’d slipped Barbra’s half-dozen shots of Mrs X into my back pocket when I’d collected our snack. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette for bedroom picnics, but taking them straight out and staring at my hostess seemed like bad manners. A bit of social chit-chat was surely called for first?
‘I thought you liked the commune. I read this mag piece; said you found it an enriching experience.’
‘I read that too. I said it. What else could I say? That they were mostly a bunch of self-indulgent no-hopers who were hiding from real life? God, you should have heard them ... sitting there night after night droning on about how they were going to save the world and not doing one single damn thing to try to change things. But I had to stay. How else could I have finished my degree? Everyone wanted me to have an abortion. Or have him adopted. But I wouldn’t. He
was mine. No one was going to take him away from me. I even had to leave Peter with them for a few years after I joined chambers. There was no possibility of affording a child-minder on what they were paying me for the hours I worked. And God, how I worked. I had to: female; unmarried mother; ethnic minority. Believe me, I had to be ten times better just to stand still, let alone get ahead.’
‘You seem to be ahead of the field now.’
‘Don’t I just. Successful husband, adorable children, lovely home, high-flying career. No ... I tell a lie . ..’ She wagged a finger and rocked forward slightly. ‘Two careers. Barrister and Member of Parliament. Didn’t like the law. Stupid profession. Mr Bumble was too kind. It’s not an ass . .. it’s a whole herd of asses. Politics is better ...’
The alcohol was really starting to kick in now. Even that impeccable diction was beginning to slur. Any minute now she was going to lie down for a few hours - and wake up with a thundering headache, queasy stomach and the words ‘never again’ on her lips.
Sure enough, she started to bend sideways from the waist as I watched. Her head touched the carpet, whilst her legs were still crossed in the lotus position. Amazing suppleness; I just hoped Luke had appreciated it. There was no resistance when I straightened her out into the recovery position and tucked the duvet over her.
She’d more or less confirmed she was Mrs X, and any criminal skeletons in her cupboard would have been unearthed by the press long ago, surely. There was really no need for me to stay any longer. But those capsules bothered me. I ended up rooting around in the waste-paper containers before going outside and tipping out the rubbish bin on to the patio. I finally found the wet and disintegrating blister pack tangled in the remains of a smashed jar of olives. As she’d said - sea kelp.
Reloading the muck into the wheelie and straightening up, I became aware of the sweat trickling down my back. The heat wave was building up again with a rapidity that promised it would break in another electrical storm. I was hot, sticky and facing a very long bike ride home. There was only one thing to do in the circumstances. Invite myself to stay.