The Third Person

by Stephanie Newell

  ****

  Fri 16th December

  At a quarter past eight tonight, a burst of coughing upstairs turns into sob. With alarming speed, the sob turns into an undulating wail like the siren we sometimes hear echoing over the marshes.

  I close the drawer I’ve been rifling through and hurry upstairs, worried there will be a domino effect. Pram-dwellers are similar to dogs. I know this from observation in town. If a baby opens its mouth and starts to howl, there is an immediate chain-reaction. All the others follow suit until the entire non-speaking population has turned into a solid wall of noise. They have no idea why they’re crying so nobody can offer them any comfort.

  I peep round the bedroom door, realising, as I do so, that Samuel has no idea who I am. He’s only seen me once or twice in the village shop, plus that time Mr Phillips kindly gave me and Katie a lift home. Generally, on all such occasions, we’ve given each other a wide berth. Now I’m blocking the entrance to his bedroom and when he looks up he’ll see a total stranger.

  He’s in the process of trying to climb out of bed, legs tangled up in the eiderdown. When he sees me he freezes.

  His wail turns into a scream. ‘Mummy!’

  ‘I’m Lizzie!’ I say in my friendliest voice. I need to shut him up before he wakes the baby. ‘Let’s go downstairs. Choccy biccies!’

  As with dogs, the only way to the heart of a small child is through an appeal to its appetite.

  Samuel struggles and screams hysterically in my ear when I try to pick him up. I bundle him downstairs, into the living room. The cat flees its place on the sofa as the howling, writhing mass enters the room.

  He won’t even take hold of the biscuit I offer, let alone start to eat it. He kicks me violently.

  ‘Mmm! Yummy-yummy!’ I shout, noisily stuffing the biscuit in my mouth to show him how tasty it is.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ he bawls.

  I carry him through to the kitchen, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and baby George upstairs. The cat looks at us in alarm and disappears through the cat-flap.

  I tell Samuel about all the chocolates I’ve got for him, but I have to shout to be heard above the racket. As a result, I probably sound a little bit less of my friendly self than usual.

  Samuel only knows one word.

  ‘She isn’t coming home till later.’ I shake my head at him. ‘No mummy! No, no, no! Big fat mummy’s gone away!’

  I will not let this boy get his way. He will have to learn who is boss here.

  I put him on the kitchen floor and sit on a chair staring at him severely.

  After about three quarters of an hour, we’re both completely exhausted. His face is purple, and his mouth is a trembling crater inhaling and exhaling streams of spit. But he seems to have realised I’m not going to kill him, much as I’d like to. He has also learnt a useful Lesson to remember for future reference: he will never win a battle of wills against a person like me.

  He finally takes the biscuit and holds it miserably, waving it in the air like a flag of surrender. His hands are so hot the chocolate melts all over his fingers. By the time I carry him upstairs and put him back in bed, there are smeary chocolate streaks all over his blue pyjamas.

  ‘How was everything?’ Mrs Phillips asks when they arrive home.

  I’m exhausted.

  ‘Sammy coughed a bit,’ I say. ‘I gave him a biscuit, but apart from that everything was fine.’

  ****

  Mon 19th December

  I can see that Katie appreciates the honour I am bestowing upon her, because she pushes people out of the way in order to get to the front of the bus and rushes up the road, eager not to lose a precious minute of her allotted time. Afterwards we’ll retire to number sixteen for our usual after-school snacks and drinks. I don’t want to miss tonight’s delicious cocktail.

  The whole idea occurred to me during the bus journey home. Since my encounter with Mrs Nelson on the seawall, Katie has been on permanent look-out to make sure nothing else happens with Those Three Girls at school. If there’s any trouble, she has to go and find a prefect to tell one of the teachers. Those Three Girls will be suspended if they bully me again. Tonight, by inviting Katie round to see my room at number eleven, I’ll be able to subtly let her know she’s making substantial progress towards becoming my potential friend. But I’ll never pick up my knife and fork and eat humble pie in front of her.

  Helen is forbidden from joining me and Katie.

  ‘Go straight up the road,’ I instruct my sister, ‘and tell Mrs Nelson we’ll be there in exactly thirty minutes.’

  ‘Do this. Do that. Yes ma’am,’ Helen mutters as she bangs the door behind her.

  As Katie and I hover in the hallway, I realise that there’s nothing in the house to offer her, not even a bag of crisps. Worst of all, I’ve made no plans for how to keep track of my sister’s whereabouts during Katie’s visit. Helen could be sailing freely past the Nelsons’ house at this very moment, up the road to see him.

  I’m annoyed with Katie for letting me invite her round.

  ‘Quickly phone your mum. Tell her Helen’s on her way and we’ll be there in half an hour.’

  Katie laughs when she sees our grey plastic phone screwed to the wall with its circular, rotating dial. The Nelsons’ downstairs phone has a keypad for swift dialling and a very long flex. Mrs Nelson tucks the receiver under her chin and walks all round the house during her conversations.

  ‘Did you make sure Helen got in?’ I ask when she gets off the phone.

  ‘That’s all fine with Mum. Helen’s there now.’

  ‘Just put your stuff here,’ I say, throwing my schoolbag and coat on the floor. Only now do I notice how seriously Helen’s been neglecting her cleaning duties recently. Balls of dust huff up in the draft when I drop my things.

  ‘Haven’t you got a spare hanger for this?’ Katie asks meekly, sliding out of her Laura Ashley coat and eyeing the mound of shabby outdoor garments clinging to the wall. I can’t remember what the pegs look like underneath all the coats.

  If she continues to criticise our house, we will go straight back outside and she will never be allowed back in. This kind of behaviour is typical of only children.

  I try not to sound irritated. ‘Put it over the banister, or on top of my coat.’

  She puts it on the banister.

  As we climb the stairs, I notice how frayed the carpet’s become, and how scuffed and chipped the gloss paint looks all the way along the skirting-boards.

  Katie stands in my bedroom doorway with a confused expression on her face. She turns in circles as she enters, as if she’s searching for something. Finally, she focuses on the neat row of sealing-wax sticks on my mantelpiece. ‘Everything’s really old-fashioned and funny in here apart from those crayons.’

  I walk over to the Exhibition Area on my mantelpiece and pick up the ancient sealing ring Dad gave me, engraved with an antelope leaping elegantly through the air. ‘This is a Roman Centurion’s seal. It’s over two thousand years old.’

  The antelope is suspended, mid-air. He’s disappeared from one place, but hasn’t yet landed in his destination. He’s caught between two worlds.

  Katie wanders away to the table by my window. She picks up a calligraphy quill. ‘It’s like a museum in here!’ she says, flourishing the feather.

  ‘I’ve got twenty-eight different nibs,’ I explain, walking over. ‘They’re arranged in size order at the front of the table. Those are my Winsor and Newton coloured inks at the back. I keep my black ink, cartridge paper, pencils and ruler on this side. When I finish a bottle of ink, I bury it in the garden for somebody to find in a hundred years’ time.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a stereo?’ she interrupts.

  ‘I’ve got a radio so I can listen to the Top Forty.’

  She looks at my bed. I wish I had a duvet.

  ‘Haven’t you got any teddies or dolls from when you were small?’

  ‘I’ve got that ballerina you gave m
e,’ I say casually. The porcelain figure stands in pride of place on top of my chest of drawers. ‘And I’ve still got lots of books from when I was a child,’ I say, pointing at Crime and Punishment and Hamlet.

  I select my favourite nib, plug it into the wooden pen, ink-stained from use, and pull the black ink towards me. ‘Want to see me do some Gothic Script? I’ll write a No Entry sign for your bedroom door if you like.’

  But Katie has already moved away. I carefully replace the lid on the ink bottle and unplug the nib. As I turn around, I catch sight of Katie Nelson’s left hand stretching out, tentatively picking my smallest blue poison bottle off the glass shelf, enveloping it tightly, and returning to hang by her side.

  ‘Don’t touch those!’ I rush over.

  She freezes, looking guilty. ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘Yes you did.’

  ‘I was just looking at them.’ Her pale face has acquired two scarlet stains, forming perfect spheres either side of her nose. She can’t persuade her eyes to meet mine: they dance about in mid-air above my left shoulder.

  ‘Give it back, you thief!’ I point at the criminal hand.

  ‘I haven’t got it.’

  We both look at the clamped fist for a while.

  Slowly, with a look of disbelief, Katie unfurls her fingers.

  ‘That is my favourite exhibit,’ I inform her in my coldest voice. I retrieve my tiny bottle from her clammy palm.

  ‘It’s so small and pretty.’

  ‘It’s not yours to take.’

  ‘Don’t tell my mum and dad. My dad’ll kill me.’

  As I reflect on how to punish her, I realise that certain mitigating factors relating to school will have to be taken into account, otherwise I might forfeit my playground protection.

  ‘That depends,’ I say.

  ‘Please don’t tell them!’ she begs.

  ‘I can see why you did it because it’s so beautiful,’ I begin, in a sympathetic voice. Her white teeth emerge from behind her lips in a cautious smile. ‘But you should never take stuff off friends or family.’

  She will, of course, be banished from number eleven on a permanent basis from now on.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

  ‘Yes you did! You decided to take it!’ I’m glad I’ve never been tempted to tell Katie Nelson about my collection of stolen goods. Then she would be able to take the upper hand and hit me back with it at this moment. ‘I won’t tell your mum and dad, but only if you agree to help me with something.’

  By the time her thirty-minute visit is over, Katie has read aloud and signed a binding contract to follow my sister on Mondays and Wednesdays between seven and eight o’clock in the evening so that I can watch my favourite programmes on telly. She will write weekly reports, due every Thursday, detailing all she’s seen. She holds the rolled-up contract at arm’s length in her left hand while I drip scarlet wax onto the seam and stamp it with my antelope seal.

  ****

  Tues 20th December

  Helen has stopped writing in her False Diary. It’s remained completely blank for nearly six weeks. This is the clearest sign yet she’s hiding something. I’ll have to work extra-hard to flush out the Real Diary and make it spill all the beans and pulses.

  I search her room patiently for other clues. Her underwear drawer contains stretchy pants with faded Disney characters on the fronts. Knickers she’s owned since she was six or seven mingle with her more recent acquisitions, including those Mr Men knickers I spotted when she was in the bathroom.

  ****

  Fri 23rd December

  ‘How’s Helen?’ Mrs Phillips asks. ‘We hardly ever see her these days.’

  You hardly ever see her, I think to myself, glancing over at Mr Phillips to see if he looks guilty. He sits on the arm of the sofa with the Radio Times, feigning innocence by pretending to read. There’s a picture of Margaret Thatcher on the page he’s studying. I will locate that page after they’ve gone and, when he walks me home tonight, I’ll test him on its contents to see if he really read it or not.

  ‘She’s always out and about in the village, especially on Monday and Wednesday nights,’ I tell Mrs Phillips, enunciating my words carefully. I observe him out of the corner of my eye for a response. ‘She keeps disappearing. It’s difficult for us to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘That’s why I never see her. I’m at evening classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.’

  Mrs Phillips is so dense.

  ‘Okay, let’s go. Have you got everything you need?’ He throws down the Radio Times and ushers her through to the kitchen.

  They pull the back door closed behind them, sealing me into their world.

  This whole babysitting arrangement has several pros and one serious con which I need to think about carefully before deciding whether or not to continue. The pros are, first and foremost: he always walks me back to number eleven at the end of the evening. We stroll down the road, just the two of us, in the dead of night, our arms almost brushing together while the rigging on the boats chimes out like church bells on the creek. I ache for him to reach out and touch me, and he almost does so on numerous occasions. I keep him talking for as long as possible, entertaining him with stories about school, or engaging him in conversations about things I’ve read in the Guardian or Radio Times while babysitting. I try to make sure most of this takes place on the doorstep of number eleven so we’ll burn holes in Helen’s ears upstairs.

  A second pro is that I like earning a pound an hour in return for watching telly and exploring their house.

  There’s only one major con. My babysitting is actually strengthening Mr and Mrs Phillips’s relationship. He can’t possibly love somebody as ugly and fat as her, but I’ve noticed certain subtle changes in the way they relate to each other since I started my Friday-night duties up the road. She used to nag him all the time, telling him ‘do this, do that, find this, find that.’ Now, however, when they leave the house, she often holds his hand, or she stands beside him stroking his back.

  Mr and Mrs Phillips always leave the key sticking out of the lock in case I need to go into the back garden for any reason. They probably think I need to nip outside for cigarettes, but I don’t smoke. I don’t like to go near that door. After dark, behind the panes of glass, black shadows flicker and creep about in the garden, and the cat-flap clatters on windy nights. A narrow passageway runs down the side of the house onto the drive and the street beyond. I’ve lurked at the other end of that passageway countless times, feeling the shadows creeping up on me from the garden.

  Every surface inside is littered with books and magazines. I pick up a book called Pure and Untouched by Barbara Cartland. The cover has a picture of a handsome man leaning out of bed, staring at an innocent girl with long brown hair. The girl doesn’t know he’s looking at her. The man isn’t wearing any pyjamas.

  I start to read the novel, marvelling at the rich language.

  I might grow my hair a bit longer.

  I turn off the Christmas lights because the flashing colours are giving me a headache. The book is compelling, but I force myself to put it down because I want to concentrate on my ongoing investigation of the house.

  When I open the lid of the bureau in the living room, invoices, receipts, blank forms and half-written letters cascade to the floor. Panicking, I bundle them up in my arms with no idea of the correct order, push them back inside and close the lid: it gapes a quarter of an inch open, and bits of paper slip out through the crack like tongues getting ready to tell tales on me.

  The obese cat gazes at me without curiosity from its place on the sofa, then lowers its head onto its paws.

  I open the bureau again with a lot more caution. This time, I carefully put my right hand through the gap and hold all the stuff in place while I ease the lid open with my left hand.

  The loose documents inside all seem to relate to shop business. There are order-forms, invoices, and print-outs from suppliers. Each time I find a hand-written letter or a card, I read it. I wa
nt to find out more about him, his likes and dislikes, where he’s from, why on earth he married her.

  Most of the letters are to Mrs Phillips from someone called Maggie in Australia. Maggie’s handwriting is really neat, although she puts circles instead of dots on her i’s. Rebecca says that kind of thing is common. We must never circle our i’s. Once or twice, she refers to some troubles, but I can’t find any letters explaining what she means.

  Stuffed in amongst the paperwork are packets of photographs. There are hundreds of pictures of Samuel and baby George. It’s a shame there aren’t any pictures of him on his own. The best I can find is a snapshot where George is lying asleep in his arms, nice and low. I’ll be able to cut a straight line across his shoulders, throw the baby away, and keep the top part for myself. I tuck the picture in-between a bar of Dairy Milk and a Twix in my bag.

  At the back of the bureau I see a row of compartments. Carefully, I reach into each one and pull out the contents. In amongst all the old postcards, there are some loose photos. I gaze at a faded black-and-white print of a girl standing on a sandy beach in her knickers, holding a bucket and spade, smiling up coyly at the camera. I wonder if it’s Mrs Phillips when she was a girl. It’s strange to think she had dark hair as a child. After that, there’s a photo of a different girl, an ugly, dumpy creature with long pale hair and a doleful mouth, wearing a bikini and standing by a horse. This one is far more likely to be Mrs Phillips.

  I’m amazed by the third photo: it looks just like my sister, dwarfed by an elephant at the zoo. Behind this picture is another one of the same girl, this time at a swimming pool. It’s definitely not the pool in town.

  I carry them into the middle of the room, hold them under the main light and examine them closely. This girl certainly looks like Helen. How could he take her on special outings, not me?