The Hoax

by Paul Clayton

  Cora stood up to do the half-kiss, half-peck on each cheek that she was accustomed to giving, but it seemed to make Frankie even more uneasy. They sat and Cora took a big sip of her coffee. Frankie looked at her cup but didn’t drink.

  ‘Right. What’s wrong?’ asked Cora, placing her coffee back down on the table.

  Getting three children off to school never ceased to be a challenge that Frankie failed. This morning had been pandemonium and, as a result, Henry had been late for school. Shannon had not been on time, either – not that it would have worried her – and Frankie had rolled into work ten minutes late. As they were leaving the flat, the postman was delivering mail. Frankie had grabbed the letter he proffered and pushed it into her bag without further thought.

  Given the morning had proved so chaotic, Frankie had gone into the kitchen at work to make herself a cup of tea at the first opportunity and taken the letter out of her bag.

  Cheryl, who sat three booths down from Frankie and took remarkably few breaks, sauntered into the kitchen.

  ‘Bastards,’ muttered Frankie under her breath, but Cheryl caught the word.

  ‘Who?’ She flicked on the kettle and leaned against the sink.

  ‘Fucking insurance.’ She told Cheryl what had happened.

  ‘That’s all right. Insurance should pay up. That’s what they do.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m not insured. Only third party. And this bloody woman’s insurance company say my car is a write-off and they’ve offered me what they see as the replacement value.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Cheryl. She turned back to her tea making.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s fine. What car I can get with £300?’ Frankie picked up her tea and went back to her kiosk before Cheryl had any further chance to share her wisdom,

  The company banned personal calls at work, but in this instance Frankie took the risk. After a few minutes on hold, during which Frankie kept an anxious eye out for the supervisor, they put her through to someone whom she suspected was sitting in a room not unlike the one she worked in herself.

  ‘I think there’s a mistake with the valuation,’ she began after they had taken her details. ‘It’s her fault without a doubt. She’s liable for replacing the car and £300 isn’t going to do that.’

  ‘I’m afraid Sunquest insurance’s policy is to assess the current value and roadworthiness of the vehicle and make an offer based on those factors. That value has been calculated on the Fiat, and the offer is £300. We can have that paid into a bank account, or we’ll send a cheque if you’d like to give us the details and confirmation you are the person who suffered the loss.’

  Frankie took a deep breath, trying to use the technique they had taught her to deal with difficult customers. It didn’t work.

  ‘I’d like to give you what for,’ she said. ‘It’s a fucking racket. You know that car’s worth more than three hundred quid. There’s no chance of me replacing it for that, not even with an old pile of shit. I’ve got two kids and a school run to do and you don’t give a fuck.’

  ‘Here at Sunquest Insurance, we do take abuse against our staff very seriously. If you continue to use language of that sort, it will force me to terminate the call.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied Frankie. ‘Why don’t you take the opportunity to do that? Terminate the call. And while you’re at it, why don’t you shove your handset so far up your arse that you couldn’t shit it out if you tried?’

  With that, Frankie ended the call and breathed deeply.

  ‘I take it they won’t be paying up, then,’ said Cora.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sue Steadman lived in Larchwood, the most luxurious block of flats overlooking the park, in an elegant three-bedroom apartment on the third floor. Sue had never liked houses. Here she had balconies; a rear-facing one where she could grow her herbs, and a glorious front balcony laden with artificial grass and plants for presenting herself to the world. A picture of refined sophistication. Sue didn’t have green fingers and, quite frankly, she didn’t need them. Just as she didn’t need children. Little bundles of soiled pants running around her home. Her maternal instincts had never flourished and she was perfectly happy to keep it that way.

  What motherly love she had she lavished on Mercedes, and the dog was glad to receive it. He was her baby; he was her darling. She had long since ceased to be the foremost object of affection in Damien’s eyes, but Mercedes loved her unquestioningly and she adored him back.

  That’s why the episode in the supermarket car park had upset her so much. It was an accident, that was all, an accident – and accidents happen. The dumpy woman had made such a fuss. If it hadn’t been for the delightful man from the supermarket and that peculiar red-haired woman who’d helped sort it all out, heaven knows what would have happened.

  The sudden recollection made Sue sit down in the kitchen. Having achieved a remarkably low score on Pop Master with Ken Bruce, which she listened to most mornings, she now got the Colombian Arabica roast ready to make a pot of coffee. She would take the coffee and sit in the lounge to catch up with the Daily Telegraph on her iPad. Sue liked to keep abreast of current events.

  As she put everything on her tray, the doorbell rang – not the entry phone where visitors to the block buzzed in but the bell for the door to her flat. That meant that whoever it was had already got into the block. It was probably Leslie, the caretaker and groundsman, but there was a slight unease in Sue’s gut as she walked down the corridor to open the door.

  She had long wanted to drill a spyhole, but Damien had been against it. ‘We’ve got the video system,’ he’d said. ‘What do we need a hole in the front door for? And don’t forget it can be used both ways. People can put their eyes to the door and have a look down the hallway.’

  Sue thought he was being unreasonable as usual. Other people installed little brass covers over their peepholes which pushed to one side. Given that Damian organised most of the practical things in the household, it had never got done.

  Sue opened the door a little. ‘Oh. It’s you. Should I ask you in?’ As the visitor stood and stared at her, Sue adjusted the necklace around her neck and ran the beads through her fingers. ‘Is there something you wanted?’

  ‘I want to make things fair, about you and your insurance company not compensating for the car you wrecked.’

  Sue didn’t like the visitor’s tone. And this was nothing to do with her. ‘I’ve said all this before. I gave all my details to be circulated to the relevant parties. My insurance company will have decided what’s best, and they’re the people dealing with it. I’m sorry, but you’ve had a wasted journey.’

  She moved to close the door but found the visitor’s left foot pushing against it. ‘That’s not helping. Would you kindly remove your foot?’

  Sue pushed the door open again and stepped forward with the intention of making the visitor take a step back. As she put her foot on the threshold, a pair of hands reached out and grabbed her wrists. Hands squeezed and fingers dug into her inner arms.

  Sue gasped. ‘I’m sorry. That’s hurting. That’s really hurting.’

  The visitor pulled Sue forward by the forearms across the carpeted hallway.

  ‘What are you doing?’ screeched Sue, struggling to keep both her dignity and her hold on the door frame. She felt herself being dragged along the white railings which bordered the staircase.

  The block had a large central glass atrium. A sudden vision filled Sue’s eyes as to what was going on, and her breathing became ragged and harsh. ‘What are you doing? Please. Please.’ A paralysing alarm spread through her body like icy liquid metal.

  ‘Help?’ Her throat closed and tightened as she tried to call again. ‘Help, please help somebody!’ she shouted but she knew she was unheard. The people in the other flats on the top floor worked during the day. She was often the only resident at home,
and she knew there was no one who could come to her aid.

  Sue could hear only one sound, that of her own throbbing pulse. As they reached the top of the staircase, the pressure on her forearms increased and she was yanked savagely forward and spun round at the top of the stairs.

  She looked into her visitor’s eyes, pleading, one last faint cry leaving her mouth as her forearms were pushed and she plunged backwards down the stairs, a crashing, head-splitting, bone-breaking fall.

  Her visitor walked down the staircase and, reaching the second-floor landing, stepped over Sue Steadman.

  Sue felt a pair of hands lock across her forehead and what seemed like a knee or an arm in the small of her back. The hands twisted, and there was blackness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Frankie liked the growing closeness with Cora. As a youngster, one thing she’d always been short of was friends. When she was at school, her mother had never wanted her to bring people home and it became hard to keep in with the other pupils in her class. She’d never found it easy to make friends yet, ever since the morning when Cora had turned up on her doorstep with Henry, something had been different. It just worked. Cora made it so easy.

  Frankie stood in the kitchen with Henry by her side. He was balanced on a small stool doing the last of the washing up. She ruffled his hair. ‘All done, my love. Thank you. You can watch telly with the others now.’ Saturday morning always meant telly for the kids whilst Frankie did some tidying up around them. Then it would be a supermarket run.

  But now she had no car. That meant a fair walk there and carrying heavy bags back. Maybe she could persuade Jonny to help. Henry would jump at the chance, but he couldn’t carry much. And it would be pointless even asking Shannon.

  She was just counting up the cost of getting a taxi back from the supermarket with the boys when her phone buzzed.

  ‘Morning.’ The cheery voice on the other end of the phone sounded familiar.

  ‘Hello. How are you?’

  Cora laughed, sharp and loud. ‘I was ringing to find out how you were. Forgive me if it seems like prying, but I think this is another Saturday without the car to go shopping. Am I right?’

  ‘Too right.’ Frankie turned away from the kids. ‘I was just working out the logistics and who could carry what.’

  ‘That’s why I rang. I think I can help you, my dear. I’m popping round in half an hour. Okay?’ And before Frankie could reply, Cora rang off.

  Frankie stood by the sink gazing out of the window. ‘What do I know?’ she thought. Cora had walked into her life and now she was becoming part of family shopping outings. She understood their problems. She was a brilliant listener. Whenever they met for coffee, it was Frankie who did most of the talking. Cora nodded and listened, made the occasional remark, and she always paid for the coffee and wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The way she’d stood up for Frankie in the supermarket car park and dealt with everything had been remarkable. Just being there, listening to Frankie having a good moan when the insurance company sent their letters had helped. It was as if Cora had landed from another planet or come from some parallel world.

  Frankie had never counted herself as a lucky person. She didn’t win raffles or competitions and, although she bought a lucky dip every week on the lottery, the most she’d ever won was £30. Yet here was Cora giving her time and friendship. Perhaps being lucky sometimes came in other forms.

  ***

  ‘You mean it’s ours?’ asked Henry, as the five of them stood on the pavement looking at the car. A blue Hyundai i10, no Aston Martin but certainly the smartest car Frankie had ever seen.

  Her amazement at its arrival with Cora at the wheel had almost matched that of the kids. They’d all piled out of the flat, Shannon still in pyjamas. There was an embarrassing blue bow attached to the bonnet.

  ‘You can’t give us a car, Cora.’ Frankie knew this was ridiculous; it would cross a boundary of friendship. And yet she wanted it so much. To her, at this moment, it was the most beautiful car in the world.

  ‘Why not? I don’t use it and it’s been sitting in a garage for over a year. The marvellous thing is, I can stop paying rent on the garage – and you’ll have a car to do your shopping.’

  ‘To go to the seaside!’ yelled Henry. ‘Seaside, seaside, seaside,’ he chanted.

  Frankie looked at the car and then at Cora, who was standing next to three beaming faces. Even Shannon had turned her normal grimace into something approaching a smile. Jonny was encouraging Henry to bounce around and shout even louder.

  Cora reached into the front passenger seat and retrieved her bag. ‘Now, I’ve got the paperwork here but I’ve changed it all online and put it in your name. It was a little presumptuous of me, I know, but once I got the idea I just couldn’t stop. How about we make an enormous pot of tea and sort everything out?’ She threw her arms wide. ‘Then who wants to go for a drive?’

  ‘To the supermarket,’ said Frankie.

  ‘And then the seaside!’ shouted Henry.

  Jonny laughed at his brother and soon they all joined in. They were all still laughing when the police car pulled in next to them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Little Girl liked the children’s home. It looked like a doll’s house she’d once seen in the window of the toyshop, with a tall pointed roof with green paintwork, a huge front door in the middle and windows, tall and rectangular, on either side.

  The children’s home was crowded. Little Girl didn’t have her own room; she shared with four other girls and she found it difficult to talk to them. What she liked was that they didn’t seem to mind. There were other children who kept themselves to themselves. The only thing she hated was the locking of the bedroom door at night. If she needed to go to the toilet, they used a chamber pot or what her grandma had called a ‘gazunder’ because, she would say through her laughter, ‘it goes under the bed, dear’.

  Every morning they woke early and dressed, all of them virtually identical in pale-green dresses with a belt, cheap white plimsolls, white socks and dark green cardigans if the weather was cold. The staff who looked after them were not hurtful, but not caring either. After breakfast it was lessons, and after lessons it was lunch, and after lunch it was lessons, and after lessons it was dinner, and after dinner there was a little time when they were allowed to watch television. They were not to change the channel and had to watch whatever the member of staff who was in charge that evening wanted to watch.

  Little Girl became enthralled with the lives of the people on television. The programme she liked most was about a Yorkshire village where the family had been farmers but now were involved all kinds of things like plane crashes and post-­office robberies. The programme was what she felt real life must be like, not her own life but that of other people. People who talked to each other, which was what she learnt to do.

  Little Girl’s best friend was a few months older than her and was called Lottie.

  Lottie and Little Girl talked because it was a way of misbehaving in class. The more the teacher tried to shut them up, the more they snatched hidden, illicit conversations. Lottie said she was in the home because her mother hadn’t been able to keep her. That was how Lottie had put it, but Little Girl could tell there was another reason, something Lottie never spoke of. Yet Lottie had something that made Little Girl very envious – she had a birthday. And she’d had a birthday party with cake and friends in her home.

  Little Girl told Lottie how she’d never had a birthday, how she didn’t have a birthday date, and her parents had never held a party for her. Eventually Little Girl told Lottie about the dolls’ birthday party and how, in a moment, she had decided it was all wrong and fetched the torch to burn the dolls and the box. She remembered how her father had returned home and stood next to her in the back garden of the house, horror-struck at the blaze. The acrid smell of melting plastic limbs and synthetic hai
r filled the air as the sound of her singing grew louder and louder. ‘Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.’

  It was the first time she’d spoken of such things. As she told Lottie, she knew that she would probably never return home.

  Then one day Lottie told her why she was in the home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Frankie couldn’t remember ever having cause to go past the front desk of the police station. Other than an unsuccessful attempt to get a ticket from a cocky parking warden revoked, she’d never been into the building, even when Jonny was in his most troublesome teenage years.

  Now she found herself sitting in a room familiar to her from the last half-hour of Midsomer Murders, the one where the prime suspect ’fessed up to everything. Except she wasn’t a suspect, or at least that’s what they had said.

  PC Ashley had got out of the police car accompanied by a WPC called Barbara Something. Frankie sent the kids indoors and waited with Cora to see what the constable wanted. He was as charming as on his previous visits and said they were investigating an incident involving someone called Susan Steadman.

  Frankie glanced at Cora. That was the woman in the supermarket car park with the mad Audi and the wire-wool dog.

  ‘Yes,’ replied PC Ashley. ‘That’s correct. There’s been an unfortunate turn of events, I’m afraid, and we’d like to ask you some questions.’

  Cora asked what he meant by ‘an unfortunate turn of events’.

  He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I’m not at liberty to say, but I need Mrs Baxter to come down to the station and answer some questions.’

  Frankie’s gut did a little flip. You’d only go down to the station if you were a suspect, and if you were a suspect you’d need a lawyer, and if you needed a lawyer it was already serious. WPC Barbara Something assured her that at this stage it was just some questions, but they did need to do it at the station.