‘Watch?’
‘I was told I could.’
She looks surprised.
‘Well, yes, you can, if you want,’ she says uncertainly. ‘It’s just that people generally don’t.’ She flicks the pages on her clipboard. ‘I like to think I’m creating something here, but most of the time I’m just a glorified babysitter.’
I look around the hall. I’m the only other adult there.
‘It’ll be nice to have an audience for a change, won’t it, girls?’
The chorus line nods. There are whispers to Esme, curious smiles. I walk to the row of orange plastic seats along the back of the hall.
‘Right, here we go, girls,’ Mrs Frobisher says. ‘This time with music. Remember your timing.’
The girls kick out a can-can to music so loud it’s distorted and makes the speakers throb. Esme flashes me a quick smile. My smile back is weak, clouded by memories of Amy performing in her school assemblies, bobbing up and down to each note on the piano. Dana, next to her, doing the same, but out of time.
Esme has Amy’s rhythm and flair, but she doesn’t have her star quality. The thought grows like a bruise. The more I look at her, the less I see of Amy. They look alike but are not alike – in the same way Amy was completely different from Dana, despite the so-called physical similarities.
Their teachers struggled to tell them apart. I couldn’t see why. They had the same colour hair, but Dana was shorter than Amy, her features pinched, her body clumsy. Amy was the natural choice for Baby Spice. Dana was more Ginger. She forgot her gym bag every week, hit bum notes on the recorder and read by following the words with her fingers and moving her lips. Not like Amy at all.
The only time I saw any kind of similarity between them was when she stood in for Amy in the reconstruction for Crimewatch. My heart broke a thousand times when Dana appeared in copies of the clothes I’d last seen Amy wearing. They looked so ordinary then, not the stuff of enduring memories. Of living nightmares.
As Dana played on the swings, joyless and blank, I wished for someone to grab her instead. That’s not something I like to admit to myself, but it’s true. I prayed that when the cameras stopped rolling, it would be Amy’s face that appeared from under her hood. When it didn’t, Dana was a very poor swap.
Esme is too. Yes, she’s kind and bright, quick and considerate, polite, sincere and pretty. But it feels to me like she’s making an effort, that she has all the facts and details of Amy’s life off pat, but has left out the core of the girl.
I realise now that I’ve had no true sense of Amy ever since Esme turned up. I’ve been blind to the deficiency. Swept up in wishful thinking, confusion, hope, grief – fear. Too busy with hard facts, details and painful memories to feel the soft insinuations of instinct.
Esme is just a shell protecting the truth, and even the hardest shells can be broken. I won’t go at her with a hammer blow. I’ll do it carefully, so she won’t notice. Like pricking an egg with a pin and slowly sucking out the yolk.
At the end of the rehearsal most of the girls drift away together. A couple of mums turn up but just stand at the door, trailing cigarette smoke. They’re gone before I get the chance to talk to them, and Mrs Frobisher is too preoccupied with turning off lights and locking up.
‘Did you like it?’ Esme says, her forehead damp with sweat.
‘You were wonderful,’ I say, giving her a tissue to wipe her face. ‘I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Are you feeling okay?’
‘Yes thanks. Except I’m starving. I hope Mum’s doing something yummy for lunch.’
‘Maybe we could get some crisps on the way home,’ I say.
As soon as we turn the corner, I regret taking the detour to the sweetshop. Billy Gibson is smoking outside with a couple of other boys. He nudges them and they laugh.
‘Here they are,’ he says through a haze of smoke. ‘Lady Gaga and Lady La-Di-Da.’
‘Piss off.’
‘Esme! Please,’ I say. ‘Just ignore him.’
Billy roars with laughter.
‘Oh, I say, Esme, please,’ he mimics, his voice posh and high-pitched.
‘You’re such a prick, Billy Gibson,’ Esme yells.
‘Esme!’ I put my hand on her shoulder, but she pulls away.
‘You’re not exactly an expert on pricks, are you, Esme?’ Billy sneers as I open the shop door.
I tell Esme to take her time choosing what she wants, hoping the boys will be gone by the time we leave. But when we come out, they’re still there.
Esme pushes past them. Billy Gibson sniggers and waggles his tongue at us, as if licking an invisible lolly.
‘La la la Lady Gaga and la la la Lady La-Di-Da. La la la Lesme.’
I put my hand on Esme’s shoulder and steer her on before she can think of going back. There’s a flush of pink in her cheeks and her fists are coiled. She flicks a finger at him. He laughs.
‘What’s that?’ he says. ‘Practice?’ His fingers flutter and poke at the air. ‘Oi! Lady La-Di-Da!’
I keep on walking, not daring to look around to see if they are following us. But as we turn the corner, I glance up.
Billy Gibson flaps a pink wet tongue at me. He shouts something, but the cheers from the betting shop door and the blast of a car’s faulty exhaust drown him out.
I can’t be sure, but the last word he says sounds like Henry.
I slip out on Sunday morning to get a newspaper. At least that’s what I tell Libby. She doesn’t usually bother, she says, they’re just a waste of money. Either gloom and doom or so-called celebrity gossip. It’s the gossip I’m hoping to find – only not in the papers.
Billy Gibson is in the same spot I saw him yesterday, only this time he’s on his own, smoking. He sneers as I approach, blows a funnel of smoke at me.
I take a twenty-pound note from my pocket. His eyes widen.
‘I ain’t no rent boy. Even if I was, I wouldn’t do crusty old grannies.’
‘I don’t want you either,’ I say. ‘I just want some information.’
His eyes narrow with suspicion.
‘About what?’
‘Henry Campbell Black.’
He walks towards me, hand out.
‘You from the social or something? Police?’
‘Of course not.’
He grabs my arm, snatches the money from my hand and jumps away.
‘I wouldn’t tell you nothing,’ he snarls. ‘Fucking Lady La-Di-Da, slumming it, flashing her cash.’ He waves the money at me. ‘Ta for this, though. Easiest money I’ve ever made. No biggie that they call it mugging. ’
He flicks his cigarette butt at me, laughs as I flap it away, and runs off.
It’s not worth reporting him to the police; they’d only say it was my fault. I should have known better, been more careful.
I walk towards an old man shuffling in the direction of the newsagent. The threadbare Jack Russell at his side growls as I get closer.
‘Henry Campbell Black?’ he says, holding the dog back. ‘Don’t ring any bells. People come and go all the time around here now. Not like it used to be.’ He nods towards the newsagent. ‘Try in there.’
The Asian woman behind the counter is so engrossed in her magazine I have to repeat my question twice. She shakes her head.
‘No.’
‘Could you check the names on your paper round?’
‘We don’t deliver papers. None of the kids want to work.’
She raises her eyebrows when I buy an Observer and drops the change into my hand as if I’m infectious.
The greasy-looking man in the Spar next door says he’s only just taken over the shop so doesn’t know many people by name yet. He suggests I try the bookmaker.
I walk to the corner, but Ladbrokes is shut, the pavement dappled with ground-out cigarettes. The metal doors of the Beaten Path pub are locked and the streets are empty. Curtains are drawn tight across windows. I feel trapped, shut out. The grapevine the cab driver promised is withered and broken.
The cab driver.
I take out my purse for the card he gave me.
‘Cab.’ The woman’s tone is clipped and bored. ‘Where to?’
‘Manchester city centre.’
‘Picking up at?’
‘The Beaten Path,’ I say, checking the name of the pub. ‘Wythenshawe.’
‘Yup. What name?’
‘Beth. Is Dave working today?’ I cross my fingers.
‘Which one?’ the woman says. ‘We’ve got three.’
‘Oh, I don’t know his surname. He’s about fortyish, short black greying hair. Red car.’
‘Ah, that’s Dave Hadfield. Aka Mr Manchester!’
‘That’s the one.’
‘You sure you want him? He never shuts up.’
‘That’s why I want him.’
She chuckles.
‘Suits me,’ she says. ‘Keeps him out of the cab office bending my ear.’ There’s the rustle of paper. ‘He’s on an airport run right now, so he’s not far from you. Just a tick.’
I hear her talking in the background, the hiss of radio static.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘He’ll be with you in ten minutes.’
It’s a long ten minutes. I feel conspicuous, stranded. As bleak as the maisonettes and tower blocks around me.
Dave gives a toot on his horn as he pulls up to the kerb.
‘Hello again,’ he says through the open window. ‘Are you waiting for the pub to open, or have they just tipped you out after last night?’
The car is warm; the smell of the citrus air freshener doesn’t quite mask the trace of pastry. Dave brushes some crumbs from his lap into his palm and throws them out of the window.
‘Cornish pasties,’ he says. ‘Food of the gods. And a godsend to busy cabbies.’
‘Even if they are from Cornwall?’
‘Manchester can’t take the credit for everything.’ He wipes his lips. ‘Whereabouts in the city centre do you want?’
I puff my cheeks out.
‘I’m not really sure.’
I hadn’t intended going anywhere; it was his time and knowledge I wanted. But now he’s here I feel relaxed. Safe. It’s good to have a conversation where I don’t have to scrutinise every comment or be on my guard. And it makes a change to hear a man’s voice. His has a soothing timbre and the accent is rhythmic and rounded.
‘Another mystery mission, is it?’ he says.
‘Yes. Surprise me.’
He nods.
‘Right. King Street will do you, I think,’ he says. ‘Plenty of things to keep you occupied down there.’
‘Such as?’
‘Posh frocks and jewellers. Kendall’s is just across the road and then it’s straight up Deansgate for the Barton Arcade and Selfridges. Credit card beware.’
The car pulls away from the kerb. I text Libby that I’ve gone for a walk to give her some time alone with Esme, and sink into the seat.
‘I didn’t even know Manchester had a Selfridges,’ I say.
‘We’ve got two actually. Which is, let’s see . . .’ he raises his eyes as if counting, ‘one more than you’ve got in London.’ The wink in the mirror makes me smile. ‘We’ve got a Harvey Nichols too.’
‘Ah, designer cloth caps and clogs.’
He laughs and accelerates to get through an amber light.
‘They’re all out of clichés, I think.’
We drive pass brown brick warehouse apartments, the large windows fretted by metallic blinds. Glass office buildings scratch at the sky. Dave sighs as the traffic in front of us crawls to a halt. He lifts a hand from the steering wheel to cover a yawn.
‘I’ll call it a day once I’ve dropped you off, I think,’ he says. ‘Been at it since midnight, me. Need some kip before the match this afternoon.’
‘Who are you playing?’
‘We’re not. It’s City v Spurs at home. I want Spurs to thrash them. Then there’ll be lots of happy cockneys in a generous mood looking for a cab to Piccadilly station.’ He yawns again. ‘If I can keep awake, that is. I need coffee.’
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘You’re the native. Where’s good for coffee? On me.’
He looks at me quizzically in the rear-view mirror.
‘For real?’
‘Absolutely. I don’t want any chain-store muck, though. I can get that anywhere. I want Manchester’s finest brew.’
We end up in a café just off a large square dominated by the white ferris wheel I saw on Esme’s postcard.
‘Not quite as impressive as the London Eye,’ I say, as I sip my coffee.
‘Ah, but all you can see from the London Eye is London.’
‘And up there you can see the Pyramids and Niagara Falls, I suppose?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’m no good with heights, me.’
The whole area was redeveloped, he tells me, after an IRA bomb exploded in 1996.
‘Fifteenth of June,’ he says with a shudder. ‘Worst day of my life.’
‘You were injured?’
‘No, thank God. Not physically, anyway. I was in town that day, though. I was just coming out of the electricity showroom when . . . boom.’ His throws his hands up. ‘If that shop’s windows had blown out I’d have been cut to ribbons.’ He shakes his head. ‘It was a beautiful day, too. Blue sky and sunshine. Manchester don’t get many of those, so having one ruined by the IRA was a good enough reason to hate them. But what they did to my city? Bastards. All them people cut and bruised and shocked. All them shops and businesses shut – a lot of them have gone for ever.’
‘It must have been awful.’
‘Do you know the thing I remember the most?’ he says.
I shake my head.
‘The whole sky turning grey,’ he says. ‘Just for a moment.’
‘Yes, I can imagine. All that dust and smoke.’
‘No. Not smoke,’ he says. ‘Pigeons. Thousands of them, all taking off at once. Like a big silver wave crashing over the city.’ He lifts his cup to his mouth and blows on his coffee. ‘That were an omen, that.’
‘Of what?’
‘All this.’
He points to the buildings outside. The gleaming glass and metal of new buildings contrasts with the white and grey stonework of Victorian edifices.
‘Regeneration. All the cash that poured into the city. All the jobs.’ He laughs. ‘Funny, eh? That something meant to ruin the city actually brought it back to life.’
I think of Amy and Esme, of transformation, regeneration, rebirth. Explosions, dirt and blood.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he says, twirling a teaspoon in his fingers. ‘It gutted me at the time. Really shook me up. I’d never felt unsafe in my own city up till then. It was like it had turned on me. Me sister felt the same. She used to live in a housing association flat not far from here – nice place, too. But would she go back after the bomb? Would she heck as like. That’s how she ended up in Wythenshawe.’
I’d forgotten about his sister.
‘And she feels safer there?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. No one’s going to bomb Wythenshawe! Mind you, there are some who think it would be a good thing.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, but . . .’
‘Not exactly for tourists, eh?’ he says with a laugh.
‘Some of the locals are . . . colourful. Billy Gibson’s practically wildlife.’
He snorts.
‘So I’ve heard,’ he says.
‘You know him?’
‘Only from what my sister’s told me. The whole family’s a nightmare by the sound of it.’
I wriggle forward on my chair.
‘Has your sister ever said anything about Henry Campbell Black?’
He looks away and screws his face up.
‘Don’t ring any bells,’ he says. ‘Sounds a bit posh for Wythenshawe. The only double barrels you’ll find around there are on a rifle.’ He leans forward. ‘Why? Is he giving you problems?’
‘Only that I can’t find him.’
‘Ah, so that’s what you’re doing up here,’ he says with a wink. ‘What’s he done?’
‘He’s a friend of the woman I’m staying with. He’s just disappeared and we’re trying to track him down for child support.’
He grimaces.
‘I hate it when men knock women up and do a runner,’ he says. ‘Bloody cowards. Happened to me sister before she met her husband. She’d have kept the baby if the bloke had hung around.’ He takes out his phone, dials a number and puts it to his ear. ‘Henry Campbell Black, was it?’
I nod and put my elbows on the table, chin cupped in my hands. Dave curls his lip and shakes his head.
‘No answer,’ he says. ‘I’ll try again a bit later. Give me your number and I’ll let you know if I have any joy with her.’
He smiles as he punches my number into his phone.
‘Let’s hope me wife don’t get nosy.’
That afternoon, I keep my phone beside me during a game of Monopoly with Esme and Libby. Esme chooses to be the top hat, as she’s seen them used in black and white musicals on TV. Libby goes for the sack of money. I opt for the howitzer.
Esme has a knack of avoiding properties that don’t belong to her and throwing doubles to get out of jail free. Her side of the board bulges with cash from the fines she collects, and she constantly rearranges it to make sure it’s still there.
When I land on Bond Street she doesn’t even need to look at the card to see how much the fine is. She knows the penalties for all her other properties too, regardless of the number of houses or hotels.
‘You’d make a slippery landlord, Esme,’ I say. ‘I’m being fleeced in my own city.’
‘I’m good at the Manchester version too,’ Esme says, greedily tucking the cash into her pile. ‘But I prefer the London one. It’s more glamorous.’
‘There’s nothing glamorous about Pentonville Road! Or the Elephant and Castle.’
Esme picks up the dice and jiggles them in her hand.
‘The subway tunnel ramps at Elephant were good for skating down,’ she says. She throws the dice and moves the top hat along the board. ‘But the tramps and winos at the bottom were scary.’
Libby shoots me a significant glance.
The ringtone on my phone makes me jump. The screen says Dave.
‘Ah, it’s my friend Jill,’ I say. ‘I’d better take it in the bedroom. It’ll only be about the church jumble sale.’
The Second Life of Amy Archer Page 17