My new spiritual awareness did make me smile, and was eons away from the pragmatic Rachel of the West Midlands police force. But the efficiency that had made me a good officer was also the trait that enabled me to block out Joe’s unhappiness at my plan, his whispering of something I could never quite catch, never quite understand.
Was it Joe’s reluctance, or my own?
I rose from the bed, exhausted with half-formed thoughts. I decided to go to the library and properly read the letters Amanda had sent to her ‘lover’. I’d been putting it off; it was too sad reliving Amanda’s life. But soon I would have to write my letter – Amanda’s letter to Michael Hemmings.
As I padded down the dark hallway towards the front door, smelling the pungent herbs, I caught sight of Mrs Xú.
‘Mrs McCarthy ... you ok?’ she asked.
‘Of course, why wouldn’t I be?’
She seemed to look into my very core and touched my hand with her own, her skin silk-like, and a shiver passed over me as she pressed her fingers lightly onto the new ‘Gorski-perfect’ skin on my left hand, then upwards towards my wrist.
‘You are sad.’
The chill that ran up and down my spine rocked me. I was very sad, and wanted to tell her but pulled away instead. This was ridiculous. She knew nothing about me. I thought back to our visits to the Chinese doctor, who’d been more than he’d seemed; I’d known it, and I sensed a very young Joe had too. The Chinese man knew a long time before the conventional doctors what was wrong with Joe. The herbalist possessed more than just a gift for prescribing herbs.
As did Mrs Xú.
‘Something very not right and you not listening.’
I took a deep breath. Thinking I knew what she was saying, thinking I knew everything but knowing that if I did I wouldn’t be here. My life would have been so very different if I’d known everything.
I smiled towards her, humouring her, this woman whom I didn’t know but liked. And the smell of a tree’s boiling roots overwhelmed me.
She said, ‘Sometimes I see, and feel, too much.’
‘I have to go,’ I said, feeling breathless and confused. Quickly I put a foot outside the door and, as I stepped onto the pavement, a young girl hit me on the arm as she whizzed by on skates. Everything consuming me. Everything hurting and aching.
‘Watch where you’re fucking going,’ the girl shouted. I looked at Mrs Xú’s window above the shop doorway. I felt her silence, even outside. Felt her hesitance as strongly as I sometimes felt Joe’s and my own.
I could not confide in anyone.
Making my way towards the nearest bus stop for King’s Cross and the library, I side-stepped mid-morning tourists, avoiding the shop windows that reflected back Marek’s work. I didn’t want to see what I’d done. I put my head down, hunching my shoulders forwards, now concentrating on the task ahead: writing a letter to Hemmings.
After finishing in the library I planned go to an internet café nearby. Razor had been doing some more work for me. This time regarding Margaret.
At the library I found an empty table and sat down, retrieving Amanda’s letters and writing paper from my bag.
I’d arranged for a mailing service in the States to forwards the letter from ‘Amanda’ to Littleworth, so it would bear an American postmark. I was leaving absolutely nothing to chance. What I’d managed to find out about the ‘inner workings’ of Littleworth, and Michael Hemmings’ part there reminded me of the cleverness buried underneath his thick coat of pseudo-insanity.
Uneasiness enveloped me at each reading of Amanda’s letters. I read them again now, listening to the laboured breathing of the old man who was sitting next to me. The desolation of Amanda’s life still shocked me. In the library, and with a clear image of where Amanda came from and who she was, I wrote my letter. Amanda’s pain and mine meshed together. By feeling hers so intensely, I managed to convince myself that what I was doing was right, but felt like a voyeur and a betrayer of trust. Silently, hunched up on the plush new library seat, I asked Amanda to forgive me and wondered if I could ever forgive myself. Three times I crumpled the letter in a sweaty hand.
The old man turned his head at the sound of crumpling paper. ‘Is it a love letter?’ he asked.
I shook my head, but smiled. I didn’t mind his inquisitiveness.
Finally I finished the letter, padded out with many of the incidents that Amanda had conveyed to Stephen Passaro, the murderer she’d befriended on death row. Only the thought of Hemmings stopped me from screwing up the paper again. Hotness rose in my cheeks and the pain in my thighs, and my heart, swamped me.
—
Outside, I reeled at how busy London was, my head still filled with sheep sheds in Ohio, cattle prods and young children living in absolute terror of a man who should, if there was any justice, never have been born.
Leaning against the wall of the library building I asked myself: could I face the unsavoury truths that might be waiting for me in an email about Margaret?
The internet café was full. I waited in a torn fake leather chair for a terminal to become free, preparing myself for what I might find out about Margaret. I allowed my head to rest on a grimy wall and closed my eyes, revisiting my childhood. Back to the day I’d found Michael in Margaret’s bedroom. This time I didn’t see from afar, as someone else: today I remembered as Rachel again.
My dad had finally returned home and still my mother had said nothing. I had followed her around the house, wanting to ask what had happened and why Michael had been sitting on her knee with her nipple in his mouth. The fear I felt for my mother had receded with my intense curiosity.
I remember her cooking lunch; everything perfectly ordered in her kitchen. Pots gleaming and the familiar smell of roasting chicken, mixed with her lavender scent. My parents ate and I don’t think my dad saw anything was wrong. I couldn’t eat as my stomach was still cramping periodically. (Later, we found out it was a spastic colon.) The tension in the house seemed to be prolonging the attack. My dad read the newspaper after finishing his homemade apple pie. I drank some water. He got up and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. I would normally. I shook my head, rubbing my stomach. He patted the top of my shoulder, telling me to rest, and off he went.
Despite my cramps, I picked up the tea towel and dried up.
‘Why was Michael here ... why was he doing that?’ I blurted after the second plate.
‘You didn’t see anything. Michael wasn’t here.’
‘He was, Mum. Why was he doing that? I don’t think Mr Roberts would let Mrs Roberts do that with Wayne.’ Wayne was Mr and Mrs Roberts’s nephew.
And she turned, looking at me, not looking like my mother, not looking like anyone’s mother. All I remembered now was the feeling of emptiness.
‘If you mention this to anyone, Rachel, I will slit you in two.’ She held up the sharp knife she was washing. The suds falling like fairies from the blade.
It would be years before I mentioned the incident again.
I felt warmth enter the café. I tried to lift my head because I smelt sweet toffee.
‘Joe, Joe...’
A light kiss on my cheek but I was unable to move, as if paralysed.
Finally I opened my eyes, feeling a prod on my arm. A woman chewing gum indicated a terminal was free. I nodded a thank you, which she ignored as she carried on filing her nails.
I sat down ignoring the pain in my thighs, a memory of the scar on my hand where the skin was now smooth and pale.
I logged on and, after a few seconds, my email account popped up. A message from Razor. He’d been busy. I hadn’t told him who Margaret Hemmings was, but he knew. Of course he knew, and was probably intrigued. I sensed his ingenuity as much as I’d done the numerous times I’d interviewed him at the station.
I clicked.
His words lay in front of me. Did they shock, were they a surprise? A long time afterwards I’d admit to myself that although shocking, the words weren’t surprising.
B
efore me, before she looked after Michael, my mother had been an English teacher at a private boys’ school. She had left her post very quickly, amid rumours that she had been asked to resign. Knowing my mother, I knew immediately that she would have only left if there was a compelling reason to do so. The compelling reason was substantiated rumours that she was having inappropriate liaisons with the boys in her care.
I thought back to when I started my career in the police. How Michael Hemmings had been checked out, a given considering his conviction history. Tom wouldn’t have been keen to promote me too quickly if I had a past he had to worry about. Neither of us suspected my mother would be a problem. I wondered now: had he ever checked out Margaret? If he had, he’d obviously found nothing. Margaret had fallen from Tom’s, and the force’s, radar.
Razor had done an excellent job in his digging.
Feeling too hot, I took off my jumper. I pushed the chair back and stood, stretching legs that felt like dehydrated twigs. I shielded the screen from anyone that might be looking. Shame gathered around me like laden clouds before a sea-storm. Humiliation that she was my mother; angry discomfort that it was only now that I was allowing myself to dredge up memories so deeply buried – by me, and my dad.
Michael Hemmings was a monster, but my own mother had carved his character.
I felt my eyes redden. The girl with the gum and the dirty nails was sitting at the next terminal. She glanced at me quickly, and away just as quickly. I was on my own, doing what I knew was right, in the world I occupied hour after hour, day after day, year after year. What I was doing was the only outcome.
All I needed now was to hone Amanda, be Amanda, and I would be ready.
CHAPTER THIRTY
By the time I returned to Mrs Xú’s the sun was already losing its daytime lustre. Her shop was closed for business and I wondered if she’d opened up at all. I let myself in through the residential door and made my way up the darkly carpeted stairs. Turning left towards my room at the top of the staircase, I saw a whisper of light fall from the open door. My pulse quickened as I moved nearer. I threw my handbag and jacket on the floor ready for confrontation, anticipating a burglar, a madman off the streets of London.
I nudged the door with the tip of my finger. A sound came from the direction of the bathroom, and I steadied my pulse with long breaths and moved towards the direction of the noise. The bathroom door was half open; I pushed it further with a shoeless foot and entered.
An ebony black cat slithered between my legs, out of the bathroom and ran from my room. Exactly three minutes later I began to sneeze. I was allergic to cats, a fact that had made Joe, who loved them, sad. I now realised why my nose had been constantly running since coming to Mrs Xú’s.
I wedged open the bathroom door, hoping that whatever cats gave off to make me sneeze would eventually disappear.
Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire to talk to someone. I made my way back downstairs to find Mrs Xú and knocked on her door. No answer. The door next to her rooms opened directly into the shop, and was open. The shop was closed but Mrs Xú was busy. Smells permeated the small space. The cat sat on the wooden table where she worked. Mrs Xú chopped and cut. Several jars of powdered something sat on the table, and a few more were lined up on the floor. The cat moved its head, looking up to watch me, as did Mrs Xú.
‘Don’t like people here when working.’ She said it not unkindly but forcefully. The cat meowed, jumped from the table and slunk itself around its mistresses ankles. Mrs Xú stopped chopping, took a deep breath and sighed. ‘But do not mind you being here.’
And that was when I saw the grief, in its complete unprocessed form, the sadness I’d seen when I’d first met her.
‘I do not know what you doing but should stop.’ She bent down and stroked the cat. ‘I had son. Gen was name. Was in South Tower.’
South tower, what was she talking about?
Then it hit me. 9/11.
‘You’re American?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she watched me closely.
‘What happened ... to your son?’
‘The day of disaster was his birthday. My husband gone to New York to be with him. Thirtieth, very important birthday. Husband went office to see Gen, early morning ... on ninety-sixth floor, have look Gen’s new place of work ... Was new job.’
‘And your husband was there ... with your son?’
‘He was.’
Instinctively I moved closer and put my arm around a tiny shoulder.
‘I know grief,’ she said. ‘Hatred ...’ she watched me. ‘Desolation. No matter what do, problem always there.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘Know too much, always known too much. Knew bad thing going to happen to Gen, knew from day was born, but could do nothing. That is not way of nature, could not interfere.’ She leant against the table.
Fatigue folded over me. ‘Mrs Xú, I’m so sorry about your husband and son, I truly am. I understand ...’ I tried to find the right phrase. ‘I understand your gift, but with all respect you know nothing about me.’
I thought she would question me but didn’t. Did she hope that she could help me by sharing her own heartache? Her story was no less sad than my own. She slumped onto a stool and I saw Mrs Xú move to another place inside her mind; and I could see it; a familiar place that I understood.
For what seemed like an eternity we were silent. Then she rose from the stool and reached underneath the table, pulling out a jar of herbs. ‘Boil these up ... I think know how,’ her expressionless face broke into a smile, ‘make you less sensitive to Mr Cat.’
I took them. ‘Thank you.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was an easy ten minute walk to Cambri and, as at Mrs Xú’s, it was difficult to identify the correct door. The school wouldn’t have been found by accident. After asking several unhelpful people, I walked into a delicatessen that I knew was in the right vicinity. A massive man who was serving a tiny old lady – ‘6oz of ham, 4oz of camembert, 4 pickled eggs ...’ she was saying – looked up and grinned.
‘I’m looking for Cambri, any idea where it is?’
‘Here, sort of, next door, darlin’. Just press the big silver button on the door outside.’ He looked at the 1930s Bakelite clock that hung in pride of place on the back wall of the old-fashioned counter, above shelves of cheeses and hams. ‘Nearly ten, Stanley should be here now. He’s not normally late, but it’s Monday. Has to get over from Ealing. Godforsaken suburb.’
‘George, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Ealing.’
I turned at the very English voice as the old lady nudged past me, scurrying from the shop.
‘Ah, Stanley, there you are. This lady’s hoping to get in,’ George said.
Stanley was tall, matching my own height, but stocky. He wore an old-style tweed jacket that was too small for him. He had a mop of wild grey hair. He reminded me of Albert Einstein.
‘Mrs McCarthy?’
‘Amanda...’
‘Nice to meet you, Amanda. Stanley Fishel.’
‘Stan, mate, this is a shop, not your office,’ George said good-naturedly.
Stanley took my elbow. ‘Everyone here calls me Stanley, not Stan, only George can get away with it.’ His eyes crinkled into a laugh. I wanted to tell him his happiness was infectious. I’d only just met him but already felt some part of me smiling in a way it hadn’t done for five years. ‘We are out of here.’ Stanley winked at George.
‘Really good to meet you, Stan ... ley,’ I said as we moved outside.
He pressed the relevant numbers on the combination lock and opened the door next to George’s shop. ‘The others will already be here, I’m late, sorry.’ He kicked at the bright-red door, pushing it open wider, and allowed me to go through first.
I was curious to see inside the school, wondering how it could operate from such small premises. Thinking about Jacob, I smiled. Unpretentious Jacob would have loved this.
Stanley was speaki
ng. ‘Come through to the office, I’ll just need to get some details. Then classes begin. One-to-one voice coaching in the afternoon.’ He looked up from his notebook that he’d pulled from a very battered briefcase. ‘There’s not much information in here. You kept it brief.’
He watched me carefully, and I was conscious of his conclusions. He probably guessed I wasn’t an actor.
‘I’m researching a book that I plan to write, part of it about voice coaching.’
He nodded, not fully reassured. ‘People come here for more reasons than just to learn how to speak differently. We have an acting school running from here, too, specialising in method acting. Only small, the acting part of the school, but well respected.’ He paused. ‘You might be interested in doing some taster sessions? They’re competitively priced.’
‘I might, I’ll see how it goes. I’m not here very long.’
‘No.’ He smiled, his face creasing into kindness. ‘Now, we don’t have many rules, but the one that cannot be broken is attendance. We expect full commitment. By the time you finish the course, you will be able to speak in any accent you wish, or need.’ He looked at me questioningly, then grinned. ‘And hopefully be able to write your book.’
I smiled. ‘Good. That’s all I ask.’
As he turned I noticed his grey hair was held in a ponytail. ‘I’ll show you the communal room, where you can get tea and coffee, socialise,’ he said, taking my arm and whisking me down a long corridor. The place was much bigger than I’d anticipated. ‘Grab a coffee, or tea, make yourself at home,’ he said.
‘I hate tea.’ I paused. ‘Stanley, I want to be able to do an American accent, will that be do-able?’
‘America’s a big place – lots of accents – where?’
‘Maybe somewhere like Ohio. Maybe I could be a waitress from a diner?’
‘Ohio? That’s very specific. A waitress? Like the generic ones in every Hollywood movie? Repressed, abused female characters,’ he rolled his eyes upwards towards a mushroom-painted ceiling. ‘I’m thinking Julia Roberts ... Pretty Woman.’ He peered into my face, took in my height. ‘More than a passing resemblance.’
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