The Girls in the Garden

by Lisa Jewell

  She was so like Willow, Adele thought. So much nervous energy, all channeled into such inane activities. Maybe one day girls like Willow and Tyler would rule the world, but for now they were just compulsively fiddling about with bits of it.

  “So, how was school?”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you say anything to anyone, about Saturday?”

  “No,” she said. “No one knows Grace, so it wasn’t like anyone would be interested.”

  “What did your mum say?”

  “I don’t know. Not much.”

  Adele pulled the salt and pepper pots from Tyler’s hands, set them back on the table, brought her gaze up to meet hers. “Tyler,” she said, “I’m hearing a lot of weird things about Saturday night. Things about stolen champagne. About teasing Grace and Dylan. About pushing Willow off the swing. And, kind of most worryingly of all, accusations about Gordon?”

  Tyler shook her head and cast her eyes back to the tabletop. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I didn’t say anything about Gordon. Why would I say anything about Gordon?”

  “And why would someone say you had if you hadn’t?”

  “I dunno. People just say stuff, don’t they?”

  “They do, yes. That is true. So why don’t you tell me some stuff. About Saturday. About what you think happened?”

  “I have no idea what happened. I swear. We were just in the playground, then Pip came running by, then it all went crazy.”

  “And what were you doing in the playground?”

  “Just what we always do. You know. Hanging out. Mucking about.”

  “Pushing people off swings?”

  “Yes. Well. She was annoying me.”

  “And what was she doing that annoyed you?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You can’t remember?”

  “No.”

  Adele sighed, remembering innumerable situations over the years where she’d had to question Tyler about her involvement in childish scraps. She’d always been evasive to the point of genius. “She’s got a terrible bruise, you know.”

  Tyler shrugged, squaring the menu up against the corner of the table. “Sorry,” she said.

  The waitress brought Tyler’s potato, steaming through a mountain of cheese and baked beans. Tyler immediately picked up her fork and began to eat, blowing the steam of the too-hot food from a mouth made into a circle.

  “Where was your mum on Saturday?”

  Tyler unfolded a paper napkin and wiped her mouth with it, picked up her Coke and took a slurp. “At his.”

  “Who’s ‘his’?” She remembered the date Cece had been going on when they’d met in the street a couple of weeks back.

  “Her boyfriend. She’s there all the time.”

  “Oh,” she said. “And who’s looking after you?”

  “No one. Me.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “He’s all right,” she said, her fork suspended by her mouth. “He’s not very chatty. And he’s a bit ugly.”

  Adele sighed. She could not imagine. She really could not. “Anyway,” she continued. “Going back to Saturday night. Do you remember seeing anyone else, apart from your friends? Anyone you wouldn’t expect to see in the park at that time of night?”

  “Saw Gordon,” she said, “hobbling about. Saw Leo. With the dog. Saw Rhea on her balcony. Didn’t see anyone else. No weirdos lurking in the undergrowth.”

  “You know, Tyler,” she said. “They’ve run blood tests on Grace. She was given an overdose. That’s what caused the coma.”

  She watched Tyler chewing a mouthful of food, loading up her fork again, putting it in her mouth.

  “You don’t look very surprised.”

  “Not really. It’s just history repeating itself. Isn’t it?”

  Adele turned her teacup around on the saucer. “You mean Phoebe?”

  “Yes. Phoebe. And Gordon. My mum told me that it was him. That he’d been abusing her. And she threatened to tell. So he killed her.”

  Adele felt anger building within her. “Right. Tyler,” she said, firmly, “it is absolutely not okay to talk like that about people. I have no idea where your mother got this ridiculous notion from, but it’s utter rubbish. And neither of you should be going around saying things like that.”

  “Yes, but it’s relevant, isn’t it? Grace was drugged. Phoebe was drugged. Gordon was in the park.” She shrugged as if to say: Dur.

  “Right. Fine,” said Adele. “Let’s just drop this for now. But seriously, Tyler, when the police come to talk to you later, you have to be very careful what you say. Because if you start shooting your mouth off with all this nonsense about Gordon, you’ll be distracting them from the real issue. And the real issue is Grace. And what on earth would Gordon have to do with Grace?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he’s a pedophile?”

  Adele’s thoughts returned to Rhea’s words the other day: that she wouldn’t feel happy having Gordon in her home with young girls. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course he’s not.”

  “How do you know that? How do you know anyone’s not a pedophile? How do you know Leo’s not a pedophile? I mean, he went out with my mum when she was only thirteen!”

  Adele recoiled. “God, Tyler,” she said, aghast. “How on earth do you know about that?”

  “Because my mum told me,” she said. “She told me everything. That she was obsessed with him. For years. I know all that. And you know something else?” Her eyes narrowed and she put down her fork. “I used to think that Leo was my dad. I really, really did. Because my mum let me believe that he was. She let me believe that for years and years and years. She never said he was. But then she never said he wasn’t.”

  She slid her fork back and forth across the side of her plate. Adele could see a film of tears across her eyes. The fork was moving faster and faster, making an irritating, rasping sound. She resisted the temptation to grab Tyler’s hand and stop it. There was something colossal happening here and she didn’t want to scare it off.

  “But why?” she began gently. “Why would you think he was your father?”

  “Because—” She stopped. She looked up at Adele. “Because once, when I was really little, when I was about four, five or something, I saw them kissing each other.”

  Adele laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  Tyler looked at her, affronted. “I don’t know why you’re laughing. It happened. It really happened.”

  Adele cast her thoughts back through nearly a decade of memories. Nine years ago. Willow was one. Fern was four. Catkin was six. Leo’s consultancy was just taking off. Adele was not yet used to juggling a baby with two homeschooled children. Life had been quite stressful. Things between Leo and her had been almost dark. She’d wondered back then if Leo might be tempted to find some light somewhere out of their home. Find someone to be nice to him when she was incapable of doing so. But still—Cece Rednough? She was hardly a ray of sunshine. She was a whole other kind of dark.

  “Does your mother know you saw them?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “It was in the Rose Garden. I was looking for Dylan. I don’t know if she saw me. I never talked to her about it.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you saw, Tyler? Because you know Leo, he’s very touchy-feely, very affectionate. Maybe he was just hugging her?”

  “I don’t know. I was four. I know what I think I saw and how what I think I saw made me feel. And it made me feel like Leo must be my dad because only dads kissed mums and it was the best feeling I ever had because I wanted it so much. Because I wanted to be part of your family more than anything.”

  “Tyler, you are part of our family. You’ve always been part of our family.”

  “No,” she said, “no I haven’t. Not properly. I thought I was. I really believed it. But then . . .” She stabbed the skin of her potato with the tines of her fork. “Mum told me. Last week. She told me who my dad really is. I met him
.” She looked up at Adele with horror. “I met him last week. And he’s a . . . literally a nobody. He’s a loser. I mean, do you know where he’s been all my life? All the thirteen years that I’ve been alive?”

  Adele shook her head.

  “In prison. My real dad. In prison. For beating up his girlfriend. Beating her up so badly that she’s blind in one eye.”

  Adele clasped her throat.

  “Yeah. Exactly. So. Imagine that. All these years thinking that Leo was my dad. Thinking I had his blood in my blood. Thinking that your children were my sisters. And it turns out that I’ve got nothing to do with you. And that this ugly little rat of a man with tattoos on his hands and dirt under his nails, this little man who hasn’t even got a proper home, this man who hurts women—he’s the man who made me.”

  “Oh, Tyler . . .”

  “His name is Wayne. Imagine that. My dad is called Wayne. Wayne the Wife-Beater. God.”

  Adele couldn’t speak. She stared at the little scratches up and down Tyler’s scrawny arms. The scratches she said she’d got retrieving a football from a blackberry bush. She looked at the dull, greasy roots of her hair. She thought of the heaviness of the atmosphere between all the children these last couple of weeks.

  “It’s not . . . ,” she began. “The man your mum’s dating—it’s not him, is it? It’s not your father?”

  “No!” She looked appalled. “God. No! Mum thinks he’s disgusting too. Mum hates him. And you know, all those years that she let me think Leo was my dad, even though she knew he wasn’t, I think I get it. I think I do. Because she was in love with Leo. All along. Just like me. We were both in love with Leo. Both of us. We both wished he was my dad. And he’s not. He never was. And now he’s . . . All of you have . . . It’s all . . .” She was crying properly, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  “Tyler . . .” Adele put her hands out to Tyler’s, but Tyler snatched them back. She pushed back her chair and she collected her schoolbags. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Thank you for my tea.”

  And she half ran from the café, away from Adele, knocking into people as she went.

  Grace’s room was washed in golden light. The three of them sat around her bed watching the sun’s rays, filtered through the branches of a tree outside, flickering over her face. Pip wondered if she could feel it. Wondered if she could see the strobes through her closed eyelids. She wanted her to wake up, right now, like a princess from a fairy-tale slumber, and then she wanted to say to her: Tell me tell me tell me. What happened in the Rose Garden? Because there was a question nagging at her in the darkest corners of her mind. A question she hadn’t asked Max earlier on. A question that hadn’t even occurred to her at the time. Something so obvious and so awful that maybe she hadn’t allowed herself to think it.

  She looked at her beautiful sister, so still, so separate. Grace had been a baby when Pip came along. She’d never known a world without Pip in it and Pip had never known a world without Grace in it. They were as intrinsic to each other’s beings as their own shadows. And yet, in the black hole left behind after their father burned down their house, Grace had found a way to fill the void that didn’t include her. Another family. Another father. Another soul mate. She hadn’t needed Pip at all. But now there was something Pip could do for her that nobody else could do. She could ask Max the question. The question that might provide the answer to who’d done this to her sister. And why.

  She touched the sleeve of her father’s soft pink shirt and said, “Daddy. I need to do something. Will you come with me?”

  She saw him immediately. He was still in his school uniform: grubby white polo shirt; navy trousers; scuffed, end-of-term leather shoes. He was playing football with his dad. He looked so happy, the very particular happy of a boy whose dad had come home from work early and said yes when asked if he’d come out and play football. It was the happiest she’d ever seen Max.

  She felt guilty for a moment, to be interrupting Max’s special time with his dad, but there was no other option. She didn’t want to leave Grace at the hospital for any longer than necessary. She couldn’t bear not to be there when she opened her eyes. She wanted to be the first person Grace saw. She wanted to start everything all over again with Grace, to be once more her beginning and her end.

  “Max,” she called out. She saw the look of joy fall immediately from his face. “Can I ask you something?”

  Max looked curiously behind her at her father. She hoped he’d know without thinking too hard who he was. She hoped that the physical similarity was striking enough.

  “You know, on Saturday? You know when you were playing football? When you went up the hill to get your ball? And you saw Grace on the grass?”

  He nodded, staring at his shoes. “Yeah.”

  “You know, before you came up? Can you remember who was in the playground?”

  He looked at her strangely, as though the question didn’t compute. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, that night, when you were playing football. Who was in the playground?”

  “There was no one,” he said, flatly, as though it was so obvious it didn’t need to be said. “There was no one in the playground.”

  “No one?”

  “No one. It was empty.” He shrugged, apologetically.

  Pip nodded, her head spinning with a sudden, awful rush of knowledge and understanding.

  “Thanks, Max. See you later.”

  “Yeah. See you later.”

  She turned to her father, her face set hard. “Okay,” she said. “We can go back now.”

  “You got what you wanted?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I got what I wanted.”

  30

  The atmosphere in the Howeses’ flat by the time the two PCs returned at six o’clock that evening was charged with so many different kinds of energy it was virtually electric. Adele had had to give Willow a dose of Tarentula hispanica, a homeopathic aid with indications toward calming hyperactivity in children. So far it didn’t seem to be working.

  She offered them homemade hummus and breadsticks. Then she felt worried that the Greek PC would think she was patronizing him, so she offered them, rather randomly, some pasta salad.

  “So,” began PC Michaelides, “we’ve spent the day talking to various people, as you know, although we still haven’t managed to get hold of . . .” He consulted his notes. “Cecelia Rednough.”

  “No,” said Adele, wishing that Willow would stop bouncing up and down on the footstool. “She doesn’t tend to get home from work until quite late.”

  “Maybe we’ll give her another try after we’ve finished here then.” He smiled, and then turned to Leo. “So, Mr. Howes?”

  “Leo’s fine.”

  “Leo. Thank you. I wonder if we might be able to talk to you first? Possibly without the children?” Adele looked up sharply, glancing from the PC to the WPC and then at her girls.

  The WPC smiled reassuringly. “Just a couple of little things,” she said. “Won’t take a minute.”

  Adele gestured at the three girls to leave the room, which they did with varying degrees of grace.

  After they’d gone all four turned and smiled at each other, nervously.

  “We were wondering,” said the PC, “if you could tell us a bit about your impressions of Grace Wild?”

  “My impressions? Gosh, well . . .” He stroked his chin, making himself, in Adele’s opinion, look thoroughly dodgy. “She’s only been living on the park for a few months, so I haven’t really had a chance to—”

  “I suppose,” the WPC cut in, “what we mean is: what was your relationship with her? Are you close?”

  “No,” Leo replied, too fast, too firm. “Not at all. I mean, there are children on the park who I’ve known since they were babies and I’d say I was close to them. But not Grace. She is just a friend of my daughters.”

  “The reason we’re asking, Leo, is that we’ve had our analysts going through the CCTV footage from Saturday night, from the cameras
situated above the communal gates? And there is clear footage of you, at approximately nine twenty-five, approaching Grace Wild by the gate, engaging her for a while in conversation, and then”—he pulled a print from a folder on the sofa next to him and passed it to Leo—“embracing her.”

  Adele flicked her gaze to her husband, reptile fast. Then she looked down at the photo in her husband’s hand. It was almost a bird’s-eye view. There was Grace, her bare arms wrapped around the waist of a dark-haired man. A dark-haired man attached to a medium-sized golden dog.

  “Ah,” said Leo, not making eye contact with Adele. “That. Oh. God. I mean, that was . . . She was standing there. Waiting for her boyfriend to come back. You know, I must be honest right now and say I wasn’t sober. You know, a big family day. Drinking since two p.m. So I don’t entirely remember what happened here. But I do remember seeing her standing there and me saying she should probably go home, because her mum wasn’t well and her sister was there on her own. And then, I honestly don’t know why, but she launched herself at me. I mean, if you watch the footage you’ll see it. You’ll see what happened. Look here, at my arm.” He pointed at the photo. “It’s kind of hanging loose, see.”

  “Mr. Howes—sorry, Leo. No one is accusing you of anything here. We’re merely trying to ascertain the nature of your relationship with Grace so that we can put all the jigsaw pieces together. And from this footage it struck us that maybe you and she were close. Maybe you had an insight?”

  “You know,” he said, his eyes too bright, his body language all wrong, “it strikes me now, now that I think about it, that maybe she was missing her dad. It was her thirteenth birthday; she hasn’t seen him for such a long time. It’s possible she saw me for that brief moment as a father figure? Or that I reminded her in some way of her father? I mean . . .” He shrugged and rubbed his chin again.

  Stop talking! Adele wanted to scream. Please stop talking!

  Who was this man? This man who kissed thirteen-year-old girls? Whose own father believed he’d been involved in the death of a teenager? Who may or may not have kissed their neighbor in the Rose Garden nine years ago? Who fueled other people’s daughters’ fantasies about his being their Real Father? And who hugged other people’s daughters in dusky alleyways? Why hadn’t he told her about the interlude? Moments after this had happened, he’d been back at their flat, saying good-bye to Zoe and her family. Why hadn’t he said: God, you won’t believe what just happened. Grace Wild just hugged me for no good reason!