by Nicci French
FIFTEEN
I thought it would be really hard but it was easy. After just a few minutes searching online, I found a map of London murders organised by year. I had vaguely thought that there would be hundreds or thousands of murders to comb through, but so far this year, nearly six months in, there had only been sixty-two.
The statistics were searchable through different categories: age, type of weapon, gender of victim. I clicked on the box marked ‘female’ and the number dropped to thirteen. Thirteen? Out of a city of nine million? It felt like an amazingly small number. The murders were represented by dots. It looked like south London was safer than north London: only three dots. West London was safer than east London, outer London safer than central London. I placed my cursor over one of the dots down near Brixton, clicked on it and the details appeared: knife, thirty-one years old.
That didn’t look right. Poppy hadn’t said anything about a knife. There was violence but her picture showed someone falling. I clicked on three more: knife, knife, knife. The next one said ‘weapon: unknown’. That looked more promising. The woman was called Vicky Silva and she was twenty-eight years old.
I opened a new window and searched for ‘Vicky Silva death’ and immediately found a news report: her husband had pleaded guilty to strangling her. I went back to the map and clicked on another dot: blunt object. What was a blunt object? Yes, something that wasn’t a knife.
I clicked on another dot: ‘weapon: unknown’. Again I did a search on the victim’s name and found a news story: ‘Suspected Murder Suicide’. She had been found dead alongside the body of her husband. The circumstances of the deaths were unclear, but the police had concluded that the husband had killed the wife and then himself. Always that way round, I thought to myself.
Another woman had died in a fire started by an ex-partner. Another was weapon unknown and victim unidentified. What did that mean? It – whatever it was – had taken place in Dartford. This sounded too far out of the way to be significant but I wrote ‘Dartford?’ on my notepad, though I didn’t know what I would do with that.
The next one was also ‘weapon: unknown’. A Russian woman living in Hampstead had been found murdered in her flat and two Russian men and a Russian woman had been arrested. Large amounts of money were involved and it all seemed a bit strange, more complicated, more exotic, and also entirely unconnected with what I was looking for.
Victim number eleven was eighty-nine years old. For some reason, I had always imagined the victim in Poppy’s drawing as young, but there was no reason to. I did a search on the name and found that it had happened during a burglary and the man had been caught and had confessed. Another blunt object.
Victim number twelve’s cause of death was unknown. A search on the name showed that her body had been found in her flat in Stoke Newington. The autopsy had been inconclusive, but a man had already been charged with her murder: another ex-partner.
The thirteenth and final victim had been beaten to death by her boyfriend. He had confessed and been sentenced to life imprisonment. I read a local newspaper story about the crime and the condition of the body when it was found and the events that had preceded it and the previous offences of the murderer, and I had to stop and look away from my screen and take a few deep breaths.
I thought of what had happened to each of those women. The youngest was seventeen and the oldest was eighty-nine. Even among this small number they were from different backgrounds, different cultures. Looking through my notes, I was struck by the fact that only two had been killed by strangers. The biggest danger to these women had been their husbands or their lovers, those they were intimate with, those they trusted. As far as I could make out, most of them had died in their own homes.
I looked around the living room and felt with a shiver that the place I had thought of as my refuge was where I was genuinely vulnerable. We’re all safer with strangers because they don’t care enough about us to kill us.
Still, I hadn’t succeeded in what I had set out to do. I hadn’t found a death that reminded me of Poppy’s drawing. These tragic women had been stabbed or strangled or bludgeoned or trapped in a burning building. But none of them had been pushed off anything. None of them had fallen.
Fallen: not every murder was recognised as a murder. When a person was pushed from a high place, it might look like an accident or like a suicide. I did a search for UK suicides and quickly saw that this was going to be much harder. The UK was a country with few murders but many suicides. A government website told me that in the previous year there had been six and a half thousand suicides registered. Almost three quarters of those were men, but that still left almost two thousand possible cases to go through.
As I read on, I realised that the few murders in the UK are investigated rapidly with plenty of publicity, but suicides are different. They are just one part of the flood of deaths that happen everywhere all the time. They don’t get much publicity, unless they are spectacular, and are investigated not by the police but by inquests that take months or years.
Unless they are spectacular. I read through an account of the different causes of suicide. A few deep breaths weren’t enough. I made myself a mug of coffee and walked outside and stood in my little garden, in the sunshine, until I was ready to continue.
I returned to my laptop. The usual methods by which people took their own lives were drab and domestic. A fall from a high window was the sort of thing that might get into the newspapers. I did a search for ‘falls deaths UK’ and read a series of stories of little children and windows with defective window fastenings, scaffolding failures, mountain climbers’ ropes coming loose, each of them a heart-stopping drama, none of them relevant. I narrowed it to ‘falls deaths London’ and still there was nothing that felt right.
I closed my laptop and sat for several minutes thinking. I was still holding my pen, but there was nothing to write down. I drew little squares and attached triangles to the squares and filled them in with cross-hatching. So where was I? I now felt almost certain that in Greater London, in the first four or five months of this year, no woman had died by falling or being deliberately pushed from a high place or high building. I tapped my pen on the paper. Was there something I was missing?
I reached for my mobile and called Laurie, who sounded surprised to hear from me.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. I’m ringing about something that might sound a bit strange, but you’ve spent a lot of time with Poppy recently and I was wondering whether you ever read stories to her and Jake.’
‘Stories? Of course.’ Laurie sounded offended, as if I was criticising his parenting skills. ‘I try to read to them every day, unless Nellie’s having one of her screaming fits.’
‘I know, I know, you’ve been wonderful. I’m asking because Poppy has been doing some odd drawings and I just wondered where she got the ideas from. For example, have you been reading any fairy stories to them?’
‘I don’t know. I just read a few of the books we’ve got around the house. I can show them to you if you want. I’m sure there’s nothing that’s unsuitable.’
‘That’s not what I mean. For example, did you ever read them the story of Rapunzel?’
‘Rapunzel?’
‘That’s the story of the girl in the tower and she’s got long hair and—’
‘Yes, I know what Rapunzel is.’
He was definitely offended, I thought.
‘Did you ever read it to them?’
‘I have not read the story of Rapunzel to Poppy. Or to Jake for that matter. Or any other story involving princesses with long hair.’
‘It was more the tower bit of the story that I was thinking of. Of someone falling from a tower. Or jumping.’
‘I’ve not read any stories about princesses in towers. Or towers in general.’
‘Isn’t there a Disney film about it?’
I heard Laurie laugh at the other end of the line.
‘You’re really pursuing this, are
n’t you?’
‘I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what’s been upsetting Poppy.’
‘I don’t think it’s likely to be a fairy story.’ Laurie sounded impatient. ‘Yes, I think there is a Disney cartoon about it, but I haven’t got it or shown it to Jake or Poppy. I know I should encourage Jake to watch films about princesses, but he prefers adventures and fights and that probably makes me a bad father, but—’
‘Of course it doesn’t make you a bad father.’ I paused and he waited. ‘You’re a wonderful father,’ I said. ‘Amazing. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to know. Thank you. Poppy may have got the idea from somewhere, but she didn’t get it from you and it probably doesn’t matter anyway.’
I rang off, hoping I hadn’t sounded unhinged.
So Poppy hadn’t got the idea from a story or film at Gina and Laurie’s. I could check with Lotty. Could they have done a project about Rapunzel or something like Rapunzel in class? And what about Jason? Jason read stories to Poppy, and Emily too. I pondered this. Could a simple story have triggered Poppy’s escalating distress?
There was, of course, another possibility. I had discovered nothing about the truth behind Poppy’s picture or whether there was anything behind it at all. But I had discovered a new truth about my own relationship with Jason. Perhaps, in her unconscious, Poppy had picked up on the discord and the lies and the deceptions of her parents’ break-up and that was what the picture was about.
Perhaps the figure in the picture was actually Poppy herself, in freefall.
SIXTEEN
It was barely midday. I opened the fridge and peered inside. There was milk, butter, four eggs, half a jar of green pesto, some Parmesan, a bag of salad leaves and a little bowl of mashed potatoes – left over from supper that Aidan had cooked, weeks ago. It must have gone off by now. I peeled away the cling film and dipped a finger into the mash. It had definitely gone off. I threw it in the bin then stared around. I wanted to do a binge tidy of the kitchen, but everything was clean and in its proper place. I might not be an amazing cook, but I was a good tidier and cleaner. Like my mother, like my grandmother. Women down the generations washing, sorting, folding, putting away, bringing order to mess and to chaos.
I looked around the large downstairs room. There was a damp patch spreading above the skirting boards that needed attention. The fridge was old – bought second-hand and failing already – and through the winter the heating had been inadequate. I worried about the leftover money from the Brixton house leaking away. I worried that this place wouldn’t feel like home to Poppy, that she would prefer to be with her father, in a house with many rooms and a larger garden, full of the comforting clutter that had been built up over the years.
I went into Poppy’s room, adjusted the covers on her bed unnecessarily, opened her drawers and peered inside at the bright-coloured tee shirts, the paired socks. I thought of Poppy at school. It would be lunchtime now, and I pictured her tearing round the playground with her red hair flying, her pale face and shining eyes, that look of ferocious joy on her face.
I pictured her shouting at her teacher, biting her friend, making Jake distressed, and had an impulse to run to the school now and pick her up and carry her home where she was safe. But today Poppy was supposed to be going to Jason’s again: he was only having her for a few days over the half-term week, so we had arranged long ago that this weekend she would stay with him from Friday to Saturday afternoon.
The thought of not seeing her until tomorrow afternoon was unbearable. The thought of her being with Jason, in that house full of new people and old memories, impossible. Something might happen; she might come back freshly traumatised.
I paced through the flat, unable to keep still. On an impulse, I snatched up my mobile from the kitchen table and wrote a text to Jason, pressing ‘send’ before I had a chance to read it over or change my mind:
Really sorry for late notice, but Mum has arranged some kind of treat for Poppy tonight – she didn’t tell me until now! Hope that’s OK.
I looked at the sent message, frowning, then added: I am sure you’ll understand.
I pressed ‘send’ and then regretted it because after our last meeting it sounded so patently false. I added a postscript.
Will pick Poppy up from school.
It occurred to me that when he next saw her, Jason might ask Poppy about the treat. I found my mother’s number on my phone and rang it, but it was engaged. I cursed and went online to search for kids’ event in Abingdon over the weekend – after all, it had been weeks since Poppy and I had visited my mother, so this was an opportunity to turn the lie into the truth. There was a puppet show on Saturday morning. I opened the link, while trying the number again.
My mobile rang as I did so, startling me. Jason.
‘Hi,’ I said breezily. ‘Sorry about the mix-up.’
‘So your mother’s taking Poppy somewhere this evening?’
‘Yes.’ There was a silence and I filled it, like I always did. ‘Apparently she arranged it ages ago, but she only just let me know.’ I gave a brittle laugh. ‘Typical.’
‘Is that so?’
Something about his tone sent a spike of unease through me.
‘I told you as soon as I heard. I know it’s a bit irritating, but you saw Poppy a couple of days ago and you can have her for a day next weekend. Is there a problem?’
‘I think I’d call it a problem.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve just come off the phone to your mother.’
Sweat was breaking out all over my body.
‘Why were you talking to my mother? I mean, you never talk to my mother. You don’t even like her.’
There was another silence. I thought of throwing the mobile away and unplugging the phone and closing the curtains and curling up in a small ball of shame.
‘I rang her,’ said Jason eventually, ‘because I wanted to know if she was expecting Poppy this evening.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ I had closed my eyes, as if being in the darkness would make my humiliation easier. ‘You had no right,’ I added uselessly.
‘She was very surprised to hear from me, and very surprised to hear that she was taking her granddaughter out this evening.’
‘OK. I lied.’ I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I want to have Poppy this evening.’
‘She’s coming to us. As planned. Emily will pick her up from school.’
‘Please, Jason. I just need to have her with me tonight. She’s not her usual self. I won’t keep doing this. I shouldn’t have lied. But I knew you’d say no if I just asked.’
‘You were right. I am indeed saying no.’
‘I’m worried about her.’
‘And I’m worried about you.’ He was enjoying this, I thought; he liked hearing me squirm. ‘Have you thought of talking to someone?’
I wanted to shout, to hurl the phone into the garden, to scratch his handsome face.
‘You don’t get to say that to me. Not anymore.’
‘I’m just looking out for my daughter. I’m sorry for whatever it is you’re going through, Tess, but I don’t want Poppy to suffer.’
* * *
I went for a run, sprinting as fast as I could down the little side streets, into London Fields, relishing the pain in my calves. I had a long shower. I wrote two more reports, then sat at my sewing machine, feeding Poppy’s golden witch cloak through the steadily ticking needle. I picked up my mobile to call Aidan because I needed to hear a kind voice, I needed someone who was definitely on my side, then put it down again.
I picked up my jacket, my keys, and walked swiftly towards Poppy’s school, ignoring the voice inside me that was telling me it was a bad idea. I stood under the plane tree and watched as Emily arrived, looking so pretty in a flowery dress, her dark blond hair falling round her face. I watched as Emily greeted Poppy, leaning down towards her, and there was my sprightly little daughter in her yellow cotton skirt and her red hair flying, holding on to Emily
’s hand, dipping and weaving and skipping along beside her as they left. I felt ready to cry with tenderness, with jealousy.
I was being stupid. Stupid stupid stupid stupid.
Jason had lied to me and he had had an affair – or probably affairs. Poppy had been going through a bad patch. And I was behaving like a madwoman.
SEVENTEEN
That evening, Aidan and I went to a party together. I put on my green silk dress and piled my hair on top of my head. I applied red lipstick that made my face look unhealthily pale and squirted perfume behind my ears. When I stood in front of the mirror, I seemed like a stranger, which made me feel both triumphant and uneasy.
We both drank a large gin and tonic before we left and I filled my glass to the brim with red wine when we arrived at Lex and Corry’s house near Victoria Park. It was a fortieth birthday celebration. There were lots of people there and most of them were pretending that they were still young and childless. I hugged old friends and introduced everyone to Aidan – he still didn’t know many of my circle and I knew few of his. I smoked a dizzying cigarette in the narrow garden with Lex and a man called Geoffrey and felt a bit nauseous. The moon was up, buttery yellow and almost full. I could smell roses. As the evening wore on, I danced, my body loose and free. I put my face close to my old friend Simon’s and said:
‘Did you like Jason?’
‘Jason? I liked him because you were with him.’
‘But did you like him?’
‘Is this a real question?’
‘Yes.’
‘I would say he was a bit arrogant. Some of the time. Not always.’
‘Did Jason ever make a pass at you?’ I asked my friend Megan as we sat together on the stairs, propped against each other.
‘You’re drunk,’ said Megan affably. ‘So am I.’
‘But did he?’
‘No. But he always felt’ – she made a flapping gesture with her free hand – ‘available.’