A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Then why . . .?’

  ‘Why aren’t I going after the second name first? Because it’s got no surname or address attached to it. It’s just a first name: Billy. Thirty-six people rang in to say they know Baldy as Billy, but don’t know anything else about him.’

  ‘Does the sarge know? We need to—’

  ‘Track Billy down?’ Gibbs cut Sellers off again. ‘I will be doing – at 131 Valingers Road, Bethnal Green.’ He laughed at Sellers’ confusion. ‘Warren Gruff; Billy. You really can’t see it? Think along the lines of nicknames. You’re supposed to be a detective, for fuck’s sake.’

  Finally, Sellers made the connection. ‘Billy Goat Gruff,’ he said.

  19

  Monday 12 October 2009

  ‘Ray?’ The problem with Marchington House is that it’s so big, there’s no point calling out anybody’s name. I’d be better off ringing her on her mobile, except that mine has been thrown into a boating lake, and without it, I don’t know her number.

  I check the lounge, family room, kitchen, snug, utility room, both studies, the games room, the music room and the den, but there’s no sign of her. I head for the stairs. Distributed over the top three floors of the house are fourteen bedrooms and ten bathrooms. I start with Ray’s room on the first floor. She’s not in there, but Angus’s jacket is, the one he was wearing when he accosted me outside my flat. There’s also a bulging black canvas bag on the bed with ‘London on Sunday’ printed on it in small white letters.

  I wrestle with my conscience for about half a second, then unzip the bag. Oh, God, look at all this: pyjamas, toothbrush, electric razor, dental floss, at least four balled-up pairs of socks, boxer shorts . . . Quickly, I pull the zip closed. Words can’t express how much I do not want to look at Angus Hines’ boxer shorts.

  Great. My prisoner has come to stay – the man I yelled at for being decent enough not to smash my window. I’m going to have to see him again and die of shame. This must be how the purveyors of apartheid felt when all that truth and reconciliation stuff started and they had to spend hours telling Nelson Mandela what rubbish human beings they were. I think that’s what happened, anyway. I’m considering giving up heat magazine and subscribing to something more serious instead, to boost my general knowledge: The Economist or National Geographic.

  I unzip the side pocket of Angus’s suitcase, having decided it’s bound to be underwear-free: he wouldn’t divide his boxer shorts equally between the compartments. I’m surprised to find two DVDs in there, both of Binary Star programmes I produced: Hate After Death and Cutting Myself. So Angus’s investigation of my credentials is ongoing. Actually, Hate After Death is the best work I’ve ever done, so I hope he’s watched it. It was a six-parter about families in which a feud between one branch and another had spanned several generations. In some cases, parents on their deathbeds had extracted promises from their children not to let their enmities die with them, to hate on their behalf even after their deaths, to hate their enemies’ children, and the children of those children.

  Sick. Sick to want to pass on your anger and resentment to others, sick to hang on to those feelings yourself.

  I’m not angry with Laurie any more. I don’t hate him, or wish him harm. What I wish is that . . . I don’t allow myself to think it. There’s no point.

  As I’m putting the DVDs back in Angus’s bag, I hear footsteps. They seem to be coming from the landing above me, but when I go and investigate, I can’t find anyone. ‘Hello?’ I call out. I check all the bedrooms on the second and third floors, but there’s no sign of life. I must have imagined it. I decide to go to my room, get into bed and have the protracted pillow-thumping cry I’ve been looking forward to since Regent’s Park.

  I open the door and scream when I see a man standing next to my bed. He doesn’t seem at all startled. He smiles as if I ought to have known I’d find him there.

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing in my room?’ I know who he is: Ray’s brother, the dark one from the punting photo in the kitchen. He’s wearing a white V-necked cricket jumper and trousers that are more zips than material. I’ve never understood that: why would you want to shorten and extend your trousers at various points during the day? Who’s the target audience: people whose calves only work part-time?

  ‘You’ve got that the wrong way round,’ says Ray’s brother, still grinning. ‘You’re in my room.’

  ‘Ray said this was a guest room.’

  ‘It is. It’s my guest room. This is my house.’

  ‘Marchington House belongs to you?’ I remember what Laurie said about Ray’s parents living in Winchester. ‘But . . .’

  ‘You know different?’

  ‘Sorry, I just . . . You’re so young. You look about my age.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Thirty-one.’

  ‘In that case I’m younger than you. I’m twenty-nine.’

  I feel a fit of tactlessness coming on. ‘When did you fit in getting rich enough to buy a house like this? At school, between double Latin and croquet? Or did you make constructive use of a detention?’ I’m talking nonsense, still freaked out by having found him in my room. Why was he lying in wait for me? How dare he own Marchington House? Did he open my suitcase? Was he looking at my underwear, while I was looking at Angus Hines’?

  ‘Croquet and Latin?’ He laughs. ‘Is that what you learned at your school?’

  ‘No, we learned gang warfare and apathy,’ I snap. ‘I went to an inner city comprehensive.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And I’m not rich, apart from this house. I inherited it last year from my grandfather. I run a window-cleaning business. This isn’t where I live – I’m still in my rented flat in Streatham. This place is way too big for me, and the décor’s too . . . womanly. My gran was an interior designer.’

  ‘Just you?’ I say. ‘You inherited this whole house?’

  ‘All six of the grandchildren inherited a property,’ he says, looking sheepish. ‘My grandfather was very wealthy. Something to do with diamonds.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I say. ‘I’m lucky: both my grandads are still alive. One’s something to do with an allotment and the other’s something to do with sitting in a chair waiting to cark it. Look, Ray said I could stay here, and—’

  ‘You want me to get out of your room? My room? Our room?’

  That’s it: he’s definitely been rooting through my knickers. That was an unambiguous innuendo.

  ‘I’m supposed to kick you out,’ he says.

  ‘Kick me out?’

  ‘That’s right. Don’t worry, I’m not going to. I don’t see why I should do his lordship’s bidding, do you?’

  His lordship . . . Angus Hines. I might have known.

  Is that why he and Ray aren’t here? Too scared to do their own dirty work? Did they watch Hate After Death, think it was hopeless and lose all faith in me?

  ‘Do you come from a rich family, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  I do mind, but I’ve no right to, after what I asked him. ‘No. Poor. Well, ordinary, which effectively means poor.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘What’s the point in having a bit of money?’ I say crossly.

  ‘You’re a strange woman, Fliss Benson. Has anyone ever told you that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I hated school, actually,’ he says, as if it’s the obvious next thing to say. ‘My parents could have afforded to send all of us to Eton, no problem. We could have lived the croquet-and-Latin dream, but instead we went to Cottham Chase and had to spend every day fighting to attain the dubious title of cock of the school.’

  ‘Did you succeed?’ Eton’s a boys’ school. Ray couldn’t have gone to Eton.

  ‘No. Which was a huge relief. The cock’s responsibilities were onerous: you were expected to kick the crap out of literally everybody that crossed your path. I’d have had no free time.’

  ‘Why didn’t your parents send you somewhere bett
er if they could afford it?’

  ‘They thought that sending us to the local dump was sure to bring about global equality.’ He smiles at me again, as if we’re best friends. ‘You know the type.’

  I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about. ‘Look, about you booting me out . . .’

  ‘I’ve already told you: I’m not going to.’

  ‘Why don’t you evict them instead?’ I blurt out. ‘I’m not the one causing the trouble. If there were a public vote, like on Big Brother, I’m sure I’d get to stay in.’

  ‘Them?’ He looks surprised.

  ‘Ray and Angus.’

  ‘You want me to ask Ray to leave?’

  ‘I want you to ask Angus to leave.’

  ‘Is Angus her ex-husband?’

  Never trust a man with too many zips on his trousers, that’s my motto. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know the name of your own sister’s ex,’ I say crossly. ‘Though I’m not sure how ex he is any more.’

  ‘My sister?’ He laughs. ‘Sorry, do you mean Ray Hines?’

  I stare at him in disbelief. Who else could I mean?

  ‘Ray isn’t my sister. Where did you get that idea? Ray is someone I’m temporarily allowing to stay in an empty house I own.’

  This is making no sense. ‘There’s a photo of you up in the kitchen, punting down a river.’

  ‘The River Cam, yes. With my brother – my nice brother, not the stupid one who uses and discards beautiful women he really ought to treat better.’

  What’s he talking about? ‘I was looking at the photo, and Ray said, “Not much of a family resemblance, is there? Those two got all the good looks.” Or words to that effect. But if you’re not Ray’s brother . . .’

  For the first time since we started talking, he looks angry. ‘Then who am I?’ he says, completing my question. ‘If I tell you, you’ll hate me on the spot, and it’ll be his fault, like everything always is.’

  Before I have a chance to respond, he’s gone. I run after him, shouting ‘Wait!’ and ‘Stop!’ and all the other stupid pointless things you shout at people who turn their backs and leave you behind at great speed. I get down the last flight of stairs just in time to hear the front door slam. Through the window, I see him drive away in a car with a cloth roof, probably unzippable, like the bottoms of his trousers.

  I storm into the kitchen and pull the punting photograph off the wall to get a better look at it, as if it might be able to tell me what’s going on. My fingers touch a flap of paper on the back of the frame, and I turn it over. There’s a label on the back; one corner has come loose and curled up. On it, someone has handwritten, ‘Hugo and St John take a punt! Cambridge, 1999.’ My heart does its best impersonation of a bouncy ball. Hugo. St John.

  Laurence Hugo St John Fleet Nattrass. His lordship.

  I run round the house like a demented person, pulling drawers open, panting loudly. I don’t care how long it takes – I’m going to find something, something better than what I’ve got, something that proves to me what I already know.

  I find it in a sideboard in the den. Or rather, I find them: photograph albums. On the first page there’s a picture of a jowly middle-aged man smoking a pipe. I pull it out and turn it over. ‘Fleet, 1973’ is all that’s written on the back. Laurie’s dad. Next, I select a photograph of a smiling baby sitting in what looks like the lotus position in front of a chair. I turn it over and read the tiny handwriting: ‘St John Hugo Laurence Fleet Nattrass, eight months old, 1971’. This must be the blond brother from the punting photograph, younger than Laurie and older than . . . Zip-man must be Hugo.

  Did Fleet Nattrass only know three boys’ names apart from his own? Is it a posh family thing, giving all your children the same names in a different order?

  Not much of a resemblance, is there? Ray thought I knew she was staying at Laurie’s brother’s house. She assumed he’d told me.

  The person who wants me evicted isn’t Angus Hines. It’s Laurie.

  The house phone rings. I crawl over to the table on my hands and knees and pick it up, hoping it might be Ray.

  It’s Maya. ‘Fliss,’ she says. She sounds caught out, as if she wishes I hadn’t answered. I don’t need to ask her how she knew where to find me. I hear a drawing in of breath.

  ‘Let me save you the trouble,’ I say. ‘You’re afraid you’re going to have to let me go. That about right?’

  ‘Close enough,’ she says, and hangs up.

  I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor in the hall when the front door opens and Ray and Angus walk in. Distractedly, Angus says, ‘Hello, Fliss.’ He doesn’t look as if he’s thinking about me locking him in my flat. If he’s surprised to find me at his feet, he shows no sign of it. He squeezes Ray’s arm and says, ‘I’ll be down shortly,’ then heads for the stairs as if he has something important to attend to.

  ‘Did you tell him you’re pregnant?’ I ask Ray. His suitcase upstairs can only mean one thing. Not long ago, he didn’t even know where she was staying. ‘Is he happy about it?’

  ‘Happy’s difficult for both of us, but . . . yes, he’s pleased.’

  ‘Are you back together, then? Are you moving back to Notting Hill?’ Childishly, I want her to say she’s moving out because I know I’ll have to. I can’t stay in Laurie’s brother’s house. What did you think, idiot? That someone like you can live in a place like this for ever? ‘Is Angus coming to live here, too?’

  Ray’s smile vanishes, and I notice how tired she looks. ‘No. We’re not going to be living together.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Let’s get set up for the camera,’ she says. ‘It’s all part of the same story.’

  ‘Did you tell Angus the baby might be Laurie’s and not his?’ I ask, making no effort to lower my voice. I’m guessing that at some point Ray and Laurie slept together. Why wouldn’t he try it on with her? He slept with me in an attempt to persuade me not to interview Judith Duffy for the film; he shacked up with Maya to avoid me and the police, or maybe so that the card-sender wouldn’t know where to find him. No doubt bedding Ray was part of his campaign to persuade her to be involved in the film: first he offered his body, then Marchington House as a refuge. He must have been furious when neither did the trick.

  From Ray’s point of view, why wouldn’t she have sex with Laurie? At forty-two she could still have another child. If she has Laurie’s baby rather than Angus’s, there will be no genetic auto-immune issue to worry about.

  She takes my arm and leads me into the den. Closing the door behind us, she says, ‘Please don’t call it a baby. It isn’t one, not yet. And there’s no “might” about it. It’s Laurie’s. Angus had a vasectomy while I was in prison. He wanted to make sure he’d never go through the pain of losing another child.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I told him the truth,’ says Ray. ‘Don’t you think I’m sick of lies by now? Do you really think I’d try to start my new life, and Angus’s, based on a lie?’

  ‘So you’re going to tell Laurie?’

  ‘Laurie Nattrass is nothing to me, Fliss. Personally, I mean.’

  Lucky you.

  ‘I can withhold information from him and it won’t be living a lie, not in the way it would be if I lied to my husband.’ She looks caught out. ‘Angus and I are getting remarried,’ she says.

  But you’re not going to be living together? ‘Will he be able to feel the same about Laurie’s baby as he would about his own?’ I ask.

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ says Ray. ‘Neither do I. But we don’t have the option of “his own”. This is all we have, our only chance of being . . . well, I suppose a family, though an unusual one. Are you going to tell Laurie?’

  ‘No.’ I’m not going to tell him about Ray’s pregnancy, and I’m not going to tell anybody about him bribing Carl Chappell and Warren Gruff. With regard to Laurie, I’m going to do nothing. I don’t want to destroy anybody’s life – not Laurie’s, not Ray’s, not Angus’s.

  ‘Can I ask you one more f
avour?’ says Ray.

  ‘What?’ I haven’t granted any so far, unless my memory’s letting me down.

  ‘Don’t tell Angus you know. It would make it harder for him if he thought anyone else knew.’

  What happened to no more lies? I don’t say it because it’s a ridiculous thing to say, or even think. If no one ever told a lie again, life would quickly become impossible.

  Ray nods at the camera. ‘Shall we get started?’

  ‘I need to make a phone call first,’ I tell her. ‘Why don’t you sort us out with drinks?’

  Once she’s gone, I use the antique phone on the table in the corner to ring Tamsin. She doesn’t sound pleased to hear from me. ‘Just to remind you of the etiquette: you’re supposed to drop your friends when you’ve got a new man, not when you’ve lost your marbles,’ she says. ‘In the event of a loss of marbles, you’re allowed to spend as much time with your friends as you ever did, as long as you remember to look confused and call them by the names of people who’ve been dead for years.’

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t got a new job yet,’ I say.

  ‘Job?’ She sounds as if she’s forgotten what one is.

  ‘How hard would it be for you and I to set up on our own?’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘As what we are: people who make TV programmes.’

  ‘You mean our own production company? I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Find out.’

  I hear a long, gusty yawn. ‘I’m not sure how I’d go about finding out, to be honest.’

  ‘Find a way,’ I say, and then I cut her off to show her I mean business. I’m sure that’s how MI6 would handle her lazy, uncooperative streak. It’ll all work out, I persuade myself. It has to work out.

  Now all I have to do is tell Ray and Angus that it’s not going to be Binary Star making the film after all.

  20

  12/10/09

  ‘So we’re sure Warren Gruff’s Baldy?’ Simon asked Sellers.