by Nicci French
‘It wasn’t my memory.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was something a friend once said to me. She told me this story about cutting hair. I don’t think she said it was her father’s, actually. Maybe it was her boyfriend’s or her brother’s or a friend’s. I can’t remember. I don’t know why I even remember her saying it. It was just a little thing and it was ages ago. It just kind of stayed with me. Weird to think of Rajit writing it into his spiel. Passing it on.’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, slowly. ‘So your friend told you and you told Rajit.’
‘A version of it.’
‘Yes.’
Agnes looked quizzically at Frieda. ‘Why on earth does it matter?’
‘What’s your friend’s name?’
‘I’m not going to tell you until you’ve answered my question. Why does it matter?’
‘I don’t know. It probably doesn’t.’ Frieda gazed into Agnes’s bright, shrewd eyes: she liked her. ‘The truth is, it bothers me and I don’t know why, but I feel I have to follow the thread.’
‘The thread?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lila Dawes. Her real name is Lily but no one calls her that.’
‘Thank you. How do you know her?’
‘I don’t. I knew her. We were at school together. Best friends.’ Again that ironic smile. ‘She was a bit wild, but never malicious. We kept in touch after she dropped out, when she was just sixteen, but not for long. Our lives were so different. I was on one road and she – well, she wasn’t on a road at all.’
‘So you have no idea where she is now?’
‘No.’
‘Where were you at school?’
‘Down near Croydon. John Hardy School.’
‘Is Croydon where you both grew up?’
‘Do you know the area?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘It’s near Croydon. Next to it.’
‘Do you remember her address?’
‘It’s funny. I can’t remember what happened last week, but I can remember everything about when I was young. Ledbury Close. Number eight. Are you going to try and find her?’
‘I think so.’
Agnes nodded slowly. ‘I should have tried myself,’ she said. ‘I often wonder about her – if she’s OK.’
‘You think she might not be?’
‘She was in a bad way when I last saw her.’ Frieda waited for Agnes to continue. ‘She’d left home and she had a habit.’ She gave a shiver. ‘She looked pretty bad, thin, with spots on her forehead. I don’t know how she was getting the money to pay for it. She didn’t have a real job. I should have done more, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She was in trouble, I could see that, and I just wanted to run a mile, as if it was contagious. I tried to put her out of my mind. Every so often I think of her and then I push her down again. Some friend.’
‘Except you remembered that story, and passed it on.’
‘Yeah. I can see her now, telling me. Grinning.’
‘What did she look like when you knew her?’
‘Little and thin, with long, dark hair that was always falling over her eyes, and a huge smile. It used to take over her whole face. Gorgeous, in an odd kind of way. Like a monkey. Like a waif. She wore eccentric clothes she picked up from vintage shops. Boys loved her.’
‘Does she have family?’
‘Her mum died when she was little. Maybe things would have turned out differently if she’d had a mother. Her dad, Lawrence, was lovely – he doted on her but he couldn’t keep her in order, not even when she was small. And she has two brothers, Ricky and Steve, who are several years older than her.’
‘Thank you, Agnes. I’ll tell you if I find her.’
‘I wonder what she’s like now. Maybe she’s settled down, become respectable. Kids, a husband, a job. It’s hard to imagine. What would I say to her?’
‘Say what’s in your heart.’
‘That I let her down. So odd, though, how it’s all come back like this – just because of a silly story I told to poor Rajit.’
Frieda – you haven’t answered my last phone calls or my emails. Please let me know that everything’s all right. Sandy xxxxx
THIRTY-THREE
Frieda walked home slowly. She could feel the warmth seeping into her body, hear her feet softly tapping on the pavement. People moved towards her and then flowed past, their faces blurred and indistinct. She saw herself from the outside; the thoughts that streamed through her brain seemed to belong to someone else. She knew that she was tired after all the nights of wakefulness and disordered dreams.
She did not go straight to her house but turned aside to sit awhile in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was a small, green square, bright with blossom and new tulips. In the middle of the day it was often full of lawyers in their smart suits eating their lunch, but now it was quiet, except for a pair of young women playing tennis on the court at the far side. Frieda sat down with her back against one of the great old plane trees. Its girth was tremendous and its bark dappled. She closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sun that fell through its leaves. Perhaps she should do as Sandy said and go to New York, where she would be safe and with the man she loved, who loved her and who knew her in a way that no one else in the world ever had. But then she would no longer be able to sit in the shade of this beautiful old tree and let the day settle around her.
When she got up again, the sun was sinking lower and the air was beginning to feel cool. She thought wistfully of her bath. And she thought of Chloë, took out her mobile and made the call.
Olivia’s voice was ragged. Frieda wondered if she’d been drinking. ‘I suppose Chloë’s been telling you all sorts of horrible lies about me.’
‘No.’
‘It’s no good pretending. It’s no good anyone pretending. I know what you all think.’
‘I don’t –’
‘Bad mother. Fucked-up. Wash our hands of her.’
‘Listen, Olivia, stop!’ Frieda heard her own voice, harsh and stern. ‘You need to talk about this, it’s clear, but I’m not washing my hands of you. I’m ringing up to talk about Chloë.’
‘She hates me.’
‘She doesn’t hate you. But it’s probably a good thing if she stays with me for a few days while you sort things out.’
‘You make me sound like a sock drawer.’
‘Say, one week,’ said Frieda. She thought of her tidy, secure house invaded by Chloë’s mess and drama and experienced a feeling of near-panic. ‘I’ll come over tomorrow evening and we can talk about what you’re going through and try to make some kind of plan to deal with it. Half past six.’
She turned off her phone and put it into her pocket. Her own plan was that she was going to go home, have a very long, very hot bath in her new and beautiful bathroom and climb into bed, pulling the duvet over her head, shutting out her thoughts. And hope that she wouldn’t dream, or at least that she wouldn’t remember her dreams.
She opened her front door. Several pairs of muddy shoes lay on the mat. A leather satchel. A jacket she didn’t recognise. There was a nasty smell coming from the kitchen. Something was burning and an alarm was making a piercing sound that felt to Frieda as though it was coming from inside her head. For a moment she considered leaving her own house and simply walking away from everything that was going on in there. Instead, she went up to the alarm in the hall ceiling and pressed the button to turn it off, then called out for Chloë. There was no reply but the cat dashed past her and up the stairs
The kitchen was full of fumes. Frieda saw that the handle of her frying pan was blistered and twisted. That must be the nasty smell. There were beer bottles, empty glasses, a lovely bowl had been used as an ashtray and two dirty plates lay on the table, which was sticky and stained. She cursed under her breath and threw open the back door. Chloë was in the middle of the yard, and she saw that Ted was there as well, sitting with his back against the far wall and
his knees drawn up to his chin. There were several cigarette butts scattered round him, and a beer bottle at his feet.
‘Chloë.’
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘There’s quite a mess in there.’
‘We were going to clear it up.’
‘I’ve been speaking to Olivia. You can stay here for one week.’
‘Great.’
‘But there are rules. This is my house and you have to respect it and me. You clear things up, for a start. Properly. You don’t smoke inside. Hello, Ted.’
He raised his face and stared at her. His eyes were red-rimmed and his lips were bloodless. ‘Hi,’ he managed.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘I was just going.’
‘Have you both been at school today?’
Chloë shrugged and gave her a defiant look. ‘Some things are more important than school, you know. In case you forgot, Ted’s mother was killed.’
‘I know.’
‘If you had to choose between double biology and helping your friend, which would you choose?’
‘Helping friends is something you do after double biology.’ She looked at Ted. ‘When did you last eat?’
‘We were going to have pancakes,’ said Chloë, ‘but they went wrong.’
‘I’ll make you some toast.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you about stuff, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘That’s all everyone seems to want. For me to talk about my feelings and weep and then you can hug me and tell me everything will be OK in the end.’
‘I’m just going to make toast. Does your father know you’re here and skipping school, Ted?’
‘No. I’m not a child.’
‘I know you’re not.’
‘My dad’s got his mind on other things. Mum was shagging another man.’
‘That’s a painful thing for you to find out.’
‘Do you want to know how I feel about it? Because I’m not going to talk about that. Or anything else.’
There was a knocking at the door, hard and insistent, although Frieda wasn’t expecting anyone.
‘Come inside now,’ she said, to the two of them. ‘I’ll see who’s here.’
Judith stood on the doorstep. She was wearing a man’s shirt over baggy jeans held up by rope, and broken flip-flops. There was a colourful bandanna wrapped round her chestnut curls. Her eyes, set wide in her face, seemed bluer than when Frieda had seen her at that awful interview, and there was vivid orange lipstick on her full mouth, which was turned down sullenly. ‘I’m here for Ted. Is he here?’
‘I’m making toast for him. Do you want some?’
‘OK.’
‘This way.’
Frieda led the girl into the kitchen. She gave a nod to Ted, who nodded back, then raised her hand in half-greeting to Chloë, whom she obviously knew.
‘Louise is clearing out Mum’s clothes.’
‘She can’t do that!’ Ted’s voice was sharp.
‘She is.’
‘Why can’t she fuck off to her own house?’
‘Dora’s shut herself in her room and she’s wailing. And Dad’s shouting.’
‘At you, or at Louise?’
‘Everybody, really. Or nobody.’
‘He’s probably drunk.’
‘Stop it!’ She put her hands up as if to cover her ears.
‘Face it, Judith. Mum was fucking another man and Dad’s a drunk.’
‘Don’t! Don’t be so cruel.’
‘It’s for your own good.’ But he looked ashamed of himself.
‘Will you come back with me?’ his sister asked. ‘It’s better if we’re there together.’
‘Here’s your toast,’ said Frieda. ‘Help yourself to the honey.’
‘Just butter.’
‘I’m very sorry about your mother.’
Judith shrugged her thin shoulders. Her blue eyes glittered in her freckled face.
‘At least you’ve got Ted,’ said Chloë, urgently. ‘At least you two can help each other. Think if you were alone.’
‘You were together when you found out, weren’t you?’ asked Frieda. ‘But since then have you talked about it to each other?’ Neither of them spoke. ‘Have you talked to anyone?’
‘You mean someone like you?’
‘A friend or a relative or someone like me.’
‘She’s dead. Words don’t change that. We’re sad. Words won’t change that.’
‘There’s this woman the police sent,’ said Judith.
‘Oh, yes.’ Ted’s voice was raw with contempt. ‘Her. She nods all the time as if she has some deep understanding of our pain. It’s crap. It makes me want to throw up.’ There were hectic blotches on his cheeks. He tipped himself back on his chair so he was balanced on only one of its legs and spun himself slowly.
‘Mum hated it when he did that.’ Judith waved at her brother. ‘It was like a family thing.’
‘Now I can do it as much as I want and no one will bother about it.’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘I agree with your mother about that. It is very irritating. And dangerous.’
‘Can we go home, please? I don’t want to leave Dad on his own with Louise being all sad and disapproving.’ She faltered. There were tears in her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘I think we should go home,’ she repeated.
Ted lowered his chair and stood up, a spindly, scruffy figure. ‘OK, then. Thanks for the toast.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Bye,’ said Judith.
‘Goodbye.’
‘Can we come again?’ Judith’s voice was suddenly tremulous.
‘Yes.’ Chloë’s voice was loud and energetic. ‘Any time, day or night. We’re here for you – aren’t we, Frieda?’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, a little wearily.
She trudged upstairs to the bathroom. The bath was there in all its glory. She turned on the taps and they worked. But there was no plug. She looked under the bath and in the cupboard, but it wasn’t there. The plug in the washbasin was too small, and the one in the kitchen was an irritating metal kind that didn’t have a chain but twisted down. She couldn’t have a bath, after all.
Karlsson and Yvette arrived at the Lennox house shortly after Judith had left. The shouting was over, and in its place there was a curdled silence, an air of unease. Russell Lennox was in his study, sitting at his desk and staring blindly out of the window; Dora was in her room, no longer sobbing but lying curled into a ball, her face still wet and swollen from tears. Louise Weller had been cleaning up. She had washed the kitchen floor, vacuumed the stairs, and was just about to make a start on some of her sister’s clothes, when the doorbell rang.
‘We need to look through Mrs Lennox’s things one more time,’ explained Yvette.
‘I was making a start on her clothes.’
‘Perhaps not just yet,’ Karlsson told her. ‘We’ll tell you when you can do that.’
‘Another thing. The family want to know when the funeral can be.’
‘It won’t be long. We should be able to tell you in the next day or so.’
‘It’s not right.’
Karlsson felt an impulse to say something rude back to her but he replied blandly that it was difficult for everybody.
They made their way upstairs, into the bedroom that the Lennoxes had shared for more than twenty years. There were signs of Louise Weller’s work: there were several plastic bags full of shoes, and she seemed to have emptied most of the small amount of makeup Ruth had owned into the waste-paper bin.
‘What are we looking for?’ asked Yvette. ‘They’ve been through all this.’
‘I don’t know. There’s probably nothing. But this is a family full of secrets. What else don’t we know about?’
‘The trouble is, there’s so much,’ said Yvette. ‘She kept everything. Should we look through all those boxes in the loft with her children’s reports in? And wha
t about the various computers? We’ve been through theirs, of course, but each child has a laptop and there are a few old ones that obviously don’t work any more but haven’t been thrown away.’
‘Here’s a woman who for ten years met her lover in their flat. Did she have a key? Or any documents at all that would shed light on this? Did she really never send or receive emails or texts? I’ve taken it for granted that this affair must have something to do with her death but perhaps there’s something else.’
Yvette gave a sarcastic smile. ‘As in, if she was capable of adultery, what else might she have done?’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant.’
Standing in the bedroom, Karlsson thought about how they knew so much about Ruth Lennox and yet didn’t know her at all. They knew what toothpaste she used and which deodorant. What her bra size was and her knickers and her shoes. What books she read and what magazines. They knew what face cream she used, what recipes she turned to, what she put in her shopping trolley week after week, what tea she favoured, what wine she drank, what TV programmes she watched, what box-sets she owned. They were familiar with her handwriting, knew what biros and pencils she wrote with, saw the doodles she made on the sides of pads; they had studied her face in the photographs around the house and in the albums. They had read the postcards she’d received from dozens of friends over dozens of years from dozens of countries. Rifled through Mother’s Day cards and birthday cards and Christmas cards. Checked and double-checked her email, and were sure she’d never used Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
But they didn’t know why or how she had managed to conduct a ten-year affair under the nose of her family. They didn’t know if she’d felt guilty. They didn’t know why she had had to die.
On an impulse, he pushed open the door to Dora’s bedroom. It was very neat and quiet in there. Everything was put away and in its proper place: clothes neatly folded into drawers, paper stacked on the desk, homework books on the shelves above it, her pyjamas folded on the pillow. In the wardrobe, her clothes – the clothes of a girl who didn’t want to become a teenager yet – hung above paired, sensible shoes. It made Karlsson feel sad just to look at the anxious order. A thin spindle of pink caught his eye on the top of the cupboard. He reached up his hand and pulled down a rag doll, then drew in his breath sharply. It had a flat pink face and droopy legs, red cotton hair in plaits, but its stomach had been cut away and the area between its legs snipped open. He held it for several moments, his face grim.