‘Are you going to get them for her?’ asks Caroline, interrupting my thoughts as she appears at my side with an armful of clothes.
‘I think so.’ I glance at the dungarees and run my hand along the fabric.
Usually, I get Rose books. Occasionally Ellie will post about them on Facebook or Instagram with the book on Rose’s lap or placed artfully on the kitchen table, thanking me. I sometimes have to nudge her, though. She was always scatty and these days she’s worse than ever. I wonder if Ellie starts sentences to her new friends, ‘As a mother …’ I hope not.
On the walk back to the shop, I find myself wondering if I can casually steer the conversation to Juliet and her presence in South Kensington the night Dickie died, but I can’t think of how, not in any subtle way. I’m not making any progress, but perhaps it will be easier when Charles comes to spend his book tokens and he and I finally have the opportunity to talk.
‘Where have you been?’ asks Brenda as I return to the staffroom, my cheeks still flushed from the cold. She takes her ready-meal out of the microwave, pulls the cellophane back carefully.
‘BabyGap,’ I say. ‘Of all places.’
‘Ah,’ says Brenda blandly. She turns back to the sink, and doesn’t ask any more questions.
For years, Brenda used to run the Children’s section in the shop. She’d hold storytelling sessions once a month, her face coming to life when she read. She’s so dozy, normally, so placid, you wouldn’t think she’d be capable of bringing so much animation to The Tiger Who Came to Tea or We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
Then, last year, she asked management if she could change to Non-Fiction. They weren’t keen for her to move, but she insisted. Now she works quietly in Travel, avoiding any contact with children, while Ingrid, who fancies herself as something of a globe-trotter, is always grumbling that she could do a better job.
I’m pleased with my purchase. On the way home, I keep slipping a hand into the plastic bag and stroking the soft fabric of the dungarees. For some silly reason, they make me feel hopeful, optimistic in a way I haven’t felt in a while – as if they could herald the end of our estrangement.
27
I know what comes next. It’s always the same – after something wonderful happens with Charles there is a period of waiting. I comfort myself by recalling the story of Penelope and how her waiting paid off: unpicking her weaving each night so that the shroud would never be finished, playing for time, delaying the suitors who hovered like vultures while her husband, Odysseus, journeyed home. If you wait long enough, something always happens eventually.
It happens on a bright November day. There’s something about the cold, clear weather in winter that stirs the blood. The clean, pale potential of the sky, like a canvas, makes you believe anything is possible. I’ve always been a winter person. On days like these my spirit soars – the season of opaque tights and radiators, hot chocolate with cream, cashmere socks and reading in bed.
The feeling of wellbeing persists. I don’t often feel good about myself but today when I glanced in the shop windows on the Kings Road my hair seemed to fall with a pretty wave and my cheeks looked naturally rosy. My interactions with the customers have an ease to them, a playfulness – ‘What an excellent choice,’ I say once or twice, at the till, because they love it when you say that and always flush with pride. It’s a day, in short, on which I feel glad to be alive. Once or twice I look up and see Gareth watching me as I move with purpose around the shop and I know it’s Charles’s attention working its magic.
But all this is the prelude – the overture to what is to come. It’s as if everything had to be right first – all the pieces of the puzzle had to come together with friends in my life – first Meilin and now Caroline – and Ellie communicating with me again. We were messaging just last night – a silly back-and-forth about Rose’s dungarees, which I’d sent to an address she’d given me in Tignes.
Your parcel hasn’t arrived, wrote Ellie, What was in it?
I want it to be a surprise for Rose.
I promise I won’t tell, she typed, adding a winky face.
I looked for the dungarees online but only found them in blue. I sent her the link.
She sent me the heart-eyes emoji. Thanks, sis. You’re the best.
I spot him before he comes to me, looking through a pile of gift books at the front of the shop. The emotion isn’t so much the giddy elation of my teenage years, but tenderness. It feels as if everything has been leading up to this day. A certainty. That’s what it is. That I wouldn’t even have to go over to him. That this time, he would come to me. I wait by the till for him. It needs to be perfect.
‘Fran,’ Charles says, putting the book down on the counter and fishing out his tokens.
‘Of all the shops,’ I say. I’d practised that line in the mirror.
I glance at the book. It’s Henry IV, Part I. A beautiful gift edition. My eyes fill with tears. It’s a book that makes me think of him every time I pass it on the shelves. That and Wuthering Heights. A cover I have to stop myself from caressing at times. I hold it in my hands for a moment too long before scanning it.
‘You remembered,’ I say.
‘It’s for you,’ he whispers. ‘Do you have a pen?’
I pass him one from behind the till and wish they could see me now – the naysayers, Meilin, Ellie, Juliet. I always knew it would come to this. That it was inevitable. I glory for a moment in my rightness, longing to return to that teenage Fran and tell her: it’s OK. It was always just a matter of waiting.
Charles smiles and hands me the book. He doesn’t stay to see my reaction as I read it. He’s too much of a gentleman for that. He simply wraps his scarf around his neck and strides off into the crisp November afternoon. As soon as he’s gone, I open the book.
Dearest F, I’ve finally seen the importance of acting. Would you mind if our private study session took place at the Victoria Hotel tonight – just around the corner from here. I need to talk to you.
I stand staring at the words for a long time.
‘What did he want?’ asks Gareth grumpily.
I close the book hurriedly and push it into my handbag.
28
There’s no obvious bar at the hotel Charles has chosen, but when I ask for him at reception, I’m told he’ll meet me in the library. It’s a good thing I haven’t had too much time to worry about this appointment. If I’d had the chance to go home, no doubt I would have started trying on various outfits and getting into a pickle about whether I was overdressed or not, but, this way, I have no choice but to run a comb through my hair and come along in my work clothes, walking smartly through the streets to the hotel to outrun my nerves.
The library looks like something from a film. It couldn’t be more perfect if I’d designed it myself. Antique brown volumes on the shelves, a pair of armchairs by the fire. Charles staring into the flames, lost in thought. As I enter, he gets to his feet and asks what I’d like to drink.
I glance around, but this place is too sophisticated for menus. ‘How about a gin and tonic?’
‘Slimline?’
I touch my waist self-consciously. That must be how Fiona takes it.
‘No, thank you,’ I say. ‘I like proper tonic water.’
‘Quite right,’ he says and disappears to order.
While he’s gone, I scan the volumes on the shelves, looking for a title I can say something insightful about, but there’s nothing I recognise. They’re all volumes of local history, borough by borough. Books as furniture.
I pop to the loo, check my flushed reflection for a final time and when I return someone has served our drinks on a table by the fireplace.
‘It was good to see you at the auction,’ Charles begins.
I smile and take a sip of my drink. I hope he doesn’t notice the tremble in my hand as I raise the glass to my lips. We haven’t spoken one-on-one for any length of time for years, since Ellie and I visited Honeybourne. We have conversations in my head, of cou
rse. But that’s different.
‘I find I want to spend time with people from school at the moment. People who knew Dickie when he was young.’
I wait for him to go on.
‘I can’t stop thinking about him. The guilt is terrible.’ He takes a sip of his whisky. ‘I never should have let him drink that night.’
I’m quiet for a moment, thinking of Caroline and Daisy. ‘Could you really have stopped him?’ I ask in the end.
He shrugs. ‘Maybe not. But it’s not just that. It’s all of it. I keep looking back to see if there’s something I could have done to prevent his death. Fiona tells me not to; that there’s nothing I can do now.’
‘You must miss him,’ I say, keen to change the subject from Fiona. My tone is honeyed, understanding. There is a touch of acting involved, it’s true, but I don’t feel too bad about it. I daren’t say what I really feel about Dickie’s death. That it has given me a new lease of life. That everything, for me, has improved.
Charles nods. ‘He wasn’t perfect,’ he says. ‘I know you, of all people, are aware of that.’
The fire crackles and spits.
‘But I was there, you see, that night. I saw it happen – and that makes all the difference.’
‘I can imagine,’ I murmur, trying to push away my own memory, in case I give myself away.
‘I had to ring Caroline.’ Charles takes a gulp of his whisky. ‘I had to tell her. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’
His tears on the platform. Were they for Caroline as well as himself? It would be like Charles to think of others in that way. I’d wanted to go over to him, felt the pull of him in my limbs, but it was a private moment. Sometimes we need to cry alone. And perhaps I was scared, too, of exposing my presence. I didn’t know how he would react. I still don’t.
‘Fiona thinks I’m going crazy,’ Charles says softly. He pauses before continuing. ‘But I sometimes think it might not have been an accident. That someone might have pushed him.’
I’m silent for a long time, remembering the jostling movement of the crowd near Dickie and Charles. The shriek of ‘Watch out!’ The way Dickie glanced over his shoulder and half-smiled. This is what I’ve been waiting for: my moment to say something. To share my fears with Charles. I take a breath, unsure how to begin and, without warning, the words from Ellie’s email pop into my head: Be careful, sis.
I hesitate. The moment passes. ‘Who’d have any reason to kill Dickie?’ I hear myself say instead.
The truth is, I can think of at least one person, and I’m sure Charles can too. I’ve done well to avoid the thought so far – to push the memory down as deep as I can – but in that moment it leaps back up like a repressed spring. One of the women on that platform had hair like my sister’s.
‘There was a strange vibe,’ Charles says.
He doesn’t seem to have noticed any change in me. I hold my glass to my cheek to cool it down.
‘People were being aggressive,’ he continues. ‘Shoving each other. A group of women who’d just seen a show – they were quite drunk.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘It sounds stupid but you could feel the situation getting dangerous. I stepped back from the line just in time.’ His voice cracks. ‘I should have pulled him with me.’
It’s a strange experience to listen to the description of a scene you witnessed yourself. How easy would it have been for an arm to push between the bodies and make contact with Dickie? To tip him over the edge. We were so tightly packed the CCTV cameras might not have picked it up.
‘Have you ever doubted your own eyes?’ Charles asks.
I remember the woman I saw at the V&A. Her blue dress, blonde curls so like Ellie’s. Like the woman on the platform. But then there were so many of them – one of them had hair like mine, another like Juliet’s. You can’t tell anything from that.
‘I made my statement to the police,’ he continues. ‘Saying he just fell – but now, thinking about it, I’m not so certain.’
I swallow a couple of times to gather myself. ‘They’ve set a date for the inquest, haven’t they? Caroline says it’s in January. They’ll look into it thoroughly, examine the CCTV footage. I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it.’
‘I imagine they’ll speak to other witnesses.’ He glances up, his grey eyes seeming to look straight through me. ‘There were plenty of people on the platform – maybe one of them saw something significant? I could wait to see what they say before reviewing my story …’
‘Reviewing?’ I shift in my seat. ‘I’m not sure what the police will make of that.’ It suddenly seems unbearably hot by the fire. I’m aware of the prickle of sweat at my hairline, my belly like liquid. Is it possible Charles saw what I saw? Or can he mean something else? Is he insinuating he spotted me?
He touches his forehead anxiously. ‘I know, I know.’
I begin to breathe more freely: he’s as nervous as I am. It’s nothing. That’s not what he meant.
‘I can’t change my story just like that. It will look …’ He doesn’t finish the sentence.
I want to reach out and touch him. ‘What does Fiona think?’ I ask instead.
‘That I shouldn’t say anything unless I’m sure. And I wasn’t initially. It wouldn’t be fair on Caroline otherwise. It might stir things up from Dickie’s past.’
‘What sorts of things?’
He looks down at the table. ‘His drinking. Enemies.’
‘Enemies?’
Charles leans forward. ‘Dickie wasn’t good with women. He had a bad track record. Ellie was the first, but I think there were others.’
He’s said her name. My heart begins to pound with the urgency of an alarm. I hold my hands tightly in my lap, trying to calm down.
‘Caroline’s so blind when it comes to Dickie,’ Charles continues. ‘I’m not sure how much she knows about his history.’
‘Well, Ellie lives abroad …’ The words slip out too quickly. ‘If that’s what you’re saying.’
‘I’m not saying …’ He laughs nervously. ‘Christ, I’m not saying … Ellie and I are friends – you know that. I think the world of her. I don’t know.’ He lifts his glass and puts it back down again. ‘Maybe I’m worrying too much, but it’s just that he was bad to women and then there was a group of women next to him when he died.’ He shrugs. ‘Possibly – probably – accidentally.’
A thought snags on the roses on my bed. Those had arrived much later. Weeks after Dickie’s death. There was no chance Ellie had been in the country. No chance at all. And anyway, she wouldn’t. Ellie wouldn’t.
‘I’m probably just winding myself up,’ says Charles, his face lightening. ‘As I say, Fiona thinks I’m barking. Obsessing about things after everything I’ve been through.’
‘Juliet was there,’ I say quickly, trying to make the words sound casual. ‘In the area. The night he died.’
‘Oh,’ Charles says, sounding confused.
‘She mentioned it at the auction,’ I say, waiting for a twinge of guilt that doesn’t come. ‘It might be worth asking her.’
‘OK.’ He frowns. ‘I will.’
I follow his gaze to the fire, wondering if he’s torn by his old loyalty to Juliet. They were together for years, on and off.
He looks down at the table. ‘It’s funny – she never said.’
A waiter checks on us to see if we’d like another drink and we move on from the subject to talk about our days, our work. Charles is good at levity – a tease, a joke. His humour is gentler than someone like Dickie’s – it’s never needling or unkind, but he helps me to lighten up. That’s something I struggle with. Something I’ve been told all my life. But when you’ve learned to be watchful, untrusting of other people’s motives, it’s easier said than done. We make a good team, I think. This is what it could have been like all these years.
Now we’ve changed subject, I can relax and enjoy myself too. I just need to avoid the subjects of Dickie, Ellie and Fiona, and I’m fine. It’s completely normal. Like being
in the prep room again. Nothing has changed.
As we get up to leave, Charles helps me with my coat and walks with me out of the hotel. He pauses for a moment under the awning and steps out of the light into the shadows.
‘Night, Francesca,’ he says, and he stoops to kiss me on the cheek.
The warm press of his mouth tingles on my skin as I make my way home through the frosty streets.
29
In the shop the next day, I find myself humming scraps of Gilbert and Sullivan – the sort of thing Mother used to play loud in the cottage when she was spring-cleaning, while Ellie and I would leap around, jumping from the sofa as we pretended to be the Pirate King. After all these years of longing, I don’t feel the need to confide in anyone about my night with Charles. Even if I did, the telling might dilute it. The details are too rich, too potent, to be shared. I hug my secret tightly to myself.
On my lunch break, I return to the spot on the platform – exactly where I was standing when Dickie fell. I don’t know why, but after my conversation with Charles perhaps I’m hoping that my return will shake out a new memory.
It doesn’t. There is no trace of Dickie’s death now – no X marking the spot or the wilted bunches of flowers you get in road accidents. They have to act so quickly, the British Transport Police, erasing every trace. I walk to the place where Dickie was standing and close my eyes. Was there anything I missed? A familiar face in the crowd I might have seen but not stored carefully at the time. I would have known if Ellie had been there, wouldn’t I? The scent of her, perhaps. Some kind of sixth sense between sisters.
‘Watch out,’ says a voice nearby.
I open my eyes.
It’s a man in late middle age, carrying a briefcase. ‘You were close to the edge,’ he says kindly. ‘There was an accident here recently, you know?’
I should be more careful. It’s probably not a good idea for me to be revisiting the spot. It might look suspicious. Anyway, there’s absolutely no chance Ellie was there. She was in France at the time – so I don’t know why I’m worried. Hopefully Charles has spoken to Juliet by now, made her squirm a bit. I try not to reflect on how I mentioned her name as a way of changing the subject from Ellie.
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