by Amy Bird
“Here we are, sit down,” says the woman, pulling out a chair. “I’ll get you a glass of water.” She goes over to the sink. I want to ask if it’s filtered water, but I guess maybe their water is better in the countryside anyway. While her back is turned, I take a couple of quick photos of the kitchen to add to my collection. Might help Will get some happy memories of his old childhood home. I guess he’d be content with any memories, though.
“Thanks so much,” I say, as the woman hands the water to me. I take two big sips and put it down again.
“I’m Ellie,” I tell her.
She nods, like she knows.
“Janet,” she says.
“Well, thanks, Janet,” I say. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll start feeling better. Goes just as quickly as it sets off, this pain.”
“You should see your midwife,” says Janet.
“Oh, you know, pregnancy’s an uncomfortable business. Pretty sure it’s normal,” I say. Because that’s what I’ve told myself, often enough. “Probably just trapped wind or something.”
This time, the woman does raise her eyebrows at me.
“Sorry, sorry. Too much information. You spend enough time on Mumsnet, you start thinking it’s fit conversation fodder.”
The woman smiles and shakes her head. “Don’t worry. I’ve been there. Just tell your midwife.”
“Must have been a great place to bring up children, this house?” I ask her, thinking of Will, but wanting her to think of her own offspring.
She nods, and I’m sure she’s about to expand on the answer. But then the phone rings. Her landline. Immediately, the closed body language is back. Her shoulders tense and she twists round to look at the phone. She just stares at it, and I think she isn’t going to answer it. Then she gets up.
“I’d better…” she says, and I nod in encouragement. Not that she looks like she wants encouragement. She looks scared.
She goes over to the handset, one of those old-fashioned ones that are attached to the wall, with a little umbilical cord linking to the dialling mechanism.
“Hello?” she says.
As soon as the burbling sound of the caller starts, Janet clutches the phone closer to herself. She cups the mouthpiece and turns away from me.
“Yes. Yes she is,” I hear her say. “Not long.” Then there’s a silence from Janet, and lots of burbling on the other end. Then Janet speaks again. “No, I believe you! Yes, OK. OK.” Then I hear the sound of a dial tone. The caller has hung up. Janet replaces the handset too. I see her hand is shaking.
She doesn’t sit down again. Instead, she stays standing over me.
“How are you doing with that water?” she asks me. Her voice is shaking too. The arms are folded across the chest again.
“Is everything OK?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says. “But as I said, it’s not a great time.”
“Do you not know anything about the previous occupants? About what happened?”
“I only bought this house a couple of years ago,” she says.
“But you said…” I start, wanting to challenge her that she said it was a great place to bring up children. But she just repeats herself.
“I only bought this house a couple of years ago.” There’s a steeliness in her eyes which tells me not to push the point.
Reluctantly, I pull myself up from the chair. I’ve clearly outstayed my welcome.
“Thanks for the water,” I say, as our feet clatter back along the tiles to the door.
“You’re welcome,” she says. But I’m plainly not. Because a moment later I’m out on the street and the door closes behind me. On a whim, I press the doorbell. Even from outside I can hear it ring. It’s working perfectly. Unsurprisingly, the door doesn’t open again.
What was she so frightened of, this Janet woman? It can’t have been me. I’m not intimidating, am I? Pretty much anyone is less vulnerable than me in my current condition. It was like she was frightened to be seen with me. And I’m sure she did know more than she said. Much more. Still, there are plenty more houses in the development. Plenty of curtains that twitched, thirty years ago, I’ll bet.
I go next door, to number 9. Rather try that first than 13. This time, there is no sign on the doorbell, so I ring it. It sounds loud and clear. Yet no response. I clatter the letterbox a bit, then stoop down to look through it. Feet. I straighten up again and wait for the door to open.
It does, but again the chain stays on. Like I’m some kind of threat. A loony on the doorstep. Although to this woman, maybe I am a threat. She looks kind of old. About seventy, I’d guess, although she could be younger. White hair always makes people seem older.
“Hi, my name’s Ellie,” I begin. “I’m not from round here, but – ”
“You came about Max Reigate.”
I stare at her. How does she know?
“Um, yes, actually, or rather Sophie Travers – ”
“Nasty business,” she says.
“Yes, right, well, what I was actually after was to find out where Sophie Travers might be now. You see, I’m the wife of the son she put up for adoption and he’s just found out about it all, and that his father – ”
“Died,” supplies the old woman.
“Died,” I nod. This is brilliant. She knows everything. “And I wanted to reunite him with his birth mother.” I stop, waiting for her to invite me in while she finds the address or, better yet, phone number.
Instead, she shakes her head.
“Can’t help you,” she says.
“But I thought you knew…” I begin, disappointed.
“Oh, I know some things,” she says. “Unfortunately. Nasty business, like I said. But I can’t help you. I hope you do get help though, dear. From the doctors.” What? Of course I’m going to get help from the doctors, when I give birth, but that’s nothing to do with this. Maybe she is senile. And then she starts the looking over my shoulder routine. I see her shrink back into the doorway. I look over my shoulder again. There’s that same car, in the distance. Although, it seems to be coming closer.
“I really can’t help you, my dear,” says the woman, drawing my attention back to her. She starts closing the door.
“Please,” I say. “Will, he’s – ”
At the mention of Will, the closing motion of the door stops slightly. Then it carries on again. But there’s a small whisper from the old woman as it closes. “You might try the school. Where Sophie used to teach. But I didn’t tell you that.”
And then the door is shut. The school? Which school? Sophie, a teacher, who abandons children?
I turn away from the door to ponder it further.
And I see that car, the car that has been on the other side of the estate while I’ve been door-stopping the locals. It’s much closer this time, and I see it properly, before it speeds away. I gasp. Because I know that car. It belongs to Gillian and John. And Gillian is driving.
Chapter Fourteen
-Ellie-
Oh my God.
What the hell are Gillian and her Audi doing here?
I run to the side of the road as quickly as a woman in my state can run. But she is gone. In a puff of witch’s smoke, or exhaust fumes.
What is she doing? Is she, like, properly stalking me?
Or…yes. Yes, that’s it. She has been going from door to door putting the frighteners on people. Threatening to kneecap them or worse, I bet, if they tell me anything. That’s how that old lady knew what I was here about. And what else did she say – that I was cuckoo? A mad, dangerous mental person, hence the old woman’s comment about doctors? But why? Is Gillian really so desperate to deprive Will of his real mother that she’ll go round defaming her (adoptive) family and threatening physical violence? Murder, even? Maybe she read in a book that good mothers will do anything to protect their children, and thought that included being a gangster?
Or is she scared of something else? Exposure? I mean, I was kind of joking before when I told myself she might have killed Ma
x and forced Sophie to put Will up for adoption. But what if it’s true? What if she did? What if that’s what happened that day? And maybe Sophie Travers is dead too, buried at night in the middle of Dartmoor. Maybe Gillian has killed for Will once, twice. What’s a bit of kneecapping to that?
But then, why wouldn’t all these people just call the police? Unless Gillian has acquired a gun, she’s just not all that threatening, is she? I guess she can be a bit intimidating, if you let her in. I just never have. Maybe I should. Maybe I should let her frighten me. See what it reveals. Maybe she has a mad jealous rage burning inside her, that was first lit when her lover Max Reigate went with Sophie Travers and had a son. Maybe she couldn’t face not having Max and the boy, so she killed Max and took the child. But wouldn’t you kill Sophie, make it look like an accident, then win Max and Will? Maybe she is stupid as well as mad.
All sounds a bit melodramatic. People don’t really go around murdering each other, do they? Perhaps it’s just possessiveness of Will got out of hand. Perhaps she worked herself up into such a frenzied fear over the years that Will would run away from her when (or rather, if) he found out he was adopted that she is trying everything to stop him running now. Even when he is already doing it. I’d feel sorry for her, if she weren’t such a bitch. Such a bad mother. I stroke my tummy. Don’t worry, Leo, I think-speak to my little boy. I will be such a good mother, when you come along in three months’ time. I will keep you close but let you be free, too. I won’t restrain you. I’ll know what’s best for you, just like I know what’s best for Will. And you’ll just willingly accept that, because it will be so obvious. A nice, smiling happy little boy, and a nice smiling happy young man. That’s what I’m going to raise.
But whatever Gillian’s doing, she couldn’t stop me getting a clue, could she? About the school. God knows which one, or what I’m supposed to say when I get there, but I’m totally going to find out. I pull out my phone and open Google maps. Widen out the map picture until I find a school – and yes! There it is. Just call the number of the taxi firm that brought me here, and I’ll be there in no time. And maybe there, there’ll be a trace of Sophie. A trace I can follow. To bring back both her and my husband.
And oh, for God’s sake! What car do I see pulling out of the school gates when I arrive? Gillian’s, of course. What, has she bugged people’s doorframes? Or is this such an obvious move that I was bound to make it? Just one of the tracks that needs to be covered? As the taxi turns in, and her car turns out, I mouth an angry ‘What the fuck?’ at her and spread out my hands. If I thought she could lip-read properly, I’d also say ‘Why the hell are you trying to ruin our happiness? Don’t you understand, this is all I can think of to make Will take an interest in me again?’ But of course, I already know the answer. Happiness is her and Will. No one else. Not me. Not Sophie. Probably not even Leo. Gillian doesn’t do a witchy smile, like I thought she might. Just stares at me intensely, her lips set firmly into a line that’s not a smile, and turns her head in the other direction to check for traffic. Wish she hadn’t. Wish it just ploughed into her. My mind flashes to when I found out about the car ploughing into Mum and Dad’s car. I close my eyes for a moment. Maybe I don’t wish that even on Gillian. I wouldn’t want to witness it anyway.
So, anyway, I’m plainly not going to have the benefit of surprise. Still, I’m going to try to use the cover story I’ve come up with. Not too difficult. Woman with a bump. Means woman will have child (God willing). Means child will need a school. And oh look here I am, speccing one out.
I go into reception, and with as much of an air of complacent entitlement as I can manage, I ring the little bell at the front desk.
A woman appears. Will and the taxi driver seem to be the only men who have survived in Dartington. She smiles a greeting.
“Hi. I’m Ellie Spears,” I say. Although maybe actually I’m Ellie Reigate now. We haven’t discussed if Will is going to revert to his old name.
The woman’s smile disappears.
“Oh,” she says. “We were told you would come.”
So Gillian has been in here spreading her poison.
“Mothers-in-law, hey?” I joke. “Always nosing in where they’re not wanted.” Particularly when they are fake mothers-in-law, trying to stop you finding the real one.
My joke doesn’t get a smile. Perhaps because the laughter I tried to put in my voice can’t hide the panic. Panic that this day is turning out wrong. That I’ll go back home answer-less. Sophie-less. Back to the same.
“What did she say, my lovely mother-in-law?” I ask.
No response.
“Did she say I was looking for a school for my lovely little boy, in here, hey?”
That gets a response. “It’s a girls only school.”
Damn. If I hadn’t been so busy looking at Gillian’s ugly face when we turned into the gates I would have noticed that.
“OK, OK, I confess. I’m not here about that. I’m here about Sophie Travers. Sophie Reigate. I think she used to teach here.”
The woman starts to examine her fingernails. They could do with some examination – the red paint is chipping off. Then again, the pink on mine is too.
“We could both use a nail bar, couldn’t we?” I say, trying for sisterly camaraderie.
I obviously miss, because she just says “Lots of people used to work here. I didn’t know them all.”
“Can I see someone who did? Your headmistress?”
There is a slight shake of a head, as if I’m asking the impossible.
“Please?”
At first the head-shaking continues. But then, she seems to change her mind. “I’ll go and see if she’s available.”
I sense that she won’t be. That this is just a trick, a sop to a difficult almost-parent, like the difficult actual-parents they must get in here. Unlike Gillian, who is a just a non-parent. Perhaps they found her easier for that reason.
Still, her leaving the front desk gives me a chance to look around a bit. I step back from the desk and look at the walls. They are lined with pictures, those group shots with teachers on benches along the front, rows of girls standing behind. There are scores of pictures, going back across the years. Going back across the years! Maybe Sophie Travers is in here! My heart beats a bit faster, my energy returns. OK, OK, find 1984. We know she lived in the area then. I follow the pictures round the entrance hall. The 2010s, the naughties, the nineties, the eighties. There! 1984. Have to stretch a bit to see, and let’s look –
“That’s her,” says a voice behind me, and I see a finger pointing at a face in the picture. It’s not a (half-)lacquered fingernail this time, so it’s not my ‘friend’ of earlier. I turn round to see the owner of the face. It’s a woman with frizzy mousy hair, expect for the roots, which are grey. Bit of a moustache as well, if I’m honest. She has on a white shirt, tightly buttoned up to the collar, and a knitted cardigan over the top.
“That’s her,” she says again. “Sophie Reigate. She taught music. She played the violin. She was brilliant.”
I don’t know where my new friend has come from. Perhaps her ears pricked up at Sophie’s name. For I suspect I have uncovered something of a girl crush. But never mind that. I stand on my tiptoes to look at the face that is being pointed out to me. It’s beautiful. Younger than I thought. She can’t have been the same age at Max. She only looks about twenty-three, twenty-four. She has this wonderful mane of hair, so brown it’s almost black. That’s why Will goes for brunettes then. Me, and the one we don’t mention. Plus look at those wonderful pouting red lips. Sophie Reigate is a stunner. Almost a femme fatale, were she not a teacher.
There is the sound of shoes clicking along the corridor. Only one set. So not a headmistress. My new friend the Sophie-lover darts into the reception office, right at the back, from whence she must have come.
My non-friend breaks the bad news.
“I’m afraid the headmistress can’t see you now,” she says. “She is out for the day.”
“Would you mind just calling me a taxi, then?” I ask.
The woman looks down her nose at me. Perhaps it is not in her job description to order taxis. In fact, it definitely can’t be, because she asks my new friend to do it.
As I sit and wait, nobody talks. The two women click away in the reception area, doing whatever it is that the upkeep of schoolgirls requires them to do. I just stand and stare at Sophie Travers’ picture, fixing it in my memory. Then I realise I can do one better than that; I take a photo of it on my phone. Another one to add to the collection. I would love to call Will, or better still, send it to him. ‘Guess who!’ it would say or ‘I found your mum!’ Or ‘Roll over that bitch Gillian – here’s…SOPHIE!’ And part of me is tempted to. To abandon the secrets, to tell him everything. But secrets are OK when there’s a surprise at the end. A nice surprise, that is. Take note, Gillian. But what if, were I just to show him a photo, he shrugged and looked away? Or turned away from me and switched out the light? No. I need Sophie to really be there, in person. That’s how this goes.
There’s a hooting outside. I look up, and my new friend is standing up to see out of the window.
“Your taxi’s here,” she says. “Let me help you with the door.”
“No, it’s fine, really,” I say. I spare her the lecture about how I’m not completely incompetent just because I have a child growing inside me. She has been a bit helpful, after all.
“No, really, let me help you,” she says. And there’s something about her tone that tells me not to resist further. She comes out of the reception booth and opens the inner door. Then the outer one, where we’re out of sight from the reception booth. She whispers to me.