Silent Playgrounds

by Danuta Reah

  Barraclough liked nosy neighbours. She particularly liked house-bound nosy neighbours. Best of all, she liked house-bound nosy neighbours who were quite up-front about their hobby. It was always a frustration and a delay to find your way tactfully around ‘I mind my own business’ and ‘I keep myself to myself.’ Rita Cooke was seventy-three. She had the shuffling gait and twisted hands of arthritis, but her mind was whip sharp, as, apparently, were her eyes. And she’d lived next door to the Allan family for ten years. ‘I don’t know which was worse,’ she said happily, pouring Barraclough a cup of tea. ‘That Sandra, always got a long face on her, always sighing and moaning. She’d come round here and it was, “Oh, Dennis’s done this and Dennis’s done that and poor me.” What she needed was a few real problems, take her mind off herself.’

  ‘What did her husband do? What did she complain about?’ Barraclough took another biscuit.

  ‘Oh, something and nothing. He worked nights, you see, and she didn’t like being on her own, or he wouldn’t back her up with the girl – “He lets her talk to me how she likes” – or he didn’t understand about how ill she was. You know. Mind you’ – Rita Cooke wanted to be fair – ‘he was just as bad. In his way. “Yes, love, yes, love, oh, what shall I do? Oh, I can’t cope.” It’s no wonder that child went to the bad.’ She waited for Barraclough to pick up the bait.

  ‘How do you mean, Mrs Cooke?’ Barraclough asked obligingly.

  ‘Oh well, I only know what I saw. She was out all the time. All night, sometimes. And she had some very odd-looking friends, not that they came here much. Not unless there wasn’t anyone here.’

  Barraclough nodded. ‘Would you recognize any of them?’ she said.

  Mrs Cooke gave her a sharp look. ‘I might be getting on, but I’ve still got my sight,’ she said. Barraclough hastily nodded again. ‘There was one lad – didn’t like the look of him at all. He used to hang around a lot and wait for her. I’d have sent him off, but you’ve got to be careful these days.’ Barraclough got a description of the youth. Tall, pale, dark hair and eyes. ‘Quite good-looking,’ Mrs Cooke conceded.

  Barraclough asked her about Sandra Allan’s death. For the first time, the old woman seemed a bit reluctant to speak. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She had a big row with the lass – shouting and screaming. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it went on for a while. Then the lass is off out, door slamming, and he starts. I’ve never heard him shout at her before. She went out for about half an hour …’ Barraclough checked the time. They knew about that. She’d gone to the chemist to collect a prescription, the prescription for the pills that she later overdosed on. ‘Then she didn’t go out again. I saw him going out to work, four o’clock that was. I thought she was going to come round here like usual when she was upset, but she never did. It was quiet after that. I heard him come back at six the next morning. Then I got woken up again by the ambulance.’ The old lady frowned, looking uncertain, frail. ‘I never thought she’d do it,’ she said, looking at Barraclough with troubled eyes.

  Suzanne gave up on work. She felt as though something trusted and familiar had let her down. She looked out of her kitchen window and saw Jane in her small yard, working in the early evening sun on the tubs she used to grow herbs. Lucy was crouched over some game involving building blocks and the animals from her wooden farm. Mother and daughter.

  She remembered her own mother, that close, intense relationship that had been the centre of Suzanne’s child universe. She could remember coming in from school every day, her mother lying on the settee, the disorder of the morning still to clear up, the food to prepare before her father came back from work.

  As a child, she had just accepted her mother’s illness. As an adult, she could see that it had deprived her of the things that a normal childhood should have: a mother who looked after you, friends, uninterrupted schooling. But as a child, she had liked it. It had made her feel important and wanted. She remembered her mother the year before Adam was born, always on the settee, always in bed. But she could remember a party, her friends round a bonfire, sausages on sticks and her mother laughing as she watched them bob for apples. When had that been? You’ve worn your mother out, Suzanne! How can you be so thoughtless! Her father. She shook her head. Memories of childhood were not what she wanted just now.

  She knocked on the window and, when Jane looked up, she mouthed, Tea? Jane smiled and nodded and, five minutes later, Suzanne was carrying mugs of tea out into the garden, and some apple juice for Lucy. The day was fine, the sky a deep blue, with just a few clouds racing in the breeze that kept the air warm rather than baking hot. Suzanne took off the sweatshirt she’d been wearing over her T-shirt, and sat on the low wall that divided the two gardens, watching Jane work. ‘It’s just tea,’ she said, indicating the mug.

  ‘That’s OK.’ Jane pulled up a long-rooted dandelion and looked at it. ‘You know, they used to cultivate these things. I tried making dandelion coffee once. It was disgusting.’

  Suzanne looked across at Lucy who seemed to be involved in her game, oblivious to the conversation between the two adults. ‘Have you heard anything more?’ Jane looked at her. ‘From the police, about Emma.’ Surely Jane didn’t need reminding.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Jane went on looking at Suzanne, then she said, ‘You still look very tense. I don’t know – I haven’t heard anything directly.’

  ‘How do you mean, directly?’

  Jane knelt back on her heels and sipped the milkless tea Suzanne had given her. ‘I’m sure this stuff is better for you than people say,’ she said, indicating her mug. ‘Of course, you just don’t know what’s in it.’

  Suzanne wasn’t sure if Jane was being deliberately evasive, or if she was just thinking out loud while she sorted out an answer to Suzanne’s question. She couldn’t ask again, because Lucy came over and looked at the glass of apple juice. ‘Is that mine?’ Suzanne nodded, and Lucy picked it up carefully, holding it with both hands.

  ‘Sorry,’ Suzanne apologized. ‘It’s a bit full.’ Lucy nodded, concentrating as she lifted the glass to her mouth. ‘What are you doing?’ Suzanne indicated Lucy’s game over at the other side of the yard.

  ‘Playing.’ Lucy drank some more juice and looked at the level in her glass. ‘I’m going to take some for the people,’ she said.

  ‘People?’ Suzanne looked across to where wooden toys were assembled on some twigs and leaves. The peacock feather was stuck in the ground like a flag above them.

  ‘They’re on a boat,’ Lucy explained. ‘Escaping from the monsters. Tamby’s guarding them.’ She carried her glass carefully back to where she’d been playing.

  Jane pulled a face. ‘Still monsters,’ she said. ‘They spent a long time with Emma’s father,’ she went on, ‘but I don’t know why. Joel told me.’

  Suzanne had to do a quick mental pivot to realize that Jane was now answering her earlier question. ‘Emma’s father? How does Joel know?’

  Jane shrugged. ‘Joel made it his business to know. I don’t ask. Joel wanted to know if there was anything they weren’t telling us – that we should know. He was worried.’

  ‘Well, so he should be.’ Suzanne wasn’t giving any ground on Joel. ‘She is his child. His only child.’ This concern, uncharacteristic of Joel in her experience, made her feel slightly warmer towards him.

  ‘Oh, she isn’t. His only one, I mean.’ Jane sat back on her heels, detaching a snail from one of the plants. She looked at it. ‘I don’t want that.’ She threw it over the wall into the garden of the student house. ‘He had a child from his marriage.’

  Suzanne was genuinely shocked. She hadn’t known. ‘He never said anything. I’m sure he never told Dave.’

  ‘No. There’s no contact.’ Jane had finished working on the tubs now, and was looking at them with calm pleasure.

  ‘What, never?’

  Jane fixed her blue eyes on Suzanne. ‘Never.’ She gauged Suzanne’s reaction for a moment, then said, ‘I know how it looks. And I
don’t have many illusions about Joel. I know what he’s like. But there’s Lucy, you see.’ She rested back on her heels, her hands clasped round her cup. ‘Joel was just a bit of fun – I knew he wasn’t someone to take seriously. I didn’t actually plan for Lucy to happen.’ Suzanne nodded. Jane rarely talked about this. She was a very self-contained and private person. ‘Lucy needs to know that her father loves her,’ Jane said, glancing back at where Lucy was still absorbed in her game. ‘And if that means I have to make allowances for him, well, what does it matter? If I pressure Joel into doing more, he’ll just vanish. And what good will that be for Lucy? She’ll find out what he’s like as she gets older, but, just now, she needs to know he loves her.’

  ‘Does he?’ Suzanne had never, until recently, seen much sign of this in Joel.

  Jane sighed and shook her head. ‘I don’t know. As much as he’s capable, maybe. Though this thing has really given him a jolt. He was straight up as soon as I told him – he was pissed off that I didn’t call him straight away – and he’s sticking around. Oh, he’s off today because he’s working, but he’s coming back tonight.’

  Suzanne felt depressed at the thought of Joel being around. She remembered her encounter with him that morning. ‘He seemed upset that the police had interviewed Lucy,’ she said doubtfully. She found Joel in his new incarnation as concerned father a bit hard to believe.

  Jane nodded. ‘He said I shouldn’t have allowed it. He thought it had upset her. I think she needed to talk about it, and she needs to know that someone is doing something. It was good for her to see the police – she knows that there’s someone to chase the monsters away. And we all needed to find out what happened – to Lucy, as well as Emma. I think Joel knows that really. He just hates to admit he’s wrong.’

  ‘Do you know any more about what happened to Lucy?’ Suzanne looked across the garden to where Lucy was rearranging her toys, her face serious.

  Jane shook her head. ‘Lucy still says she went to the playground on her own, then she hid in the woods because she didn’t want to go to the hospital, I think. But it all got mixed up with Tamby. Each time she tells it, it gets more and more like one of her stories. I agree with Joel about any more interviews. I’ve told the police I’m not asking her again. I want her to forget.’

  Suzanne needed to talk. Jane listened quietly as Suzanne told her about the interview with DI McCarthy, and her worry that she’d unwittingly implicated Ashley. ‘I tried to explain,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t believe me.’

  Jane looked at her with exasperation. ‘You worry too much. Leave it up to them. It’s not your problem any more. You did the right thing. You told them what you saw. They’ll deal with it.’ She thought for a moment. ‘McCarthy. Was he the fair-haired one? Cold and distant? There’s something very sexy about men like that. He should have been wearing a uniform.’

  ‘Who? Who should have?’ Suzanne was thrown.

  ‘Your DI McCarthy. And you had him to yourself for a whole hour?’ Jane sighed. ‘All Lucy and I got was some female with a stuffed rabbit.’ She looked at Suzanne. ‘It’s not your problem,’ she emphasized.

  Suzanne looked at Lucy who was engaged in carefully burying one of her toys in the narrow border at the bottom of the yard, her hands and face muddy, her hair tousled, her face intent.

  Dennis Allan sat at the small coffee table in the front room. It was dark; the heavy curtains were drawn. He didn’t want people looking in, staring, whispering. He’d heard what they had been saying. Him… his wife… now his daughter… the police… murder… murderer… Murderer. He held his hands round the mug of coffee, sipping it occasionally, not noticing that it was cold. How had it happened? He looked at the photographs on the glass cabinet, safe in their frames, safe like he wasn’t any more, like his family wasn’t any more. Sandy in her wedding dress, white, he’d wanted that, though his mum had had a bit to say. Well, under the circumstances, Emma already on the way … Emma, in one of those oval frames the school photos came in, ten, smiling. Emma and Sandy on holiday, squinting in the sun, smiling. Emma in cut-off jeans, her blonde hair dyed a funny yellow, that awful stud through her nose, not smiling any more. Emma last Christmas by the tree, caught unawares, playing with the cat. Smiling now.

  How had it happened? He’d tried so hard. I did try, Sandy. Nothing. I love you, Emma. Nothing. The answer came, unwelcome and unasked for. Like mother, like daughter. His own mother’s sour disapproval that had blighted the early years of his marriage. He felt his eyes fill with tears. He was weak. People thought he was weak. He’d seen the veiled contempt in the eyes of the detective. Did they think he didn’t notice? They thought they were so clever. Well, let them work it out.

  Eight o’clock that evening, Suzanne decided she was going to the pub. There was a comedy night, she could talk to some friends, have a drink and just get away from it for a while. She put on the black trousers she’d bought several weeks ago and hadn’t worn yet and a silk top that Jane had given her. She twisted her hair back and caught it in a clip, put on some lipstick.

  She was just checking the contents of her purse when there was a knock at the door. Suzanne opened it. She was surprised to see Richard Kean, the psychologist and her mentor from the Alpha Centre, his head almost touching the top of the doorframe, his bulk filling the small entrance hall as he came in. Richard had never been in her house before. She invited him into the front room, wondering what it was he wanted. He looked at her, taking in her make-up, the new clothes. Suzanne always dressed conventionally, even severely, for work. Until recently, she’d dressed conventionally, severely, for everything. ‘Sorry, I’ve interrupted you. You’re going out.’

  ‘No, that’s fine. I’m only going to the local. Do you want a coffee?’ Suzanne wondered if he might join her down at the pub.

  ‘I’d rather have a cold drink.’ He looked hot.

  ‘Beer? Or a soft drink?’

  ‘Coke? I’m driving.’ Suzanne went through to the kitchen to get the drinks. He wasn’t likely to want a trip to the pub if he was driving. When she came back into the room he was standing by the wall looking at her photographs. ‘Is this your son?’ He was in front of the picture of Adam, the one taken just after his eleventh birthday. ‘He’s about the same age as my Jeff.’

  ‘No.’ Suzanne swallowed a sudden bitter taste. ‘No, that’s my brother, Adam.’

  ‘Oh, right, he looks a bit like you. Is this recent?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What does he do, then? Is he an academic too?’

  Suzanne found it hard to say. ‘No. Adam – he died, when he was fourteen. Six years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’ He looked embarrassed. He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t want to know. ‘Look, Sue, this is really a business visit. It couldn’t wait until Monday. I had a call from Keith Liskeard.’ Suzanne recognized the name of the Alpha director. ‘He says he’s had the CID round asking questions.’

  Suzanne’s stomach lurched. She should have warned them. ‘About Ashley?’ she said.

  Richard looked serious. ‘You do know about it.’

  ‘Well, yes …’

  He went on before she could tell him what had happened. ‘Look, Sue, I realize you were in a difficult situation – if you saw Ashley you had to tell them, no one’s saying you shouldn’t have done. But you should have let us know. I would have hoped you’d have come to us before you went to the police. It’s part of the commitment you make—’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Suzanne was caught completely off balance. ‘What exactly do you think happened? What do you think I said?’

  ‘I can understand when there’s been a crime like that, if you saw Ashley near the scene you’d naturally—’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Suzanne felt a cold push of anger.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He looked confused.

  ‘I didn’t see Ashley and I didn’t tell them I’d seen Ashley. I didn’t volunteer to talk to them, I had to …’

  ‘Yes, that’
s what I’m saying …’ He tried to pick up the initiative again but she overrode him.

  ‘It’s all a stupid misunderstanding. I specifically told them, specifically told DI fucking McCarthy that I didn’t see Ashley.’

  He looked at her in silence for a minute. He obviously didn’t believe her. ‘There are some issues with Ashley at the moment. This couldn’t come at a worse time for him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say.’

  Their endless confidentiality! Maybe if she’d been given the information that Richard was referring to … ‘Why don’t you ask Ashley? He’ll tell you where he was.’

  Richard looked uneasy. ‘It’s almost certainly because of these other issues … He hasn’t been to the centre since Thursday evening. We need to find him, get him to tell his story to the police before this gets out of hand.’

  Suzanne found that her anger was being taken over by a sense of insecurity – had she done something wrong, something stupid? ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I’m … OK, right.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘Keith is very unhappy about it,’ he warned.

  She went to the pub by herself in the end, but left early. She talked to a few people: some of Dave’s friends who’d been her friends as well when she and Dave were married; one or two people she knew from the university. It could have been a pleasant evening, but she found that she didn’t really want to talk to anyone. The comedy evening was a let-down as well, though the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it well enough. To her, the comedian’s laddish jokes were pointless and unfunny. She left early. He heckled her as she was leaving. ‘There’s another one off for her pension!’ It seemed that being over twenty-five was funny in itself now.

  She walked back past the park gates and paused, looking down the path towards the woods. It was dark. She could see a small group of people hanging around in the shelter near the entrance. Teenagers, she assumed, though it was too dark to tell. Further in, the shadows were black under the trees. She could see a light flickering in the darkness, but otherwise it was quiet and still. The group by the shelter watched her as she stood under the street light. She could walk through the gate, follow the path to the third bridge, go out the gate there and be on Dave’s doorstep, be where Michael was. She couldn’t think of anything that would induce her to walk into that black silence.