The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit)

by Gyland, Henriette

  Jim laughed. ‘Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this place what doesn’t meet the eye.’

  ‘Easy, son,’ said Bill. ‘Remember, the walls have ears.’

  Jim rolled his eyes and continued to work in silence.

  Helen was still wondering what he’d meant by that when she left at five that evening. Everyone else had already gone, but there was a lot to learn so she’d spent the last hour reading up on various things. Mrs Deakin had said something about her mother working long hours; if she could do it, so could Helen.

  Using her own, shiny new security pass, she released the lock on the loading bay door and let herself out. A sharp gust of wind tossed a bundle of wood shavings used for packing across the yard and behind a car. Helen caught up with it, but when she bent down to pick it up, she found herself staring at a pair of shiny black shoes.

  A squeak of alarm escaped her, and she drew back to look up at the owner. He was a big guy with short cropped hair and biceps straining against his black suit jacket. Arms crossed, he stared back at her with virtually no expression on his face.

  Helen felt the rush of blood in her ears. It was still light, but the office buildings surrounding the auction house were deserted, and she was alone with a gargantuan thug and only a handful of wood shavings for a weapon. Fighting back was out of the question.

  Before she could ask what he was doing here, he beat her to it.

  ‘I am here for business purposes,’ he said in heavily accented English. Eastern European or Russian, Helen wasn’t sure.

  ‘What kind of business? The office is closed now.’ Surprised at herself for being so cocky when her heart was practically jumping against her ribcage, she tossed the wood shavings in a rubbish crate.

  ‘With boss.’

  ‘And where’s your boss?’ Even bolder now.

  ‘He is there,’ he replied and looked over Helen’s shoulder.

  Helen turned. Across the yard Letitia was coming out through the loading bay with someone, a man. He whispered something in her ear, and Letitia’s husky laugh echoed in the thin evening air.

  Any further words died in Helen’s throat. It wasn’t the fact that Letitia had a lover – if it was a lover – which made her stare, it was the man himself.

  In her wallet Helen carried a faded Polaroid photo of her parents, the only picture she had of them together. Her father, who died before she was born, had thick dark hair, arresting eyes and a rather prominent nose.

  The man descending the steps with his eyes boring into hers was a walking ghost.

  Dmitri Stephanov had returned from the dead.

  With several conspiracy theories racing through her mind, Helen stared at him numbly. Had her father faked his death? He couldn’t have. You could fake an accident but not dying from leukaemia …

  If Letitia was annoyed at being caught out with her boyfriend, she didn’t show it. Instead she did something which took Helen completely by surprise. Putting a well-manicured hand on his, she motioned for Helen to come closer.

  ‘Helen, I’d like you to meet a business associate of mine. Arseni,’ she said, with an elegant movement of her wrist, ‘this is your niece.’

  Suddenly – nastily – the pieces fell into place. Helen’s father had a brother, but she’d never met him, and when her mother was killed and he hadn’t come forward to claim her, she’d thought … well, what? That he’d died? That he didn’t know his brother was dead and his niece an orphan?

  No.

  She’d thought he’d rejected her.

  Like everyone else had. Because she was a bad child who had epilepsy. Who’d want that?

  ‘Hello, Uncle. Nice to meet you. At last,’ she added, barely holding back a sneer.

  Her uncle’s face had gone white, and he’d stopped in mid-movement as if frozen. After a few long seconds he turned to Letitia.

  ‘What? You wanted to meet your niece. Well, here she is.’

  Arseni ran his fingers through his dark brown hair, so like her father as he was on that faded Polaroid and so like herself except for the hair colour. Then, as if remembering a role he was supposed to be playing, he spread his arms wide and grinned broadly.

  ‘Yelena.’ He came towards her and kissed her on both cheeks. Then, frowning, he held her at arm’s length with his hands firmly on her shoulders. ‘A young lady now. Not beautiful like you mother, but like Dmitri. You are my poor, dead brother – what you say? – come back to life, nyet?’

  Unhappy with this level of closeness, Helen tried to move away, but his grip remained firm.

  ‘Well, girl, have you no kiss for your poor old uncle Arseni?’ The Russian inflection got heavier with each word.

  He wasn’t old, and he didn’t look poor. Nevertheless she planted a kiss on his cheek, expecting to feel something, affection, happiness, revulsion even, but she was like a dead thing. She didn’t even have the energy to slap him for not being there when she could have done with a real flesh and blood relative, not just a step-this or step-that. She experienced no connection at all.

  Then the anger came, shocking in its intensity, poison in her veins. Sensing this, Arseni let her go.

  ‘Why you do this to me?’ he said to Letitia. ‘Is not fair.’

  ‘Seni, don’t be dramatic. I didn’t know she was here. Most of my staff have normally left by this hour.’

  ‘I wanted to meet her when I was properly prepared,’ Arseni went on. ‘When I could give her gifts and show her my love. She is family, she deserve only the best proper Russian welcome, not like you English, so stiff and upper lip. God in heaven!’

  Letitia shrugged. ‘How touching. A proper family reunion. Seni, you’ve had twenty years to get to know your niece. You could’ve looked her up sooner. I expect she’s thinking the same. Give her some space.’

  Helen’s eyebrows rose at this unexpected insight from Letitia.

  ‘You are hard woman, Letitia,’ said Arseni. ‘And cruel too. Russia is very busy country now. Life got in the way. I would have found her sooner and clasped her to bosom of family.’

  ‘Oh, no doubt,’ said Letitia dryly. ‘Helen, if you’ll excuse us, Arseni and I have business to discuss. Come by my office on Friday afternoon and we’ll talk about your first week.’ She turned away, fully expecting her Russian lapdog to follow.

  Arseni winked at Helen. ‘Always business with your aunt. All work and no play. It makes me very dull boy.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘But you must come to my home, and I’ll make up for you all my neglect, da?’

  As she watched them get into a black Mercedes parked behind Letitia’s sports car and drive out through the gate, two things struck her in rapid succession: her uncle was as phoney as the accent he cultivated, and everything had just got ten times more complicated.

  Why couldn’t he have stayed in bloody Russia?

  When Jim came back from his early deliveries the next day, he handed Helen an envelope. Inside was an invitation to a black-tie dinner, at the Knightsbridge home of Mr Arseni Stephanov, on Saturday. Below the printed invitation was a scribbled note to Helen promising that they would get to know each other, followed by an A and a smiley.

  Irritated, she crumpled it up and threw it in the staff room bin. She had no interest in false friends like her uncle. Almost immediately she fished it out again, wiping off a tea stain, and smoothed out the paper. Arseni had known her mother, and might be able to fill in some of the blanks.

  For the rest of the week she shadowed Bill in the packaging hall and helped Mrs Deakin with a backlog of paperwork, and saw nothing of Letitia until Friday when they had their talk about Helen’s first week at work. Afterwards Letitia’s secretary provided her with the promised list of shops where Helen could buy the sort of clothes Letitia deemed suitable for representing the corporate image of Ransome’s, and her scathing look revealed all too well what she thought of Helen’s fashion sense.

  Ignoring the put-down, Helen scanned the list and was tempted to chicken out of the dinner party altogether. It wa
s only the thought of her mother which made her change her mind.

  On Saturday, feeling more determined, she trawled through some of the shops on the secretary’s list. The displays were so dazzling, the prices so extortionate they made her gasp, and the whole experience was an exercise in obscenity at the thought of anyone spending that amount of money on clothes.

  After a confrontation with a particularly snooty sales assistant in Bond Street, she gave up on the idea of new clothes and headed home. Walking past the market, she bumped into Charlie weighed down by grocery bags.

  ‘Why the long face?’

  ‘I’ve been out shopping,’ said Helen, and since she wasn’t carrying any bags, offered to take some of Charlie’s.

  ‘Window shopping, was it?’ said Charlie.

  ‘I was trying to buy a dress.’

  ‘They’ve got decent threads at the market. Come on, let’s go back and have a look.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Why not? They’re good value.’

  Helen hesitated. Charlie had become a friend, and she didn’t want to alienate her. ‘It’s not that sort of dress. I need something a bit smarter.’

  ‘Have you been to Next?’ Charlie shifted her grocery bag to the other hand.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not smart enough?’

  ‘I need something which isn’t off the peg.’

  ‘You what?’

  Helen showed her Letitia’s list.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Charlie. ‘Someone’s having a laugh. You could feed a whole family for the price of a handkerchief in one of those shops. What do you need a dress like that for?’

  ‘A party in connection with work.’ It was sort of true.

  Charlie chewed her lip for a moment. ‘We’ll ask Fay.’

  ‘Why Fay?’

  ‘She trained as a dress-maker in prison. She’s very good.’

  ‘I don’t want to ask Fay.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just don’t, okay.’

  ‘You want a dress or not?’ Charlie caught her by the sleeve and almost dragged her back home. ‘Come on, it’ll be fun.’

  Conflicting emotions flew through Helen’s head. Excitement over going to a party – she hadn’t been to one in years, and never in Knightsbridge. Irritation that she had to go through this ridiculous, girlie ritual of dolling herself up in order to find out more about her mother. Worry that she’d stick out like a sore thumb, when all she wanted to do was to blend in. And she had no one to go with.

  But worst of all was the idea of wearing a dress made by the same hand which had probably taken her mother’s life.

  The thought gave her goose pimples.

  Chapter Twelve

  Back at the house Charlie dumped the groceries on the kitchen table and dragged Helen upstairs to Fay’s room.

  ‘Helen needs help.’

  ‘What sort of help?’

  Fay looked pale and tired, and her eyes were red-rimmed. Through the open door Helen could see into the room. It was tidy, with furniture similar to her own, as if Jason had bought in bulk at IKEA. She also had a small two-seater sofa, a bookshelf brimming with paperback novels and an unobstructed view of the unkempt back garden. The room smelt of a mixture of jasmine from the garden and something more exotic, perhaps one of her candles.

  But what caught Helen’s attention were the photos, which were everywhere.

  Fay quickly blocked the view as if she found Helen’s curiosity invasive.

  ‘She needs a dress,’ said Charlie.

  ‘What kind of dress are we talking about?’

  ‘It’s for a posh work thing, so she needs something glam.’

  Helen held up her hands against Charlie’s onslaught. ‘It’s all right. I’ve got a couple of skirts, and one of them will probably do.’

  ‘Sounds like what you need is a cocktail dress.’

  ‘I’m fine. Honestly. You don’t have to—’

  ‘Helen,’ Charlie snapped, ‘stop being so bloody difficult. I told you Fay would help. That’s what friends are for.’

  But I don’t want Fay’s help, Helen wanted to shout. She’s not my friend. She can never be my friend!

  ‘I might have something in your size,’ said Fay. ‘What are you? A ten or a twelve?’

  ‘Somewhere in between.’ Helen shrugged and wished she’d left the party invitation in the bin. She didn’t want to be indebted to Fay over a stupid dress, and she resented Charlie’s pushiness. In fact, she resented all of them, and just wanted to climb into bed and pull the covers over her head.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Fay.

  She went back into her room, closing the door behind her, then returned a few minutes later with a short-sleeved black dress wrapped in protective plastic. She pulled it out and held it up against Helen. The dress was made from thick velvet and had a daring neckline, and it reached to just above the knees. A hand-written price tag was attached to the zip at the back with a silken string.

  Feeling the material in her hand, Helen remembered ‘Laura’s dress’. And shiny black shoes, so shiny she could see her own reflection. She saw Aggie’s house, her mum in burgundy velvet, a wine glass in her hand and her blonde hair in a clip on top of her head. A much thinner Aggie carrying a tray of tiny bits of food which Helen didn’t like. Ruth laughing. Letitia glittering. Men in black jackets and bow ties.

  They’d both had ‘Laura’ dresses, she realised, not just her.

  ‘Mummy, when can I meet your friend Laura?’ she’d asked for the umpteenth time.

  ‘One day soon.’ Mimi smiled and ran her hand over Helen’s hair.

  But of course, they never went to see Laura or any other friend. Instead it was curtains drawn in the daytime, the phone unplugged, and shadows closing in.

  Abruptly she stopped fingering the dress. The memory was so happy and so painful at the same time that tears welled up in her eyes. Impatiently she wiped them away.

  ‘Ah, bless,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You can give it back when the party’s over,’ said Fay. ‘It’s no skin off my nose.’

  Helen shook her head. She couldn’t accept this, it was a step too far. ‘No, I can’t let you do this. What if I ruin it?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  Helen fingered the material again, but to her disappointment it didn’t bring back any more memories. ‘If you’re sure … I’ll need to try it on, though.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Charlie. ‘We’ll be in the kitchen.’

  It was only after she’d put on the dress and twirled in front of the mirror, both satisfied and surprised at this magical transformation, that she realised she’d forgotten all about shoes. The dress was crying out for stilettos, except she’d never owned a pair in her entire life.

  She tried on several pairs of sandals, but they either screamed ‘hippy’ or were too worn to do the dress justice.

  ‘Bugger,’ she muttered.

  Which left only her Doc Martens boots. Heaving a sigh, she pulled them on, then spent half an hour touching up her make-up and hair, before going downstairs to the kitchen to get Charlie’s opinion.

  ‘Hey, snazzy,’ said Charlie from her usual post in front of the telly.

  ‘I don’t have any other shoes,’ Helen explained and glanced at her wrist watch. ‘Any decent shoes shops around here where I can get a pair of high heels?’

  Charlie got up from the sofa. ‘You don’t need them.’

  ‘Are you serious? This just doesn’t go together.’

  ‘Who says?’

  Helen sent her an exasperated look. ‘I think I’m expected to wear something a little more, um, elegant.’

  ‘Why be elegant when you can be grungy? Trust me, you’ll turn heads.’

  ‘Yeah, won’t I just?’

  ‘No, seriously, you look good.’ Charlie switched the TV off. ‘Anyway, why try to be something you’re not? They took you on because they thought you’d be a good little worker. If they’re gonna give you the sack for having an original taste in
clothes, they’re not worth the bother.’

  ‘I’m not convinced.’ This wasn’t the time to tell Charlie that the invitation had nothing to do with work. As for what she wore, did it really matter? She wasn’t planning on impressing anyone.

  Jason and Fay came into the kitchen, and Jason put the kettle on.

  ‘It fits, then,’ said Fay.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Jason. His gaze roamed over her outfit then settled on her hair, which she’d piled on top of her head. ‘Going somewhere?’

  Helen’s stomach did a curious flip. Maybe there was one person she wouldn’t mind impressing. Just a little bit.

  ‘She’s off to a glamorous party in Knightsbridge.’ Charlie took an apple from the fruit dish and started crunching noisily.

  ‘Shouldn’t you wash it first?’ said Fay.

  ‘Why? What’s gonna happen if I eat a dirty apple?’

  ‘You’ll get polio and die.’

  Charlie flicked back her blonde dreadlocks. ‘I’m vaccinated.’

  ‘You’re too much sometimes.’

  Helen and Jason left them bickering, and Helen burst out laughing when she’d closed the kitchen door.

  ‘Fay’s right, Charlie is a bit full on sometimes.’

  ‘You haven’t seen half of it yet,’ said Jason. ‘So, Knightsbridge, eh? What’s the occasion?’

  ‘Oh, one of the clients of the company I work for has invited some members of staff to a dinner party.’ Helen tried to be vague to avoid discussing the family connection.

  ‘Who’s the client?’

  ‘A collector. A Russian business man. He imports vodka, I think.’

  He sent her a long look, and a sharp tone crept into his voice when he asked, ‘What was the name of your company again?’

  ‘Ransome & Daughters. Why? Do you know it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of them.’

  ‘Really?’ Ransome’s wasn’t exactly Sotheby’s, despite the family’s pretensions in that direction. ‘I didn’t think they were that well-known.’

  Jason shrugged but didn’t explain how he’d heard of them, and she couldn’t very well ask if she hoped to side-step his questions.

  ‘Well, I’d better get a move on, then,’ she said instead. ‘See you.’