Risking It All

by Ann Granger

  ‘Just for starters,’ I said, ‘how did you get my number?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She tossed her hair. No longer in the wet rat’s tails as when I’d seen her under the lamplight, it was pale blonde and twisted in a mass of narrow curls. She had well-defined eyebrows and pale-blue eyes. Her nose was short and straight, cheekbones wide and pronounced, mouth generous even set, as it was now, in an angry line. She looked like my mother – our mother. Or as I remembered my mother all those years ago, before her illness. She looked more like her than I did, certainly. I’d taken after the Varady side. Grandma had repeatedly told me so. As for Nicola’s father, Mum had given no clue as to who he had been, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t got to pass on his looks. This girl was a Nagy.

  ‘It was the evening you waited outside the house,’ she was saying. ‘Later on Ben Cornish came to have dinner with us. He was a bit late. Mummy was out in the kitchen cooking. I’d gone upstairs to sort my books for the next day. I heard Ben come and I went out on to the landing. I meant to lean over the banisters and call down to him. I like Ben. Do you like Ben?’ She peered at me in a manner I can only call hostile. Ben was the subject of a crush, clearly. She wanted to know if I’d strayed on to what she saw as her territory.

  ‘Never mind what I like,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  She looked miffed and chalked up a mental black mark again me, but she went on. ‘Well, before I could call down, Dad and Ben had started talking. Ben looked sort of shifty. They were whispering. So I listened. They didn’t know I was there. Neither of them looked up. I heard the name “Fran Varady”. Ben said he’d been talking to you. Dad swore.’ She seemed vaguely entertained by this.

  ‘Then Dad said that my mother mustn’t know. Ben said, of course not. He took a bit of paper from his jacket pocket and showed Dad. Dad said he’d call you; I mean, he said, “I’ll call her when I get the chance, but for God’s sake, keep it from Flora.” Then he took out his pocket diary and copied down a number from the paper Ben held out. Ben folded it up and put it back in his jacket pocket. Then he took off the jacket and hung it in the hall. They went into the kitchen to say hello to Mummy. I came down. I could hear them in the kitchen talking about some new wine or other Dad wanted to try, so I knew they weren’t coming back at once. I looked in Ben’s pocket, found the number and made my own copy. Easy.’

  Now she definitely looked smug. Trains were coming in and out. People swirled around us. It was chilly and not very comfortable standing on the platform but it was still the best place. I didn’t know of a café around here and I could hardly take her into a pub. I suggested we walk up and down. It’s easier on the legs to keep moving, rather than just stand planted like a couple of posts.

  ‘Look,’ I said to her, ‘the bit of business I had to discuss with your father, I’m not prepared to talk about it to you.’

  She thrust her angry little face at me. ‘Well, I’m fed up with being left out! Don’t tell me it hasn’t got anything to do with me, because I jolly well know it has! They’ve been talking about me for a while now. I’ve heard them whispering together. Then last night Dad came out with this crackpot idea that Mummy and I should go on a holiday abroad, right away, like now! I mean, it’s term-time. I’ve got a violin exam coming up. I’ve been practising like mad. I kicked up a fuss and said I wouldn’t go. They both looked so upset. Something’s going on and I want to know what it is!’

  ‘Have you asked them?’

  ‘Of course I have!’ she shouted. Then, more quietly and sullenly, ‘But I didn’t get anywhere. What can be so secret? It’s stupid.’ She stared at me. ‘You know, if I hadn’t seen you that evening, in the rain, I might have thought you were Dad’s girlfriend. My friend Naomi’s dad is always having different girlfriends. Her parents row over it. But my dad hasn’t ever done anything like that. Anyway, I’d seen you, and obviously you couldn’t be anyone’s girlfriend, well, not someone like my dad.’

  ‘I’m not your dad’s girlfriend,’ I said sniffily. ‘He wouldn’t be my type.’ Cheeky little madam. It just so happens several blokes have told me I’m attractive, and not everyone is put off by muddy boots, one of them laced with string. I didn’t think Ben was, for a start, and if I’d wanted revenge on her for the cutting remark, I could have taken it there and then. I remembered she was only just on thirteen and nobly kept silent. Only fight your own weight.

  ‘So, are you going to tell me?’ she insisted.

  ‘No, I’m not, and you can phone the shop until you’re blue in the face, but I’m not meeting you again. I’m wasting my time meeting you now. This conversation is going nowhere.’

  I then made the mistake of adopting the superior adult approach. I ought to have known better. It had never worked with me when I was her age.

  ‘Believe me, Nicola, it’s nothing for you to worry about. Just go home and put the whole thing out of your mind.’

  Whoosh! Did she blow up then! She actually stamped her foot. ‘How can I? Everyone treats me as if I were a kid, as if I were thick! I’m not a kid, I’m almost thirteen and I’m not thick! Something’s wrong and it’s been wrong for several weeks. So don’t tell me not to worry or not to let my imagination run riot or any of the other crummy things people have been telling me!’

  Something wasn’t right here. I didn’t know how long Mum had been in the hospice, but I had only started looking for Nicola just over a week ago. Yet here she was claiming something had been wrong for several weeks, well before my arrival on the scene. Her parents had been discussing her surreptitiously for ‘a while’. The only other person I could think of who might have been stirring up muddy waters was the late Clarence Duke. All my old suspicion of Jerry Wilde came back. What if Duke had been on the track of Nicola before me? What if Jerry had found out and was panicked into drastic action?

  ‘Nicola,’ I began carefully, ‘does the name Clarence or Rennie Duke mean anything to you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Just someone I met the other day. I thought he might have been to see your parents. Hew – he’s a little thin bloke, drives a jade-green car.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about him,’ she muttered. She kicked at the ground. ‘No one tells me anything. You could but you won’t. But I know something’s up and it all started when I told Mummy about Nurse Cooper.’

  I whirled round so fast I nearly stumbled over the edge of the platform into the path of the approaching Barking train, putting paid to my investigations altogether. ‘Who’s Nurse Cooper?’

  Nicola looked surprised. ‘Oh, she came to talk to my class. We’ve had all kinds of people coming in, different professions, to talk to us. It’s the headmistress’s idea. Supposed to give us ideas about what we’d like to do when we leave school. Nurse Cooper came to talk to us about being a nurse, you know, and how long it takes to train and the different sorts of specialities. I wasn’t really interested because I want to be a professional musician. But she said she’d trained at St Margaret’s Hospital, and that interested me because I was born in St Margaret’s. So afterwards, when we were all chatting to her, I told her that. I didn’t have anything else I wanted to ask her but I felt I had to say something to her. She was interested. She asked how old I was and said I must have been born there when she was just starting her training . . . What’s up?’ She broke off and stared at me. ‘You look funny,’ she said.

  ‘I’m cold,’ I said. ‘And pretty fed up with standing around here listening to you. Did you see this nurse person again, after she spoke to your school?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, but I went home and told Mummy about it all. I didn’t think she’d be really interested, but she was. She kept asking me if I was sure it was St Margaret’s. Later on that evening when Dad came home, she told him about it. It seemed sort of odd to me. Why would they care?’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, it was after that that things started to go peculiar. There’s been an atmosphere ever since. Really freaky.’

  ‘It’s been nice talking
to you, Nicola,’ I said briskly, ‘but I really think you ought to go home now. You never know, your mother might ring your friend’s house with a message for you or something. You don’t want her to find out you lied, do you? Nor is it a good idea for either of your parents to know you’ve talked to me, right? I really mean that. As for whatever it is your parents have got worrying them, you have to respect their right not to tell you about it.’

  She looked mutinous, lower lip thrust out.

  ‘Nicola,’ I urged, ‘part of growing up is learning to respect other people’s need for privacy. I’m sure you’ve got your secrets from your parents. If they have some problem they don’t wish to discuss with you, I think it would be mature of you to accept that.’

  She still didn’t look happy, dragging her toe through the grime on the platform. ‘I’m not agreeing to go on some stupid holiday when I’ve got my exams coming up.’

  ‘Fair enough. Explain that to your parents. Then leave it at that, right?’

  She mumbled something and we parted. I wasn’t at all sure she was going to leave things alone. She was persistent and curious and, heck, a lot like me. I wouldn’t have given up easily at her age. I’d just have got more devious. Nicola, a kid who listened in on other people’s conversations and searched their pockets, would, I fancied, think of some other stratagem. But I had no time for that. I had other things to do.

  Lights shone from almost every window at Newspaper Norman’s place. It looked as if everyone was in for supper. I rang the bell and called through the letter-gap and eventually Norman came shuffling down the hall.

  ‘Come in, dear,’ he invited. ‘I’ve been expecting you. Come about the room, I expect.’ He had a grubby apron tied round his middle over his red jogging pants.

  ‘Well, no, Norman, not exactly. I haven’t quite made up my mind about that.’

  He looked surprised and reproachful. ‘I’ve been holding it for you. Several people have been to look and expressed lively interest.’

  I suggested, as tactfully as I could, that perhaps it would be best if he let it to one of them.

  ‘Norman, I’ve actually come round to see if you can help me over something else. It’s about a newspaper story . . .’

  Norman brightened. ‘Let me go and switch off the cooker. I was just about to start on a few chips.’

  He trotted off towards the kitchen. I made my way into the room on my left and gazed with misgiving at the stacks of newsprint lying around everywhere. I wished Norman hadn’t mentioned making chips. Chip pans are a prime source of house fires.

  ‘You know, Norman,’ I said when he came back, ‘you ought to get a smoke detector put in the hall. Just think, if anything happened to destroy your newspaper collection, what would you do?’

  He looked horrified. ‘Don’t even speak of it, dear. It would be a disaster! Now I can take you back to nineteen seventy-three.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Those would be in the other room.’

  There was another room like this? Norman was considering the smoke alarm idea. ‘I’ll give it some thought, dear. What can I do for you? Offer you a sherry, perhaps?’

  I declined the sherry. ‘Recently there’s been a running story about a missing nurse.’

  Norman clicked his fingers. ‘I know the one. All of them have covered it. Do you prefer a broadsheet or a tabloid account?’

  ‘The fullest one, please. Oh, and last night’s Evening Standard.’

  He sat me down in a sagging armchair and began ferreting away happily in his boxes and cupboards. ‘I have an infallible filing system,’ he told me.

  ‘Great, Norm,’ I said. Goodness only knows what it was.

  Eventually he came back with an armful of papers, and after searching through them one at a time, he laid a selection before me. ‘Sure you won’t have a sherry while you’re reading? It’ll take a while.’

  I’d already grabbed the first paper and was scanning it eagerly. Norman must have taken this as acceptance of his offer, and produced a bottle and glasses from a small wall cupboard which must have been the only one without newspapers in it.

  I read on, then sat back, my head spinning. LeeAnne Cooper, the missing nurse whose mother had been appealing for news, was a thirty-one-year-old divorcee who shared a flat with a nursing colleague. Her former husband worked abroad, had been traced, and was out of the picture. She had no current boyfriend but was described as friendly, outgoing and capable. She had done a lot of work with young people and charity. No one could imagine what had happened. To disappear was not in her character.

  Then, one line in one paper only, a tiny bombshell hidden among all the rest. Asked if LeeAnne had expressed any worries, the flatmate had mentioned that the missing woman had been concerned that she wasn’t earning enough to buy a flat of her own. This was followed by some general observations by the paper on nursing pay.

  I sat back. It was horribly, hideously clear to me. Fate had led LeeAnne Cooper to give a talk at Nicola’s school. LeeAnne, one of the few people who would know that baby Nicola Wilde had died in St Margaret’s Hospital thirteen years ago, without ever going home. And Nurse LeeAnne Cooper was feeling short of money.

  ‘Drink your sherry, dear,’ said Norman. ‘You look a bit pale, in need of a restorative.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I am.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I don’t like breaking promises and generally do my very best not to, but this time it was being forced on me. I just couldn’t handle this alone any more. I was going to have to tell Ganesh everything.

  I hoped my mother would understand, even though it was going directly against her expressed wish. Hadn’t she said to me that all anyone can do is make a decision and then live with it afterwards? What I couldn’t live with was the thought of a killer. What I didn’t know was what I was going to do about it. I didn’t expect Gan to come up with the answers, but I needed to share the responsibility. He had, after all, been feeling left out. He was about to be brought in with a vengeance.

  They were just shutting up the shop when I got there. I nipped in through the door as Gan was closing it. He flipped the card hanging in it round to Closed and slid the bolts. Hari was busy behind the counter. Gan and I looked at one another. I knew my face was a picture of misery.

  ‘I see your good mood didn’t last long,’ said Gan. ‘Am I to be told what’s happened to knock you off your happy little cloud?’

  I rallied with, ‘Not if you’re going to be sarcastic!’ and then surrendered with a pitiful. ‘I’m in an awful fix, Gan.’

  He glanced at Hari. ‘Just give me half an hour to finish up here and we’ll go somewhere quiet and you can tell me all.’

  I told him I’d wait in the garage. I exchanged a brief ‘Good evening!’ with Hari, who asked me absent-mindedly how I was as he shovelled cash into little bags. I don’t know what I replied. Whatever it was, he probably didn’t hear me.

  Bonnie jumped up happily when I appeared in the storeroom, but even she sensed my mood and her exuberance was dampened. She followed me out to the garage and sat down, head on one side and one ear cocked, wondering what was going on. I opened a tin of dog food and spooned out her supper. She might have been worried about me but she didn’t let it come between her and her food. Like me, Bonnie is a survivor. You don’t turn down a meal when you’re not sure where the next one’s coming from.

  Gan appeared in twenty-five minutes holding two cans of Coke from the cold cabinet. He handed me one and hauled up a crate to sit on.

  ‘Are you in trouble with the law?’ he asked, popping his Coke can.

  ‘Yes and no. I will be if Morgan finds out what I’ve been doing.’

  I took a deep breath and, starting at the beginning, explained the whole deal to him. He sipped at his Coke but didn’t say a word. When I’d finished, he shook the can to check it was empty, set it down on the floor and said: ‘I know what I’d like to say to you.’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘Fine, so I won’t say it. B
ut I’m glad you’ve told me now, Fran.’

  ‘I did feel mean leaving you out,’ I confessed. ‘But I’m not too happy now I’ve told you, either, because I’ve dragged you into it with me. I wanted to keep you out of it, out of the Nicola bit, anyway. I couldn’t keep you out of the Rennie Duke bit.’

  ‘About this nurse—’ he began.

  ‘Don’t say it’s a mix-up of some sort, because it isn’t. How many Nurse Coopers are likely to pop up in one connection? I can see what happened. She obviously had a good memory. When Nicola started talking to her she remembered the Wildes. Who knows? She was new on the job at St Margaret’s when all this happened. Perhaps it was the first time she’d had to deal with parents who’d lost a child. It made a big impression on her. Anyway, even though it was thirteen years ago, she knew that what Nicola was saying was all wrong. Nicola may have been born in St Margaret’s but she wasn’t Flora’s kid.’

  ‘She might have been adopted quite legally,’ Ganesh interposed. ‘Nurse Cooper wasn’t to know.’