I see them, but they don’t see me. We’re of no interest, an old man in a wheelchair, and his carer in a fleece, tracksuit bottoms and a blue overall, an anorak over the top, walking slowly, her face turned to the ground.
I don’t know what makes me return to the river today. It’s so cold out there. In the market, the lights and smells and music thumping from doorways give the impression, at least, of warmth. I push Charles through the back streets to the path, to the steps down to the water.
Here, the sound drops; it’s silent but for the slosh of water against the wall and the occasional drone of an aircraft overhead. I don’t look into the depths. I’m afraid of what might stare back up at me. Yet, at the same time I want to see, I want to know. I imagine it, and shudder. Max’s long surgeon’s fingers reaching out, reaching for me. But there’s nothing, just dark water lapping at the bottom of the steps. Ten steps are exposed, along with a layer of rubbish – beer cans and cigarette packets, burger containers and plastic bags, all swirling in a brown scum on the surface of the Thames.
I stare across at the posts stained green and the landing stages with the signs that I know say Danger Keep Off! and I think how it is good that the river is dangerous, the structures precarious. Because then if someone does find Max’s body and Dora does tell the police that I am responsible – I will come here and walk slowly down these steps, into the river, and disappear completely and forever. Better this, than that Ummu and Leila believe I have killed a man and am in prison. I will end my life in the same country as Ali, but beneath the water, and somewhere, some day, our souls will meet and mingle. And this gives me a kind of bleak comfort.
It’s dark now. My shoes have soaked up puddlewater. I don’t care, but Charles, whose hands look blue with cold where they clutch the paper bag of clementines on his lap, must get home before the January night sets in.
Every day now it’s the same. After our walk I take him back, prepare his meal, fetch his pyjamas, warm them for him in front of the gas fire. I keep going. It’s OK. It’s not hard to work silently. To keep quiet for Leila and Ummu. Ummu will have her operation. Leila will go to school.
Every day we turn the corner at the pub, as we’re doing now, and I push the wheelchair down the street under the shadow of the dark church. Past the angels and figureheads with their eyes shut tight. I reach the house and take the side entrance to the back garden. Help Charles out of his chair and down the steps to the basement, disappearing into London’s bowels, its underground.
Back inside, I assist Charles into his reclining armchair with its foot-rest. It’s more of a struggle than it was, getting him in and settled. He no longer seems to remember how to make himself comfortable and I have to do this for him, adjusting his feet, placing his hands on the arms of the chair. He demands his dinner and I take it to him on a tray; I sit and spoon it into his mouth, and wipe his mouth and offer him sips of water.
And when he’s finished his supper I peel a clementine for him. I feed him the pieces of orange, and the juice runs down his chin, and I dab it away.
I spoon Charles’s medicine into his loose pink mouth, and help him into clean night things. Pour him his two fingers of whisky. I kiss him on his papery old cheek. He moans, says he needs the toilet. I lift him, let him hang on to me as he totters into his little bathroom. Hold his penis while he wees before I wash him and lead him back to his bed. Then I take the peel into the kitchen and drop it into the over-flowing pedal-bin. I take the liner and knot it. I put it ready to take out. I replace it with a new one. I wash his dishes and tidy up.
Above, in the main house, comes the thud of someone pounding down the stairs, the rumble of a chair scraped across the floor. I feel the sound in my skin; it twitches and my ears ring. My palms begin to sweat. I long for the day to end, for the moment I can lie down in the corner of this room on the makeshift bed with its one flat pillow, because I’m so terribly weary, and oblivion more than anything is what I yearn for now.
But that sound, the scraping of the chair in the kitchen above me, means only one thing: it is time for me to start on the next shift.
Dora’s voice echoing down the shaft into Charles’s sitting room.
‘MONA!’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s seven o’clock. I’m hungry.’
‘Charles is going to bed now. Then I’ll come.’
‘You’re late.’
And the old man demanding my attention at the same time. ‘You’ve hidden it again! Blast and damn you, woman, you’ve taken my whisky.’
And the shout from upstairs – ‘Now!’ – and Charles grumbling, and my head beginning to pound.
As I hand him his whisky, he picks up his paper and we spot it together. There, in the bottom corner of the front cover, staring out, is a picture of Doctor Max.
And Charles speaks.
‘That’s the doctor who examined me – American chap. I saw it happen through my bedroom window. Dora pushed the statue of Maudy at him, and he fell down the steps.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Max wanted to come back and live with me. He loved me, he wanted to leave Valerie for me.
And now he’s dead!
I spend the whole of the night rearranging history in my head. Placing things where they are meant to be.
It is a relief to go to work, to focus on something outside my house, to throw myself into creating the new show they have chosen me to present, ‘A World of Flavour’.
And now, as I arrive home, almost falling over his enormous trainers lying haphazardly on the floor, my heart lifts to realise that Leo must be home. His return, I believe wildly for a moment, will erase everything that has happened since he left. Things will go back to normal. Max never happened. I drop my bag in the hall and rush through to the kitchen, where I fling my arms around my son. I stand back to look at him.
He’s tanned, thinner, healthier-looking than I’ve ever seen him. And he’s smiling.
‘You look so well!’ I exclaim.
‘I bought you Argan Oil, Mum. Claudia says it’s the next big thing for hair.’
‘Thanks, Leo.’
I feel like crying. It’s seeing someone I love again. It’s realising how much this means to me. It’s knowing he must never, ever, learn the truth about the terrible things I have done.
‘I’ve got some figs for Grandpa, too, and some new slippers for Mona – babouches, the kind she likes but says she could never afford. Where is she?’
‘She’s with Grandpa.’ I’m wondering, though I’m trying not to, whether slippers are a more generous present than Argan Oil, and why Leo feels my hair needs help while he doesn’t feel Mona’s does. But I’m not going to let these thoughts take over. I’m going to relish Leo’s return.
He left a hole in my life I couldn’t see until now it’s been filled again. If he hadn’t gone away, things might have been so different.
‘I’ve made loads of New Year’s resolutions,’ he says, going over to the kettle. ‘Do you want a cup of tea, Mum? I’ve got so much to tell you. But it’s my first shift at the bar tonight.’
I sit opposite him at the table. This is what I’ve needed, time with my son. Time in which I believe he actually wants to be with me, rather than in front of a screen or with Mona.
‘And I think, Mum, once I’m earning a decent wage, I’ll move in with Barnie and George.’
‘Good,’ I hear myself say. ‘That’s great, Leo.’
But I want to tell him not to, to stay with me, that I’ll pay for whatever he wants, that he doesn’t need a job.
You spend half your life resenting your dependants for sucking dry your time and energy, then, when they inch away, you want nothing more than to gather them back to you, beg them to need you again.
Later, when he’s finished telling me about his travels, he says he’s going off to the bar.
It’s OK, I tell myself. Leo can leave, he can live his life. I do, after all, have the thrill of a new career in front of me again, and Mona to m
eet my every need.
I go to the dumbwaiter now, and shout down for her.
When she comes up, she hands me a pile of catalogues offering summer bulbs, and those lovely Toast clothes I’ve decided I’ll wear all the time from now on. I give her back the envelopes for the recycling.
‘Have you done the rooms today?’ I ask.
‘All done,’ she says. ‘The bed’s ready for your massage. I was going to make a tagine.’
‘Good. The recording of my new show starts next week – and you’re to help me with the recipes. You’ll need to explain the techniques you use for spicing dishes. You must tell me about the ingredients my listeners may never have heard of before, to give them the feeling they’re discovering something unique. I’ll need two recipes for each programme. It’s going out once a week to start with and I’ll need six weeks’ worth, so that’s twelve recipes. I want you to tell me how you make your clafoutis, your harira, your meatballs, and those lovely almond pastries you made with Leo.’
I sit in the kitchen Mona has made pristine and watch her, the way she chops the vegetables as if she were a trained chef, with those hands that gesticulate and wave and work so hard. Mona nods her head each time I ask her to do anything. She doesn’t look at me. She keeps her eyes down.
A vision comes into my head, of Boudicca, of the night Max and I met beneath her and the way he gazed up at her – her strong legs, her valiant expression.
I feel that I have conquered everything – everyone. No one can humiliate me again. I am indeed a Boudicca figure, strong, powerful, in command.
And I thank Roger silently for bringing me Mona.
‘Mona,’ I say. ‘Full body massage today.’
This is something new I’ve discovered about her, her skill when it comes to massage.
‘Where did you learn such good techniques?’ I ask her, my voice muffled as she kneads my back, erasing all the tension, all the anxiety and fret, and yes, the sour taste left in my mouth by recent events. ‘It is really extraordinary, the way you are able to reach deep into my muscles with your fingers. Your hands were one of the first things I noticed about you. They are so expressive, so strong. ’
She has lit candles as I instructed her to do, and some more of the incense she placed around my room the night I brought Max home. I tell her to put Nina Simone on the CD player and I lie down on the massage table and let all my troubles float away. I’ve dealt with each problem as it’s come. The fear that I would be made redundant. The fear of rejection. The fear of fading the way I’ve seen other women fade when their lives become dominated by the needs of others and they are shunted off to the sidings.
It is safe to relax, to let go. I’ve taken control and it’s paying off. I don’t let myself think about Max in the river. He’s gone. It’s as if he’s just returned to America again, is going through one of his silences.
I remind myself, however, that he loved me. And this soothes away some of the pain.
Mona’s fingers find a particularly tight knot in my neck and ease it out.
She bends a little closer. ‘I saw it,’ she whispers.
‘What?’
‘In Charles’s paper.’
I can’t turn my head as her hands are on my neck, my face pressed into the mattress of the divan.
‘A picture of Doctor Max. And the steps – the steps where we took him. Oh Dora,’ she says right into my ear, ‘they’ve found his body.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
I rear up, shoving Mona’s hands off me.
‘Bring me the paper!’ My hands shake as I snatch the pages from her. ‘Where? I can’t see it. You must have made a mistake!’
Mona points at the page, where I spot the item, my heart leaping into my throat.
It’s a tiny report in the bottom corner, as if this death was really very insignificant.
A man’s body has been found washed up at the Upper Watergate steps at Deptford. Police believe it might be the body of a New York doctor who disappeared a week ago whilst on a stop-over trip to London. The death is being treated as suspicious. Police are carrying out enquiries in the local area. At the moment questions are centring around items found on the man’s person, including a blue overall of the kind worn by domestic staff.
‘It was wrong to put him in the river,’ Mona says.
‘No, Mona. We did the right thing. We didn’t hurt him – we just got rid of his body after his accident. It was to protect his family, his wife, his kids. They don’t need to know he was seeing me. We must keep quiet. Say nothing, do you understand? Nobody knows that Max came here except for you and me. The police won’t find us. Oh, it says here, they found a baby monitor on him – the alarm thing we had for Daddy. What on earth was he doing with that?’
‘I gave it to him,’ she says. ‘He said he would bring it up to your room.’
‘Your fingerprints will be on it,’ I say, ‘unless the water has washed them off. That, in addition to your overalls, will implicate you, I’m afraid.’ I smile. I don’t want to frighten her, but it’s important she understands that if she speaks, she will be the prime suspect.
She takes a step back, like Endymion when he feels cornered.
Her eyes widen.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ I say. ‘You just have to keep doing exactly as I say. And then you will be all right.’
Does she realise how important it is not to speak about this?
‘Do you see, Mona, if the police find out that Max died here, in my house, I will have to tell them it must have had something to do with you. I found Max at the bottom of the steps. He fell. But perhaps you pushed him?’
‘But why don’t you say he fell. It’s better always to tell the truth.’
I think this is rather rich, coming from someone who has openly thieved.
‘I told you, Mona.’ My voice is hard, I can hear it myself, but I feel she’s being a little slow and I’m growing impatient. ‘They don’t need to know he came here at all. He has a wife in America. She doesn’t know about me! She need never know. If you speak . . .’ I make a slashing motion across my throat and Mona blinks.
Good God, there are a thousand reasons why it’s better not to tell ‘the truth’!
If the police discover this man died in my house, that we hid his body, what will become of my new radio programme?
‘You mention this to a single person, I’ll tell the police that you must have killed Max. Accidentally maybe. Or even deliberately. I’ll tell them you flirted with Max, the way you did with Monsieur Sherif—’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I’ll tell them you must have wanted money from him: you wanted him to help you. That you’d already told lies to get work, said you were a widow. After all, you’d even saved his number on your phone!’
I stare triumphantly at her.
‘Then you grew afraid of him, and you pushed him and he fell and cracked his head, and you wrapped it in your overall to stem the blood flow.’
She gives me her blank look, the one that’s impossible to read.
‘I wonder who they will believe,’ I go on. ‘Theodora Gentleman, The Voice of South-East England, or a domestic worker, desperate for money, for a passport. For British citizenship.’
She remains speechless.
‘Another thing. CCTV. When we drove him to the river, I made sure I wouldn’t be seen, do you remember? I kept my head down. But you were driving, Mona. I imagine there is plenty of evidence if I choose to use it against you, so I hope you won’t make me have to. The point is, Mona, Max is dead, but we had nothing to do with it There are no other witnesses.’
Still not a flicker of emotion crosses her face.
‘There is another witness.’ She speaks at last.
I look up. I want her to continue with the massage – I’ve had enough of this.
‘There is Charles,’ she goes on. ‘Your daddy. He saw you push the statue. He saw Max fall.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
I leave Dora on the ma
ssage table.
I can hear her shouting after me, ‘It’s all your fault! If you’d never come, this would never have happened!’
My heart’s racing, I don’t know what Dora is capable of doing now I’ve revealed what I know.
I hurry up to Leo’s room. He’s out.
I need to check my Facebook page for messages. See if there’s any news. It’s many days since I last checked.
Charles’s words as I left his flat earlier this evening come back to me.
That’s the doctor who examined me – American chap. I saw it happen through my bedroom window. Dora pushed the statue of Maudy at him, and he fell down the steps.
Images flood into my head. Dora forcing me to work on my hands and knees; the day she kicked me. Amina’s message, that Dora hurt Zidana. That she disappeared, never to be seen again.
What if Dora killed Zidana! Like she killed her lover.
I go cold then as the full realisation hits me.
The moment she turned and saw me at the top of the steps, she stared as if she thought she’d seen a djinn. She’d thought I had been in the flat with Charles.
She thought Max was me!
Dora pushed the statue over because she thought Max was me!
She tried to kill me.
I feel all the strength drain from me. I whisk round, terrified suddenly that Dora has come up, that her intention is to finish me off after all. I must tell someone. The police? But the police have found a dead body in the river. I helped to deposit it there. The baby monitor and my overalls are clues that will prove, if Dora wishes to claim it, that I was involved.
I’m clicking on the screen as these thoughts tumble through my head.
Who will believe my word against Dora’s? Who will believe the words of an old man with senile dementia?
Yet if I run, I have no passport, no documents. I’m here as Dora’s domestic, tied to her, and she knows it.
The Darkening Hour Page 28