by Alison James
‘Here,’ he comes into the kitchen as she stacks plates into the dishwasher and holds out her mobile. ‘You can have your phone back.’ He says it as though conferring privileges on a well-behaved teenager.
Lucy feels her insides curdle with anger, but forces a smile. ‘Thanks,’ she says, putting it down in full view on the counter, to prove she has nothing to hide. ‘I don’t have lectures or seminars tomorrow, so I think I’ll go and see Dad. I’ll probably stay the night.’
Which you will know full well, since you’ll be tracking me, she thinks privately. She’s not sure whether she will actually stay at her father’s or not, but she intends to pre-empt her husband checking up on her plan.
‘Good idea. Give him my best and tell him to get Malcolm Denehay to phone me if he has any concerns.’ He comes over and hugs Lucy, thus declaring an end to their fight. ‘I’m going to go up now: I’m shattered.’
Once Marcus is in the bathroom, Lucy goes to her desk in the bay window of the dining room and roots through the drawers. At the back of the bottom one, her fingers brush against something leathery and she pulls out what she was looking for. A small, bound passbook for the savings account her parents set up for her when she was ten. They added money regularly on birthdays and at Christmas, and, with the interest earned, the balance now stands at several thousand pounds. All her other accounts are shared with Marcus, and he checks the statements routinely, so that if she withdraws an unusual amount of cash, he will notice. But she has never mentioned this old account to him. She stuffs the passbook into the zipped pocket of her handbag, and once there is no further sound coming from upstairs, follows her husband up to bed.
In the dark, he stirs and reaches for her, but when she lies still and unresponsive, he gives up and sinks back into deep sleep.
Rhea Gibson is three years older than Lucy: a stringy, energetic woman who has always enjoyed having the upper hand over her younger, more attractive cousin. Having completed her nursing registration, she joined a pharmaceutical company, working her way up through sales to management. She proudly and anachronistically describes herself as ‘a career woman’, and this – according to Rhea – is why she is single and childless. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she is bossy, inflexible and occasionally aggressive.
‘Come in, come in,’ she says as she opens the door of Jeffrey’s bungalow to Lucy, dressed in sports gear with an apron on top. ‘Only, make sure you wipe your feet. I’ve just hoovered.’ She gives her cousin a stiff embrace. ‘Uncle Jeffrey’s in the lounge: I’ll pop the kettle on and make us some coffee.’
Lucy bends over her father’s armchair and greets him with a kiss. He seems lethargic, but the deathly pallor has left his face and he smiles warmly at his daughter.
‘All okay with you?’ he asks, adding pointedly, ‘And Marcus?’
‘Yes, fine. We’re both fine.’
His eyes examine her face, as though searching for clues. ‘Are you sure, darling? You look wrung out.’
‘Yes, Dad. Just a little tired.’
It occurs to her that her father might think she’s pregnant. That he probably hopes she is.
‘It’s getting to the end of my course, now, and there’s a lot to fit in. Once my dissertation’s done, I’ll get a chance to relax.’
‘Let’s hope so… I expect that son-in-law of mine is still working ridiculous hours too?’ Jeffrey sighs.
Lucy perches on the edge of the armchair, which allows her to avoid further scrutiny of her face, and examines her fingernails. Rhea bustles around, plumping cushions and polishing the occasional table before she puts the coffee tray down on it, all of which seems quite unnecessary to Lucy, as does the ridiculous apron.
After a couple of home-made shortbread biscuits and half an hour of awkward small talk, Lucy is relieved when Rhea heads back to the kitchen to prepare some soup for lunch.
‘Don’t tire him out, he needs to rest!’ she admonishes, as though Jeffrey is her father and not Lucy’s.
‘Better do as you’re told,’ Jeffrey says with a conspiratorial wink.
Lucy bends to hug him, then lets herself out, shouting goodbye to Rhea.
The kitchen is at the back of the bungalow and Jeffrey’s armchair faces towards the back garden, so there is no one to see her place her phone inside the little wooden mailbox nailed to the wall next to the garage. Jeffrey long ago asked the local postman to put all the post through the letter box, so this mailbox is now redundant. Having thus fixed her GPS coordinates at her father’s home, she gets back into the car and drives into the centre of Redgate.
Her first port of call is the building society, where she withdraws five hundred pounds in cash from her childhood savings account. Then she goes to a mobile phone concession, where she tries to explain to the gangly, acne-scarred salesman that, no, she doesn’t want or need a contract phone, she just wants the pay-as-you-go handset with optimal web browsing capacity. A frustrating forty minutes later, Lucy emerges from the shop with the new phone unpacked, charged and ready to use.
She walks down the street to The Copper Kettle, an old-fashioned tea shop where her mother used to take her as a child, and orders a pot of tea and a toasted teacake. She’s not in the least bit hungry, but her mother always used to order teacakes when they were there, and it feels wrong not to do so now. The place hasn’t changed in thirty years: the tables are still covered with red and white checked PVC tablecloths, each sporting a bowl of sugar lumps and a metal serviette dispenser, and the shelves on the walls are still crammed with an assortment of dusty knick-knacks, none of them an actual copper kettle. Lucy feels the years roll away, and she is transported back to the comfortable, untroubled days of her childhood. When she first moved to London after university, this was the last place she wanted to be, and if anyone had told her she would be sitting here fifteen years later, deliberately trying to conjure the ghosts of her past, she would have laughed in their faces.
She signs into Facebook and types ‘Adele Watts’ into the search box.
There are a lot of Adele Watts out there in the world, far too many to trawl through in one sitting. And that’s assuming Lucy’s Adele uses social media, which – if her contrarian and non-conformist character has remained unchanged – she may not. Perhaps she could start with someone connected to Adele who might be less difficult to find. Lucy remembers the spelling of her sister’s name was unusual; wrong even, in some people’s estimation. Chelsee, rather than Chelsea. She tries searching for Chelsee Watts. A lot of Chelsea Watts come up, but only one Chelsee Watts.
Lucy squints at the pictures. She barely remembers the five-year-old Chelsee she first met in 1995, but this could well be her. Her profile settings are open, and her location is listed as ‘Surrey, UK’. She clicks through the photos on her account and sees that this is definitely the right Chelsee. She’s now a petite pretty young woman in her twenties, fond of heavy pencilled brows and stripes of brown highlighter under her cheekbones. Here she is with a short, dumpy woman who is just about recognisable as Dawn Watts, and with various half-siblings and boyfriends. The boyfriends conform to a distinct type; all dressed like would-be rappers, in branded sportswear, gold chains and designer trucker hats. And here she is, finally, with Adele. They’re seated in a pub beer garden, with a cohort of empty glasses in front of them, each brandishing a lit roll-up. The way they are lolling back on their elbows, their poses unfocused, suggests a degree of intoxication.
The caption reads: Standard weekday night: me and my big sis down at the Dog #secondhome.
It’s dated about six months ago. So Adele and her crowd must still drink at the Dog and Fox. Lucy glances at her watch. It’s only half past three, and she does not relish the idea of hanging about in a grotty pub for hours. But her only other option is to send a message to Chelsee and hope she’ll pass it on to her sister. If she doesn’t check Facebook regularly, that could take days, or even weeks, or not happen at all.
She visits the newsagent across the road and
buys a handful of magazines before driving to the Dog and Fox and parking in the far corner of the pub car park. The pub itself is all but empty, so she waits in the car for a while, flicking absently through the magazines but not really taking in what she’s reading. The pictures and words just blur.
At six thirty when regular drinkers start to shuffle into the pub in ones and twos, Lucy goes inside and orders a gin and tonic, positioning herself at a table opposite the door. The main bar has cheap wood panelling and swirling floral wallpaper on the walls and torn, sticky carpets. The fittings are cheap, and everything is covered with a faint patina of ancient tobacco smoke. Lucy knows that people are staring at her, a woman with her long hair expensively styled, rather than scraped onto the top of her head in a tight bun. That alone makes her stand out. She orders a second gin and tonic and a packet of crisps and tries to deflect attention by studying her phone.
At eight forty-five, just as she’s at the bar ordering a Diet Coke and wondering how much longer she can spin out her solitary drinking session, she catches sight of Adele, standing with a group of people near the pool table.
Taking a deep breath, she walks over and clears her throat.
‘Adele?’
Adele turns and looks at her, but her slanting eyes betray no surprise, no emotion at all.
‘It’s me, Lucy Gibson.’
‘Yeah, I know who you are. Not likely to forget, am I?’
There is a hint of the old Adele grin, but it’s gone as soon as it’s appeared. She’s wearing tight jeans with a top that exposes her shoulders, and Lucy realises it was the padded coat that she was wearing in the supermarket car park that had made her appear big. She’s still stockily built, and a rim of flesh hangs over the waistband of her jeans, but she’s barely overweight. There are creases at the corners of her eyes, which are accentuated with heavy eyeliner.
Silently she takes in Lucy’s J Crew blazer and £200 trainers, her Prada bag and chunky gold bracelets.
‘I knew you’d come,’ she says eventually.
Eleven
‘You knew?’ Lucy repeats, surprised.
‘Ever since I saw you.’
Lucy frowns, even though the answer is obvious.
‘In the Costcutter’s car park. And, also, my mum’s friend Janet Leary is friends with the lady who cleans your dad’s house, and she told Janet that your dad had been taken poorly. Gone into hospital. So I reckoned you’d probably be coming down here at some point.’
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ Lucy asks.
Adele has come into the pub with two men and a girl, all in some variation on the theme of sportswear, and they are staring over at her and Lucy with frank curiosity.
‘Go on then: I’ll have a pina colada. Just kidding. I’ll have a double rum and black, since you’re buying.’
Lucy goes to the bar and returns to the table where Adele is waiting alone, carrying drinks and two packets of salt and vinegar crisps. Adele always loved salt and vinegar.
‘You remembered,’ Adele says with another faint grin, ripping the packet so that it opens up and the crisps are spread out, just as she always used to. ‘So, how’s my bezzie mate?’
She’s being sarcastic, of course. It has been a long time since she and Lucy were best friends, and even then it was only for a year. And yet the intensity of that friendship and its terrible ending affected them both deeply. Lucy knows this is true for her, and looking into Adele’s oddly slanting eyes, she can tell it’s the same for her. Even so, the steadiness of her gaze is unnerving.
‘Fine,’ Lucy says, because that’s what’s expected, and because it’s a bit too soon to delve into the truth. ‘You’re right: I’ve come down to visit Dad. He’s out of hospital now.’
‘And so you thought you’d just pop into the old Dog and Fox. Bit random, isn’t it?’
‘I remember seeing you here once, years ago.’ She becomes aware that Adele is staring at the huge diamond solitaire on her left hand and buries it in her lap. ‘And I fancied a drink after the stress of dealing with Dad, so I thought I’d try here on the off-chance you’d come in.’
Adele reaches out her arms in an expansive gesture. ‘Well, here I am. Still hanging around this shithole. Never did get round to moving away from our dump of a home town. Not like you.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘I hear you got married.’
Lucy nods. ‘Yes. My husband’s a doctor. In London.’
‘Very nice,’ says Adele, though her tone implies anything but. ‘Got kids?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘I’ve got two,’ Adele’s face softens slightly. ‘Two girls. Paige and Skye.’
‘Lovely,’ says Lucy. ‘Lucky you.’
Adele shrugs. ‘Their dad’s a useless bastard, but my mum gives me plenty of help.’
‘Do you ever see anyone from Redgate High?’ The truth is that, apart from Adele, Lucy can barely remember the names and the faces from her brief stint at the school.
Adele shakes her head. ‘Not really. Occasionally I bump into Gary Emsworth and Elaine Castle.’
‘You liked Gary, I remember that much,’ Lucy says, the memory of Adele’s high-octane crush prompting a smile. ‘Elaine… yes, I think that name rings a bell.’
‘They’re married now. You see people round and about, you know, in a small place like this.’
Lucy wonders if she will mention Joanne Beckett. If either of them will. Her presence hangs there between them, as awkward in death as she was in life. ‘Can I buy you another drink?’
Adele shakes her head. ‘I’ve got to get back to the kids. My neighbour’s with them, but she needs to get home. Tell you what, why don’t you come back with me, and we can get something to eat. Order a takeaway.’
Adele’s flat is a short walk from the Dog and Fox, so Lucy leaves her car parked at the pub and accompanies her on foot. They stop at an off-licence to pick up a bottle of white wine, which Lucy insists on paying for.
‘Ooh, posh stuff,’ Adele remarks, and Lucy is transported back suddenly to her scrutiny of Lucy’s bedroom and her ridiculing the embroidered sampler with her full name. She feels exposed, just as she does when she’s introduced to Adele’s babysitter, Jackie, and receives a long, suspicious appraisal through narrowed eyes.
‘Luce was at Redgate High for a year, same time as us,’ Adele tells her.
‘Don’t remember anyone like you,’ Jackie says doubtfully, gathering up her bag and coat but keeping her eyes on Lucy all the way to the door. ‘Kids are fast asleep, Dell; you shouldn’t hear from them till the morning.’
Adele’s flat is on the second floor of a building on the Danemoor estate, where she lived as a child. ‘Haven’t moved very far, have I?’ she laughs, finding a corkscrew and wine glasses. Despite patches of peeling wallpaper and flaking paint, the place is tidy and well-organised, and although the decor and furnishings are cheap, they have been put together with a certain amount of flair, and pride.
Adele pours them both wine, then kicks off her imitation Ugg boots, heaves her bare feet onto the sofa and lights a cigarette.
‘Best fag of the day,’ she says, adding with a cackle, ‘but then I say that about all of them.’ She gulps at the wine and pulls a face at its dryness. ‘Blimey, bit sour isn’t it?’ Disappearing into the kitchen, she comes back with a bottle of lemonade and splashes some into the glass. ‘Bit more like sangria now.’ She proffers the bottle to Lucy, who is about to shake her head, then, not wanting to seem prissy, holds out her glass for some. ‘So you’ve done all right for yourself,’ Adele says without bitterness. ‘Rich husband, house in London. What do you do for work?’
‘I’m just finishing a postgraduate degree.’
Adele shrugs. ‘You were always good at exams, and tests, and stuff… Remember when we had the maths tests and we always used to try and sit next to each other so I could copy your answers?’
Lucy nods. ‘Yes, I do remember.’
‘And that camcorder you had… I remember all those stupid home movies we us
ed to make.’
A pin-sharp mental picture comes to Lucy then, of the two of them laughing so helplessly they used to roll off the bed and onto the floor. When has she ever laughed as hard as that, before or since? Probably never. It was the first proper friendship she’d had, and the most colourful. ‘That was such good fun,’ she says, smiling. ‘Mum used to come and check we were okay, we made so much noise.’
Adele sits up, tapping the powdery column of ash into an empty coffee mug, before taking another deep drag. ‘So,’ she says, her expression changing abruptly. ‘Why are you really here?’
Lucy looks down at her feet. Awkward or not, it’s time to come clean. ‘It’s kind of hard to explain. To know where to start… I saw that you spent some time in prison.’
Adele shrugs. ‘What of it?’
‘I need to find someone who might have some sort of connections… someone who’s brushed up against the wrong side of the law. To help me… with something.’
Adele gives a derisive snort. ‘You mean you want to have someone bumped off? A hitman.’
Lucy shakes her head. ‘No! God, no. Sorry. I’m not explaining very well.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Adele grinds out her cigarette and lights another one.
‘I want to disappear.’ Lucy has been holding her breath, and she lets it go now, in a rush. ‘Change my identity. I need to find someone who can help me do that.’
Adele tilts her head and puffs smoke at the ceiling. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that? You’ve got the perfect life.’
‘No,’ Lucy shakes her head. ‘It’s not. My husband and I… it’s not a happy marriage. Quite the opposite.’
‘So. Just leave him. Divorce him and take half the wonga.’
‘It’s not quite as simple as that. Even if I do leave… he’s made it clear he’s never going to leave me alone. He’ll never let me get on with my life. I’ll never be able to start over.’