by Penny Kline
‘Where did Lianne live before?’
‘Off Cheltenham Road, then something happened.’
‘How d’you mean?’
Janice smiled to herself. ‘Ask no questions you’ll be told no lies. No, not you, I was talking about Lianne. If you ask me, some man let her down. Always the way, isn’t it. Not worth it, I keep telling her, too much hassle, then she goes all quiet and that’s even worse. Poor kid, she’s all right when you get to know her, got some funny ideas but I like people with funny ideas. Anyway, she’s got me to look after her now.’
We had reached my car and Janice was busy picking wet leaves off the windscreen. ‘I was married once,’ she said, ‘only for a couple of years, then he buggered off with someone else.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, there’s no need, I’d known all along he was a sod. We had a baby, thought it would improve things between us but of course it only made them that bit worse. Andrea, her name is. She’s eight now, nearly nine, lives with her father in Braintree. I write letters and she writes back when she feels like it which isn’t that often.’
‘Your husband was given custody?’
She looked away. ‘His Mum had Andrea while I was in hospital, then when I came out they persuaded the judge I wasn’t fit. Munchausen’s syndrome. I’d had it on and off since I was a kid. Used to make myself bad, eat stuff that gave me vomiting and diarrhoea, knew all the right symptoms to produce if you want to get admitted, only I’d never have harmed Andrea.’
‘You’ve had a hard time,’ I said, guiltily aware that her disruptive behaviour was beginning to make sense. She had come to the college, hoping it would solve all her problems, then been disappointed when she found there were so many students it was impossible for the teaching staff to get to know each of them on an individual basis, although I had a feeling nothing I or anyone else could have done would have lived up to her expectations. It crossed my mind that now might be a good time to ask why she had been following me round Bristol. On the other hand, it might mean I became even more caught up in her problems.
‘Reason I’m telling you this,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t mean Andrea would want to come and live with me or anything, not after all this time, but I reckon she might be prepared to stay the odd weekend, only I’m not sure how to go about arranging it — wondered if you’d any ideas.’
‘That’s what you wanted to ask me?’
‘It’d be a fair bargain — you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ Her eyes were shining, it was the most elated I had ever seen her. ‘You tell me what to do about Andrea and I’ll tell you everything I know about Nikki Newsom.’
*
The evening was pleasantly warm. I carried a chair to the strip of concrete outside my front door and started marking the latest batch of essays. Janice’s large sloping writing was at the top of the pile. So far, whatever she had been asked to do, she had written roughly twice as much as required, hoping perhaps that quantity would make up for lack of quality. Along with several of the other students she had very little idea how to write an essay. There was no beginning, middle and end, just a jumble of paraphrased extracts from one or two of the set books. Taking note of my advice — that she try to make some points of her own — she had included several anecdotes, written in the first person. One of her pet hates was television commercials, especially those that portrayed ideal families, eating their way through cosy meals in well furnished houses, or going on holiday together in shiny new cars. They're supposed to give you a nice warm feeling, Janice had written, but there’s millions of single mothers in this country and why should it make them feel good. After my husband left me I never cooked myself a proper meal for months. If there’d been commercials with people on their own, and it not being such a terrible thing, I might have fed myself better.
Peter Hedley was walking up the road with a clipboard in his hand and his bald head covered with a green tweed cap. Last time he collected signatures it had been for a petition to persuade the local supermarket that the entrance to its car park was in the wrong place and that the whole system should be reversed so the entrance became the exit.
‘Mr Hedley’s coming,’ whispered Charlie, creeping up behind me and making me jump. ‘He’s funny, even his dog thinks he is. It’s called Lawrence. Isn’t that a silly name for a dog. I saw it biting his leg.’
‘Sorry to bother you.’ Hedley had come up the path and was standing uncomfortably close to me. ‘Gayle’s away, visiting her sister, won’t be back for a couple of days.’ He broke off, looking a little embarrassed. ‘Hope you don’t mind me mentioning it but I wondered if there’d automatically been any more phone calls?’
‘Not since last week.’
‘Oh, good.’ He squeezed my arm with his free hand. ‘We were worried about you, here on your own.’
‘I’m not on my own, Eric and Charlie are the other side of the wall.’ Had Charlie taken in the remark about the phone calls and was trying to work out why anyone should be worried about me?
‘I’m afraid Gayle may have given the wrong impression,’ said Hedley, ‘made you think the calls could be from someone with psychiatric problems. Trisha Thurston did have a relative in hospital but since he was automatically suffering from senile dementia I doubt if he’d be able to dial the right number.’
I glanced at Charlie and Hedley seemed to realise for the first time he might be listening to the conversation.
‘All right, young man?’ He gave Charlie a playful push, then pulled the kind of silly face someone might make to coax a response from a three-month old baby.
‘The allotments,’ he announced. ‘There’s a possibility the land may be sold to developers. Twenty-five brand new homes and nowhere for people to grow their vegetables.’
‘I’m not sure where the allotments are,’ I said, knowing I would sign almost anything, just to get rid of him. ‘Who does the land belong to?’
He handed me a ballpoint, with its end chewed. ‘That strip of land near the railway line. Gayle doesn’t mean any harm, you know, just gets bored, automatically tends to exaggerate. Of course, when the children were still at home …’
Now what was he talking about. ‘Exaggerate about what?’
I signed the petition and he clamped the clipboard under his arm and yanked up the zip of his anorak. ‘Oh, nothing in particular, all I’m saying, you want to take what she says with a pinch of salt, don’t want to let it get you down.’
After Hedley left Charlie hovered behind my left shoulder, asking what I was doing. ‘Marking essays.’
‘What are essays?’
‘Like compositions, projects. I expect your teacher asks you to write short pieces, where you went on holiday, what you did at the weekend.’
‘You mean “diaries”?’
‘Yes, that’s the sort of thing.’
He was silent for several minutes but I knew he was still standing behind me and it crossed my mind he might be hoping to steal some more money from my purse. Perhaps I should have talked to Eric about it, not that a few pounds made that much difference, it was the fact that he was prepared to steal that bothered me. ‘Charlie?’
‘What?’ He moved in front of me and I saw he had a clover flower in his hand and was pulling out the petals and sucking their ends.
‘I’m collecting honey,’ he said, ‘only you can hardly taste it. I expect the bees have better nerve endings than us.’
‘Yes, I expect so.’ I put the completed essay face down on the path. ‘Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask, do you need some money, for something special perhaps? I’m sure your Dad gives you pocket money but I thought you might be saving up for a new computer game or something. I know they’re very expensive.’
His whole body had gone rigid and his fists were clenched. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘It’s all right, calm down, I just thought if you needed any extra I might be able to find some jobs you could do, polishing the car, watering my plants.’
&n
bsp; ‘I can’t do jobs.’ He realised he was shouting and attempted to lower his voice. ‘I’m not old enough. Dad wouldn’t let me.’
‘No, well, it doesn’t matter, forget it.’ I picked up Janice’s essay. ‘You know all those ads on the telly? The student who wrote this essay doesn’t like them any more than you do. She thinks …’
But he had no interest in what I was saying. He was standing on one leg, with his eyes closed, swaying from side to side, then all of sudden he lost his balance and clutched at my chair. ‘Why didn’t somebody tell me?’ he shouted and before I could ask what he meant he had run back across the grass and squeezed into the narrow gap between the hedge and Eric’s workshop.
Chapter Fourteen
The card had a picture of two polar bears and I was worried in case it reminded Charlie of his day at the zoo with Isabel, not that there were any polar bears at Bristol Zoo.
He was hugging it against his jumper. ‘I know it’s from Barry,’ he said, ‘but he’s got funny writing. I can’t read it all.’
‘Did you ask your Dad what it said?’
‘He doesn’t like Barry.’
I took the card, a little reluctantly.
‘How are you Charlie,’ I read, struggling to decipher the capital letters written with a ballpoint that seemed to be running out of ink. ‘It would be wonderful to see you again. If you like we could go out for the afternoon or you could come to my house and we could go to the park and have a kick about. All the best, Barry.’
Charlie was scowling. ‘When? He hasn’t said when. Now Dad won’t let me go.’
‘Yes, I’m sure he will. Someone can phone Barry and fix up a date.’
‘When?’
I finished collecting my few bits of washing off the line. ‘I think you should go and ask your Dad.’
‘No.’
Next door’s cat, a large tabby with huge yellow eyes, had come into the garden. I bent down to stroke its back but Charlie shooed it away.
‘Don’t!’ he shouted. ‘It a killer. If it gets the robin I’ll break its bloody neck. Anyway, I’m going to see him whatever Dad says. I’m going today!’
‘Calm down or you’ll spoil everything. Did your Dad explain how Barry’s got a new wife called Moira?’
He chewed his nail. ‘Does she know about me?’
‘Yes, of course. Look, we’ll go and find your Dad together. Where is he? In the workshop?’
He nodded. ‘Putting up more shelves I expect, that’s all he ever does.’
‘I thought he was going to make some animals, zoo animals to go with the Noah’s ark. He showed me the mouse you carved — it’s really good.’
‘Oh, that thing, the ears went wrong, only he never even noticed. If I’d broken my bloody leg he wouldn’t notice.’ He looked up and saw my expression, and I expected him to smile, but his face was deadly serious. ‘It’s true, I promise it is.’
‘Does he know you’ve had a card from Barry?’
‘No, it only came through the letter box a few minutes ago, then I saw you in the garden, that’s why I came out. He thinks I’m emptying the waste-paper baskets. He thinks I’m a bloody slave.’
*
The dog came round the corner first, then Gayle Hedley, hanging onto its extending lead.
‘Oh, there you are, dear, I was hoping to bump into you. Any more calls for Tanya?’
‘No, they seem to have stopped.’
‘Oh, what a relief.’ She picked up the dog and put it under her arm. ‘It may be nothing at all, I’m sure it is, but I wondered if you’d seen someone hanging about down the end of the road.’
‘What kind of person?’
‘That’s just it, I’ve never seen him close to, he always moves away, but there’s something about him, nothing you can put your finger on, but I didn’t like the look of him very much.’
‘You mean you were wondering if he might be one of the people Mrs Thurston befriended?’
‘Well, it did cross my mind. I’ve read about a certain type of person who becomes obsessed, just won’t take no for an answer. So interesting, getting inside other people’s minds, although in some cases I sometimes think it may be better not to know. I’ve been away, visiting a relative.’
‘Yes, your husband told me.’
‘Really?’ She looked slightly put out.
‘Oh, I suppose he was round with one of his petitions. Keeps him occupied, poor dear, but you mustn’t let him pressurise you into signing something you don’t agree with.’
*
Since it was Saturday I expected the entrance to be locked but a man and a woman, both carrying briefcases, came out into the street, ran down the short flight of steps and climbed into a white Audi, parked on the double yellow lines. I stared up at the six floors of shiny green windows and wondered if Nikki had worked on Saturdays. The more I found out about her the more it seemed she had arranged her life so as to spend as little time as possible with Eric and Charlie. Perhaps Charlie missed her less than I thought, perhaps the stealing and the bedroom rituals had nothing to do with his mother’s death, and something else was responsible for making him feel so insecure. Something to do with Barry?
A familiar figure was coming out of the office building. Smartly dressed and looking very different from the person who had answered the door in crumpled jeans and an old grey cardigan. Ronnie Cox paused at the top of the steps, looking all about her, then a tall, balding man with an umbrella came round the corner and the two of them rushed towards each other, the umbrella dropping out of the man’s hand as they flung themselves into each other’s arms.
On the way back to Broadmead it started to pour. Shoppers sheltered in doorways or returned to the shops they had just left to wander round the displays till the sun came out again. I followed a route that was mostly under cover, then found a side door that led into the multi-storey car park and pressed the button for the lift. Being trapped in a lift was one of my recurrent nightmares. To overcome the fear I exposed myself to it on as regular a basis as I could stand but, contrary to the theory of aversive therapy, it had no effect at all and the fear remained as strong as ever.
Going up to the top level I remembered Faye saying how Deborah liked to take Saturday afternoon off, something which must be difficult on their busiest day. Faye had mentioned how part-timers, girls wanting work experience, sometimes came in for three or four hours. Even so I wondered if she resented the fact that Deborah insisted on spending the afternoon with Ted.
The drive to Fish Street should have taken less than ten minutes but the traffic had been diverted by roadworks and I had to follow a circuitous route round the one-way system so that by the time I reached the shop it was nearly five o’clock and there were only two customers — a woman and a child choosing crayons and colouring books — and no sign of any of the part-time workers. Was I imagining it or did Faye look less than pleased to see me? I had started to think of her as a friend but perhaps I had got it all wrong — she just wanted the two of us to pool any ideas we came up with in the hope that eventually they might provide a clue to the identity of Nikki’s killer.
‘I’ve been round to my flat in Cliftonwood,’ I said, ‘to see how the repairs are going. Then I did some shopping.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She glanced at the woman and child. ‘Will you be able to move back in quite soon?’
‘Yes, I hope so. Look, the reason I dropped in … only I could call back at closing time if it would be easier.’
‘No, it’s all right, the big rush was this morning. Things usually ease up about now.’
I waited while the crayons and colouring books were put in a bag, then picked up a couple of packets of endangered species stickers and asked Faye how much.
She shook her head. ‘Take as many as you like. I presume they’re for Charlie.’
‘Thanks. Part of the reason I’m here, I wondered how much you knew about Nikki’s stepfather.’
‘He was ill, wasn’t he? Had to miss the funeral?’
/> A customer I had failed to notice, an elderly woman with a stick, came out from the far end of the shop, reached the counter with some difficulty and paid for an expensive-looking set of doll’s clothes: pink party dress, white shoes and socks, tiny handbag, pink straw hat. While Faye was busy I strolled across to inspect the doll’s house furniture in its two glass cases. Much of it looked too fragile for young children to play with, but perhaps it was sold to collectors. A Welsh dresser with a price tag of nearly six pounds. A four-poster bed with lace curtains — eight pounds, fifty. Still, for all I knew, the miniature furniture could be their most lucrative line.
After the woman left Faye asked if I had managed to trace the man called Llewellyn, alias ‘Mr Wonderful’.
‘Not yet. I’ve made a few inquiries but so far no one seems to have come across him.’
‘Oh, well, from what Nikki said he sounded a fairly shady character, only just this side of the law. I expect he’s moved to another city; could even be in prison.’
‘Was Llewellyn his surname or his first name?’
She thought about it. ‘I’m not sure. Could be either I suppose. The first time Nikki mentioned him must have been about two years ago, before Deborah met Ted. I remember she asked if Deborah and I wanted tickets for a concert at the Colston Hall but it wasn’t really our kind of thing — some American pop star who’d once had a lot of hits but was on the way down.’ She took some keys from her pocket, opened the door of one of the glass cases, and stood up a grandfather clock that had fallen face down. ‘How’s Eric? He hasn’t been in touch for weeks but I don’t like to phone in case he thinks I’m harassing him. You know, after Nikki died the police wouldn’t leave him alone. Oh, I know it’s their job, but it’s the way they go about it. Anyway you were asking about Nikki’s stepfather. Eric’s still in touch with him then?’
‘No, that’s really why I wanted to talk to you. I was hoping you might know what happened. You see Charlie’s asked to see him but Eric doesn’t want anything to do with it so he’s trying to persuade me to fix up a meeting.’