Someone You Know
Page 24
Bob returned and pushed a bottle into her hand. She slurped at it. She’d already had three in The Lamb and Flag and was enjoying the warm alcohol running through her.
‘Can we dance?’ she asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Can we dance?’
She had to shout in his ear.
‘Finish this first.’
He raised his bottle. Edie took no time at all finishing hers just as the thumping bass of ‘The Night’ came on.
‘We have to dance to this,’ she said and dived onto the dance floor without waiting for an answer.
The music merged with the alcohol, spinning her round, the dance floor a blur. She forgot the time, and that she was only fourteen and shouldn’t be here with her friend’s boyfriend. All she felt was the movement of her body combining with the beat. Everyone was too involved in their own dancing to notice her, except the guy from Irregular Records, who nodded. She smiled back.
Edie danced every song. Before she knew it they were playing ‘I’m on My Way’. Uncle Ray had told her this was always the last track of the evening. She looked at her watch, it was just before two, not like the all-nighters she’d heard about. The club was still full, the dancers savouring every last note.
Bob put his arm around her.
‘Better go,’ he said.
*
The cold night air was a shock after the heat of the dance floor. She shivered and Bob pulled her close. She bent her head a little, he reached down and kissed her. The same tingle she’d had on the stairs coming into the club ran down her neck.
‘You can come back to mine if you like,’ Bob whispered in her ear.
It would have been easy to go with him, to carry on her adventure.
‘No, I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not tonight.’
He smiled, he’d not expected her to say yes.
‘Let’s get you on the bus.’
He put his denim jacket around her shoulders when it arrived.
‘Give it back next time you see me,’ he said and kissed her again.
She hugged the jacket to her and ignored the drunken shouts and songs of the other passengers. She’d found something away from her little world, something she loved.
*
Edie shut the front door as quietly as she could and tried to listen for movement in the house above the ringing the music had left in her ears. She took her shoes off and padded along the hall. Light was flickering along its floor from a black and white film, playing on mute in the lounge. Dad was snoring softly in his armchair.
She climbed the stairs. Tess’s light was off. Edie went to her own room, slipped Bob’s jacket under her pillow and switched the dressing table lamp on. In the mirror she could see her eyeliner had smudged beneath her eyes. The effect pleased her. In one night she looked five years older.
Then she heard footsteps and her door swung open.
‘It’s nearly three, Edie,’ Tess said.
‘So?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere you’d like.’
‘You stink of smoke.’ Tess came into the room and sniffed. ‘And alcohol.’
‘Go back to your own room, if you don’t like it,’ Edie said.
She was light-headed from the drink, music and Bob. He had kissed her, she could have been with him now. Instead, she’d come home to Tess. She envied the girls at school, who only had their parents to deal with.
‘Were you out with Michaela?’ Tess asked.
‘What do you care?’
‘I was really bored here on my own.’
‘That’s cos you are boring. Anyone would be bored stuck here with you for company.’
‘Just cos I don’t want to hang out with boys and smoke and get drunk like you. You can hardly talk.’
‘Go to bed, Tess,’ Edie said. ‘I need to sleep.’
She dragged a cotton wool pad across her eye to remove the make-up. In the mirror she could see Tess behind her, standing by the door. Edie carried on taking her make-up off. Tess slipped away. She pulled the cotton wool across the other eye. It was covered with a pleasing amount of mascara. She should have face cream and a negligee, something sophisticated, not her pink pyjamas.
One day she would escape. She could have done it tonight, not come back at all, gone with Bob. The thought excited her and scared her at the same time. She put Bob’s jacket on over her pyjamas, lay on the bed and dug her nose into its collar where it had rubbed against his neck. It smelt of him, the club, excitement and escape. She closed her eyes. Soon, she thought, soon.
Chapter 47
Tess: July 2018
Mrs McCann stares wide-eyed out of the window from the front seat of the car. Her expression of wonder makes me think she only leaves the care home when Raquel takes her. Or it’s possible she went on a trip yesterday and doesn’t remember.
‘Are you alright, Mum?’ Raquel asks. ‘Do you want the window down?’
‘That would be nice.’
Raquel presses the driver-side button for the passenger window and a blast of air cools the car. Mrs McCann raises her chin and the wind brings colour to her cheeks. She could be young again.
‘I’m not sure how much she can tell you. I doubt it’s anything the police will be interested in. Have they made any progress? They came to see me about Max.’
Her pitch strays higher as she stares at the road straight ahead.
‘You don’t think …’
She glances over.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Max. He’s not capable of violence.’
Raquel looks unconvinced. Her father was good with his fists. She thinks all men are capable of violence. It makes me worry about her husband. Then I think how she smiles when she talks about him, which reassures me.
‘I used to come here as a girl,’ Mrs McCann says when we reach Coughton Park. ‘It was different then, they had a witch’s hat and swings over there. I don’t recognise these new things they’ve got.’ She points to the climbing frames in the shape of a train. ‘Do they still have swans on the bottom lake?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Raquel says. ‘We were here last Wednesday. Don’t you remember?’
She turns to me and shrugs.
‘She doesn’t ask about Fleur when I don’t bring her,’ Raquel says. ‘It makes me want to cry. She always wanted a grandchild, now she’s got one, she doesn’t remember. She talks about your mum sometimes, and Edie. How can she remember all those years back and not what happened last week?’
I can sympathise. I often find memories from twenty years ago are clearer than the previous night’s.
‘It’s common with dementia, isn’t it?’ I say.
‘People tell me that. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating.’
‘She recognised me.’
‘Not really. She thinks you’re Gina.’
Not as pretty, Raquel is too polite to add.
Mrs McCann pulls out the bread Raquel has brought and walks along to where the swans have gathered in a shaded spot below overhanging willows.
I wait till she’s out of earshot before asking Raquel, ‘Do you think it will be alright to talk about Mum or will it upset her?’
‘No,’ Raquel says. ‘She likes to talk. And she seems quite good today. Buy her an ice cream, she’ll love that.’
After she’s fed the swans, I fetch ice creams, a 99 with strawberry sauce for Mrs McCann and mint Cornettos for Raquel and me. We sit at the edge of the lake, on a bench carved out of a tree trunk, to eat them.
‘Oh Gina,’ Mrs McCann says. ‘It’s like the old days.’
‘This is Tess, Gina’s daughter, remember?’ Raquel says.
Mrs McCann stares at me.
‘Tess?’ Her brow creases. ‘I do get confused. Time seems to fold, like curtains.’ She pats me on the hand. ‘Tess. All grown up. Without Edie. Never thought I’d see you alone, could never separate you. Where’s she gone?’
‘Mum,’ Raquel says.
‘Has it really been so long since I las
t saw you, Tess?’ Mrs McCann asks.
‘Nearly twenty-five years. We moved away from the street after Mum died.’
She nods.
‘Poor Gina. When they told me I thought, she’s finally done it. But they said it was an accident.’
The ice cream’s sugar cold bubbles in my stomach.
‘And Mr Vickers took it bad. I didn’t think he would. But he was never the same. Neither was the street. It lost its heart after Gina. Just families coming and going. A man was killed a few years later, an accident at work. I only found out because it was on the news.’
I take a deep breath to quell my nausea.
‘Do you know what happened?’
She looks at me.
‘A wall collapsed. He was crushed.’
‘I mean to Mum, to Gina.’
She licks her ice cream and I’m not sure she’s heard, until she says, ‘I wasn’t sure it was an accident. No one was. Poor Gina.’
She starts humming ‘It’s Too Darn Hot’ and laughs and carries on licking her ice cream.
‘It’s a good one, plenty of strawberry sauce.’
I glance at Raquel. She shuffles in her seat.
‘Why do you think it wasn’t an accident? Was it something to do with my uncle Ray?’
‘Ray, oh Ray, yes, so handsome. Too handsome. If he’d married Gina, none of this would have happened.’ She puts her head to one side. ‘Poor Vince. Poor Gina. It’s no wonder that the whole Valentina thing pushed her over the edge. It’s always the same, she thought she was the only one he loved. They all thought that. He was a charmer, like my Harry.’
Mum and Ray. Jem was right and I should have known. You’re so like Gina, Ray had sighed. His devastation at her death had been more than the familial love of a brother-in-law. I remember how he used to dance with mum, how they spun round laughing, as Dad watched on from the edge of the room. When had it started, how long did it last?
‘And I did always wonder about those two girls,’ Mrs McCann says.
‘What? What did you wonder?’
My voice is fast and urgent, which seems to have scared her.
‘What did you wonder, Mrs McCann?’
She doesn’t respond. Her eyes retreat under the folds of skin. I look at Raquel; she shakes her head.
‘Come on, Mum, you’re tired.’
‘But if I could just ask her,’ I say.
‘No,’ Raquel says. ‘Not when she’s like this.’
I no longer feel sorry for an old woman who had once been kind to me. I want to shake her, shake her until she remembers something, anything. I stand up and walk away to hide my frustration.
‘Tess,’ Raquel calls.
I turn around and she flicks her head in the direction of the car park. I follow them. Mrs McCann is no longer so sprightly; her walk is slow, as an old woman’s should be.
On the way back she doesn’t look out of the window and stares at her hands instead.
‘I’m sorry I got angry with you,’ Raquel says after we’ve dropped her mum off.
‘It’s alright.’
‘I think I’m overprotective because I get so annoyed with her myself.’
I nod.
‘I’ve never heard that before,’ Raquel asks. ‘About Ray and your mum. I knew they were together before your Dad but not that they kept seeing each other. What made you suspect?’
‘Something someone said. What did she mean, “I wonder about those two girls?”’
‘I don’t know, Tess,’ she says.
But she does know what she meant. As do I. Is Ray more than just my uncle?
Chapter 48
Edie: April 1998
She had to concentrate, check the street names and find the right stop, but when the bus reached Marlborough Drive, she hesitated. The address had been easy to find, there was only one N. Bexley in the phone book. She’d scribbled it down along with the phone number on the school exercise book she was carrying with her. Now she’d arrived, her courage evaporated. Only the bus driver staring at her impatiently, as she hovered at the opened door, made her jump off. She landed on the pavement with a jolt, looked up and down the street and realised she had no idea why she’d come.
What would a man, who downed alcohol before ploughing two tons of metal over a woman without looking back, care about anything she said to him? He would make her feel stupid and hysterical. Still, she found herself turning off the main road and heading up Marlborough Drive.
Her step slowed as she neared number fifty-seven, a semi-detached bungalow. Next door had a neat hedge and a caravan in the drive. Fifty-seven’s drive was empty. An attempt at a shrubbery, with only three plants, lay under a window, framed with flaking paint.
Edie loitered at the end of the drive. Two cars passed. She must look odd just standing there, shifting from one foot to the other. Two more cars passed. She didn’t have to stay, she could just go home, forget about it. A lorry rumbled by and the ground trembled. She closed her eyes, heard the screech of brakes, the screams of passers-by and her vision flooded with red.
She walked up the drive and rang the bell. No one answered. A vacuum cleaner was humming away inside. Edie banged on the door. The humming stopped and the door opened.
Edie looked down to see terry towelling slippers on top of a deep-pile carpet, both in dusky pink. Above the slippers hung thick tights running up to a grey skirt and a lilac jumper. The woman was shorter than Edie, shorter even than Tess. Her grey hair was cut close to her head and finished just below the ears.
‘I don’t want anything.’
She barely looked at Edie as she spoke.
‘I’m not selling anything.’
‘And I’m Church of England and already give to charity.’
Edie stayed and said nothing. The woman looked at her properly for the first time.
‘What are you after then?’ she asked.
‘I’m looking for Nathan Bexley, does he still live here?’
Edie spoke slowly and clearly to counteract her urge to gabble.
‘Who are you? What do you want with him?’
Again, Edie didn’t reply. The woman glanced over to her neighbour’s.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
Edie hesitated. She didn’t want to go inside. She’d imagined confronting Bexley on the doorstep. But something told her he wasn’t in, the vacuuming, the empty drive.
The bungalow’s interior matched its exterior, tidy but unloved. Coming from the lounge, Edie could hear a radio, tuned to a local station.
Edie turned to go into the room. The woman reached in front of her and shut the door.
‘This way,’ she said.
She led Edie to the kitchen at the back. It was cold and smelt of bleach.
From her hair and clothes, Edie had thought she was Mrs McCann’s age. When she turned to face her, she could see the woman wasn’t much older than Dad. She frightened Edie. She might be small but the close-cut hair gave the impression of a helmet and her eyes were fixed and intense.
‘So, what do you want with Nathan?’ she asked.
Edie tried to think of something to say.
‘Well?’ the woman said.
Edie hadn’t practised this scene. However awkward or painful her conversation, she had always imagined it would be with him, Nathan Bexley, not this woman. Who was she? His wife?
‘You’re not the first,’ the woman said.
Her voice wavered and Edie realised she was more upset than angry.
‘The first what?’ Edie asked.
‘The first girl to come and find him.’
‘No?’
Had Tess come to find Nathan Bexley and not told her? Would Tess really do that? Maybe Edie wasn’t the only one with secrets.
‘The other one was older. Of course I knew,’ she said. ‘He was always away on the road, always staying a night longer here and there. Never thought it would come back to haunt me.’ She raised the corner of her mouth in a sneer and looked at Edie again. ‘
How old are you?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Fourteen?’ She stared out to the cracked patio behind. ‘So what did your mother tell you about him?’
‘I’m not sure …’
‘Or did she not know him so well?’
This woman thought Edie was someone else.
‘Did she think she was the only one, your mother? Cos she wasn’t.’ The woman’s voice was louder now. ‘There were loads of them, a string of floozies up and down the M6, probably in France too, for all I know. They were just an amusement on the road, like listening to the radio, or a glass of beer in the evening. Did your mother tell you that?’
Her eyes ran over Edie’s face.
‘After the accident he gave all that up. I bet she wondered why he never came back.’
‘Accident?’
‘So he didn’t even tell her about that. I thought not. Some stupid bitch ran out in front of him. She’d had more to drink than he had, ran into the road, deliberate. He had no time to stop. I did wonder if she was another one, did it to spite him, but I couldn’t find any link and she was too close to home. He preferred them at a distance. Where are you from?’
‘London,’ Edie said.
‘If she’d wanted to kill herself, why didn’t she throw herself into the canal instead of ruining someone else’s life? Selfish bitch. Stupid, selfish bitch.’ The woman was too involved with her story to see Edie flinch. ‘Lost his job. Lost his licence. They would have put him in jail if that other driver hadn’t come forward. The other witness disappeared. It destroyed Nathan. He was never the same.’
‘Where is he now?’ Edie asked.
‘Gone.’ She looked at Edie and smiled. ‘Heart attack. Two years ago. That woman may as well have killed him at the same time as herself. So if you’re after money you’re too late.’ She looked at Edie. ‘That other girl cried when I told her her daddy’s dead. Are you going to cry?’
‘No,’ Edie said.
‘Good. I hate scenes. What are you going to tell your mother?’
‘My mother’s dead.’
The woman changed her stance and looked hard into Edie’s face.