Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  The vet holds Monty’s abdomen in his hands, feels along his ribs, his spine. Listens to his heart, then places him on the scales. They beep, and the vet frowns.

  ‘Yes, he has lost a bit more weight than I’d like. Is there anything obvious that could account for his not eating? Anything going on at home?’

  I hesitate, unsure whether to mention the police. I think again about the radio. A murder inquiry. My stomach twists.

  The vet breaks my concentration. ‘I guess … there have been a few changes, in the house? Cats can be very sensitive to changes in their environment.’ He is looking down at my bump, over the top of his glasses.

  I force myself to smile, happy to let him attribute my silence to the pregnancy.

  ‘Yes, how did you guess,’ I say, trying to make my voice light. ‘Actually, we’re having some fairly major building work done, too.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Yes. The whole downstairs is being done, plus a basement extension.’ I stroke Monty’s back. ‘He hates it all. Especially since we laid the concrete – it’s a new foundation. He won’t go near the cellar anymore.’

  The vet nods sympathetically. ‘His food bowl – is it in that area, by any chance? By the cellar?’

  I look up at him, feeling like an idiot.

  ‘Try moving it somewhere quiet, where Monty feels a bit safer.’

  As he talks to me about a new diet, animal Prozac, microchip catflaps, I notice that the vet is rubbing Monty between his ears, like Rachel used to do. He’d lie in her lap for ages, as if under some kind of spell. I think of the night we watched Sliding Doors, tucked up on the sofa together, Monty asleep on her legs. She’d had one hand on his ears, tapping away on that gold diamanté-clad phone with the other. That wolfish grin. I love cats. They don’t give a fuck, do they?

  I tell myself to stop thinking about her like that, as if remembering someone who is dead. I run my fingers through my hair. It feels greasy. When was the last time I washed it?

  ‘Um, sorry, Mrs Thorpe. Did you want to take any of these?’

  I force myself to concentrate, focus on the vet’s questions.

  ‘Sorry. Yes, thanks. I’ll take all that.’ I hand him my debit card.

  ‘Have you got long to go?’ he asks.

  ‘Depends on the builders, really. But a few more months, at least, I’m afraid.’

  The vet looks confused.

  ‘Oh, sorry, you meant the baby!’ I force a laugh as I tap in my pin. ‘Due any day now. I’m nearly forty weeks.’

  ‘Well, best of luck.’ He frowns. ‘Oh, that card seems to have been declined. Do you have another?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, that one should be fine. Could you try it again?’ But it is declined again. I tap my pockets, search my bag, but I know it’s the only one I brought with me. I don’t understand. There should be plenty in our joint account. I transferred a load from our savings the other day, in case we needed any more baby stuff, Daniel having obviously forgotten.

  When I pull up back at home, I’m exhausted. I need to call the bank, try and sort things out with the vet, but all I want to do is sleep. I must call the builders about that crack as well. I must do that today. Before it gets worse. I’m just so tired. And I keep thinking about Rachel’s father on the radio. Of what he must be going through.

  It’s such an effort to haul Monty out of the car and up the path that I barely notice the man with the patchy stubble, smoking outside the Plume of Feathers. It’s only after he’s in my front garden that I realise he was waiting for me. He is rubbing the hair at the back of his head, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The man locks eyes with me. Something about him is familiar. Something about the mouth.

  ‘Are you Helen?’

  I feel a prickle of anxiety on the back of my neck. Monty’s carrier is weighing down my right side; I can’t run, even if I wanted to. The man bounds up to me. Before I can say anything else, he grabs my arm, tight as a vice. I gasp. His face is close enough for me to smell alcohol on his breath, the staleness of his clothes. And then I work out who he is.

  ‘I want a word with you,’ he spits. ‘I want to know what happened to my daughter.’

  KATIE

  As soon as I see the press conference, I can tell things are about to change, that Rachel is about to become big news. It’s been a slow week, and now we have a murder inquiry: a young woman, missing after a party in one of London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. A plea from a tearful father, begging for information. I can already tell it will be replayed again for the news at six, then at ten, and round the clock on Sky News.

  A picture of Rachel is doing the rounds, too. And it is a front-page picture, no doubt about it. It looks like a selfie she took at Helen’s house, in the spare room. Someone must have found it on social media. She is wearing that red dress, that red lipstick she had on at Rory’s birthday. You can even see Helen’s shelves in the background, that old glass vase of her mother’s. It is all too close to home. Far too close.

  I steer well clear of the Rachel story, volunteer to do up a dull report about house prices I know will barely make the paper, so that I don’t have to concentrate. By the afternoon, though, I can’t stand it any more. I call Helen, but it goes straight to voicemail. I think about calling Charlie, but then I decide against it. I slip out of the newsroom. I know where I need to go.

  I don’t know what I am expecting to find. Maybe I am hoping to find nothing. Maybe Jane got it wrong. It is a popular club. Rachel could have just gone there sometimes.

  The rain has lessened to a drizzle by the time I reach it, passing the scruffy wall outside, with its blocky graffiti, bill poster upon bill poster. On Friday and Saturday nights, there’s always a queue along this wall, but today is Tuesday, and the club won’t be open for hours. I push the door and am surprised to find it opens.

  There is no one in the black-painted entrance, where the bouncers usually stand. The little window to the cloakroom is closed, the shutters pulled down. I walk down the steep steps, clinging on to the banister. How did I ever do this while drunk? I wonder. I haven’t been here for a while. I know Charlie has started to get fed up with it. He’s even been talking lately about getting a proper job. I’d told him it was about time.

  There is a girl at the bottom of the steps, mopping the floor. She looks like she’s barely a teenager. She is wearing a Goldfrapp T-shirt, scissored off just below her breasts, exposing a skinny navel. Her trainers are metallic, her jeans ripped, her hair long on one side and shaved on the other. Her face looks familiar – I wonder if she was at the bonfire party.

  The girl looks up at me with a bored expression. ‘We’re closed.’

  ‘I know. Sorry. I’m … I’m a friend of Rachel’s. Rachel Wells. She used to work here?’

  The girl sighs, twisting the mop to squeeze the greyish water out of it.

  ‘You a journalist as well?’ She rolls her eyes, doesn’t wait for my answer. ‘None of us know anything about Rachel,’ she says. She is chewing gum, transferring it from one side of her mouth to the other. ‘None of us have seen her in ages. The police came round already. You should speak to them.’

  She picks up her mop and bucket, turns away from me.

  ‘You shouldn’t really be here,’ she adds, speaking over the clatter of the metal bucket. ‘If you want Paul, the manager, he’ll be back around nine.’ She pushes the double doors through to the bar with one hand, swings the mop and bucket through in front of her, then follows them.

  I stand glued to the spot, unsure what to do. All right, just because Rachel worked here, it doesn’t necessarily mean she knew Charlie, I tell myself. Maybe they never met each other. Maybe they worked here at different times. I’m sure there’s an explanation. Because if he knew her, he would have said. Wouldn’t he?

  I turn to leave. I should just ask him, I think. It suddenly feels wrong, coming here behind his back.

  I take one last l
ook through the windows in the double doors, and a flash of colour on the wall catches my eye. A noticeboard, behind the bar, covered in pictures.

  When I am sure the girl is out of sight, I follow her through the double doors into the bar, holding on to them so they don’t swing back and make a noise. The girl is nowhere to be seen – she must have taken the mop and bucket around the back. I slip the latch off the gate and sneak behind the bar to get a closer look.

  The pictures have been stabbed to the board with red and yellow pins: clubbers with their tongues out, their faces pressed up to the camera; girls dancing on podiums, the bar on fire, cocktails pouring with dry ice. I flinch when I first see Charlie’s face, but then I see he is in several of the pictures – his arms around different guys, and girls. One with his top off, neon paint on his face.

  And then I see it. Right in the corner, in a section dated last year. Pin-sharp, unmistakable. Charlie, grinning away, his arm around a girl.

  And the girl is Rachel.

  HELEN

  I set the mug down on the coffee table. ‘Please, have a seat,’ I tell Rachel’s dad. But he does not sit, or smile.

  I open the shutters, but the light is fading fast, and it still feels dark in the room. I lean over to switch on the lamps, my bump pressing awkwardly against the side of the sofa. The glow illuminates the swirls of dust in the air. I should really tidy up, I know. The place is such a mess. It smells of unwashed dishes, unwashed floors. My enthusiasm for cleaning has waned with my increasing exhaustion, my preoccupation with Rachel. And I’m tired. So tired.

  I couldn’t sleep last night. I was up watching TV until late. As I pass the armchair, I snatch up the packet of chocolate digestives and the pair of ski socks wedged in the side of the armchair, where I left them. The nerves in my back protest at the effort of straining to reach.

  Rachel’s dad – John, he said his name was – is marching around the room, as if looking for clues, things to write down in a notebook he grips in one hand. A pencil is lodged behind his ear. He’s not a tall man, and is slight, like her. Everything about him seems to be constantly in motion.

  ‘I heard you on the radio this morning,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine what you must be going through.’ I pause. ‘I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know. I really don’t know what else I can tell you, though. Except what I told the police.’

  At the mention of the police, his face contorts.

  ‘I don’t trust them,’ he says. ‘I’ve been on at them for two weeks. I told them it’s not right, that she wouldn’t just disappear. I told them something must have happened to her. And they’ve done nothing.’

  ‘I … I think they are taking it seriously now. I mean, the press conference –’

  ‘About time.’

  ‘I’m sure it will help,’ I say, trying to sound encouraging.

  Now his bravado slips a little, his shoulders sloping. He finally slumps down into the sofa, gives a long sigh, like air escaping from a crumpled balloon.

  ‘I dunno, Helen. I hope so. I hope it’s not too late. I couldn’t bear it if … I couldn’t bear it.’ He drops his head, presses the balls of his hands into his eye sockets. I touch his shoulder, gently, but he flinches. I quickly pull my hand away.

  I wish Daniel was here. He’s said he wants to work late every night this week – that way we’ll have more time together when the baby arrives. ‘It’s not long now. I’m just getting ahead,’ he said. ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? Call me if you need me. Or if anything happens.’ I agreed at the time. But now I’m starting to regret it.

  ‘You know, she didn’t have that many friends,’ John says gruffly.

  I sit down, gingerly, on my inflatable birthing ball. I try to sound breezy. ‘Oh, I’m sure she had –’

  ‘No,’ he says bluntly, shaking his head, ‘she didn’t.’ There is an expression of sadness on his face. ‘She had trouble with friends, our Rachel.’

  I am not sure how to react to this. John cracks his knuckles in his lap. It’s too warm in here. The central heating’s on too high. I stand up to open a window. Without me weighing it down, the ball drifts off and bounces gently against the wall.

  ‘The police said that you reckoned Rachel was pregnant,’ he says. ‘Was she?’

  I nod. ‘Didn’t she tell you that?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Why wouldn’t she tell me?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’

  ‘No, that’s right,’ he says, the anger in his eyes flaring up again, like a gas light. ‘You’re the same as them. No one will give me a straight answer, and no one seems to care.’

  I take a deep breath in and out. I press my hand into the side of the sofa, try to calm myself down.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, trying to sound gentle, ‘that’s just not true. I’m worried about Rachel, of course I am. But you have to remember, she sent me that –’

  ‘I should have taken better care of her.’ He starts pacing around the room again. His boots are filthy. It is as if he’s forgotten I’m here, as if he’s talking to himself. ‘I was proud she was in London. That she was making something of herself. If I’d known how she was living … when she said Dalston, well. I didn’t know it would be like that … that horrible tower block, those two stuck-up girls always sneering at her. And now you tell me she was pregnant –’

  ‘Hang on. Dalston? Like, you mean in east London? When was she living there?’

  He stares at me. ‘Until she moved in with you.’

  ‘But that can’t be right. She definitely lived around here, in Greenwich. At least by the time I met her in the summer.’

  John frowns and sits back down. I glance at the tea on the table. It must be cold by now. A grey semicircle is forming on the top.

  ‘Definitely not,’ he says. ‘She never lived round here. This was miles away from her place.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. She was always around here. She told me she lived on the other side of the park.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘But … she was at the Greenwich antenatal classes.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Antenatal classes. You go when you are pregnant,’ I gabble. ‘It’s only for Greenwich residents. The whole point of the classes is that you go to your local … you meet local people.’

  I try to think. Did she really tell me she lived around here? Or did I just assume it? We never went to her place. Did she ever even tell me where it was? Did I ever ask?

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘it’s just … it doesn’t really make sense. There are antenatal classes all over London. If she lived in Hackney, and was pregnant, she would go to the classes there. She never mentioned Hackney, or Dalston. She never mentioned any flatmates. I thought she lived alone.’

  ‘She’d have been better off,’ he says darkly. He stands up, starts pacing again. ‘Ask her flatmates. If you can get a civil word out of them.’

  I sit on the ball again and rock back and forth, trying to massage the pain out of my hips. I feel like screaming. None of what he is saying makes sense. Why didn’t she tell her dad she was pregnant? Why was she always here if she lived miles away? What was she doing in Greenwich all those times? And if she lied about that – what else had she lied about?

  I think of all the times I’d seen Rachel in Greenwich, after I met her. Had it really been a coincidence, bumping into her all those times? Or had it been deliberate? Had she been following me? The thought makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. But why would she do that? Why?

  ‘John, Rachel told me she’d been signed off work with high blood pressure, because of her pregnancy. Do you know where she worked?’

  ‘A bar, or a club, maybe,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember the name. She never said anything to me about blood pressure. She just said she had something else she wanted to do. Some project. No point pressing her. She knows what she wants, Rachel. She does things her own way. Always has done.’

  I grip the side of the sofa. The room feels as if it
is tilting. I’ve told all this to the police. I think about what I said to them in that grey room that smelled of stale old papers. How I’d leaned into the tape recorder to make sure they got everything down. She was from somewhere in Greenwich, met the father through her work at a music venue. Heavily pregnant. Signed off with high blood pressure. And it was nonsense. All of it. They must think I am a complete idiot. Or worse. Maybe they think I am a liar.

  John is still talking. ‘She wasn’t easy, you know. As a teenager. And then … after what happened to her … Well, she changed then. You couldn’t blame her. She was angry, very angry.’

  He says this as if I must know what he is talking about. I blink, say nothing. He looks up at me, eyes glistening.

  ‘Didn’t she tell you?’ He drops his gaze, gives his head a little shake. ‘I expect she keeps it to herself,’ he mutters. ‘It’s just that I thought you two were so close.’

  I clamp my mouth into a line. We weren’t close, I feel like screaming. We weren’t even friends. It’s nothing to do with me. She is nothing to do with me. I realise I want this man out of my house as soon as possible. But he is still talking. It is like he can’t stop.

  ‘She’d been calling me every week, until the day of your party,’ he is saying. ‘That was the last time I heard from her. I could tell she was looking forward to it. Said there was someone who was going to be at the party. Someone important to her.’

  I feel the muscles in my shoulders tense. ‘Did she say who?’

  He blows his nose on a hanky he has pulled from his cuff.

  ‘No, she didn’t. She said she’d call me soon. And then … nothing.’

  He is sobbing now, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. I go and fetch my hospital bag, sitting by the front door, and find the packet of tissues in the side pocket. He takes them, gratefully.