As She Left It (15 page)

It had to be fifty feet long, door after door on either side, and the ceiling so high it felt like being in church or something when Opal stepped softly along the length of it. Church because it was dark too, and dusty, but at the end light dazzled down and the motes danced and—was that a pulpit?

It wasn’t. It was just the fancy bottom of the stairs before they turned and started for real. Opal couldn’t see out of the front door, stained glass onto the vestibule and frosted glass beyond, so she went up the first few stairs to peer through the fanlight, and it was right enough. This was N Fossett’s house. There couldn’t be two drives choked like that with the bushes grown up like Sleeping Beauty’s vines.

She dropped back down from her tiptoes and that was when she saw Shelley, standing at the bottom looking up at her.

“Big house, eh?” she said. She tried to sound innocent, but Shelley’s face had gone wooden. “Why would a single woman buy a house this size?”

“She didn’t,” said Shelley. “She was born here. Where were you going?”

“Wow,” Opal said, her thoughts tumbling.
How old was she? When did they stop teaching kids that loopy writing?

“Were you needing to find the loo?”

“Nah, just nosey,” Opal said skipping down the stairs and landing with a jump on the thin carpet. “Must be nice, living in the lap of luxury like this. It would do me.”

Shelley said nothing.

“Tell Miss Fossett I said bye,” Opal called over her shoulder. As she let herself out and went back along the weird tunnel to the gate, she punched the air and shouted “Yes!” making a long fierce hissing sound. Miss N Fossett, who
had
to know who the little bed girl was and who might even
be
her! Locked and loaded!

“Hey!”

It was Shelley, standing at the back door. Opal turned.

“What are
you
so happy about?” Her face was just as wooden and her eyes were narrow too.

“Good deed for the day,” Opal said. “Little old lady home safe and sound.”

“That’s what you said when you called me,” said Shelley. “A little old lady.” She was walking towards Opal, slow and steady. “But, just then, when you were saying goodbye, you used her name. Miss Fossett.”

“Yeah?” said Opal. “So?”

“How did you find out her name? Were you snooping? Upstairs?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Opal. “You got me. I got into her house but before I went snooping round I called up a neighbor so I could get caught red-handed.”

Shelley flushed.

“
You
told me her name,” said Opal. “On the phone.”

And now Shelley put a fluttering hand up to her throat.

“Did—Did I?”

“None taken,” said Opal and went on her way. She was unstoppable. Take more than Shelley to slow her down. And she wasn’t just coming along after the little bed girl was dead and gone and telling her story either, because she was still
there
, alive and kicking. Well, alive anyway.

And, okay, whoever had done bad things to Norah when she was little might be dead by now and past punishment, so you could ask what was the point. But Miss Fossett had put her head down and said “sorry, sorry” when Opal grabbed her arm
. That
was the point. She was a white-haired little old lady who’d told no one except her bedposts what was wrong, and a hundred and fifty years later (or however old she was), she was still apologising if someone hurt her arm.

And
, Opal told herself, it might have been some horrible schoolmistress with a bamboo cane or a priest or something. There might have been a coverup, and it might have happened for years and years or even be happening still.

In fact—she was marching along by now, jaw set, flip-flops smacking against her heels with every angry stride—she knew “it” was happening still. “It” happened to little girls all the time. And “it” had happened to Craig Southgate, in Mote Street, just ten years ago. Some “it” or another anyway. Close enough.

“Cool down, Curly,” said a voice. Opal swung round. There were two lads sitting on the low wall by the bins on the corner of Monkbridge Road, coke cans and cigarettes in their hands, laughing at her. Opal bared her teeth and made a noise like a cheetah, rasping from deep in her throat, making the lads shrink back, just for a moment, before they shook themselves and started again, whooping with laughter. Opal didn’t care; she’d scared them.

She’d seen it in their eyes.

NINETEEN

A
T THE BOTTOM OF
Mote Street, she crossed her fingers and hoped that Fishbo wouldn’t see her and grab her for more practising. This silver wedding gig made her mouth turn dry every time she remembered. But she was out of luck. When she peeped round the corner of Pep Kendal’s house to see if the coast was clear, it was only to meet his eyes looking back at hers from where he was sitting on a dining chair set out on the pavement ten feet away.

“She’s at her book group,” he said, twinkling.

“Who?” said Opal

“Vonnie,” he said. “Who else?”

“A
book
group?” said Opal, coming round to join him. “For real?” Pep nodded. Opal hitched her backside up onto his living room windowsill and whistled through her teeth. “Sometimes it feels as if I’ve never been away and sometimes … Mrs. Pickess in a book group.” Pep laughed and stretched out in his chair until he was only touching it with his shoulder blades and the backs of his thighs, before relaxing again. “Anyway, it was you I was dodging, if you must know.”

“What have
I
done?” he said.

“Well, Mr. Fish, anyway. Roped me in for this weekend. I’m shitting bricks.”

Pep waved his cigarette at her, his eyes screwed up, until he had caught his breath, exhaled the smoke, and could talk again.

“You’re safe enough,” he said. “It’s off. Cancelled.”

“They heard about me!” said Opal, and Pep laughed again.

“Naw,
we
cancelled it, Opal love. The boys and me.” She told herself it was silly to be hurt, told herself it was their job and their reputation and of course they’d cancelled rather than let Opal makes fools of them all. “And don’t look like that, softie,” he said. “We cancelled on account of Fishbo.”

“Huh?” Opal said. Pep held up one finger and cocked his head telling her to listen, so she cocked her head up too, to the same side, and found that she could hear a rattling, burbling cough drifting down from the open front bedroom window.

“I had to get the doctor in,” Pep said. “Chest infection. No way he’ll be fit for Saturday.”

“Cool,” said Opal and then flushed. “I mean—” She stopped to listen to another cough, or maybe a new phase of the same one. It was deeper now, each spasm of it making a clapping, hacking sound that Opal couldn’t imagine happening inside someone’s body, in their chest, without bones breaking. Nicola had sometimes had a hell of a cough in the winters, smoking too much and not eating enough, and one coal fire never really got the house really warm right through to the brick. But Opal had never heard a cough like this one, and she swallowed hard, trying not to shudder as she listened to it ebbing away at last, leaving Fishbo retching and moaning.

“Okay?” Pep shouted up to the open window.

“
Hoo-yah
!” said Fishbo’s voice, faintly. “Okay.”

Opal noticed that Pep’s face was pale above his stubble and, in spite of the heat, the hairs that usually lay like a pelt all over his arms were standing up, stiff and fuzzy. He rubbed his hands over them as if warming himself and shuddered too.

“I wish he’d move downstairs,” he said. “I didn’t get a wink last night with that racket. Never mind up and down all day with cups of tea.”

But he didn’t sound annoyed. He sounded worried and for the first time—funny how you just accept things when you’re a kid—Opal thought about the fact that Fishbo had moved into Pep Kendal’s house, taken over a room to give music lessons in, and just stayed put there.

“How long have you lived together?”

“Eh?” said Pep. “We don’t
live together
. Bloody hell. He’s my lodger. Nineteen eighty-five, he moved in, more or less as soon as he gave up driving taxis and joined the band. Live together!” He lit another cigarette, flustered.

“I didn’t mean
that
,” Opal said. “But come off it with the lodger bit. You wouldn’t be running up and down with tea or calling the doctor if he was a lodger, would you?”

Pep blinked, considered it, and then acknowledged the point with a nod of the head, lips pushed out in a pout.

“Call him a pet, then,” he said. “Like a parrot. More annoying than a bloody parrot, that’s all.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can’t stand the sight of each other,” Opal said. “Lived in the same house my whole lifetime cos you
annoy
each other.”

“Nothing annoys Fishbo,” said Pep. “That’s one of the things that makes him so irritating.” He looked up at the open bedroom window again. “I hope he can hear me, the old fart.”

“But you must be fond of him,” Opal said. “All these years. You must be.” She was hoping to get the conversation round to his past, New Orleans and his family again; she couldn’t have predicted where it would suddenly swerve off to.

“He’s been good to me,” Pep said, and for this he dropped his voice. In case the old fart heard him, Opal supposed. “Stuck by me when times were hard.”

“And friends were few,” said Opal. She couldn’t remember where she had heard that, but it made Pep smile.

“Certainly seemed that way,” he said. He had his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, making him squint, and with the low sun making him squint as well, he was grimacing like one of those old cowboys in the films, all screwed up against the desert dust as they stared into the distance. Except Pep wasn’t staring into the distance; he was looking up and down the street, letting his eyes rest on one house after another, like he was doing some kind of stock-take. When he was done, he shook his head slowly. “Fewer than I’d reckoned, anyway. Can I ask you something, Opal love?”

She nodded. He cleared his throat and wet his lips with a smacking sound.

“I know you didn’t come to visit,” he went on, “but maybe you talked to your mother on the phone? So I was thinking maybe you could clear it up for me.”

“Clear up what?’ she asked.

“Something that’s bothering me for years. Ten long years, if you must know.”

“Ten years?” Opal echoed.

“Since Craig Southgate died. Disappeared.” Opal had flinched at the word and hoped he hadn’t seen her. It didn’t mean anything. Everyone thought he had died, didn’t they? Everyone knew deep down that he must have. Pep saying it didn’t mean a thing.

“What about it?” she said. He threw his cigarette down onto the pavement in front of him and ground it away to shreds with his heel.

“You shouldn’t do that with slippers on,” Opal told him.

“What about it”—Pep was bringing his foot up to rest on the opposite knee, craning to see his slipper sole and then flicking at it—“was that one of my dear neighbors in this close-knit community here told the police I was a kiddie-fiddler. That’s what about it.”

“No!” said Opal. That wasn’t what Zula Joshi had told her Doolal had said. Not so clear and harsh as all that. It had just been a hint—bad enough—about all the men in the band, living together. Or maybe Zula couldn’t bring herself to tell the whole truth of it. And no wonder. “No,” Opal said again.

“Oh yes,” said Pep, grimly. “Wife left, Fish never married, kids in and out for music lessons … you wouldn’t believe what a couple of coppers can make of that if they’ve a mind to.”

“
I
was in and out for music lessons,” Opal said. “Jesus!”

“Aye and when you left, your mother came over more than once asking Fishbo why you’d upped sticks. What had he done to you to make you go. Asked me too. That’s what made me think, years later, she might have said summat.”

“What was she on about?” said Opal. “I never said anything about not being looked after over here. Was she drunk?”

“Well, she was breathing, love, put it that way,” Pep said. He paused then. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Opal. “It’s a fair comment. What a nerve, though, blaming you for me leaving. That wasn’t exactly Disneyland, was it?” She nodded across at her own house.

“So she never mentioned owt about it?” Pep said. “Never said to you who she suspected? When Craig d—disappeared?” He had checked himself, making Opal think he’d noticed her flinching before.

“We weren’t in touch,” she said. “I didn’t even know about Craig till I got back again and Margaret told me the story.”

“Right,” Pep said, and he slumped a bit in his seat. Opal wished she could have told him different. It had to hurt, him not knowing who’d said something like that. Maybe she could explain. Tell him that Doolal was angry and lashing out, and that his mum was mortified and if his dad knew he’d get a thrashing. Then she shook the thought away. Her granddad always used to say to her—when she was scared of ghosts in her cupboard at night, this was—that it was the living you had to mind out for and forget the dead. Nicola was past caring now, but Doolal could still get his beautiful teeth knocked down his throat if Pep had a mind for payback.

“Wouldn’t put it past her, mind you,” she began. “If she’d fling that kind of accusation about after I left home, she’d do the same after Craig went, wouldn’t she? I mean, she was pally with his dad, and I think the police took a long hard look at her.”

“Yeah?” said Pep.

“Oh yes,” Opal said. “Mrs. Pickess sent them over.”

“Like pass the bloody parcel,” Pep said. “Vonnie set them on Nic, Nic set them on me?”

“And then Fishbo set them on someone else to get them off your back?” Opal said, thinking that there was no one much left, since the Joshis had had their turn without anyone pointing the finger.

“Eh? Fishbo?”

“I thought that’s what you meant about him being good to you.”

“No, not Fish. Not his style at all. Wouldn’t harm a fly. He just kept his trap shut, that’s all.”

“What about?” said Opal, thinking of the way Pep Kendal had said
died
like that.