Deceit (8 page)

There was no sign of her dad. He’d probably gone to pick Micky up from school. Her mum was on so many drugs she couldn’t drive.

She looked at her watch. Three o’clock. Yep. That’s where he’d be. She called out, “Mum!” No reply. She looked in the front room, pushed open the door to the kitchen… looked down the garden. No one.

Upstairs, her mum’s door was shut, so Claire opened it very carefully. Pushed it open a fraction at first. The room was in semi-darkness and she could hear her mum’s breathing, sonorous and slow. She tiptoed across. Peered closely at her and touched her mum’s shoulder. She was so deeply asleep she only stirred a little. Her eyelids fluttered and she muttered something, making a pitiful noise like a little creature losing its fight for life in the dark of the night.

Beside her bed was a bottle of sleeping tablets. Strong ones judging by the labels: ‘One to be taken before bedtime. Do not drink alcohol. Do not drive or use heavy machinery.’

The first time her mum had used them she’d taken
three
. She’d been desperate to find some peace. But three had been a big mistake. Only ten
minutes after she’d taken them she was unconscious on the floor, and Claire and her dad had really struggled to lift the dead weight of her body into bed.

Carefully Claire lifted the bottle of sleeping tablets. She pressed down and unscrewed the lid. She shook out four… one to experiment with, one for the real thing and two more just in case. That should be more than enough. She stuffed the pills into her jeans pocket and put the lid back on the bottle. As she placed it back on the bedside table, she knocked the other bottle over. Not a loud noise, but sharp and unexpected and enough to wake her mum. Or half wake her.

“
Whoozat?
Oh…” Her mum tried to raise herself on one elbow and look up at Claire. Her eyes were blurry and her hair was tangled and muzzy. “Oh I thought it was your dad. Claire… there isn’t any…?” her voice trailed off and she slumped back on the pillow.

“No, Mum. No news. But Matthew will be okay. There’ll be good news soon I promise. Just you wait and see. I’ll go and make some tea. Then we’ll get you showered. Your hair needs a wash. You’ll feel better after.”

I sound like such an idiot
, she thought.
Only getting Matthew back will make things better
.

At bedtime, Claire took one of the tablets. She lay down in bed, pulled up the covers and waited. How long before anything happened? She looked at her watch. After five minutes she still felt wide awake and she’d almost decided to risk it and take another one, but then her legs and arms started to feel really heavy and her eyelids closed. She was dimly aware of trying to lift an arm, move a leg. But she felt the resistance as if she were moving under water.

She remembered nothing until she woke the next morning… Wednesday… late. Feeling like death, with her mouth dry and her brain struggling to function. Though she was telling her body to get out of bed, nothing much was happening. At first anyway. Slowly, slowly her muscles did as they were told. But they still felt as heavy, as if she were lifting ten kilo weights.

She swung her legs out of the bed and pushed herself up. She staggered to the bathroom. Stood under the shower… making it as cold as she could bear. Shaking her head under the stream of water
in an effort to dislodge the white fluff filling up her head.

One tablet and she felt terrible. What would happen when she took two? She shivered. She had to take enough… but not an overdose. She didn’t want to die. Dying would not be good.

All the rest of that day she struggled to function. She drank a lot of coffee, sitting in cafés. Her mum and dad still thought she was at school. Every day she felt sure someone would ring home and ask where she was. But no one did. They made assumptions that she was at home looking after her mum and they didn’t want to intrude. Not yet anyway. But that was okay, because soon, with any luck, none of that would matter.

She needed to check out that house in Paris. Make sure Matthew couldn’t possibly be there. Talking to Jacalyn was the obvious way, because she was in Paris right now. But her faith in Jacalyn had been dented. Could she really trust her?

So instead Claire tried using her phone to check out the house on the Internet. No results. No, if she wanted to know quickly there was nothing else for it, she would
have
to ask Jacalyn.

So she sent her a text:

Then she took the tube to Tower Hill and walked down through St Katharine Docks and along Marble Quay, to the area where Nicholas’s warehouse would have been. She just needed to make sure it wasn’t there any more. And it wasn’t. There were some old buildings that had probably once been warehouses… but they were apartments now. And there was a mass of new buildings. All very smart with expensive boats moored up alongside them.

It was two o’clock and she was starting to feel hungry. There was a café by the quay and so she went in and ordered a burger and
another
coffee and took them outside onto the deck overlooking the water. She was sitting there, her face tilted up to the sunshine, her head aching and her eyes feeling like they were full of grit, when she heard the sound of high heels clicking on the decking. She instinctively turned to look and saw a slim,
dark-haired young woman about to go through the open door into the café.

For a split second Claire didn’t register who it was. Why would Lindsay be here? Work? But wasn’t her office somewhere in north London?

Lindsay hadn’t seen her and she mustn’t. Claire didn’t want anyone to know she was bunking off school, because that would ruin everything. She quietly pulled her sweater hood up so her hair was covered at least and turned her back to the café door.

She heard Lindsay say, her voice floating out through the open door, “Oh I don’t know… I’ll look at the menu.” Then Lindsay laughed. She sounded relaxed and cheerful.

That made Claire feel a bit odd. As if it wasn’t right that Lindsay should be out having lunch and enjoying herself when Matthew was still missing. But there wasn’t time to think about that now. The minute she was sure Lindsay wasn’t coming out again, Claire walked quickly across the deck to the steps and down to the pavement.

She was hurrying back towards the station, past all the boats and barges parked up along the quay, when she was stopped in her tracks. The ring
had momentarily tightened on her finger. And something else… there was the faintest hint of a horribly familiar smell.
His
smell… flowers and cinnamon.

She looked around quickly, her heartbeat hammering up in her throat, and felt for the ring. But it was loose now and when she stood still to sniff the air, she could only smell coffee and toasting bread. She must have imagined it, or perhaps someone had been wearing a perfume that smelled the same. Even so, it had spooked her badly and what with that and seeing Lindsay unexpectedly, she felt jittery for the rest of the day.

Later, when Claire was helping her dad and Micky make the supper, the subject of Lindsay came up. Micky was asking if Lindsay was okay because she hadn’t been around much lately. Her dad looked a bit uncomfortable and muttered something about work being frantic. And so Claire was able to ask him where it was in north London that Lindsay worked. She knew, she said, that Lindsay ran a business and it was something to do with property.

“Her office is in Hampstead, but she works all over the place… even abroad sometimes. Why?”

“Oh I don’t know really. I was just thinking it must be hard for Lindsay, you know, having to take time off because of everything that’s been happening. And then I realised I didn’t know exactly where it was she worked…”

“Yeah. She does have a lot on. She works incredibly hard. Long hours… and then she has to be away a lot.”

Her dad frowned and then he tried to sound cheerful and upbeat. “But it’s better for her really. No time to dwell on things. And I’m such a miserable bastard at the moment. No use to anyone.”

Claire put her arms round his waist and leaned her cheek against his back. “You
are
useful, Dad. You make brilliant chips! Promise me you’ll make loads when Matthew’s back. Everything’s going to be all right. I know it.”

Micky pushed and squirrelled her way in between them and Claire’s dad turned and put his arms around them both.

“Of course it will.”

But Claire could feel how he was shaking and when she looked up into his face, the tears were streaming silently down his cheeks.

He tells me his name is Jonah Spry, a wool merchant. He says he will be sending a shipment of wool along the coast to Rye, tomorrow. From there it will be smuggled across to Calais. “Meet my carter, Thomas Kent, at daybreak, just clear of Dover and by the waymark. I will tell him to expect you. He will hide you amongst the bales of wool on his cart, but I warn you that it will not be a pleasant journey. He will cross the Channel at night and it may be rough, even at this time of year. There is also the very real risk you may be stopped by a customs ship. And…” He looks at me to make sure that I know what he means: that we may be arrested and thrown into prison… or worse.

“It is a risk we must take, whatever the cost,” I reply.

“Then when you get to Rye, give this to the captain of the boat.” He slips me a pewter token stamped with a picture of an owl. “He will take you as a favour to me. My wife was also his daughter; he feels responsible for her death.”

I want to throw my arms about him and thank
him from the bottom of my heart, but he hurriedly stands and, tipping his hat to me, leaves the inn.

Christophe seems worried when I tell him what Jonah has said. “How do we know that we can trust him?”

I feel guilty that I have not told him this before and I cannot look him in the eye as I say, “My ring did not burn when I met him. It did when I met with Silas Becke.”

It is cold before daybreak and Christophe and I huddle together at the side of the road, close to the waymark to Rye. Mercifully it is not raining. It is still pitch black and, though we have pilfered a candle from the inn, its light is not enough to pierce the darkness. But soon the sun comes up. Just a pearly greyness in the sky at first, followed by streaks of red. The ball of the sun appears little by little and as yellow as butter. The red sky worries me though, since I think it may betoken rain and a storm later. But I soon forget that, for now I can hear the steady clop of horse’s hooves and the rumble of iron-shod wheels on the chalk.

The cart, when it appears round the bend in the road, is loaded down with packs of wool covered over with a tarpaulin. I step out into its path and ask, “Thomas Kent?”

The carter, sandy-haired and choleric looking, stops the cart and nods curtly in affirmation.

He asks who has sent us and when I reply that it is Jonah, his face breaks into the broadest of smiles and he jumps down.

He quickly moves to the back of the cart, unties the ropes and peels back the tarpaulin, saying, “I have kept a space clear for you.”

A very small space, I think, but Christophe pushes me up onto the cart and I squeeze in between the bales and then reach out a hand to pull Christophe up too. Then Thomas ties down the tarpaulin again and soon I feel the cart begin to move.

It is pitch black, airless and hot amongst the bales. The smell of the wool is overpowering. Panic rises up in my throat. I feel as if I am being buried alive. I struggle to keep my breathing measured and I am afraid that I will not be able to stop myself from shouting out and pushing my way up into the fresh air and light.

I reach for my bottle of laudanum, kept safe in my pocket, and furtively take a sip. Now I can breathe easy again. I lean back against Christophe and soon I slip into a deep sleep full of vivid, wild dreams.

It is dusk when the cart stops and Thomas lifts the tarpaulin and says that we are at Rye… or at least just a little way from it. We can see the walls of the town and the town gate.

“Wait at the Mermaid Inn and I will come for you there when the wool is safely delivered,” he says and helps us down. Then he leaps back up onto the cart, flicks the reins and trots away.

We walk on in through the city gate and find a dark corner in the Mermaid Inn where we settle ourselves. At least we are warm and there is food and drink. Just as well, for we have a long wait.

Thomas does not return until nearly midnight. “I thought you had forgotten us,” I say.

“I promised Jonah I would see you safe across to France,” he snaps and looks a little cross. “And I keep my promises. The wool had to be unloaded from the cart and stored safely until the boat was ready to leave. But now… come… the boat
is
loaded and ready. The wind is fair and they will set sail as soon as you are aboard.”

We step out of the light and warmth of the inn and follow Thomas through the streets and alleyways of the town until we reach a little wooden door set in the side wall of a house. Thomas cups his hands to his mouth and makes a noise like an owl hooting… and the door opens a crack and Thomas whispers, “May God be with you,” and pushes the two of us forward, so that we slip through the open door alone.

Now Thomas is gone and the door is closed and bolted behind us. In the flickering light of the lantern, I am surprised to see the sailor from the inn at Dover. But there is no time to ask anything of him before he hurries us down some steps and along a dark damp tunnel. A sound like thunder echoes all around us, and there is a smell I know from the market, of fish packed in salt and shellfish kept fresh in seaweed.

The tunnel seems to go on for miles, its ceiling getting lower the further we travel. My feet are wet now; the hem of my dress is soaked with water and heavy. I hold tight to Christophe’s hand as we
follow the sailor. His lantern light a beacon in the blackness ahead of us. But at last we reach the end of the tunnel and we come out to a moonless night lit only by stars and to a sound like booming cannon fire.