Ghost Girl (10 page)
‘It’s better here.’ Michael batted at the air. ‘It’s good you made us come.’ He wrenched free of Mary and galloped down the path, his satchel bouncing on his back, one shoelace trailing.
‘We are going tomorrow. On the Underground.’ Mary caught up with Michael and shoved him against the tennis-court fence. ‘I didn’t make us come here. Stop saying it! ’
‘Mummy said. They gave you a new name and we had to have a new house.’ Michael wriggled from her grasp and dodged back up the path.
‘Dad got a new job, you idiot, it’s miles from our old house.’ She waited. Michael would have to come back.
Michael meandered towards her, chinking the marbles in his shorts pocket. The avenue of blossom trees was deserted. A crow cawed from a branch above their heads. The trees and the viaduct prevented sunlight from penetrating and made the air cool. Mary turned on her heel towards the arch where a sign proclaimed: ‘Children’s’ Playground’.
She had strict instructions. ‘Go through the arch, follow the path by the flower beds to the gates, turn right – the hand you write with – on King Street. Cross at the zebra by the post office. No dawdling.’ She must bring Michael straight home and make the tea. Mary had promised she would.
‘Let’s have a go on the slide,’ she said.
Michael hung back. ‘We’re not allowed.’
‘It’s up to me.’ Mary was finding being her mum made a lot of things possible. She snatched at Michael’s jumper, pulling it out of shape, and hustled him along to the next arch where, gleaming silver in the chill shadows, was the highest slide either of them had ever seen.
Children were clustered at the bottom of an iron ladder. Far above was a pretend house with a pointy roof and a chimney. Her eyes adjusting to the gloom, Mary saw the girl with plaits; she was climbing up the ladder.
‘Can I go first?’ Mary pushed through the group.
‘Before me?’ The girl looked down at her.
‘We’re in a hurry.’ Mary grasped the metal: it was cold and rough like the skin of a snake. She placed her foot on the first rung beside the girl’s plimsoll.
‘OK then.’ The girl got down. ‘Watch out, it’s very steep.’
Mary let go of Michael’s hand and grabbed the other metal handrail. She had not expected the girl to be nice.
She scurried up the ladder and stuck her head out of one of the windows in the pretend house. She was aghast to see Michael coming up after her. He was going up the rungs as he did stairs, leading with one foot, looking at the ground, which was the worst possible thing. He did not seem to hear the children shouting from below for him to come back.
‘Stop!’ Mary signalled with the flat of her hand.
Michael climbed doggedly, his breath laboured.
‘Look up!’ she whispered and looking through the slats she saw the concrete below, a dizzying drop. Mary forgot about her brother and crossed unsteadily to the slide. She leant out through the doorway. The slide tapered downwards.
She got astride the flat end of the slide and the cold metal was a shock to her bare legs. She adjusted her skirt and shuffled to the edge. There was nothing to grip, and each scoot brought her nearer to the chute. Her body grew lighter as gravity took hold and, kicking her legs, Mary plummeted out. Skimming metal burned her skin as, gathering speed, she tumbled against the shallow sides. She snatched fruitlessly for a hold, her duffel bag slipped off her lap and swung over the edge, it pulled the string tight around her neck cutting into her skin.
At the foot of the slide Mary shakily got up. She smoothed her skirt and then whisked around the structure for another go.
There was a commotion. The children, six in all, were arguing and wrestling at the ladder. Two boys and the friendly girl with plaits were blocking the bottom rungs. The girl was persuading the boys to climb down, but they ignored her. Mary saw why no one had followed her down the slide. Michael was in the opening of the house. There was room for more than one child on the platform, but no one could get up there because he was in the way. Mary heard the girl with plaits call to him that it would be all right. She knew her brother would not be able to hear because he was scared. Someone threw a tennis ball at him. It missed, but he flinched. If he fell he would die.
‘Michael!’ She heard her own voice as if from far off.
Cissy. Cheat. Baby.
Mary barged through the group, elbowing and punching her way to the front.
‘You won’t be in trouble,’ the plaits girl was saying.
Mary stared up. When he saw her, Michael flung his legs through the rail as if he might leap into her arms.
‘Don’t move!’ She must not look at him for fear of what he would do.
‘He’s scared.’ the girl explained and touched her shoulder.
‘No, he is not! My brother is never scared. We have to go, that’s all. We are in a hurry.’ She shook the girl off and risked a look. ‘Michael, come here now!’
Michael’s eyes were strange, as if he didn’t know her.
‘Get him off there.’ A voice in her ear. The boy was sturdy with sprouting-up hair and a bright white shirt tucked into grey shorts. Mary could smell Bazooka Joe bubble gum. She knew his name. Clifford Hunt had a silver snake buckle belt and had given her a brand-new pencil.
‘Michael is stuck.’ She felt herself grow hot.
Clifford Hunt leant on the handrail and rested his chin on his fist as if her point was worth considering. ‘He’s your brother,’ he declared. ‘He’ll do what you say.’
Mary squeezed past the children. She felt fingers beneath her sandal when she put a foot on a rung and began the climb. Halfway up she hesitated; the girl with plaits was called Jacqueline, but it didn’t matter any more. They would not be friends; Mary and her brother were leaving tomorrow.
Michael was a lump and Mary could not get around him on to the platform. Out of view of the audience below she pushed him but he didn’t move. He was the most petrified she had ever seen him.
‘Mike, face the other way round and go into the house.’ He stayed where he was. She nudged him in the chest, but it made no difference.
‘I’ll give you sweets.’ Mary crossed her fingers behind her back so that he couldn’t see she didn’t mean it.
Behind her the ladder shook. The children were coming. The house began to shake but Mary was steadfast: they were in the way; no one could get in. Suddenly Michael scrambled backwards until he was cross-legged in the centre of the platform. Mary wedged herself in the entrance, resisting the pressing behind her.
‘Sit on the slide,’ she commanded in a low voice.
Michael crawled to the slide and obediently sat on it. He gripped the sides so tightly his knuckles were like chicken legs. Mary saw two marbles roll out of the pocket of his shorts and trundle along the gap in the planks until, the gap widening, they dropped through. Michael was very still.
‘Keep back,’ Mary snarled over her shoulder when someone jabbed her shoulder blade. She dived forward and joined Michael on the slide and, her legs either side of him, held him around the waist.
The platform drummed and rattled when the children clambered up. Shouts and whoops bounced off the bird-slimed walls of the brick chamber.
‘There’s too many up there,’ a man’s voice thundered. ‘Get down!’
Mary wedged her heels against the lip of the opening and pushed with all her might. Bricks zipped past. Michael was flung against her chest. She felt a jolt on her arm that made her teeth clack together so she bit her tongue. She careered off the slide on to the concrete with Michael on top of her. When she tried to get up, a smarting pain in her wrist prevented her.
She rolled on to her other side and struggled up. She grabbed her brother and pushed him out of the arch.
They ran helter skelter up the path. Under the arch, past the flower beds, through the iron gates. They turned right on the main road and did not stop until they reached the zebra by the post office.
‘I rescued you,’ Mary panted. Michael’s face was chalk-white, the freckles on his cheeks like pencil dots. He had shrunk; the jumper their nan had knitted was baggy, his socks rumpled around his ankles. His elbow was bleeding.
He looked at the blood. ‘We should have gone straight home.’
‘We are.’ Mary set off down the street. ‘Pull your sleeve down.’
When Mrs Thornton came into the kitchen her children were scraping the remains of beans on toast off their plates and draining glasses of milk. She did not notice the bruise on Mary’s wrist and only found the plaster on Michael’s arm at bedtime. He had hurt it playing football, he declared, adding that he had scored a goal. The first statement was the only lie Michael Thornton ever told his mother.
As she often did when she kissed her son goodnight, Mrs Thornton told him he was her little angel.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Stella Darnell started her domestic and commercial cleaning business the day after she left school, aged seventeen, ignoring the application form to join the police her dad had given her. She did the cleaning herself, but when the jobs grew and she was threatened with turning away new clients she gave in to her mother’s advice and recruited other cleaners. She continued to clean and, bleary-eyed from late-night and early-morning shifts, clacked out quotes, invoices and receipts on a second-hand electric golfball typewriter into the early hours.
One night Suzanne Darnell appeared in the bedroom now serving as a makeshift office, in her silk dressing gown and blackout shades pushed up on her forehead, with two mugs of tea. Stella accepted the tea but, licking and stamping envelopes, had no time to chat.
Her mother pulled out carbon copies of letters and invoices stuffed in a bulging concertina file. ‘Spacing’s wrong and only put “yours sincerely” if you know the recipient’s name.’ She sat on Stella’s bed. ‘You haven’t given a payment due limit. Put “immediately” or you’ll waste time chasing payment and have cash-flow problems. You must look professional or customers will decide you won’t do a good job. You need a name – Stella Darnell won’t do. Clients will always ask for you.’
‘I’ve had no complaints.’ Hunting and pecking at the typewriter keys, Stella had tried to shut her ears to this advice.
‘You don’t know how many clients you have lost. Hop up.’
They swapped places. Suzie’s fingers flew over the keys, the juddering machine sounding like sustained gunfire. She churned out error-free letters, proposals and contracts until there was nothing to do and the vinyl record storage case serving as a filing tray was overflowing. The dawn chorus began and the indigo sky was streaked with pink as the last envelope was sealed.
Suzie grabbed the mugs. Pausing by the door, she said: ‘Clean Slate.’
‘What?’ Stella squared off the envelopes for posting.
‘That’s the name of your company.’
For the next year Suzanne Darnell handled the administration for Clean Slate. She visited second-hand shops for a filing cabinet, a waste bin. She brokered deals for cheap stationery. She set up a system – a tower of trays: ‘in’, ‘pending’ and ‘out’ – filed client accounts in folders and locked them in the cabinet.
Stella had to clean less, drum up new business. Suzie devised new packages and joined her in recruiting cleaners; they rarely disagreed about whom to employ. Suzie insisted they trial the cleaners in the Barons Court flat and that everyone wear Clean Slate polo shirts to reinforce the message that they meant business.
Jobs increased, in size and quantity. Banished to the ‘office’, Stella kept to herself that she enjoyed cleaning more than anything.
One blustery rainy night, soon after Clean Slate’s second anniversary, Stella arrived to clean the premises of her first commercial client, an employment agency over a Spar supermarket on Shepherd’s Bush Green. Months before, the manager, a Mrs Makepeace – late twenties, snappily clad in a suit with shoulder pads – had haggled a knock-down price for the Silver Interior package. Suzie objected, but was mollified when Mrs Makepeace secured Clean Slate contracts with three companies. Stella did the employment-agency shifts and modelled herself on the older woman. She bought a suit for meetings and was nicer to people. Despite Suzie’s warning to maintain a line between staff and clients, over tea and biscuits after sessions Stella confided to Jackie – they had quickly moved to first-name terms – her plans for Clean Slate. She switched to Jackie’s trusted suppliers and absorbed tips on client handling.
That stormy evening there was no tea or biscuits while, her voice raised above the lashing rain and wind buffeting the windows, Jackie Makepeace told Stella the agency had gone under. Her employer had emptied the bank account and disappeared. Clean Slate’s invoice would not be paid and nor would Jackie, although she made little of this. Surrounded by the trappings of an efficient office, she admitted she had completed the filing after hearing the news, although everything would be incinerated, the equipment sold for a song and the lease given up. Jackie was relentlessly optimistic; it was the one time Stella saw her close to crying.
Stella made the tea and, running down to the mini-mart, bought two packets of Rich Tea biscuits, Jackie’s favourite.
By the time she left, Stella had appointed Jackie her office manager and decided to take over the lease of the premises overlooking Shepherd’s Bush Green. Her mum fretted that Clean Slate was too big for Stella’s bedroom, so would applaud her professional response to a crisis; she need not consult her.
Suzanne Darnell did not applaud any of it: she disliked Shepherd’s Bush and, without meeting her, disapproved of Jackie. Once a client always a client; besides, Mrs Makepeace must have had a hand in the collapse of the employment agency. Suzie had relished her role in Stella’s business; she was horrified by the abrupt redundancy, but could not say so.
Soon after this Stella rented a bedsit over the dry cleaner’s next door to the office and left the home she had shared with her mother since she was seven. Suzie showed no further interest in Clean Slate; or much else.
In 2011, on her accountant’s advice and responding to Jackie’s concern that she was living on the job, Stella bought the corner apartment of a gated development by the Thames in Brentford. Stella still held to the rule that clients and staff should not be friends; she forgot that it was Suzie’s rule.