I Found You (24 page)

She nodded uncertainly and he took her in his arms and held her tight against him. ‘I love you, Kirst,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know that. You’re the best sister anyone could ever hope for. I’m so proud of you. And I love you.’

She pushed her face closer into his chest and he rested his chin on the crown of her head and stared hard at the ceiling rose above. The pills weren’t working. His wrist screamed out at him, like a thousand electric shocks being pumped through his arm. He wanted to lie down and cry. But he needed to stay alert. He needed to keep his sister safe.

There was a noise at the door and they broke apart. Kirsty stepped on to the chair, unfurling the blanket. Gray stood to one side, the lamp held firm in his left hand, the pain in his right suddenly gone.

‘Hello! Hello!’ Lily steps slowly and cautiously across the tiled hallway. ‘Hello! Is there anyone here?’

Russ follows behind her, searching the walls for light switches. He finds one and when he turns it on a large crystal chandelier overhead slowly lights up, revealing a thick network of dusty cobwebs.

‘Wow,’ she says, looking around her. It is like a stately home. Like the grand buildings in central Kiev: the banks and the insurance companies. Doors open up from four points off the central hallway; double doors to the left and the right, then smaller doors behind the staircase. Above is a glass dome through which she can see the burnished golden clouds. The air smells old and stale, but not damp. She turns right and pushes through the double doors there. They lead
into a grand sitting room. It is full of elegant, threadbare furniture and half-packed cardboard boxes. A door at the other end leads through to an anteroom: a vase of dusty dried flowers on the windowsill, a velvet moth-eaten armchair. They pass through here, quietly, nervously, into a remarkable room: it is made entirely of glass and ornate wrought iron and is filled with desiccated palm trees and dusty rockeries, dead rubber plants and shrivelled trees. It smells of earth and decay. But there at the other end is an arrangement of nice rattan furniture, a glass-topped coffee table, lamps with ragged shades, suggesting that this was once a fine room in which to sit and enjoy the greenery.

A door to their left leads into a kitchen, long and narrow with five windows overlooking the lawned garden. It is decorated in the style of the 1970s: rust-coloured Formica countertops and pine doors, low-hanging orange plastic lampshades, plastic-topped bar stools at a breakfast bar. Everything is covered in a fine layer of grease and dust.

They find themselves back in the hallway and explore the rooms on the other side of the house. A large dining room, a smaller room with clubby leather armchairs and a bar built into a corner, and a cloakroom with a painted porcelain handbasin and a cistern with a chain set high up the wall.

As they emerge once more into the hallway, Russ says, ‘Well, I’m pretty sure there’s no one living here.’

‘But the woman!’ she replies. ‘She answered the phone!’

‘This is true. But seriously. Look at this place. You can just tell. It’s got that air about it. Of abandonment.’

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s go upstairs.’

She grips the mahogany banister and looks upwards. It’s a staircase from an old-fashioned American movie, sweeping into two dramatic curves as it heads upwards towards the glass dome. The first landing leads to four large bedrooms. The second landing leads to two attic rooms. Each door opens at their touch; each room is empty. But on the top floor, a door is locked. Russ and Lily exchange a look. Russ tries the handle after Lily. It rattles in its setting, but doesn’t budge.

‘Hello!’ Lily calls out through the door. ‘Hello! Lady! This is Lily! We spoke earlier on the phone. Lady? Are you there? Hello?’

She puts her ear to the door, but there is pure silence on the other side.

She turns to Russ. ‘Kick it in,’ she says.

‘What!’

‘Kick the door in. Please.’

‘I can’t do that, Lily. That’s criminal damage. I could be arrested; it could . . .’

Lily pushes him out the way and launches herself against the door.

‘Lily!’ He tries to stop her but she pushes him away from her.

The door feels solid, but not impregnable. She hefts herself against it again and again, until she can feel bruises forming on her hip. She uses her feet then, kicking and kicking, sending shockwaves from the soles of her feet through to her knee joints.

‘Lily! Seriously! You can’t do this!’

‘I
can
do this,’ she snaps, turning to Russ angrily. ‘My husband might be in there. Anyone could be in there. We drove five hours to come here. I’m not leaving until we’ve been inside this room. OK?’

She starts to kick again and then Russ is at her side.

‘Come on then,’ he says, ‘on three. One . . . two . . . three.’

They kick at the door in tandem, once, twice, three times, and suddenly, finally, there is a sound of splintering wood; they kick again – the door loosens; then again and the door flies open.

Russ reaches for the light switch. He turns it on. They step inside.

Frank’s face appears at Alice’s back window at about six o’clock. It’s become very cold very suddenly and his breath leaves his body in misty clouds.

‘Hi,’ he says, rubbing his hands together. ‘Bit chilly, isn’t it?’

‘Get in front of the fire,’ says Alice. ‘I’ll bring you something to drink. What do you want? Tea? Wine?’

‘Actually . . .’ He pauses and looks down at his feet. ‘I didn’t come in to bother you – I know this is your busy time – I just came in to say I’m sorry. About earlier. I feel like I was a bit of a downer. And I didn’t thank you properly for the wonderful lunch. So nice of you. And also, I made you this.’ He passes her a postcard-sized piece of card.

She looks at the card, and then up at him, and then down at the card again. ‘You did this?’

He nods, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘It turns out I can kind of draw,’ he says.

‘Wow,’ says Alice. ‘That’s just, God, it’s beautiful.’

It’s a tiny pencil sketch of the three dogs on the beach, with the words ‘THANK YOU’ in an elegant calligraphy underneath. The sea in the background and the fairy lights in the foreground are coloured in pale smudges of pastel.

‘I hope you don’t mind but I used some of your art stuff. I found it in a drawer.’

‘No, God, no. Of course I don’t mind. I mean, wow, Frank, you’re really talented. This is so beautiful.’

‘It was the weirdest thing, Alice. I wanted to give you something so much and I have nothing to give you and I might never see you again after tomorrow and I was scared that maybe I’d never have a chance to repay you, and I saw your drawer and I had this huge
wave
of wanting to draw something so I sat down and my hands seemed to know exactly what pencil to use, how to use the pastels and the dogs just suddenly appeared on the paper and I can draw!’

‘You can draw, Frank,’ said Alice. ‘You really can.’

‘I know. And it’s quite ironic really, because just before this happened, I remembered what my job is. And seriously, it couldn’t be further removed from this.’ He gestures at the beautiful postcard.

‘What?’ she asks breathlessly. ‘What is your job?’

‘Guess.’

‘You’re an accountant.’

‘No, but not far off. I’m a maths teacher.’

‘Ha!’ Alice hoots. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. In a secondary school.’

‘Oh my God. Where? I mean, could you remember the name of the school?’

‘Couldn’t remember the name, but I remembered the uniform: black blazers, black jumpers with a red trim. Black and red striped tie. An emblem like a sort of castle thing, a turret.’

Alice smiles. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘actually, I can just see you. I really can.’ She laughs. ‘And had we known this sooner you could have repaid me for my hospitality by giving Kai some extra tuition.’

‘I still could!’ he says brightly. ‘I could do some with him now!’

Alice laughs again. ‘I think that might not go down
all
that well as a Sunday-evening suggestion. But if you come back from the police station tomorrow, I’ll definitely take you up on the offer.’

Frank nods and then sighs. ‘There’s more, Alice.’

She bites the inside of her cheeks and waits for some terrible pronouncement about children and wives.

‘I’m pretty sure I’m single.’

She starts and looks up at him. ‘You mean . . .?’

‘I mean I remembered where I live. I could see the inside of my flat. All my stuff. And there was no sign of a woman. Just a cat. Called Brenda.’

Alice feels her heart blossom and unfurl. This man, this remarkable stranger, this person who has made her feel ways she thought she might never feel again, is a single maths teacher with a cat. She laughs loudly. ‘Brenda?’

‘I know! Brenda! What a wag I am!’

‘What a wag you are, Frank.’ She smiles and hugs herself.

‘And now, of course, I’m really worried about her.’

‘About Brenda?’

‘Yes. I live alone. She must be hungry.’

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘cats are adaptable, resourceful. She’ll find someone to feed her.’

‘Do you think?’

And his face is so stricken with concern that Alice can’t help throwing her arms around him and hugging him. ‘Don’t you worry about Brenda,’ she says into his ear. ‘If you get locked up tomorrow I’ll personally go to your flat and collect her and bring her back here to live with me. OK?’

‘A murderer’s cat? Are you sure?’

‘As you know,’ she says drily, ‘I have no problem with animals owned by criminals.’

He pulls back from her and appraises her warmly. His eyes are taking in the detail of her and she feels raw and alive. ‘You’, he says, ‘are amazing.’

‘I am not amazing,’ she says. ‘Really. Trust me. Ask anyone. I’m an idiot.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Because I am. Just look at me. Look at this house. It’s chaos. And you know . . .’ She stops, hovering with one foot poised on the edge of a conversational precipice. ‘You know, I’ve had the social services called on me. Twice.’

He looks at her disbelievingly.

‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘Once in London over Kai and Jasmine. Some busybody mother at the school decided I wasn’t raising them properly, because there were people in my house who maybe shouldn’t have been in my house, because they were late for school most mornings, because I couldn’t get my arse out of bed in time, because I was so fucking depressed, because sometimes I had no food in the house and I sent them in with inappropriate meals. All that. And it was all true. I was a shit mother. I loved them, but I didn’t have a clue how to mother them. That was a real wake-up call. I changed everything. I went to the GP, got myself a prescription for Prozac. Got rid of the stupid friends. Kept the good ones. Tidied the flat. I was allowed to keep them. But it was close. And it was . . .’ She blinks slowly and swallows, ‘. . . it was the worst time of my life. But we got through it. And then, oh, you know, clever, clever me, I go and get pregnant again. By some man that any other woman
wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole. A psycho. So, that was great. Just when I’d got my shit together, suddenly I’m suffering with PND and a new baby and a controlling idiot of a man trying to tell my kids what to do, trying to tell me what to do, what to wear, what to think.’

She stops and pulls her hair back from her face. ‘So, yeah – we ran away. Didn’t tell Romaine’s dad where we were going. I did all this covertly.’ She indicates the cottage. ‘Waited until he was in hospital, for his cirrhosis, because, oh yes, I forgot to mention, didn’t I, that he was an alcoholic?’ She laughs wryly. ‘He stopped drinking for long enough to be granted occasional access to Romaine. And then he kidnapped her. It was . . .’ She gasps as tears jump up her throat. ‘It was a nightmare. Then, thank God, he fucked off to Australia and made a baby with another woman and everything settled down for a while. And then, oh joy, Romaine’s reception teacher decides that Romaine is being neglected.’

‘What!’

‘Yes. Because I never had time to comb her hair in the mornings. Because she had stains on her sweatshirt. Because I was always late collecting her. Because she wet herself and cried a lot. Oh and because, once,
once
, she talked about a horror film she’d accidentally watched at home when I was out and Kai didn’t know she was in the room. Because . . .’ She sighs.
‘Because I took my eye off the ball. Because I’m a shit mother. And no, no action was ever taken. They came round here, I told them the story of her kidnapping – you know he kept her in a hotel room for nearly two weeks? Two weeks! On her own half the time as well and she was barely three years old. Fucking, fucking bastard. I was so cross with the school, with that po-faced little teacher with her fucking shiny little crucifix round her neck, who knew
nothing
about
anything
, I couldn’t walk through the gates without getting in a row with someone. I was
that
mother. You know: the scary one that they all have to have meetings about. It was . . .’ She pauses and rubs her face. ‘It was the worst time. Of all the worst times. I just wanted to sell the cottage and move somewhere else, Outer Hebrides, as far away from everyone and everything as possible. And that was when Derry stepped in. She turned everything round for me. Liaised with the school on my behalf. Helped me get a diagnosis of dyslexia for Romaine. Collected Romaine when I was running late. Smoothed everything over. Dear God, I’d be dead without her. Really I would.’

Frank has been staring at her fixedly throughout her monologue.

‘I still think you’re amazing,’ he says.

‘I haven’t told you about sleeping with Barry yet though.’

‘Barry?’

‘Yes, remember the dodgy lodger who stole chocolate and gave it to my kids? The one who left me with a six-stone Staffy and two months’ of unpaid rent? The one whose jacket I gave you on the beach?’

He nods.

‘Yeah. Him. I slept with him. He was physically repellent. But I did it anyway. Because I’m a fucking idiot. I’ve always been an idiot and I always will be an idiot.’