Laying the Ghost (30 page)

Oh, here it came. What would Gillian say if she knew that Patrick was on hold in her computer, right now? She would probably be sharpening some kitchen knives and buying a nice new funeral outfit, something suitable for wearing to a murder victim’s send-off. Though whether the victim would be Nell or Patrick was anyone’s guess.

‘Look, give it a rest, Mum. Patrick was over so many
years
ago, OK? Now – coffee? I can hear the kettle boiling away to itself in the kitchen. You really need a new one, you know.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ Gillian said. ‘That one will see me out.’

16

Don’t Look Back In Anger

(Oasis)

SO THAT MADE
two nights in a row without proper sleep. Nell, before six in the morning, went into the kitchen, switched on her computer and read again the flurry of emails between herself and Patrick from the evening before. No, he’d told her, there was no one else in his house who could have intercepted the mail. Yes, he did have someone he lived with, but she was in Brazil visiting her son. Not
his
son, Nell noted. And yes, he’d be delighted to see her again – how about lunch, Friday? She hadn’t yet replied to this last one. It had rather taken her breath away and seemed so very, very soon. Somehow she’d imagined any kind of meeting would be in the safe middle distance. But then, wasn’t this exactly what she’d hoped for? She thought about the numbers here. Five
years
of loving and fighting. Six weeks of pregnancy. Twenty years of silence and now five days till they met again. Well, sometimes you get what you wish for. That was the peculiar downside with wishes.

Patrick’s emails left only one possibility – Steve was responsible for the intercepted letter. He was also, as a result, responsible for her sleepless night. Discovering that someone out there was manipulating your life was very frightening – what would they do next? He had, after all, been the one who’d changed her lock. In the middle of a long dark night, the possibility, however remote, that he might have held on to a key was a very chilling thought.

Nell felt about ninety years old, and a quick glance in the mirror told her she was possibly underestimating there. She lay on the sofa watching the day’s early news on TV and eating stale croissants (just bearable if hot and smothered in blackcurrant jam) while looking up locksmiths in the phone book, wondering how soon she could get one to come over. There were plenty of twenty-four-hour ones for lockout emergencies, but this wasn’t what she was after. What she needed was someone to change the new lock on the back door completely, and it wasn’t a job she felt up to tackling by herself.

The previous night, in feverish paranoia, she had gone for maximum security in the ways that Steve had taught the class: she had taken to bed her trusty Maglite torch, stashed the front-door key in a white bag beside her, ready
to
throw down to the police if she had to summon them (oh, and they’d just love her, wouldn’t they – calling them out two nights in succession). Both the landline phone and her mobile were on the pillow beside her, and every possible way into the house was locked. She even put on maximum-security nightwear: a pair of Mimi’s coldest-weather flannelette pyjamas in candy pink and patterned with tiny, smiling ballerinas (more irony from Seb), fastened way up to her neck. She drew the line at locking, or even closing, her bedroom door, though, because there was Mimi to consider. If someone crept up the stairs in the night, it would be Mimi’s room they came to before hers and she wanted to hear them coming. What kind of mother would lock herself in securely but leave her daughter vulnerable?

But in spite of all these precautions she had only managed the kind of sleep where the slightest rustle of a leaf at the far end of the garden had her eyes flashing wide open and her heart pounding; for what was the point of all this safety provision if the someone out there possessed a spare key to the back door? Now that she was up and about in reassuring daylight, Nell allowed herself to imagine the scene she’d been carefully avoiding: Steve at three a.m. leaning casually on the bedroom door frame, pointing his high-beam police-issue torch at her, smiling and shaking his head and telling her, ‘Well you’ve only yourself to blame, Nell – did you count the keys I gave you
after
I fitted that lock? Didn’t you wonder why there were only two of them?’

Of course this hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t. But in the middle of a very dark night all the worst things seemed possible, and no way now would she wander casually across the garden in the midnight hour just to collect something from the studio. Maybe even then he’d been around, lurking, watching. If he had been, she hoped he’d approved of the way she’d fought off Ed. It would almost have been funny (but OK, not very) if he’d emerged from behind the lilac tree to give her a round of applause – or more likely tell her what she was doing wrong.

Now, in the safe light of day, Nell had to wonder, realistically, why on earth she’d got herself into such a panic that she’d imagined Steve would even think of doing anything so sinister as creeping up on her in the night. If he’d wanted to see her, he’d surely have arranged it the simple way, by phoning and asking. And if he had any intentions towards her, they weren’t likely to be about scaring her. It seemed to be more something to do with control, with power. What he had done with Patrick’s letter … did that count as a form of stalking? She felt mildly guilty in this area, because how clear was her own conscience? Tracking down Patrick and checking up on where he lived, that wasn’t exactly a hundred per cent above board either, surely. As she’d joked to Kate at the time, you could get an ASBO for that. It wasn’t funny any more.

* * *

‘It was all activity next door on Saturday night. Police, flashing blue lights, comings and goings, the lot,’ Charles told Ed in the kitchen that Monday morning. Unable to resist gloating, he emphasized the obvious with, ‘You missed it all.’

‘Why? What happened? Is Nell all right?’ Ed looked out of the window to Nell’s house. The car was still there on the driveway; the house windows seemed to be intact.

Charles smirked. ‘Aha! You’re very quick to ask about
her
! Not the daughter, I notice!’

‘Nell, Mimi, either, both. Come on, what happened? I know you’re dying to tell me.’

Charles started looking in cupboards, fussing with mugs, plates, inspecting the bread meticulously as if to check out every last crumb for uncomfortable roughage in the form of seeds, nuts or deadly mould. Ed waited, trying to stay patient, refusing to rise to the bait while Charles was deliberately doing his old-man act, bumbling around pretending he couldn’t talk and be active at the same time. He’d give in before Ed did – he’d be unable to keep gossip bottled up for long.

‘She went missing, that daughter you didn’t ask about. Out all night, it seems. Poor Nell must have been frantic …’ He looked round at Ed, expecting to see him agog for more information, but Ed wasn’t there. Charles
heard
the front door close and smiled happily – there was only enough marmalade left for one lot of toast. It was all his.

Mimi drifted down the stairs half asleep and wondered why the door was wide open. For her, this was incredibly, almost unheard-of, early, but she was keen to get to school while she still had a bit of celebrity status. That was if she had – life’s dramas had a fast turn-round among her group. Something might have happened on Saturday night that would eclipse all that she and Joel had done (or not done …). She closed the front door, quite pleased with herself for first having taken a look to make sure her mum wasn’t out there chasing Isabelle-across-the-road’s cat off the foxgloves. This was a sign she was becoming a grown-up, she realized: thinking of more than just the immediate problem, working out cause and effect. Shutting her mother out of the house at just past seven in the morning would be the
cause
of much fury. Being shouted at for Being That Stupid would be the
effect
. She yawned and rubbed her half-awake eyes, thinking Joel would be impressed at her logic: she would make a scientist yet. Still only half focused, Mimi stumbled into the kitchen, wailing, ‘Tea, I need tea.’ And there were her mum and Ed … oh God, not again!

‘Mum? What are you
like
?’ Mimi stood still in the kitchen doorway, her hand shielding her eyes from
the
scene but slowly taking in every detail she could see between splayed fingers. Nell was wearing her Ugg boots and Mimi’s pyjamas. (
Why?
She’d got stuff of her own.) She supposed that had to be a slight improvement on what she’d been wearing the last time Mimi had found her with Ed. But this time she wasn’t just sitting around laughing and drinking tea, she was all wrapped up with him, cuddled up close – like some
lerve
thing was going on. Ed was wearing the full complement of normal clothes (for him, anyway – why did men of his age think wine-coloured velvet was acceptable?) which was something, because,
euwww
, the alternative didn’t bear thinking about, and he looked like he was about to go to work, which probably meant he hadn’t actually been there all night. What he was doing in the kitchen this early, hugging Mimi’s mother, was anyone’s guess. And had she missed a big, full-on snog scene? It was too early in the day to think like this. In fact, and she felt slightly nauseous now,
any
time of day was too early for that.

‘Er … Mum? Like … what, please, exactly is going on?’ Mimi had gone through the imagining about what would happen if Nell started seeing someone; she’d even wondered about how it would be if another man moved in. What she was looking at felt strange … it was a long time since even her parents had been caught hugging each other. Grown-up displays of affection just weren’t what she was used to seeing, not in this house. Tess’s parents
were
always holding hands and tended to do that yucky thing of kissing each other as they passed in a room, which was something no adolescent of a sensitive nature should have to tolerate.

‘Morning, Mimi,’ Nell said, moving only slightly away from Ed. He looked as if he didn’t want to let go of her. She looked as if she didn’t want him to. Mimi felt like some kind of gooseberry. What was she supposed to say? ‘
Don’t mind me’?

‘Um … breakfast,’ Mimi muttered, heading for the fridge. She couldn’t look at either of them properly. They weren’t squashed up together any more, that was something, but Ed had hold of one of Nell’s hands.
Let go
, Mimi wanted to squeal.
Not in front of me
.

‘And work … I must get going,’ Ed said. ‘I’ll call you later, Nell, OK? Will you be all right?’

‘Yes, thanks. I will. Don’t worry, and thanks so much for coming round. I’ll give those lock people a call as soon as I’ve had a shower.’

‘Yes, do. Bye, Mimi!’

‘Um … bye, Ed.’ She gave him a vague wave.

And he was gone. Mimi pounced on her mother as soon as the front door was closed.

‘OK, Ma, what’s going on here? Are you, like, dating the happy hippie from next door? Is he my new dad?’

Nell laughed. ‘Mimi, no, of course not! You’ve got a dad. You won’t ever get a new one, don’t be daft!’

Mimi felt as if she’d been slapped. ‘I’m not daft!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t patronize me! I just come down the stairs and find my
mum
and the
man next door
all loved-up and you call me
daft
! Well, thanks
a whole lot
!’

‘Mimi, just sit down, calm down. Look, there’s tea here for you. I was going to bring a cup to your room, seeing as I was up so early. Ed was only here because he’d heard from Charles about you being missing all Friday night. There’s no “loved-up” about it, either. He was just concerned, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, right. And I could see just
how concerned
. I suppose the
whole street
knows about me on Friday night. Are they all going to come round and give you some big love?’ Mimi grouched. She slammed about, poured herself some muesli, broke off half a banana and pushed it into the middle of the bowl, chopping it viciously with her spoon so that milk splashed on to the table. Nell didn’t comment, so Mimi chopped even harder, deliberately making maximum mess.

‘Of course the whole street knows,’ Nell said. ‘But would you really prefer to live in a place where nobody cares?’

‘They don’t care, they’re just fucking nosy,’ Mimi growled.

‘OK, stop now. There’s no need for that. Stop showing off, Mimi,’ Nell snapped. ‘Look, I’m going to have a shower and get dressed – I’ve got a lot to do today. Don’t
forget
to come
straight
home after school, OK? And Mimi …?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t … don’t talk to strangers out there. No weird people, OK? Don’t walk around texting; notice who’s around you and what’s going on.’ Nell kissed Mimi’s tatty, bed-tangled hair and gave her a hug.

‘Yeah, all right. S’pose,’ Mimi conceded. She heard Nell running up the stairs and thoughtfully chewed through the stodgy muesli. She wished she had the type of mum who’d buy really dodgy sugary cereals. You so needed something to zing you up in the mornings. Especially mornings like this one. She ate only half the muesli, tipped the rest down the waste disposal and put the bowl in the dishwasher. Then, recognizing with some regret that this was yet another sign of impending adulthood, she tore off some kitchen roll and carefully mopped up the spilled milk.

The lock was done. Nell handed over a vast amount of cash and the young man who had been sweet enough not to ask questions about the changing of a perfectly usable, obviously new, lock, handed over three keys. He’d probably had to deal with all sorts of domestic dramas – divorce, beatings, murders even. He must have heard stories of keys dropped down drains, keys hurled into the dark in a fit of anger, and could have written a book on the different reasons for lock-changing. She had also
replied
to Patrick, agreeing to meet him at the St Alban restaurant in Lower Regent Street on Friday, a prospect that now filled her with a mixture of pulse-banging excitement and deep, deep dread.