Now You See Me (24 page)

‘If I get taken in,' he said, ‘would
you
take Gordon back to her and explain? Tell her it weren't my fault.' I said of course I would. I was honoured to be asked.

I asked him why the dogs were called such funny names. I could hear the smile in his voice as he told that his gran's sister had been called Norma and she had pretended to everyone she was married to a reclusive man called Gordon. When she was found dead there was no husband to be seen, but they did find about a million Gordon's Gin bottles, all nicely washed and stacked in the shed. Her whole marriage one weird joke. His gran had named the dogs after that marriage, in her sister's memory.

I was glad he'd told me one of his family secrets, even if it was so strange. Told me more than he'd told Sarah. I put my arms round him from the back but so lightly I don't think he would have noticed and got the wrong idea.

In the night I heard a noise. It was drips splashing on the floor by the bed. I could see a shiny wetness on the carpet. I got out of bed and put the potty in the right place to catch the drips. I lay still all the rest of the night just listening to Doggo's breath and the leaking roof.

And remembering something. The phone had rung during the evening and I'd had to answer it because Doggo was there listening. It was Sarah. We talked about the snow. It was even deeper where she was. She'd had to help dig a Shetland pony out of a field. She asked how we were getting on, how Mr Dickens was. I said everything was fine, he was rapidly improving. She said, ‘Great,' sounding as if she'd been let off the hook. Well, that is what she wanted to hear, isn't it? There was no point her rushing back.

Twenty-nine

It was Mrs Banks next morning. I would have forgotten. The days were losing their order with everything in life so altered. But Doggo said something about his mum and that reminded me. I was curious to see her now I knew so much, to see if she looked different.

Walking was awful. Zita's boots were wet inside from yesterday and my jeans damp too. Everywhere snow was rushing and shushing to the ground, the paths slithery with deep fudgey slush. Gutters were blocked and cars swished along the roads sending up muddy waves of slop.

It was weird seeing her face to face. She'd turned into a different person in my head – but here she was, the ordinary same. She looked surprised to see me. Apparently I'd not come when I'd last been meant to. ‘Lamb! Come in,' she said. ‘Get those wet things off. Have you been ill? I've been worried. Could you give me a phone number so I could get in touch?'

Worried.

‘Sorry, I haven't got a phone,' I said.

Roy was making a snowman out of green plasticine on the kitchen table. ‘I maded a real one yesday,' he said, ‘and I gived it a carrot for a nose and one of Daddy's cigars.'

‘Daddy wasn't too impressed with that idea, was he?' She winked at me over his head.

‘I made a snowman yesterday too,' I said, ‘with my boyfriend.'

‘You've got a boyfriend?
Good.'
She sounded almost relieved. ‘What's his name?'

‘Oh … Derek,' I said. I don't know where that came from.

‘Been together long?'

‘No,' I said. ‘What shall I do?'

‘Have a coffee before you start? Nursery's shut today so I'm taking a sickie.'

I sat down at the table. The table mat had been moved and the burns were there for anyone to see but she just poured the coffee and went on about this and that. How they might get the lounge decorated only she wanted peach and Neville wanted green, well not green, a hint of mint it's called. She got out the colour-cards to show me and I agreed that peach was better. ‘I'll tell him that,' she said and grinned in a way that was so much like Doggo I had to look away.

I watched Roy making his plasticine man, black hair sticking up, tongue nipped between his teeth with such fierce concentration, his strong grubby little fingers squeezing and pressing.

‘We're going to decorate the tree later, aren't we, Roy,' she said; ‘so there's no point hoovering, anyway.'

‘Yeah, tree,' Roy said, grinding his fist into the plasticine man. ‘Now.'

‘No, we've got to wait for Daddy. Shall I put Pingu on for you?'

Her mention of the tree gave me an idea. Doggo and I could have Christmas. We could get a tree and even have a Christmas dinner. We could pull crackers and watch telly and be traditional. We could be just like everybody else.

She started gabbling on again about making curtains or buying them or what about Roman blinds? but the words that were coming out of her mouth were not the ones in her eyes. I watched her face, trying to imagine her being beaten up. I listened and hardly said a word except for yeah, and mmm.

‘I got my handbag back by the way,' she said suddenly, and it was like another voice cutting through. My face went hot. I'd forgotten all about the bag.

‘Yeah?' I said.

I only had to stay cool. There was no way she could know I had anything to do with it. No way.

‘A few days ago. All there. Someone left it on the doorstep.'

‘That's weird.' I gulped down the last of my coffee, thinking I'd scalp Doggo when I saw him.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘yes, it is weird, isn't it?' My coffee was finished so I didn't know what to do with my hands, apart from chew my nails. There was a long sloppy drip from the gutter. I shivered.

‘It's funny,' she said, ‘a funny thing to do, I mean, stealing the bag and then returning it. I wonder what possible motive …'

What did she want me to say? I mean I wouldn't mind if I had even
taken
the bag in the first place. ‘Maybe you lost it,' I suggested, ‘and someone found it.'

‘I don't think so, Lamb. More coffee?'

I shook my head. I was practically sticking to the ceiling as it was. I got up. ‘So what shall I do then?' I have never wanted to get on and clean so much in my entire life.

‘I want to have a word with you first.'

I sat down again thinking, what now? I waited but she paused. I searched my mind for what I'd done but apart from the bag and a few baths – which were while I was cleaning it anyway – there was nothing. My eyes fixed on the burns but it wasn't about the burns.

She cleared her throat. ‘I had a phone call from Margaret,' she said. I waited, thinking who the hell's Margaret?

‘Margaret Harcourt,' she said.

‘Oh.'

‘She told me this frankly incredible story … advised me to send you packing before you got up to any of your tricks here, as she put it.'

She waited for me to say something but I just shut my eyes and felt the edge of the bath against the back of my knees and pictured the thick pink of Mr Harcourt's flesh and started to cry. It was warm runny salt on my face, wet as the melting world outside.

‘Oh Lamb, I'm sorry.' Mrs Banks put her hand over mine like a soft cup. We sat there for a minute while tears ran down my face. ‘Would you like to tell me about it … as a friend,' she said.

Friend. A friend. A fried fiend. Part of me wanted to tell her where to stick her friendship. I mean I was her cleaner. Paid peanuts to do her dirty work. But she was Doggo's mum too and in her eyes I could see Doggo's eyes.

‘What did she say?' I said.

‘Well, she said that you, well you
seduced
Mr Harcourt. He was ill in bed and you were poking about where you shouldn't have been, as she put it, and he challenged you and you offered him your … well.'

I snatched my hand away. ‘That's a lie,' I said.

‘I'm quite sure it is.' It was like Brands Hatch or something in my head while I tried to think. I didn't have to say anything. She couldn't make me say a word. It was none of her business anyway. I could just go. But I didn't want to go. I wanted to say something. I didn't want her thinking that.

‘It wasn't like that,' I went. ‘He … Mr Harcourt … he tried to rape me.'

‘Oh Lamb.' She got hold of my hand again and squeezed.

‘I was terrified and he tried it on but I fought him off then he offered me a thousand pounds to shag him. And then he …'

She shook her head and squeezed harder.

‘Ow.'

‘Sorry.'

‘But I never took it. I never did it.'

‘Of course you didn't.'

‘It's worth a grand to me not to have done it.'

‘I'm sure.' She sat there, shaking her head, the corners of her mouth pulled down. Probably wondering who to believe. Sometimes it's hard to remember what
is
the exact truth when there are so many possible versions. The easiest thing to do was cry again. She handed me a tissue and got up to put the kettle on.

‘What I'm wondering,' she said after a while, ‘is what we should do.'
We?
I thought. ‘I mean whether we should tell her. She should know what her husband's like. Would you be prepared to face her? You could even press charges.'

‘The police?' I said. ‘No way.'

She looked at me for a long time. ‘All right. But you can't let him get away with it.'

‘I just want to forget it.'

‘I've never liked Bruce,' she said. ‘He's that type that undresses you with his eyes.' Roy came running in with wet all down his legs. ‘Not again,' Mrs Banks said.
‘Please
tell me when you get the feeling.'

She took him upstairs. I washed up the coffee cups and rolled the plasticine into a neat ball. It was raining now, thick gloopy rain so you could hardly see out of the windows. Maybe I did take money from Mr Harcourt. Not a thousand pounds. Maybe this is how it happened: I said I wanted the money first. He said, ‘You obviously weren't born yesterday,' and laughed like a man of the world. He went out in his car to the cash machine. While he was gone my clothes finished drying and I put them on. He came in, put the money on the table and looked at me, a fat grin spreading on his face. I picked the money up. ‘Feels good, eh?' he said. ‘A thick wad like that. I bet you never held so much in your little hand before.'

He reached out for me but I kicked his shin and ran. Ran out the door and down the street. Ran until my lungs were bursting. Then I went to the Botanies. I counted the money. It wasn't a thousand pounds it was three hundred and seventy. So he had done me, just like I'd done him. Hahaha. Though he must have been mad. He could have had a girl off the street for twenty quid. But maybe it was a thrill, the thought of doing it in his very own house with the cleaning girl. The naked sylph. Who knows how his sick mind worked. Anyway, I had done him. And it served him right.

I was picking away at one of the scorched flecks when Mrs Banks came back. She saw me.

‘What happened here?' I said.

‘God knows,' she said. ‘But I'm after a new table anyway.' She turned her back, making Roy a peanut-butter sandwich. ‘Would you like a snack, Lamb?' she said.

‘Gotta go,' I said.

‘Oh don't go yet. I feel so awful for you.'

‘Nah,' I said, ‘it's not down to you.'

‘Still.'

She heated up some soup in the microwave. Bright orange tomato soup like my mum used to give me when I was ill. Roy got it all down his chin and made a butterfly out of his sandwich. In the end he went off to play.

‘What a mess.' She tutted at the soup splashes and peanut mush he'd left behind.

‘Can I talk to you, Lamb,' she said suddenly, as if she'd dared herself. ‘I've been feeling the need to talk to someone. If I don't talk to someone soon I'll burst.'

‘What,
me
?' I said.

A cloud passed over her eyes. ‘I'll tell you something, Lamb. Not many people know this, no one round here, for a start. I can't talk about this to anyone else. Can I trust you?'

‘Dunno,' I said. ‘I suppose so.'

She took a deep breath and started. ‘Neville isn't my first husband. I was married before when I was only eighteen. I had two boys, less than a year between. Two under one, can you imagine?' She left me a gap to imagine it in.

I couldn't think what would be the natural thing to say. ‘Where are they?' I said.

Now it was her time to cry. Not quite cry but go red and get that bright look in her eyes. She bit her lip. ‘You'll probably think I'm a monster.'

I said nothing but I remembered Doggo's words, how her hair brushed his cheek, the sweet smell of it, then she was gone. The sad shine in his eyes when he told me that.

‘I was a bit,
wild
as a girl. My poor parents, they did their best. I got expelled from the local school and they sent me to a private one and I got expelled from that too.'

I stared at her. ‘Mrs Banks! Why?'

It was the last thing I expected. She wasn't wild at all. Her house was neat and boring and full of scatter cushions. If you ask me scatter cushions are the opposite of wild. She put her index finger in a splash of soup and drew a circle, over and over, round and round.

‘I don't know what was up with me really,' she went on. ‘They gave me everything. Riding lessons, dancing, holidays here, there and everywhere, whatever I wanted, but I just … I got in with a gang of … well. My father went spare when he realised. Said it was the limit, either I stopped seeing them and pulled myself together or I left. So I left.

‘To cut a long story short, I got pregnant. Seventeen and pregnant. Had the baby and another. It was a disaster. But did we do the sensible thing and call it a day? Did we heck. I loved the kids but oh God I was just a kid myself.'

‘Yeah,' I said.

She told me the story that Doggo had told me, but her side of it. About how her husband had taunted her for being posh, bullied and beaten her till she could hardly think straight. About how she might have cracked up altogether or even died if she hadn't left when she did. About how she'd still been a child. Just a little girl. She kept saying that.