Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (26 page)

That was all it took. The next minute she was leaning against him, her hands over her face, pressed into his chest. The relief of being held, of being accepted and held by another human being after the past five years was almost too much. She’d got by on so little for so long, this would have been enough.

‘I should have phoned. I’ve been wanting to phone youabout Ellie.’

‘You have?’ Jessica stood back, for a moment afraid.

‘She sent me a notea love letter, I suppose.’

‘Ellie?’

Robert paused, watched Jessica accept this as she did everythingrapidlywhether she wanted to or not.

‘My God, Robert. I should have seen that coming a long time ago. Why didn’t I?’

‘I should have phoned you about it.’

‘Have you got the letter?’

He turned automatically to go and get it.

‘No…wait. Leave it.’ Jessica paused. ‘When did she send it?’

‘The week before exam leave started.’

She collapsed against the Hunters’ hall wall. ‘That’s it. Have you contacted her, at all?’

He shook his head.

‘Will you talk to her now?’

‘Ellie?’

Jessica nodded.

‘Is that a good idea?’

‘Right now, it’s the only idea I’ve got.’

The next minute, Robert was picking through the pile of shoes by the coat rack until he found his old tennis trainers and started to put them on, having trouble with the laces, which had been knotted since last summer. ‘Fuck these shoes,’ he said, suddenly furious.

‘Here,’ Jessica said, crouching next to him and unlacing one of the shoes.

She handed it back to him and he put it on in silence as she picked up the other one and unlaced that.

The next minute he stood up.

‘I don’t want to make any trouble for you,’ she said.

He pulled her up. ‘I don’t care if you do.’

They stood in the kitchen at No. 283 Prendergast Road as a scream rippled suddenly through the layers of noise coming from outside.

‘Ellie!’ Jessica called out.

She went through to the lounge.

Behind her, in the kitchen, Robert stood staring at the puddle of milk, now rancid, on the kitchen floor. He heard Jessica run upstairs, then run back down again.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said from the doorway.

‘Where’s Ellie?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Has she gone out?’

‘She doesn’t go outshe never goes anywhere.’

‘Maybe she went to Keisha’s.’

‘She’s not talking to Keisha.’

‘Did she have to go to work?’

Jessica shook her head irritably. ‘Not today. Something’s wrong,’ she said again, staring at him.

He tried to take hold of her, but she pushed him gently to one side and went running back into the lounge-diner.

Now she knew what was wrong.

There it wasEllie’s Walkman on the coffee table. Ellie’s Walkman never left her room. There was a note beside it:
…to Arthur

‘She’s gone, Robertshe’s gone.’

‘What d’you mean, gone?’

‘I don’t know, I mean gone, just gone. We’ve got to find her, we’ve got to.’

Robert didn’t say anything. He was thinking about a conversation he’d had with Kate some time ago. It was at Eastershe said she’d seen Ellie up in the woods near the allotments and thought she was taking drugs up there.

‘I think I know where she might be…’

The rhythmic beating from the Ghanaian drummer’s stall followed Robert and Jessica back down Prendergast Road. Jessica stood getting jostled on the pavement by No. 22 as Robert went over to the cake stall to talk to Kate.

‘Robert? When did you get up?’

‘Someone’s gone missing,’ he said.

‘What’s going on?’ Beatrice asked.

‘Ellie Palmer,’ he said to Kate.

‘Oh,’ Beatrice said, trying to fathom the significance of Ellie Palmer and the fact that she had gone missingand why it suddenly had something to do with them.

‘Ellie Palmer? How d’you know?’

‘Her mother doesn’t know where she is,’ Robert said coldly.

‘She’s probably just gone out and forgotten to say where. You must have done that when you were sixteen.’

‘I don’t think he ever didno,’ Margery said.

‘Of course not,’ Kate responded, without turning to look at Margery, who was standing beside her on the stall. She turned back to Robert. ‘What’s it got to do with us?’

Robert didn’t respond to this. ‘I’m taking the car.’

‘Has Jessica even tried phoning people Ellie might be with?’ Kate persisted.

‘I’m taking the car.’

‘The car?’

‘Jessica’s car’s at the garage.’

‘Why d’you need the car?’

‘Because I think Ellie might be up at the allotmentsyou said you used to see her up there sometimes; in the woods.’

‘Once. I saw her up there once.’

‘I’ve got a feeling…’

‘About Ellie Palmer? What has any of this got to do with usand why the sudden need to start driving round the environs of south London onon a whim,’ she hissed.

‘Jessica doesn’t have whims,’ Robert said, automatically.

‘Do I know a Jessica?’ Beatrice put in, still confused.

‘You might have met her…’ Kate said, unconvinced and uninterested. ‘Robert—’

‘Everything okay?’ It was Jessica, who’d been watching them and approached unnoticed, her eyes on Robertdesperate.

Kate turned round, furious. ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said to Robert.

Robert stopped.

Jessica stopped; Margery and Beatrice stopped as well, even though nobody had been moving in the first place.

‘That’s absurd,’ he said quietly.

‘Why?’ Kate said helplessly, accusingly. ‘Why not just phone around?’

‘Jessica’s already tried that,’ Robert said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice.

Jessica remained silent.

‘You said you sometimes saw her up at the woods.’

‘So why doesn’t she go up to the woods and look for her?’ She turned to Jessica. ‘She’s your daughter.’

‘My car’s being serviced,’ Jessica explained again.

‘Okay, we’ve wasted enough time.’ Robert made to leave.

‘I thought you had a migraine.’

‘I did have a migrainethis morning.’

‘He was exhausted,’ Margery said, repeating her earlier theory.

‘And after all, you would knowwouldn’t you?’ Kate said loudly, wildly, rounding on Margery. ‘Because you spend so much bloody time here, you might as well just go ahead and move in.’

‘Well, I can’t help it,’ Margery said, shocked. ‘I can’t help it if somebody on Leicestershire Council decided to replace all the windows in my bungalow with double glazing.’

‘Only somebody on Leicestershire Council didn’t, did they, Margery?’ Kate shouted.

‘Kate…’

Robert tried to take hold of her elbow, but where only seconds before she’d been desperate for his touch, now she shook him off.

‘Kate…,’ Beatrice echoed.

‘I phoned Leicestershire Council.’

Margery stared at her, horrified.

‘They said they had no plans in the foreseeable future to put double glazing in your bungalow or any of the other bungalows on the estate.’

Robert stared at Kate for a few seconds more, then turned to Margery. ‘Mum?’

‘Edith,’ Margery said after a while. ‘They came for Edith.’

‘Who came?’ Robert asked.

‘They came for Ediththey took all her cash, cards, chequebook, savings books. They came for her, Robert,’ she said, tearful, appealing to him.

‘I thought Edith was in hospital having a hip replacement done.’

‘Lukeher son, Lukefound her on the sitting-room floor. Her hand was still round the TV remote. She must have been holding it when she went to answer the door.’ Margery was breathless, alternately panting and whimpering. ‘She
is
in hospitalbut I didn’t tell you the truth, Robert.’

‘Mum, it’s okay.’

‘It’s not okaythey’re murdering old folk in their homes in East Leeke; they’re smashing windowssetting fire to cars. I’ve been too terrified to leave the housebeen living off
Take A Break
magazines, corned beef, baked beans…’ She broke off. ‘The National Express coach I got down here was the first time I slept properly in weeks.’

Robert stood gently rubbing the tops of her arms. ‘Why didn’t you just say?’

‘I don’t know.’

Robert turned to Kate. ‘And what on earth possessed you to phone Leicestershire Council?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Robert,’ Kate exploded.

‘I can’t stand all this dishonesty—’

‘Dishonesty? Your mother lies; I expose those liesand I’m the dishonest one?’

‘You are dishonestnot the only one, but you are dishonest,’ Margery said, disappearing past them across the road and into the house.

‘Jessica,’ Robert called out.

‘I’ve got to goI’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll be there, just give me a minute.’

‘I’ll start to walk.’

‘I’ll catch you upwait.’ He went over to Margery who was emerging from the house, a piece of paper in her hand.

It was the St Anthony’s letter.

Standing under the sunflowers, Margery watched him read
it through, but felt none of the triumph she’d anticipated feelingjust a bitter sort of fear. She even tried to grab it off him, but he turned away.

When he’d finished, he gave her a look that was unreadable, then crossed the street again and pushed the letter into Kate’s hands.

‘I want you to keep an eye on ArthurI’ll phone.’

Kate nodded, stared down at the letter then across the street at Margery, who was still standing beneath the sunflowers outside No. 22.

Beatrice, stunned, didn’t say anything.

Margery turned and went back indoors, then drifted through to the garden, the sound of the drums reaching her over the house, distinct in the quieting afternoon.

Ivan, who now walked with a slight but permanent limp, was watching her. Staring at the flowering purple of an unloved hebe near her shoulders, she let out an isolated sob, put her hand to her mouth then went back indoors.

The front door had been left open and there was somebody standing there, but she couldn’t see who it was because she had the sunnow making its way down the other side of the skyin her face.

‘What you doing in there all alone, Margery?’

It was Mr Hamilton.

He knew her name.

He knew she was alone.

He’d come for her.

Like they came for Edith.

Why had she told Robert Edith was in hospital having her hip replacement operation done? Why had she told him she was having double glazing put in the bungalow? She collapsed against the hall wall to the sound of the drums outside.

‘Everything all right?’

‘I think I’m having a stroke,’ Margery said, for the second time that day, as Mr Hamilton entered the house and Margery, unsure whether she’d screamed or not as she started to fall, blacked out.

Arthur Palmer crawled out from underneath the cake stall.

‘Where’s my mum gone?’ he said.

Kate was about to respond when Ros appeared wearing one of the pink and black Carpe Diem T-shirts.

‘Have you seen Martin anywhere?’

Kate shook her head.

Ros looked around her, trying not to panic. ‘We need to talkabout Beulah Hill.’

Kate was about to respond when a black car drove, screeching, round the corner and stopped by the cake stall.

Three men got out and went straight to the door of No. 21.

The woman Margery thought was Lithuanian answered, and when she saw the three men standing there, tried to shut the door again, but they were already in the house, the last one knocking the woman to the ground.

It wasn’t until she sat up again that Ros and Kate noticed her arms were covered in blood.

She got slowly to her feet and stared out at the street party, dazed, before disappearing back into the house without bothering to close the front door.

Kate was only vaguely aware of Ros beside her, phoning the police.

Without people realising it, the afternoon had gone silent.

Stunned, people at the lower end of Prendergast Road listened attentively to the screams and shouts coming from inside No. 21 because they weren’t sure what else to do. A shot was fired.

The shot changed everything. People were no longer stunned; they started to run, instinctively. Only Kate and Ros stayed where they were, ignoring Beatrice who had Flo over her shoulder now while pulling Findlay after her towards the house.

A man ran out of the house and down the street. Kate couldn’t tell whether it was one of the men from the car or not.

Another man ran out a minute later, but was shot at from inside the house and fell onto his side near the pavement where the plastic crates she’d been storing her cakes in were stacked.

Another shot was fired inside the house.

It was as though Kate and Ros were waiting for somethingthey didn’t know what.

The next minute the woman in the Disneyland Paris T-shirt walked, barefoot, out of the house, her legs and some of the T-shirt covered in blood. At first Kate thought she must have been shot at, but then saw that she was carrying something in her arms, intermittently talking to it and looking about her at the balloons from Ros’s stall, cut loose, drifting up into the sky. Six heavily pregnant women walked out of the house behind her, squinting up at the sunlight.

‘She’s got a baby,’ Ros said.

There was the sound of sirens, in the distance, drawing closer. Then a police riot van turned into Prendergast Road. The sirens cut out then started again, making Kate jump.

Then they stopped, and the street was suddenly full of police.

Robert drove up Lordship Lane and through the village before crossing the South Circular and turning onto the old toll road that led up to the allotments.

Jessica stared blankly out through the open window, her elbow balanced, her hair whipping across her cheek so that she had to hold it back behind her head. They drove past courts full of people playing tennis, overhung by horse chestnuts already in full leaf, and two teenagers out flirting while walking a golden retriever. Jessica felt as though she was being bombarded by normality, but then what did she know? One of the tennis players could have spent last Sunday burying a wife who’d died of cancer for all she knew.

‘She left the Walkman for Arthur,’ she said, breaking the silence, as a motorcycle overtook them and they turned left up the hill.

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ Robert asked.

‘A bad thing. The Walkman was Peter’s.’

‘How old was Ellie when Peter died?’

‘She’d just turned thirteen.’

‘That’s a shitty age to lose anyone, let alone a parent.’

‘And she was very much Peter’s daughter. Arthur was
three, and the logistics of childcarewithout Peterkind of numbed me in the beginning. Then I went through this phase of crying all the timeif somebody walked into me in the street or if I spilt stuff in the kitchen, I’d be mopping it up, sobbing. After that I made a real effort not to cry until after the kids were in bed. I went to grief counselling but it never felt right. Maybe it works for some people, but to me it felt like everybody had these lives they didn’t wantme includedthat they were being forced to talk about. I’m sorry,’ she said, starting to throb with a familiar anger.

‘It’s EllieI’m sick of itshe’s gone through me and out the other side. I’m frightened of her.’

‘We’re all frightened of our children,’ Robert said.

Semi-ripe hedges lined the road until they passed the entrance to the golf club, the sun bouncing off the cars in the car park. Then the hedge started again.

Robert stopped the car. The heat had bought a lot of people up to the allotments. As the dust where they’d parked rose and resettled, he turned to her. ‘Jessica…’

She fell, sobbing suddenly, against his chest, grabbing a handful of his T-shirt and pulling on it.

Robert sat staring through the dust on the windscreen, automatically stroking her hair then kissing the top of her head without thinkinglocked in the moment.

A man appeared in the door to the Nissen hut, which was open, and stood drinking a cup of tea, staring at them. ‘You can’t park there,’ he said after a while.

Jessica sat up, wiping at her eyes and sniffing.

Robert turned off the engine and got out of the car. ‘We’re looking for someone.’ He ducked his head quickly into the car to check on Jessica. ‘You okay?’

She nodded, slivers of sunlight reflected from Robert’s watch darting over her face.

‘D’you have an allotment?’ the man asked, eyeing them both, unconvinced.

‘That one over thereyou can see the red roof from the playhouse.’

‘Ah.’ The man relaxed slightly, and carried on drinking his tea.

‘Have you seen a young girltall, skinny, about sixteen, blondeish? She comes up here sometimes.’

‘We’ve got a lot of people up here today,’ he said, pleased.

Jessica got out of the car, her hand over her eyes to block out the sun, scanning the allotments and the fringes of the wood. ‘She’s not up here,’ she said quietly to herself. Then, louder, starting to panic. ‘She’s not here.’

With Robert beside her, she turned instinctively towards the wood and into a warm wind carrying the smell of fennel and wild garlic with it.

They started to walk.

‘Heyyou can’t park here,’ the man called out after them. ‘You can’t just leave your car here.’

Jessica and Robert disappeared into the woods.

They walked in silence, their eyes scanning the woodland to either sidemostly beech, silver birch, elm, some dense holly and the occasional towering oak. They stopped, shaken, when three bikes passed them, the riders calling out to each other, excited. Robert was sure the last rider was Jerome, but maybe it was just the unbearable tautness of the afternoonhe’d only seen him from behind. They waited for the silence to settle again and once it had, started to call out, ‘EllieEllie.’ They didn’t know why they hadn’t called out her name earlier. They waited, but heard nothing, and after a while started to walk againRobert slipping on flint and chalk sticking up from the path.

He thought he might have been here once beforewhen
they’d first got the allotment; he’d come in with Findlay to pick blackberries and build him a bracken camp.

‘Ellie!’ they called out at the same time, stopping again.

They could hear the road again, louder now. They were nearly at the Crystal Palace edge of the woods.

The world was still out there and, as soon as Jessica heard it, time came rushing at her from all sides as it struck her suddenly that it was running out.

This hadn’t happened when she’d been in the car with Peter, driving down Park Lane. He’d been talking about whether or not to open a business account and she hadn’t been listening; she had been watching the fairground lights through the skeleton trees in Hyde Park thinking how much she’d like to be sitting in one of the carriages of the big wheel right then, surrounded by freezing night air. She turned to Peter to try to convey something of this, knowing she wouldn’t be able to, but wanting to trywhen they’d been hit. There was a crack as Peter’s arm swung out unnaturally, and another crack as his wristwatch hit the windscreen. Then nothing.

This time it was different. This time, she was being given some sort of forewarning. ‘ELLIE,’ she screamed into the trees. There was the sound of animals that had nothing to do with them running through last year’s brackenbut other than that nothing. ‘She’s not here,’ she said helplessly to Robert.

As soon as Jessica said this, Robert became aware of just how convinced he was that Ellie was in the woods.

‘Come onlet’s carry on up here,’ he said, starting up a smaller track, heavily covered in undergrowth.

But Jessica stayed where she was.

‘Come on,’ he said again, as gently as he could.

A woodpecker started up on a tree nearby.

Jessica was no longer standing still; she was virtually
motionless. The breeze had died down and not even her hair was moving.

Robert took a few steps along the overgrown track towards a holly bush, crushing dead leaves and wild garlic underfoot until the smell was overwhelmingwhen suddenly the three boys on bikes came crashing over the rise. It
was
Jerome.

The excitement had gone. Jerome and the others were curled over their bikes, riding with intentuntil they saw Robert standing in the middle of the track.

As soon as he saw them, he knew.

Jeromewearing Manchester United coloursdropped his bike suddenly, nearly falling off it, the back wheel spinning wildly.

His right hand, in a fingerless leather glove, clutched the handlebar still, preventing the whole bike from lying on the ground.

‘Up there, sir,’ he said to Robert, his eyes wide, breathless as the other boys skidded to a halt in the leaves behind him. The ‘sir’ was absurd, but no longer a taunt.

‘Show me,’ Robert said.

Jerome shook his head and picked up his bike.

‘I need you to show me where. You twoyou know the allotments?’

The other boys nodded.

‘I want you to go and find someonetell them what you saw. Tell them,’ he said, before breaking into a run up the track, not even checking to see whether Jessica was following him.

He ran as hard as he could, slipping over the stones in the path. Jerome, who’d ridden ahead, was parked on the brow of the hill.

Robert stopped to get his breath back then stood up and started to run again. The tree in the dell just over the brow of the hill was an oak.

A black and white converse trainer hung from a brokenoff stump and Ellie Palmer was hanging from the first branchon an orange scarf, her hands grasped round it, her legs thrashing as if she was treading water, the tree creaking in the way it did during a storm.

Robert was aware of shouting something but he didn’t know what as he ran into the dell and got hold of Ellie’s legs, yelling at her to stop kicking.

Her knees were on a level with his shoulders and he had to press her lower legs against his chest to get her to stop kicking, but he wasn’t holding enough of her for her to balancenot that she knew or her body knew that she needed to balanceso she fell forward over his head then flipped backwards.

Robert reached up as high as he could, trying to reach her thighs so that he could support as much of her body as possible.

‘A bladeI need a blade,’ he yelled into Ellie’s jeans, unable to turn round and not even knowing whether Jerome was still there or not.

What felt like ages passed before he heard the sound of footsteps slipping towards him.

‘Penknife,’ Jerome said, throwing it to him, before vomiting over the trunk of the tree and Ellie’s converse trainer.

‘I need you to climb up and cut the scarf on the branch. Just cut the scarf…’

The smell of Jerome’s vomit, rising immediately, was making him gag. And Ellie was kicking repetitively against his groin.

A deep-throated scream rang out from the brow of the hill.

Jerome, who was wiping his mouth, jumped.

‘Ignore itjust ignore it,’ Robert commanded. ‘Climb the tree and cut the rope.’

Jerome burst into tears.

‘Just climb the fucking tree,’ Robert yelled, kicking the penknife back through the dead leaves towards him.

Ellie wasn’t jerking now so much as thrashing; he needed to hold her higher, but was terrified of her falling onto the rope again.

Jerome, sobbing, slipped twice in his own vomit then got a footholdand the next minute was hauling himself up onto the branch.

Robert couldn’t see him any more.

Jessica was there and was trying to hold Ellie as well, yelling incoherently at her as though she didn’t recognise her any more; only the pain she was causing her.

The next minute Ellie, Robert and Jessica collapsed into the undergrowth, Robert rolling away onto his back so that he saw Jerome crouched along the tree branch, staring down at him, the sun bright behind him.

A couple of his tears fell onto Robert’s face.

From the brow of the hill the other two boys watched from astride their bicycles. They didn’t come down.

They turned their heads at the sound of others in the wood, and watched as a golden retriever ran past them and down into the dell.