The Girl Next Door (25 page)

Most of those who survived went to Stanley’s funeral, as did those widows, Maureen and, of course, Stanley’s own widow, Helen. Rosemary was there and so was Lewis with his new wife, Melissa. Everybody stared at her and pretended to be looking at some piece of decoration on St. Mary’s walls. The men’s verdict was that old Lewis had done well for himself, and the women’s that she had had at least one face-lift. Michael turned up, a rather unexpected guest. His father had died in his care home and in Michael’s presence, everyone knew that, and to some people his appearance seemed in bad taste. How did he know about the funeral? No one found out. The answer was that Maureen had phoned and told him. No, Daphne wouldn’t go. Alan would likely be there, and it might be awkward for both of them to meet on such an occasion.

Alan intended to go. Daphne had sent his other suitcase some weeks before, and in it was his charcoal-coloured, almost-new suit, which he meant to wear. In the time he had lived alone, his feelings for Rosemary had changed. He longed to return to the flat in Traps Hill. He longed for
her.
Many aspects of her recurred, coming to him in the night, in dreams, and in the daytime when he was out food shopping or while he sat alone in the studio flat he was renting; the sound of her sewing machine, the sight of some new dress she had made, her always slightly wrong fish pie, returned to him. It troubled Alan that most of those who attended the funeral and knew him asked after Rosemary. Was she unwell? Didn’t they know he and she had been apart for months? He replied noncommittally and went home before anyone could carry him off to the graveside.

The studio flat he rented in Buckhurst Hill wasn’t much more than a room, its kitchen being some small pieces of equipment built into a panel on the wall where the door to the shower (no bath) room was. He tried to get out of it whenever he could. Therefore his attendance at Stanley’s funeral. Back at home, he sat down to think about trying again. Just go to the flat in Traps Hill and ask to come back? Go further than that and tell her he loved her, he
always had, and must have been mad to leave her? After a while he fell asleep, as he often did in the afternoons. This time he dreamt that he was back with her, it was eight on a Saturday morning, and she was bringing him a cup of tea, telling him it was going to be a fine day and how would he feel about going to see Freya and baby Clement? He thought it was real, that dream, and when he woke up and found it wasn’t, he lay in the armchair and felt two tears run down his cheeks.

H
APPY
R
OSEMARY HAD
rediscovered a couple of girls she had been at school with. Sylvia and Pamela were both widows and “well-left,” as such women used to be described when husbands had died and left them a stack of shares and a considerable income. Now the three of them were friends again and had taken to attending the cinema together, going to the theatre, signing up for French-conversation lessons—age was no bar—going on weekend trips in luxury coaches and riverboats and buying tickets for book festivals.

While Rosemary was away at one of these, Alan made his carefully planned trip to the flat he longed to return to. The suitcase he left in the studio. Daphne had sent it on but his key wasn’t inside. It was lost. Perhaps he had never put it in there. He called round to the flat as any male visitor might, but without the flowers such a man would have brought. Anyway, no one was at home. It was a bitter disappointment. He tried again, in the afternoon this time, on the following Wednesday. Rosemary was at a matinee of a play called
Once
, and this time with a man also called Alan, whom she had met at the Harrogate Literary Festival. The Alan that she was married to decided that to call in the morning might be wiser, and he did so on a Monday.

He was sick with trepidation. Like some young lover, he had woken up at 4:00 a.m. and lain in a sweat of dread. Suppose she
turned him away again? Suppose she saw who it was through the window and refused to open the door? But he must do it, he must go there. She opened the door to him, all smiles, in a new dress that plainly wasn’t one she had made. She looked years younger than when he had last seen her, and that wasn’t a cheering thought.

“Rosy. Can I come in, Rosy?”

She nodded, the smile still there. No changes had been made to the flat. It was just as it had been when he left it. He sat down and she said she would make coffee. It was going to be all right, more than all right. She brought in the coffee and he noticed at once that it was far better than it used to be. She had learned how to make coffee in his absence. Grown slimmer since he’d left her, she had become cleverer and somehow more charming. She sat down, began to talk about some play she had seen and some literary festival she had been to in Yorkshire.

“You took yourself to a theatre on your own? Well done.”

“I wasn’t on my own.”

It was a simple sentence. It sent a shiver through him. He drank his coffee, said he was living in a studio flat but now he thought he would give it up. There was no point in keeping it. Rents were so high, he had had no idea.

She picked up the tray and carried it to the kitchen. When she came back, she told him she thought he had a key “to this place.”

“I did have but I’ve a confession to make. I seem to have lost it.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? You don’t need it. Better not give up this studio of yours. Not till you’ve bought something bigger, I should think.”

“Rosemary. Rosy, I thought I should come back here. I want to come back to you.”

“Don’t bother to sit down again. It’s been nice to see you, but I have to go out in ten minutes. Back to the studio, eh?”

“Rosy, let me come back.”

“I don’t think so. It won’t do. You left me for no reason and now I’m leaving you.” She opened the front door. “Bye-bye, Alan. I’m sure we’ll meet again someday.”

He sat down on the same seat he had sat on those weeks ago when he had been turned away by the woman with the cat. This eviction, he felt, was final. He had no idea what he was going to do, now or in the future.

28

W
HILE
J
OHN
W
INWOOD
was alive and Zoe was in touch with him, Michael thought about his father with dread and tried more or less successfully to forget about him. Once she was dead and the duty fell on him, the ancient man had spoiled his life just by existing, as he had spoiled it when Michael was a child. Now he had gone. Michael felt happier than he had perhaps for ever. For even when he had Vivien, his father was
there,
was in the world, a threatening presence that might descend upon them, himself, his wife, and their children, and carry out some frightful acts of destruction. But not now, no more. Even he couldn’t come back from the dead.

With no father there, a brooding presence, he found he liked his children better. When one or the other came to stay, he began to enjoy their company. He returned Jane’s hugs with tender enthusiasm, enquired about Richard’s business, asked after his new wife, the newly arrived baby. When would Richard bring this new family to see him? Jane was getting married again? He didn’t add the once inevitable suffix,
at last
. He said good, he was happy. When was she going to bring her fiancé to meet him?

Some two or three months after he’d heard from Rosemary that Alan was now living in a house he had bought in Epping, Michael
encountered Daphne Jones in the Café Laville. He always thought of her as Daphne Jones, but this was his first visit to the Café Laville. He had never belonged to that great sect whose doctrine is to buy, as a habit in the middle of the morning, a mug of coffee with a lid on and drink it on the premises or take it home or to work. He did it now, getting off the 46 bus on his way to Warwick Avenue station, because he saw Daphne inside. She was sitting at a table on that balcony bit of the café that overhung the canal and enjoyed a magnificent view of a glittering stretch of water all the way to the distant bridge beyond. Little Venice, it was known as.

She welcomed him to her table with the kind of smile he hadn’t seen on a woman’s face since he lost Vivien. “If Venetians come here on holiday, do you think they’re flattered or disappointed?”

“I don’t suppose they come,” said Michael.

“You were the boy next door for years, but I don’t think we ever spoke, not even in the qanats. What brings you down here?”

“ ‘A wonderful bus is the forty-six. It takes you right out to the sticks.’ I was going to the tube station but I’ve forgotten why. Have lunch with me?”

So she did. Three months later he was spending half his time with her in the house in Hamilton Terrace and half at home. He was happy. Vivien’s room he had locked up, opening it only when Jane and her husband came to stay.

© JERRY BAUER

Ruth Rendell has won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writers’ Association. Her remarkable career has spanned more than fifty years, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she lives in London.

ALSO BY RUTH RENDELL

To Fear a Painted Devil

Vanity Dies Hard

The Secret House of Death

One Across, Two Down

The Face of
Trespass

A Demon in My View

A Judgement in Stone

Make Death Love Me

The Lake of Darkness

Master of the Moor

The Killing Doll

The Tree of Hands

Live Flesh

Talking to Strange Men

The Bridesmaid

Going Wrong

The Crocodile Bird

The Keys to the Street

A Sight for Sore Eyes

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

The Rottweiler

Thirteen Steps Down

The Water’s Lovely

Portobello

Tigerlily’s Orchids

The St. Zita Society

THE INSPECTOR WEXFORD SERIES

From Doon with Death

The Sins of the Fathers

Wolf to the Slaughter

The Best Man to Die

A Guilty Thing Surprised

No More Dying Then

Murder Being Once Done

Some Lie and Some Die

Shake Hands Forever

A Sleeping Life

Death Notes

The Speaker of Mandarin

An Unkindness of Ravens

The Veiled One

Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter

Simisola

Road Rage

Harm Done

The Babes in the Wood

End in Tears

Not in the Flesh

The Monster in the Box

The Vault

No Man’s Nightingale

BARBARA VINE NOVELS

A Dark-Adapted Eye

A Fatal Inversion

The House of Stairs

Gallowglass

King Solomon’s Carpet

Asta’s Book

No Night Is Too Long

The Brimstone Wedding

The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy

Grasshopper

The Blood Doctor

The Minotaur

The Birthday Present

The Child’s Child

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