The Girls (8 page)

The woman said her name was Rhea and that she’d lived on the garden since she was fifteen and she was now eighty-four! She said she’d seen everything there was to see. And then she said a strange thing; she said, ‘Best to keep yourself to yourself in these gardens. Don’t get too involved.’ She said not to stroke the cat because he would bite.

Then I saw the boy with red hair. His name is Max. He was on his own, just kicking his football against a wall. He didn’t say hello.

I went into the Rose Garden. There was nobody in there and I looked at the plaques on the benches. I noticed there was one for a girl called Phoebe. It said: ‘In Memory of Phoebe Rednough 1977–1992’. She was only fifteen when she died. That made me feel so sad I nearly cried.

Imagine dying when you’re only fifteen. When you haven’t found out what you’re good at. And you’ll never know how tall you were going to be or how pretty or if you were going to be rich or poor or happy or sad. So I sat on Phoebe’s bench for a while and thought about everything. About you. And what you did. And how we could all have died. And maybe then there would have been a bench for us somewhere – someone might have put one on Hampstead Heath. And how someone might have sat on it one day and said: Oh poor things, they were only eleven and twelve. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Next time I see Rhea I will ask her about Phoebe Rednough. I bet she knows what happened to her.

Then the man came into the Rose Garden, Dylan’s big brother, the one with special needs. I was polite and said hello but I didn’t really want to stay in there on my own with him so I left. After that I went back inside and watched telly with Mum. She was very quiet. I think she misses you too.

Love you, Daddy, more than words can say,

Your Pipsqueak xxxx

Seven

‘What do you think of those girls?’

Adele rested her chin on the edge of the roll-top bath and looked at her husband who was lying in bed reading a book.

‘What girls?

‘Pip and Grace. What do you make of them?’

Leo shrugged. ‘They seem like perfectly nice children. The older one’s a bit frosty but the little one seems charming.’

‘Did Tyler tell you’, she began, ‘what Cecelia said to her when she saw them in Waitrose last week?’

‘No. She did not.’ He put down his book, showing that he was fully engaged with the conversation. ‘What?’

‘She said that she recognised their mother, from an article in the papers a few months back. An article about a man with paranoid schizophrenia who set his house on fire because voices in his head told him it was infested with alien rats who were scheming to take over the world. Anyway. I Googled it earlier and I think she might be right. Two girls aged eleven and twelve. Mother aged thirty-two. House in Hampstead. Happened last November. The article I read said the mother and children had been taken in by relatives afterwards. It all adds up.’

‘Christ,’ said Leo, ‘those poor little girls.’

‘I know. Imagine it. Imagine having a parent just go completely and utterly crazy. You know, sectionable crazy. How would you deal with that as a child? How would you make sense of it? And I wonder if they’ve seen him? I wonder if they visit? Because I must say, I’m not sure, as a mother, if I could face you again if you’d put us all in danger like that.’

‘But don’t forget,’ said Leo, ‘for all his faults, the guy did save the world from an alien-rat invasion.’

‘Leo!’ Adele sat upright in the bath and looked at her husband, aghast. ‘That’s not funny!’

‘Oh, it is.’

‘It is not! And listen, you mustn’t say a word to anyone. Apparently when Tyler asked the girls about it they totally denied it and Grace told her that their dad was dead. So pretend we never had this conversation.’

Leo nodded sombrely. ‘I hear you.’

‘So sad.’ She thought for a moment. ‘We must make a special effort with those girls. And their mum. You know, maybe we should have them all over for supper?’

‘Yes,’ said Leo, ‘why not? Maybe Friday next week? When Dad’s in hospital?’

Adele smiled at the thought of Gordon being in hospital. ‘Excellent, yes, Friday week. I’ll pop over tomorrow and ask them.’

‘How’s the manuscript going?’ Leo asked a moment later as Adele stepped from the bath and pulled a towel around herself.

‘Slowly,’ she said. ‘You know, Dylan’s school are giving them two-week half-terms now. I was half tempted to give the girls the same so I can work on it some more when Gordon’s gone.’ She sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at Leo. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think as long as Catkin’s on track with her GCSE studies, then why not? The weather’s so nice. I might even take some time off work too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, why not? I can take the girls off your hands maybe, do a day trip or two. It’s the least I could do to repay you for looking after my old bastard of a father all week. It’s the least I could do to repay you for everything you do. Seriously.’

‘I really do love you sometimes, Leo.’

‘Sometimes?’

‘Yes, sometimes. Sometimes I hate you.’

‘But right now you love me?’

‘Yes. Very much.’

Leo smiled, wolfishly, and patted her side of the futon.

Adele let her bath towel fall to the floor, and climbed in next to him.

The following morning Adele put Scout on a lead and walked him around the gardens for a while. The girls were all still sleeping; Leo was showering; she’d taken Gordon his morning toast and jam and water for his painkillers.

It was a pale, bland morning, no cloud, yet no sun, the lawn still dewy underfoot. Scout tugged at the lead and Adele checked the time on her watch. Not even eight thirty. Was it too early, she thought, to knock on Clare’s back door? She decided to pass by, discreetly, see if there were any signs of life. The girls said it was the one near the halfway house, with the giant magnolia tree in the back garden. She stood, nonchalantly, on the path outside, pretending to adjust Scout’s collar. The light was on in the kitchen, the curtains open in the living room. She saw a head pass the window and the steam of a boiling kettle blooming into condensation on the glass. She came to the back door and knocked gently. Pip appeared, in fluffy pyjamas, her thick curls in disarray.

‘Hi,’ she said uncertainly, her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her pyjamas.

‘Sorry,’ said Adele, ‘it’s really early. I just wondered if your mummy was here.’

Pip crouched down to pet the dog and called over her shoulder for her mother.

Clare, thankfully, was dressed. She looked both surprised and displeased. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’

She was a funny little thing, Adele observed. Made from tiny bones, with a pale, almost peaky face framed by an urchin cut of soft bleached hair. She wore no make-up apart from a coat of the kind of mascara that gives you unnaturally long eyelashes. The overall appearance was that of a newly born lamb.

‘Hello, don’t know if you remember me, I’m Adele, mother of the three girls …’

‘Yes,’ said Clare, ‘I remember. From across the garden.’

‘Yes!’ said Adele. ‘That’s me and it was lovely to meet you the other day and I wanted to say I’m so sorry I couldn’t ask you in or stop and chat but, like I said, we had a last-minute house guest on the way and
anyway
… we were thinking – me and Leo – the girls all seem to be getting along so well and we wondered if you might all like to come over for supper one night. We were thinking maybe Friday next week? My father-in-law will be in hospital then and we’ll be a lot more relaxed. And nothing fancy. Just a pie or something?’ Adele knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t quite stop herself. It was something to do with the way Clare was staring at her as if she was waiting impatiently for her to get to the point. But the point had been reached and passed, yet still the words fell from Adele’s mouth.

‘Would you like that? And obviously if you have a partner or someone else you wanted to bring …?’ Adele looked beyond Clare into her flat; it was immaculate. Horribly so. White walls, grey sofa with four carefully arranged red felt cushions, small square table with three wooden chairs, laminate flooring, nothing on the walls. It was the sort of clinical interior that chilled her heart. But of course, she realised, if Clare’s husband had burned down her house then she’d have had to start from scratch. All her photos gone. All her clothes. All her children’s drawings. Adele couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be like.

‘Er, yes. Of course. That would be lovely.’

‘Good! Great! Come at seven. I’m sure I’ll see you before. But if not, anything you don’t eat? The girls?’

Clare shook her head and said, ‘We’ll eat anything.’ Pip looked up from where she was still crouched down petting Scout and said, ‘That’s not true! I don’t like meat. Or ravioli. Or any green vegetables. Apart from green beans. And I hate lentils and things like that. And coconut. And things with bits of—’

‘OK, Pip, thank you,’ said Clare, smiling conspiratorially at Adele. ‘I think we get the message.’

Adele laughed. ‘Great. I’ll try to bear that all in mind. And I’ll let you get on. Sorry to disturb you so early. Have a good day.’

Adele tugged at Scout’s lead and let him walk her home.

Clare didn’t know what to make of it. An invitation to supper with the glamorous couple across the way. She’d said yes because it was eight thirty in the morning and she hadn’t even had a coffee yet. Caught in the twin beams of Adele’s shining brown eyes and dazzling smile, she couldn’t work out how to say no.

Pip didn’t seem too taken with the idea either. ‘Do we have to go?’ she said.

‘I thought they were your friends?’

‘Yes, sort of. But I just don’t really want to go there for dinner.’

‘No,’ said Clare. ‘Me neither.’

She hadn’t told the girls about their father yet. Pip would be delighted. Grace would be terrified. It could set her right back to where she’d been just after it had happened. Nightmares every night. Refusing to go to school. Refusing to eat.

She’d keep it to herself, for now. Because even if they did let him out and even if he did find his daughters, what would he do? He wouldn’t harm them, she was pretty sure of that. He would just want to talk. He would just want to spend some time with them.

But even as this highly reasonable summation of the situation passed through her consciousness it was overwritten by the memory of him last November, standing, ridiculous in his wetsuit, oblivious to the crowd of people surrounding him, the dancing flames reflected in his crazed eyes, the dark, nonsensical words spilling from his mouth. She remembered her daughters’ faces, golden and red in the light of the fire, pulling Pip back from going to her father, silent tears pouring down Grace’s cheeks as she shuddered inside her arms, and then her whole body arching, tensing as she cried, ‘But my homework’s in there! And my new jacket! And’ – she’d clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with horror – ‘my piggy bank with all my money in it!’

Three things amongst so many. Clare sometimes lay awake at night trying to compile a mental inventory of what had gone. She’d get 3 per cent into it before giving up. Baby teeth. Hairbrushes. Her favourite All Saints cardigan that went with everything. The cookbook with the recipe in it for chocolate birthday cake which was the only one she’d ever used. The book she’d been halfway through reading. Diaries. Hairbands. All her silk underwear. Linen. Towels. The vintage velvet cushions from her grandma’s house. Six orchids in full bloom. Her laptop. Her camera. Passports. Half a box of expensive chocolate truffles. Her brand-new sunglasses. Her wedding dress.

They’d come to this flat with nothing and were building themselves back to normality, sock by sock, cushion by cushion, spoon by spoon.

‘I’ll tell them we can’t come,’ she said, her hand on Pip’s crown. ‘I’ll tell her something came up.’

Grace walked in and caught the end of the exchange. ‘Tell
who
something came up?’

‘Adele,’ said Clare, ‘the sisters’ mum. She asked us over for supper next week.’

‘But’ – Grace looked from Pip to Clare and back again – ‘I want to go. Why aren’t we going? I really want to go!’

Clare regarded her daughter curiously. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I just do,’ she said. ‘I like it there. I like them.’

Clare looked at her daughter’s bright face and then looked about her at their flat. They’d come such a long way but this place was not yet a home. And maybe her daughter had found a place that felt, for whatever reason, like home to her.

‘But, Mum, listen.’ Grace bit her lip. ‘I told the girls a lie. About Dad. I told them he was dead.’

Clare rocked slightly on her feet. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Did you?’

‘Yes. Tyler asked us if we were the people whose dad burned down their house and I just said we weren’t. And I could tell she didn’t believe me so I said he was dead. Just to shut her up.’ She cast her eyes to the floor and shifted from foot to foot. ‘I’m really sorry.’