The Sick Rose (4 page)

‘This is all a bit beyond the call of duty,’ said Elvira, when she found her reading Bartram’s
Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine
. Louisa was almost embarrassed to let Elvira know quite how seriously she took it all.

‘It’s just something to do when there aren’t any customers,’ she said.

‘I’m not knocking it. You took three hundred quid last Sunday.’

Louisa grew to love the rhythm of her days, the quiet hour at the top of the day before the customers came, her after-work cider with the other stallholders at the Milk Bar or Henry Afrika’s. Most of all she treasured her lunchtimes. These hours she spent alone in the rooftop gardens on top of the old Derry and Toms department store. It wasn’t until you stood at the top of the city above the pall of pollution and looked down that you noticed how few people ever looked up. There were three separate gardens up here. The surprisingly thin trickle of tourists who found their way up tended to dwell on the show-stoppers: the pink-walled, palm-lined Spanish garden with its Moorish geometricity, or the English Woodland with its ponds and birds. Most people only passed through the walled Tudor garden to reach the balcony that looked out across the Brompton Oratory and the caterpillar trains that crawled through the shallow gorge of the Circle line at High Street Kensington station towards Battersea Power Station in the distance. For Louisa, however, it was a destination in its own right. Of course it couldn’t possibly be authentic, sitting as it did on top of an art deco building; but its crinkled walls that captured the scent of the lavender growing in the shallow borders, and the herringbone stones beneath her feet, suggested a different time and place. She defended her territory as ferociously as a cat, slipping down Derry Street without telling anyone where she was going. She lived in constant fear of chancing upon one of the other stallholders, or, God forbid, one of the one-night-stands who wouldn’t take no for an answer and hung around the market for days. It was such a shame that they were only attractive for as long as they remained strangers. She always told them this at the beginning. They never got it.

She watched, with an anthropologist’s interest, the burgeoning relationship between Matty the tattooist and Roberta, the Italian rockabilly who worked in the market café. Louisa would cover his stall for his almost hourly coffee runs, and in return for facilitating his courtship he offered to pay her in kind. They made her right ear their joint project, Matty fitting as many tiny silver rings as Louisa’s flesh would accommodate.

Her parents were irritatingly tolerant of the multiple piercings; the corsets, blue hair and black leather choker strung with an unambiguously anatomical silver pagan fertility symbol also went unremarked. It was only after everything had happened, when her clothes had become drab, her skin was scrubbed clean and her hair reverted to its natural brown, that their younger daughter’s appearance gave them cause for concern. But that was on the other side of love, the other side of death, and by then there was nothing they or anyone else could have done for her.

Chapter 3

September 2009

Paul took the fast train to Fenchurch Street and from there a short walk to Tower Hill Underground station, passing the Tower of London, which people in work clothes hurried past as though it were just another office block. He took two Tubes across the city, doubting his ability to negotiate the bewildering interchange of Baker Street but arriving at Marylebone two hours after he had left the place he could never again call home. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and the wide, quiet station was almost deserted. He bought a Ploughman’s sandwich from Marks & Spencer and ate it on a red bench, looking over his shoulder between mouthfuls. He would have preferred the benches to line the walls but they were hexagon-shaped seats in the middle of the concourse, so that no matter where you sat you had a blind spot. He could not shake the conviction that someone – one of Carl’s associates or the man himself – was following him. He fingered the mobile in his pocket, wondering when he would be brave enough to turn it back on. Dozens of times his thumb hovered over the power button and dozens of times he withdrew it. He wanted very much to speak to his mother but could not bring himself to do so until he believed he was safe. Their last conversation had been on a police station telephone; he had told her that he was in trouble in the vaguest terms he could get away with, insisting that she stay where she was. Then she had wanted to know why he didn’t come down to her. He could not find a way to explain that would not frighten her, so he had made a feeble promise that everything was going to be fine and then hung up.

He changed carriages twice even though the train was almost empty. He ended up sitting near the toilet because from there he could see along the length of two carriages and there was somewhere to hide. At his knees was a bin overflowing with paper coffee cups, its side streaked with years of spillages. On the wall above his head was a map of the rail network. Unknown towns and famous cities were connected by strips and bolts representing the tracks that climbed to the north and curved subtly to the west. He wondered where Daniel was now and what was happening to him.

Woburn had driven him back to Grays Reach in an unmarked car and waited outside while he let himself into the Scatlocks’ house. Carl’s car was gone but he could hear the dog barking in the garden and he hesitated on the threshold before running upstairs and picking up the holdall he’d packed days before for a very different sort of adventure. On the way out, he grabbed Carl’s tatty old road atlas and slid it inside his jacket. Woburn promised – for what that was worth – that Daniel had been charged and would remain in custody until the trial, which would be months off. Paul wondered guiltily if Daniel had had to make a statement and, if so, who would have read it back to him.

The right-hand window gave onto a bank of balding shrubs but to the left were soft rolling hills in shades of brown and green and grey. He had no idea where he was. Hertfordshire? Bedfordshire? Not Warwickshire, not yet. He took out his phone again but instead of turning it on, he levered the casing apart and removed the SIM card. He crossed the concertina divide between the two carriages and found that there he could open the window a tiny amount. Paul unclenched his fist to release the SIM card and posted it through. He felt his shoulders loosen and drop.

The train slowed so that the countryside outside the window seemed to be ambling along past a stationary carriage. The ticket inspector told him that they’d be getting into Leamington (he didn’t call it Leamington Spa, like the maps did) around ten minutes behind schedule. He muttered something about vandalism on the tracks, triggering another reflex reaction of guilt in Paul. He looked up his destination in the atlas. The village of Kelstice wasn’t big enough to have its own station: it was halfway between Coventry and Leamington, places he knew the names of but nothing more. It was maybe a quarter of the size of the Grays Reach Estate. It might be far away, but it didn’t look big enough to hide in.

At Leamington station, the other passengers dispersed into waiting cars or simply strode off into the unfamiliar town. When they had gone there was only one person left on the forecourt, a boy about his own age, wearing jeans tucked into work boots and a leather jacket Paul wouldn’t have minded for himself. They made brief eye contact and the boy broke into a smile.

‘Are you Paul Seaforth?’ he asked, his voice soft and Scottish. ‘I’m Ross. Demetra sent me to come and get you. She’s really sorry but one of her girls is ill and she can’t get away. I’ve got your keys and a wee welcome pack.’ He fanned out a bunch of leaflets and dangled a single key from a blue plastic fob. ‘We’re no far.’

The station behind them was grand and vast but opposite the car park was a row of hoardings and the few scattered buildings were faded and peeling. Walking into town they kept pace with the railway line, which overscored them in an iron-studded viaduct. There was a budget supermarket, an off-licence, two sari shops and a couple of down-at-heel estate agents. In a gap between the bridge itself and the back of a shop that had been appropriated by a mental health charity, there was a shoulder-width alleyway. Train tracks towered forty feet above their heads, weeds running down the blackened arches like liquid. A series of gateways gave onto mean backyards.

‘This is you,’ said Ross, doubtfully.

‘I’m not going to be living in Kelstice?’

‘Och, none of us can afford to live in Kelstice. They wouldn’t have the likes of us, anyway. It’s got something like the highest proportion of millionaires per square mile in the county. You’ll see when you get there on Monday. Most of us live a bit further out on the Coventry road. I’m not sure why Demetra’s put you out here, to be honest.’

‘It was all done at short notice,’ said Paul.

‘Of course. Sorry.’ Paul wondered what he knew. ‘The good news is that, in Leamington, the posh part of town is north of the railway line. Technically, you’re north of it. About six feet north. But still.’

Ross consulted his key fob and stopped at a gate marked 45B. Paul deduced from the duelling clouds of vapour pumping from the two shops below that his flat was above either a launderette or an Indian restaurant. When he turned into his own gate there were a dozen empty vats that had once contained ghee, as big as drums, lined along the path. The front door was a plain red slab and white bars lined the windows of a room that turned out to be a dark, messy little kitchen. A pair of bicycles hung on wall hooks and there was a two-seater sofa strewn with takeaway menus.

‘Does someone else live here?’ Paul asked. He had never been inside, let alone lived in, a house that wasn’t a family home.

‘Couple of Polish guys who work on the lorries, apparently,’ Ross replied. ‘I reckon you’ll barely see them. It’s as good as having the place to yourself.’

The staircase they crept up had no natural light and the landing on the first floor was in darkness. Only a thin white cord of daylight was visible through the door that, he decided, must lead to the front bedroom. Up a further flight of stairs the only open room, the top front, must then be his. It was a good size, with cheap fitted wardrobes taking up a whole wall, giving more storage space than any one person, even a girl, could ever use. The bed was nestled into the dormer window, the pane of which was gauzy with dirt. It was bigger than the matterss he’d had at Daniel’s, smaller than the double he’d had to himself at his mum’s. Paul noted in alarm that it was made up with blankets, a slippery beige and brown counterpane with a complex hatching pattern folded stiffly over the top layer. He would have to buy his own duvet.

Ross presented Paul with the leaflets. Topmost was a bus timetable.

‘The K12 takes you right up to the site,’ he said. ‘Yours is the stop just after the village. Blink and you’ll miss it.’

‘The bus stop?’

‘The village. I feel bad leaving you like this,’ said Ross. ‘I’d stay and have an introductory pint with you but I’ve got to get back to the site and then after that I’m on a promise with the barmaid at the Kelstice Arms. Monday, after work? We’ll have a beer?’

‘I’d like that,’ said Paul.

He stood on his bed and watched the street. Ross emerged from the alleyway to wait at the bus stop just below his bedroom window, texting constantly. Paul wondered if he should have taken his number, then remembered that he no longer had a working phone. His insides dropped as he realised that he had thrown away Emily’s number, and had never bothered to memorise it. Not that it changed things, not that she would want to hear from him again, especially not now.

The rest of the flat didn’t take long to survey. There was no communal living room and no television, just the kitchen, one bathroom and three bedrooms. The bathroom backed onto the railway arches. A tattered net curtain was all that stood between his modesty and the commuters.

Paul began tentatively to explore Leamington. Most of the pubs at his end of town had open doors but frosted windows. He turned right at the end of the High Street where there was a park and some pleasant, vaguely official-looking buildings, after which the street changed its name to The Parade and the architecture changed for the better. The Parade consisted of two long, opposing, creamy Regency terraces on a gentle slope, so that the entire street appeared to have been carved through a chalk hill. Shops and restaurants occupied the ground floors: Paul stopped when he came to the plate-glass welcome of a Wetherspoon’s. After a couple of pints he was confident enough to go into the Balti house underneath his flat. The chicken curry, which came in a little silver bowl, was the first thing he’d eaten since his sandwich in London and it burned like acid in his throat and ribcage. Back at the flat, there was no sign of his Polish housemates.

He went to bed around ten and woke with a start at midnight to the shouting, vomiting and fighting of closing time. He spent the next few hours in a restless trance. Shortly after five, when he thought things must surely have died down for the night, the trains started again, shaking the house from top to bottom. By about eight, the sound had built up to white noise and through that he slept deeply.

Saturday began with a sense of purpose, but once he’d bought a new SIM card and some proper bedclothes the day lacked focus. Paul grew anxious. His days and nights had been timetabled by Daniel for as long as he could remember and he wore his new autonomy awkwardly. On Sunday, he decided to have a dry run of his route into work. His timetable told him that the K12 bus ran every hour on Sundays and his was right on schedule.

Within minutes they were in the countryside. The roads had no markings and the scattered houses were all of a uniform pinky-brown brick. Some of them even had actual thatched roofs. The road veered sharply to the right to reveal a little humpbacked bridge made of the same red stone. It would have looked like a picture postcard if it hadn’t been flanked by two signs saying
Kill Your Speed: 12 casualties on this road in 2008
. The bus driver took the bridge and the bend so fast that he was almost on two wheels. It wasn’t until Paul saw a pub blackboard advertising Sunday lunches at the Kelstice Arms that it occured to him that he must be in the right place. Gripping the handrail and bracing himself, he pressed the buzzer. How were you supposed to know that that was a bus stop? It looked like a garden shed with the front wall missing.