by Alice Castle
‘No, no,’ Janice said. ‘Nothing like that.’
Beth breathed out but noticed shadows like violet thumbprints under her friend’s eyes. And, even more worryingly, the buttons on her trademark cashmere cardigan were done up all wrong.
‘What is it, then?’ Under her fringe, Beth’s forehead wrinkled. Was there something amiss with her tiny goddaughter?
‘It’s this. It’s very important that you answer me honestly. I feel that everyone’s been lying to me for so long,’ said Janice, tears trembling on her long eyelashes.
‘Look, let’s sit down,’ Beth said, steering Janice to one of the wonderfully squishy sofas designed to cosset anxious parents while their offspring were being interviewed. ‘Now, just ask me and I’ll help if I can,’ she said slowly and gently.
‘Do babies, well, do they… do they ever fucking sleep through the night?’
Despite her friend’s wail of anguish, Beth couldn’t help laughing. ‘Oh, Janice.’ Then she looked again at the mortified, exhausted face. It wasn’t just the dark circles. Janice’s pretty milkmaid features had taken on a pinched quality which Beth was only just noticing. It seemed cruel to giggle, but Beth was too relieved not to. She couldn’t have borne it if there’d really been anything seriously wrong with the scrap of gorgeousness that was little Elizabeth.
‘Believe me. You’ll look back on this as one of the happiest times with your daughter. Enjoy her while she’s tiny. Yes, she may not sleep, but she’s all yours and she stays where you put her, and she doesn’t answer back, and she wears the clothes you want, and eats what you cook and… oh, she’s your lovely tiny little baby.’
Janice, looking a bit shocked that there might even be a time when all that would change, mumbled something about having a lot to do. Beth immediately felt terrible. She reached out tentatively, then touched her friend’s arm.
‘Listen, I’ve been there. It’s just a long time ago. But I do remember how awful it was, never getting enough sleep, being woken through the night, and worrying all the time… Well, some things never change, hey?’ She smiled but realised she was hardly being reassuring.
‘Just try a few things – later feeds, a different bedtime routine – and something will work. But chances are, it will just be coincidence and she’ll have decided of her own accord to try sleeping for a change,’ Beth said.
‘The other thing is, don’t believe anyone who says they have all the answers. Other mums might try and tell you they’ve cracked it, but there’ll be something down the line that they can’t do and you can, so don’t measure yourself against anyone else.’
Beth rooted in her bag for a clean tissue, found one eventually, and handed it to Janice. Then she pointed to the offending cardi buttons. ‘You might want to, erm…’ she hinted.
Janice flushed and sorted things out. ‘Honestly, I’m a mess at the moment,’ the girl said, bottom lip wobbling perilously.
‘You’re just tired. The short answer is yes, they do sleep through the night. It might take Elizabeth a while, but she’ll get there, and so will you. Do you have anyone who can babysit, let you get out for an hour or two after work?’
‘Magenta would stay later if I asked her to, if Tom and I wanted to go out… but we don’t.’
‘Are you sure? It might do you some good just to have a dinner together, see a film… get a break,’ said Beth, feeling for poor old Dr Grover. He’d had such an ordered life, and a perfect wife… If Janice was reeling, he must be feeling his whole world had fallen apart.
‘I don’t know…’ said Janice, looking as though the idea of leaving Elizabeth, even for a short while, was a terrible betrayal.
‘Listen, I’m happy to have her for an evening. She is my goddaughter. It would be a pleasure,’ Beth found herself saying, then immediately kicked herself. What was she talking about? She was stretched to the limit already with a job she wasn’t doing, a son who was growing away from her, a mother in danger, and a boyfriend who was far too free range for her liking. Adding a newborn into the mix was just completely bonkers.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Janice, delight lighting up her face like the dawn returning to a post-Apocalyptic land.
Beth’s heart sank. That was the face of someone who was definitely going to take her up on her half-witted offer.
‘Can I let you know when?’
‘Of course,’ said Beth, inwardly cursing herself. Great. The only thing she remembered about babies Elizabeth’s age was that they were even harder work than the Maths assignments Ben wasn’t showing her. But never mind. Janice’s smile made it all worth it. Almost.
‘If you want to have a peaceful forty winks now, why don’t you take Colin along to my office and just have a snooze on my desk again? I don’t think anyone will bother you,’ Beth said, knowing full well that the chances of anyone bursting into her domain with urgent archiving that needed doing were well under zilch.
‘But I’d be stopping you from getting on with your work. What will you do?’ said Janice, getting to her feet immediately.
Beth tried to look as if being prevented from making headway with her book outline was going to be a real problem, but gave it up as a bad job. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ve got a lead I could follow up… erm, on some details about Sir Thomas Wyatt,’ she added unconvincingly.
Janice gave her a mild glance but was too sleepy to remonstrate.
Outside the building, Beth handed over her keys and Colin’s lead. Colin goosed Janice quickly, as though going through the motions, getting an inconvenient social ritual out of the way for both their sakes. Janice crossed her legs briefly and exchanged glances with Beth, but then patted the old boy on the head.
Beth watched as they plodded off to the Archive Institute together. Janice was so exhausted that her normally sprightly pace perfectly matched the old dog’s.
Pausing for a moment as they disappeared out of sight, Beth wondered if there was really any merit in her latest hare-brained scheme. But she pushed all such doubts aside and set off herself at a pace which would have had Colin’s tongue unrolling like an old pink carpet.
Ten minutes later, she was on the little patch of grass that separated Pond Cottages from the wide private road hemming the edge of the Wyatt estate. It was as tranquil a spot as you’d ever find within a stone’s throw of the South Circular. Somewhere, the traffic poured on relentlessly, cars and trucks in their endless game of tag. Here, though, the sound was subdued to the level of a rough purr, like big cats playing out of sight – apart from a succession of clangs and clatters. They were coming from a pantechnicon parked at a rakish angle on the grass outside Pond Cottages. From inside it, Beth heard the familiar vinegary tones of south east London workmen dropping stuff on their feet. Outside, a woman with a clipboard looked very cross.
‘Can you get that last rig out? We’re running way behind,’ she shouted into the depths of the van.
Beth took advantage of her distraction to nip past and trot into the front garden of the late Alfie Pole’s bijou home. Though the hollyhocks had faded, the well-stocked flowerbed was still boasting a regiment of late-blooming dark purple and blood red dahlias. Beth loathed dahlias. They were one of the few flowers she actually recognised, but only because the fleshy petals and unnaturally round blooms always looked like three-dimensional bruises to her, particularly in these colours. But they stood as a silent testament to the green fingers of their late owner. His fingers would be very green by now, she thought with a shiver of macabre disgust as she hurried past. To her surprise, the door was open, solving her dilemma about whether to ring or not. She sauntered on in.
Expecting the dark, cool interior of a house designed two hundred years ago, when keeping sunlight from one’s precious embroideries was the biggest design craze going, she was surprised to find that the house was in fact flooded with crisp autumnal light. The back of the place, at the end of the narrow hall she stood in, seemed to be a wall of glass. The passageway led her past a tiny panelled parlour and a slight
ly larger book-lined room, both gorgeous places she’d love to poke around in if she had the time. She’d decided to make for what had to be the kitchen, where all the noise was coming from, when she was hailed by someone coming down the narrow stairs.
Beautiful, tetchy-looking, incredibly thin, and dressed in a virtually transparent floor-length dress, a young woman was waving a wad of papers at her. ‘Hey, you. This scene, yeah?’ she drawled in an accent so American that Beth could almost taste the milkshake and fries. The empire line of her gown was jacking up meagre breasts and exposing a wealth of gooseflesh as she leant over the bannister. ‘So, my motivation here, I mean, you’ve got to be kidding, right? She turns this guy down? Have you seen his house?’
A page fluttered over the newel post and Beth bent to pick it up, scanning it before handing it back. It was a scene which looked strangely familiar. “…the concern I might have felt at refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner…”
Wait a minute, Pride and Prejudice! It was only being made – or remade, for the umpteenth time – right here. Beth could hardly believe it.
‘Mr Darcy? He’s coming? He’s on his way?’ she asked breathlessly.
The woman stared at her, then rolled her eyes contemptuously. ‘You’re not the writer. Who the hell are you? Where’s the runner?’ she grumbled, stomping rudely past, picking up her muslin skirts and revealing Doc Marten boots and stripy fleece socks.
Beth paused for a beat, inwardly thrilled at having been mistaken, however absurdly, for Jane Austen, then followed. At the end of the corridor, Alfie Pole’s house opened up into a beautiful modern kitchen with double doors to quite a spacious garden, in which more workmen were rigging up spotlights, while a woman in jeans was being harangued by a fat middle-aged man, now joined by the rake-thin actress. She detected a flurry of movement on the other side of the fence – was that a rapidly retreating form, heading towards the house next door?
Beth was torn between waiting for Mr Darcy to turn up, primed and ready for his proposal – surely, like most women in Britain, she had waited a lifetime for this moment – and finding out what the hell was going on in Alfie’s house.
She dithered, the seconds lengthening and Pemberley passing before her eyes for the third time, before she stepped forward. On the fringes of the group in the garden was a woman in her mid-thirties looking almost as out of place as Beth, with a mug of tea in each hand, evidently waiting for a pause in the argument so she could pass over her offerings.
Beth closed in on her. ‘Miss, er, Pole?’ she said tentatively.
Immediately, the woman’s head whipped round. ‘Who are you?’
It was the second time Beth had dodged that question in as many minutes. ‘I thought your father swore blind he’d never have films made here?’ she countered, an accusatory tone in her voice.
The woman took a step back, sloshing tea on her hands and wincing. ‘How dare you question my right? This is my house now. And what’s it got to do with you, anyway?’
These were all fair queries, Beth couldn’t help admitting to herself. But something told her to plough on, for Alfie’s sake. ‘He’s not even cold in his grave. What would he have said about all this?
‘That’s absolutely none of your business. And how dare you breeze in here and question me? I’ll report you to the police. This is trespassing. And harassment.’
‘The door was open. And I’m not harassing you,’ said Beth, mentally adding a yet. Whatever relations between the Poles had been while Alfie was alive, his daughter was showing no signs at all of sorrow after his untimely passing. In fact, throwing open his house to a production company at this point seemed almost an obscene act, in view of poor Alfie’s steadfast refusal to “prostitute” the house himself. This woman was going right down in Beth’s estimation – but rapidly ascending her list of possible suspects.
‘Well, close the door on your way out. What I choose to do with my own property is my business,’ Alfie Pole’s daughter hissed.
The large man and the harassed woman broke off from their intense discussion and looked over at her.
‘Everything ok there, Venetia?’ the woman asked in a high-pitched voice. The scrawny actress piped up, ‘That’s the woman I was telling you about,’ and the fat man took a step towards Beth.
Just then, there was a squawk from the woman’s earpiece. ‘What’s that? He’s parking? He’s early. Get him to go round the block. I don’t care if he’s dying for a pee! We’re not ready for him…’
Just as Beth was hoping against hope that she’d soon be meeting Mr Darcy, although perhaps not quite in the propitious circumstances she’d always dreamed of, he was there. Bursting through the front door, striding up the passageway towards them, his face in darkness until, suddenly, there he was, the shards of weak September sun glinting off the high shine on his chestnut riding boots and caressing the unfortunately rather obvious highlights in his mane of painstakingly tousled hair.
She gasped, and so did Venetia Pole. He was magnificent. Then, as she took in the tidemark of foundation around his neck, the petulant curl of his lip, and the fact that not a hair on his head moved as he shook his head this way and that, Beth’s dreams curled up and died. Yes, he was terribly famous – he’d been the star of last year’s massive Netflix hit, Blame the Drones – but somehow he was just, well, a bit meh in the flesh. His bony co-star was welcome to him.
Beth exchanged a surprisingly sympathetic glance with Venetia, then they both remembered that she was distinctly de trop here, and she withdrew, thinking this Mr Darcy was definitely one of the last men in the world she could ever be prevailed upon to marry.
Where did it leave her investigation? That was the question. Venetia Pole’s motive had become three-dimensional, certainly. Each day of filming would be netting her a tidy sum, and the house itself was a substantial asset even without its day job as a backdrop. Did Venetia actively need the money, though?
And was that a glimpse of Alfie’s neighbour she had got while they’d been in the garden?
Once she was outside again and contemplating the fierce cannonball dahlias, Beth hesitated, taking a peek at her watch. Hmm, she just about had time. Janice and Colin would no doubt be fine. Both would be in the Land of Nod by this stage, she was willing to bet. And when would she next be around this way?
She marched back down the path towards the pantechnicon, which was disgorging still more lights, cables, and large black boxes of trickery, no doubt essential for magicking the pair of unappealing actors within into celluloid gorgeousness. Pausing to click Alfie’s gate shut, she opened the one next door, and strode up to that house before she had time to think better of her actions.
Rapping sharply and looking from left to right to see if anyone was watching, she wasn’t surprised when nothing happened immediately. From what she’d seen, Alfie’s neighbour was too busy spying on the filming to pay much attention to her own morning callers.
The workmen didn’t seem remotely interested in her actions, and Venetia Pole was too busy kowtowing to her clients to keep tabs on her. She had nothing to lose by checking a theory.
Just as she was giving up hope, the door cracked open a chink. She could just about see a woman inside, crouched over, her eyes gleaming faintly in the shadowy depths. Raising her index finger, she beckoned Beth in.
On the threshold, Beth took a last look around behind her, then stepped forward, to be swallowed up by the darkness.
Chapter Seventeen
If Alfie Pole’s house had astonished her with its light, his neighbour had gone firmly in the opposite direction. The walls were painted in a blue-black so intense that it seemed to suck the life out of the day, though it made the Japanese plates displayed on them glow as vividly as Alfie’s dahlias.
‘You’ll be from the Council. Come away in,’ said the woman.
Beth couldn’t get a fix on her; she didn’t seem to be a typical Dulwich type at all. For a start, she was Scottish. Then she was short, but wi
th a slight figure, dressed in clothes that Beth recognised with a shock were both boring, and familiar. Well-worn jeans, a jumper bobbling a bit around the arms, feet in plain dark socks. By the front door there was a sorry little line of down-at-heel suede boots. She wore no jewellery, no watch, and was middle-aged. This, at least, was a comfort. She had at least ten years on Beth, if not fifteen.
‘You’ll be wanting to know what’s going on, I take it?’ The woman was fixing her with a surprisingly intense stare from eyes that were midway between blue and green.
‘Um, absolutely,’ said Beth truthfully, then thought she’d better qualify that, in case impersonating a Council officer was an offence of some sort. ‘That is to say, I’m not from Southwark—’
‘You’ll be from the Wyatt’s Estate then. Aha, I thought so,’ the woman said, nodding.
‘Aha,’ echoed Beth, feeling as though she’d strayed somehow into Alan Partridge territory. ‘Although, not quite in the way you might think…’ she added, about to clarify that she did work for Wyatt’s, just not for the Estates.
‘It’s complicated,’ the woman said, nodding. Beth nodded along, knowing she was getting deeper and deeper into what she’d like to describe as subterfuge, but which she knew others – principally big, grumpy policemen of her acquaintance – would call plain lies and deception.
‘Um, what seems to be the trouble?’ Beth asked, crossing her fingers behind her back in the vain hope that this would somehow cover her against any charges of fraud.
‘Well, let me just show you. Probably easier, isn’t it?’ the woman said, ushering Beth down the corridor.
Thus far, it was a mirror of Alfie Pole’s floorplan. But, at the end, where Alfie’s hall opened up into that magnificent all-mod-cons kitchen, this one finished in a small door which, when opened, gave onto a room that was still straight out of the 1950s. Poky and as dark as the corridor they’d left behind, this little kitchen was clean and tidy but utterly uninspiring. There was frosted glass in the back door – the type that was thick and swirly and stopped you seeing out. But a very small window over the old aluminium sink showed a small rectangle of the garden.
