Agnes closed the photograph album and set it aside absently. I tried not to show how startled and subtly horrified I was by her apparent lack of emotion. ‘She was clumsy?’ I asked.
‘Dunno, really—she didn’t normally trip up and break things and that. But she was useless round the house. More trouble than it was worth, letting her do a thing. Bernadette normally did her chores for her, even when she was old enough to do them herself. I was working by then, so I couldn’t.’
‘What was she like, apart from that?’
‘Like I said, not that bright. Too easily led by the other kids, you know.’ A brief pause, in which I saw her thinking deeply—her expression was that of an earnest student in an unexpectedly tough final exam. ‘Like, she got done for nicking sweets from the corner shop when she was about seven. She was hanging around with a couple of older kids—course, they’d put her up to it. The lady from the shop knew Mum and come round to complain. The older kids just lied their way out of trouble, said they hadn’t known nothing about it. But Mum knew poor Eleanor was telling the truth, she didn’t have the brains to do anything else. She wasn’t allowed to go round with those kids, after that. God knows what they’d have talked her into next.’
‘Was she happy at school? Before she met Rebecca?’
‘Dunno. Suppose so. She was always going out and playing with the other kids round here and that. Mind you, it all changed when she met that little cow. Rebecca this, Rebecca that. They acted like they was joined at the hip.’
I watched Agnes closely. ‘Did Rebecca ever come to visit Eleanor at home, when you were there?’
‘A few times. All she ever did was try and get poor Eleanor out of the house—didn’t want nothing to do with the rest of us. Stuck-up little cow, like the rest of her family. You should have seen the way her mum looked, when she dropped her off here—like she had a bad smell under her nose. Drove this big flashy sports car, stuck out round here like a sore thumb. She was always tarted up to the nines even first thing in the morning. Looked just like Rebecca, she did.’
‘But Rebecca was adopted, wasn’t she?’
‘Was she?’ Indifference looked back at me, unsurprised, uninterested. ‘Well, I dunno, then. She still looked like her.’
A slightly too-long silence. Suddenly, I was afraid she’d bring this interview to an arbitrary end, and searched my mind for another avenue of enquiry. ‘I heard Rebecca bought things for Eleanor, as if she was trying to buy her friendship. Did you ever see any of the presents at the time?’
‘Oh, yeah. There was this gold bracelet once—I found it under poor Eleanor’s bed, showed it to Mum. That started some trouble, all right. Mum went on and on at her asking her where she’d got it. When she said Rebecca’d give it to her, Mum made her put her coat on right away. Said the two of them would have to go straight round the Fishers’ house and give it back, said no kid would be allowed to give away something like that.’ It was a clear echo of that Daily Mail article, and was also the first time I’d heard Agnes laugh; her amusement seemed to come out of nowhere, for no reason. ‘They didn’t get back till hours later because it was such a long walk, but you should have seen Mum’s face when they did. Never saw her so angry in my life. Face like thunder, told us all about it as soon as she’d got in the door.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Oh, all about Rebecca’s mum. That stuck-up cow treating her like dirt and what have you. Rebecca’s mum didn’t even invite them in, just kept them on the doorstep like they was rubbish, and called Rebecca down from her room. Asked her if it was true she’d given her bracelet away. Course, Rebecca said it was, but her mum just snatched it back like poor Eleanor had nicked it, got really snotty, said her little girl wouldn’t be giving anything else to our family if she had any say in it. Then she just sent them off with a flea in their ear. Mum was hopping mad about it for days.
‘Well, she wasn’t happy about Eleanor playing with Rebecca, not after that—said if we weren’t good enough for Rebecca, then Rebecca wasn’t good enough for us. But it was only a couple of weeks later that poor Eleanor went missing. She must have been meeting up with the little cow in spite of what Mum said. Like I said, she weren’t that bright. Didn’t seem to understand much of anything.’
I had a question burning a hole in my mind, but could find no diplomatic way of phrasing it, and finally realised it could only be asked outright. ‘It sounds as though Rebecca was a very possessive kind of friend to Eleanor,’ I said carefully. ‘At the time, with the expensive presents and everything, didn’t it strike any of you as being a bit sinister?’
‘Not really. Me and Mum was working most of the time, Pat and Mary had boyfriends, Bernadette and the others just had their own mates. You know.’ A brief pause, in which I observed an apparently uncharacteristic moment of insight—the essential coldness of the household she’d described, a group of indifferent strangers sharing bedrooms and blood groups and nothing else. When she spoke again, there was an edge of defensiveness to her voice. ‘I did tell her it weren’t right once, it weren’t normal to hang round with kids in different years, even kids from round here. But poor Eleanor didn’t pay any attention.’
I became aware of the too-loud telly for the first time in some minutes; a middle-aged man in a bright purple suit was pulling faces and gesticulating wildly, to fits of canned laughter that had a slightly disturbing, hysterical edge. ‘Well, I think that’s all I need to know,’ I said. ‘Thanks a lot—you’ve been very helpful.’
I rose to my feet and she looked up. ‘You going to send us a copy of your book, when it’s done?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be quite some time, though—I’m just researching it at the moment.’
‘But you’ll mention my name in the credits and that?’ I nodded. It was perhaps the first time I’d seen her smile without an edge of sullen, judgemental misanthropy. ‘My mum talked to loads of journalists about poor Eleanor,’ she said confidentially, ‘kept a scrapbook of all the cuttings. She was in the Daily Mail once. Left it to me when she died—that’s it, up there on the shelf.’
Curiosity rose inside me, but was instantly forced back—I couldn’t get out of this claustrophobic little living room quickly enough, out of this woman’s blank, spiteful, profoundly unnerving presence. ‘I’m sure it’s very interesting,’ I said, taking a step backwards, towards the door. ‘Thanks again. I’ll let you know when my book finally comes out.’
There was no hiatus of hallway between living room and street, and I stepped straight out onto the pavement. As the door closed behind me, I couldn’t help taking a deep breath, urgently in need of fresh air. There was something insidious, not in her possession of that scrapbook, but her naked pride in it; I imagined her reading through it and glorying in the sight of her family’s names in print, not even recognising the vast gulf between the words in the cuttings and the reality she’d lived through. I thought of the rose-tinted Catherine Cookson idyll the Daily Mail had portrayed—the loving extended family, financial hardships counterbalanced by warmth and togetherness—and held the images up against the big, pale woman with the lank hair, her emotionless, dutiful references to poor Eleanor.
As I walked, a picture of the life Eleanor Corbett must have led back then slowly crept up on me. A mental image of these streets in 1969 became clearer, as I imagined how they’d look bare of bristling satellite dishes and phone lines. No river or open parks or trees or even front gardens to interrupt the monotony and give the senses space to breathe, just red-brick terraces and narrow roads, occasional concreted-over yards that were either junk-filled or empty. It occurred to me that Eleanor would have had no reason to go beyond this area in the usual run of things, except when she went to school. Even during weekends, I expected she’d have stayed here. As the picture sharpened, I felt a combination of claustrophobia and pity. The network of empty streets took on the feel of a prison cell with a single high window: seasons could change, years could pass, and nothing would ever alt
er here but the colour of the sky.
I could have got a taxi to Melanie Cook’s house, but preferred to walk—I had comprehensive directions and plenty of time, and there was something inexplicably reassuring about the gradual change in my scenery. The relentless dictatorship of red-brick terraces began to loosen its grip, and then was over completely. Down a wide, tree-lined road on the outskirts of the town centre, I passed a pub called the Golden Lion. Blackboards outside promised toad-in-the-hole and cod and chips, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten all day. I sat in the sunshine on one of the wooden benches outside, first with a Diet Coke, then a ploughman’s lunch, then a cigarette. As I was lighting it, I saw a little group of seven- or eight-year-olds running together across the road, shrieking happily. Their shrill voices tumbled down the pavement like something blown by the wind, and lingered a long time in the quiet distance.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ANNETTE WATSON, Judith Davies and East Lancashire Online had all told me that Teasford had changed dramatically over the years, but they hadn’t told me how. I’d imagined it all evolving simultaneously, while, in reality, certain areas had raced ahead, leaving others far behind. If the post-war terraces near the railway station had been alive with bleak and petty history, the private housing estate where Melanie lived had the inviolate, pristine newness of a doll fresh out of its box on Christmas morning: well-tended lawns, twin coachlights on either side of front doors, adjoining garages. The interior of her house matched its atmosphere detail for detail; everything in the kitchen we sat in looked spotless, wipeable, apparently unused.
‘We should have the house to ourselves for an hour or so,’ she was saying over a cup of coffee. ‘My husband’s off watching the football with the boys and his dad—the boys are both primary school aged, so it’s a bit more peaceful here without them.’
Melanie was a pleasant-looking brunette in her mid-forties, with a charm both impersonal and impossible to dislike—her manner was that of an efficient receptionist at a good hotel. ‘Are they at St Anthony’s themselves?’ I asked. ‘Your sons?’
‘That’s right. Of course, it’s much better these days. I hardly recognise the old place when I do the school run. It used to be very run-down, and quite a lot smaller.’
‘You knew Rebecca there,’ I said, ‘didn’t you?’
‘That’s right—well, as I said on the phone, I didn’t really know her. She was a year below me, but I think everyone knew who she was. She was a bit of a celebrity there, thanks to those parents of hers.’ She frowned, correcting herself. ‘Adoptive parents, anyway—I remember reading in the paper that she wasn’t their real daughter. I was quite surprised I’d never known. I don’t think anyone else at St Anthony’s was adopted—you’d have thought word would have got around.’
‘That is pretty strange,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘What did you think of her?’
‘Not very much, to be honest. I don’t mean I disliked her, just that she struck me as surprisingly ordinary. With a family like that, you’d have thought she’d be an arrogant, spoilt little princess, but she seemed just like any other quiet little girl, a bit shy, nobody’s idea of a troublemaker. Lovely clothes and things, school uniform or not—her mother must have bought it all from some expensive shop miles away, it was far smarter than anyone else’s—and of course, she was amazingly pretty. Apart from that… God, I could kick myself for not noticing anything else… I suppose she was a bit of a disappointment to all of us. I think we’d have quite liked to have an authentic rich bitch around the place—it would have made our schooldays much more interesting.’
She broke off for a second, looking thoughtful. ‘It’s funny. I only saw her father—her adoptive father—once, and he was an awful disappointment as well. I must have been eleven or so, and someone pointed him out to me, driving past. He was a sort of legend around the area, owning the big factory and everything. The way everyone talked about him, he was richer than Bill Gates. But from the little I saw of him, he looked much like anyone else. Glasses, dark hair. Ordinary sort of car.’ She smiled. ‘I remember being quite annoyed that he didn’t have a chauffeur. Or even white hair, or a big cigar. Well, I suppose you live and learn.’
‘Did you ever see her adoptive mother at all?’
‘Oh, God, did I ever. She was definitely the colourful one in that family. You couldn’t possibly not have noticed her when she came to pick Rebecca up from school—her husband’s car might have been ordinary, but hers wasn’t. She had this incredible two-seater sports thing, pillar-box red. I think it would look pretty good these days, but it must have cost a fortune back then. She certainly knew how to attract attention, that woman—not the good kind, either. She seemed to have a genius for rubbing people up the wrong way.’
‘In what way?’ I asked. ‘What did she do?’
‘Well, it was everything about her, really. I know how vague and annoying that must sound, but I don’t know how else to put it.’ Again, the thoughtful look, then I saw her face light up unexpectedly. ‘Actually, I can think of a specific example. I heard about it from a friend’s mother, who’d tried to strike up a conversation with her at the school gates one day. You’d really have had to know what my friend’s mother was like; she couldn’t see a stranger without launching into a heart-to-heart. Just as poor as most of us were, then, but she wouldn’t have been a bit embarrassed to talk to the Queen herself.
‘Anyway, she just said something complimentary about Rebecca’s mother’s new hairstyle, and they started talking politely enough, then Rebecca’s mother said something about it being hard to keep her hair perfectly clean in the summer. Something like that, anyway. What I do remember is that she said you people, as in I suppose you people don’t worry so much about that. My friend’s mother remembered it word for word a year later, and still got angry whenever she mentioned it—“you people,” she’d say, “bloody cheek.” She said the most incredible thing was that Rebecca’s mother said it quite blithely, as if she had no idea it might cause offence. Anyway, my friend’s mother never spoke another word to her, after that—always said Mrs Fisher was a poisonous woman.
‘Actually, I heard her and my own mother talking about Mrs Fisher, once. Well, bitching about her, really. They said she’d been the one with the money to begin with, and that was the only reason Dennis Fisher had married her. Called him a cold fish. Apparently, her own father had been a millionaire, or close to one—he’d owned a lot of coal mines round here, before they’d all closed down. Local boy made good, like the great Dennis Fisher himself.’
I couldn’t help but be interested by the introduction of this new character, the elegant mother the Daily Mail had referred to so casually in passing. ‘What did you think of Mrs Fisher yourself?’
‘I can’t say I ever spoke to her. I remember she had this very loud, very posh voice that really carried. Nobody talks like that unless they’re the Duchess of Devonshire or something, and I knew she’d grown up near Teasford herself. There was something terribly artificial about it, trying really hard to project the right image. Everything about her was like that. The way she walked, the way she dressed. Even what she looked like.’
I remembered what Agnes had told me. ‘I heard she looked a lot like Rebecca.’
‘Whoever told you that must have needed their eyes testing. Mrs Fisher couldn’t have looked like Rebecca in her wildest dreams.’ Melanie’s expression was frankly incredulous. ‘Oh, she had lovely hair, she was always perfectly made-up, and as for her clothes—I don’t think I ever saw her wearing an outfit that Vogue wouldn’t have put on the cover. But her actual looks…there’s no nice way to say this, but she looked like a man. Not a handsome one, either. Small eyes, big nose, heavy jaw. You certainly couldn’t have called her attractive.’ She broke off for a second, looking deep in thought. ‘It was strange how all the things she could change about herself were so beautiful, and all the things she couldn’t were anything but. I suppose these days she’d have plastic surgery—she certainly had the mone
y, and anyone who spent that much time on their hair and makeup must have had the inclination—but back then it was totally unheard of. Whoever told you she looked like Rebecca?’
‘I interviewed someone else before l came here—one of Eleanor’s sisters, Agnes. She was the one who said that.’
‘That explains it. God, those Corbett sisters! I don’t have anything to do with them these days, but one of them was in my class at St Anthony’s. Bernadette, it was, but it might as well have been any of the others. They were all practically identical, apart from Eleanor.’ Melanie sighed deeply. ‘I suppose they were harmless; they certainly weren’t troublemakers, or anything like that. But they were so stupid, it was depressing. They didn’t seem to have a single original thought or sense of humour between the lot of them. I can quite believe they’d have thought Rebecca and Mrs Fisher looked alike. Both quite slim. Both well-dressed. And of course, they both had shiny blonde hair.’
Melanie’s expression was one of comic but genuine exasperation. I found I could relate to it only too well. ‘Did the others in your class think the same?’ I asked. ‘About the Corbett girls, I mean?’
‘Oh, I think a few did. There were plenty of others who didn’t seem to notice or care how blank they were—they’d grown up as near neighbours, and knew each other’s families, so, the way they thought, the Corbett sisters had to be all right. But, to me, there was something infuriating about that family, just like nails down a blackboard. There was something—it sounds so nasty, but—cow-like about all of them. Except Eleanor, anyway. As I said, she wasn’t quite like the others.’
‘How was she different?’
‘Oh, she just seemed to have a bit more life. Not necessarily in a good way, but I thought anything was better than those sisters of hers. She was two years below me, so I didn’t know her at all well, but I can still remember her clearly. Before she fell in with Rebecca, she used to tag round after a group of kids in my class sometimes. I heard something about them stealing sweets together, but I don’t know the details.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but that girl had the persistence of a door-to-door salesman. I heard the kids in my year telling her to go away in the playground sometimes, only, you know, a bit less politely. But she always came straight back. Finally, I think they just resigned themselves to putting up with her. Short of running away every time they saw her, there wasn’t much else they could do.’
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