She looked around. Where would Fishbo keep papers? Old addresses, letters, that kind of thing. She opened the cupboard in his bedside table, but there was only a tower of magazines in there. She couldn’t help herself, even though she didn’t really want to know if the mags were that kind, but it was okay: on the cover of the top one was a picture of Louis Armstrong with his trumpet at his lips, and Opal could tell that it was the same magazine all the way down.
And in the drawer on top, there was only more cigarettes, more matchbooks, a watch and a spare watch strap, a couple of odd little keys, and a small clay pipe—a Popeye pipe—that Opal had never seen Fishbo using.
Next, the chest of drawers. The bottom drawers were filled with cardigans, knitted tank tops, long-sleeved vests, and long-legged pants. In the middle were summer shirts and short vests, pants that were a bit more normal—but only a bit. And in the top drawer were socks—really terrible socks, black nylon washed without any softener so they were stiff and crackly and all with a row of white pillies along the tops of the heels where they rubbed against his shoes. As well as the socks there was a pile of folded and ironed handkerchiefs, the ones Fishbo always had to mop his face when he was onstage. She was glad he’d graduated to tissues for his cough. Imagine having to wash the hankies after he had used them now! She fingered one of the smooth white squares and felt the embroidered initial. EG—Eugene Gordon. He hated that name, but he had it embroidered on his hankies? Not FG or even just F? She looked quickly down through the pile. Nope. EG, it was. Or GG sometimes. Fishbo might be Fishbo in every other part of his life but he was Gene or Eugene Gordon on his hankies, and it made Opal smile.
There was only one place left now. She lifted the latch on the old-fashioned brown wood wardrobe and tried to open the door. Stuck. She tried again. Locked? Then she remembered the keys in the bedside drawer.
One was definitely a suitcase key, but one looked older and more sturdy and when she fitted into the lock on the wardrobe door, it turned. Weird, Opal thought. That’s got to slow you down in the morning—having to fetch a key and unlock your wardrobe. Then she saw what was inside and understood, because here was where Fishbo kept his private things. His treasures. A trumpet case, a hat box, a cricket bat, about half a dozen flat packages wrapped in yellowed crepe paper and tied with string that she thought, when she felt them, were picture frames. Family photos. They must be! And as well as all that there were newspapers, a whole great big pile of them. Yorkshire Evening Posts on the top. A couple from ten years ago. The headline: “Little Leeds Lad Still Missing: Prayer Vigil Tonight.”
Opal looked at that one for a long moment, but then told herself nothing would be more normal than to keep a newspaper about the biggest news that had ever happened on the street where you live.
But what if the other papers were about other children gone missing? She checked. The next one was the Yorkshire Evening Post again but whatever had made Fishbo keep it, it wasn’t front-page stuff. And the next, folded open at the right page, made Opal let her breath go in a big rush. “Mote Street Boys Raise the Roof” it said, and there was a photo of them. They were all slimmer—except Fishbo, who was a tiny bit fatter if anything, not such a bag of bones as now—but they all wore exactly the clothes they still chose today—the leather waistcoats and string ties, the pork-pie hats and deck-chair-striped blazers.
She skipped the rest of the Evening Posts—there were only a few—and dug down to a more-yellowed, different-sized paper, not standing up so well to being kept all these years. The Daily Gleaner. She lifted the top one—it would be interesting to see a real New Orleans—
“What the hell are you doing?” Pep Kendal’s voice froze her like a searchlight on a prison break and instinctively she ducked her head down between her shoulder blades to dodge the blow. None came, so she turned very slowly, hoping against hope that Fishbo was exhausted from his bath and asleep in Pep’s arms. It was even better than that: Pep’s arms were empty, hanging by his sides as he stared at Opal kneeling there.
“I—” she said. “Is Mr. Fish okay?”
“I came to get him some clean pajamas. I forgot to take them through and he wouldn’t hear of me shouting to you to bring them.” Pep’s face hardened. “He’s a private man, Opal. Always has been. No matter how sick he is, he still deserves his dignity.”
“It’s only newspapers,” said Opal, brash as she always was when someone gave her a proper row, and as she said the word she had a brainwave. “I needed some newspaper to finish off the window. Look at the streaks I’ve left on it!” Pep did look, briefly, but when he brought his gaze back to Opal, it was through narrowed eyes.
“You found the wardrobe key and unlocked it to see if there was any old newspa—tchah!”
“No,” said Opal, colouring up. “I opened the wardrobe to see if there was a clean blanket in here.” She stared back at him as hard as he was staring at her, and at last he faltered. Then she started piling the newspapers back in to the bottom of the wardrobe as she had found them. “But these are all too old and dry anyway. It’ll just have to stay streaky.”
“I better get back,” Pep said, with a glance over his shoulder. Opal stood and opened the second drawer down on the chest, where the pajamas were, and took a pair out. It was only when she was handing them over that Pep’s eyes and hers met and they both realized that the only way she could know where they were was if she had been snooping.
THIRTY-ONE
Well so what if she had, Opal argued to herself, stomping back over the road. She was still blushing, and between that and the lather she had worked up getting the hoovering done and the sheets on in three minutes flat before Pep and Fishbo came out of the bathroom, she felt as if she had a coating all over her: lemon cleaner and carpet powder and old tobacco. But she was sure there were answers in that wardrobe, and she would get back in there no matter what Pep Kendal had to say. Because The Gleaner must have been kept for the same reasons as the Evening Post. Fishbo was in there, or someone he knew, maybe even announcements of births and deaths. Or why else would he have saved them? Never mind saved! Packed them and brought them all this way when he came.
She dumped her hoover down on the step and put in her key.
“Got yourself another little job?” came the voice from directly across the road. Opal blew her breath out and turned.
“Just helping out, Mrs. Pickess,” she said. That was all the excuse Mrs. Pickess needed to bustle over and take a good long searching look at what Opal had in her hands.
“You don’t want to be wasting your money on that rubbish,” she said, nodding at the bottles of freshener and cleaner with her lips pursed. “It’s nowt but perfume. It won’t budge muck, it just covers it up with a smell.”
“Well, it’s my money,” said Opal.
“Nowt but chemicals,” Mrs. Pickess said. “And it’s not good for you. Mr. Pickess used to get terrible asthma, every month. It were the oven cleaner. I went back to wire wool and hot suds and he never ailed again.”
Until he died, Opal couldn’t stop herself thinking. Then: “Great,” she said, proud of herself for managing it. “Listen, Mrs. Pickess, I could really do with putting my feet up.”
“Young piece like you?” said Mrs. Pickess, scandalised and unbelieving.
Opal knew she should guard her tongue but it had been such a long hot hell of a day and Mrs. Pickess was the tin lid on it. She gave way to irritation. “Why not come in and have a drink?” she said with her sweetest smile. “I’m sure there’s a bottle of brandy and it’s a good make, smooth as anything. D’you like brandy, Mrs. Pickess?”
Mrs. Pickess stood very still.
“I’m no drinker,” she said.
“Me neither,” said Opal. “I didn’t buy it. It’s left over from my mum. She must have bought it herself, eh?”
“I’ve left summat on the ring,” said Mrs. Pickess, beginning to move away.
“Oh?” said Opal. “Hope it’s not a chip pan.”
“Stock,”
Mrs. Pickess said.
Opal couldn’t help laughing, and she thought that maybe letting her tongue run on wasn’t such a bad idea after all. She’d just confirmed that Mrs. Pickess really did know about Nic’s brandy. Why else would the mention of it freak her out this way?
“Right,” she said. “Stock.” She looked up at the pale pink glow in the sky, the muggy haze that hung over Mote Street. “It’s just the weather for a pot of broth. Wish I’d thought of doing one.”
She couldn’t face so much as a lettuce leaf, actually. She’d a sick headache like when Steph had been gloss-painting, and she wondered if Mrs. Pickess might be right about the chemicals as well as the newspaper for windows. She sat down at the kitchen table and got her Golden Threads notepad out. She hadn’t written in it—hadn’t so much as looked at it—for days. And so when she started, she was surprised to see how much ground she’d covered since last time. Lena Martell and finding Karen—finding out that Karen had no suspicions about Craig’s dad. She’d just about jumped down Opal’s throat for hinting that Robbie was involved. Opal twiddled her pen. That was rock-solid, wasn’t it? A woman might protect her husband no matter what he’d done—happened all the time—but if she hit the roof and defended her ex-husband, that really meant something. And if she defended her ex-husband to his girlfriend’s daughter, when his girlfriend’s daughter was poking her nose in, she must be really sure.
And why exactly had Opal suspected Robbie Southgate, anyway? Witchy Pickess made her. Hinting and gossiping …
She always acted like she was better than everyone else. Holier than thou. But Vonnie Pickess was a gossip. She shopped Nicola and the police took Nic’s house apart and probably gave her a really hard time. So Nic retaliated the way that only she knew how. God knows what tale she threatened to tell to pay Mrs. Pickess back again. So Mrs. Pickess bought the brandy to shut her up and keep her in line. And if Nic had threatened Mrs. Pickess’s precious reputation with some gossip of her own, that explained why Mrs. Pickess never blabbed Margaret’s secret. She didn’t dare. Scared of comeback. Of course, it wasn’t nice to think that your mum was a bully and a blackmailer, but it was better than what Opal had been thinking. Anything was better than that.
So she’d answered three of her questions then. She’d done a good bit to get three suspects off her list. Robbie, Vonnie Pickess, and Nicola. At least, they weren’t off the list exactly, but they could be explained away.
And Pep and Fishbo were never on the list.
So did that mean the Joshis were the prime suspects now? Because they had kept Margaret’s secret and they alone had no reason to? And because they had whispered—Zula and Mr. Joshi that day—about Opal asking questions and about … what was the other thing? Opal tried to remember what it was she had heard when she was putting the shopping away. Something about offering to help Opal and giving stuff to Nicola that she probably sold anyway. Nicola again. Opal started to let her mind drift, trying to see a pattern, but the sick headache flooded her and she had to catch her breath and swallow.
Something about Nic and Robbie and little Craig and what Mr. Joshi had said and … it just wasn’t there, and she didn’t want to chase it. Maybe if she thought about something else for a while it would come back to her. Or maybe—and she might prefer this—if she thought about something else, it would sink below the surface and stay there for good.
So onto another thread and again she couldn’t help being chuffed at how far she had come with the little bed girl, as she was still calling Norah in her mind. She’d made miles of progress there. She’d found out that whatever happened to Norah, it was her brother Martin that did it to her, and decided that it was absolutely the right thing to do, even after all these years, to try to help. Because Norah wasn’t over it; she wasn’t okay. She was still scared and sorry and bewildered. And Martin had children and grandchildren, and for all Opal knew they were scared and sorry too. And unless she found out that Martin was dead, she was going to track him down and tell him she knew what he had done.
Once she found out what it was, anyway. And once she had some definite proof too. So she had to find the other half of the bed, and put the whole north-south-east-west letter together again. If you could even call it a letter; it was more like a spell. Or a prayer. She remembered Norah’s little leather prayer book sitting beside her bed in the nursery bedroom and wondered if she would have written anything else in there.
Also, she should track down the rest of the family. That shouldn’t be too hard. There were contact numbers pasted up all over that kitchen; the niece and nephew had to be two of them.
And as for the third golden strand? Okay, Pep didn’t agree about finding Mr. Fish’s family for him, but it wasn’t Pep’s call. Somehow she’d get back into that wardrobe to track down names and addresses. Then of course she’d have to write, which would take forever and Fishbo, even though he’d definitely throw off this chest infection once the antibiotics kicked in, certainly didn’t have forever. Not if he wanted to take a long plane journey and still be alive and kicking at the end of it. So she could phone, which would be really expensive. But then again, her three golden threads had so far cost her one return bus fare to Ilkley, so she thought she could spare enough for a phone call to America if push came to shove. Maybe some of it could be done at the library on email.
She hadn’t ever had email at home. Kate and Rhianne would. But she didn’t want to tell them she didn’t have a computer and couldn’t afford to buy one and didn’t have any other friends who had one. If the library didn’t work out, she’d ask someone who already knew she had no money. Michael? Steph wouldn’t let her back in the house. The Joshis would have the Internet for sure, but she couldn’t ask them, because Zula would stand and read everything she was typing over her shoulder. And Margaret, Mrs. Pickess, and Pep would no more have the Internet than they would … Opal tried to think of something less likely … than they would install jacuzzis in their outhouses.
Then another big wave of nausea washed over her and it left the pain in her head sharper and stronger than before, like a drill coming in under her skull. Cool shower, she thought. Might as well stand under it since it’s on anyway.
And the water had worked. Upstairs was not only not boiling hot anymore, it was almost chilly, so Opal went into the small back bedroom to close the window there. Three daddy longlegs had come in and were rattling about where the ceiling joined the wall; she’d forgotten how her room had always been full of them and she’d not been in there much since she came back. She looked around. This was where she would put her desk and computer if she had one. Maybe she’d get hold of a cheap desk and put it in here anyway, keep her notepad up here. It would be better than leaving her notes lying around the kitchen where anyone might see them. And the view was better too. Or at least you could see a bit farther. She went over to the window and looked out.
The backs of the big houses were dark against the pale pink sky, and the yellow oblongs of their lighted windows made Opal think of advent calendars. She wished she was close enough to see inside to what the families who lived there were doing. Not standing in an empty room planning the incredible luxury of a cheap desk anyway! She took her eyes away and let it rest on the trees instead. It wasn’t like her to be so chippy, she thought. Maybe the picking was getting to her: the avocados and pumpkin seed crisp breads, the endless bloody bottles of Cava people seemed to need to deal with a decent summer. But that wasn’t fair: Franz Ferdi used the online shop, and he never ate anything fancy.
Thinking of him she flicked a glance down at the yards, hers and his, and jumped. He was standing there.
THIRTY-TWO
She hadn’t heard him because for once he wasn’t crying. He was just standing with his head down in the middle of the concrete, looking at something on the ground in front of him. Opal watched him. He didn’t move. And now she couldn’t stop watching him because if she moved, he might hear her, the window being open the way it was and the night being so very stil
l, nothing moving at all except the soft rattling of the daddy longlegs dancing around above her head in the empty room.
When he did move, Opal shrank back, holding onto the window frame. She hadn’t seen the thing in his hand, but it glinted when he raised his arms and she was sure she could hear it whistling as he brought it smashing down. When he lifted it again she got a clearer view and she could see it was a hammer, shiny metal with a long slim handle, and he was pounding something bright and brittle that lay on the concrete floor of the yard. Shards of plastic flew around, hitting the walls, and one flew right over and landed in Opal’s yard, just by the outhouse door.
And still he kept going, starting to chase the pieces around until he had beaten them all down as small as they would go, little splinters of red and blue plastic, then he hurled his hammer at the back wall of the yard and disappeared into the kitchen, slamming the door so hard Opal could feel her own bedroom floor shaking underneath her.
She waited, wondering if anyone else had heard, if someone else would come to the back gate and look over to see what the noise was, but after the slammed door stopped echoing in her ears there was perfect silence again. She looked at the curved jagged piece of blue plastic lying in her yard, and it jolted her back to life again. If she could see over his wall, then he could see over hers, and if he looked out of his back window and saw that lying there, he might come to get it. Opal didn’t want the man who had swung that hammer so fast it had whistled coming into her yard.
But before she could stir herself he was out again. And he went straight to his gate, trampling over the mess of plastic, wrenched it open, and disappeared out into the lane. Opal stepped back and waited to see him fill her open gateway, but he didn’t appear. And there were more noises now. She sidled up to the window and listened. He was chucking stuff into his wheelie bin; she could hear it bouncing on its little rubber wheels and the unmistakable hollow thump of the lid hitting against the body every time something landed inside.
As She Left It Page 19
