Where Everything Seems Double

by Penny Freedman

  The play was really good. When they had read it at school Mrs Endicott had done her best to help them to imagine it on stage, and they had watched some bits of a film, but it was difficult really to get into it with someone like Hester Biggs-Anderson reading Titania and Gordon Duncan being really unfunny as Bottom. She liked them all being in modern dress in this production – especially Hermia arriving in the wood to run away with Lysander toting her wheelie case. And the fairies looked really good – not childish and frilly but quite scary. Oberon’s followers wore slinky onesies that looked like they were made of snakeskin, and animal masks – foxes, weasels and owls. Titania’s fairies wore leotards with floaty stuff over the top that looked like moth’s wings when they danced. She quite wished she was one of them – until, that is, the interval came and they were all ushered out to the lakeside, and there the fairies were, in canoes, floating about with lanterns, singing the song that they sang round Titania when she was asleep. It was sort of magical, but she couldn’t help thinking how cold they must be out there on the water. She was glad she had taken Granny’s advice and brought a sweater, and she still shivered when she thought properly for the first time about what had happened to Ruby and who had taken her and how really terribly scared she must have been.

  The fairies were out again at the end of the play, standing by the lakeside, but she thought everyone had had enough of them by then, heading for their cars or for the ferry back to the other side. Back at the hotel, Granny said they needed to warm up and they went to the bar for hot chocolates. Sitting curled up in an armchair with her drink, watching the cream melting nicely on the top, Freda had one of those moments of pure happiness that you could sometimes have. She felt warm and loved and safe and completely content. She smiled at her grandmother and then looked stricken.

  ‘Granny,’ she said. ‘We didn’t ring Mum.’

  Granny was unbothered. ‘Well, we’ll do it in the morning,’ she said. ‘Too late now. Remind me in the morning.’

  But the morning wouldn’t do. Mum would be worried. They hadn’t even let her know that they had arrived safely. She had thought of ringing that morning but the boys told her that there was no mobile signal at the hotel – the hills behind blocked it. Apparently there was one spot in the corner of the car park where you could get a signal, and she and Granny had planned to try calling from there before they went to the theatre. But they had forgotten. She had forgotten. And Mum would be worried.

  ‘We have to ring,’ she said, ‘we have to go out now and ring.’

  ‘Freda, do you know what time it is? It’s eleven-thirty. Look around. We’re the only people left in here. We can’t wake Mum now just to tell her that we’re all right. If she was worried about us, she could have rung the hotel. She knows where we are.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Freda drank her chocolate but its power to comfort was lost. She felt jangled and wrong now. How could feeling change so quickly? Was there something the matter with her?

  Her grandmother yawned. ‘I am going to have a long bath,’ she said. ‘There was some interesting looking bubble bath among our toiletries – camomile and something. I shall try it out.’

  Upstairs, Freda did her teeth and vacated the bathroom. In her room she looked at the hotel phone on the bedside table. She could ring home on that even though Granny had said not to because it would cost a fortune, but Mum and Ben would be asleep and it would give them an awful shock. She heard her grandmother go into the bathroom and start the taps running for ‘a long bath’. An idea seized her and would not be ignored. Pulling on her sweater and pocketing her phone, she slipped out of her room and exited through the big bedroom, leaving the door on the latch. She sped down the stairs, through the empty lobby, and out into the windy darkness. She took a deep breath. This felt like a scary thing to be doing but it wasn’t really, she told herself. She was just going to the car park. Where was the harm in that?

  The car park was across the road from the hotel, further along the lake. There were no streetlights out here, but there was some light thrown onto the road by some fancy lamps at the entrance to the hotel. The car park, though, was in deep darkness and she felt that she could walk slap into something without warning. She got her phone out and clicked it into life. The blueish glow was comforting but there were no bars indicating any kind of signal. The far corner of the car park, Milo had said. She shone her phone around, trying to orient herself and then moved on in what she thought was the right direction, watching her screen for signs of a signal. One bar. Should she try with one bar? She typed quickly:

  ‘Cant say much because its dark in the car park but we are ok xx’ and she pressed send and waited. And waited. Then came the message:

  ‘Message could not be sent. Try again later’

  She wanted to cry with frustration but she wasn’t giving up now. By this time her eyes were adjusting to the dark and she could see the perimeter of the car park. She would walk round it until she got a better signal. Groping her way between the cars and keeping her eyes on the screen, she was rewarded eventually by a second tentative bar. She pressed the send icon again, and this time her phone gave its little chirp to tell her the message had gone. Elated, she turned and dodged her way as fast as she could between the rows of cars, back to the light of the road. Mum would get the message as soon as she woke in the morning – or maybe she had heard it arrive. Freda imagined her picking up her phone, smiling and going back to sleep. It had been the right thing to do.

  This was what she was thinking as she came out onto the road and bumped straight into a dark figure coming the other way. She couldn’t help giving a squeal of fright, but he just grunted and dashed past her. Feeling shaky, she raced across to the hotel and upstairs to their room. She hesitated at the door. Had she been ages? How long was a long bath? She edged the door open and waited for a voice to call out. Nothing. She ventured in, her mind whirling with excuses, but the room was empty and the bathroom door was closed. She was safe.

  Back in her own room, she sat on the bed and thought. She was pretty sure that the person she had bumped into was Dumitru, Granny’s pet waiter. She had glimpsed his face in the light from the hotel lamps. He was carrying something – something that she had bumped into. A bundle, like a bundle of clothes. But the way he was carrying them made her think that it could have been a person he was carrying. Or a body.

  He is so nice

  Chapter Seven

  DEMETRIUS IS A WORTHY GENTLEMAN

  Friday

  Freda is rather quiet this morning and a bit lacklustre about breakfast. I think she is still worrying about the phone call home, but when I suggest that we go out to the car park straight after we have eaten, she says she has rung already and is evasive about when and how. I suspect that she has used the hotel phone although I was mean about paying hotel rates, but I say nothing. Something has upset her and there is a danger that I could end up getting the blame.

  After breakfast we go back to our rooms and I settle down by the window with the news section of the paper and Freda has a go at the speedy crossword, though she still seems edgy and jumps visibly when I break our silence to say that I am meeting Dumitru later. She gets up, says she is going to do some sketching out on the jetty and disappears with her sketchpad. Something going on among the young, I think, and decide not to wade in unless I think she is out of her depth.

  Dumitru and I meet in the garden again, though it is not as balmy a morning as yesterday and we huddle over the table, warming our hands on our mugs (no iced tea this morning but a large cappuccino). I return his homework to him, appropriately amended with a red pen I found in the bottom of my bag. His main problem is spelling. His grammar is mostly all right, though tenses are a bit random, he sometimes forgets the third person ‘s’ and articles are hit and miss. He has a pretty good vocabulary too, but his language learning has obviously depended on conversation and, I guess, films and TV. I can
understand that he might not read books but screens would do just as well, provided that he can tell when he has strayed into the lands of the illiterate.

  ‘How much do you read?’ I ask.

  He gives me an apologetic waggle of the head which says, Read? What’s that? and I become bossy.

  ‘Do you have a laptop? A tablet?’

  ‘My phone just.’

  ‘Just my phone,’ I correct automatically. ‘Or my phone only.’

  ‘So complicated,’ he protests.

  ‘Your spelling is what we need to work on. You have to remember that in English sounds and letters don’t always correspond. And two words can sound the same but be spelt differently. Look here, for instance. You’ve written “I like best the seen where…” That “seen” is when you have seen something. A scene in a play is different – spelt like this.’

  I show him my correction and enlightenment dawns. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I heard “seens” and I thought they were the pictures we see on the stage. But this is scenǎ.’

  ‘Exactly. I thought it would be something like that – like the Italian.’

  ‘But why you don’t say the “c”?’

  ‘Why don’t you say the “c”? We don’t say it because there are lots of letters we don’t pronounce. English is made up of several languages all blended together, and when the spelling got fixed three hundred years ago the scholars who decided what was correct kept a lot of the original spelling in the languages the words came from, even though they were being pronounced differently. The spelling is like a ghost of pronunciations in the past. It’s not easy even for British children to get it right.’

  ‘So how I can learn?’

  I raise a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘How can I learn?’ he corrects himself.

  ‘Reading, for one thing. If nothing else, try to read the newspaper every day. What happens to the papers that are put out in the bar?’

  ‘Recycled, I suppose.’

  ‘Well you can pinch them at the end of the day, then.’

  ‘Pinch?’

  ‘Steal.’

  He looks uncomfortable for a moment and then shrugs. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I steal.’

  ‘You don’t like the idea of stealing,’ I say. ‘I think you must be “a worthy gentleman”.’

  His English is good enough for him to recognise this as an odd expression.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he says.

  ‘A quote from the play. You realise that the name Demetrius in the play is the same as your name? It’s Greek originally, from the goddess of the earth and the harvest, Demeter. It would be a good name for an eco-warrior if you wanted to be one.’

  I am losing him, I think. He looks unhappy.

  ‘I think I am worthy gentleman,’ he says, frowning. ‘I would like to be so.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I feel bad for what has happened to Ruby, you know.’

  ‘Do you know what has happened to her?’

  ‘NO!’ He is so loud that a bird that has been peacefully pecking crumbs off a nearby table takes fright and flight. ‘I meant only I was not there for her. Should be there in her boat with her.’

  ‘And why weren’t you?’

  ‘Because of work. I had call to go back to work but when I get there, it is not so busy. I am not necessary.’

  ‘Who called you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? But the call came on your mobile?’

  ‘No. There is no signal at the theatre. All mobiles are dead. There is landline phone – payphone –near the dressing rooms. The message came to there.’

  ‘So you didn’t speak to the person who called?’

  ‘No.’

  I wait for more but nothing comes. ‘So who took the message, Dumitru?’

  ‘Was Eve’s grandson.’

  ‘Milo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Milo? Really? Eve must know this, mustn’t she? Why am I being starved of information? What game is she actually playing here? I wonder.

  ‘And Milo didn’t say who called?’ I ask.

  ‘No. He doesn’t know the hotel. He said just “message from the hotel”.’

  ‘And when you got there you didn’t think you were really needed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you didn’t try to find out who had called?’

  ‘No.’ He shrugs. ‘I thought maybe it was the boss – Mr Fenton.’

  ‘Dominic Fenton, who owns the hotel? Does he manage the staffing himself? Isn’t there a manager?’

  Again, a slight shrug. ‘There is manager but Fenton, he doesn’t like that we are in the play.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Bad for business. The restaurant makes really a lot of money but with the play it is not so busy. Guests eat quickly in the bar, not spend the whole evening eating and drinking.’

  ‘And you told the police this?’

  ‘About Mr Fenton. No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They don’t ask.’

  If he was as unforthcoming with them as he has been with me, they’ve probably got him tagged as a suspect, I would think, but I suppose it depends on what Milo has said.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘Ruby’s father thinks you’ve abducted her – but I expect you know that.’

  Suddenly he leans forward and bangs his forehead histrionically on the table. ‘Why does he say this? She is just a child – thirteen years. Why I would want a child?’

  ‘Plenty of men do.’

  ‘Well not this man. I liked her and I was sorry for her. Her father is not a nice man, I think.’

  ‘And she had a crush on you?’

  ‘Crush?’

  ‘Liked you a lot.’

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe,’ he says.

  This is an awkward conversation and I am uneasily conscious that we have slipped into the past tense when talking about Ruby.

  ‘Well,’ I say briskly, ‘it’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it? And it’s worrying for you, I can see. But let’s hope Ruby is found and all is well. Meanwhile, you have an IELTS test to think about, so we’ll get back to this homework of yours and sort out your verb forms. And I think we might try flash cards for the spelling tomorrow. I’ll see if Freda might do some for me. She’s a little artist.’

  We both look across to the jetty, where we can just see Freda with her sketchbook.

  ‘She is enjoying here?’ he asks.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘She likes to observe, I think,’ he says, which strikes me as an odd comment from someone who hardly knows her.

  ‘Perhaps we all need to be a bit more observant,’ I say. ‘Come on, tenses!’

  *

  When I have finished with Dumitru I stomp off down to Eve’s studio. I am not actually quite as cross now as I was when Dumitru told me about Milo and the phone message but I puff myself up with outrage to try and buffet some truth out of her, and then am more or less deflated by finding her in the throes of another coughing fit.

  When I have fetched water and she is breathing easily, I say, ‘I suppose you know about the phone message?’

  ‘Phone message?’

  ‘Dumitru wasn’t with Ruby in the canoe that night because he had a message to go back to work. You must know that.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The tone is dismissive but she is watching me.

  ‘The call from the hotel went to the theatre and was picked up by – whom?’

  ‘It was Milo. So? What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Come on! You know it’s a big deal. Someone else was in Ruby’s canoe that night because Dumitru wasn’t there and Dumitru wasn’t actually needed at the hotel and doesn’t know who called. It sounds like the call was a hoax, Eve, so the police must be very keen to hear from Milo what the voice soun
ded like, and if he can’t give them a helpful answer then their next move is to wonder whether there was a call at all, or whether the hoax was all Milo’s.’

  ‘And why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, but if they suspect Colin then they will be wondering if Milo was persuaded to help him.’

  Eve puts down her water glass and stands up. ‘Well. I’m surprised at you, Gina Gray, the big detective, that you can be making assumptions before you have all the evidence. There was someone else in Ruby’s canoe that night – there are witnesses to that – but the someone was not my husband, who was seen ushering people about on dry land and is, anyway, a very large man whose size would have been conspicuous. And it was not Milo in that boat either. He was backstage with me, shifting scenery – and it’s not just me saying that – others were there too. So you’ll need to do better than that.’

  The last words are said as she disappears into her studio at the back and I feel that I have been dismissed but I follow her anyway.

  ‘If I don’t have all the evidence it’s because people aren’t telling me what they know – you especially. If you’d told me about Milo I could have talked to him already. And you say someone was seen in Ruby’s canoe with her – well, what did people say about him?’

  ‘Nothing, really, as far as I know – a lad in a costume and a mask, but I just hear the rumours, don’t I? I don’t sit in on the police interviews.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  But I know a man who could, I think.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’m on it. Watch this space.’

  As I walk back to the hotel I think about Dumitru. The mystery phone call has to be the key to what happened that night, but could Dumitru have set it up himself? There is probably somewhere near the theatre where his phone would have worked. Could he have made the call and then sped back to the theatre to get the message from Milo? But Milo would have spotted a foreign accent wouldn’t he, even if he didn’t recognise Dumitru’s voice? I need to talk to him but he doesn’t want to talk to me.