Where Everything Seems Double

by Penny Freedman

  She started to walk away, furious and tearful and wanting to escape, but she found herself almost colliding with the boys, returning cheerfully with a Magnum in each hand, and in the business of finding the money for them, and unwrapping and taking that first crisp, cold bite she somehow managed to swallow her anger too, and though she avoided eye contact with Venetia she thought she did pretty well at behaving as though nothing had happened.

  Milo and Eve came out of the police station long after the Magnums were finished and they had played an assortment of word games on their phones, mostly won by Venetia. Milo looked pale and Eve looked rather hot and red, but she sounded cheerful enough when she said, ‘Well they didn’t throw him into a cell, anyway,’ and she handed Milo some money and said that she was going to her studio but he could buy them all fish and chips. ‘But home after that, boys. Your granddad wants some help with moving the hives.’

  They watched her go and then, without saying anything, Milo brandished the notes in his hand and led them across the square and down towards the quay, where they joined the queue at the chippy. Nobody said anything as they stood in line, jigging with impatience. Everyone had questions for Milo; everyone knew this wasn’t the place for them; no-one could think of anything else to talk about.

  Eventually, juggling their hot bundles, they walked along the lakeside until they found a sort of grassy lump that projected out into the lake.

  ‘It’s a viewing point,’ Venetia said. ‘People stop here to gawp at the lake, but if we’re here they can’t, can they?’

  They spread themselves out on the grass and once the unwrapping of the food was underway Micky asked the first question.

  ‘So what did they say?’

  Milo ate a chip. ‘Not much.’

  ‘What did they ask then?’

  ‘What do you think? Why did you have the phone? Why didn’t you tell anyone you had it? What was your relationship with Ruby? All of that.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ It was Venetia’s question this time.

  ‘She gave it me to look after. I forgot I had it. Ruby was just a friend.’

  He said this in a sing-song voice, like someone reciting something he had learnt.

  Venetia said, ‘Well, that’s all true, isn’t it? But you were in there for ages. They must have asked you other stuff too.’

  ‘They wanted to know about that phone call I took, for Dumitru. You could see they were putting that and me having the phone together and making themselves a little story.’

  ‘Did they ask about Dumitru?’ Freda asked.

  He looked at her directly. He knew what she meant. ‘Not really. They wanted to know who made the call. Went on and on about it. What kind of voice? What kind of accent? Young or old? What exactly did he say? Any background noise? Di-da-di-da.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Micky had been busy with his fish, and his mouth was still full.

  ‘It was a man’s voice. Youngish. He said, “Message for Dumitru. He’s wanted back at the hotel right away” – or words to that effect. Who remembers the exact words of a phone call?’

  There was a pause while they all ate their chips. Then Venetia bundled up her remaining chips and said, ‘Freda’s granny has asked a policeman to come and stay. He’s a chief inspector and he’s arriving this afternoon.’

  Freda knew that she was absolutely scarlet as everyone turned to look at her. She concentrated on bundling up her own uneaten chips. ‘He’s a really old friend,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why he’s coming. They see each other sometimes. I don’t think it’s anything to do with Ruby. He works in London, so I don’t…’

  She tailed off, and Venetia went for the kill. ‘He is called David,’ she said, ‘and I’ve just been looking at the Facebook stuff about Milo and Fergus’s grandfather and the girl who was killed in Marlbury. The inspector who arrested him was called David Scott. Coincidence, isn’t it? I just wonder if he’s here to help the local bobbies fit your granddad up for whatever has happened to Ruby.’

  Freda dared not look up. She sat, rolling the chip papers into a tighter and tighter roll. Then Milo said, ‘Lay off, Venetia. You watch too much crime stuff on TV.’ He stood up. ‘Come on, Ferg. We’d better get home and sort the hives. We’ll see you guys around, OK?’

  Venetia jumped up too. ‘I want to do some shopping. I’ll walk through town with you.’

  Freda felt helpless. She wanted to get Milo away from Venetia and explain to him about David, but he had walked away without giving her another look, and there was absolutely nothing to be done but to get the ferry back to the hotel and leave Venetia to keep dropping her poison in his ear. She looked at Micky.

  ‘Do you know what time the next ferry is?’ she asked.

  For answer he pointed a thumb out towards the lake, where she could see the ferry just leaving the quay. ‘Two hours till the next one,’ he said.

  She shrugged, trying to look unbothered. ‘Looks like I’ll have to go shopping too,’ she said.

  Micky jumped up. ‘I could row you there if you like?’

  ‘Really? Have you got a boat?’

  ‘My dad lets out boats off the quay here.’

  ‘But he’s driving the ferry, isn’t he?’

  ‘He doesn’t drive the ferry. He captains it.’

  Feeling mocked, Freda jumped to her feet, ready to say that she didn’t want to be rowed down the lake and would just wait for the ferry to come round, but Micky was on his feet too, smiling at her.

  ‘My uncle manages the boat hire. Let’s see what he’s got. Dinghy or canoe – what’s your choice?’

  ‘Which would you rather row?’

  ‘Well I would only row a dinghy. I’d be paddling a canoe, wouldn’t I?’

  He was grinning again and she could see that he wasn’t really being unkind.

  ‘OK,’ she said, so I’m a landlubber. We only have a piddling little river where I live, and nobody does anything with it.’

  They made their way back to the quay, where Micky called something she couldn’t follow to a man in a slightly official-looking hi-viz jacket, jumped into a small rowing boat and put out a hand to help her in. She sat facing him as he pushed off from the shore and then settled into a steady pull on the oars.

  ‘Good practice for the race,’ he said, and he was smiling again. Watching him as he moved to and fro with the rhythm of his rowing, Freda thought that she had ignored him rather because Milo was more exciting, but he was really rather good-looking – and actually rather nice.

  The ferry

  Chapter Nine

  ARE WE ALL MET?

  Saturday

  It is not a good way to start the day, the arrival of a hyper-excited teenager at your breakfast table, breathless with secret knowledge, and then the choppy ferry ride endangering the digestion of a stack of pancakes. By mid-morning I am frazzled and wish I had stopped for a restorative coffee before taking the ferry back to the hotel. However, I have things to do. I must see Dumitru for our usual morning session, and I must make arrangements for David’s stay.

  I see now that I was not thinking clearly when I pressed David to come up here. I imagined just slotting him in to the vacant space in my king-size bed, but I realise now, as we make our way back up the lake and I have the fresh breeze and quite a bit of spray in my face to wake me up, that this will not do. After the four-month sabbatical in our relationship, I can hardly be sure whether David will want to be in my bed – or, indeed, whether I will be keen to have him there. The potential for awkwardness is considerable, and then there is Freda. Even supposing we feel like it, how could David and I possibly be comfortable in bed together with Freda just the other side of a door? And then there’s all the awkwardness with the bathroom and all of us edging round each other. I can only too easily compose Freda’s side of the dialogue with her new friends: My gran’s boyfriend… cringe-making… s
ooo gross…

  It won’t do. I consider briefly whether Freda and I could share the bed and put David in the little room, but I don’t think Freda would find that any more acceptable. Time was there was nothing she liked more than to get into my bed with me but those days are long gone. There is nothing for it but to see if there is another room for David, and if the signals are right we shall have to skulk between one another’s rooms in the middle of the night as I remember doing on premarital visits to my in-laws back in the day.

  I am startled from remembrance of things past by the chirpy arrival of a text:

  ‘On train arr Penrith 11.30. Hiring car. Eta 12.30.’

  There is no sign-off and no xxs. Thinking about it, I don’t believe David has ever done xxs, but a ‘Looking forward to seeing you’ or even just a ‘See you soon’ would have been nice.

  I sprint off the ferry, put my head into the bar to tell Dumitru I’ll be with him in a moment, and go to reception. At least in requesting another room for David I don’t need to misrepresent our relationship by using the dreaded word, ‘partner’, so I say briskly that a colleague of mine is in the area and would like to stay for a couple of nights. I like ‘colleague’ – business-like, free of implications sexual or emotional, and more or less true as far as the purpose of this weekend is concerned. The receptionist – a swarthy, unsmiling man I have not encountered before – frowns at his screen and scrolls and taps before saying that all he can offer is a deluxe room with very good views on the third floor. Judging by the sparsely populated breakfast tables this morning, I don’t believe this for a moment, but I don’t quibble. David can afford it, and I am beginning to think that I won’t need to worry about the inconvenience of padding up flights of stairs in my slippers for nocturnal congress.

  Dumitru is ready with a cappuccino for me when I go into the bar, but I notice now that he is not looking good. He has a black eye, a split lip and the grey pallor of a man in pain.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened to you?’ I ask.

  He makes a poor attempt at feigning incomprehension, and when I gesture at the face mumbles that he hit it on a door.

  ‘Ah, these doors,’ I say. ‘Don’t they just spring out and get us?’

  He looks slightly puzzled but I think he gets my tone. I size up his injuries while appearing to be devoting myself to my cappuccino. Someone has beaten him up – I can almost see the knuckle marks in the bruises on his face – but he is not going to tell me about it so I concentrate instead on phrasal verbs. This is a bit punitive, I know, for a student who looks as though he has an extremely bad headache, and he begins to look very pale as we work our way through such delights as the multiple meanings of ‘take in’ and the differences between ‘pass on’ and ‘pass by’.

  When I think he has had enough, I give him some homework, go up to our room to brush my hair and put on some lipstick, and then seat myself in one of the window bays in the bar to watch out for David.

  I don’t have long to wait, although it takes me a moment or two to marry my mental picture of the David I am waiting for with the man I see striding up the drive. It’s not that he has aged so much in the past months – I’m pretty sure the grey at his temples was beginning to show then and his face didn’t any longer qualify as boyish. No, what has happened is that I have been time travelling back to an earlier episode when, marooned in foreign territory and out of my depth in a murder investigation in which I had become a suspect, I was rescued by him. The memory of it is so acute that my heart does something strange and I give an odd little gasp, which attracts the attention of a man at the next table. I recall the moment of rescue so vividly – David, tall and tanned, jumping out of a taxi and whisking me off, sweaty and bedraggled, from the house I was sharing with a group of overwrought students, and transporting me to a luxury seaside hotel, where he put me to bed and went off to sort out the local police. We subsequently had a terrible row, but I remember it as one of the happiest times of my life. I was in love with him then, I suppose. Am I in love with him now? I would have to resort to the weasel words of the Prince of Wales: ‘Whatever in love means’. I am so flustered by this memory that by the time I stumble out into the lobby and accost David at the reception desk I have tears in my eyes, and he greets me with, ‘Are you all right?’ in a tone that is less sympathetic than you might think.

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ I say briskly, and we don’t kiss, or even touch. He collects his key and I go with him to his room, feeling odd in the forced intimacy of the lift. I feel odd in his room too, with its enormous bed, so I ask him if he has had lunch and say that I will order him a sandwich and meet him down in the bar.

  By the time he comes down, I have adjusted my mental picture and actually he looks rather good in a nice blue, short-sleeved shirt. I let him swig his beer and make inroads on his beef sandwich before I say, ‘So shall I tell you what’s going on?’

  He nods, and says rather indistinctly, ‘They’re not dragging the lake, then?’

  ‘They’re not. The local kids who feel they own the lake are expecting it, but I don’t know if that’s based on actual information.’

  ‘They feel they own the lake?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. You eat and I’ll talk.’

  And so I tell him, with admirable lucidity and economy, I think, though I don’t get any commendation. I explain about the ‘gang’ – the provenance of its members and Freda’s insertion into it – about the craft centre and Ruby Buxton’s parents, about Colin’s chemistry coaching for Ruby, about The Dream and the floating fairies and the abandoned canoe, about Dumitru and the mystery phone call, about Milo and Ruby’s phone and, finally, about Freda’s night-time encounter with Dumitru and the mystery bundle. Then I pause for breath and ask if I can have a sip of his beer.

  ‘Obviously what I don’t know,’ I say, after rather more than a sip, ‘is all the police stuff. Have they got any useful CCTV footage? Have they traced the call to the theatre? Any forensic evidence from the abandoned canoe? Why haven’t they dragged the lake?’

  He has finished his sandwich and drains the last of his beer. ‘Cost,’ he says, ‘is the answer to that. They’ll want to exhaust other possibilities first.’ He looks at his watch. ‘I might as well go into the station now. I said early afternoon.’

  ‘You’ve talked to them already?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to come all this way on spec. They’re certainly taking this case seriously – I was able to talk to the SIO at 8.30 this morning.’

  ‘Eve had told them about Ruby’s phone.’

  ‘Yes. Tell me, what sort of alibi has Colin Fletcher got for the relevant time?’

  ‘He was ushering at the theatre – helping to manage the crowd going to the lakeside and back at the interval.’

  ‘And there are witnesses who saw him there – and saw him in the theatre afterwards?’

  ‘That I’m not sure about. He and Eve are very prickly. The police have interviewed him three times now so they should know, but it doesn’t sound as though he has a cast iron alibi does it?’

  ‘It doesn’t.’ He gets up. ‘I’ll just go and pay for this.’

  ‘I paid. It’s on my tab.’

  ‘Right. Thank you.’

  ‘I assumed that you weren’t on expenses.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  Oh God. Are we going to talk to each other like this for the whole weekend?

  ‘Well, good luck with the local bobbies,’ I say. ‘I’ll probably be here when you get back. Remember mobiles don’t work in the hotel so you’ll need to knock on my door if I’m not in here or in the garden. Room 118.’

  He gives a vague wave and off he goes.

  And then, as soon as he has gone, I am seized with the panicky realisation that Freda isn’t back yet and it is two o’clock. Shouldn’t she be back? I look helplessly at my dead phone and decide to go to the car park sweet spot to
see if there has been a message. There has not: two bars spring up obediently for me but no message chatters its way in. Damn. I walk along to the jetty to consult the ferry timetable, find that the next one won’t be in for over an hour, and am turning back towards the hotel when a shout of ‘Gran’ attracts me and I turn to see Freda hopping nimbly out of a rowing boat, assisted by a round-faced boy who I think is Micky. She waves him off and turns to me, smiling. ‘I missed the ferry,’ she says, ‘so he rowed me. He’s good, isn’t he?’

  I ruin the moment for her. ‘Did you give her a life jacket?’ I call to the boy, and I can feel Freda’s eyes rolling even though I am not looking at her. Micky grins, though, brandishes a life jacket and sets off down the lake with long, even pulls on his oars. Freda doesn’t say anything right away, but as we are walking across to the hotel she says, ‘You have to do it, don’t you? You and Mum? It’s like you can’t stop yourselves.’

  ‘It’s called being a mother. You wait. You’ll be the same.’

  ‘I absolutely won’t. I’m determined. I shall trust my children.’

  ‘David’s here, by the way,’ I say.

  ‘Right,’ she says.

  Back in our room, she takes a sharp look round for evidence of David’s occupation.

  ‘He’s got a nice room on the third floor,’ I say.

  ‘Right,’ she says again.

  Keeping my back to her, and making a performance of tidying the stuff on my bedside table, I ask, oh so casually, ‘So how did Milo get on?’

  ‘Fine,’ she says, sitting on the window seat and looking out at the lake.

  ‘They were happy with his explanation?’

  ‘I don’t think he was aiming to make them happy.’

  I grit my teeth. ‘They believed his story, I mean,’ I say, still trying to maintain my casual tone and feigning deep interest in my phone, into which nothing of any importance can have made an entrance.