The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Yes, cloth ears.’ Sniffing victory, Bella did a cartwheel.

  ‘My mum went shopping this morning,’ Emily said helpfully. ‘It could have been her, except it was Oxford Street.’ She came down the stone steps and picked up her hat.

  ‘I wonder if you lied?’ Bella speculated. She did another cartwheel. ‘You don’t look like her one bit.’

  ‘I do.’ A shutter of red came down over Chrissie’s eyes. She curled her fists.

  She landed Bella a high kick and sent her flying. She kicked her until she stopped moving and speaking and was nothing but a brown sprig. Dead material.

  ‘I don’t look like my mum or my dad. Everyone says that. They call me the Cuckoo in the Nest.’ Sitting on the top step, Emily twisted thread around her index finger. ‘She must be Chrissie’s mum; we saw her.’

  The red mist cleared. Chrissie regarded Emily; she was surrounded by wisps of torn cotton. She had stretched her blouse over her knees so it looked like she had huge bosoms. Chrissie would have laughed at this with her friends from her old school, but at the prep school even the jokes were different.

  Bella turned on Chrissie. ‘Prove that the lady in that house is your mother.’

  ‘I don’t mind if we don’t have proof.’ Emily brightened. ‘Although you could bring a photograph of your mum. Let’s all do that.’ She was perched on the bottom step.

  ‘Why do we need to know what our mums look like?’ Chrissie was dismayed. Emily had deserted her.

  ‘Because we do.’ Bella was icy.

  The sun was a big metal plate pressing down on her. Chrissie had proof. She reached into her pocket and then held out her hand, palm uppermost. The silver caught the sunlight. ‘I happen to have this.’ She was nonchalant.

  ‘What’s that?’ Hands on hips, Bella didn’t move.

  ‘That’s gorgeous!’ Emily got to her feet and peered at the locket. ‘You should wear it round your neck; it would look beautiful on you.’

  ‘It’s not all.’ Chrissie prised open the case with clumsy fingers. She held it up for Emily to see. She didn’t look at Bella.

  ‘That’s your mum!’ Emily exclaimed with delight. ‘How clever to make it so tiny. Is that your dad? Golly, they’re kissing!’ She gave a mew of delight.

  ‘That’s revolting.’ Bella hugged herself. ‘Parents shouldn’t do that. Mine don’t.’ She frowned.

  ‘Do what?’ Emily looked at her.

  ‘Kiss and all that.’

  ‘Yes they should.’ Chrissie sensed a chink in the armour. ‘It’s how we exist. Our mums and dads go to bed and—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Bella spat.

  ‘Don’t you think it would suit Chrissie if she wore it?’ Emily, apparently oblivious to the prevailing aggression, appealed to Bella.

  ‘I might lose it.’ Chrissie couldn’t say that if she wore it she might be sent to prison and then there was no chance of being a taxi driver. ‘Anyway, it’s not mine.’ She knew to add in a sprinkling of truth.

  ‘Give it to me.’ Bella strode over and put out a hand.

  ‘No.’ Chrissie closed her fingers around the locket. ‘I’m not to give it to anyone. My mum said I could show you, but I must bring it back.’

  ‘Is it a family heirloom?’ Emily enquired. ‘My dad says Mum’s sold all our ones. They argue about it.’ Her brow puckered briefly.

  ‘Yes.’ Not knowing what an ‘air loom’ might be, Chrissie gave herself a 50 per cent chance that this was the correct answer. ‘Anyway, that’s all the proof I’m giving you,’ she told Bella.

  Her dad said she was a winner, but even winners needed back-up. ‘Your new friends will help when you’re older. It’s how it works. Tell George – Mr Watson – I’m right behind you. That’ll impress him.’ Chrissie felt a pall of gloom descend at the idea of still knowing Bella when she was grown up. Nor could she tell Mr Watson that her dad was behind her. He would look over her shoulder and see she was lying.

  Blinded by the glare of the sun, pinpricks of light danced before her eyes. Another aeroplane roared across the sky. As the sound died, Chrissie announced, ‘I have to go.’

  ‘We’ll come with you.’ Bella gave a sly smile. ‘I want to ask your dad about drawing plants.’

  ‘Race you.’ Chrissie snatched off her flip-flops and, her rucksack bouncing against her back, pelted up Syon Vista. The short dry grass stung the soles of her feet. Emily shouted that she was going the wrong way, but Chrissie ran faster. She veered off the avenue and plunged through a shrubbery.

  She was deep in the hinterland of the Botanic Gardens. With temperatures a record high, visitors were sheltering in the cafés, but even on normal days this area was rarely frequented. She pushed on between rhododendron bushes, tripping on tree roots, inhaling eucalyptus and the scents of other exotic oils released by the searing heat from the bark of trees brought from far-off lands. She was oblivious to cuts flecking her skin from grasses razor sharp through lack of rain.

  At last certain that she had shaken off Bella, Chrissie stopped. Getting her breath, she put on her flip-flops and, depleted by the heat, plodded on. Mesmerized by the crunch of tinder-dry brushwood beneath her feet, she wandered along a meandering track of compacted soil slippery with pine needles, and pushed through thickets of foliage.

  She was a winner. She told Bella out loud, ‘I’m in charge.’

  Triumphant, it didn’t occur to Chrissie that she was lost. Or that if she shouted for help, in this remote part of Kew Gardens, no one would hear.

  Chapter Eleven

  October 2014

  Jack placed his London Underground pass on to the barrier sensor at Kew Gardens station. A train had just left so there was no one on the eastbound platform. It was eleven forty. He strolled to the ‘head end’ and regarded the two screens on the driver’s console. They displayed two angles of the dark empty platform. He flicked a glance at the top of the console: there was nothing there. Since the ‘One Under’ case last year, he’d been looking out for objects left there and once had seen a tin of mandarins. The case had involved a child’s toy left on top of consoles on the Wimbledon line and a man hit by a train at Stamford Brook station. It was the first case brought to Stella by a client. The first two investigations that he and Stella had worked on had been cold cases. Stella had found the files in her father’s house after his death.

  The tin of mandarins had gone when Jack made the down-road journey and no more tins of fruit – or anything else –had appeared since. Probably left accidentally by a driver. Most explanations for strange occurrences were boring. The One Under case was only last year, but it felt longer ago since he and Stella had worked as a team. He missed it.

  In that time the ‘Grime and Crime Agency’, as Lucie May – reporter and erstwhile friend of Terry Darnell – had, not altogether kindly, dubbed it, had solved two cases. They had reunited a cat with its owner and found a missing person. Both ‘jobs’ were done free of charge. The missing person case wasn’t in theory minor. Suzie Darnell had noticed newspaper deliveries for an elderly woman on her corridor mounting up. A few ‘door-to-door inquiries’ (two doors) established that the neighbour was staying with her niece in Brighton and had forgotten to cancel the papers. Jack suspected Suzie had rustled up the mystery to keep their hand in. It hadn’t required teamwork; Stella had done it by herself.

  On the other line, a Richmond train was approaching. The driver waved at Jack and he returned the gesture automatically – one driver to another; then the driver switched on his cab lights and Jack realized that he knew him. Darryl Clark had got the One Under at Stamford Brook. Jack was pleased that Clark was back at work. One man had beaten his demons.

  The doors shut and the train gathered speed, clattering off down the track, lights absorbed into the darkness. Jack had two days off. He had spent that day and the evening walking the streets of West London. He had crossed the river four times, the final time over the bridge at Kew, and ended up at Kew Gardens station. He hadn’t made a conscious decision to take
a train, he was rarely a passenger, but now that he was on the platform he understood why he was here. Jennifer Day, the woman who had died on his train, had been at the back of his mind all day. With a shock he remembered how her life had ended here. Strictly speaking she had died a few metres up the track, but it wasn’t necessary to be precise. Eleven forty-three. The time that the P.E.A. alarm had been sounded on his train. It was a sign that tonight’s driver was Darryl Clark; everything was connected. Coincidences are non-existent.

  There was something tied to the fence on the other platform. Jack stepped to the edge of the platform and saw that it was a bouquet of flowers. The flowers were dead and limp. They must have been left for Jennifer Day. Something was attached to the wrapping. A card, perhaps left by her family, flapped listlessly in the damp breeze. At the inquest her two grown-up children, a man and a woman, had kept close to the husband as if he might crumple to the floor. The term ‘looked like he’d been hit by a truck’ was apt. The man’s face was alabaster-white and blasted by shock. Jack had read somewhere that most people want to die in their own homes. Jennifer Day wouldn’t have wished to die on the floor of a late-night train amongst strangers as Lucie May, unafraid of raw truth, had phrased it in the Chronicle.

  There was someone on the platform. He must have been in the last car of the Richmond train. Jack retreated into the shadows of the canopy. The man was strolling towards the barrier, swinging a golfing umbrella; it tapped as it touched the platform. Tap. Tap. Tap. He was passing the flowers. He stopped. Tap.

  The man approached the railing and, with a deft movement, ripped off the card. He gave it a cursory glance and let it drop. It floated to the ground a metre from the railing.

  Abruptly he swivelled on his heel and looked across to where Jack was standing, shrouded in darkness. Adept at invisibility, Jack had learnt to close down. He had told Stella that people sense when they are being watched, even from behind. He concentrated on the bundled cables beneath the platform lip: even thoughts could attract attention. He dressed in black to blend with the night. The man’s gaze paused at the spot where he stood. He knew he was there.

  There was a clatter. A boy had pushed through the turnstile and dropped his skateboard on the platform. He was scooting towards the man and the flowers. The man resumed his stroll up the platform with what Jack took to be an Oyster card held lightly between his fingers.

  Keeping in the darkness of the canopy, Jack glided swiftly to the barrier and slipped behind a pillar. The man passed beneath the bleak lamplight and as he turned to the barrier, Jack saw his face properly. A ripple of shock passed through him. It was the man from the sixth car. The True Host.

  Jack forced himself to stay by the pillar. The man was aware of Jack. His only option was to outthink him.

  The man left the station and went into the tunnel. Like Jack, he hadn’t chosen the bridge. Moments later, he came up the steps close to Jack’s pillar. Had he not been acutely aware of him, Jack might have missed him. He was holding his umbrella across his chest like a rifle. Treading like a cat, the man slipped through the ticket office and out on to the concourse.

  Jack pushed back through the barrier and, staying in the ticket office, looked out through the window. The man was out of his sightline, yet he forced himself to remain where he was. The True Host couldn’t know what he was made of. Not yet. If Jack showed no sign of following him, he might be put off the scent. He couldn’t know that Jack had a mind like his own.

  Jack stared at the Lloyds chemist on Station Approach. To keep his mind free he listed the items that were sold. Moisturizer, plasters, cotton wool, prescription drugs, sun-tan cream...

  The man was caught in the reflection of the chemist’s window walking towards Kew Gardens Road. Spectral: although he was alive, there was no sign of life. He dealt in death.

  ‘What you doing?’ The boy was balanced on his skateboard, jiggling to music in his headphones; the wheels rolled back and forth.

  Jack felt a frisson of alarm. It was the innocent who gave the game away.

  ‘Waiting for someone.’ He looked stern. The boy was no more than fifteen, he should be at home in bed.

  ‘No one’s coming,’ the boy said with a confidence that was uncanny – as if he knew. He pivoted his riding foot and pushed off. When Jack came out of the station, the scrawl of the wheels on the pavement was fading. He had lost the True Host. Jack didn’t panic. He would find him.

  Most people assume that they will not be chosen from a crowd. No one will follow them and learn their habits. Most consider themselves invisible. The majority of commuters ignore station warnings to stand back from the yellow line at the platform’s edge. Not just to avoid the train’s slipstream, but because a True Host might be waiting to push them beneath the wheels. CCTV doesn’t pick up intention. Few people expect the unexpected. Sometimes someone fell on to the rails and died beneath the wheels of the train. Verdict: accidental death. When Jack pulled into stations, his gaze travelled across faces searching for the killer. He forced them to see that he knew them. He had to stop them committing a terrible act. How many lives had he saved in that way?

  People leave windows open at night, a door on the latch while they take their dog for a last walk and secrete keys under the mat. They rely on experience. It didn’t happen yesterday so it won’t happen today. If it does happen, it happens to other people. A True Host infiltrated existence and rendered it void.

  Jack had learnt early that adults weren’t to be trusted. He had developed an antenna for those who carry death in their hearts. It was months since he had found a True Host. He had forgotten the effect that it had on him. He felt barely alive.

  There were no cars outside the station to provide cover. Jack walked as if he had a destination, blotting out the True Host. If he checked his watch and began to hurry it would appear contrived. He submitted to the deadness. Yet if the man was a True Host he would recognize Jack. A man with a mind like his own.

  Jack passed the health-food shop, the flower shop and an optician’s. At the end of the road he used the zebra crossing although there were no cars coming.

  He found him on Leyborne Park, walking with purpose. Jack risked staying on the same pavement as if he didn’t care if he was seen. The man crossed the South Circular and went down Forest Road and into Priory Road. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound echoed in the empty streets.

  Jack tried to keep in the shadows, but the street lighting was effective so if the man looked round he would see him. At the end of Priory Road the man stopped. Jack ducked behind the trunk of an oak tree.

  The man remained still, a hand resting on one of two iron gates. The words ‘Kew’ and ‘Villa’ were wrought into the top of each. The man unlatched the gate. He shot a cuff and consulted his watch. He closed the gate and continued on his way, walking faster now. Swinging the umbrella higher. Tap. Tap.

  On Kew Road the boundary wall of the Botanic Gardens stretched off into the distance. It wavered slightly as if the bricklayers had lacked a plumb line when they built it. More likely the centuries had caused the wall to shift out of true. The gardens were Stella’s latest client. It was also one of his favourite places. Since he was a boy he had nurtured a dream of going to the Herbarium and seeing the centuries-old collection of plant specimens, many of them unidentified. His mother had promised to take him when he was grown up. Or had she? Whatever, it was surely another sign. Jack roused himself. The man was walking fast now.

  Jack stepped into the doorway of the Maids of Honour tea shop. He would be out of sight. He glanced into the shop. He had gone there with his mother. It was when she had promised to take him to the Herbarium, he was sure now. He could see the table at which they had sat. Or had they? Like most things to do with her, he might have made it up.

  The pavement beneath the Kew Gardens wall was empty. The pagoda peeped above the dark bulk of the trees. Even a True Host couldn’t scale the high wall. Heedless of being seen Jack checked under and between parked cars on the opposite side o
f the road. Nothing.

  If Stella were here, she would insist that there was a logical explanation. Unlike him, she didn’t believe that people disappeared – drifting between time zones or into other lives – she would examine the bricks and mortar. Keeping to the boundary wall, Jack went in the direction that man had been going.

  He had played a game in the car with his mother. Singing to music on the radio when they were about to enter a tunnel she told him to keep singing. ‘Hold the tune, keep the beat.’ When the car came out of the tunnel and radio reception was restored, their singing was in synch with the song. It was ‘Endless Love’, the duet between Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie. Yet the song was released three days after his mother’s death so that couldn’t be true. ‘It’s true for you,’ Jackie had said. Jack hummed it now and, as if coming out of a tunnel and picking up the song again, he saw where the man had gone.

  No ghosts, no magic. The explanation was as prosaic as Stella would have expected. There was a door in the wall. Bricks and mortar. The True Host had gone into Kew Gardens.

  Jack had walked along here – night and day – and hadn’t noticed the door. He tried the handle, knowing that it would be locked.

  He retraced his steps. By the time he arrived at the Victoria Gate it had started raining. Large drops that in moments would soak him. A car was coming down Kew Road towards the bridge. A lamp at the front came on, the orange light blurred by rain. A taxi. Jack put up a hand and flagged it down. The driver’s offside window slid down. A silhouetted figure in the darkness.

  Jack gave an address – not his own, he never divulged that – and heard the click of the passenger door unlocking. Inside he did up his seat belt and settled back. He hoped the driver wouldn’t chat and noted that the glass partition was closed. The driver remained silent.

  Jennifer Day had died amongst strangers. One of the ‘strangers’ had been a True Host. In her report of the inquest, Lucie May had said Day’s death had been ‘accidental’. Cashman’s layman’s diagnosis had been correct. She had died of a cerebral aneurism. A blood vessel had ballooned and burst, flooding her brain with blood. She had died instantly, and the coroner had assured her family that, apart from the stiff neck she had mentioned to her fellow passenger, she had felt no pain. Yet it had happened in the presence of a man who made it his business to extinguish life.