Perfect Little Children

by Sophie Hannah

  “You trying to get rid of me, Beth?”

  “Haha. No, not at all. I mean after.”

  “She’s in the bath. Hang on, she’s getting out. Seriously, though, you should all come over and stay with us. We’ve got a three-bedroom guesthouse in our garden, a swimming pool, a tennis court. You’d have fun! Oh, wait, here’s Flora.”

  I hear a woman’s voice in the background. I can’t hear what exactly she’s saying—something about being lucky, I think—but . . . it sounds like Flora.

  How can it be her?

  “What, hon?” Lewis calls out. “Can’t you do that later? Oh, okay. Beth, she’ll ring you back in five, ten minutes. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  Lucky. Where have I heard that word recently?

  “Sit tight. And get your diary ready. Let’s schedule a visit for y’all to the good old US of A!” The line goes dead.

  I put my phone down on Ruth and Robin’s kitchen table.

  “That’s it?” says Dom.

  “No. Flora’s ringing me back.”

  “When? Can we go home, and you talk to her there?”

  “No, she’s ringing in five minutes, Lewis said. Dom, I heard her. In the background. Well, I heard a woman. It sounded like Flora.”

  “You didn’t ask him why there’s no Flora or Georgina on his Instagram, or who Chimpy is.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him for twelve years. I didn’t want to sound like I was interrogating him.”

  “So how long are we going to sit here? I mean—”

  Dom doesn’t get a chance to tell me what he means because my phone starts to ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Beth! I can’t believe this! Is it really you, after all these years?”

  Is it really you, Flora?

  I don’t need to ask. I know it’s her, without a doubt. I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s the same one I heard yesterday morning, on Wyddial Lane. I can’t pretend anymore, not now that I’ve heard her speak. “Flora—sorry to just go straight in with this, but . . . can I tell you about something really strange that happened to me yesterday?”

  Dom covers his face with his hands.

  “Of course,” says Flora.

  I tell her the same lie I told Lewis—that I ended up on Wyddial Lane by accident. Then I tell her what I saw, and what happened when Dom and I went back there this morning. When I get to the end of the story, she says, “Beth, that’s . . . the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. I can promise you, Thomas and Emily are no longer five and three.” She laughs.

  “Obviously,” I say. “I know it sounds like I’ve gone mad, but I haven’t. I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “Is this why you contacted Lewis?”

  “Yeah. Dom told me you’d all moved to Florida—I didn’t know that, but as soon as I heard it, I realized I could . . . well, I could find out if you were there or here.”

  “I’m here.” Flora laughs. “Which, for you, means I’m there, and you can’t have seen me on a street in England where I used to live. Beth, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to call you back later. Someone’s at the door. Lovely to talk to you—we’ve left it far too long! Bye.”

  “Wait,” I say.

  Too late. She’s gone.

  She lied. No one was at her door. She could have ignored it, or let Lewis answer it. She hasn’t spoken to me for twelve years, I tell her the most bizarre story she’s ever heard and she chooses to end the call because “someone’s at the door”?

  I know where I heard the word lucky. Flora said it, standing outside Newnham House yesterday, talking on the phone. As well as saying she was home, talking about Peterborough and saying hello to someone called Chimpy, she said, at the very end of the phone call, “Lucky. I’m very lucky.”

  I pick up my phone again.

  “What happened?” says Dom. “Where did she go? Who are you ringing now?”

  “No one. Look. Look what it says for the last call.” I pass him the phone.

  “No caller ID.” He says it as if it’s an answer that raises no questions, and hands the phone back to me.

  “What does that mean?” I try Lewis’s number again and get a busy signal.

  I can’t call Flora back, or see where she called me from. If she’s in Hemingford Abbots and not Delray Beach, for instance. Which would explain why there had to be a separate call—why Lewis couldn’t pass his phone to her so that she could speak to me.

  Then who was the woman I just heard saying “lucky”?

  “It could mean many things,” says Dom.

  “No.” It could, but it doesn’t. “It means one thing. It means that Flora deliberately withheld her number.”

  7

  The nearest school to Wyddial Lane is in a village called Wyton. Houghton Primary has a large, square courtyard playground bordered by an L-shaped beige-brick building and another L made from green prefabricated units. There’s a tree in one corner, tall and thick with pink flowers, pushing up the concrete on either side of it. I think it might be a cherry tree. Dom and I have often agreed that trees are like fish—we ought to know more than we do about the differences between the various types, but we’ve reached our forties and can still only identify weeping willows and salmon with any certainty.

  The tree, together with a fence painted the same green as the prefabs, allows Houghton Primary School to make a welcoming first impression. It’s eight forty-five. The bell signaling the start of morning school rang a few seconds ago, and the children are shrieking with delight and running circles around one another. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have so much energy. I got up and left the house at five this morning, having had only about two and a half hours’ sleep. I wanted to make sure to get here before the preschool breakfast club part of the day, so that I wouldn’t miss any parents who dropped their children off early.

  Flora Braid—that’s who you didn’t want to miss. Dropping off Thomas.

  I’m no longer correcting every thought that passes through my mind. I know why I’m here and I’m not going to argue with myself about it: I’m waiting for Flora to bring her son, five-year-old Thomas, to school. Emily, at only three, is still too young for school. Maybe she’ll be getting dropped off at nursery school on the way.

  So far, it’s not looking promising. I’ve seen two black Range Rovers, but no sign of the silver one I saw outside Newnham House. When the children start to form a line to enter the building, I know it’s not going to happen. They’re not coming. Flora wouldn’t allow Thomas to be late for school. Lewis always used to tease her for wanting to get to the airport two and a half hours before even a domestic flight. When we went to Corfu, he grumbled all the way to Gatwick about how early she’d insisted on leaving. “When I’ve got my own private jet, I’ll get picked up from my house,” he said matter-of-factly, as if this was something inevitable that would one day happen.

  “No messing about, no lining up for hours with half of London.”

  Damn. How could I have been so stupid? Houghton Primary is a state school. Anyone who lives locally can send their five-year-old here for free. If I wasn’t so tired, I would have realized this much sooner. There’s no way on earth that Lewis Braid, with the money he must have now, would send his kids to a state school. Thomas—both Thomases, the seventeen-year-old one in Florida and the five-year-old one in Hemingford Abbots—will be receiving an expensive private education.

  That’s how I’m thinking about this until I’ve gathered enough information to make sense of all the contradictory evidence: there are two Thomases. I’ve seen two Thomases—one in real life, the one I can’t possibly have seen, and one in photographs online, the one that other people believe in too.

  My phone starts to ring on the seat next to me. It’s Dom. He was still asleep when I left the house, and has no idea where I am. I’ll text him, but not now. If I take the call, we’ll only end up having the same conversation we had last night; he’ll tell me I need to stop wanting the a
nswers I’m always going to want until I get them.

  Flora never called me back, though she promised she would. Lewis didn’t answer his phone again, though I tried calling it many more times.

  “When are you going to accept that there’s nothing more you can reasonably do?” Dom asked me.

  I didn’t reply, apart from in my head: When are you going to realize how fucking bizarre and creepy it is that a woman in the same room as Lewis Braid in Florida said the same words I heard Flora say outside Newnham House yesterday? “Lucky. I’m very lucky.”

  Once Dom’s name has disappeared from the screen, I pick up my phone and put the words “Private primary schools near Hemingford Abbots, Cambs” into the search box.

  Various results come up, enough to convince me that there isn’t one obvious next port of call. I try to look at the first few search results, but it’s no good. My screen is too small, and cracked from when I dropped it on the tiles at St. Pancras station last year. I’m not ready to go home. Where can I go that might have Internet access and computers?

  Half an hour later I’m at Huntingdon Library, staring at a screen large enough to contain all the information I need at a glance. There’s no obvious answer to the question of which school five-year-old Thomas is likely to attend. There are plenty of private prep schools in Cambridge but, having lived there for many years, I know how impossible it can be to get in on the A14 in the morning. From Hemingford Abbots, in rush-hour traffic, it could easily take an hour or more. Still, as a proud University of Cambridge graduate, Lewis would certainly believe that Cambridge was where the best education was to be had. No doubt about that.

  He also believed in ease and convenience, and not waiting in lines, whether at airports or on busy commuter roads . . .

  Would Flora be willing to expose her children to exhaust fumes for an hour twice a day? I wouldn’t. What would I do, if I lived in Hemingford Abbots and wanted my children to attend a straw-boater-and-striped-blazer sort of private school, but didn’t want to see, or inhale, too much of the A14?

  I start to look through the other options and find one that looks promising: Kimbolton Prep School. Not too long a drive from Wyddial Lane, and possible to reach without getting snarled up in the Cambridge traffic.

  A woman’s voice behind me says breathlessly, “You’ll never guess who’s upstairs!”

  I turn, but she’s not talking to me. The white-haired man at the computer next to me, without turning his head, says, “Who?” as if bracing himself for bad news.

  “John Major—well, a statue of him, anyway. Bronze or copper or something like that. What a funny thing to have in a library. John Major,” she says again wistfully. “I never thought I’d miss him, but I do. Should have appreciated him when he was prime minister. He’d never have landed us in this mess.”

  The white-haired man harrumphs in response.

  I pick up my bag and make my way outside. Kimbolton Prep School. That has to be what Zan and Ben would call “a good shout.” There’s nowhere else nearby that looks like the sort of place Lewis Braid would choose for his child. And he always made all the important decisions.

  Did Flora want to ring me yesterday or did he force her to, and then tell her when to end the call and that she mustn’t ring me back? Did he make her withhold her number so that I couldn’t phone her back later?

  Dom didn’t originally want me to contact Lewis, but he couldn’t stop me, just like I couldn’t stop him from spending too much money on pub meals all those years ago, to support The Olde Jug’s new owners before they were our friends. That’s because neither one of us controls the other; we’re both free agents. Flora and Lewis, on the other hand . . .

  What if he’s always manipulated her, and I just didn’t realize? So often she would say, “Lew-is,” as if she wished he would stop whatever he was doing. I interpreted it as her trying and failing to control him, but what if it was the other way around: him controlling her, keeping her alert and in check by demonstrating how far he was willing to go? Like the two-grand changing room . . .

  When you’re young, you don’t seriously wonder whether your friends might be terrible people. You’re naive and optimistic; you assume anyone occupying the structural position of best friend must be a good person deep down.

  What if Lewis isn’t? What if, as well as being an entertaining, outrageous and occasionally offensive weirdo, he’s also something much worse?

  Or I might be getting stupidly carried away. There’s no way of knowing, not without an answer to the more immediate question: what are he and Flora so determined to hide, and how does it relate to all the bizarre things I’ve seen and heard? That’s the mystery—the one Dom can forget all about, apparently, and I can’t. At least we agree on one thing: the Braids are hiding something.

  In my hurry to get to the library, I forgot to notice where I left my car, and I have to walk up and down the car park for a few minutes before I spot it. I’m reaching into my bag for my phone when I feel someone’s eyes on me.

  I look up, and my phone slips from between my fingers. She’s standing directly in front of me, about ten feet ahead.

  It’s Flora.

  * * *

  She must have been coming this way, then seen me and come to a standstill. Her eyes are wide with shock, and she’s lowering her arm, as if she’s been pointing at me, or pointing me out to somebody . . . but there’s no one with her. She’s alone.

  She stares at me as if she’s never seen anything more terrifying. Feeling as if the ground I’m standing on is falling through space beneath my feet, I take a step toward her, opening my mouth to speak, but she’s already turning away, walking fast in the opposite direction. Running.

  “Flora! Wait!”

  I think about chasing her, but there’s too much distance between us already and something’s nagging at the back of my mind, telling me I mustn’t go anywhere, not without . . .

  My phone.

  I dropped it. It made a crunching noise. The screen was already cracked; now it’s probably damaged beyond repair. In normal circumstances, I’d be feeling sick about the cost of a new phone.

  Amazingly, it still works, though it looks like something anyone sensible would throw in the trash. Dom has tried to call me four times. I send him a quick message saying, “Out for the day. Don’t worry, all fine!” and end up with a small piece of glass in my forefinger. Parts of the screen are missing around the button at the bottom. I can see silver-gray innards. And more silver in front of me, now that I’ve turned around: Flora’s Range Rover, standing out glossily in a row of smaller, less shiny cars. I must have walked straight past it and not noticed—because I wasn’t looking for it, not here.

  To be strictly accurate, I suppose I should say, “A silver Range Rover.” I didn’t notice the license plate on Saturday, so there’s no way of knowing if this one is Flora’s.

  It is. It’s her car. She was on her way back to it, walking across the car park, when she saw you and turned and ran.

  A text arrives from Dom. “No clients today? Out where?”

  “I rearranged two appointments,” I text back.

  “Why? What are you doing?” is his response. Then, “When back?”

  If I set off now, I could be back by noon. I send a reply saying, “Not sure when back yet, will keep you posted!,” put my smashed phone back in my bag and walk over to the silver Range Rover. The windows are tinted, making it hard to see what’s inside, though I can see the outlines of car seats.

  I don’t know what makes me try the door. It opens with a soft and fluid thunking sound. I close it, then open it again. Thunk-thunk. My car doors make a much harsher noise. No one would leave a car like this unlocked. It must be worth at least fifty grand.

  The answer comes to me right away: she didn’t. Flora didn’t leave the car unlocked while she went and did whatever she had to do in Huntingdon. She unlocked it just now, thinking she was about to drive home, and then, in her shock at seeing me, she forgot to lock i
t again before running away.

  I walk around to the other side of the car, open the door, get in and sit in the driver’s seat. If Flora wants to come back and ask me to get out, let her do that. I’ve got plenty to ask her; she can give me some answers and maybe then I’ll agree to move.

  I open the glove compartment and find nothing useful, only the Range Rover’s official manual. I get out again, open the boot and see a black backpack with green straps and zips, a pink and white duvet with white press-studs along one edge, a creased sheet of paper with some writing on it in large handwriting. This turns out to be a spelling test. There’s no name at the top, only the numbers one to five in the margin and the answers written in a child’s hand: “friend, school, house, father, shugar.” All have red ticks beside them apart from “shugar.” Next to it, the correct spelling of the word is written in smaller, adult handwriting.

  Is this a test that Thomas Braid, or Thomas Cater, was given at school? My eyes linger on the words “house” and “father.” There’s nothing here to identify who the Range Rover belongs to—no “Braid” or “Cater” written on anything. Also no mud, dirt, no crumbs, no wrappers. The boot looks as if it has been recently vacuumed, which is what I’d expect from a car belonging to the Braids. They used to hire carpet cleaners every two months when we all lived in rented flats in Newnham. Dominic used to rib Lewis about it. “You’re paying, out of your own pocket, to have a carpet professionally cleaned that’s still clean from the last time?” he would say, and Lewis would shake his head and say, “You live in filth if you want to, mate. Some of us have higher standards.”

  On the backseat, there’s a bunched-up navy-blue raincoat that would fit a woman of Flora’s size, and two child car seats. They’re not baby seats. They’re the kind that a five-year-old and a three-year-old would need.

  Two car seats. Not three.

  I’m not crazy. I didn’t imagine anything. This is all real.

  This is where two small children were sitting on Saturday morning, in these car seats, when Flora opened the door and said, “Thomas! Emily! Out you get!” And that’s what she said. I didn’t mishear or misremember. She called them Thomas and Emily, and they were wearing Thomas and Emily Braid’s old clothes.