‘I only have your word for it that it wasn’t yours.’
‘It had been defaced. You must have seen that if you’ve looked at it properly. Someone took a felt-tip pen to it. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I’m incapable of defacing a book.’
‘And you ask our forensics expert and he will tell you that the only fingerprints on that book are yours.’
‘Well, that’s suspicious in itself, isn’t it? It’s a library book. Lots of people have handled it. People don’t generally wear gloves to read a book, do they? Whoever put it there wiped it clean and wore gloves, didn’t they? The point is, that book was left as some sort of message – presumably by Kelly’s killer – and then our books disappeared – four of them – and —’
She breaks in. ‘They haven’t disappeared, Gina, have they? One of you left that book there and now you’re all playing the ‘I am Spartacus’ scene to cover up. I don’t know yet what you’re doing, but I will find out and —’
‘They were taken, Paula! Someone got into our houses and took them. Maybe they just wanted to get us into trouble but maybe it’s more sinister than that and you won’t know that until one of us turns up dead with a book lying beside us.’
I am shouting by this time and Caliban comes racing up in anticipation of canine gallantry. Paula turns away and makes for the steps. ‘I’m not listening to this, Gina,’ she says. ‘This isn’t a TV drama. I’m investigating one death and some stupid game that you and your friends are playing.’ She starts to mount the steps and then pauses and calls down to me, ‘And I’ll tell you how I know there isn’t some sort of serial killer stalking your book group. If he was, wouldn’t he have started with the most completely bloody infuriating person in it? And that would have been you.’
I watch her climb the steps and listen for the sound of her car driving off before putting Caliban on his lead and going home.
I have no time for worrying about Paula today. It is half-term and my granddaughter, Freda, is coming to stay tomorrow, so I am engaged in some last-minute embellishments to my milieu. Freda has been kinder than the rest of my family about my decision to live in a hovel but even she finds it less than ideal. At six, she is a serious reader and her expectations of the world derive largely from literary stereotypes, so in her world it is fine – appropriate, indeed – for a granny to live in a cottage, but the granny should wear her grey hair in a wispy bun and have spectacles on the end of her nose, and her cottage should stand in the middle of a wood with a garden round it and a cosy fire, home-baked cakes and a cat inside. The bun and specs are not an option, not even for Freda, and I can do nothing about my house’s seabound state, but I can offer a cat, I can bake a tin of ginger flapjacks and I will, I have decided, produce the cosy fire. For Freda I have broken my vow of austerity, paid out two thousand pounds, and expect a slick young man to arrive at any moment to install a woodburning stove in the fireplace condemned by Jason the builder as unusable but declared by the slick young man (Will, by name) to be no problem for woodburner technology. ‘We just stick a pipe up the chimney,’ I was informed, ‘and you’re cool.’
‘Or warm?’ I suggested.
He smiled but I’m not sure he took my point.
So now I’m waiting for him to arrive and perform this piece of magic. Two hours max I am assured. Actually, I’m terrified now. I have no faith in my ability to manage burning wood, even if my chimney can stand the strain. Never mind serial killers, I’m quite capable of incinerating myself and Freda with no malice aforethought.
Will is reassuring, however, turning up on time with his sidekick, Chas, both wearing Aran sweaters and corduroy trousers, as though they were away on a shooting weekend. If they hadn’t decided to start up this business, I feel, they would be working in merchant banks. They aren’t based on this dingy bit of coast, of course – we’re more food banks than merchant banks down here. My internet trawl found them in upmarket Tunbridge Wells; they are slumming it today but are too well-bred to let it show. They do turn down my offer of the obligatory cup of tea, however, not wanting to embarrass me by asking for Earl Grey, I suppose, though they explain, charmingly, that they want to ‘crack on’ and ‘get out of my hair’ as quickly as possible. They are done with time to spare, don’t ask to use my loo and depart, leaving me feeling, in spite of the cheque they have taken with them, that I have been the beneficiary of kindly youthful voluntary service.
I devote the rest of the day to getting to grips with the fire-breathing monster I have let into my house. I test the humidity of my bag of logs, using the implement I have been sold for this purpose, I experiment with the air-flow control and try the doors closed and open. Open is a bad idea: air rushes in and flaming splinters of wood fly out. I burn holes in the hearth rug and spend a good deal of time on my hands and knees with a wet j-cloth, neurotically chasing down the sparks which I imagine will smoulder away, only to burst into flame later and barbecue me in my bed. Only when I feel I have the mastery of the monster do I eat a cheese sandwich and go to bed to dream of infernos.
Chapter Seven
IN A FREE STATE
Monday 17th February 2014
Well, we have not been incinerated. Freda arrived yesterday, escorted by her family – Ellie her mother, Ben her stepfather and Nico her brother. I cooked lunch like a proper grandmother and we sat round the woodburner while the rain lashed the window panes. Freda is gratifyingly delighted by the woodburner, insisting that it is like the witch’s stove in Hansel and Gretel. She is seriously into witches at the moment, arriving with two Harry Potter DVDs and three volumes in the Worst Witch series. She confides to me, after the rest of the family have left, that she has told her friends at school that I am a witch. I take this to be a response to the untended state of my hair but she says, ‘No, Granny. Because of your broomstick!’ I had forgotten about my besom broom, bought in my new spirit of austerity off a market stall. I don’t actually use it because it turned out to be pretty ineffective and the hoover is quicker, but it stands in a corner of the kitchen and I am very much afraid that, if it ever stops raining, Freda will want me to fly on it. So far she has been satisfied with a viewing of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a witch’s brew supper of minestrone soup and a chapter of The Worst Witch Strikes Again as a bedtime story. She has her eye on Ariel as my familiar, I can see, but the cat is staying firmly by the fire, looking ostentatiously earthbound and unmagical. I know how she feels.
This morning, I am taking charge of our agenda. We walk Caliban in a light drizzle and then set off for a trip to Dover Castle. This, I think, offers excitement without witchcraft, though it turns out to have its drawbacks. I had forgotten what a long climb it is up to the castle’s cliff-top eminence; Freda starts protesting before we are halfway up. Neither had I anticipated the French invasion. Perhaps unwisely, I showed Freda the Welcome to France message on my phone as we left the house, so when the first flock of French schoolchildren chatters past us, she tugs my hand and says earnestly, ‘Granny, I think we ARE in France.’ What are they all doing here when the sole purpose of this castle, for hundreds of years, was to keep out our despised Gallic neighbours?
Whatever their teachers’ reasons for dragging them here (surely not by ferry?) in the icy blasts of February, they are here en masse – from little ones in bright high-vis tabards to sullen teenagers glued to ses téléphones portables. So Freda and I play Dodge the Frogs, heading for anywhere that looks quiet before the place gets overrun and we beat a retreat.
Freda likes a cartoon version of the history of the Plantagenet kings. She doesn’t follow the history – who does? – but she likes the way defeated kings fall over flat on their backs with their crowns on. She also finds a throne that she can sit on while I take a photo of her on my phone. Then, when a French advance party arrives, we head for the Saxon church and the Roman lighthouse, the Pharos. Freda knows about the Romans. You can hardly grow u
p in Marlbury without knowing about them; they are there from its solid city walls to the mosaics and coins in its museum, to its gates, north, east and west. She is much less sure about the Saxons, which only goes to demonstrate the truth of Orwell’s observation that history is written by the winners. (I know Churchill is supposed to have said ‘History is written by the victors’ but no one seems to be able to say when or where he said it, so I’m going with Orwell, who definitely wrote his remark in Tribune in February 1944.)
Freda likes the Saxon church, though, because it has intricately tiled walls, which fascinate her, and the Pharos is pleasantly spooky without overdoing it. Then it is time for lunch. My vow of poverty does get a bit wobbly when Freda comes to visit, so we do not eat sandwiches on a bench in the face of a biting wind that carries the taste of the Siberian steppes on its breath. Instead we treat ourselves to soup, bread and cheese, and flapjacks in the warmth of the castle’s café. We are virtually the only clients – the French children, it seems, are doomed to freeze with their sandwiches. This is all very satisfactory and I feel that we are doing well as we make a few educational purchases in the shop and scamper down the slope to the exit, though I am disconcerted when Freda spots an ice-cream sign at the bottom and cannot be persuaded that ice creams in February are inappropriate. She selects chocolate and raspberry in a cone and licks it happily as we walk into the town. One advantage, I have to say, of eating ice cream when the temperature verges on freezing is that it doesn’t make a mess. Freda consumes the whole thing without getting drips on her gloves.
After this, life gets tedious for her because I have to take her with me to my asylum seekers’ class. I can’t cancel the class because we are never quite sure where people are to let them know, and though Alice, my neighbour, offered to have her for the afternoon, the noise made by her two sons racing round the garden this morning made Freda wobbly about going there, so there is nothing for it but for her to sit with her freshly purchased book about castles while my students and I work on verb tenses. I did convince myself that, in some way, seeing Freda would be good for my students, on the principle that a small child is always a cheering thing, a reminder about renewal and hope, but I did also think to warn them that Freda would be here today and I am not surprised that Ivy has stayed away, needing no reminder of her lost sons. What does surprise me, though, is that Farid is not here. He never misses a class and his absence makes me uneasy.
We work on the difference between the simple and progressive forms of verbs, the aspect of the verb form, as it is called: Where do you live? (simple) as opposed to Where are you living? (progressive) for example. Does anyone ever ask my students where they live? No. They ask where they are living, because that covers the temporariness of their arrangements. Asking someone where they live implies a settled state, with all the accoutrements of legal entitlement; asking where they are living acknowledges the temporary, includes the unspoken phrases, at the moment or for the present. We mull this over for a bit and I get them to tell the bits of their recent travels they can bear to relate in progressive terms: I was travelling for x weeks; While I was travelling y happened; I have been waiting to hear about my asylum application for z months.
At the end of the class, they want to hear from Freda, and I do understand the fascination of hearing a small child speak effortlessly a language that one is struggling to learn. I have stood staring at French infants as they rolled their guttural ‘r’s with no trouble, their lips already poised in the perfect pout. Freda, I must say, acquits herself well, getting over her initial shyness and demonstrating, at the end of the session, a flawless mastery of the perfect progressive tense with her answer, ‘I have been staying with my granny since yesterday.’
Freda is tired by the time we arrive home, so I get the fire lit and we sit in front of it to eat cheese on toast with crispy bacon (her choice) and watch a quiz show that neither of us quite understands.
Upstairs, as I’m giving Freda a bath, we hear shouting from next door. I can’t hear what they are saying, but Alice is mostly yelling at Simon, with aggrieved burbles from him in response. Freda looks surprised. ‘Is their TV upstairs?’ she asks. I am momentarily nonplussed by her question, and then I am so delighted that I have to sit down on the laundry box to compose myself. You can’t know, really, the state of your children’s relationships; Ellie and Ben seem happy and fond when I see them together, but they are juggling jobs and children and not enough money and it could be that it gets on top of them from time to time. God knows Ellie and Annie heard enough shouting when they were growing up. It was much like what we are hearing from next door, I suppose: me yelling and Andrew infuriatingly calm and quiet, turning me into a two-year-old in a tantrum. But Freda thinks if there is yelling in a house it must come from the television and I bless her innocence.
Chapter Eight
TROUBLES
Monday 17th February 2014
Alice
Alice Gates lay in bed, luxuriating in idleness so unusual for her that it felt almost criminal. Outside in the garden she could hear her boys playing; Simon, she knew, was out there with them and she could relax. She arranged her pillows, sat up and took a sip of her tea. She looked round the room, greyly lit by the north-facing window. It was pathetic really, this room: a wall of fitted cupboards and the bed and barely room to move round it. It had been the right decision to give the boys the bigger room at the front, looking out to sea, because, with the bunk beds in, there was room for it to be a playroom as well, and that meant they could keep some of the chaos out of the sitting room downstairs. What was really pathetic, of course, was that they had to live in this poky little two-bedroom place at all, both of them full-time teachers, and Simon a deputy head. But Simon had Paul to support; Heidi wasn’t going to let him off the hook there, even though she had remarried and the new husband was some sort of whiz in the city. Simon had been taken for a ride over the divorce and he knew it; that was one of the reasons why the black moods came over him. Heidi had got the house, as well as maintenance for Paul until he was eighteen. She had produced medical evidence that her health was too fragile for her to work. Not too fragile, it seemed, for keeping a horse and holidaying in St Lucia.
Enough. She took a deep breath and drank her tea. She would not be sour. Not today. She would bless half term and a husband who didn’t mind getting up early even on a non-work day, and two bright, healthy, noisy boys and a new book to read. She had just yesterday picked up from the bookshop in Dungate a copy of May We Be Forgiven, which won the Bailey’s prize and was promisingly puffed as being about sibling rivalry and murderous rage. Life was not at all bad.
This thought got her out of bed, ready to go downstairs and warm up one of the pains au chocolat she had bought as a half-term breakfast treat. She looked out of the window. The boys were bouncing on the trampoline and Simon was leaning on the fence, talking to Harry, their neighbour. Harry gave her the creeps a bit, and he had had a UKIP poster in his window for the local elections, but she knew she ought to think of him as a vulnerable old man and she did keep an eye open for milk piling up on the doorstep and curtains not getting drawn. She just didn’t want to have to talk to him, so she was glad that Simon seemed happy to do it.
As she was eating her pain au chocolat and savouring the first pages of May We Be Forgiven, Simon came in from the garden and took his car keys off a hook above the sink.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘Just a quick trip into Dover.’
‘Are you taking the boys with you?’
He glanced out of the window. ‘They’ll be fine out there. You’ll only need to look out for them now and then.’
‘No, I won’t!’ she protested. ‘We agreed, Si. This is my morning off. I’m on duty this afternoon. Why can’t you take them with you?’
‘They’ll be bored. They’ll be fine here.’
‘No, they won’t. The minute you’re g
one, they’ll be in here moaning about being bored and demanding this, that and the other, and bang goes my morning off. ’
‘Have you any idea how whingey you sound?’ He was jiggling his keys, dying to be off.
‘I don’t care! We had an agreement. Take them with you or go this afternoon.’
‘I can’t. I’m taking Harry with me. He’s got something he needs to do.’
‘Harry? Why? Why can’t he get the bus like he always does?’
She saw his face relax as he spotted a chance for self-righteousness; he almost smirked. ‘Listen to yourself, Alice,’ he said. ‘He’s an old man and it’s freezing out there. The least I can do as a neighbour is give him a lift.’
‘So take him this afternoon.’
‘What he has to do is urgent.’
‘Is he ill? Are you taking him to the hospital?’
She saw the blood surge into his face, the warning signal she had got used to, the tremor of an imminent explosion. ‘Why can you never leave anything alone?’ he growled, and she could see the effort it cost him to keep his voice low. ‘If you must know, he wants to go to the police station, and, before you ask, he thinks he has some information about Kelly’s death.’
‘What sort of information?’
He was moving towards the door now, desperate to be off.
‘He saw someone hanging about,’ he said as he moved down the hall. ‘Young guy, foreign looking.’ He had the door open now. ‘I shouldn’t be much more than an hour. You can manage that, can’t you?’
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