Drown My Books

by Penny Freedman

  ‘This is crap, Simon!’ she yelled, and slammed the front door after him.

  She stood for a moment, taking some deep breaths, before going back to the kitchen and finishing her breakfast. She would not – would not let the day be spoilt, As she cleared her crockery into the dishwasher, she felt, rather than heard, something outside. She looked up to see her sons’ faces flattened against the panes of the window. Both of them, she noticed, had runny noses. She opened the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. She saw that they had dragged upturned plant pots across to stand on.

  ‘We’re cold,’ Sam said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  ‘Really, really cold,’ Joe added.

  ‘Well, come in, then.’

  ‘Dad said we had to stay out here and not disturb you,’ Joe said, jumping down from his pot and coming to bury his face in her anorak.

  Guilt. Great waves of it. As was intended, of course.

  ‘How about some hot chocolate?’ she said.

  The morning passed perfectly pleasantly, if she discounted getting no chance to read her book. They baked biscuits, the boys watched some TV and, at lunchtime, when Simon returned, she decided not even to comment on the three hours he had been away, nor to ask what he thought he was doing encouraging Harry’s xenophobic paranoia. That could wait. She dished up sausages and chips and kept her counsel. Play happy families, she thought, and you might even convince yourself.

  She felt she had been rewarded when Simon got the boys to help with clearing the table and then took them upstairs to work on the chemistry set that Sam had been given for his birthday, but was forbidden to use without supervision. She settled herself on the sofa with her book, feeling mildly virtuous.

  The knock on the front door came almost immediately. At the door stood a smartly-dressed young woman whom she took to be selling something until she pulled out a warrant card for her scrutiny.

  ‘DI Paula Powell,’ she said. ‘Attached to Dover Police.’

  ‘Is this the library book again?’ Alice asked. ‘Because I’ve already talked to a police officer about —’

  ‘It’s not about the book,’ DI Powell said. ‘Can I come in?’

  Alice showed her into the sitting room but did not offer tea or coffee. She returned to the sofa and ostentatiously marked her place in her book and closed it. ‘If this isn’t about library books,’ she said, ‘then I suppose it’s about our neighbour’s phantom foreigner.’

  DI Powell looked at her sharply. ‘Phantom? Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because Harry sees dangerous terrorists behind every garden fence. He thinks boatloads of them come across in the night and land on the beach down there.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen any young men hanging about here in the past few weeks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Although your husband has?’

  ‘My husband?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No. He didn’t.’

  She could hear, above their heads, the bumps and creaks of Simon and the boys at work with the chemistry set.

  ‘Look, he’s just upstairs,’ she said. ‘I can call him down and we can —’

  ‘No.’ DI Powell stood up, as though she might need to block her path. ‘We have your husband’s statement. It’s you I want to talk to.’

  ‘OK. Well, I don’t know when Simon is supposed to have seen this guy, but I should tell you that this time of year we’re hardly here in the light to see anything. Simon and I both teach at the primary school in the village, and the children go there as well. We bundle out of here at eight-fifteen in the morning, and we’re not looking around for enemy aliens at that point. It’s a good day if everyone has the right shoes on and we’ve all remembered our packed lunches. And in the evening, after we’ve sorted out our classrooms, we’re not back usually until four-thirty, and it’s getting dark. We’re into the house, fire on, curtains closed.’

  ‘What about the shop?’

  ‘What about it? Anyway, it’s closed at the moment, since —’

  ‘Before it closed. Did you never stop off there on your way home?’

  ‘Not if I could help it. It’d mean fighting off demands for sweets and comics. We do a weekly supermarket shop, and that’s it.’

  ‘What about your husband? Does he make a habit of stopping off at the shop?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘You don’t know? Doesn’t he come home with you?’

  ‘He’s the deputy head. He quite often has more stuff to deal with.’

  ‘But you never ask him to pick something up from the shop? If you’ve run out?’

  ‘I do my best not to run out.’

  ‘And he didn’t tell you that he had seen a young man – not a local – having an argument with Kelly Field in the shop a few days before she died?’

  ‘When you say not a local, I assume you mean not white?’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘He’d have been keen to tell you that.’

  ‘But he didn’t tell you?’

  ‘He didn’t mention it.’

  ‘Is that usual? Don’t you share that sort of thing with one another?’

  Alice felt her face grow hot. She could just come out and say it; what did it matter what this woman thought about her marriage? My husband is a racist, she could say, and we don’t like each other very much.

  ‘We’re busy,’ she said. ‘And when we’re at home we’re focused on the children. There’s not much downtime.’

  ‘You said your husband would have been keen to tell us that the young man was from an ethnic minority. Why do you think that?’

  ‘He’s not comfortable with people who are different from himself. Let’s put it like that.’

  ‘But you are?’

  ‘I am what? Different from him?’

  ‘Comfortable with people who are racially different?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t grow up round here, unlike Simon. I grew up near London.’

  DI Powell stood up. Alice suddenly felt as if she was an actor in a TV crime drama. At any moment, she thought, DI Powell would say, There is just one more thing, and that would be the killer question.

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ DI Powell said, ‘If you had seen a young, foreign-looking man hanging around near your house, what would you have thought?’

  Alice stood up, too. ‘I would have thought how miserable it must be for him to be hanging around in this freezing, sorry arsehole of a place,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you out.’

  She went back to her book but could not settle to it. The afternoon was spoilt. She would not tackle Simon until the boys were in bed but she was not letting this go. The thought of Simon and Harry in cahoots with each other, running off to the police with their tales of a dodgy foreigner made her feel sick, and the leaden weight of the knowledge she tried so hard to avoid pressed down on her. She had made a terrible mistake. She had married a man she despised now, and was afraid of, she had two children with him and she couldn’t stay with him. It was going to be a mess at best, and very ugly at worst. She jumped up and went to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘I’m just popping out,’ she called. ‘Shan’t be long.’

  Without bothering with a coat, she put the door on the latch and, hunched against the wind, hurried round to Gina’s house. There was no answer to her knock and she remembered then that Gina had taken Freda into Dover with her. Reluctantly, she walked across the road and stood looking at the sea. What had made her let Simon persuade her that there was something romantic about living here, facing this endless, grey turmoil of water? She thought about the young Arab lad. Could he have felt more displaced anywhere than here, on this seafront? She knew who he was, of course, though she was damned if she was giving the polic
e any more information. He was Theodora Karalis’s boyfriend. She had seen them together at the bus stop one morning, when she had gone into school early, ahead of Simon and the boys, because her class was performing in morning assembly. They weren’t holding hands, or even talking to each other, just standing side by side, but the look on Dora’s face said everything. And another time she had looked out of the bedroom window and seen him wheeling a bike along the alley behind their houses. She assumed that father Karalis didn’t approve but she was glad for Dora – time for her to get away from his suffocating attention, she thought.

  She paced up and down for a few minutes, trying to keep warm, but gave in eventually and went back home.

  Over supper, Simon did not ask who their visitor had been, but he had looked out of the window and seen her, Alice felt sure. There was something false about him: he was too eager to please, overacting the fun dad, avoiding her eye. When they had finished, she told the boys they could watch a DVD before bed. ‘Half-term treat,’ she said. They sped out to the sitting room and, without looking at him, as she loaded the dishwasher, she said, ‘We need to talk about my visitor this afternoon. I suggest upstairs.’

  He went on the defensive as soon as she closed the bedroom door. ‘I would have told you the police might want to talk to you if you’d only given me the chance, but you were so keen to get back to your bloody book – couldn’t wait to get the boys off your hands —’

  ‘Shut up, Simon, and listen to me.’ She was shaking, she realised, with the rage she had been storing up all day. And she was afraid. He had never hit her but she had always known that he could. The only thing that held him back was that he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to go to the police. She sat down on the bed. ‘Don’t tower over me like that,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it. Sit down and we can talk properly.’ She kept her voice low and even. Low and slow – the mantra for teachers dealing with angry children.

  There was nowhere to sit in their cramped little bedroom but on the bed, so he sat on the floor under the window and scowled at her.

  ‘I don’t care about having to talk to the police,’ she said quietly. ‘What I care about is you sneaking off to the police with fascist Harry to sell them poisonous gossip.’

  ‘Well that shows how little you know. There’s no gossip involved. I told them what I saw and what I heard.’

  ‘And what was that, exactly?’

  ‘I saw a young guy – Arab, Middle-Eastern – whatever the PC term is – threatening Kelly Field.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What did he threaten her with? Knife? Gun? Suicide vest?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Oh, just words, then?’

  ‘He said, I warn you, if you say anything to him I will make you sorry. And he repeated it – I will make you sorry.’

  ‘So that lets him off the hook, then, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, you seem to think that threatening to make her sorry is evidence that he killed her, but I’d say it’s the opposite. You don’t make someone sorry by killing them, do you? Because they’d be dead and wouldn’t be able to be sorry.’

  ‘You’re splitting hairs.’

  ‘No. I’m not. Haven’t you ever told a child at school that you’d make them sorry if you ever caught them doing whatever again? But you didn’t mean you were going to kill them, did you?’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘No!’ Her voice was rising now; she couldn’t do low and slow any more. ‘You’re ridiculous – running off with a crazy old bigot to make trouble for a young guy who’s been hanging around here simply because he’s got a girlfriend here.’

  ‘Who?’ he laughed. ‘Who’s the girlfriend?’

  ‘I’m not telling you. But that, I imagine, is what he didn’t want Kelly to tell.’

  ‘So, then.’ He stood up, sensing triumph, she could tell. ‘He wanted to shut her up, didn’t he?’

  ‘You watch too many bad crime dramas,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody superior,’ he growled, standing over her now. ‘You never used to be like this. Not till weirdo woman came to live next door.’

  ‘Weirdo woman?’

  ‘Yes. With her bloody book group, so you’ve got snotty about what I read, and her horrible vegetables that you insist on us eating, and her smart remarks that we have to hear about. Gina says, Gina thinks – You know what they call that group of yours, don’t you?’

  ‘By they I suppose you mean your charming friends in the pub? Well, they’ve come up with some really clever names, but The Broomstick Brigade is the one we like best.’

  ‘And how do you think that makes me feel, hearing my wife called that sort of thing?’

  ‘Pretty stupid, I imagine – pretty stupid to be spending your time – and your money – with Neanderthals like them.’ She stood up now. ‘But I’ll tell you how I feel when I’m with my friends at the book group. I feel that here, at least, I can have an intelligent, truthful conversation about things that matter, that I can have a discussion – a disagreement, even – without anyone shouting or name-calling. It’s a great feeling and it’s one I certainly don’t get at home.’

  And then he hit her.

  Chapter Nine

  THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS

  Tuesday 18th February 2014

  My day starts with an eight o’clock phone call that has my heart thumping in panic. The call is bad news, though not of the kind I fear. Paula Powell is on the line.

  ‘I tried to see you, yesterday,’ she says, ‘but you weren’t there’. She says it accusingly, as though I were under house arrest.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve got my…’ and then I stop. Why the hell should I explain myself to her? ‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘What can you tell me about a young Arab man who’s been seen hanging around near your house?’

  ‘Seen by whom?’

  ‘By your neighbours. And by you, too, I imagine. Only you didn’t think fit to tell me about him.’

  ‘You told me not to interfere.’

  ‘Don’t start with me, Gina. I’m not in the mood. Have you seen him?’

  ‘I think,’ I say carefully, ‘that you may be talking about a student of mine. A medical student. He borrows my bike sometimes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why does he borrow your bike?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, I don’t use it much these days, what with the dog to walk and there’s the bus, you know, and —’

  ‘You know what I mean. Why does he want your bike?’

  ‘To ride it, Paula,’ I say.

  ‘Why,’ she asks, and I can hear her teeth gritting as she speaks, ‘doesn’t he have a bike of his own if he needs one?’

  Well, I wasn’t going to be able to stall forever, was I? I don’t want to tell her that he’s an asylum seeker; I want her to hold the image of medical student in her head for as long as possible. ‘He’s a bit short of money,’ I say.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Farid Khalil.’

  ‘And where is he studying? You’re not still teaching at Marlbury Uni, are you?’

  ‘He’s not at Marlbury. He’s studying in London but he’s… taking a break at the moment.’

  ‘What sort of break?’

  ‘Look, he’s from Syria, Paula,’ I say.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, they’re having a bit of trouble over there at the moment. You may have heard.’

  ‘Are you telling me he’s not a student, in fact?’

  ‘He is. He’s done two years in London – and been a model student – but his father was killed and there’s no more money.
He’s taking a break while he finds a way to support himself.’

  ‘If he’s not actually studying, he has no business being here.’

  And then I have to say it. ‘He’s applied for asylum.’

  There is a silence. Then, ‘Where can I find him?’ she asks.

  I am tempted to say I don’t know – which is, strictly speaking, true – but that will only send her off to the Border Agency to track him down and probably make matters worse. ‘Try Ruth and Ernest Cartwright,’ I say. ‘They run a drop-in centre at St Saviour’s Church hall. They may have an address for him.’

  ‘Right.’

  She is about to ring off but I stop her. ‘He’s not a killer, Paula. Really he’s not. This is a wild-goose chase.’

  She rings off.

  I take Freda to Folkestone for the morning. There we career down the zigzag path to the beach. It is an odd time of year to be doing it but we find other families desperate enough for half-term entertainment to be doing the same. We return in the Victorian cable car and finish off with excellent hot chocolate in a rather charming arty café. It is a satisfactory morning and I am distracted from worrying about Farid but on the way back, on the train, I start to fret. I am quite sure that he didn’t kill Kelly, but there is something I know which I have no intention of telling Paula. It was three days before Kelly’s death that Dora’s father strode across the road and carried her away from Farid. He took my bike and rode off back to Dover. I was worried about him and kept an eye open during the next two days, for his returning it, hoping to have the chance to talk to him. There was no sign of him, though, and I concluded that he was keeping it for the time being, even though it was no use for assignations with Dora any more. On Thursday morning, though, the day Kelly died, as I paced about the house waiting for the police to come and talk to me, I saw the bike, in its plastic cover, in my garden. Some time between Wednesday night and Thursday morning Farid had been back.

  Freda brings me back to the present, enquiring what our plans are for the afternoon, and the truth is that there are none. That is to say, I have plans: I shall be teaching first Matt and then Dora. I was hoping that Freda might conquer her fears and go to play with the Gates boys.